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we ought not to take them too hard. It isn't as if a person had been hurt, is it?"
Claude shook himself and tried to respond to her cordiality, and to the shabby comfort of her long parlour, so
evidently doing its best to be attractive to her friends. There weren't four steady legs on any of the stuffed
chairs or little folding tables she had brought up from the South, and the heavy gold moulding was half broken
away from the oil portrait of her father, the judge. But she carried her poverty lightly, as Southern people did
after the Civil War, and she didn't fret half so much about her back taxes as her neighbours did. Claude tried
to talk agreeably to her, but he was distracted by the sound of stifled laughter upstairs. Probably Gladys and
Enid were joking about Bayliss' being there. How shameless girls were, anyhow!
People came to their front windows to look out as the sleigh dashed jingling up and down the village streets.
When they left town, Bayliss suggested that they drive out past the Trevor place. The girls began to talk about
the two young New Englanders, Trevor and Brewster, who had lived there when Frankfort was still a tough
little frontier settlement. Every one was talking about them now, for a few days ago word had come that one
of the partners, Amos Brewster, had dropped dead in his law office in Hartford. It was thirty years since he
and his friend, Bruce Trevor, had tried to be great cattle men in Frankfort county, and had built the house on
the round hill east of the town, where they wasted a great deal of money very joyously. Claude's father always
declared that the amount they squandered in carousing was negligible compared to their losses in
commendable industrial endeavour. The country, Mr. Wheeler said, had never been the same since those boys
left it. He delighted to tell about the time when Trevor and Brewster went into sheep. They imported a
breeding ram from Scotland at a great expense, and when he arrived were so impatient to get the good of him
that they turned him in with the ewes as soon as he was out of his crate. Consequently all the lambs were born
at the wrong season; came at the beginning of March, in a blinding blizzard, and the mothers died from
exposure. The gallant Trevor took horse and spurred all over the county, from one little settlement to another,
buying up nursing bottles and nipples to feed the orphan lambs.
The rich bottom land about the Trevor place had been rented out to a truck gardener for years now; the
comfortable house with its billiard-room annex--a wonder for that part of the country in its day--remained
closed, its windows boarded up. It sat on the top of a round knoll, a fine cottonwood grove behind it. Tonight,
as Claude drove toward it, the hill with its tall straight trees looked like a big fur cap put down on the snow.
"Why hasn't some one bought that house long ago and fixed it up?" Enid remarked. "There is no building site
around here to compare with it. It looks like the place where the leading citizen of the town ought to live."
"I'm glad you like it, Enid," said Bayliss in a guarded voice. "I've always had a sneaking fancy for the place
myself. Those fellows back there never wanted to sell it. But now the estate's got to be settled up. I bought it
One of Ours 47
yesterday. The deed is on its way to Hartford for signature."
Enid turned round in her seat. "Why Bayliss, are you in earnest? Think of just buying the Trevor place
off-hand, as if it were any ordinary piece of real estate! Will you make over the house, and live there some
day?"
"I don't know about living there. It's too far to walk to my business, and the road across this bottom gets pretty
muddy for a car in the spring."
"But it's not far, less than a mile. If I once owned that spot, I'd surely never let anybody else live there. Even
Carrie remembers it. She often asks in her letters whether any one has bought the Trevor place yet."
Carrie Royce, Enid's older sister, was a missionary in China.
"Well," Bayliss admitted, "I didn't buy it for an investment, exactly. I paid all it was worth."
Enid turned to Gladys, who was apparently not listening. "You'd be the one who could plan a mansion for
Trevor Hill, Gladys. You always have such original ideas about houses."
"Yes, people who have no houses of their own often seem to have ideas about building," said Gladys quietly.
"But I like the Trevor place as it is. I hate to think that one of them is dead. People say they did have such
good times up there."
Bayliss grunted. "Call it good times if you like. The kids were still grubbing whiskey bottles out of the cellar
when I first came to town. Of course, if I decide to live there, I'll pull down that old trap and put up something
modern." He often took this gruff tone with Gladys in public.
Enid tried to draw the driver into the conversation. "There seems to be a difference of opinion here, Claude."
"Oh," said Gladys carelessly, "it's Bayliss' property, or soon will be. He will build what he likes. I've always
known somebody would get that place away from me, so I'm prepared."
"Get it away from you?" muttered Bayliss, amazed.
"Yes. As long as no one bought it and spoiled it, it was mine as much as it was anybody's."
"Claude," said Enid banteringly, "now both your brothers have houses. Where are you going to have yours?"
"I don't know that I'll ever have one. I think I'll run about the world a little before I draw my plans," he replied
sarcastically.
"Take me with you, Claude!" said Gladys in a tone of sudden weariness. From that spiritless murmur Enid
suspected that Bayliss had captured Gladys' hand under the buffalo robe.
Grimness had settled down over the sleighing party. Even Enid, who was not highly sensitive to unuttered
feelings, saw that there was an uncomfortable constraint. A sharp wind had come up. Bayliss twice suggested
turning back, but his brother answered, "Pretty soon," and drove on. He meant that Bayliss should have
enough of it. Not until Enid whispered reproachfully, "I really think you ought to turn; we're all getting cold,"
did he realize that he had made his sleighing party into a punishment! There was certainly nothing to punish
Enid for; she had done her best, and had tried to make his own bad manners less conspicuous. He muttered a
blundering apology to her when he lifted her from the sleigh at the mill house. On his long drive home he had
bitter thoughts for company.
One of Ours 48
He was so angry with Gladys that he hadn't been able to bid her good-night. Everything she said on the ride
had nettled him. If she meant to marry Bayliss, then she ought to throw off this affectation of freedom and
independence. If she did not mean to, why did she accept favours from him and let him get into the habit of
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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