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The Wind Before the Dawn, a novel by Dell H. Munger |
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Chapter 23. "At Any Cost" |
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_ CHAPTER XXIII. "AT ANY COST" The old doctor delivered the message to Luther, and the next morning he appeared at the sickroom door. While he was talking to Hugh, Nathan Hornby came and was called into the sickroom also. Elizabeth was too busy with her own work to think much about this visit, and before it was finished Doctor Morgan was with her questioning her about the night spent by her patient. Nathan came to the kitchen while they were talking. "I think I'll take that youngster home with me if you're goin' t' be alone t' day," he announced. Doctor Morgan looked relieved. "That's about the kindest thing you could do for this girl," he said. "Noland isn't as well as I'd like to have him, and she's up every hour in the night. It takes a hired girl to run off at a time like this." Elizabeth defended Hepsie at once. "Hepsie's pure gold. She waited a long time for Hugh to get well. Please, Doctor, don't make any such remark as that outside of this house or some one 'll tell her I said it. Really, she's the best help a woman ever had. She'll come back the first of next week. She said she'd come back any day I'd send for her. She'd do anything for me." "I guess you're right, little woman," Doctor Morgan laughed. "I wish all the same that you had some one with you so that you could stay right with that boy." All through the forenoon Elizabeth kept out of the sickroom except when the medicine was due, and then got away as fast as she could, though it was not easy to do so, for Doctor Morgan had urged her to entertain the invalid and keep him cheered up, letting her see that he was more than usually worried. She meant to live up to her resolutions, but in the afternoon Hugh was so quiet that it seemed ominous and began to worry her. "Oh, Hugh! how can I do right if you take it this way?" she cried in despair, and would have stroked his hair if he had not shrunk from her hand. "Don't, Elizabeth. You have asked for help. I have to give it in my own way. I have done harm enough to your life. Make it as easy for me as you can, for I'm only a man and--well, I've promised to help you--at any cost. You've nothing to worry about. I'm no worse than I've been," he ended in a whisper, and closed his eyes, as was his way when he did not want to talk. The girl tiptoed out, and left him to his thoughts. Her own were anything but satisfactory. He was more wan and tragic than ever before, and Doctor Morgan had especially cautioned her. She worked in the kitchen most of the evening, keeping out of his presence, and so the long, hard, unsatisfactory day passed, was recorded in the annals of time, and forever gone from the opportunity to alter or change its record. Luther Hansen came in after dark. Elizabeth answered his knock. "Alone?" he asked in astonishment when he entered the sitting room. "Yes. Mr. Chamberlain wanted John to bring the men over and load hogs for him. It's been too hot to take them to town in the daytime. Hugh's asleep, I think," she said in a low tone. "I didn't take a light in, because he likes to be in the dark, but I spoke to him two or three times and he didn't answer. Are you in a hurry? I hate to waken him." Doctor Morgan came as they talked. He stopped to look Elizabeth over before going to the sickroom, and then took the lamp she handed him and, followed by Luther, left Elizabeth standing in the dining room. She heard the doctor's sharp order, "Take this light, Hansen," and ran to help. The horror, the anguish, the regret of that hour are best left untold. The number of disks gone from the bottle under the pillow gave the doctor his clue. One final effort must have been made by the desperate invalid to secure for himself the drink which would wash them down without the dreaded coughing spell. The old doctor, who loved them both, and Luther Hansen also, witnessed Elizabeth's despair, and listened to her story. As Luther had said a few weeks before, he was a safe person, and her secret remained a secret. Luther led her away into the night and sat silently by while her grief spent itself in tears; it was a necessary stage. When John and the men came, he led her back, and himself met them at the gate to explain. The morning and the evening were the first day; the comings and goings of the inquisitive and the sympathetic were alike unremarked by Elizabeth. Only for that first hour did her grief run to tears; it was beyond tears. At the coroner's inquest she answered penetrating questions as if they related to the affairs of others, and when at last the weary body, whose spirit had been strong enough to lay it aside, had been buried on the bare hillside, the neighbours and those who came to the funeral from curiosity agreed that Elizabeth Hunter could stand anything. So little evidence of emotion had she given that Mrs. Crane remarked to Mrs. Farnshaw as they rode home together: "I declare, Lizzie's th' coolest hand I ever met. She couldn't 'a' liked Mr. Noland very much. She wasn't near as broke up as Mr. Hunter was, an' when I asked her if she wouldn't feel kind of spooky in that house after such a thing, she just looked at me, funny-like, an' says 'Why?' an' didn't seem t' care a bit." Doctor Morgan drove home from the graveyard with the family. "I suppose you know, Hunter, that there's a will," he said before he helped Elizabeth into the buggy. "No! Who's got it?" John exclaimed. "He gave it to me, with a note asking me not to read it till after he was buried, if he should die." John and Elizabeth followed the doctor's rig home across the long stretch of prairie. "Did you know that Hugh left a will?" John Hunter asked Elizabeth, after driving a long time in silence. "Luther told me last night. I didn't think much about it and I forgot to tell you," Elizabeth returned briefly, and fell back into her own sad thoughts again. John Hunter looked at his wife in surprise. "Luther!" he exclaimed. "Yes," she answered indifferently, not looking up, and unaware that John was regarding her with a surprise which amounted almost to suspicion. John let the subject drop, but as they rode home he had an uncomfortable sense of unpleasant things to come: first of all why had the presence of the will been concealed from him, Hugh Noland's partner and closest friend? secondly, why had Luther Hansen been told? thirdly, why had Elizabeth declined just now to discuss it with him after knowing about it for some time? He could not put his finger on the exact trouble, but John Hunter was affronted. The truth of the matter was that Elizabeth had only heard of the will the night before, and had been too stunned by other things to care much about it. If she had thought about it at all she would have supposed that John had been told also, but Elizabeth had been occupied with troubles quite aside from material things, and now did not talk because she was concerned with certain sad aspects of the past and almost as sad forebodings for the future. "You better come in too, Hansen," Doctor Morgan said to Luther, when they arrived at the Hunter house. Sadie had stayed with Hepsie at the house, and Luther had expected to take her and go straight home. The two women had been busy in the three hours since the body of Hugh Noland had been taken from the house. The mattress which had been put out in the hot sun for two days had been brought in, and order had been restored to the death chamber. There was a dinner ready for the party of sorrowing friends who had loved the man that had been laid to his final rest, and it was not till after it was eaten that the subject of the will was mentioned again. They sat about the table and listened to Doctor Morgan's remarks and the reading of the important document. "I have," Doctor Morgan began, "a letter from Mr. Noland written the day before his death, in which he tells me that he has made a will of which I am to be made the sole executor. In that letter he enclosed another sealed one on which he had written instructions that it was not to be opened till after his death. I opened the latter this morning, and in it he states frankly that he has decided to voluntarily leave his slowly dissolving body, and spare further pain to those he loves. Perhaps--perhaps I could have helped him, if I'd known. I can't tell," the old doctor said brokenly. "He asked me to do something for him that I guess I ought to have done, but I thought he was all right as he was, and I wouldn't do it. However, he asked me as his executor to see to it that every provision of this will, which I have never seen, be carried out to the letter. Hansen, here, is one of the witnesses he tells me, and Hornby is the other. It is unnecessary for me to say that I shall have to carry out these instructions as I have been commanded to do." Turning to John, he added: "I hope, Hunter, that there's nothing in this that will work any inconvenience to you, and I hardly think it will." John Hunter sat through the opening of the envelope and the rapid survey which Doctor Morgan gave its contents before he began to read, stirred by varying emotions. Suspicion crawled through his brain, leaving her slimy trail; why had there been need of secrecy? Why had all these people been told, and he, John Hunter alone, left out? Nathan Hornby and Luther Hansen witnesses! But most of all, as was to be expected, his suspicions were directed toward Elizabeth. She had known--she probably knew from the beginning. She was in the conspiracy. Of the fact of a conspiracy John Hunter felt certain when Doctor Morgan cleared his throat and began to read:
There was a pause. Surprise held every person present, for the witnesses had seen only their signatures up to now, not the will, and Doctor Morgan was no less astonished than the rest. At last he reached his hand across the table to Elizabeth saying: "It's an instrument that I shall get some pleasure at least from administering, Mrs. Hunter. You deserve it. I'm glad it goes to you. It's like the boy! God rest his weary soul, and forgive his impatience to be off! we'll miss him," he added brokenly. Elizabeth sat with her hands clasped on the table in front of her, neither hearing nor seeing more. She was unaware that she was the object of everybody's attention and that all eyes were turned on her. The merely material items contained in that instrument were of little moment to her just then; to every one else, except perhaps Luther, they were all that there was of importance. Sadie Hansen looked at her young neighbour, overcome by the fact that she was to have several thousand dollars all her own; Luther's gray eyes dwelt upon her affectionately, glad that this last evidence of Hugh Noland's sacrifice was hers; Doctor Morgan thought of the power it would give her to control the financial side of her life, and John Hunter was glad that at least the money was to remain in the business, and ready to forget the supposed plot. Elizabeth was aroused by Doctor Morgan placing a sealed envelope in her hand and saying: "This seems to be for you, Mrs. Hunter. It was in this big envelope with the will, and I didn't see it till just now." The girl was so surprised that she turned the envelope over two or three times and read her name carefully to realize that the letter was for her, and from Hugh's own hand. When at last it was clear to her, her face flushed with confusion, and the first tears which had dimmed her eyes since the hour of his death came to her relief. But the tears did not fall. Realizing that the eyes of all present were upon her, she controlled herself, and rising said: "Excuse me one moment, till I have read it," and passed into her own bedroom, where, with the sense of his presence, she clasped it to her tenderly an instant, and still standing, broke the seal. It was simple, sincere, and so formal that all the world might have read it, and yet, it said all that she would have wanted him to say. My Dear Elizabeth [it began]: When this reaches your hand, my heart will have ceased to trouble either of us. I will have fought my little fight; I will have kept the faith--which I started out too late to keep. The little I leave you will be small recompense for all I have cost you, but it is all I have, and will, I hope, help toward emancipating you from care. My one earnest bit of advice to you is, keep it free from debts. Elizabeth Hunter returned to the table with the open letter, which she handed to Doctor Morgan saying: "Read it aloud, Doctor," and stood behind her chair with her head bowed while it was being done. When it was finished, she looked about her, measuring the different members of the group, wondering if it said the things to them which it cried aloud to her. The survey was satisfactory, till she suddenly realized that John was not there. "Where's John," she asked. "Gone out to see Nate Hornby--he's brought the baby," Luther answered. Doctor Morgan started for home, taking the will with him to have it legally probated, and Elizabeth took Jack from his father's arms, and went back to put away her letter, forgetting that John had not heard it read. Nathan came to spend the rest of the day. He knew from personal experience the cheerlessness of the house which has but lately harboured the dead. _ |
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