Book Three: Sunrise on the Prairie - Chapter 12

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_ The afternoon sun was pouring in at the back windows of Mrs.
Farmer's long, uneven parlour, making the dusky room look like a
cavern with a fire at one end of it. The furniture was all in its
cool, figured summer cretonnes. The glass flower vases that stood
about on little tables caught the sunlight and twinkled like tiny
lamps. Claude had been sitting there for a long while, and he
knew he ought to go. Through the window at his elbow he could see
rows of double hollyhocks, the flat leaves of the sprawling
catalpa, and the spires of the tangled mint bed, all transparent
in the gold-powdered light. They had talked about everything but
the thing he had come to say. As he looked out into the garden he
felt that he would never get it out. There was something in the
way the mint bed burned and floated that made one a
fatalist,--afraid to meddle. But after he was far away, he would
regret; uncertainty would tease him like a splinter in his thumb.

He rose suddenly and said without apology: "Gladys, I wish I
could feel sure you'd never marry my brother."

She did not reply, but sat in her easy chair, looking up at him
with a strange kind of calmness.

"I know all the advantages," he went on hastily, "but they
wouldn't make it up to you. That sort of a--compromise would make
you awfully unhappy. I know."

"I don't think I shall ever marry Bayliss," Gladys spoke in her
usual low, round voice, but her quick breathing showed he had
touched something that hurt. "I suppose I have used him. It gives
a school-teacher a certain prestige if people think she can marry
the rich bachelor of the town whenever she wants to. But I am
afraid I won't marry him,--because you are the member of the
family I have always admired."

Claude turned away to the window. "A fine lot I've been to
admire," he muttered.

"Well, it's true, anyway. It was like that when we went to High
School, and it's kept up. Everything you do always seems exciting
to me."

Claude felt a cold perspiration on his forehead. He wished now
that he had never come. "But that's it, Gladys. What HAVE I ever
done, except make one blunder after another?"

She came over to the window and stood beside him. "I don't know;
perhaps it's by their blunders that one gets to know people,--by
what they can't do. If you'd been like all the rest, you could
have got on in their way. That was the one thing I couldn't have
stood."

Claude was frowning out into the flaming garden. He had not heard
a word of her reply. "Why didn't you keep me from making a fool
of myself?" he asked in a low voice.

"I think I tried--once. Anyhow, it's all turning out better than
I thought. You didn't get stuck here. You've found your place.
You're sailing away. You've just begun."

"And what about you?"

She laughed softly. "Oh, I shall teach in the High School!"

Claude took her hands and they stood looking searchingly at each
other in the swimming golden light that made everything
transparent. He never knew exactly how he found his hat and made
his way out of the house. He was only sure that Gladys did not
accompany him to the door. He glanced back once, and saw her head
against the bright window.

She stood there, exactly where he left her, and watched the
evening come on, not moving, scarcely breathing. She was thinking
how often, when she came downstairs, she would see him standing
here by the window, or moving about in the dusky room, looking at
last as he ought to look,--like his convictions and the choice he
had made. She would never let this house be sold for taxes now.
She would save her salary and pay them off. She could never like
any other room so well as this. It had always been a refuge from
Frankfort; and now there would be this vivid, confident figure,
an image as distinct to her as the portrait of her grandfather
upon the wall. _

Read next: Book Three: Sunrise on the Prairie: Chapter 13

Read previous: Book Three: Sunrise on the Prairie: Chapter 11

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