The Wind Before the Dawn Part 6

Susan knew that Nathan would never forget the failures of that year, but she also knew that the comfort of accustomed activities would help to fill his mind and keep his thoughts from sore introspection. Here in Topeka there was nothing to do but cogitate and reflect. It was therefore a relief to her when Elizabeth received a letter from her mother summoning her home to teach a spring term of school. While at any other time she would have been filled with indignation at the recall of Elizabeth just as she was beginning to get settled to her new work, Susan Hornby felt that Elizabeth needed education less at this point than Nathan needed the busy seeding season to occupy his troubled thoughts.

CHAPTER III

REFORMS NOT EASY TO DISCUSS

Elizabeth kept her tears and regrets to herself. She cried them out on her pillow that night, all the disappointments and handicaps of that wonderful year of experience and aspiration, but as she cried she planned the arrangements of her going.

The letter was received on Thursday night; Elizabeth decided that she would go for her books the next day, and say her farewells to desk, recitation room, and the halls that had been dear to her. When Elizabeth was called to the blackboard that afternoon to explain a problem in algebra, the board, the pointer, the very chalk in her fingers cried aloud their unity with her life and thought, and she sat down when it was over with a great throbbing in her throat and ears, and a sense of overwhelming disaster.

As Elizabeth carried her books home under her arm, bulging out one side of her circular like an unevenly inflated pudding-bag, the throbbing continued, and she turned into the less frequented streets with the certainty that she was going to disgrace herself with tears shed publicly.

It had been a trying day, and in spite of all efforts her emotions broke loose before she could gain the shelter of home. Hurrying blindly to get the last block covered, she nearly dropped her books as she turned the corner.

"The Unknown" was coming toward her!

Her startled glance of recognition was so unexpectedly open that he thought that he had probably met her. He looked puzzled, but lifted his hat as she hurried past him, wiping the tears from her face with her free hand.

A boy called from across the street an instant later.

"Oh, Hugh, I'm coming over for some help on that chem. ex. to-night."

"All right," came the answer from "The Unknown," and mixed with Elizabeth's mortifying confusion was a quick thrill at knowing his name.

"Hugh!"

No opportunity had ever come to meet him or to find out what his name might be. Elizabeth was conscious that her life on the farm had made of her an impossible mate for this young man who, even among the young men of the city, was set apart by a peculiar grace and culture. She remembered the hat which had not merely been lifted from the head, but had been carried below the chin as he bowed distantly, and also the well-bred curiosity of his look. The rest of the leave-taking was made easier by having met him, and received his bow, and acquired the glorious, mystical knowledge of his name.

To round out the experiences of the winter, fate decreed that Mr. Farnshaw could not come for her, and the glitter of the inside of a railway coach, with its bra.s.s lamps, plush seats, and polished woods, was added to her experimental knowledge. Luther was somehow connected in her mind with the day's experiences and she wished devoutly that she could talk to him about the disappointment of leaving her school before the end of the term, and of this journey home on the train, and of Hugh. Yes, Elizabeth would have told Luther even of Hugh. Luther Hansen was to Elizabeth Farnshaw unchanged and unchangeable. The transformations of her own life did not call for any such transformations in him. He was Luther. It had been his mental processes which had won and now sustained her attachment for him.

Their two minds had worked together as one mind while they had struggled with the innocent problems of their childhood days, and Elizabeth still felt incomplete without him. She had been less conscious of Luther's absence the first year than at any time since his going away, but in Topeka, and now that she was approaching the scene of their a.s.sociation together, Elizabeth wanted him with a depth of homesickness she had never felt before. It was hard to go back to the old battleground and not find him there. The prospects in store for her at home made her shrink.

Elizabeth fell to wondering if any improvement in that home were possible.

She had had them quite cheerfully in mind all winter, but now that the distance between her home and herself lessened rapidly a feeling of inadequacy came upon her, and the glitter of the wonderful coach in which she was riding was forgotten. Could she help? The only thing that was very clear to her was that much patience would be necessary. At Uncle Nathan's they had been gentle and loving and tolerant.

"Can I make them see it--and see how?" she asked herself so many times that the wheels beneath her took up the refrain.

"Gentle and loving and tolerant--gentle and loving and tolerant--gentle and loving and tolerant," they sang for miles as she sat with her young brow puckered into a deep frown.

The realities of life were thrust into the foreground the moment Elizabeth arrived, and for new reasons she missed Luther. Mr. Farnshaw resented the new circular.

"Is that th' d.a.m.ned fool kind of coat she was talkin' about?" he inquired as his daughter alighted from the farm wagon at the kitchen door that afternoon. "It ain't got no warmth," he added scornfully. "Th' ain'

nothin' to it but looks, an' not much of that. What 'd y' you do with th'

coat you had?"

The old heartsickening contention had begun.

"I've got it."

"Well, you see that you wear it and don't go makin' a fool out of yourself around here. I'd 'a' kept my money if I'd 'a' knowed it was goin' t' be put into a thing that'd swell up in th' wind like a balloon."

Mrs. Farnshaw saw the look that swept over Elizabeth's face and instinctively ranged herself on the side of the young girl. She saw with a woman's eyes the style in the garment and its importance in her daughter's appearance. When Elizabeth took it off her mother took it to the bedroom to put it away, remarking in a whisper that it made her look quite like a school-teacher ought to look. She was secretly glad that her daughter had it, since it was already paid for and she did not have to make it. It would be the most observed wrap in the schoolhouse the next Sunday if she could only persuade Elizabeth to go to meeting. The metal clasp had virtues all its own.

"I think it's ever so much more stuck-up than if it had b.u.t.tons," she whispered.

The undertone rasped on Elizabeth's nerves. Aunt Susan never differed with Uncle Nate in undertones.

"Let's get supper, ma," she said, to shake herself from threatened despondency.

But though Elizabeth bustled energetically about the getting of that meal, the eating of it was not a very great success. Mr. Farnshaw discoursed upon the senselessness of prevailing styles, with the new cape plainly in mind, and Mrs. Farnshaw nudged her daughter's knee under the table whenever Elizabeth seemed inclined to defensive retorts.

When Mr. Farnshaw had taken the milk pails on his arm and repaired to the corral, however, Mrs. Farnshaw turned from a belated churning and administered the caution in words:

"Don't ever say anything back to your pa, Lizzie; he gets worse and worse all th' time."

Elizabeth considered the subject for some minutes. The wear and tear of the discords of her mother's life she knew were far more responsible for her mother's broken health than anything she did in the way of hard work.

It seemed a good time to begin the reforms upon which her heart was set.

"Ma, I've been thinking about you a good deal this winter," she began slowly. "Something is wrong with us all." The girl thought again for a moment. Her mother watched her with sharp attention and waited. Reforms were not easy to discuss with her mother; they were very different, Elizabeth and her mother. Elizabeth hardly dared express her longing to reorganize their home. If only she could effect a reformation! Her heart had been set on it all winter. She knew now how people _could_ live if only they understood how to do it. Her help here was needed. When she began to speak again it was very slowly, and with a careful consideration of the words she was using.

"We ought all of us to be different. We go along day after day hating our work, scolding and fretting at each other, and never really happy, any of us, and I've been wondering why?"

Her mother eyed her closely. Something of the girl's mood stirred a responsive chord.

"I've thought of it too," she said, "but I can't never tell why it is though, unless"--she spoke slowly and Elizabeth was encouraged--"unless it's because we don't never belong to ourselves. Now your pa wants t' run th' house, an' th' farm, an' you children, an' me, an' everything, an' I'm so tired, an' never have any help, that anybody'd be cross. n.o.body ever pities me, though. Here, take this dasher an' finish this here churnin'

for me."

Elizabeth took the dasher into her own hand and stood looking down meditatively at the cream gathered about the hole in the churn lid. The first sentence of her mother's remark struck her attention.

"Why can't folks belong to themselves?" she asked, letting the dasher rest while she churned mental problems of greater moment.

Mrs. Farnshaw looked up quickly. "Well, if you think you can marry an'

belong t' yourself, just you try it," she replied.

"But, ma, if a man loved a woman couldn't she get him to leave her free?

Now--"

Mrs. Farnshaw cut her short. "Love! Men don't know how to spell th' word.

They get a woman, an' after she's got children they know she can't help herself. She's got t' stick to it 'cause she can't raise 'em alone an'--an' it don't make no difference whether he takes care of 'em or not--" Words failed the exasperated woman.

Elizabeth studied her mother with a new interest. She began to apply her mother's words to her own case. She knew that her mother had wanted her services this spring as much as her father, and remembered the letter calling her home.

"But that don't cover your case, ma. You love pa more than you do us children; you know you do, and we know that you do too."

Mrs. Farnshaw usually denied the most obvious thing if her protective instincts prompted her to do so, but her daughter had hit the bull's-eye so exactly that for the moment she had no defence ready. Elizabeth was encouraged by her mother's silence. Mrs. Farnshaw talked so much that it was not easy to get her attention. The young girl, glowing with the discoveries made in Aunt Susan's home, desired to get at the bottom of the causes of inharmony in her own and to reorganize it on a better basis. It looked as if she was to be granted a hearing upon her schemes.

"I don't care about him running over _us_ so much," she said diplomatically, "but you let him run over you in the same way. Now isn't there some way to come at him and get him to see it. When we're alone you talk about him domineering over you, but when he's here you let him say anything he wants to and you never try to help yourself. Why don't you strike out on a new tack and say you won't do it when he makes unreasonable demands? Why don't you reason with him good-naturedly, if you think that's better, without crying, I mean, and then if he won't listen at all----"

"I don't know, Lizzie," the mother interposed slowly. "I sometimes think I will an' then when he's here something won't let me. It ain't what he says to you; it's--it's--something he does to you when he looks at you. I'm as weak as water when he looks at me. I don't know why. I guess it's because I've always give up--an'--an'--I can't tell why. A woman does just like a horse--there's more'n one kind of whippin' a man can give--an' she gets scared--an' minds. A man begins right from th' first t' tell her what to do an' she loves 'im and wants t' please 'im, an' before long she don't have her way no more'n a n.i.g.g.e.r."