CHAPTER XVHUGH NOLAND
Doctor Morgan folded his stethoscope and thrust it into his inner pocket.
“Your heart’s been pounding like that for seven years, you say?” he asked of the man sitting before him.
“Seven years in May,” was the brief answer.
The patient got up from the office chair and adjusted his waistcoat. The waistcoat was ample and covered a broad chest. The face also was broad, with a square chin, and eyes set well apart. The man was twenty-eight or thirty years old and nearly six feet in height.
“I know all you’ve got to tell me,” he said, going to the mirror to brush his tumbled hair. “They sent me out to find a place on a farm because medicine wouldn’t do anything for me. I’m tolerably comfortable if I don’t overdo—that is, if I stay out of doors while I’m doing. I don’t expect you to make a new man out of me; I only thought I’d have you look me over the first thing, because I might need you suddenly, and it’s better for you to know what sort of patient you’ve got beforehand.” He paused for an inspection of his well-groomed hands.
“You may not need me for years,” Doctor Morganinterrupted hastily. “That kind of a heart outlasts the other organs sometimes. The doctor twisted the heavy-linked watch chain which dangled from his vest pocket as if calling upon it for words. Of course an out-of-doors life is best. What have you been doing of late?” he asked.
“Teaching in the old university since I got my degree, but they’ve sent me out like a broken-down fire horse. I’ll get used to it,” the young man said indifferently. He was accustomed to signs of hopelessness when his case was discussed, and was unmoved by them.
“Have you family ties?” the doctor asked. He liked the grit this man’s manner indicated.
“None that need to be counted,” was the brief reply.
The doctor noticed that his patient wasted no extra words in self-pity. “That’s good! It lessens a man’s worries. And—where are you staying, Mr. Noland?”
“At the hotel, till I get a place on a farm. Before I invest I’m going to get my bearings about farms, by working around till I get on to things. You don’t know of a place where a man could work for his board for a month till the spring seeding and things come on do you?”
He was pushing the cuticle back from his finger-nails as they talked, and Doctor Morgan smiled.
“Those hands don’t look much like farm work,” he said.
The man laughed easily. “Oh, that’s habit. I’ll get over it after a while.”
“You will if you work for these yahoos around here much. Why don’t you invest in land and have your ownhome right from the start? A man like you can’t live in the kind of houses and do the kind of work You’ll find in this country.”
“I wouldn’t work for myself—I’ve nothing to work for. When you take away a man’s chances to marry and live the normal life, you make a sluggard of him. I’ve got to have a partner, and have his interests to serve as well as my own, or I won’t work, and in the meantime I want to look about a bit before I pick up some one to go into business with. I won’t be long finding some one.”
“No whine in him,” was the doctor’s mental comment, but what he said was: “Well, You’ll find life about here a bit dull. Come in, and make yourself at home in this office while you’re in town, and I’ll see what I can do about finding a place for you.”
After he had watched his patient swing off up the street he considered the case seriously.
“College athletics do just about that sort of thing for a boy,” he said aloud. “Now I believe Silas Chamberlain would take him for his board, and there ain’t any children there. Children’s the devil in a farmhouse: no manners, and they set right on top of you, and if you say anything the folks are hurt. He’s a nice fellow, and I intend to hold on to him. It was like old times to talk for a while to a man that knows chemistry and things. I’ll see more of him. I’m gettin’ old altogether too fast in this blamed hole. I need some one to talk to that’s more like a man ought to be.”
CHAPTER XVIREVIVIFYING FIRES
It was butchering day at Silas Chamberlain’s and Liza Ann had the household astir early. Luther Hansen was master of ceremonies in the backyard, and relieved Silas of the heavy lifting. It was a day for visiting and neighbourly activity as well as hard work. Hugh Noland had been sent to Silas the week before by Doctor Morgan, and assisted in rolling the pork barrel from the cellar door to a convenient post near the out-of-door fire, where they sunk the bottom of it into the frozen earth and carefully tilted it to the proper angle for scalding purposes.
“It’s fifteen years since I’ve been at ‘a killing,’ and I feel as if I were ten years old again,” Noland said as he watched the hard earth give way under the mattock Luther wielded.
“Go hunt a straw in that case, and I’ll see that you get the bladder. Shall I save you the pig’s tail?” Luther said as he settled the barrel into the cavity.
They swung the great iron kettle over the pile of kindling and corncobs laid ready for lighting, and then carried water to fill it.
As the last bucket was emptied into the kettle, Lutherturned and swung his cap at John Hunter and Jake, who were passing in the bobsled.
“Hunters,” he explained. “Have you met them yet?”
“No,” replied Noland. “Who are they? He drives a good team.”
“Nearest neighbours on th’ west over there,” Luther said, pointing to the roofs of the Hunter place, plainly to be seen over the rise of land between. “They’re th’ folks for you t’ know—th’ only ones with book-learnin’ around here. Goin’ t’ stay with th’ Chamberlains long?”
“No,” replied the other, with a look of reticence; “that is, only for a time. He don’t hire much, he tells me. I’m just helping him till he gets his fencing tightened up and this work done. Why?”
“Well, I was just a thinkin’ that that’s th’ place for you. Hunter hires a lot of work done, and—and you’d like each other. You’re th’ same kind of folks. I wonder how he come t’ be takin’ ’is man along t’ town with ’im? Th’ was a trunk in th’ back of the sled too, but that may ’a’ been for Mrs. Hunter. That was ’is mother with ’im.”
There was not much time to speculate about future work, there was much to be done in the present, and before noon five limp bodies had been dragged from the pens to the scalding barrel, plunged into the steaming water, turned, twisted, turned again, and after being churned back and forth till every inch of the black hides was ready to shed its coat of hair and scarf-skin, were drawn out upon the wheelbarrow. Then a gambol-stick was thrust through the tendons of the hind legs and the hogs weresuspended from a cross pole about six feet from the ground, where they hung while the great corn-knives scraped and scratched and scrubbed and scoured till the black bodies gradually lost their coating and became pink and tender looking and perfectly clean. They were then drawn and left to cool and stiffen.
The sloppy, misty weather made the work hard because of the frozen earth under the melting snow, and the steaming, half foggy atmosphere was too warm for comfort of men working over an open fire and a steaming barrel of hot water, but by noon the butchering was finished. To the new man it was a journey back to childhood. How well he remembered the various features of preparation: the neighbours asked in to assist, the odours pleasant and unpleasant, the bustling about of his mother as she baked and boiled and stewed for the company, the magic circle about the pens from which he was excluded when the men went forth with the rifle, and the squeal which followed the rifle’s crack, and the fear which gripped him when he thought the poor pig was hurt, but which was explained away by his father, who, proud of his marksmanship, assured him that “that pig never knew what hit it.”
In addition to the fact that the man had spent his childhood on a farm, he had the happy faculty of entering into the life of the people among whom he found himself. He entertained the little group at the dinner table that day with a description of his mother’s soap-making, and discussed the best ways of preparing sausage for summer use as if he himself were a cook; and as Luther listened hewas convinced that the Hunter home was the proper place for him to settle down.
At two o’clock Luther started home with some spareribs, wrapped in one of Liza Ann’s clean towels, under his arm. It was early, but nothing more could be done at Silas’s house till the carcasses were cold enough to cut and trim, and, besides, there was an ominous looking bank of dull gray cloud in the northwest. Luther swung along the road toward the west energetically.
The wind gave a little twisting flurry, and dropped completely when he was about halfway between Chamberlain’s and the Hunter place. A few minutes later there was a puff of wind from the opposite direction, succeeded by a feeling of chill. Luther scanned the horizon and stepped faster. When the advance guard of fine snow began to sift down from the leaden sky above, he started to run. He had lived in the north, and knew the meaning of the rapidly darkening sky. The signs were unmistakable. Presently the fine flakes began to rush along toward the south with greater force. The wind came on steadily now. Luther looked about anxiously, making a note of the location of things. It was still a quarter of a mile to Hunter’s. As he peered ahead, wishing himself nearer protection, with a roar the blizzard fell upon him, blotting out the landscape before him as completely as if a curtain had fallen between.
With all his might Luther struggled forward. The wind came from the right side and almost carried him from his feet. He had been standing over a steamingkettle and scalding barrel most of the day, and the icy blast went through him, chilling his blood instantly. Luther knew his danger. This was not a cyclone where men were carried away by the winds of summer; this was a winter’s storm where men could freeze to death, and men froze quickly in blizzards. The driving particles of snow and ice made it impossible to look ahead. He shielded his face with his right arm, and tried, as he hurried forward, to keep in mind the exact direction of the Hunter house. If he could only reach that he would be safe. The road was a new one, recently opened, and not well defined. It was almost at once obliterated. Little needles of ice thrust themselves at him with stinging force, and he could not see; the blinding snow whirled and whistled about his feet, and in five minutes Luther Hansen realized that he had got out of the road. He stopped in alarm and, turning his back to the storm, tried to see about him. The gray wall of snow completely obscured every object from his sight. He had a sense of being the only thing alive in the universe; all else seemed to have been destroyed. His every nerve ached with the cold, but peer about as he would he could not possibly tell where he was. He remembered that there had been a cornfield on his right, and thought that he must have gone too far south, for he was certainly in the meadow now. The pressure of the wind, he reflected, would naturally carry him in that direction, so he faced around and started on, bearing stubbornly toward the north. Every fibre in him shook; no cold he had ever felt in Minnesota wasequal to this; there was a quality in the pressure of this cold that was deadly. The wind pierced in spite of every kind of covering. Real fear began to lay hold upon him. He stumbled easily; the action of his limbs began to give him alarm. The package of spareribs fell from under his arm, and he stooped to pick it up. As he bent over the wind caught him like a tumble-weed and threw him in a shivering heap on the ground. He had worn no mittens in the morning, and his hands stung as if tortured by the lashes of many whips. To ease their hurt he remained huddled together with his back to the wind while he breathed on his freezing fingers, but remembered that that was the surest way to add to the nip of the cold in a blast which condensed the breath from his mouth into icicles before it had time to get away from his moustache. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled on toward the Hunter house, trying as hard as his fast benumbing senses would permit to bear toward the wind and the cornfield at the right. He had not picked up the package—had forgotten it in fact—and now he tried to beat his freezing hands across his shoulders as he ran. The bitter wind could not be endured, and he crossed his hands, thrusting them into his sleeves, hoping to warm them somehow on his wrists; but with eyes uncovered he could not gauge his steps, and stumbled and fell. Unable to get his hands out of his sleeves in time to protect himself, he tripped forward awkwardly and scratched his face on the cut stubs of the meadow-grass. Evidently he had not reached the road as yet. He knew the road so well that he could have kept itwith a bandage over his eyes but for the wind which thrust him uncertainly from his course. It was that which was defeating him. Try as he would, he could not keep his attention fixed upon the necessity of staying near that cornfield. Determined to find it before he proceeded farther toward the west, he faced the wind squarely, and, bracing his body firmly, hurried as fast as he could toward the stalkfield.
After a time he seemed to wake up; he was not facing the wind, and he was aching miserably. Luther Hansen knew what that meant: he was freezing. Already the lethargy of sleep weighted each dragging foot. He thought of the nest an old sow had been building in the pen next to the one where the killing had been done that day. With the instincts of her kind, the mother-pig had prepared for the storm by making a bed where it would be sheltered. Luther’s mind dwelt lingeringly upon its cozy arrangement; every atom of his body craved shelter. Death by freezing faced him already, though he had been in the grip of the storm but one short quarter of an hour. He had lost consciousness of time: he only knew that he was freezing within sight of home. Nothing but action could save him. Nerving himself for another trial, the bewildered man turned toward the north and walked into the very teeth of the storm, searching for the lost trail. Sometimes he thought his foot had found it; then it would be lost again. He wandered on hours, days, weeks—he wandered shivering over the meadow, the road, the state of Kansas—over the whole globe and through all space,till at last a great wall shut off the offending wind, the roar of the planets lessened, and the numb and frozen man fell forward insensible, striking his head against a dark obstruction thrusting its shoulder through a bank of dirty gray snow.
The sound of a heavy body falling on her doorstep brought Elizabeth Hunter to the door. She opened it cautiously. The snow swirled in as it was drawn back and the heated air of the sitting room rushed out, forming a cloud of steam which almost prevented her from seeing the helpless figure at her feet. She could not distinguish the features, but it was a man, and the significance of his presence was plain. Seizing him about the body, Elizabeth dragged him into the house, and shut the door behind him to keep out the blast.
“Luther Hansen!” she exclaimed.
Finding that she could not arouse him, she pulled the relaxed and nerveless form to the lounge, but when she attempted to lift the limp figure to the couch she found it almost more than all her woman’s strength could accomplish. Luther stirred and muttered, but could not be awakened sufficiently to help himself, and it was only after some minutes and the putting forth of every ounce of strength that the girl had that he was at last stretched upon the lounge. Elizabeth brought blankets to cover the shivering, muttering, delirious man, and having heard that the frost must be drawn gradually from frozen extremities, and being unable to get his hands and feet into cold water, she brought andwrapped wet towels about them, and chafed his frozen face.
It was a long time before the white nose and cheeks began to show colour; then the ears became scarlet, and pain began to sting the man into consciousness. The chafing hurt, and Luther fought off the hands that rubbed so tenderly.
Gradually Luther Hansen awoke to his surroundings. Delirium and reality mixed helplessly for some moments. He remembered his struggles to reach the Hunter house, but the gap in the train of his affairs made him suspect that this was a phase of delirium and that he was in reality freezing. He was stinging all over. He wanted to find out where he was, and tried to get upon his feet.
“You are right here in my house, Luther,” Elizabeth said, holding him on his pillow.
Luther relaxed and lay looking at her for some time before he asked:
“How did I get here, Lizzie?”
“I don’t know, Luther,” she replied. “I heard you fall on the doorstep. I never was so surprised. How did you come to be out—and without mittens too?”
She removed the wet towel from one of his hands, and he drew it away with a groan.
“I expect, Lizzie, it’s frozen. You better rub it with snow.”
The question of how he reached her house puzzled Luther throughout the long afternoon and evening, whilethey listened to the roar of the wind and talked of the unsheltered cattle in the many Kansas stalkfields.
“The only thing that kept our cattle from being out of doors was the fact that Jake had to go to Iowa and John had to take him to town,” Elizabeth had said at one point.
“Has Jake left for good?” Luther asked hesitatingly. He knew John’s unpopularity with the men who worked for him and was a little afraid to ask Elizabeth, who might be sensitive about it.
“No. Jake has lost his mother, but he’ll come back for the spring seeding. Jake’s a good man; he and John seem to get along pretty well.” It was Elizabeth’s turn to speak hesitatingly. She did not know how much Luther knew of John’s affairs with his men, nor what opinion Jake might have expressed to Luther.
“Jake’s a curious cub! He’s been your dog, Lizzie, ever since that school business. I’ve heard ’im tell it over twenty times.”
“I wish we could find another like him,” Elizabeth said wistfully. “John isn’t able to take care of all this stock unless he gets a man in Colebyville to-day, and—and if he did, the man, as likely as not, wouldn’t stay more than a week or two.”
Luther Hansen looked up eagerly.
“Lizzie, I’ve found th’ very man for you folks. He’ll stay too. He’s a fellow by th’ name of Noland—workin’ for Chamberlain, an’ wants a job right soon—got a lot of book-learnin’—just your kind.”
“I’ll have John see him when he gets home,” Elizabeth answered indifferently. “My! I wonder when they will be able to get back?” she added.
“They wasn’t through tradin’ when this thing come on,” Luther replied. “Anyhow, houses was too thick t’ get lost th’ first half of th’ way. Listen to that wind, though! I’m glad t’ be here if I do look like a turkey gobbler with these ears,” he laughed.
It was so cold that Elizabeth had built a roaring fire, and to keep the snow, which penetrated every crack, from sifting under the door, she laid old coats and carpets across the sill. She brought coal and cobs from the shed, stopping each trip to get warm, for even to go the twenty steps required to get to the cobhouse was to experience more cold than she had ever encountered in all the days when she had plowed through the snows of Kansas winters while teaching; in fact, had the fuel been much farther from her door she would hardly have ventured out for it at all in a wind which drove one out of his course at every fresh step and so confused and blinded him that the points of the compass were a blank, and paths could not be located for the drifts, which ran in every direction the swirling wind chose to build them. She had gone around the shed to the back door, knowing that the front door being on the windward side could not be shut again if once opened, and the few extra steps necessary to creep around the building froze her to the bone, for the eddying wind had carried the snow deep at that point and, being enough sheltered to prevent packing, had left it a soft pile into which she sankalmost to her waist. She was obliged to hunt for a shovel and clear the snow out of the doorway when she was through, and her hands were completely numbed when she reached the house after it was over. With the feeling that she might not be able to reach the shed at all in the morning, or that the doors might be drifted shut altogether, Elizabeth had taken enough cobs and coal into the kitchen to half fill the room and was ready to withstand a siege of days, but she paid toll with aching hands and feet that frightened Luther into a new realization of the nature of the storm.
When at last the one fire Elizabeth thought it wise to keep up was rebuilt and dry shoes had replaced the wet ones, she settled down beside the lounge, with her feet in another chair to keep them off the cold floor, and turned to Luther expectantly.
“This storm’s awful, as you say,” she said in reply to his observation that it might hold for days, “but I’m just so glad of a real chance for a visit with you that I’m quite willing to bring cobs and keep fires.”
“If that’s true, why don’t you come t’ see us as you ought t’, Lizzie?” Luther said, looking her searchingly in the eye. “I never meddle in other people’s business, but you ain’t th’ stuck-up thing folks says you are. Honest now, why don’t you do as a neighbour should?”
Elizabeth Hunter’s face flushed crimson and she leaned forward to tuck the old coat, in which she had wrapped her feet, more closely about them while she took time to get herself ready to answer the paralyzing question. Thelonger she waited the harder it became to meet the kindly questioning eyes bent upon her, and the more embarrassing it became to answer at all. She fumbled and tucked and was almost at the point of tears when Jack, who was asleep on a bed made on two chairs, began to fret. Seizing the welcome means of escape, she got up and took the child, sitting down a little farther away from Luther and hugging the baby as if he were a refuge from threatened harm.
Luther felt the distance between them, but decided to force the issue. He came about it from another quarter, but with inflexible determination.
“I hope Sadie got her kindling in before the storm began. It’ll be awful cold in th’ mornin’, and—I do wish I could ’a’ got home. Sadie’s fires always go out.”
“Your cobs are closer to the house than mine; Sadie ’ll get along all right.”
“How do you know where our cobhouse is now, Lizzie? You ain’t seen it for over a year,” Luther observed quietly. And when Elizabeth did not reply, said with his eyes fastened on Jack’s half-asleep face: “I wonder how Janie is?”
Glad to talk of anything but herself and her own affairs, Elizabeth answered with feverish readiness the last half of Luther’s observation.
“You never told me what the baby’s name was before. Isn’t it sweet?”
“Do you know, Lizzie, that Sadie ’d most made ’er mind up t’ call it after you, if it was a girl, if you’d ’a’ comet’ be with ’er when it was born, as you said you would?” Luther looked at her almost tenderly, and with a yearning beyond words.
“After me? She didn’t send for me when she was sick, Luther.”
“No, but she would ’a’, if you’d ’a’ come as you ought t’ ’a’ done them months when she wasn’t goin’ out.” He looked at her penetratingly.
“I haven’t been anywhere since Aunt Susan’s death,” Elizabeth evaded, determined not to recognize his trend.
“You could ’a’ come before her death, there was plenty of time. Now look here, I ain’t goin’ t’ beat about th’ bush. I’m talkin’ square. You can’t git away from me. You’ve had th’ best chance a woman ever had t’ help another woman, an’ you didn’t take it. Sadie was that took by what you said about bein’ glad for th’ chance t’ have your baby, an’ th’ idea of helpin’ him t’ have th’ best disposition you could give ’im, that she didn’t talk of nothin’ else for weeks, an’ she looked for you till she was sick, an’ you never come. I want t’ know why?”
Elizabeth Hunter had come to the judgment-bar; she could not escape these cross-questions, neither could she answer. Her face grew white as Luther Hansen looked searchingly into it, and her breath came hard and harder as he looked and waited. This chance to talk to Luther was like wine to her hungry soul, but John Hunter was her husband and she refused to accuse him even after the long months of despair she had suffered at his hands. Luther let her gather herself for her reply, not adding a word tothe demand for truth and friendship. How he trusted her in spite of it all! He watched her indecision change to indignation at his insistence, and he saw her head grow clear as she decided upon her course.
“I will not discuss the past with you, Luther,” she said slowly, as one who comes to a conclusion as he proceeds. “I cannot tell you all the things which have led up to it. I am going to ask you not to mention it to me again, but I will try to do it better next time. I had no idea that Sadie cared whether I came to see her or not; she had always seemed to dislike me.” Elizabeth added the last hesitatingly lest she hurt Luther’s feelings.
“Lizzie, I won’t be put off. If you don’t want t’ tell mewhyyou’ve done as you have, I won’t ask you t’, but you’ve got t’ let me talk t’ you about it all th’ same. I ain’t a man t’ let myself mix up in my neighbours’ affairs, but, Lizzie, you ought t’ live up t’ th’ things God’s put int’ your power t’ do. Now, then, you let folks get a wrong idea of you. You’ve got more education ’n anybody else’s got in this country, an’ you’ve got more money, an’ you’ve got more everything ’n th’ rest of us, an’ what’s it been give t’ you for if it ain’t goin’ t’ come t’ nothin’? Here you’ve had th’ best chance t’ do somethin’ for a neighbour woman a woman ever had: Sadie’s been that took with th’ things you said about children that she was ready t’ listen t’ you on anything, an’ you won’t let ’er have a chance t’ get at you at all—an’ ain’t she come out? You’d have t’ live with ’er, Lizzie, t’ know what that little woman’s done fur herself this last year—an’ it was you thathelped t’ do it. Honest, now, don’t you see yourself that if you’ve had things give t’ you that th’ rest ain’t had that you owe somethin’ t’ th’ rest of us?”
In all the weary discordant time when she had struggled for better conditions Elizabeth Hunter had never thought of anything in the situation but the bettering of her own surroundings. It had been the suffering of blind stupidity, of youth, of the human being too deeply submerged to think of aught but personal affairs. Luther drew her attention to the main facts of her life, drawing her away from self. It was a simple occurrence, a simple subject, a simple question: it was in itself the reason for the perpetuation of their friendship. The winds blew, the snow found its way under door and sash and heaped itself in ridges across the floor, and in spite of the roaring fire they were not always warm, but throughout the night Elizabeth sat beside her lifelong friend and drew in a revivifying fire which was to remould and make over a life which had almost flickered to a smouldering resentment and inactivity.
CHAPTER XVIIADJUSTING DOMESTIC TO SOCIAL IDEALS
The next morning the wind blew the fine snow in one vast driving cloud; it was impossible to see a hundred feet. Elizabeth knew that the stock was suffering, but was almost certain that she could not reach them. It would not be hard to reach the barn, since the wind would be with her, but to return would be a different matter. To feel that she had done all that she could, she went as far as the gate, and when she could not see the house from that point was sufficiently warned and struggled back to safety. No sound but that of the storm came to her even at the gate, but she was certain that the famishing cattle were calling for food. Her day was consumed in the care of Luther’s inflamed hands and feet. The only remedy she knew was wet cloths and she worked anxiously to reduce the swelling and congestion.
About four o’clock the wind dropped. Though the air was still full of fine snow, Elizabeth wrapped herself in John’s old overcoat and muffler, and putting a pair of Jake’s heavy mittens on her hands, and taking the milkpails on her arm to save a trip back for them, she went to the barn.
The barn door stuck, with the snow which had collectedin the runway, and she had to fumble for some time before it would come open. A perfect babel of voices greeted her. Jake had left the south door of the barn ajar when he left that morning, and the eddying snow had banked itself along the entire centre of the building. Patsie stood in the stall nearest the door, humped up with the cold, and with a layer of snow on her hips and spreading black tail. She turned sidewise and pawed furiously, giving shrill little whinnies as Elizabeth seized a half-bushel measure and waded through the snow to the oats bin.
“No, corn’s better this cold weather,” the girl said aloud, and hurried to the other bin. Soon the horses were making noise enough to inflame the appetites of the other animals, who redoubled their cries.
She investigated the pens and found the hogs in good condition, but the drifts so high as to make it possible for them to make neighbourly visits from pen to pen, and even into the cattle yard. It was a struggle to carry the heavy ear corn from the crib to the pens, but it was done, and then Elizabeth turned her attention to the excited cattle.
Taking time to rest and get her breath, Elizabeth noticed that a few of the hogs had not come to get their feed, and went to investigate the cause. They seemed to be fighting over some choice morsel on the far side of the cattle yard. At first she thought that it was one of their number that they were fighting about, but as she approached the knot, one of them ran off to one side dragging something, its head held high to avoid stepping on thegrewsome thing it carried. One of the young cows had lost her calf in the freezing storm, and the hogs were fighting over its torn and mangled body. Elizabeth sought out the little mother, and segregating her from the herd, drove her into the straw cow-stable, where she would be sheltered. The other milch cows had been left in their stalls by the men the day before, and snorted and tugged at their ropes as the newcomer appeared. Elizabeth tied the heifer, and then shut the door after her and returned to the unprotected herd outside.
The fodder was so full of snow that it was impossible for the girl to handle it at all, so she dug the ladder out of the snow and placed it against the long hayrick beside the fence and forked the hay over into the racks below. It required every ounce of strength she had to throw the hay clear of the stack and in line with the racks where the cattle could reach it, but the girl worked with a will, while the cattle fought for best places, or any place at all, and reached hungry tongues for the sweet hay.
Elizabeth worked with joy and energy. The mood of the storm was upon the girl. Not before in all the months she had been married had she ever moved in perfect freedom in her native out-of-doors element. It was a gift of the gods and not to be despised or neglected, for to-morrow would come John—and prison bars. Before she had begun, she faced the wind, and with bounding joy looked over the drifted fields toward the north and northeast. The air was clearing. The world looked different from this lofty position. She was Elizabeth again, Elizabethtransformed and made new. The lethargy of recent months had slipped away; something about the rush and motion of things in the last twenty-four hours inspired her; the fierce winds of yesterday and to-day stirred her spirit to do, to be in motion herself. They had communicated their energy, their life, their free and ungoverned humour. Elizabeth’s thoughts ran on as fast as her blood. She thought of Luther, and of all he had said to her, of her neglected opportunities which he had pointed out to her, and wondered modestly if he were right, and then knew that he was. She thought of how she, the out-of-door prisoner of her father’s home, had become the indoor prisoner of her husband’s home. She had thought that to marry and escape her father’s grasp was to possess herself; but Elizabeth Hunter saw that as a wife she was really much less free. She thought of the sacrifices she had made in the hope of securing harmony, and she thought of the futility of it all. She decided that if a woman were enslaved it was because she herself permitted it, that to yield where she should stand fast did not secure a man’s love, it only secured his contempt and increased his demands. In the three years she had been married she had not been permitted an hour of real companionship until the accident of this storm had brought an old friend to her door and kept him there till she had had a chance to realize the mental depths to which she had fallen in her isolation. In all the time she had been married she had not thought of anything but the bare details of their daily life. A woman had to have theassociation of congenial people to keep her from falling into housekeeping dry-rot. For thirty-six hours she had possessed herself, and in that time she had renewed her youth and acquired a new outlook. As she stood looking across the fields, her eyes fell on Nathan Hornby’s chimney. The wind had dropped so completely that the air had cleared of snow, and the curling smoke from a freshly built fire arose in the frosty air, sending a thrill of homesickness through her as she pictured the orderly kitchen in which that fire was built. Was it orderly now that its guardian angel was gone? The hideous cruelty of a neglect which kept her from knowing whether it was well kept swept over her. Once she would have spent herself in emotionalism and tears at remembrance of it, but Elizabeth had advanced.
“I’ll go and see him to-morrow, or as soon as the roads are fit,” was her resolve. “Luther’s right; he usually is.”
The cattle calling from below brought her back to the necessities of the hour. Laying hold of the frosty pitchfork she renewed her attack upon the hay and continued till the racks were filled. By the time the ladder was put away again her hands were stinging till it was impossible to work, and she ran to the barn where she could put them against Patsie’s flank while she blew her warm breath upon them. Patsie was ticklish, and twitched her loose hide nervously and gnawed at her feed-box with little squeals of excitement. The feed-box was of two-inch lumber instead of the usual sort. It was like all John did: so much attention put in one place there was no time forthe rest; well done, but much left undone. Everything about John’s barn was orderly and well built. There had been a time when she had rejoiced at what seemed to be thrift, but to-day she saw it from a new angle; Mr. Farnshaw had wastefully let his machinery rot and his stock perish from cold, but here was wastefulness of another sort; Elizabeth speculated on the cost of this barn and thought of the interest to be paid.
On her way to the cow-stable where the little mother whose calf had fallen a victim to the cold awaited her, she thought of the toolroom where she had gone for her feed. A forty-dollar set of harness hung there: Carter’s harness had chains instead of leather tugs, and would outwear them several times over. It was an orderly toolroom: the bridles occupied a row over the collars, hames and back-bands came next, and on the other side of the room, on six-inch spikes, hung extra clevises, buckles, straps, and such materials as accidents to farm machinery required. John’s mending was well provided for and well done. Elizabeth would have loved just this sort of order if it had not been so costly.
The little cow was so hungry that she hardly knew that she was giving her milk into a foreign receptacle till a voice at the stable door made her jump so violently that the pail was knocked over and Elizabeth had to scramble hastily to avoid a similar fate.
“Well, now, there you be! Gosh-a-livin’s!——”
Silas Chamberlain never finished that speech. The milk from the rolling pail spattered over his feet as hesprang to Elizabeth’s rescue. The little cow tore at the rope that held her, and every mate she had in the stable joined her in snorting and threatening to bolt over the mangers. The old man, “So-bossied,” and vented all the soothing cattle talk he could command while he looked on in embarrassed confusion.
“Now ain’t that jes’ like me?” he queried in dismay. “Look what I’ve gone an’ done!” He picked up the empty pail and handed it to the man that was with him to keep it from being trampled upon by the plunging cows, while he tried to establish confidential relations with them.
“Never mind, Mr. Chamberlain. She’s only a heifer and never milked before. She wouldn’t have let me get that far without trouble, anyhow, if she hadn’t been so hungry. The hogs killed her calf last night or this morning and I thought I’d milk her before I began on the rest. I don’t suppose John can get home before to-morrow night, and the chores had to be done. Here, there’s an extra bucket or two. Do you want to help milk? they’ll quit fussing in a minute.”
“Course I do. That’s what Noland an’ I come for. This is Mrs. Hunter, Noland,” Silas said, remembering formalities at the last moment. “We thought John wouldn’t ’a’ got back ’fore th’ storm come on. Now let’s get this milkin’ done ’fore dark or we’ll be havin’ t’ ask for a lantern.”
“Oh! Mr. Chamberlain, I forgot to tell you that Luther Hansen got caught in the storm and nearly froze,” Elizabeth said when they had settled themselves to thework. “He’s at our house now; his feet and hands are awful. I think they’re all right, but I wish we could get at Doctor Morgan.”
The old man nearly upset the milk a second time in his astonishment, and the milking was cut as short as could decently be done so as to get to the house. The early winter night had settled down and the sting of the cold was paralyzing as they hastened in. Silas went straight to Luther, and Elizabeth and the new man brought a fresh supply of coal and cobs before they went in. They met Silas coming out as they carried the last basketful from the shed.
“I’m goin’ right over t’ tell Sadie,” he announced. “I brought Noland over to help, but Luther says you’re goin’ t’ need ’im right along, an’ I’ll jes’ leave ’im for good. You’ll like each other an’ he’ll want t’ stay as bad as You’ll want ’im.”
Silas had poured the whole arrangement out, and as it was about what was necessary it was accepted.
The presence of a stranger necessitated more formal housekeeping, and when the new man came back from helping Silas saddle Patsie he found the kitchen in order and the savoury smell of fresh biscuits and ham. A small table was placed beside Luther, and the ham and hot things had a seasoning of brilliant, intellectual conversation, for the man from college was adept at entertaining his fellow men and showed his best powers.
Elizabeth was too tired to stay awake long and she left him and Luther chatting, after she had shown Mr. Nolandwhere he was to sleep and had filled the cold bed with hot flatirons to take the chill from the icy sheets. However happy she may have been while feeding the stock, she had to acknowledge that the loss of sleep the night before and the unaccustomed use of the pitchfork had made of her bed a desirable place. She awoke when the stranger went up the stairs, but was asleep before his footsteps had reached the room above her. A tantalizing remembrance of his face disturbed her for a moment, but only for a moment, and then tired nature carried her back to the land of dreams. She had seen him somewhere, but where, she was too sleepy to think out.
The next morning Silas came with his bobsled and they helped Luther into a chair and carried him in it to the sled and so to his home. John and his mother came a little after noon, and the girl watched to see how her husband would like the new man, half afraid that because she had secured him in John’s absence that he would not like him, and she wished it might be possible to keep him with them. She need not have worried, for Hugh Noland had looked about the place and decided to make himself so necessary to its proprietor that his presence would be desired, and he had gifts which favoured him in that respect. Besides, John had been unsuccessful in obtaining help and was overjoyed to come home and find the cattle fed and everything at the barn in good order. Patsie and her mate were hitched to the lumber wagon and stood waiting in the lane when John came and Jack was being wrapped in his warmest cloak.
“Where on earth are you going?” John asked in profound astonishment.
“I told Mr. Noland to hitch up and take me to Uncle Nathan’s, but now that you are here, you can go if you wish,” Elizabeth replied quietly. “I should have gone a long time ago. Will you go along mother, or will you stay at home after climbing these drifts all day? I think now that you’re at home we’ll take the sled instead of the wagon. You won’t mind making the change, will you?”
She ended by addressing the new man, and it was all so naturally done that John Hunter swallowed whatever was uncomfortable in it. He would not go himself, and Elizabeth set off with the stranger, glad of the chance to do so.
“I’ll drive right home and help with things there. What time shall I come back for you?” Noland asked as he set her on the ground as near Nathan’s doorstep as he could get the team to go.
“Not till after five. Mother’s there and I’ll let her get your suppers, and I’ll get mine here with Uncle Nate.”
It was such a perfectly normal arrangement that Hugh Noland did not guess that there was anything new in it. He drove away with a feeling of disappointment because he had been unable to draw her into conversation on the way over. She had proven herself a good conversationalist at meals and he looked forward to a time when he would be a permanent part of that household. Luther and Silas had been right. Here was the partner he was looking for if he could only make himself appreciated.
He had laid out every faculty and put it to the best use for that purpose and had been a bit disconcerted to have her suddenly become uncommunicative.
Nathan was at the barn; he saw them stop and recognized his visitor.
“Humph!” he snorted in disgust. However, a man could not leave a woman with a baby in her arms standing on his doorstep on a raw February day.
“How do you do, Uncle Nate?” the girl said timidly as soon as he was near enough to accost.
Nathan’s greeting was short and inhospitable. He did not offer to shake hands, nor pretend to see the hand she extended to him. Instead, he opened the door and invited her gruffly to enter. Closing the door behind them, he went to the stove and began to stir the fire industriously.
Elizabeth saw that she must have the difficulty over at once or her courage would wilt. Setting Jack on the floor, she went to Nathan and put her hand on his arm detainingly.
“You have fire enough, Uncle Nate. Let me talk to you.”
“Well?” he said briefly.
The girl was staggered by the nature of her reception. It was worse than she had expected. Luther Hansen’s estimate of the real situation had been only too right. She stood before Nathan Hornby trembling and disconcerted by the wall of his silence. The old kitchen clock ticked loudly, she could hear her own pulses, and thefreshly stirred fire roared—roared in a rusty and unpolished stove. Dust lay thick on the unswept floor. Nathan needed her. She would win her way back to his heart.
“Uncle Nate, I don’t blame you one bit if you aren’t nice to me. I haven’t deserved it, but——”
“I guess you needn’t ‘Uncle Nate’ me any more,” he said when she paused.
His speech was bitter and full of animosity, but it was better than his compelling silence.
“I don’t blame you one bit for being mad at me——I should think you would be. I don’t know what I’m going to say to you either, but I’ve come to beg your forgiveness,” she stammered.
Nathan Hornby did not speak, but waited coldly for her to continue. There was plainly no help offered her.
“I—I can’t explain, Uncle Nate—I am going to call you so—you—you shall not put me away. I have come for your forgiveness and—and I’m going to stay till I get it. I—I can’t explain—there—there are things in life that we can’t explain, but I’m innocent of this stuck-up business you think I’ve had. I—I’ve loved you and Aunt Susan. Oh, Uncle Nate, I’ve loved her better than I ever did my own mother,” she ended with a sob.
There was the voice of honesty in what she said, but Nathan remembered his wrongs.
“If that’s so, why didn’t you come t’ see ’er?” he said. “If you loved ’er, why’d you let ’er go down to ’er grave apinin’ for you? She looked for you till she was crazy ’most, an’ she never got a decent word out of you, nor a decent visit neither. If you loved ’er, what’d you act that way for?”
The memory of that last day, when his wife had yearned so pitifully for this girl, arose before him as he stood there, and shook his faith in the honesty of Elizabeth’s purposes in spite of the earnestness of her manner.
“That is the one thing I cannot explain, Uncle Nate,” Elizabeth answered. “I—I was all ready to come that day and—and—then I couldn’t.”
She buried her face in her hands at the memory of it and burst into tears.
“Is it true that Hunter won’t take you anywhere?” he asked pointedly.
“You have been listening to the Cranes,” she answered.
“I’ve been listenin’ t’ more’n them,” he said with the fixed purpose of drawing her out on the subject. “I’ve been listenin’ t’ some as says you’re too high and mighty t’ associate with th’ likes of us—an’ I’ve heard it said that your husband won’t take you nowhere. Now I just naturally know that a man can’t shut a woman up in this American country, so’s she can’t go anywhere she wants t’, if she wants t’ bad enough; an’ I remember how Hunter was ’fore ’e married you; ’e was always on th’ go—an’ there’s a nigger in th’ woodpile somewheres.”
Elizabeth was for the moment staggered. What he said was so true. And yet, how untrue! It was hard to think with the eye of suspicion on her. Appearances wereagainst her, but she was determined not to discuss the privacies of her married life. She paused and looked Nathan squarely in the face till she could control her reasoning faculties.
“That is neither here nor there,” she said quite firmly at last. “I shall not defend myself to you, Uncle Nate, nor explain away bad reports. It would not help me and it would not help you. What I am here for is to offer you my lovenow. What I want you to believe is that I mean it, that I’ve wanted to come, that I’m here because I want to be here, and that I never mean to neglect you again. I—I couldn’t come to see her—but, oh, Uncle Nate, mayn’t I come to see you? I can’t tell you all the little ins and outs of why I haven’t come before, but you must believe me.”
Elizabeth ended imploringly.
The man was softened by her evident sincerity in spite of himself, and yet his wound was of long standing, his belief in her honesty shaken, his beloved wife in her grave, assisted to her final stroke by this girl’s neglect, and he could not lay his bitterness aside easily. He did not speak.
The silence which followed was broken only by the ticking of the old-fashioned Seth Thomas clock and the roar of the fire.
Elizabeth looked around the familiar room in her dilemma, entangled in the mesh of her loyalty to her husband’s dubious and misleading actions. Nearly every article in that room was associated with some tender recollection in the girl’s mind. Not even the perplexityof the moment could entirely shut out the reminiscent side of the occasion. The bread-board, dusty and unused, leaned against the flour barrel, the little line above it where the dishtowels should hang sagged under the weight of a bridle hung there to warm the frosty bit, the rocking chair, mended with broom wire after the cyclone, and on its back Aunt Susan’s chambray sunbonnet where it had fallen from its nail: all familiar. With a little cry Elizabeth fell on her knees by Nathan Hornby’s side.
“Oh, Uncle Nate! you can’t tell what others have to contend with, and—and you must not even ask, but——” She could not proceed for sobs.
Nathan Hornby’s own face twitched and trembled with emotion. The girl had unconsciously used Susan’s own last words. His heart was touched. Susan’s great love for Elizabeth pleaded for her.
“Can’t I come, Uncle Nate? Won’t you be friends with me?”
And Nathan Hornby, who wanted her friendship, answered reluctantly:
“Yes-s-s—come along if you want t’. You won’t find it a very cheerful place t’ come to, but she’d be glad t’ know you’re here, I guess.”
Jack, sitting in his shawls and wraps on the floor, began to cry. He had been neglected long enough. His mother got suddenly to her feet. Both stooped to take the baby. Elizabeth resigned him to Nathan, instinctively realizing that Jack was a good advocate in her favour if Nathan still retained fragments of his grievances. She let the oldman retain him on his lap while she busied herself about him unpinning his shawls.
It was home-like and companionable to have a woman and baby in the house, and Nathan Hornby had been lonesome a long time. He clucked to the baby and began to trot him up and down on his knee. With a relieved sigh Elizabeth dropped into a chair and watched them.
Jack, unaccustomed to whiskers, put his hand out to investigate. Nathan waggled his chin to shake its pendant brush, and Jack started nervously. Nathan looked across at Elizabeth and laughed. That little laugh did a world of good in aiding Elizabeth’s plans. It was not possible for Nathan to catch her eye in good-natured raillery and remain cool of manner; that laugh and the glance that went with it did much to wash away his hurt. In his secret soul Nathan had craved Elizabeth’s love and Elizabeth’s baby. She had been like a daughter in the house. He had missed her almost as much as his wife had done, but he had resented her long absence. He had come to the house determined not to forget his wrongs, and here he was, in less than fifteen minutes, smiling at her over the head of the baby in friendly amusement. He was puzzled now at the readiness with which he had given in, but Nathan found his love stronger than his grievances.
“Take off your things, Lizzie; th’ house’s yours if you—if you really want it to be.”
Elizabeth took off her wraps and prepared to begin work on the disorderly kitchen. Aunt Susan’s limpapron hung on the nail from which the bonnet had fallen, and she put it on, looking about her, undecided where it was best to commence.
“I’ve come to help—where shall I begin?” she said.
“If I could tell you what t’ do I could ’a’ done it myself,” Nathan said ruefully.
Elizabeth thought of the orderly wife who was gone and a sob arose in her throat.
“Oh, Uncle Nate! You don’t know how I miss her sometimes.”
And Nathan Hornby replied sadly:
“I kind a think maybe I do.”
The night was cloudy and the long diagonal drifts made it hard to drive after dark. The chores had kept Noland later than he had thought and it was dusk when he arrived at Nathan’s for Elizabeth.
Hugh Noland had been spending the afternoon with John Hunter about the barn, measuring him and talking of farm prospects. Here was the place for him to settle down, if he could arrange for a partnership. He was so much convinced of this that he was endeavouring to make the alliances of friendship before he led up to the more serious one. It had baffled him to have Elizabeth answer in monosyllables both going to Mr. Hornby’s and again during their return; he wanted to talk. Her home was the first farmhouse he had ever entered that he felt could be home to him; its evidences of culture and refinement had made as lasting an impression upon Hugh Noland as thatsame home had done upon Elizabeth when John Hunter had taken her to see his mother in it. It was an oasis in the rural desert. He meant to exert every effort to establish himself in it. When Elizabeth did not respond to his attempts at conversation, he fell back upon the analysis of herself and her husband which had been going on in his mind all day. They were evidently not people who felt above their neighbours on account of their superior education, for she had gone to spend a whole afternoon with that plain old farmer and she had shown the liveliest interest, even friendship, for the Swede on the other side of the farm. He liked them the better for that. If a man or woman lived in a community he or she should be a part of that community. Hugh Noland never doubted that the friendly interest he had witnessed was the regularly established course of action and that it was mutual in the household. Coming into the household at this transition point, he was to make many such mistakes in his estimates.
John Hunter was at the side gate to assist his wife and baby out of the sled. He left Elizabeth to carry Jack to the house and went to the barn to help Noland put the team away. This man, who took milking as a lark, and all farm work as a thing to be desired, and yet was a gentleman, was to John Hunter, who scorned these things as beneath himself, an anomaly. It had never occurred to John that labour of that sort could have dignity, nor that a man could choose it as a livelihood unless driven to it. It had never occurred to him that if driven to itone should enter into it as a real participant. To him it was a thing to endure for a time and never refer to after it could be put behind him. The beauty of the dawn, the pleasant odours of new-mown hay, the freshness of the crisp air, the association with the living creatures about him, the joys of a clean life, all escaped him. Hugh Noland had enumerated these things, and many more, while they had worked together that afternoon, and John Hunter accepted the enumeration, not because it was fundamentally true, but because it was the estimate of a cultured and well-educated man.
John Hunter had been vexed at Elizabeth for the sangfroid with which she had walked away from established custom in ordering the team prepared for her to be taken to Nathan’s, but with Noland present he had accepted it without remark. Here was a man before whom John would always, but instinctively rather than premeditatively, endeavour to show his best side.
Hugh Noland went to the house with John, talking farm work and prices of produce as if they were matters of pleasant as well as necessary importance, and he set John to talking in his best vein and without superciliousness; he had the faculty of bringing out the best in the people he met. He brought some of his books—he had stopped at the Chamberlain homestead for his trunk on their return that evening—and added them to those already on the Hunter shelves. While arranging them, he sat on the floor before the bookcase and glancing over the titles of those belonging to the family, opened anoccasional one and read aloud a verse or a paragraph or two. He read with zest and enthusiasm. He was fresh from the world of lectures and theatres, and the social life of the city, and became a rejuvenating leaven for this entire household.
Luther was on Elizabeth’s mind when she awakened the next morning, and as soon as the breakfast work was finished and she had time to get the house in order, she decided to move from her new standpoint and go to see him. To this end she asked Mrs. Hunter to keep Jack while she was gone, and to the older woman’s objections that she should let the men hitch up the sled and drive her over she answered firmly:
“I don’t want a word said about it. I will go whenever I please without arguing it with anybody.”
In her secret soul she was glad to get past the barn without John seeing her. She would not have permitted him to stop her, or delay her visit, but a discussion with her husband was apt to hold surprises and she to become confused and angry, and worsted in themannerof her insistence. To get away without having to explain put her in good spirits.
The sun shone brightly and the air, though snappy and cold, was brisk and fresh. It was the first free walk of a mile Elizabeth had ever taken since her marriage. Elizabeth was herself again. She skirted around the long drifts as she crossed the field humming a snatch of tune with all her blood atingle with the delight of being alonein the vast silent fields. The mere passing of time since Aunt Susan’s death had gradually worked a change in her condition, which Luther’s presence and the stimulating quality of his words, John’s absence, the intoxication of the wild and unfettered storm, the visit to Nathan Hornby’s, and the invigorating personality of Hugh Noland had combined to rejuvenate in the crushed and beaten girl. Life held meanings to which she had long been blind. Elizabeth set about the reorganizing of her life with no bitterness toward John, only glad to have found herself, with duty to herself as well as others still possible.
Sadie Hansen met Elizabeth at the door with such evident uneasiness that Elizabeth was moved to ask:
“Luther’s all right, Sadie?”
“Yes-s-s!” Sadie replied slowly, and with such reluctance that Elizabeth was puzzled.
Sadie took her to the bedroom and shut the door behind her as tight as if she hoped to shut out some evil spirit in the action. Her manner filled Elizabeth with curiosity, but she crossed to Luther and held out her hand.
“Before you ’uns begin,” Sadie said with the air of burning her bridges behind her, and before any one had had a chance to speak, “I want t’ tell you something. I could ’a’ told it in th’ kitchen,” she stammered, “but I made up my mind last night that I’d have it out with both of you. I’ve done you th’ meanest trick, Lizzie. Luther said you was goin’ t’ Hornby’s yesterday. Did you go?”
Elizabeth, standing at the head of Luther’s bed, noddedin her surprise, feeling that her visit with Nathan was not a subject to which she could lend words.
“Now look here, Lizzie, if what I said t’ th’ Hornbys has made any difference, I’ll go t’ him an’ take it back right before your face.”
Elizabeth’s eyes opened in astonishment.
“Uncle Nate did not mention it to me,” Elizabeth replied.
“Well, I’ve made up my mind I want t’ tell it, an’ have it off my mind.”
Sadie considered a moment and then plunged into her tale hurriedly, for fear that her courage would cease to support her.
“Well, when I was to your house last summer, an’ you told me about th’ effect it had on a baby t’ have a mother that never got mad, I come home an’ tried t’ do everything I thought you meant an’—seems t’ me I never was s’ mean in my life. Mean feelin’ I mean. I got along pretty well at first—I guess it was somethin’ new—? but th’ nearer I got t’ th’ time, th’ worse I got. I scolded Luther Hansen till I know he wished he’d never been born. Th’ worst of it was that I’d told ’im how—what a difference it made, and he was that anxious——?”
Luther raised his hand to protest, but Sadie waved him aside and continued:
“Oh, you needn’t defend me, Luther!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been meaner ’n you know of.” Turning to Elizabeth again, “I used t’ look over t’ your house an’ feel—an’ feel ’s if I could only see you an’ talk a while, I’d gitover wantin’ t’ be s’ mean, but you wouldn’t never come t’ see us—an’—an’ I didn’t feel’s if—I didn’t feel free t’ go any more, ’cause ma said you didn’t want t’ be sociable with our kind of folks.”
Sadie paused a moment to crease the hem of her apron and get the twitching out of the corners of her distressed mouth.
“Well, at last, when you didn’t come, an’ I couldn’t git no help from no one, I just said every mean thing I could. I told Hornby a week ’fore his wife died that you said you didn’t want t’ change visits with us country jakes, ’cause you wanted your boy t’ be different from th’ likes of us. Ma’d heard that somewhere, but I told it t’ ’im ’s if you’d said it t’ me. Sue Hornby put ’er hand on my arm an’ said, so kind like, ‘Sadie, ain’t you ’fraid t’ talk that way an’ you in that fix?’ An’ I just cried an’ cried, an’ couldn’t even tell ’er I’d tried t’ do different.”
Luther Hansen had been trying to interrupt the flow of his wife’s confession, and broke in at this point by saying:
“Sadie’s nervous an’ upset over——”
“No, I ain’t,” Sadie replied hastily. “I’ve been as mean as mud, an’ here she’s took care of you, an’ I’ve gone an’ got Hornby mad at ’er. He believed what I told, if ’is wife didn’t. They say, Lizzie, that ’e lives there all by ’iself an’——” Sadie choked, and waited for Elizabeth to speak.
“I guess you’ve worried about nothing,” Elizabeth said brightly. “I’ve been to see him, and we’re good friends—thebest kind in fact, and no one could ever make us anything else hereafter.” She looked down at Luther and smiled.
“Will it make any difference with my baby?” Sadie asked anxiously, her mind working like a treadmill in its own little round.
“No, Sadie—that is, I guess not. I’ve been thinking, as I listened to you, that the way you tried would have to count—it’s bigger than anything else you’ve done.”
Sadie Hansen dropped into a chair sobbing hysterically.
Elizabeth’s hand went to the girl’s shoulder comfortingly.
“God does not ask that we succeed, Sadie; he asks that we try.”
Elizabeth was back in her own kitchen in time to get dinner. John had seen her as she came home, but made no remark.
At the end of three weeks there was a consultation between Hugh Noland and John regarding a possible partnership. Not only did Noland like John Hunter, but he was delighted with the atmosphere with which he found him surrounded.
“This is a home,” had been Hugh’s secret analysis of the household. In fact the home was the main feature of the Hunter farm, the main reason for wishing to stay.
To John the offer of partnership was a blessing from heaven itself. The matter of interest was pressing on him far more than he had acknowledged to Elizabeth. Itgalled him to discuss things with her since she had ceased to ask about them or even to show any concern. He did not realize that she had been compelled to consider the matter hopeless.
It was agreed that Hugh should lift the indebtedness and have one half interest in the concern, land and stock. There would be about five hundred dollars left over after all the debts were paid, and John gleefully decided to buy some more calves with the residue.
“But we shall need every cent of that for running expenses this summer,” Noland objected.
“Oh, well, if we do, we can always get money on sixty or ninety day loans,” John replied easily.
“I’d rather not go into debt, with my health,” the new partner said decidedly.
He happened to look across at Elizabeth and caught the alert sign of approval in her face. He had heard Silas and some others discuss the Hunter mortgages, but here was a still more significant evidence. Elizabeth had not signalled him, but the look told the story; in fact, it told more than the girl had intended.
“I should consider it a necessary condition of any business I went into,” he added steadily. “I am an uncertain quantity, as I have told you, with this heart, and I could not be worried with debts.”
Elizabeth did not look at him this time, but he saw the look of satisfaction and heard her indrawn breath. And now the really lovable side of Hugh Noland began to show out. Feeling now that he was a real member of thefamily, he began to give himself to its pleasing features. The evening’s reading became a thing to which the whole group looked forward. The flow of companionship exceeded anything any member of the family had ever anticipated. Jake arrived in time for the spring work, as he had agreed, and was astonished by every feature of the family life which he saw about him. Elizabeth was cheerful, even happy, while John Hunter was another man. Jake figured out the changes about him wistfully, craving a part in the good-fellowship. Here was contentment such as Jake had never witnessed. Not a trace of the old tragic conditions seemed to remain. Jake had missed the key to the situation by his absence at the time of the blizzard, but he was keenly aware that some change had been wrought. He studied Hugh Noland and was even more enthusiastic about his personality and powers than the family. All called the new man by his given name, a sure sign of their affection.
Elizabeth had worked a radical change in her life. Jake watched her come and go without remark from her husband, give her orders to Hugh to hitch up for her if she chose to drive, or if she walked, going without permission, and was almost as pleased as she. He saw that she had learned to keep her own counsel and not to speak of her plans till the time for action had arrived. He felt a something new in her.
Elizabeth had, in fact, learned that while openness was a point of character, nevertheless, if she dealt openly with her husband it led to quarrelsome discussions. She sawthat John did not know why he opposed her, that it was instinctive. As she studied him, however, she found how widely separated they were in spirit. The calm which Jake saw, was all there, but there were other things fully as vital which had not been there before. The self-questioning of those months previous to Aunt Susan’s death had been productive of results. While a certain openness of attitude had disappeared, there was the strength which has all the difference between deceit and reserve in Elizabeth Hunter’s face.