"HER WAGES, FOOD AND CLOTHING SHE
MUST ACCEPT"
Luther Hansen was at the door when John returned, and they entered the
sitting room together. Jack was leaning against the bedroom door, and
John, who remembered Doctor Morgan's parting advice, went to close it. The
baby ran to his mother, escaping the outstretched hands of the father, who
was after him, but the child had miscalculated the opposition this time
and was taken firmly into John's arms and lifted free from the bed.
"Tell Luther to come to me," Elizabeth whispered.
"Doctor Morgan said----" John began.
"Tell Luther to come to me," Elizabeth repeated, putting every particle of
strength she had into her voice so that by having Luther hear her John
would be obliged to comply.
Luther came without having to be told.
"Luther, could you get Hepsie back for me, if you told her Mother Hunter
was gone and would not come back?" she asked, falling back into a whisper
from sheer weakness.
Luther bent to catch her words. Elizabeth's illness showed plainly in her
pinched face this morning; he would have done anything she asked of him.
"Of course," he answered cheerfully.
Luther really did not know whether Hepsie could be had, but he meant to
have her if she was not already at work somewhere else. He listened to the
directions and promised without equivocation that Hepsie would come. He
understood that for some reason the thing Elizabeth asked of him she could
ask of him alone, but was careful to couch his replies so that that fact
was not indicated even to her.
When it was arranged, Elizabeth closed her weary eyes as a sign that she
wished to be alone, and the men retired from the room, leaving her in the
first real peace she had known since her illness began. With Hepsie in the
house, she could look forward to the days to come with less dismay. She
resolved that if she did get the girl back that she would keep her as long
as there were hired men to cook for. With the assurance that Hugh would
keep John from falling into debt again there would be funds to pay her and
there was as much need of a girl in the kitchen as of men in the field.
Hepsie came gladly. She had always liked Elizabeth, and the well-furnished
Hunter house, with the equally well-furnished pantry, was desirable.
Elizabeth's life was in grave danger and when John at last grasped the
fact he looked after her needs rigorously. He tiptoed about the house,
looking to it personally that no discomfort assailed the wan patient. Jack
learned the note of authority in his father's voice, and incidentally the
weight of his hand also, and quiet prevailed. John reflected the mood of
the sick room in every step he took. Much of the time Elizabeth was too
ill to observe John's changed attitude, but the second week she began to
awake to things about her. She went over the situation again and again.
Something had to be done. Things had promised to straighten out since
Hugh's coming, but the very day of his first absence the old coercion was
renewed. John would not have brought the cream jar up without asking if
Hugh had been there, or if he had done so she could have mentioned the
inconvenience of its presence before Hugh and got it carried back to the
cellar. The importance of Hugh's presence loomed up before Elizabeth as
she lay considering her situation; Hugh was her only hope for better
conditions. She had accepted Hugh as a happy feature of the family life
and of the business, but she had not thought of him as a factor in her
personal affairs.
There was another feature of the weariness which came from being pushed
beyond the amount of work she was momentarily able to do: she became
irritable with Jack when tired, and then John interfered. Here again, her
only hope lay in Hugh. With Hugh present John was suave, polite, and apt
to treat her as a man is supposed to treat his wife. Considering all these
things, Elizabeth began to look forward to Hugh's return eagerly.
As if to favour Elizabeth's plans, Hugh Noland found Mitchell County a
lonely place to stay and as soon as the fencing was finished put a man in
charge and returned with all possible speed.
"Oh, John, you brother!" he exclaimed when he met John Hunter at the
kitchen door the day he arrived. He held out both his hands. "I haven't
had such a sense of coming _home_ since my mother's death."
They greeted, and looked at each other long and earnestly, and John Hunter
allowed himself to enter into closer relations of friendship and love than
he had ever done in the twenty-seven years of his life.
"I'm glad you're here," John said when he had recovered from his surprise
over this unusual demonstration of affection. "We're going to lift
Elizabeth out into a chair for the first time to-day. She'll be glad
you've come too."
"How is she? You didn't say much about her in your last letter."
"Wasn't much to say," John replied. "She's better--that's the main thing.
Come on into the sitting-room till I can get her ready and get a quilt in
the rocking chair."
"Got a girl, I see!" Hugh remarked in a whisper as they closed the door
behind them.
"Yes, and a good one fortunately. Too much milk and butter. I found that
out when I got at it. No more buttermaking in mine. I had the whole thing
on my hands for over a week. I turned half those cows out to grass," John
said, bringing forward the chair for the invalid.
"I was afraid the morning I left that she had too much to do with all
those shellers on such short notice."
Hugh stooped to pick up the baby.
"How are you, partner?" he cried, swinging the delighted child up to the
ceiling. Jack was wild with joy. Hugh stood with legs wide apart and
cuddled the baby to him for a squeeze. This was part of the homecoming
too. He was still hugging Jack tenderly when John beckoned from the
bedroom door.
Hugh drew the rocking chair into the bedroom and then stopped to stare at
the wasted figure wrapped in a quilt who had to be supported while he
adjusted it.
"John! You didn't tell me she was like this!"
He took the thin hands in his, both of them, just as he had done John's a
moment before, and was moved almost to tears by the pallid face.
Elizabeth's brown eyes had fallen back into her bony, sharp-lined head,
and her nose was thin and drawn.
"Words fail me, Mrs. Hunter," he said feelingly.
But though words failed to express Hugh Noland's sympathy his eyes did
not, and the girl, who had not had an hour's sympathetic companionship
since he had been gone, caught the fact and was cheered by it.
Hugh Noland was vital and invigorating. Elizabeth listened to his account
of the adventures in Mitchell County. He was a good story-teller and his
incidents were well selected. She was too weak to sit up a whole hour and
was carried tenderly back to her bed, where the family life centred now
that she was becoming able to stand the noise and confusion of it.
During the days which followed, Hugh, at John's suggestion, brought his
books and read aloud to them in that little bedroom in the warm spring
evenings, and life in the Hunter house took on a brighter complexion than
it had ever before assumed.
John, who had been sleeping in Hugh's room since Elizabeth's serious
illness, returned to his own bed. He looked about him for Jack the first
night and asked where he was.
"I sent him up to Hepsie's room," Elizabeth said quietly.
"To sleep!"
"Yes."
"The children in the Hunter family are not put into the servants' beds,"
John Hunter replied. The unexplained statement was offensive to a man
accustomed to being consulted.
To punish her John went to sleep without giving her the usual good-night
kiss.
"He'd have been cross, anyhow," was all the thought she gave that part of
the circumstance. Could John Hunter have known that the absence of that
kiss was a relief, and that he made of his presence sometimes an
intolerable nightmare, he might have saved for himself a corner in her
tired heart against the days to come. John's zeal and passion had gone
into the pursuit of their courtship days. Now they were married,
possession was a fact: Elizabeth was his wife.
Elizabeth understood that John was whimsical and tyrannical, but not
intentionally evil, but in spite of the fact that she had John's character
summed up and understood that much that he did was not deliberately
intended to do her injury, that little of it was in fact, she felt a
growing disinclination for his presence. The unloved, undesired child
which she had lost was a warning guidepost pointing its finger away from a
continuance of marital relations. No conditions could make it right for
her to have another child till love again existed between them. She saw
that nothing could excuse or make decent the child of wornout conditions;
nothing but affection made marriage worthy, and when that affection had
departed from a man and woman, to thrust life upon a child was a crime
against that child, a crime against nature and a crime against themselves
and society; yet, what could she do? Her health was broken, and she
without means of support. After Aunt Susan's death the girl had seriously
considered separation; she still considered it, but not seriously. Though
she cried "Fool! fool!" many times, she had given her youth, her health,
her strength to John Hunter, and her wages--food and clothing--she must
accept.