The Wind Before the Dawn Part 39

"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 compa.s.s 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 sank almost 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. The longer she waited the harder it became to meet the kindly questioning eyes bent upon her, and the more embarra.s.sing 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' come t' 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 to the demand for truth and friends.h.i.+p. 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 me _why_ you'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 G.o.d'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 that helped 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 XVII

ADJUSTING 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 famis.h.i.+ng 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 m.u.f.fler, 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 collected in 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 appet.i.tes 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 the grewsome 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 G.o.ds 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, Elizabeth transformed 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 the a.s.sociation 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 for the 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 he sprang 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 embarra.s.sed 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 ch.o.r.es 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 the work. "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."