The Wind Before the Dawn Part 26

Desiring only to convince him, which she could not do if he were irritated, Elizabeth laid her paring knife on the kitchen table and put her arm about her husband's neck coaxingly.

"Of course you get everything I need, dear; that isn't the trouble. I don't want to shut out opportunities for business either, but I gave up my education to help pay interest. I know how hard it is to raise. The calves die, and the cows don't give milk enough to make up the difference. The loss---- Oh, I know," she said putting her hand affectionately over his mouth to still the objection he had started to offer. "You think beef cattle will be different, but black-leg gets into a herd of beef cattle just as readily as into the cows and calves, and frosted corn is a liability Kansas farmers always have hanging over a crop. I'm not complaining about the cattle that are paid for--it's those we'd have to pay for that were dead. The money was yours and you had a right to spend it as you chose, but the debts will be _ours_. The skimping and saving will fall on me as much as on you, and skimping makes people mean and penurious. Promise me you won't go into debt without telling me again."

"Forget it, little woman," John replied, patting her face and kissing it many times. "I'll never do anything to disgrace you."

He had not replied to a single argument; he had not made a single promise.

Elizabeth submitted to his caresses with a sigh. It was useless. She could not fall out with him for the sake of the child that was coming. She resolved to accept what she could get and try to be patient.

"I'm glad you were so nice to Aunt Susan," she said, trying to get away from the impossible and make as much as she could out of the possible.

"we'll go over Sunday. I'd begun to think you'd never do it. We'll take them by surprise."

John Hunter laughed indulgently. "You think you got me that time," he said, and escaped to the well without further remark.

Elizabeth looked after him, and pondered, with a quivering lip, on the wilfulness of the refusal to promise. She had been so sure that she was escaping the h.e.l.l of mortgages and interest when she married. The farm was already carrying every cent the loan companies would give on first papers.

If anything should happen to the stock they would have to put a second mortgage on part of it. John was determined to work on a large scale. She had tried many times to show him how hard it would be to raise large inc.u.mbrances, but whenever she did so he became fretful and for days spoiled the home comfort for which she strove. Elizabeth tried to model their home life after that of Aunt Susan, and leave her husband free to use his own judgment, but this matter of indebtedness was alarming. She knew how slowly money came in on the farm and how impossible it was to raise a mortgage once it was plastered over a piece of land. Already she saw the day of payments, note-renewals, and chattel mortgages staring them in the face. Elizabeth's pride had suffered a fall. She saw the weary years stretch ahead of them without joy and without hope other than that which those about them had, unless some special providence a.s.sisted them to avoid the common lot of farmers. As she went about her table-setting, however, the quality of the linen, of the dishes, of every object in the room differed from anything she had ever known, and the hope of youth came to her aid. This home should be different from the rest; she would make it so by patience as well as by its possessions. The black-leg was not an immediate danger, and she would look for the best.

Winter pa.s.sed, and spring. The patience Elizabeth had vowed to command had been tried to the utmost in some particulars. John had never taken her to see Aunt Susan. Sometimes he said "wait till next week," sometimes he said he was tired, more often he retired into his accustomed irritability, and at last because of the evidences of her pregnant state she ceased to desire it. The winter had not been totally unpleasant. If she did not irritate her husband they were very happy together. John had pleasant little ways about the house and was as helpful as the most exacting woman could demand. The spring had been harder because Elizabeth had less strength and the house and garden work had increased. It took three hired men to keep the farm work done, and there were many mouths to fill.

One particularly hot day in June John unloaded on the kitchen table an armful of groceries he had just brought from town, remarking as he did so:

"I brought home some dried blackberries for pies, Elizabeth."

Hepsie Brown, the lately acquired hired girl, stood at Elizabeth's elbow, and began to put the parcels away in the cupboard.

Elizabeth took a couple of letters he was handing her and went into the sitting room to read them. John followed her in.

"Be sure you make the pies," he said with an emphasis which showed he meant to have it remembered.

"All right, dear."

"You'd better cook the fruit to-night," he added.

"All right. I'll tell Hepsie."

"Better do it yourself," he cautioned.

"She can do it. I'll tell her," Elizabeth said without looking up, but she knew that that would not end the discussion the moment it was out of her mouth. She recognized John's most unpleasant insisting mood.

"Mother always tends to her own pie-baking. Girls never get things right,"

he said emphatically, waiting for her to raise her eyes to his.

"Yes, yes, dear," the girl answered, looking up as he required. "She can do it just as well as I can; it don't hurt her to stand on her feet."

She had given the sign of submission and he was ready to be pleasant about it, but he reiterated the demand.

"I know, dear," he said, kissing her, "but I can't bear to have things coming on the table not right when we have men about. It don't take long to make a few pies."

Elizabeth rose wearily, put the letters down and went to the kitchen. Her face was drawn and there was a f.a.gged, weary droop to the shoulders. John demanded that the house and cooking be kept up to the city standard, forgetting that there was a garden to keep in order also, besides little chickens to feed and b.u.t.ter to be made. If Elizabeth had said she were sick and had gone to bed, John would have had the doctor come to see her twice as often as necessary, and would have exhausted the little town of Colebyville to supply such things as she could eat, but it never occurred to John Hunter that as long as his wife was able to go about the house that she might know what she should do much better than he.

Elizabeth was unable to defend herself. She coveted peace, and she could not have peace unless she responded to John's suggestions. Also, at this time Elizabeth was determined that she would not be cross. The coming child absorbed her mind as much as it absorbed her body. She would not let one hour of discord or inharmony affect its life. Elizabeth had no idea how to manage her husband so as to get him even to listen to her side of an argument. The girl was worn out by useless things which she could not avoid doing.

Elizabeth was extremely nervous at this period of her life. John went to bed full of healthy fatigue and slept soundly till morning, and knew nothing of mental and physical strains which left his wife more tired in the morning than when she went to bed at night. Elizabeth had been a strong girl, but she was supporting the life of another; she tossed and moaned through the two or three short hours in which she could sleep, and for the rest lay wide-eyed, staring into the darkness, filled with terror at what the rapidly approaching future held for her. In her girlish imaginings and fears, ignorant of the facts a young mother should have known, she had magnified the sufferings of childbirth till life was a network of horrors, and her nerves were at the breaking point.

The next morning Elizabeth, with aching back and trembling knees, her face flushed from the heat of the stove, stood at the kitchen table rolling out the pie crust. A tear rolled down her cheek. Hepsie, who stood near and was regarding her sympathetically, laid firm hold on the rolling-pin.

"I knew you'd no business t' do it. Now you go in an' set down in th'

rockin' chair while I finish this here batch of pies."

Hepsie was older than Elizabeth and making pies had been her business; the crust was mixed and the fruit had been cooked the night before. Reflecting that not much could happen to a pie after getting that far on the road to perfection, Elizabeth let the rolling-pin be taken from her hand and went in wearily to throw herself on the lounge to rest.

John came into the kitchen and his face darkened.

"Tell Mrs. Hunter that I look for Hansen to help with the grain to-day, and that I told him to bring his wife with him," he said to Hepsie, and went out, banging the door after him.

Elizabeth had heard him come in and had risen to explain, but stopped short when she heard that Luther had been asked to help. Her first feeling was of a joy which brought the tears to her eyes. John had been persistently cool whenever Luther had been mentioned since their marriage.

The next feeling of which she was conscious was an intense distaste to having Sadie in the house with her all day, and this was followed by the thought that John had known that Luther and Sadie were coming since the day before and had said nothing about it to her; but small time was given her to think about any phase of the matter, for Luther's familiar, unpainted wagon was at that very moment coming into the side lane. With a conviction that she had not been told till it was absolutely necessary, Elizabeth walked promptly out to meet her young neighbours.

It was the old Luther which greeted her.

"You know my wife, Lizzie," he said with such a happy look in Sadie's direction that Elizabeth's heart responded to the call for open friends.h.i.+p. Luther never nursed suspicion.

"I should just say I did," Elizabeth replied warmly, extending her hand to the little woman Luther was setting on her feet. Luther climbed promptly into the high seat from which he had just lifted his wife and held his own hand down to Elizabeth from there.

"It was mighty fine for you to send word for her t' come along."

And Elizabeth did not let him gather from any hint of expression or word that so far from sending word for Sadie to spend the day with her, she had not known till in these last ten minutes that either of them was expected.

John came and talked to Luther, mounting the spring-seat at his side to ride to the field, but did not look at Elizabeth, though she looked at him longingly and everything in her cried out for reconciliation and openness.

John had a way of ignoring her when explanations had to be made.

Luther's att.i.tude toward his wife had influenced Elizabeth in Sadie's favour as nothing else had ever been able to do. She began to feel less hostile, and as they turned toward the house asked her interestedly how she was "coming on" with her garden and chickens. This was common ground, and Sadie warmed to the real welcome she was accorded. She stopped beside Elizabeth's coops in the backyard and examined the little groups of begging, downy b.a.l.l.s with the animation of a true farmer's wife. Here was something she knew as well as Elizabeth; in fact, when a count was made it was discovered that Sadie's broods several times outnumbered those of the neighbour she envied. It was an absorbing topic of conversation, and the two women stood for some moments with the hungry little beggars clamouring l.u.s.tily about them. Suddenly they became conscious of the smell of burning sugar.

"Oh, my goodness!" Elizabeth exclaimed, and ran to the kitchen, leaving her guest to follow as she chose.

Hepsie had gone upstairs, and as Elizabeth opened the oven door a cloud of smoke rolled out which nearly blinded her and set her to coughing.

Sadie followed her in and somehow her mood changed as she looked over the well-kept kitchen. Something in the tidy order and tasty arrangement of its shelves hurt. Sadie was not a natural housekeeper.

"Bet she just thinks she beat us all," she thought as she laid her bonnet on the sitting-room sofa, where she had felt of the pillows, and the lambrequin which hung from the long shelf where the clock and vasts stood, on the opposite side of the room. "Bet she don't put on no airs about me just the same." She looked at the small bookcase below the mantel in a perfect rage of envy. Elizabeth was surrounded by the things which befitted Elizabeth, and Sadie realized as she had never done in their childhood the chasm which separated them, and knew nothing of the anguish of the young wife as she laboured with the disfigured pies, nor that Elizabeth thought of the look of love she had seen Sadie receive with something very like envy in her heart.

Elizabeth thought long upon the joy in Luther's face as he greeted her.

John must have made some move about the request for help which covered the neglect of all these months adequately to Luther. Sadie finished her inspection of the inner regions and returned to the kitchen primed with things to be said to her rival, and Elizabeth fared badly at her hands.

Her innate refinement would not let Elizabeth strike back in the coa.r.s.e way in which she was attacked, and she listened to hints and pretended sympathy on the subject of Farnshaw domestic difficulties, of reported debts which John Hunter had contracted, and neighbourhood estimates of the fact of her own secluded manner of life since her marriage, till her head swam and her memory was scorched for many a day. But though her head ached and her knees almost refused to perform their office, Elizabeth remained in the kitchen and superintended every dish prepared for that harvest dinner. The fact that the pies had scorched left her with the feeling that John had had a foundation of real fact for his demand that she give them her personal attention, and left her humbled and ready to beg forgiveness.

Every fibre of her cried out for the trust she had seen in Luther's glance at Sadie. _There_ was true marriage, and the state which she laboured daily to establish.

At dinner John did not look at Elizabeth, though her eyes sought his constantly, and when the pie was pa.s.sed around she remarked on its trimmed edges shamefacedly.