Cimarron · Chapter 11 (2/2)

His limp burden dangling over his shoulder, he now strode through the Wigwam office, into the house, and laid him gently down on the sitting-room couch. Revived, Sol Levy stopped to midday dinner with the Cravats. He sat, very white, very still, in his chair and made delicate pretense of eating. Sabra, because Yancey asked her to, though she was mystified, had got out her DeGrasse silver and a set of her linen. His long meager fingers dwelt lingeringly on the fine hand-wrought stuff. His deep-sunk haunting eyes went from Sabra’s clear-cut features, with the bold determined brows, to Yancey’s massive head, then to the dazzling freshness of the children’s artless countenances.

“This is the first time that I have sat at such a table in two years. My mother’s table was like this, in the old country. My father⁠—peace to his soul!⁠—lighted the candles. My mother⁠—sainted⁠—spread the table with her linen and her precious thin silver. Here in this country I eat as we would not have allowed a beggar to eat that came to the door for charity.”

“This Oklahoma country’s no place for you, Sol. It’s too rough, too hard. You come of a race of dreamers.”

The melancholy eyes took on a remote⁠—a prophetic look. There was, suddenly, a slight cast in them, as though he were turning his vision toward something the others could not see. “It will not always be like this. Wait. Those savages today will be myths, like the pictures of monsters you see in books of prehistoric days.”

“Don’t worry about those dirty skunks, Sol. I’ll see that they leave you alone from now on.”

Sol Levy smiled a little bitter smile. His thin shoulders lifted in a weary shrug. “Those barbarians! My ancestors were studying the Talmud and writing the laws the civilized world now lives by when theirs were swinging from tree to tree.”