Chapter 14. Mortgages Of Soul

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_ CHAPTER XIV. MORTGAGES OF SOUL

The mortgage was signed. The fine weather had brought many people to Colebyville. Elizabeth had not been in town for a year, and the sight of pleasant, happy folk greeting each other cordially and wandering from store to store bartering eggs and butter for groceries and family necessities, and exchanging ideas and small talk about their purchases, had accentuated her isolation. Those people who knew her spoke to her also, but with an air of suspicion and reserve. A puzzling feature of the day had been that John had received a more cordial reception than she had. The main suspicion had been directed against her. There seemed to be a certain acceptance of John's "stuck-upness." He had some reason for his attitude toward them which they were inclined to accept, but Elizabeth saw that to this community she was a "beggar on horseback." Instead of seeing that the man who had thrust her into this false relation was utterly inadequate to realize it, or that if he realized it he was utterly indifferent to her sufferings in it, she inquired into her own failure to get his attention, and felt that he was after all a better husband than any she had ever known, with few exceptions. John had managed to add to her confusion where he was concerned that day by being floridly insistent upon her spending a generous sum upon her purchases and taking as much interest in what she bought as a woman. There had been so much to buy that Elizabeth's economical soul had been torn by the desire to cut down the expense. The baby was ready for short clothes and there had been materials for little dresses, stockings, little shoes, a hood and cloak, to get for him alone, and Elizabeth saw in every dollar spent a dollar lost at interest-paying time. John had been happy and genial on the way home and had altogether treated her so much better than her mood had permitted her to treat him that there was a bit of self-accusation in her meditations. Everything had gone wrong. The waters of human affection ran everywhere in the wrong direction. She desired understanding between herself and her husband; her attitude toward the community in which they lived had been one of friendliness, her attitude toward Aunt Susan and Luther one of whole-hearted love, her attitude toward this family of which she found herself a part that of a devoted slave, yet nowhere had she been able to make proper alliances. Some curious defeating element had crept into every relation life offered her. While the rest ate supper that night, Elizabeth, who had no appetite and was too sick with a sense of failure to eat, nursed her baby and meditated upon the indications of the day's occurrences. Forgetting her surroundings, she drew in a fluttering, sobbing breath. Jake Ransom, across the corner of the table, caught the sound of that sob and flashed a quick glance in her direction. His eyes were as quickly withdrawn, but Elizabeth knew without looking up that he had heard. With a desire to escape observation, she made an excuse of putting the baby away and went to the bedroom with the child. Slipping him into his little nightdress she made him comfortable for the night, after which she went back to the dining room to keep Jake from thinking she had anything to cry about. There was an added hum of voices, and she went in with some curiosity.

Silas Chamberlain stood beside the stove with his old cap and his home-knit mittens under his arm, while he leaned over the welcome fire. The blues were gone instantly. There was such a glad light in her eyes as she advanced to meet him that Jake Ransom wondered if he had been mistaken in the quivering breath, and there was such genuine pleasure in her surprised greeting that Silas Chamberlain was warmed and fed by it.

"Where's that baby?" he demanded. "You ain't gone an' tucked him into bed this time o' night, have you? I come special t' see 'im."

For months Elizabeth had wanted to see Silas and the baby in a "free for all tumble" and her eyes danced with delight at the idea. She had not had such a thrill in many weeks; the young mother spoke in every line of her young face. As if by magic her troubles fell away from her. Crooking her finger beckoningly at the old man, she crept on tiptoe to the bedroom door. She had left a lamp lighted in the room and it was possible to observe the baby without him being aware of their presence. Silas had crept behind her like an Indian stalking a deer, and she caught his suppressed breath as she turned with her finger on her lips at the door. The rest of the group trailed behind with anticipatory grins.

Master John Hunter lay on the bed, very wide awake, making sputtering efforts to devour his thumb, while he kicked his little feet as vigorously as the confines of the pinning-blanket would allow.

Silas chuckled. Hearing a noise at the door, the heir of the house rolled his head on his pillow till his mother's face came within the range of his vision. Her absence that day had made the child more than usually eager for her presence. The little feet kicked more wildly than ever, and forgetting the generous slice of thumb still to be devoured, he grinned such a vast and expansive grin that the hand to which the thumb was attached, being free, joined the other in waving salutations of such joyful pantomime that the object of his industrious beckonings, completely carried into the current, rushed at him and, sweeping him up in her arms, tossed him on high as gleefully as if she had not been weighed down by care but a moment before the old man's advent into the room.

"There, Mr. Chamberlain, was there ever another like him?" she cried.

Baby, who had come down from a point as high as his mother's arms could reach, doubled his fat little body together with a smothered, squeezed off little gurgle of delight. Silas was aquiver with sympathetic glee. Those were not the days when babies were raised by scientific rules, and Silas caught the child from its mother's arms and repeated the tossing process, while the baby shouted and struggled. At last the three, followed by the family, retired to convenient chairs about the sitting-room fire.

"Now, Jack Horner, you can pare that thumb down a leetle more if you want t'. You've swallowed enough wind to give you the colic for a day or two," Silas said when the child began to hiccough.

Elizabeth clapped her hands delightedly.

"You have named the baby!" she exclaimed.

"How's that?" Silas asked.

"Oh, John can't bear to have him called Johnnie, and John is too awfully old for him now. Little Jack Horner--no, Little Jack Hunter. I'm so glad! I just do love it; and we had called him Baby till I was afraid we'd never quit it," Elizabeth said.

They kept the old man as long as they could induce him to stay, and when he did go home it was with the settled conviction that he had been wanted. He described the visit enthusiastically to Liza Ann and tried to induce her to go over to see Elizabeth the next Sunday. Silas craved the privilege of that baby's presence.

"I know, Si," his wife replied, "but she could come here if she wanted to. It's her fool notions. John was th' greatest hand t' go you ever saw till he married her, an' now he don't go nowhere, an' when I asked him about it, he said she wasn't well! She's as well as any woman that's nursin', an' she's got his mother t' help 'er too."

"Well, I don't pretend t' know th' why's an' th' wherefores of it, but I do know there ain't a stuck-up bone in 'er body--I don't care what nobody says," loyal Silas Chamberlain replied.

The new mood stayed with Elizabeth Hunter and called for much perplexed introspection. It had been a perplexing day. There was no reason that she could assign for her contradictory actions. She found herself even softened toward John and able to enter into his attempt to be sociable after Silas's departure. He seemed to be anxious to set himself before her in a kindlier light and she was able to meet the attempt as he wished. Elizabeth lost faith in herself as she saw her apparent whimsicalness and began to lash herself into line as John and his mother wished. She asked no more to be taken places.

In May, Luther came to help John with his team, and for the first time in months Elizabeth saw a neighbour woman. Luther lifted Sadie down from the high seat with as much care as if she had been a child.

"Sadie's lonesome at the house alone all day, an' it was good of you, Lizzie, t' ask 'er," he said as he climbed back into the wagon.

Elizabeth wanted a visit with Luther, himself, but was less fearful of a day with Sadie than she had been. She took her guest into the house and at the sitting-room door paused to point to Master Jack, who sat on an old quilt with a pillow at his back, digging his little heels into the floor and holding out dimpled hands imploringly.

"You darling child!" Sadie cried, going down on her knees at his side and hugging him till he sent up an indignant howl. "Isn't he cunnin'? Isn't he?" she cried, releasing him and subsiding into a doubled figure by his side. "Honestly, Lizzie, why don't you bring him over?"

She looked so insistent, that she had to be answered.

"I don't go any place, Sadie," Elizabeth answered truthfully.

"Is it so, that Mr. Hunter won't take you?" Sadie asked, and then at sight of the anger in Elizabeth's face rose to her knees and laid her hand on her arm hastily. "I didn't say that to hurt; honestly, Lizzie, I didn't. I'm trying not to do that this time."

Elizabeth's indignation was cooled slightly by the genuineness of the speech, but she did not understand the last sentence till her eye happened to fall on Sadie's form. In a flash she saw what was meant. Forgetting her hurt, she was silent from pure delight. She knew what a child would mean in that home. The other misunderstood her silence and hastened on with her apologies:

"Honest, Lizzie, I didn't want to hurt, but they do say such mean things about it that I want you t' know. Why don't you ever take Mrs. Hunter and th' baby and go t' meetin'?"

Elizabeth's face went white as she realized that she must continue to answer since she had begun.

"I don't care in the least what they say, Sadie, and I don't want you ever to mention this to me again," she said sternly.

Sadie's face worked in silent misery till she could control her voice.

"You won't be mad at me, Lizzie? I told Luther I wouldn't be mean t' nobody till it was born," she said with quivering lip.

Elizabeth took some seconds to consider the thing that had been told to her. It was of far more importance than the gossip Sadie had just hinted at, but the gossip must be answered first.

"I won't be mad at you at all," she said after a moment. "That is, I won't if I never have to listen to such things again. I don't care in the least, if I don't have to hear it. Don't ever come to me again with anything that anybody says. Now, then, tell me about yourself. I half believe you're glad of it."

"Glad?" Sadie told her secret, which could be a secret no more. Luther had wanted the child, and she had come to the point of wanting it for his sake, and the sight of chubby Jack Hunter had aroused the latent mother love in her till, as she talked, her eyes shone with the brightness of imaginative maternity. She implored Elizabeth to come to her aid when the day of her labour arrived in September, and rambled along telling of their preparations for its coming, and little home incidents, disclosing a home life of so sweet a character that if Elizabeth Hunter had not been sincere and utterly without jealousy she would have drawn the discussion to a close.

The incident had a peculiar effect upon Elizabeth. She began really to like Sadie, and all her old desire for harmony in the home welled up in her anew. The old attitude of self-blame was assumed also. Here was Sadie Crane, the most spiteful girl that had ever been raised on these prairies, able to command the love and respect of the man she had married, to do things because her husband desired them, even so difficult a thing as the bearing of children, and she, Elizabeth, had failed to accomplish any of these things. There was a renewed resolve to be more patient. Elizabeth hated sulking, and the remembrance of the day when she had gone to sign the mortgage and had been unable to respond to John's good-humoured willingness to get abundant supplies because she saw the money going out so fast was fixed in her mind with new significance. Here was Sadie doing the things that her husband wished of her and obtaining not only his love but her own self-respect, while she, Elizabeth, was able to command neither. Instead of reasoning upon the differences between the two husbands, Elizabeth reasoned on the differences between her own actions and those of Sadie, and from the results of that reasoning entered upon a period of self-denial and abject devotion to the man of her choice. John Hunter accepted this new devotion with satisfied serenity, and, not being obstructed in any of his little exactions, became more cheerful and agreeable to live with. This added to Elizabeth's conviction that the difficulty had been somewhat within herself. She ceased to ask for the things which caused friction, and there was a season of comparative peace.

In July, however, a new phase of the old difficulty arose. Nathan and Susan Hornby were driving past the Hunter house one Sunday afternoon. Elizabeth saw them and with a glad little shout ran to the road to greet them.

Susan Hornby's delight was fully equal to her own. The two persuaded Nathan to wait till Aunt Susan should have time to go into the house and see the baby. Nathan would not go in, but sat waiting in offended aloofness in the wagon.

"Why don't you come to see me, Elizabeth?" Aunt Susan whispered as they went back to the wagon. "He's always loved you so, but he thinks--well, he's always been so good to me about everything else, but his feelings are awfully hurt about you. Can't you come soon?" She looked into the girl's face with such a wealth of pent-up love that Elizabeth answered positively:

"I will come next Sunday, Aunt Susan. You may look for us, for we'll be there."

The glad look in Susan Hornby's eyes was a sad reproach to the younger woman, and though Elizabeth wondered how she would get her husband's consent, she made up her mind to force him by every means in her power to comply. All through the week she had it upon her mind, but Elizabeth had learned not to open a discussion till the necessity of action was upon her, and it was not till Sunday morning that she mentioned the visit to John.

Nothing but the pleading in Susan Hornby's face could have induced Elizabeth to ask to be taken to see her at this time, but the troubled whispering of Aunt Susan about this visit had awakened Elizabeth to the tragedy of her neglect. Susan Hornby had never before whispered where Nathan was concerned before. Elizabeth at last saw the loneliness of the old couple. It would never do to continue such treatment of those who had befriended her when she was in need.

Jack was fretful that Sunday morning and John walked the floor with him while Elizabeth finished her breakfast dishes. The breakfast had been late and it was time to get ready if they were to go. Her heart sank as she approached the subject. Jack had not slept well of late. He was not ill, but teething. Always a light sleeper, Elizabeth had kept the fact of his indisposition to herself, hoping that John, who slept soundly, might not be aware of it, but the baby had fretted in the daytime and was now tossing restlessly in his father's arms. Elizabeth was worn out from the loss of sleep and was half afraid to trust herself to make the request, because it would require politic treatment to get John in the mood. If she became vexed or upset by his opposition she would lose her opportunity. Elizabeth was weaker than John when her feelings were ruffled. She had planned and waited till the last moment, afraid of herself and afraid of her husband. She looked at him as he paced back and forth, back and forth, with a torrent of longing swelling up in her and threatening to bring her tears. She must find a way to get his ear.

"Let me take Jack," she said, hoping that something in the conversation would give her a natural opening for what must come.

"Poor little chap," John replied, releasing the child.

Elizabeth was bathed in perspiration from the hurry of having late breakfast and the fact that she would never dare to ask to be taken before all the work was done and the kitchen ready for close inspection, and she thought indignantly of the scrubbed floors of yesterday and wondered how the child could be expected to be well when he was fed on overheated milk day after day. Instantly she put the thought away from her. She must be cool and careful if she were to get to Aunt Susan's to-day.

"I'll sponge him off with soda in his bath and he'll be all right. I told Aunt Susan we'd take dinner with them to-day, and it's nearly half-past ten now. They have dinner at noon on Sunday as well as other days; so run and hitch up, and I'll be ready with baby. I'll have your things laid out so you can jump right into them when you come in."

She looked down at the baby so as not to meet his eye, but the offhand assumption of his readiness to go seemed to her to be encouraging.

"With that child?" was the astonished exclamation.

"It won't hurt him as much as for me to stand over the stove and cook a dinner at home," Elizabeth answered firmly, "and, besides, John, I promised Aunt Susan we'd come. Now don't be cross. I've got to go, and that's all there is about it."

John Hunter was actually astonished now. He had started out with his usual pretenses, but this was something new. Elizabeth had promised without consulting him! What was happening?

"You may be willing to take that child out in his condition--I'm not," he said severely. "I don't understand what you're thinking about."

"I'm thinking there'd be less harm to him in a day of rest for his mother than anything else," she said bitterly, "and I am not allowed to get a minute of it in this house. You'd let me heat his milk to the boiling point to get dinner and think it was what we both deserved!"

She was instantly dismayed at what she had done. She had spit out all the actuality of her convictions in spite of every effort not to reply unkindly when he was unfair to her. She could not afford to retort sharply to-day. She must resort to other tactics if she were to win to-day. Besides, the truth was only a half-truth. John did not in his heart wish either of them harm; he was just a blind sort of bossing creature who had somehow got into command of her and enjoyed bullying her and setting tasks to keep her occupied. He owned her, however, and she must court his consent to this visit.

"Please, dear. I told Aunt Susan we'd come. I'd--I'd have told you before--only--only I was afraid you'd not be willing--and then I'd get to crying and give up--and I've got to go. Now don't be cross. Go this once good-naturedly."

To get close to him she put her hand on his arm and put up her face coaxingly for a kiss.

John Hunter ignored his wife's signal for tender relations and shook off her hand impatiently without looking at her.

"Even if Jack were well I wouldn't go away and leave mother alone all day." John moved restlessly away from her.

Elizabeth would not give up.

"I'll manage mother. She'll go if I insist." John was edging toward the door. "Anyhow I told Aunt Susan I'd come." John was going through the door. "Please hurry. We must be on our way pretty soon," she called after his receding back.

Elizabeth's lips tightened with vexation at the contempt shown by his refusal to answer, and then loosened and spread into an amused smile.

"He can be just as mad as he wants to. I stuck to it and am going to get to go. It's better than to give up to him all the time."

She turned into the sitting room and putting the baby on the floor emptied the clothespin bag in his lap to keep him occupied, and flew up the stairs to Mrs. Hunter's room.

"Mother, we're going to Aunt Susan's to-day and you are to go with us. Now don't say you aren't, for it is settled," she said, slipping her hand over the older woman's mouth to prevent the objection she saw coming, but nothing she would do or say would persuade the older woman to go.

"I'll settle that with John when he comes in," Mrs. Hunter said, slipping away from the restraining hand. "There's no reason why you should stay at home on my account and I will not have it done," was all that she could get out of her.

"But John will not go without you!" Elizabeth cried in dismay.

The girl was tempted to tell her of the gossip she had heard, but it suddenly seemed small and not worth while. She had already told her that Aunt Susan had her promise to come in time for dinner; it occurred to her to tell her of Nathan's attitude toward them for their unfriendly neglect, but that too seemed unnecessary and trivial since they were going. On that point Elizabeth did not intend to give in an inch: she was going, even if John was cross about it.

"Yes, he will go without me, for I'll see that he does," Mrs. Hunter assured her, and with that Elizabeth was content.

Taking the baby to her own room, she undressed and bathed him and then arrayed him in the daintiest white dress she had for him, determined that Aunt Susan should see him at his best. As she nursed him so that he would drop off to sleep till they were ready to go, she looked long and earnestly at the soft skin and dark lashes of his baby face and realized as she had never done before the loneliness of the old couple whom they were going to visit. The little Katie of that house had been taken from them at about this age. A sob arose in Elizabeth's throat when she considered how they had besought her for an opportunity to pour the dammed-up stream of their love at the feet of this child, and how slighted their efforts had been.

Jack was wide-eyed and would not sleep, and after losing much valuable time his mother set him in the middle of the bed and began her own preparations. As she looked about for something suitable to wear, she saw a simple white percale with red dots scattered over it, which she had worn the summer she had lived in Aunt Susan's house. So little had she gone out and so free from personal vanity was she that it was still eligible to best wear. Besides, it had associations that were pleasant.

"Why, I made it in Aunt Susan's own house," she said aloud.

She looked down at it wistfully; those had been happy days.

A sudden impulse made her drop her heavy hair from its coil high on her head and, picking up her comb, divide it with deft movement. Brushing it into shape, she braided it as of old, in two braids, and then fished with rapturous fingers in her ribbon box for the bows she had always worn with that dress. When the bows were tied she put the braids back with a characteristic toss of the head and stood looking at herself in the glass.

"There now, he can't be cross after that," she said, feeling more as if she were her real self than she had done for many months.

Jack was restless and cried. Elizabeth turned to him with a start.

"You blessed baby! Your mother was way off and had forgotten that there was such a small person as you."

She sat down and nursed him again to fill in the time till his father should come and dress. This time he seemed sleepy, and Elizabeth sang happily to him, kissing his pink palm and satisfying the maternal instinct in her by softly stroking his plump body. He had never looked so fair to her in all the months that she had had him. John was long in coming and she fell into a dreamy state of maternal comfort as she rocked, and forgot the hour and the place and the dinner that would soon be waiting at Aunt Susan's, till the baby went to sleep in her arms.

When Jack was at last soundly asleep she placed him on the bed, covering him with a piece of white mosquito netting to keep the flies from disturbing him, and, rearranging dress and ribbons, went into the sitting room to see what time it was. An exclamation of dismay escaped her. It was but ten minutes to twelve o'clock! She had dreamed much longer than she had been aware. In a fever of hurry she ran back to the bedroom and laid out John's best suit. That had pleasant associations also. But what could be keeping him so long when it was time to go? As soon as everything was in order she ran to the barn to see what the trouble was. John came out as she neared the barn door, talking to Jake, who followed leisurely.

"Are you ready to dress?" she asked hastily, vexed at the signs of loitering.

"Dress? Why--what? Oh, I forgot. I told you I didn't want to go," he said impatiently.

"Well, you're going to take me if it is late," she said firmly. "Aunt Susan was told that we'd come, and she has dinner waiting this minute. Jake, put the horses in the wagon while Mr. Hunter dresses, and be as quick about it as you can."

"The horses--th' horses are in th' pasture, Lizzie," Jake said hesitantly. "I didn't know an'--an'--I--an' we turned 'em out an hour ago."

Jake Ransom saw the colour die out of the young face and understood exactly what had happened. He saw her turn without a look at her husband and start to the house, bowed and broken and without hope. Jake understood that a trick had been played on her, for he had been slow about turning the horses out and John had untied and led the team used for driving to the pasture gate himself.

"I don't know whether I kin ketch 'em 'r not, but I'll try," he called after her.

Elizabeth turned back hopefully, but John said

"Now look here, Elizabeth, those horses have been playing like mad for half an hour, and you could no more catch them than you could fly." Turning to Jake, "I'll take Mrs. Hunter next Sunday if she's just got to go. A man wants to rest when Sunday comes," he added under his breath.

Jake Ransom watched Elizabeth drag her listless feet up the steps and shot a look of disdain at the back of John Hunter as he followed her.

"You dirty cuss!" he exclaimed under his breath. "Lizzie's as good a woman as th' is in this country, an' she don't git nothin' she wants. I bet I see t' gittin' them horses ready next Sunday myself."

Going into her bedroom, Elizabeth Hunter laid off the finery of girlhood, and with it her girlhood also.

"I'll never ask him again," she told herself, and put her hair back into its woman's knot and went to the kitchen and began dinner.

* * * * *

Susan Hornby shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked up the road for the fortieth time.

"The baby must be worse, Nate," she said to her husband when at last there had to be a discussion of the matter.

Nathan Hornby followed her into the kitchen and helped to take up the dinner which had been waiting over an hour. His head burned with indignation, but there was something in Susan's defeat which brooked no discussion on his side. They had come as near quarrelling over this invitation as they had ever done about anything in their married life.

As they sat at the table eating their belated dinner, a lonely horseman appeared coming down the road from the west.

"It's Jake! I wonder if he's going for the doctor?" Susan exclaimed. "You never can tell what anybody has to contend with." And the meal was left to cool unfinished as the old couple left the house and hailed the rider.

"I didn't hear nothin' about th' baby bein' worse," Jake was obliged to answer when put under question.

He was so conscious that Elizabeth would not approve of the truth being told that he stammered and made his listeners feel that something was left untold. In fact, Jake's reticence was of the exact quality to add to the distrust already aroused. He edged away at last and left Susan Hornby looking at her husband in such a state that Nathan was moved to say:

"Never mind, Sue, I'll take you over after dinner and you can see for yourself."

Susan Hornby turned and started to the house. Nathan followed her aquiver with the slight that his common sense told him had been put upon her by those whom she had so faithfully and fully served.

Susan stumbled and put her hands to her head with a harsh laugh. Nathan hurried forward a step and looked searchingly into her face. With a great sob, he put his arms about her. Susan paid not the slightest attention to him, but let herself be guided along the path without actual resistance. Her face was flushed and her eyes did not see. She went docilely to her room and permitted the stricken husband to place her on the bed, where he loosened her collar and, removing her clothing, dressed her for bed as if she had been a little child. When nothing more could be done, he knelt by her and fondling her unresponsive hand let the tears he could no longer control pour over his ashen cheeks.

"Don't you know me, Sue? Don't you know your old Nate at all?" he quavered, but there was no reply except the puffing breath which was every moment growing more and more laboured. Nathan knew what it meant--she had been so once before.

As the Hunter family sat about the dinner table on Tuesday, Silas Chamberlain drove up to the side gate, and after tying his team came to the door. He entered when bidden, but would not sit down, and looked about him with an effort to adjust his impressions with what he saw before him.

"Ain't you goin' t' th' funeral?" he asked when he saw that there seemed to be no air of mourning in the house.

"Funeral?" John Hunter exclaimed. "Who's dead?"

"I told Nate Hornby you didn't know nothin' about it."

"Hornby? We haven't heard of any one being dead. Who is it?" John Hunter asked, puzzled at the reticence of the old man, who stood with his straw hat in his hand and slid his fingers about its greasy brim uneasily.

"Is--is it possible you all didn't know Mrs. Hornby was sick?" he asked, unable to lift his eyes.

There was a low cry from Elizabeth Hunter, the noise of her escape to the privacy of her own room, the sound of moans and cries after the door was shut, and Silas Chamberlain paid bitter toll for delivering his message. The family sat stunned and silent in the presence of those sounds of grief. The bowed head of the old man told his comprehension of the news and left Jake Ransom with an understanding of him which words could never have given.

As soon as Elizabeth could get control of her feelings and command her scattered senses, she snatched her bonnet from the chair beside the bed where she had dropped it before dinner and flew to the dining room again, her one impulse to get to the side of the friend whose spirit had gone from her. Going to Silas, she clutched him by the arm with fingers that sank into the flesh like a vise.

"Take me to her!--take me now!" she cried, pushing him toward the door.

"I'll take you, Elizabeth," John Hunter said, rising, and Jake Ransom saw the look of nameless horror she took on at thought of her husband's presence.

"Take me to her at once, Mr. Chamberlain. Do, for God's sake, take me to her!" she cried, and pulled the old man through the door with nervous hands, and then ran down the path before him and began to pull at the straps with which the horses were tied.

John followed them out, still protesting that he would take her himself if she would wait, but without a look in his direction she urged Silas on.

"Hurry! Hurry! Do!" she implored, and Silas gave the horses such a sharp slap with the lines that they started on a swift trot almost before they were seated, leaving John Hunter in the midst of his expostulations.

"I'll bring her back safe," Silas called over his shoulder.

Now that no further action was possible, Elizabeth sat with her hands clasped, her teeth set, and her eyes looking into vacancy, numbed beyond words, asking no questions and making no complaints. Silas's heart beat with an anguish of sympathy. He stopped at his own house a moment to tell Liza Ann that he would come back for her within the hour, and still Elizabeth gave no sign of realizing what was going on about her.

At last a terrible thought took hold of Silas, and he pulled up his team, which was sweating heavily.

"You ain't fit t' go, Lizzie. You ain't fit t' go, child. I'm goin' t' take you back home." He began to turn the horses' heads toward home, and then stopped for her wandering wits to gather.

"Why, oh, why don't you hurry?" Elizabeth exclaimed when she realized that they were standing still.

The old man's heart was torn with pity, and it was in the voice of a mother that he addressed her.

"You ain't fit t' go," he repeated. "I'm going t' take you back home." There was a white look about her mouth that frightened him.

The girl grasped his arm with fingers that closed with a grip like a drowning person.

"I couldn't see her when she was living--surely I can see her dead." Then with a wail, "Oh, no--no, not dead! Oh, my God!"

She sobbed in a dry sort of way that contracted Silas's throat to witness, and left the old man almost as undone as herself, and without further argument he drove on to Nathan Hornby's desolated home, where he lifted her tenderly down from the high seat, with a mist before his eyes that blurred her image till it was unrecognizable, and stood watching her go up the path.

A woman met her at the door, but she did not know who, and brushed past her hurriedly and ran into the kitchen, where she could see Nathan Hornby sitting with his head on his arms beside the kitchen table.

Going down on her knees with a swift movement, Elizabeth threw her arm across his shoulder, and laid her head beside his, sobbing convulsively. Nathan raised his head in dull surprise, and seeing who it was, shook her arm off resentfully and rose to his feet. Elizabeth crawled after him on her knees and clasped his own with both arms, turning her stricken face up to his and crying:

"Oh, I know! I know how you feel, but truly, truly, Uncle Nate, I am not to blame. For God's sake--for God's sake, forgive!"

He looked down on her coldly and was tempted to spurn her from him with his foot, but there was such anguish in voice and eye as he himself had hardly felt, and his wife's words, her last words, flashed through his bewildered brain: "We can't tell what anybody has to contend with." He stood irresolute while she rose to her feet. When he did not answer her, Elizabeth threw herself down in the chair from which he had just risen and bowing her head on the table moaned in such bitterness of spirit that Nathan was moved to pity, and would have comforted her if he could.

Silas, having tied his team, came to the kitchen door, but on seeing its occupants turned hastily and went out to his wagon again, where he stood choking and swallowing in helpless misery.

Presently, Nathan Hornby, at a loss to check her grief, laid a hand on her shoulder and said:

"Come and see her, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth Hunter arose like one walking in her sleep and followed Nathan to the sitting room. The black casket resting on two chairs in the middle of the room was a worse shock than any she had yet had, and with a horror-stricken cry of fright she fled to the kitchen again, and when Nathan reached her side, her teeth were chattering and great beads of sweat covered her quivering face; she sank into Nathan's chair unable to support herself.

When at last she was assisted tenderly to her feet, she begged feebly to be taken home.

"But you can't ride that far," Silas protested, pityingly. "You just naturally can't ride that far in th' big wagon, child."

For answer she dragged herself forward and staggered to the chair where they had put her bonnet. Nathan saw that her strength was returning and gave Silas a little nod. They each took an arm to steady her, and so Elizabeth passed from the presence of her one dear friend into a life as colourless as the form she left behind.

* * * * *

"He's an awful sick child, Mrs. Hunter, but we may--I believe we will pull him through."

It was Thursday, and Doctor Morgan sat opposite Elizabeth, holding the hand of the shadow of the baby of three days ago.

"You see that milk has not agreed with him. Mr. Hunter says you took a drive over to Hornby's the day of the funeral. The heat and excitement has been too much for you. You nursed him immediately on getting home?"

"Yes," she replied lifelessly.

"Well, we'll have to wean him now," the old doctor said, looking the unresponsive mother over sharply. "It won't do to try any experiments with him. Your milk may be all right now, but he wouldn't stand a relapse."

Elizabeth made no reply and listened patiently to his directions for preparing the new food. After he was gone, she laid the shrunken little body on the bed and went to the kitchen to prepare the milk. She took up the new bottle with the rubber on the end and looked at it in stupefied, aimless disgust. Her impulse was to fling it out of the open door, but remembering that she would but poison him by putting his lips to her own breast, she turned to the table and placing the bottle in a pan covered it with cold water and set it on the stove to come to a slow boil.

Going back to the bedroom she picked up the pillow--the child was so limp that they had to handle him on a pillow--and sat down, holding it close to her heart.

John came in. She did not look up. He came over to her and stooped to look at the half-conscious child, who lay with half-open eyes and under jaw dropped down. There were deep greenish rings under those eyes, and a great sob broke from John Hunter's throat.

Elizabeth stirred dully and looked up, but did not speak. There was that about her which made her unapproachable. She showed no resentment, no anger, no emotion of any sort. She had come home from Nathan's house as she was now. She had refused to go to the funeral, but she had had supper ready when John and his mother had returned from the graveyard, and it had been as orderly and as well cooked as usual, but she had not talked at the meal, nor seemed to hear when she was spoken to, but there was evidently no pouting. John had tried to explain, and she had given silent opportunity, and when it had been finished had said, "Yes," in a hollow voice, and had moved on about her work without looking up, but there had been no apparent resentment.

Before bedtime that night the baby (who had gone to sleep while she had nursed him when she had come home), awoke crying. She had taken him up and had offered her breast, but it had turned away as if sickened, and had continued to cry till, presently, it had doubled its little body together with a sharp scream and vomited till its breath was nearly gone. There had been a sour odour to the contents of its stomach that had struck terror to their hearts, and before morning Doctor Morgan was at its side. He had noted the leaden movements of the mother and calling John outside had questioned him regarding her. John, troubled at her indifference to him and the lifelessness of her attitude even toward the babe, had told him all he knew--as he understood it.

"Of course she boarded with them two years ago," he had said in concluding, "but I don't see that that needs to cut such a figure."

"Were your wife and Mrs. Hornby great friends?" Doctor Morgan asked, studying John Hunter and puzzling over the evident mystery of the situation.

"Ye-e-s-s!" with perplexed deliberation; "that is, she liked her better than any of the rest of the neighbours around here. She wanted to go there last Sunday and I thought the baby wasn't fit to take out. It looks now as if I was right."

"Well, she's had a shock of some kind, and if you don't look out She'll be down on our hands too. You'd better get a girl or let your mother do the work for a couple of weeks," Doctor Morgan advised.

And John Hunter had looked faithfully for some one to take his wife's place in the kitchen and had found what she had told him when Hepsie left to be true. In many places where there was no excuse given and girls were at home he had met with a sort of refusal which stung him to the quick.

Elizabeth rocked the baby with a mechanical dead sort of care. John was emotional enough to be badly broken up by the child's looks, but Elizabeth's unresponsiveness at such a time made of it a tragedy which he could not understand; he wanted greetings and discussion, and attentions showered upon him as usual, and they were not forthcoming. He could not understand what had brought this state of things to pass, but no more could he question one who was so evidently removed from present conditions. With a sense of forlornness he had never known, he fell on his knees by her side and laid his head against her arm, seeking comfort, and when she still did not speak, the fullness of his misery became apparent, and he got up unsteadily and left the house.

Slowly life and returning interest awakened in the child; still more slowly did the mother take up her threads in the web of living. The old routine was established, with a few exceptions. Elizabeth arose early and prepared breakfast before sunrise as before, the washing and ironing were as well done, but when she prepared to clean the kitchen floor the first washday after Aunt Susan's death, she took the mop down from its nail on the back porch and used it as she had done that first winter.

John and his mother came in with the clothes basket as she started to wring out the mop to wipe the first corner finished.

"Hadn't I better get down and scrub it for you with the brush?" John asked.

"There will be no more of that in my kitchen," replied Elizabeth, and she had quietly continued her work without looking up.

"Why not?" had been the astonished query.

"We will not argue it," she had said in the same spiritless tone in which she always spoke those days, and had been so quietly determined that she got her way. John could not argue with a woman who was so unresistant of manner: to him, manner constituted argument. Elizabeth went her own quiet way and took no part in the things that went on about her unless her services were required, then she served faithfully and uncomplainingly, but she held converse with no one in the happy way of old.

Thus summer passed, and autumn also. Little Jack walked now and was beginning to lisp an occasional word, making of himself a veritable fairy in the household. With the close of the warm weather he grew less and less fretful, and when the first snow fell he became as happy and active as a kitten. The mother had kept him with her every minute, and when her work had been done, which was seldom, was satisfied to rock him and listen to his baby chatter.

Elizabeth had not been angry in the whole six months, neither had she been glad. She never vexed John by asking to be taken places. Gladly would he have taken her, if by so doing he could have brought back her old enthusiasm and girlish glee, for Elizabeth had been the life of the household, and things had settled into a dead monotony that made of their home but a house since Susan Hornby's death. Sometimes, vexed by her passive acceptation of whatever came, John would throw out stinging observations about women who made their husbands turn to others for their society, and then be left in an uncomfortable situation by the fact that he had aroused neither anger nor annoyance, for Elizabeth would inquire in her lifeless tones what he wished her to do which was left undone. Puzzled by her real meekness of spirit, the man was compelled to admit that she made no vexatious demands upon him and that she laboured unceasingly to keep the soulless home in order. One of the strange and contradictory things in the situation was that John Hunter did not turn to the mother whom he had ever been ready to exalt for consolation in this time of trouble; the demand his feelings made was for the companionship which while it was his he had not desired. The revelation of the months showed him what he had lost. Mrs. Hunter was as much in the dark about the real cause of Elizabeth's changed condition as was John.

"The ride to Mr. Hornby's had something to do with it," she said dubiously when talking the matter over with her son after the baby began to get well and Elizabeth showed no improvement in a mental way.

"It comes from that ride in the hot sun. You see it made the baby sick too; but it ain't any use to say so to her," John replied, but in spite of the firmness of his tone there was a puzzled look on his face and the last word dragged with indecision.

"She was very fond of Mrs. Hornby, too, and that may have had something to do with it," Mrs. Hunter observed.

"Ye-e-s-s-s!" John replied. "But she couldn't care for that kind of people enough to make herself sick about them," he said more firmly.

Mrs. Hunter considered slowly for some moments.

"I guess you're right," she said at last. "She seemed to be attached to them, but she don't ask to go to see him since his wife's death; and I should think now's when her love for them would show out."

"I wish to God she would ask to go anywhere. I'm tired of the kind of life we're leading," John said in a manner which supported his words.

The weariness of life was modified, or at least shifted from one shoulder to the other for John Hunter by the increasing burden of financial worries. In this also he was denied any comfort or assistance from Elizabeth; she asked no questions, and if he talked of notes which were falling due, or of interest soon to be paid, she listened without remark, and moved about her endless round of cleaning, cooking, or sewing apparently absorbed in the work in hand. If he complained about expenses, the only reply he received was for the food on the table to be of a plainer quality and a lessened grocery bill the next time he went to town. This he would not permit, being sensitive about the opinions of the men who worked for him. Elizabeth never remarked upon the matter of keeping three men through the winter as she would have done a year ago when there was little to do which counted in farm affairs. She left her husband free to do as he chose on all those matters. She did not sulk; she had lost hope, she was temporarily beaten. In that first hour after her return from Aunt Susan's death chamber she had meditated flight. She longed to get away, to go anywhere where she would never see her husband's face again, but there was Jack. Jack belonged to his father as much as to her, and Elizabeth was fair. Besides, she was helpless about the support of the child. Her health was quite seriously interfered with by the ache in her back which was always present since the baby's coming. She had told her mother but two short years before that she would not live with a man who would treat her as her father treated his wife, and here she found herself in those few months as enmeshed as her mother had ever been. Aye! even more so. Hers was a position even more to be feared, because it was more subtle, more intangible, more refined, and John's rule as determined and unyielding as that of Josiah Farnshaw.

Having failed to act in that first hour of her trouble, Elizabeth drifted into inaction. Even her thoughts moved slowly as she pondered on her situation; her thoughts moved slowly, but they moved constantly. Under all that quiet of manner was a slow fire of reasoning which was working things out. Gradually Elizabeth was getting a view of the real trouble. Two things absorbed her attention: one was the domination of men, and the other was the need of money adjustment. To live under the continual interference of a man who refused to listen to the story of one's needs was bad enough, but to live without an income while one had a small child was worse. She would leave this phase of her difficulties at times and wander back to the character of the treatment she received and compare it to that accorded to her mother. It occasioned great surprise to find herself admiring her father's manner more than that of her husband. Mr. Farnshaw had the virtue of frankness in his mastery, John used subterfuges; Mr. Farnshaw was openly brutal, John secretly heartless; her father was a domineering man, her husband even more determined, more inflexible. While considering the possibility of escape by running away, many things were clarified in Elizabeth's mind regarding her position as a wife, and the position of all wives. She, for the first time, began to see the many whips which a determined husband had at his command, chief of which was the crippling processes of motherhood. She could not teach school--Jack was too young; neither could she take any other work and keep the child with her. As she meditated upon the impossibility of the various kinds of work a woman could do, another phase of her situation arose before her: even if the baby were older, and a school easily obtained, the gossip that would follow a separation would be unendurable. Having accumulated a reputation for snobbishness and aristocratic seclusion, people would not neglect so rare an opportunity to even old scores. She would be a grass widow, a subject for all the vulgar jest and loathsome wit of the community. Country people know how to sting and annoy in a thousand ways. However, the possibility of this sort of retribution was put entirely away by the baby's illness. By the time Jack had recovered, the young mother was worn to a lifeless machine, compelled to accept what came to her. Her youth, her health, her strength were gone; worse than all that, her interest in things, in her own affairs even, had almost gone.

John wandered about the house disconsolate and dissatisfied, and made amends in curious little ways, and from John's standpoint. He opened relations with Elizabeth's family and insisted upon taking her home for a visit. Elizabeth went with him, and accepted the more than half-willing recognition of her father, who wanted to get into communication with the baby. He was offering for sale a young team and John, thinking to do a magnanimous thing, bought Patsie. Elizabeth accepted the visit and the horse without emotions of any sort, and left her husband annoyed and her family floundering in perplexity at her passive attitude toward life. At home that night he said to her sneeringly:

"No matter what a man does for you, you pout, and act as if you didn't like it. If I don't offer to take you you're mad, and if I do you set around and act as if you were bored to death by having to go. What th' devil's a man to do?"

"I was perfectly willing to go," was the reply, and she went on dressing Jack for bed without looking up.

John cast a baffled look at her as she carried the child out of the room, and returned to his uncomfortable thoughts without trying to talk of anything else when she returned and sat down to sew. The sitting room in which they spent their evenings was in perfect order; the whole house was never so orderly, nor their table better served, but John pined for companionship. The work he had worn her out in doing was never better performed, but there was no love in the doing, and when he addressed her, though her answer was always ready and kind, there was no love in it, and he was learning that our equity in the life of another has fixed and unalterable lines of demarkation.

Thus matters progressed till February, when Jake was called home to Iowa by the death of his mother. Jake had lived such a careless, happy-go-lucky sort of life that he was obliged to borrow a large part of his railroad fare from John Hunter, who was himself so badly in debt that he was wondering how he was to meet the interest which would fall due in May. John gave him the money with the understanding that Jake would come back in time for the early seeding, and prepared to take him into town. Jake was the only man left on the farm, and there was consternation in John's heart at the prospect of having all the chores thrown upon his own shoulders in cold weather. Jake had been the only reliable man he had ever been able to hire. The more independent sort of hired men resented John Hunter's interference in the farm work, which they understood far better than he, and seldom stayed long, but Jake Ransom liked Elizabeth, was close friends with Luther Hansen, and since he saw the mistress of the house drooping and discouraged, doubly appreciated the home into which he had fallen. Jake had been devoted to Elizabeth with a dog-like devotion since his first meeting with her in the little schoolhouse six years before. He was more than glad that he could secure his return to the Hunter home by the simple method of borrowing money. More nearly than any one else in her whole circle of acquaintances, Jake Ransom had Elizabeth's situation figured out. He wanted to come back to her service, and it was with a satisfied security that he helped prepare the bobsled for the trip to town. They went early and took Mrs. Hunter with them to do some shopping for herself and Elizabeth. John hoped to find a man who could come back with them that afternoon and help with the work of watering and feeding the hundred and fifty head of cattle that made of their farm life a busy round of daily toil. _

Read next: Chapter 15. Hugh Noland

Read previous: Chapter 13. "Ennobled By The Reflected Story Of Another's Goodness And Love"

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