Page:Cather--One of ours.djvu/240

226 Behind her diplomatic monologues, however, Mahailey had her own ideas, and she was greatly scandalized at Enid’s departure. She was afraid people would say that Claude’s wife had “run off an’ lef him,” and in the Virginia mountains, where her social standards had been formed, a husband or wife thus deserted was the object of boisterous ridicule. She once stopped Mrs. Wheeler in a dark corner of the cellar to whisper, “Mr. Claude’s wife ain’t goin’ to stay off there, like her sister, is she?”

If one of the Yoeder boys or Susie Dawson happened to be at the Wheelers’ for dinner, Mahailey never failed to refer to Enid in a loud voice. “Mr. Claude’s wife, she cuts her potatoes up raw in the pan an’ fries ’em. She don’t boil ’em first like I do. I know she’s an awful good cook, I know she is.” She felt that easy references to the absent wife made things look better.

Ernest Havel came to see Claude now, but not often. They both felt it would be indelicate to renew their former intimacy. Ernest still felt aggrieved about his beer, as if Enid had snatched the tankard from his lips with her own corrective hand. Like Leonard, he believed that Claude had made a bad bargain in matrimony; but instead of feeling sorry for him, Ernest wanted to see him convinced and punished. When he married Enid, Claude had been false to liberal principles, and it was only right that he should pay for his apostacy. The very first time he came to spend an evening at the Wheelers’ after Claude came home to live, Ernest undertook to explain his objections to Prohibition. Claude shrugged his shoulders.

“Why not drop it? It’s a matter that doesn’t interest me, one way or the other.”

Ernest was offended and did not come back for nearly a