CHAPTER VREACHING HUNGRY HANDS TOWARD A SYMBOL
Susan Hornby’s delight over Elizabeth’s coming was the most satisfying thing Nathan had seen since his return from Topeka. He had traded the land to please his wife, by getting nearer Elizabeth, but the presence of the girl in the house was so overwhelmingly surprising that Susan was swept by its very suddenness into shedding tears of actual joy. Elizabeth was put to the disconcerting necessity of explaining that her mother somewhat resented Aunt Susan’s influence upon her daughter’s life when she found her friends enthusiastically planning visits in the near future. She softened the details as much as possible and passed it over as only a bit of maternal jealousy, but was obliged to let this dear friend see that it was rather a serious matter in her calculations. Susan Hornby now understood why Elizabeth had never visited her in these four years.
With the eyes of love Aunt Susan saw that four years in a position of authority had ripened her darling, and made of her a woman of wit and judgment, who could tell a necessary thing in a right manner or with a reserve which was commendable. Eagerly she studied her to see whatthe changes of those formative years had brought her. She listened to Elizabeth’s plans for going to Topeka, and rejoiced that the intellectual stimulus was still strong in her. Elizabeth was obliged to explain away her parent’s attitude regarding further education, and left much for the older woman to fill in by her intuitions and experience of the world, but there again Susan Hornby saw evidences of strength which made her feel that the loss was offset by power gained. Elizabeth Farnshaw had matured and had qualities which would command recognition. John Hunter had shown that he recognized them—a thing which Elizabeth without egotism also knew.
It was a new experience to go to sleep thinking of any man but Hugh. In the darkness of the little bedroom in which Elizabeth slept that night Hugh’s priority was met face to face by John Hunter’s proximity. Possession is said to be nine points in the law, and John Hunter was on the ground. The girl had been shut away from those of her kind until her hungry hands in that hour of thought, reached out to the living presence of the cultured man, and her hungry heart prayed to heaven that she might not be altogether unpleasing to him.
In the hour spent with John Hunter she had learned that he had come to Kansas to open a farm on the only unmortgaged piece of property which his father had left him when he died; that his mother intended to come to him as soon as he had a house built; and by an accidental remark she had also learned that there were lots in some eastern town upon which enough money could be raisedto stock the farm with calves and that it was the young man’s intention to farm this land himself. It seemed so incredible that John Hunter should become a farmer that by her astonished exclamation over it she had left him self-satisfied at her estimate of his foreignness to the life he was driven to pursue.
Elizabeth saw that if John Hunter must needs run a farm that he would do his best at it, but that he did not wish toappearone with a rôle, and being young and with her own philosophy of life in a very much muddled condition, she liked him the better for it. Crucified daily by the incongruities of her own home, she craved deliverance from it and all it represented.
Just now Elizabeth Farnshaw was going home with something akin to fear in her heart. She rated herself soundly for the useless advice she had thrust upon her mother and for the entangling difficulties which her thoughtless words had produced. That the union of her parents was unclean, that it was altogether foul and by far worse than a divorce, she still felt confident, but she saw that her mother was totally unable to comprehend the difference between a clean separate life and the nagging poison dealt out as daily bread to the husband with whom she lived; but she saw that because of that very inability to understand the difference, the mother must be left to find the light in her own way. In her desire to help, Elizabeth had but increased her mother’s burdens, and she tried to assume an attitude of added tenderness toward her in her own mind, and puckered her young face into afrown as she let Patsie limp slowly from one low hill to another.
“I’ll do everything I can to square the deal for ma,” she resolved, but in her heart there was a sick suspicion that all she could do was not much, and that it had small chance really to avail.
Elizabeth had started early for home, but the sun rode high in the heavens before she arrived. Albert, who was herding the cattle on the short grass a half mile from home, warned her as she passed that she would do well to hurry to the house.
“Pa waited for you to do the milking, Bess, an’ you didn’t come. He’s mad as a hornet, an’ You’ll have t’ bring th’ cows out after he gets through.”
It was a friendly warning. To be milking at that hour, when all the men in the neighbourhood were already following plow and harrow, was an important matter on the farm. Plainly it had been arranged to make Elizabeth feel a hindrance to the business of getting in the crops, and it was with increased apprehension that she approached home.
The storm broke as soon as she was within hailing distance.
“It’s time you brought that horse home, young lady. You see to it that it’s harnessed for th’ drag as quick as ever you can. Next time you get a horse You’ll know it.”
When Elizabeth started on and Mr. Farnshaw saw that Patsie was lame his anger knew no bounds, and thesound of his exasperated voice could have been heard half a mile away as he poured out a stream of vituperation.
Elizabeth dodged into the barn as soon as its friendly door could be reached, thankful that the cows were as far as they were from it. Joe was harnessing a team in the far corner.
“You better shy around pa, Sis; and get t’ th’ house,” he cautioned.
“All right. He told me to harness Patsie, but she’s so lame I know she can’t work—what will I do?”
“If she can’t work, she can’t. How did it happen?”
“She strained herself just before I got to Mr. Chamberlain’s. I was passing a young man by the name of Hunter and she fell flat. Say, do you know anything about Mr. Hunter?”
“Yes, yes. Jimmie Crane says he’s a stuck-up, who’s goin’ t’ show us country jakes how t’ farm; but th’ best thing you can do is t’ get in an’ not let pa get any excuse for a row.”
Mr. Farnshaw had taken the milkpails to the house while they were talking and it was Elizabeth’s fate to encounter him on the doorstep as she ran up to the kitchen door.
“Where were you last night?”
“I’m awfully sorry about the horse, pa. I hurried this morning, but Patsie was so lame and I had to come all the way from the Chamberlain district. The Haddon school board didn’t meet this week and the director of number Twelve was away, and it was so late last night that I couldn’t get home.”
“Oh, you’ve always got a good excuse. I bet you didn’t get a school after all.”
Elizabeth had been edging toward the door as her father was speaking and now made her escape to the inside of the house as she replied over her shoulder in a perfectly respectful tone:
“Oh, yes, I did, and it begins Monday.”
“Well, it’s better than I expected. Now see to it that you get that riding skirt off an’ come an’ drive my team while I finish them oats.”
The daughter stopped where she stood and was going to reply that she must get ready if she were to go to Aunt Susan’s the next day, but on second thought closed her mouth down firmly. She knew she would do well if she escaped with no harder tax laid upon her temper than that of putting off her arrival at the Hornby home, and she turned to do as she was bidden.
When Elizabeth found her homecoming unpleasant and her father sullen and evidently nursing his wrath, she faced the storm without protest, took all that was said quietly, helped in the fields and endeavoured to make up for her unfortunate words in every helpful way possible. In all, she was so subtly generous with her assistance that it was impossible to bring on a quarrel with her, and the sour demeanour of her father was so carefully handled that Friday arrived without an open break having occurred. A new dress had been one of the longed-for accomplishments of the week’s work, but certain of Aunt Susan’s help when she was safely entrenched in her home, Elizabethretired to the attic whenever she saw her father approach the house. His attitude was threatening, but the anxious girl was able to delay the encounter. It could only bedelayed, for Mr. Farnshaw made a virtue of not forgetting unpleasant things.
The only unfortunate occurrence of the week was the presence of Sadie Crane and her mother when Mr. Hunter drove up to the back door for Elizabeth’s trunk, but even this had had its beneficial side, for Josiah Farnshaw had been mending harness, because a shower had made the ground too wet to plow, and the presence of neighbours made it possible to get the trunk packed without unpleasantness. When John Hunter drove up to the back door, Mr. Farnshaw rose from his chair beside the window and went to help put his daughter’s possessions in the wagon. Sadie crossed over to the window to get a look at Lizzie’s new beau.
Sadie Crane was now sixteen years old, and being undersized and childish of appearance had never had the pleasure of the company of a young man. The yearning in her pettish face as she stood unevenly on the discarded harness, looking out of the window toward John Hunter, caught Elizabeth’s attention and illuminated the whole affair to the older girl.
“Dude!” Sadie exclaimed spitefully, facing about and evidently offering insult.
But Elizabeth Farnshaw had seen the unsatisfied look which preceded the remark and it was excused. Sadie was just Sadie, and not to be taken seriously.
“He’d better soak his head; he can’t farm.”
No one replied, and Elizabeth said hurried good-byes and escaped.
But though Sadie Crane was undersized and spoke scornfully, she was old enough to feel a woman’s desires and dream a woman’s dreams. She watched the pair drive away together in pleasant converse on the quilt-lined spring seat of the farm wagon, and swallowed a sob.
“Lizzie always had th’ best of everything,” she reflected.
The roads were slippery and gave an excuse for driving slowly, and the young man exerted himself to be agreeable. The distaste for the presence of the Cranes at her home when he came for her, his possible opinion of her family and friends, the prolonged struggle with her father, even the headache from which she had not been free for days, melted out of Elizabeth’s mind in the joy of that ride, and left it a perfect experience. It began to rain before they were halfway to their destination, and they sat shoulder to shoulder under the umbrella, with one of the quilts drawn around both. There was a sack of butterscotch, and they talked of Scott, and Dickens, and the other books Elizabeth Farnshaw had absorbed from Aunt Susan’s old-fashioned library; and Elizabeth was surprised to find that she had read almost as much as this college man, and still more surprised to find that she remembered a great deal more of what she had read than he seemed to do. She asked many questions about his college experiences and learned that he had lacked but a year and a half of graduation.
“Why didn’t you finish?” she asked curiously.
“Well, you know, father died, and I didn’t have hardly enough to finish on, so I thought I’d come out here and get to making something. I didn’t care to finish. I’d had my fun out of it. I wish I hadn’t gone at all. If I’d gone into the office with my father and been admitted to the Bar it would have been better for me. I wouldn’t have been on the farm then,” he said regretfully.
“Then why didn’t you go into the law? You could have made it by yourself,” Elizabeth said, understanding that it hurt John Hunter’s pride to farm.
The young man shrugged his dripping shoulders and pulled the quilt tighter around them as he answered indifferently:
“Not very well. Father left very little unmortgaged except mother’s own property, and I thought I’d get out of Canton. It ain’t easy to live around folks you know unless you have money.”
“But you could have worked your way through college; lots of boys do it,” the girl objected.
“Not on your life!” John Hunter exclaimed emphatically. “I don’t go to college that way.” After a few moments’ musing he added slowly, “I’ll make money enough to get out of here after a while.”
“I only wish I’d had your chance,” Elizabeth said with a sigh.
“Let’s talk about something cheerful,” young Hunter replied, when he realized that the ride was nearly over. “When may I come to see you again?” he asked. “Youare to see a good deal of me this summer if you will permit it.”
Elizabeth Farnshaw caught a happy breath before she replied. He wanted to come; she was to see much of him this summer if she would permit it! Could nature and fate ask for more?
When Elizabeth arrived, the old couple bustled about the bright carpeted room, making it comfortable, and cooing over the return of their prodigal, till a heaven of homeness was made of her advent.
Half an hour later Elizabeth, dry and warm and with a cup of tea beside her which she had found it easier to accept than to refuse, looked about her and invoiced the changes of four years which in her preoccupied state of mind during her former visit she had neglected to think upon. There were many little changes in the household arrangement, due to the observations of the winter spent in Topeka. In personal appearance Aunt Susan herself showed improvement.
When Elizabeth’s attention was turned to Nathan, however, the glad little enumeration became a more sober one. In the days when they had fed the motherless Patsie together Nathan Hornby had been portly, even inclined to stoutness, and his face, though tough from wind and sun, inclined to be ruddy. The genial gray eyes had sparkled with confidence in himself and good-will toward all about him. At Silas Chamberlain’s house a week ago the girl had noticed that Nathan let others arrange the business details of contracts and credentials, but his joyat meeting her had obscured the habitual sadness of his present manner. She had noticed that he was thinner, but to-night she saw the waste and aging which had consumed him. The belt line which had bulged comfortably under the vest of five years ago was flat and flabby, the thick brown hair which had shown scarcely a thread of white was now grizzled and thin, the ruddy cheeks had fallen in, and two missing lower teeth made him whistle his s’es through the gap with a sound unlike his bluff speech of their first acquaintance, so that without the face which accompanied the words she could hardly have recognized the connection between the man who had and the man who did embody the same personality. The cogitations of the first half hour in the white counterpaned bed that night left Elizabeth in a maze of wonder over his physical as well as mental collapse.
Aunt Susan was evidently aware of changes also, for she hovered over him solicitously. Nathan Hornby was a broken man.
School opened auspiciously on Monday; John Hunter came and stayed to walk home with Elizabeth on Tuesday afternoon, and the glad weeks which followed were but the happy record of so many rides, walks, and talks, and the dreams of Elizabeth Farnshaw and John Hunter. He was with the girl daily. Elizabeth never expressed the smallest desire for anything human hand could obtain for her that John Hunter did not instantly assure her that she should receive it. If she stayed to sweep out the schoolhouse, John would almost certainly appear at thedoor before she had finished—his fields commanded a view of her comings and goings—if she went to Carter’s to have a money order cashed he accompanied her; if she wished to go anywhere she had but to mention it and John Hunter and his team were at her service.
Elizabeth could not have been otherwise than happy. The spring, with its freshness and promise, was symbolical of the gladsome currents of her life that joyous April and May. Her lightest wish was the instant consideration of the man she admired above all others, and that man, in refinement of appearance and knowledge of the world, was as far above those of the country community in which they lived as the sun was above the smoky kerosene lamps by which the members of that community lighted themselves to bed.
John Hunter, during the season of his courtship, served the girl of his choice almost upon his knees. He made her feel that she could command his services, his time, and himself. By his request he ceased to ask when he could come again, but encouraged, even commanded, her to tell him when and where she wished to be taken and to let him come to see her unannounced. He paid tribute to her as if she had been a goddess and he her devotee.
Silas looked on and chuckled.
“Didn’t take ’em long,” he remarked to Liza Ann, and when as usual his wife did not reply, he added: “Glad we’re to have ’em for neighbours. She’s about th’ liveliest meadow lark on these prairies, an’ if she don’t singon a fence post it’s ’cause she ain’t built that way, an’ can’t; she’s full enough to.”
Susan Hornby looked on and had her misgivings. She saw the devotion the young man poured out at her darling’s feet, and she knew that it was the fervour of the courting time in a man’s life that made him abandon his own interests and plans while he plumed himself and pursued his desired mate. She saw the rapturous, dreamy look of love and mating time in Elizabeth’s eyes, and she knew that the inevitable had happened, but she was not content. Premonitions which she sought to strangle shook her whenever the pair wandered away on real or fictitious errands. She saw that no word of love had yet been spoken, but every look cried it aloud and the day could not be far distant.
Between corn planting and corn plowing the foundations of the new house had been laid and work on it had progressed fitfully and whenever the young man could find time to help the occasional mason who laid brick and stone for simple foundations, and who had crops of his own to tend between times. The work had progressed slowly, but at last the wall had been finished and the carpenters had come to do their share. It gave excuse for many trips in the evening twilight. They usually went on horseback, and Silas’s pony with Liza Ann’s sidesaddle on its back had more business on hand that month than in all the other years of its lazy existence.
Susan Hornby watched the pair ride away one eveningthe first week in June. Nathan stood at her side on the doorstep.
“Of course he loves her; how could he help it? and yet——”
“And yet, what?” Nathan asked impatiently. “She wants him, an’ he wants her, an’ you stand there lookin’ as if that wasn’t enough.”
Susan Hornby turned to her husband with some uncertainty regarding his comprehension of the subject, and with a gentle patience with his mood. Nathan was often impatient of late.
“Yes, I know—only it seems as if——”
“Well, now what’s lacking?” her husband asked when she again broke off the sentence doubtfully. “He’s got a good farm, an’ he needs a wife to help him run it. From what he says, his mother’s too old t’ be of any help. He can’t run it alone, an’ seems t’ me it’s a good thing for both of ’em.”
“That’s just it!” Susan Hornby broke out, turning back, her eyes following the progress of the pair toward the crimson west, her thoughts running ahead to the unknown future where the progress of the soul would be helped or hindered; “that’s just it! He has a farm; now he’s going to need a wife to help run it—just as he needs a horse. If he’d only be fair about it, but he’s misleading her. She thinks he’ll always do things the way he’s doing them now, and he won’t; there’ll be an end to that kind of thing some day—and—and when they’re married and he’s got her fast, that kind of man won’t be nice aboutit—and—they’ll live on the farm—and life’s so hard sometimes! Oh! I can’t bear to see her broken to it!” she cried with such intensity that the man at her side caught his breath with a sort of sob.
“Anybody’d think to hear you talk, Susan, that marryin’ was a thing to be feared, an’ that I’d been mean t’ you.”
What had she done? There was a half-frightened pause as Susan Hornby struggled to bring herself back to the husband standing beside her who was broken by failure.
“Bless your old soul, Nate,” she answered quickly, and with the flush of confusion on her face strangely like the flush of guilt, “if he’s only half as good to her as you’ve been to me, She’ll never have anything to complain of nor need anybody’s sympathy.”
Susan understood that her assurance did not wholly reassure that bleeding heart, and to turn Nathan’s thoughts to other things she slipped one hand through his arm, and picking up the milk pails from the bench at her side with the other, said with a little laugh:
“There now! I’ll do your milking for that. You throw down the hay while I do it. There’s nothing the matter with you and me, except that I’ve done a washing to-day and you don’t sleep well of late. I haven’t one thing in all this world to complain of, and this would be the happiest year of my life if you weren’t a bit gloomy and under the weather. Come on—I’m nervous. You know I never am well in hot weather.”
Nathan knew that Susan was really worried over Elizabeth’sprospects, but her luckless remark upon the marriage of farmers cut into his raw, quivering consciousness of personal failure like a saw-bladed knife, torturing the flesh as it went. His failure to place her where her own natural characteristics and attainments deserved had eaten into his mind like acid. In proportion as he loved her and acknowledged her worth he was humiliated by the fact that she was not getting all out of life of which she was capable, as his wife, and it left him sensitive regarding her possible estimate of it.
“She always seems satisfied,” he said to himself as he turned his pitchfork to get a hold on the pile into which he had thrust it, “but here she is pityin’ this here girl that’s goin’ t’ be married as if she goin’ t’ be damned.”
The Adam’s apple in his wrinkled throat tightened threateningly, and to keep down any unmanly weakness it indicated he fell upon the hay savagely, but the suspicion stayed with him and left its bitter sting.
CHAPTER VI“DIDN’T TAKE ’EM LONG”
John Hunter and Elizabeth Farnshaw rode away in the cool summer evening, wholly unconscious of the thoughts of others. The sun had dropped behind the low hills in front of them, and as they rode along, the light-floating clouds were dyed blazing tints of red and gold, as glowing and rosy as life itself appeared to the young pair. Elizabeth took off her hat and let the cool evening breeze blow through the waves of hair on her temples and about the smooth braids which, because of the heat of the prematurely hot summer day, had been wound about her head. Her eyes were dreamy and her manner detached as she let the pony wander a half length ahead of its companion, and she was unaware that John was not talking. She was just drinking in the freshness of the evening breeze and sky, scarcely conscious of any of her surroundings, glad as a kitten to be alive, and as unaware of self as a young animal should be.
John Hunter rode at her side, watching the soft curls on her round girlish neck, athrob and athrill with her presence, and trying to formulate the thing he had brought her out to say. It was not till they were turning into thelane beside the new house that his companion realized that he had been more than usually quiet.
“You are a Quaker to-night, evidently, and do not speak till the spirit moves, Mr. Hunter,” she said, facing about near the gateway and waiting for him to ride alongside.
The young man caught the cue. “I wish you would call me John. I’ve been intending to ask you for some time. I have a given name,” he added.
“Will you do the same?” she asked.
“Call myself John?” he replied.
They both laughed as if a great witticism had been perpetrated.
“No, call me by my given name.”
“Lizzie, Bess, Elizabeth, or Sis?” he asked, remembering the various nicknames of her family.
“You may call me whatever you choose,” she answered, drawing the pony up where they were to dismount.
John Hunter stepped to the ground and with his bridle rein over his arm came around to the left side of her pony. Laying one hand on its neck and the other on the hand that grasped its bridle, he looked up into her face earnestly and said:
“I would like to call you ‘Wife,’ if I may, Elizabeth,” and held up his arms quickly to help her from the saddle.
When she was on the ground before him he barred her way and stood, pulsing and insistent, waiting for her answer.
It was a full minute before either moved, she lookingdown at their feet, he looking at her and trying to be sure he could push his claims.
When Elizabeth did look up it was with her eyes brimming shyly over with happy tears, and without waiting for her answer in words, John Hunter gathered her into his arms and smothered her face in kisses.
Ten minutes later they tied the horses to the new hitching post and passed into the yard.
“It is to be your house and mine, dearie,” the young man said, and then looked down at her to see why she did not answer.
Elizabeth was walking toward the house which was to be hers, oblivious of time and place, almost unconscious of the man at her side, stunned by the unexpectedness of this precious gift of love which had just been offered her. As they stepped upon the little back porch, he said:
“I brought you over to ask your advice about the stairway; the carpenters want to leave one step in the sitting room. It’ll be back far enough from the chimney to be out of the way and it makes their calculations easier about the stairs somehow. What do you think?”
Elizabeth was altogether too new in the sense of possession to grasp the full significance of the question. John Hunter laughed at the look she turned upon him and said, with a large and benevolent wave of the hand, indicating the entire premises:
“The house is yours, little girl, and you are to have it as you want it. The only desire I have on earth is to do things for you.”
Elizabeth shot a quick look of joy up to him. “No one but Aunt Susan has ever wanted to do anything for me,” she said, and opening her arms held them out to him, crying, “Am I to be happy? John! John! do you love me, really?”
And that was the burden of their conversation during the entire stay.
“It can’t be possible, John,” the happy girl said at one point. “I have never known love—and—and I want it till I could die for it.”
“Just so you don’t dieofit, You’ll be all right,” John Hunter replied, and went home from Nathan’s, later, whistling a merry tune. He had not known that love poured itself out with such abandonment. It was a new feature of the little god’s manoeuvring, but John doubted not that it was the usual thing where a girl really cared for a man.
“I’ll farm the whole place next year, and It’ll be different from boarding at the Chamberlains’, where they don’t have any napkins and the old man sucks his coffee out of his saucer as if it hurt him. Mother ’ll like her too, after we get her away from that sort of thing and brush her up, and get her into the Hunter ways,” he told himself as he tied the pony in the dark stall.
The next day was a dream to the young girl, who patiently watched the clock and waited for the hour of visiting the new house again. “I have no higher desire on earth than to do things for you,” was the undercurrent of her thoughts. She was to escape from the thingswhich threatened at home. Instead of always rendering services, which were seldom satisfactory after she had sacrificed herself to them, she was to be served as well. Oh, the glad thought! Not of service as such, but of the mutuality of it. She loved John Hunter and he loved her. There was to be understanding between them. That was the joy of it. To put her hand on the arm of one that appreciated not only her but all that she aimed at, to open her heart to him, to be one with him in aspiration, that was the point of value which Elizabeth Farnshaw never doubted was to be the leading characteristic of their life together.
Now that she was engaged, Elizabeth felt herself emancipated from home authority. She would belong to herself hereafter. She would stay with Aunt Susan till she had her sewing done for the winter at Topeka. She would go to school only one year, just enough to polish up on social ideas and matters of dress. Elizabeth Farnshaw knew that both John Hunter and his mother were critical upon those accomplishments and her pride told her to prepare for the mother’s inspection. She knew that she was considered a country girl by those of superior advantages, and she was resolved to show what could be done in a year in the way of improvement; then she would come home and teach for money with which to buy her wedding outfit, and then they would be married. Two years and the certainty of graduation would have suited her better, but two years was a long time. The picture of John without her, and the home he was building for her, plantedthemselves in the foreground of her thoughts, and Elizabeth was unselfish. She would not make John Hunter wait. She would make that one year at Topeka equal to two in the intensity of its living. She would remain away the shortest possible length of time which was required for her preparation. Elizabeth was glad that John had his mother to keep house for him, because she did not want him to be lonesome while she was gone, though she did not doubt that he would come to Topeka many times while she was there. Her mind flew off in another direction at that, and she planned to send him word when there were good lectures to attend.
“John likes those things,” she thought, and was filled with a new joy at the prospect of their books, and lectures, and intellectual pursuits. Her plan of teaching in the high school was abandoned. It was better to be loved and have a home with John Hunter than to live in Topeka. The more Elizabeth thought of it the more she was convinced that her plan was complete. She was glad there was a month to spare before Mrs. Hunter came. John’s mother was the only warning finger on Elizabeth’s horizon. She had always been conscious of a note of anxiety in John Hunter’s voice and manner whenever he spoke of his mother coming to Kansas to live, and she found the anxiety had been transferred to her own mind when she began to consider her advent into the home John was building. She had gathered, more from his manner than anything definitely said, that his mother would not approve of much that she would be obliged to meet in thesociety about them, that she was a social arbiter in a class of women superior to these simple farmers’ wives, and that her whole life and thought were of a different and more desirable sort. When Elizabeth thought of Mrs. Hunter she unconsciously glanced down at herself, her simple print dress, her brown hands, and the heavy shoes which much walking made necessary, and wondered how she did really appear; and there was a distinct misgiving in everything where the older woman had to be considered.
John came early that evening. The carpenters had raised new questions about shelves and doors and Elizabeth must go over and decide those matters. They walked over, and it was late before all the simple arrangements could be decided upon. As they returned they walked close together in the centre of the deep road so as to avoid the dew-laden grass on either side. The open door of Nathan’s house gave out a hospitable light, but they were content to saunter slowly, listening to the harvest crickets which were already chirruping in the weeds about them, and looking at the lazy red disk of the moon just peeping above the eastern horizon.
“I shall write mother of our engagement to-night,” John said after a rather long silence.
“Oh, don’t,” the girl replied, awakened suddenly from a reverie of a different sort. “Let’s keep it a secret for a while. I haven’t told Aunt Susan yet, and I don’t want to tell her till I go to Topeka. Of course I’ll have to explain if you come down there to see me.”
“To Topeka?” John exclaimed in astonishment.
Elizabeth laughed merrily. “Why, yes,” she said. “Isn’t it like me to think you knew all about that? I’m going to Topeka to school this winter—and—and I hope You’ll come a lot. We’ll have awfully good times. Then I’ll teach another term and get my wedding clothes and get them made, and then, John Hunter, I am yours to have and to hold,” she ended happily.
“You don’t mean that you are going to school again now that you are going to get married?” John Hunter asked with such incredulity that Elizabeth laughed a little joyous laugh full of girlish amusement, full of love and anticipation.
“Why of course—why not? All the more because we are going to be married. I’ll want to brush up on lots of things before I have to live near your mother; and—and we’ll have awfully good times when you come to see me.”
“Oh, goodness!” John said irritably. “I’d counted on being married this fall. I simply can’t wait two years, and that is all there is about it.” Elizabeth argued easily at first, certain that it could be readily arranged, but John became more and more positive. At last she became worried.
The harvest crickets were forgotten as the young girl pressed closer to his side, explaining the necessity, pointing out that it was to be her last little fling at the education for which she had planned so long, her timidity where his mother was concerned, and her desire to enter the family upon equal social terms.
“It is all tomfoolery,” John answered with fixity ofpurpose. “You don’t need a thing that you haven’t already got—except,” he added slowly, “except what mother could help you to. But that isn’t the point. I shall need you. It’s time for me to get down to business and raise some money. Between building the house and going”—John hesitated—“and not applying myself as I should, I’m not making anything this summer. I want to get away from this—from here—some day, and I want to begin real work at once. Mother can help you in anything you don’t know; she’s up on all those things; and we’ve got to get down to business,” he repeated.
There was a tone of finality in it. Elizabeth recognized it, but her plans were made and she was not ready to give them up.
“I can’t go into your house, John, I simply cannot, without getting away and learning some things. When I become your wife I want to be a woman you are proud to take to your mother. I can’t have it otherwise.”
There was quiet while she waited for the answer to her assertion. Elizabeth thought he was formulating a reply. The silence lengthened, and still she waited. They were getting nearer the house and she moved more slowly, drawing on his arm to check his advance. At last, realizing that he did not intend to speak when they were just outside of the lighted doorstep, Elizabeth stopped and, facing around so that she could see him in the dim light, asked:
“What is it? What have I done to offend you?”
“Nothing, only it upsets every plan I have on earth. I tell you, it’s all foolishness; and besides, I need you.Now see here”—and he went on to show her how his mother knew all the things she was going to Topeka to learn, and to outline his schemes for the future.
Confused by his opposition, and not knowing just how to meet this first difference of opinion, Elizabeth listened and made no reply. It was her way to wait when disturbed until she saw her way clear. Elizabeth was sound and sturdy but not quick and resourceful when attacked. John talked on till he had finished his argument and then turned to the house again. When they arrived at the step he said a whispered good-bye and was gone before Elizabeth realized that he was not coming in with her.
Susan Hornby had risen from her chair, thinking that John was coming into the house, and when she saw that he did not she slipped her arm about the young girl and kissed her as she was passing.
“I’m going to bed, Aunt Susan,” Elizabeth said, and passed on to the door of her own room. Susan Hornby knew that something had gone wrong.
Saturday morning was spent by Elizabeth sewing on a dress she was anxious to finish before Mrs. Hunter came, and when there were only mornings and evenings in which to sew, and inexperience made much ripping necessary, the work did not progress rapidly. As she sewed she considered. No, she would not give up the year away at school. It was absolutely essential that she come into the Hunter family equipped and ready to assume the rôle which a wife should play in it. She would be married without a whole new outfit of clothes, but the year atschool was a necessity. Elizabeth’s pride revolted against being taught social customs by John Hunter’s mother. As she thought of the year he must spend alone, however, she was quite willing to give up teaching an extra year for the sake of the usual bridal finery. She resolved to tell him that. She would be married in the simplest thing she had if he wished.
Fate in the person of John Hunter himself took the settlement of the bride’s gown out of Elizabeth’s hands. Just before noon he stopped, on his way back from Colebyville, to give Susan Hornby the mail he had brought out from the post-office. Elizabeth followed him to the wagon when he went out.
“Well, I wrote mother. Can you be ready by October?” He spoke across the backs of the horses as he untied them, and was very busy with the straps.
Elizabeth Farnshaw’s face contracted visibly. He had taken advantage of her.
“How could you do it?” she asked indignantly.
“Why, I thought it was settled! I told you I couldn’t wait a whole year, much less two. I told you about getting Mitchell County land and getting down to cattle raising right off. You didn’t say anything.”
There was such righteous innocence in his voice that the sting of deception was drawn from her mind. The young girl made no reply, but leaned her head against the withers of the horse at her side and looked down at her foot to hide her tears. It was a blow. She was conscious that somehow there had been a lack of high principlein it. Her silence the night beforehadgiven some colour to the claim of it having been settled, but there had been a haste about this letter which was suspicious. Why could he not have stopped on the way to town as well as now on the way home?
The question which was forming in Elizabeth’s mind was cut short by feeling John’s arm stealing around her. She started and glanced at the house apprehensively.
“Oh, they can’t see us,” John said, glad to have that phase of the situation up for argument. “It wouldn’t matter if they did, since we are to be married so soon.” He added the last warily and watched to see its effect upon her.
“But I didn’t want it to be as soon as that,” the girl objected half-heartedly, making her usual mistake of laying the vital point of difference away to be settled in her own mind before she discussed it. Perhaps after all John had thought it was settled the night before; at any rate she would not speak of her suspicion till sure on that point.
John Hunter noticed that she did not refuse outright to consent to the early marriage and drew her complacently to him.
“I couldn’t wait that long, sweet. I want you and I want you now.”
He drew her close, in a firm, insistent grasp of his strong arm. Her resistance began to melt.
“I love you,” his voice said close to her ear. She felt his eyes seeking hers. His was the position of advantage.Elizabeth loved love, and she had never had it before. She had never been wanted for love’s sake. She wished to believe him. It came over her that she had wronged him by even the thought of an advantage having been taken of her. John’s arm was about her, he was pleading his love. Why be unpleasant about it? It was only a little thing. As she had said in her engagement hour, Elizabeth wanted love till she could die for it. She gave up, though something in her held back and was left hungry.
As John Hunter drove home to Liza Ann’s waiting dinner he said to himself:
“Gosh! but I’m glad I got that letter off. I knew I’d better do it this morning or she’d be hanging back. It worked better than I had any reason to expect. She’s going to be easy to manage. Mother ain’t able to cook for hired men. She’s never had it to do—and she don’t have to begin. This school business is all foolishness, anyhow.”
Elizabeth did not stand as usual and watch her lover drive toward home. Something in her wanted to run away, to cry out, to forget. She was torn by some indefinable thing; her confidence had received a shock. She went back to the house, but to sew was impossible now. She decided to go home, to walk. The long stretches of country road would give time and isolation in which to think. She announced her determination briefly as she passed through the kitchen, oblivious of Aunt Susan’s questioning eyes. Snatching up the large sunbonnetwhich was supposed to protect her from the browning effects of Kansas winds and sun, she told the older woman, who made no effort to disguise her astonishment at the sudden change, to tell John to come for her on the morrow, and set off toward the north.
Elizabeth knew that her father’s temper made her homegoing an unsafe procedure, but the tumult within her demanded that she get away from Susan Hornby and think her own thoughts unobserved.
But though the walk gave her time to think, Elizabeth was no nearer a decision when she sighted the Farnshaw cottonwoods than she had been when she started out. The sun burned her shoulders where the calico dress was thin, and she wiped her perspiring face as she stopped determinedly to come to some conclusion before she should encounter her mother.
“I suppose I ought to give up to him,” she said, watching a furry-legged bumblebee as it moved about over the face of a yellow rosin weed flower by the roadside. “I wouldn’t care if it weren’t for his mother. I’d like to get some of these country ways worked out of me before I have to see too much of her. She’ll never feel the same toward me if she has to tell me what to do and what not to do. If only he didn’t want me so badly. If only I could have one year away.”
The new house pleaded for John Hunter, the content of a home, life with the young man himself. Elizabeth had reasoned away her distrust of the means by which her consent had been gained, but her heart clung to the desireto appear well before Mrs. Hunter. Something warned her that she must enter that house on an equal footing with the older woman.
“Well, he wants me, and I ought to be glad he is in a hurry. I’ll do it. I ought to have insisted last night if I meant to hold out, and not have let him misunderstand me. If it weren’t for his mother, I wouldn’t care.”
Having decided to accept the terms offered her, Elizabeth sat down in the shade of a clump of weeds and pictured, as she rested, the home which was to be hers. Compared to those of the farmers’ wives about them, it was to be sumptuous. She thought of its size, its arrangement, and the man who was inviting her to share it with him, and a glad little thrill ran through her. When Elizabeth began to sum up her blessings she began to be ashamed of having suspected John Hunter of duplicity in writing the letter.
“He told me he had no higher desires on earth than to do things for me,” she said, springing up and starting home with a song in her heart.
Mrs. Farnshaw, called to the door by the barking of the dogs, exclaimed:
“What in this world brings you home at this time of day?” Mrs. Farnshaw’s hands were covered with the dough of her belated Saturday’s baking.
“Just had to come, mummie; just had to come,” Elizabeth cried, giving her mother a rapturous little hug.
Mrs. Farnshaw ducked her head to avoid the manœuvre, saying petulantly:
“Look out! Can’t you see I’m in th’ flour up t’ my elbows.”
Elizabeth flicked her dress sleeve and laughed in merry derision.
“Kansas flour brushes off easily, ma,” she said, “and I’ve got something to tell you.”
The corners of Mrs. Farnshaw’s mouth twitched in a pleased effort to cover a smile.
Elizabeth was surprised at her own statement. She had not exactly intended to tell her mother at this time and could not understand herself in having put the idea forth, that she had come all the way home to tell something of importance. She sat down and leaned her elbows on the littered kitchen table too confused to speak for a moment. She had made the plunge; there was no other excuse for the trip that she could think of at that time, and, with a feeling that Aunt Susan had been defrauded of something distinctly belonging to her, Elizabeth broke the silence with the bald statement.
“Mr. Hunter and I are going to be married.”
“Well, Lizzie, that ain’t much news; we seen it comin’ weeks ago,” the mother replied with a laugh.
“You did? I don’t see how you knew,” the girl said, startled out of her confusion.
“What’s he been comin’ here so steady for?” Mrs. Farnshaw replied, scraping the side of her bread pan with a kitchen knife, and ready to enter into this delightful bit of argument. Lizzie was doing well for herself.
“Lots of girls have steady company and don’t get married either,” the girl replied hesitantly.
“Oh, yes, but this is different,” the mother said. “When’s it goin’ t’ be?”
“Some time in October,” Elizabeth said, her words dragging. She had consented, but the mere mention of the time made her shrink.
“Is th’ house done?” Mrs. Farnshaw asked, her mind, like her hands, filled with practical concerns.
“Almost,” Elizabeth returned as she rose to get the broom with which to sweep the ever dusty floor. “It’s ready to paint,” she added.
“Is it goin’ t’ be painted? Will it be white and have green shutters?”
Elizabeth laughed at the gratified pride in her mother’s tone.
“I don’t know, ma,” she said, looking for the shovel, which, when it could be located, served as a dustpan.
“Didn’t he ask you what colour to put on it?” the mother asked, fishing the shovel out of the rubbish collected behind the rusty cook stove. “Now look here, Lizzie,” she added with sudden suspicion, “don’t you go an’ spoil him right t’ begin with. You let him see that you want things your own way about th’ house. If you set your foot down now, You’ll have it easier all th’ way through. That’s where I made my mistake. I liked t’ give up t’ your pa at first an’ then—an’ then he got t’ thinkin’ I didn’t have no right t’ want anything my way.”
Mrs. Farnshaw filled the hungry stove with cobs and studied the subject dejectedly.
“I don’t get my way about nothin’. I can’t go t’ town t’ pick out a new dress that is bought with money I get from th’ eggs, even. He’ll manage most any way t’ get off t’ town so’s t’ keep me from knowin’ he’s goin’, an’ then make me send th’ eggs an’ butter by some one that’s goin’ by. He makes me stay home t’ watch something if he has t’ let me know he’s goin’ his self. I don’t own my house, nor my children, nor myself.”
The undercurrent of Elizabeth’s thoughts as she listened to the spiritless tale was, “but John’s so different from pa.”
“I reckon I’ll never have no help from you now,” Mrs. Farnshaw continued in the same whine.
The girl crossed the room and put her arms tenderly around her mother’s neck.
“I’ll live real near you, ma, and you can come and see me every few days. Don’t let’s spoil these last few weeks by worrying,” Elizabeth said, her eyes opened to the longing expressed.
Mrs. Farnshaw was heating the oven for baking, and broke away from the sympathetic clasp to refill the roaring stove.
“These cobs don’t last a minute,” she said, and then turned to Elizabeth again. “You’ll have th’ nicest house in th’ country. My! won’t it make th’ Cranes jealous?”
“They don’t count,” Elizabeth answered. “I believe you think more of John’s house than you do of him.”
“No, I don’t, but I’m glad t’ see you doin’ so well for yourself.”
As she finished speaking, Mr. Farnshaw came into the kitchen.
“Well, pa, how do you do?” Elizabeth said, turning toward him pleasantly. She wanted to tell him of her engagement, now that she had told her mother, and she wanted to be at peace with him.
Mr. Farnshaw mumbled a curt reply and, picking up the empty basket standing beside the stove, went out of the house, slamming the door behind him significantly.
“I wanted to tell him myself,” Elizabeth said with a half-shamed look in her mother’s direction. “I’m glad all men aren’t like that.”
“Well, he remembers that awful thing you said about partin’——” Mrs. Farnshaw began.
“But this isn’t any new thing in him, ma. He’s always been that way,” Elizabeth objected, determined not to let her mother start on that subject to-day.
“Oh, I know it! They all get that way if they’re let; think they own everything in sight. They get worse, too, as they get older. You do what I said an’ set your foot down about that house,” her mother replied, and turned to put a pan of bread in the oven.