THE CREAM-JARS OF HER LIFE
While Elizabeth progressed toward health the work on the Hunter farm
progressed also. Because of taking the cattle to Mitchell County it was
possible to get in a greater acreage of small grain and corn. Patsie had a
small colt at her side, as did her mate also, and there was an extra man
needed in the field most of the time, but after repeated consultations it
was decided that by using care the teams they had would be able to plow
the corn, and that they could hire help for the harvesting cheaper than
they could buy another pair of horses.
However, in spite of the discussions which were supposed to have settled
the matter, John came home from Colebyville one Saturday with a new team.
"What do you think of them?" he asked Hugh, who opened the gate to let him
into the barnyard. "I just made up my mind that it wasn't economy to push
the horses we had so hard. I got them at a bargain."
"You've bought them, you say?"
"Yes," was the brief answer.
"I'd take them back," Hugh said slowly but decidedly. "Horses and dogs
talk with their tails, and I don't like the way this one acts."
"I can't take them back. I got them from a mover. I got them for a song,
and we're going to need them for the binder. I know what we said," he went
on, interrupting Hugh, who was trying to speak, "but there was a bargain
in them and we do need them."
"But we haven't the money! How did you buy them? You couldn't pay for them
outright."
Hugh Noland had been feeling his way down the foreleg of the horse nearest
him. The animal was nervous and had crowded over against its mate in an
endeavour to get away. Both its ears were laid back, and there was a
half-threatening air about its movements. As Hugh straightened up to
continue the discussion of finances, it jumped aside, quivering with
fright.
"I gave a check on the bank," John replied uneasily. Hugh had never
criticised him before.
Hugh was taken up with soothing the nervous animal for a moment.
"You'll run out of money before the summer's over," he said warningly.
"Oh, I've had to borrow a little already. With Elizabeth's illness and
all, I saw we weren't going to get through, so I just took out a loan of
five hundred and paid Doc Morgan while I was at it. I meant to have told
you. I've got some calves coming from over west to-morrow too." John
poured it all out while he was at it, with a relief in having it over.
There was a pause. When Hugh Noland again spoke it was with a distinct
note of firmness and almost of authority.
"The plain understanding in our partnership--the one I laid the most
stress upon to start with--was that there should be no debts. I'm willing
that you should be free to select a team; it isn't that. Did you borrow
this money in the firm's name?"
"Yes-s-s. I didn't think you'd care about a little sum like that," John
said slowly. He was very uncomfortable. "I turned my personal note in on
the account book for the doctor's bill. You can see it on the book."
"I don't doubt at all but that you did, John. You're not called into
question, old boy, on any other matter than the one of debts, but You'll
never put this firm five cents in debt without coming to an instant
understanding. I came to this country to get well. I won't get well, but I
won't allow myself to get into anything that will run me down quicker with
worry. You knew it before you went in with me--and you agreed."
That was the final word John Hunter felt as he tied the skittish brute he
had just purchased in the stall beside the door, and turned to put the hay
down from the loft above. The sound of plunging feet and snorts of wild
terror when the hay fell into the manger turned his mind to the probable
truth of Hugh's opinion of the lately purchased horses.
"I wonder if the blamed brutes are going to be too maggoty for our use
after all," he thought. "It'd be just my luck. He was fair about it
though," John admitted reluctantly. "Oh, well, after all, he's worth
having around, and I'm going to do a deal better than I would if he hadn't
come along. Elizabeth was right--I did get in too deep." And with this
astonishing admission, John Hunter finished haying the horses and walked
slowly to the house, thinking about the new horses, and half prepared to
admit that he had made a mistake in buying them outright from a man who
was able to get away before they could be proven, but Elizabeth and Hugh
were already sitting by the table in the living room and he knew he was
wanted. He went to the bedroom to wash his hands--John could not form the
habit of washing in the kitchen as other farmers did--and as he washed,
meditated, and as he meditated he found himself ready to accept this
reproof from Hugh Noland, ready to live up to agreements if Hugh imposed
them, ready to listen to Hugh and love him. Something in Hugh Noland was
so fundamentally square that the principle of squareness took on a new
meaning to John Hunter.
"Here you are! You're the one that's insisted on these readings most, and
you're always late," Hugh cried as John came from the bedroom, fresh and
well groomed as if he had not done barn chores a few minutes before.
The reading was part of John Hunter's play world. John was not a man of
scholarly tastes, but reading, like the use of the hairbrush he had just
laid down, was good form: they were both part of the world to which John
wished to belong. A book might or might not relate to that world, but it
was a book and seemed to do so, and while John Hunter might or might not
get much intellectual advancement out of a book, he got advancement out of
sitting in Hugh Noland's presence and opening his heart to the love and
respect Hugh commanded from him. John did not close himself off from
Hugh's influence as he did from Elizabeth's, and the things he refused to
take from her he adopted and readily set into action at Hugh's
suggestion.
It was destined to be the last night in which John was to be permitted the
comfort of this new feature of home life, however. As they were gathered
about the breakfast table a man rode into the lane and called John Hunter
to the door without getting off his horse.
"Doc Morgan was goin' past my house this mornin' an' asked me if I'd bring
this over t' you. 'E said it came after you left town, an' th' agent
didn't know how t' git over t' you 'thout he was comin' this way this
mornin'. Hope it ain't no bad news."
He waited to see John tear open the envelope and read the telegram.
"My mother's sick," was John's hurried statement as he turned toward the
house.
Hugh drove John Hunter to the station. The sun was hot and he had read
till nearly midnight the night before, and, busy season though it was, he
thought it best not to start home till toward night. Doctor Morgan had
returned home and Hugh, as was his custom, went to the office for a chat.
It was one of the chief delights of both to have an hour together.
"Do they get along well together--Hunter and his wife?" Doctor Morgan
asked after he had taken Hugh's health into account.
"You'd think so if you'd heard the directions I received for her care just
now," Hugh answered with a laugh.
"Well, I don't care--I couldn't make him understand about her when she was
sick. He let that squalling brat crawl over her, and let her do baking and
things she wasn't fit to do till she was worn out," the old doctor said
resentfully. Then added as an afterthought, "Say! You're not letting him
run you into debt, are you?"
"No debts in mine. There's one note and It'll be cleared up as soon as the
small grain can be disposed of. I put the clamps on that as soon as I
heard of it. It won't happen again. I think his wife was about as glad of
the end of the credit business as any of us," Hugh said, and then added
with a laugh: "I think you're mistaken about his treatment of her, though.
You should have heard the directions he gave me about her as the train was
about to pull out; you'd have thought she was his favourite child and that
I was going to neglect her."
Doctor Morgan snorted contemptuously.
"Oh, yes, I know him. Hunter loves to give directions to anything from a
puppy dog to a preacher. That's what's the matter with her. He directs
_her_ all the time as if she didn't have sense enough to cook hot water or
wash the baby. He ain't any worse than a lot of men I know of, but you
expect more of a man that's half-educated. I tell you, Noland, the trouble
's in this business of men owning women. I've practised in these parts
ever since this country's been opened, and I see a good deal of
husbands--and they're a bad lot."
Hugh Noland watched the old doctor with a twinkle in his eye.
"You aren't going to give us men all a knock, are you?" he said amusedly.
"I'm not saying anybody's bad," Doctor Morgan said, following out his own
reasonings. "The trouble 's in men owning everything. Theoretically, a
woman shares in the property, and of course she does if she gets a
divorce, but as long as she lives with him he's the one that has the money
and she has to ask for it if she has ever so little. You take Mrs. Hunter:
she don't spend a cent he don't oversee and comment on; she's dependent on
that man for every bite she eats and for every stitch she wears and he
interferes with every blessed thing she does. Give that woman some money
of her own, Noland, and where'd she be? John Hunter 'd treat her as an
equal in a minute; he'd know she could quit, and he'd come to terms."
Doctor Morgan swung the stethoscope with which he had been listening to
Hugh's heart, and proceeded without waiting for Hugh to speak.
"Oh, we doctors see a side of women's lives you other men don't know
anything about. We see them suffer, and we know that the medicine we give
them is all knocked out by the doings of the men they live with, and we
can't raise our hands to stop the thing at the bottom of it all. Why, that
woman's just lost a child I know she was glad to lose, and--oh, don't
misunderstand me! She never told me she was glad she lost it, but how in
God's name could she be otherwise? She couldn't do all he required of her
without it. She had butter to make, and shellers to cook for, and then the
damned fool 'd shove that heavy baby on her--and he actually talked to me
about her being cross!"
Hugh Noland was beginning to feel that living in a man's house did not
constitute a knowledge of him, and yet there were the things he himself
had seen and heard.
"But, he's looking after her now as if she were a baby herself," he
protested. "He urged me to look after her, and see that she didn't have to
lift Jack yet for a while, and to humour the hired girl for fear they'd
lose her, and he even insisted that I keep up the reading aloud that I've
been doing for them."
"I don't doubt that," the old doctor said, a bit nettled. "He's not all
bad. He's a right good fellow--that's the very point I'm trying to make.
It's because he _owns_ her and thinks he has a right to run her
affairs--that's the trouble at the bottom of the whole thing. Now that
she's sick he'll see that she don't have to lift the baby. If she owned
herself she could stop lifting the baby before she got sick; a man can't
tell when a woman feels like working and when she don't. What I want to
say is, that a man browbeats a woman because she hasn't any money and
can't help herself. Give a woman a home of her own that he couldn't touch,
and then give her an income fit to raise her children, and he'd come into
that house and behave, or he'd be sent out again, and she wouldn't age ten
years in three, nor be dragged down to the hell of nagging to protect
herself against him. I tell you, Noland, Kansas would be a stronger state
right now, and a damned sight stronger state twenty years from now, if the
women owned and run half of its affairs at least." Doctor Morgan ended
quite out of breath.
"I guess you're right, doctor, but I've got to get some barb wire loaded
to take home, and you've preached the regulation hour and a half," Hugh
said. He was living in the Hunter home, and he really loved both John
Hunter and his wife, and honour demanded that he should not gossip about
them.
"Right you are, my boy. And I see your point too; I've no business to talk
professional secrets even to you." He laid his arm affectionately across
the younger man's shoulder and squared him around so that he could look
into his face. "This is only a side of life I battle with in almost every
home I go into. I'm almost glad you can't marry; It'll leave you where I
can respect you. Think of a woman having a child she don't want! and think
of a man respecting himself afterward! It destroys a woman's body, but the
men--well, it's the most damnable, soul-destroying thing in a man's life;
he's lost and don't even know it. Run along," he said after a pause, "or
I'll hold forth for another hour in an unprofessional way. It makes me
swear to see a pretty girl made old before she's twenty-five."
But Elizabeth Hunter was not to be an old woman before she was
twenty-five, for Elizabeth had Hepsie in the kitchen, she had learned to
protect herself by refusing to be oppressed about the work she did do, and
the weeks of rest that followed John's going were filled with the things
which rested and restored her. It was not long till she was as attractive
as she had ever been in all the years of her girlhood. Elizabeth was
barely twenty-three, and there was a good constitution back of her which
rest could set right; she was one of nature's favourites to whom colour
and spirits return quickly. Every charm of person she had was enhanced by
her present surroundings, for the brightness and freedom which came from
John's absence were the crowning things needed to complete her recovery.
Hugh Noland read to Elizabeth nightly, and in the daytime her comfort was
his first thought. The work of cooking for those shellers had been his
work as much as John's, but it had all fallen on her, fallen, according to
Doctor Morgan, at a time when a man shielded even the mare in his harness
from overwork. As he watched the colour come back to the girl's face day
by day he recognized that the miracle was brought about by rest. In the
return of Elizabeth's beauty there was a new element which Hugh Noland saw
but did not recognize as new: to the roundness of girlhood was added the
strength and experience of womanhood, to the mere physical charm of youth
the maturity and poise of the woman who has fought, if not conquered,
self.
John had set the example of late hours, and the two read throughout the
long, early summer evenings quite as much from habit as from inclination.
It had been the established custom of the house for so long that Hepsie
and the hired man accepted it as a matter of course. The men saw little of
it because one of the first things Hugh had done when he had returned from
Mitchell County had been to partition off a room in the well-built barn
for the accommodation of the men. Jake, who loved Elizabeth with a
dog-like fidelity, came and went about the house more freely than the
rest, and saw the two seated about the sitting-room lamp, and was as glad
as if he had had a place among them.
"It's hers, God bless 'er!" he had said the night after John's departure,
"an' I'm mighty glad she's got it. She ain't had much t' make 'er glad
since I've been around these diggin's."
Those were evenings never to be forgotten. As Hugh read, Elizabeth
listened with the open-mouthed joy of girlhood, but the substance of what
they read was viewed from the standpoint of a woman. Hugh found the girl's
mind keen and alert. They began to turn to the classics, and Hugh Noland,
whose profession it had been to teach, was surprised and delighted with
the aptitude and viewpoints of his pupil. Elizabeth pursued literature
with her usual thoroughgoing absorption; the dictionary was brought out
and laid upon the table, and with it she spent long hours when Hugh was in
the field.
The second week in June, Hugh Noland was brought to a sudden stop in the
delicious holiday experience by a remark of Elizabeth's. The book had been
finished earlier than was usual for them to stop reading, and it had been
decided that it was too late to begin another that night. Hugh was not
ready to go to bed, and sat watching her as she straightened up the
littered table. A book of poems they had once read fell open and the girl
picked it up and began to read to herself. In a moment she was literally
engulfed in it, and he watched her deep abstraction in full sympathy with
the mood it represented. Presently she began to read aloud.
Elizabeth read on and on, and Hugh dropped back into his chair and
listened, studying her as she stood before him reading so intently that
she forgot that she stood. When the end was reached she dropped the book
on the table with a rapturous indrawn breath.
"I never knew what real happiness was before," she said. "I wonder if they
read in heaven?"
"They'd have to let us read in our heaven or it wouldn't be heaven," Hugh
Noland replied.
With the words still in his mouth he realized what he had said. The
serpent had invaded their paradise: henceforth they would wander outside
of its confines. With a self-conscious flush, he shifted the eyes into
which she was looking, and arose to say good-night.
Although she did not understand it, Elizabeth also turned hastily away;
Hugh Noland's embarrassment communicated itself to her. Her confusion
puzzled her. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was near midnight; she
had read longer than she had thought. In her surprised consideration of
what Hepsie would think if she should hear Hugh pass her door at that
hour, she got the first burst of light on the subject. Until now she had
gone along night after night reading with Hugh Noland, absorbed in the
books, and without any sort of attitude toward the man except that of
good-fellowship, but now she stood revealed to herself and was covered
with shame. That Hugh might be in love with her did not occur to her, but
that he knew that she had feelings out of keeping with her vows of
marriage she felt certain, and with her usual intensity Elizabeth went
over the mark in her shame and contrition.
"What must he have thought I meant? What must he think of me as a woman?
Worse yet, what must he think of me as a wife?" she asked herself, and
each question left her more bitterly humiliated, more self-distrusting,
more unhappy.
They were to learn, however, that three months of continual association
over the books had formed a habit not easily laid aside. To the habit of
intellectual companionship had been added the joy of close and
reciprocated affection, and the sudden breaking off of this daily
communication left both of them, especially Hugh, in a condition of almost
tragic loneliness, but honest of heart and true of purpose, both avoided
further readings.
The nights were hot now; "good corn weather," Jake called it, and the time
had come to "lay by" the early planting. John's absence had retarded the
plowing, for try as he would the chores kept Hugh late in the morning and
had compelled him to quit early at night. It had not been his intention to
take the place of an active field worker, but the season had come on so
rapidly that the weeds threatened to get the better of the hired men, and
though it was all to learn over again, Hugh had gone out with the
intention of doing good work and had succeeded, to Jake's astonishment and
great admiration. It served Hugh's plans at this point to put in the long
hours away from the house, knowing that otherwise he would fall back into
the old life of the book at once. At first the heavy cultivator handles
absorbed his time and thought, for it was fifteen years since Hugh Noland
had cultivated corn, but when the work became more mechanical his mind
wandered back to forbidden ground and the days were harder than any he had
ever known.
One frightfully hot day, near the end of the plowing of the first field,
which lay near the house, Hugh found it necessary to rest the horses
frequently. With each period of rest his thoughts returned to Elizabeth
with new force and longing; his mind worked continually on the reading
matter they had gone over, and constantly he wanted to elaborate or
discuss some subject left unfinished. It was the devil with which he had
to wrestle. Also, she showed the strain of disappointment when he met her
at meals, and he found himself struggling with Doctor Morgan's
observations on her health, her husband, and her happiness. As far as John
was concerned, he thought the old doctor was mistaken, and be it
remembered, Hugh Noland had a genuine liking for John Hunter. That liking
added to the seriousness of his situation in John Hunter's home.
He mopped his perspiring brow, while little wet lines showed in the
creases of his sleeves and across the back of his thin summer shirt. The
fierce heat parched his mouth and his whole burning body called for a
drink. Tying his team to a post an hour after noon he vaulted over the
fence and walked to the creek, picking his way down to the narrow stream.
The heat of summer was drying the brook up rapidly; already there was but
a tiny rivulet, but such as was left curled and trickled between grassy
banks in a manner to attract the eye of a thirsty man. Hugh knelt on a
hummock with his hand on the opposite bank and drank as only the man who
plows corn on a hot June day can. As he stood up he paused with his
handkerchief halfway to his face and listened, while the water dripped
from nose and chin unheeded. The continuous tones of a voice reading aloud
reached him. It was such a curious place to encounter such a phenomenon
that he listened intently for a moment.
"Elizabeth!" he whispered.
Every pulse in Hugh Noland's body pounded suddenly. On the first impulse
he was away in her direction, walking rapidly and without effort at
concealment. Without taking time to think, without knowing or caring
whether it were wise, he walked as straight toward the spot as the laden
bee to the hive.
Hugh's coming fell upon Elizabeth suddenly, but the perfect naturalness of
her joy put him at his ease.
"I heard you reading," he said simply. "What are you working on now?"
He threw himself down on the grass beside the willow trunk on which she
was seated and held out his hand for the book. After running his eye over
the page he handed it back to her with the request that she read on. The
heat of the summer day shimmered along the horizon outside, but here in
the cool shade of the willows the delicious afternoon air lulled his
senses and made of the spot a paradise of comfort and contentment. The
girl was the embodiment of everything sweet and womanly to him, and the
joy of the moment, bringing added colour to her cheeks, made the utmost
contrast imaginable to the dust and drudgery of the afternoon in the corn
rows.
Hugh's coming had been so obviously voluntary and joyous that the fear she
had entertained, that he would think ill of her as John Hunter's wife, was
set at rest. The old confidence, sympathy, and companionship were
retendered, and the girl met it with her habitual openness. She accepted
the book from his hand and read as asked. Hugh Noland watched her
earnestly, and recalled the things he had been told about her and her
affairs. On more than one occasion he had been told that she had been
neglected, and at the time had put the tale away as foolish farm gossip,
but Doctor Morgan was no fool, and his gossip was usually not only true
but had on this particular occasion fallen out with vehemence and
conviction. As he looked at her he asked himself how any man could neglect
a woman of Elizabeth's sincere qualities. She was so true that the only
indication that he had ever received of even a slight difference of
opinion with her husband had been the accidental one regarding debts. He
remembered a remark of Sadie Hansen's to the effect that John Hunter never
took his wife anywhere, and he remembered that in the four months he had
been in the house he had never heard him offer to do so, and then Hugh
Noland remembered that he had no right to think about it at all. However,
his mind recurred to it in spite of all he could do, and presently he was
immersed in the old consideration. Loyalty must be one of her qualities:
four months he had been in her house and she had never been taken anywhere
except to Nathan's, where he himself had taken her, and she had never
remarked upon it, and she was but twenty-three!
"Twenty-three!" he said under his breath.
"What was it you said?" Elizabeth asked, looking up.
"Nothing," he replied guiltily.
Elizabeth became conscious and embarrassed.
"I've kept you all afternoon!" she exclaimed, getting suddenly to her
feet.
"I wanted to be kept," Hugh admitted slowly, rising also. "It's
frightfully hot in the middle of the afternoon. I'll work late, and milk
after dark."
"I'll bring up the cows and do the milking," she volunteered.
"Let me see you!" he protested, and went to his work again.
Hugh Noland had never even guessed that he would walk deliberately over
and spend a whole afternoon with a woman he had no right to love after
becoming aware that he was already in love with her. For the first time he
stood in the limelight of strong emotions and knew himself for what he
was, not only that he was a mere man, but that he was a man who was not
showing the proper control over feelings and emotions which thousands of
men and women alike controlled every day. He worked his problem over as he
worked the mellow soil about the corn roots and made himself late, but
with contradictory impulses hurried the milking when he did get at it so
as to get down to the book again.
Elizabeth had taken time to think out her side of their position, and told
herself that she hoped that Hugh would not offer to read to-night, but as
the time approached she trimmed the lamp and arranged the books on the
sitting-room table with a slight sense of worry for fear he would not
come, and conscious that the evening was going fast. It was late when they
began, and correspondingly late when they finished the reading that
night.
The next night Hugh sat on the upturned manure cart talking to the men
till he saw Elizabeth put out the light in the sitting room, and then, in
spite of the fact that he had been strong enough to stay away, was sorry
that he had not had one more night's reading with her before John came
home. John was coming in the morning, and Hugh was to meet him, and Hugh
Noland did not like himself, nor the position he would be in when he
thought of greeting John Hunter as a friend.
The better to think things out and decide what he would do, Hugh sat down
on the doorstep and did not go in. The night was perfect. There was a full
moon and the soft breeze was a delicious reminder of the coolness of the
leafy bower among the willows where he had spent the afternoon with
Elizabeth. There was to be no more of Elizabeth for him, God bless her!
Elizabeth was a wife and honour demanded that not even a glance of
affection pass between them. This Hugh Noland believed, and yet when they
were together their little embarrassments cried their love aloud, and
neither could mentally avoid the issue. Each had known that the other had
resolved and suffered and fallen into the temptation of the reading. The
book was becoming a delicious torment. He could not stay in that house.
Plainly, it was going to be necessary for him to go away. The business
demanded his attention, and he decided to go to Mitchell County. At that
point Hugh stopped in his calculations to consider how things would run at
this end of the line if he did so.
In summing the business up, Hugh summed up his impression of John Hunter
along with it, and found himself reluctant to go away and leave everything
in his hands. John was industrious and tidy about his work. Dear old John!
He had come very near Hugh's heart in the short time they had been
together. The daily consideration of possible death had mellowed Hugh
Noland's naturally fine nature, and given him the tenderness of attitude
and thought that the sublime and inevitable impose upon those who live in
its shadow. Actions considered as final are warmer and less likely to be
inconsiderate than those where there is a feeling of indefinite time to
correct mistakes. Hugh sat now and let his heart run out to John with all
the love of a more than usually affectionate nature. In his heart he
wanted John back home, and yet it made him uneasy. There was a peculiar
sense of being a traitor as he considered the meeting with this man who
had trusted his home in his hands. In regard to the business, he, Hugh,
would have to let things take their own course. All he had on earth was in
this farm now, but he would get away as soon as he could possibly do so;
he would sacrifice that much to the man whose home he had entered. Hugh
knew to a nicety how necessary it would be for his interests in a business
way to be here on the ground and keep John Hunter from going into debt.
Hugh had his own judgment, neighbourhood gossip, and Doctor Morgan's plain
instructions on that point, but was resolved to go if he lost all that he
had in so doing. "Well, at any rate, he can't mortgage anything without
consulting me, and I'll get as much of the stock out there as I can after
next year--that is, if there is any next year for me," he said, as he got
up to go to bed long after midnight.
The morning of John's return Elizabeth asked Hugh to take her as far as
Nathan's on his way in to town. Hugh had not sat on the step till midnight
the night before to let himself fall into temptation the first thing in
the morning, and suggested that since the shafts of the buggy were mended
that she drive over to Nathan's alone, giving as his reason that he might
be unable to come back promptly. The girl fell into his plan so readily
that Hugh in his contradictory frame of mind wondered about it and was
half hurt. As he hitched Patsie into the shafts, however, he reasoned it
out that Elizabeth Hunter was probably making the same fight that he was
making. He tied the mare in the side lane and left her there without going
to the house as usual to help with Jack. If she were fighting for her own
esteem, as he was doing, Hugh resolved not to be the cause of temptation;
it made him feel a little better about meeting John. Could he have known,
as Elizabeth did, that it was the first time since her marriage that she
had had the privilege of driving alone and that the precedent once
established would settle the possibility of demanding a horse whenever she
wanted it, it would have put a different complexion on the matter.
In order for Elizabeth to use the buggy, however, Hugh was obliged to
drive the strange team. Jake had been using them since John's absence, but
had come in from the field the night before with the announcement that he
did not intend "to risk his neck with them broncos any more." Before Hugh
got to Colebyville he was thoroughly displeased with them, and spoke of
his dislike of them to John on the way home.
"A few days on the harvester 'll fix them," John replied.
"Well, they're acting better than they did on the way in. They're hot and
tired, and maybe the harvester will do it, but they're a bad lot," Hugh
replied wearily. "I feel that I've got to get away to Mitchell County. The
cattle have been on my mind for days. You'll have this team on your hands,
for none of the men but Jake would try to use them, and he told me last
night he'd used them for the last time."
"Aren't you well, Hugh?" John Hunter asked with such concern that Hugh was
covered with humiliation and shame.
"Oh, yes-s-s. But you can run the place and I'm not hanging out like I
thought I could--and I like it down there; it's more like the life I've
been ordered to lead."
"Wait till the rye has been cut. Did you say Silas wanted us to cut his
too?" John Hunter asked.
"Yes. He stopped me as I drove over this morning. The boys will lay the
early corn by to-day; we can get the binder out to-morrow and see that it
is ready by the day after. We might have been through with the corn
to-day, but I've been lazy of late. I knocked off and rested and read most
of the hot part of yesterday afternoon," Hugh replied slowly. He wished in
his heart that he could tell all.
"That's the thing to do. I'm not going to have you going down to Mitchell
County while it's so hot. You'll lay around the house and read, that's
what You'll do, and I'll run this farm for a while."
The thought of that took Hugh Noland's breath. That was what he was
running away from, but he could think of no reason but his health, and
dropped the subject to get away from it.
John Hunter asked questions about every feature of the farm work, and as
he asked watched Hugh's face, looking anxiously for signs of breaking
health. Under no conditions would he let Hugh get sick. Hugh had been the
happiest circumstance of this farming experience. There was a discouraged
note in Hugh's voice that John did not like.
"Did you see Morgan to-day?" he asked after he had had all the farm work
explained to him.
"Oh, now, don't you get to worrying because I happen to mention my health.
Yes, I saw Morgan, and he agreed with me that the other place would be
better for me. I can run that and you can run this, and with care we ought
to make some money pretty soon."
"But that takes you away from us and--and we want you here!" John
exclaimed with such fervour that Hugh winced under it.
Hugh smiled so sadly back at the eager, boyish face turned to his that
John was more than ever sure he was ill. His hand shot out to him with an
almost womanish sympathy.
"We'll see to it that you're kept busy where you belong, and the work
won't wear you out either, my boy," he said.
Hugh saw that he was getting deeper in at every word he uttered and went
back to a discussion of the farm work.
Elizabeth waited intentionally till she saw the men pass Nathan's house
before she started home. Try as she would, she did not yearn for her
husband's return. Life was short, her youth was going fast, and her fear
of the faded life grew as she looked forward to an old age spent with John
Hunter after Hugh's departure. Hugh must go, there was no question about
that. He had told her night before last that he thought of it; had spoken
of it incidentally enough, but in such wise that the girl knew why he was
going. She had felt at the time that Hugh listened for her reply, but
there was none she could make, and her silence added the final word to his
decision. Elizabeth knew that it was the only honourable course; she
consented to it in her mind, and yet, as she looked ahead to a time when
she could not have him to take shelter behind with the cream jars of her
life, she was sick at what she must face. Even to-day she hoped that he
would be present when she drove Patsie into the yard.
Fortune favoured Elizabeth in getting home with the horse and buggy. John
had said that he was going to the pasture to look over the stock, and when
Hugh saw Elizabeth drive through the gate they had left open, there was
nothing for him to do but go forward to take her horse. John had seen her
coming and had come back from the pasture gate, and the three met.
"See how brave I have become in your absence," she said.
"Well, I guess you've driven horses as long as I have," John Hunter
replied happily, and kissed the astonished wife and the child in her arms
with such real pleasure in returning to them that it was good to meet him
after all.
"If he'd always be like that," Elizabeth thought wistfully, and Hugh
Noland felt more like a criminal in the presence of that kiss than he had
ever done in his life.
"Here, I'll tie Patsie up after I give her a drink. You go in with
Elizabeth and I'll follow as soon as its done," John said to Hugh, and
turning to Elizabeth said, "You haven't taken very good care of him since
I've been away, dear. Go on in and get a book and I'll listen for an hour
before I go to the pasture."
"I'll do no such thing. I'll go to that pasture with you--that's what I'll
do. I'm not sick. Rats! Elizabeth knows I----"
Hugh Noland stopped short, "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hunter," he added
confusedly.
"I don't know why you shouldn't call me by my first name; I do you,"
Elizabeth answered, glad in spite of herself.
Hugh went away with John, and Elizabeth had a long time to think about it.
It was the first time Hugh had ever dropped into the least familiarity in
addressing her, and no amount of reasoning could keep her from feeling a
thrill of pleasure over it. She did not approve of herself, but the thrill
was there. She hated herself, but the thrill remained. She wondered
bitterly if she would ever be able to approve of herself again; every turn
of life's wheel brought out some new and hitherto unsuspected
characteristic, and try as she would she could not make herself do as her
code of morals demanded that she should. She thought of her various
friends; none of them had ever been guilty of the things Elizabeth found
herself culpable of. Sadie had rebelled against her first child, but when
shown the consequences had cheerfully applied the lesson, while she,
Elizabeth, had been unable to put into practice later the very precepts
she had so glibly given her neighbour. None of her friends had ever
committed the folly of falling in love with men who were not their
husbands.
Elizabeth would not stay for the reading that night, and had a bad hour
before she fell asleep. Her love for Hugh looked even worse to her since
John's arrival than it had done before. This new phase of her life was
even less able to command respect than any which had preceded it. Why was
she vexed with such unheard of temptations? It did not comfort her to
reason it out that this thing had fallen upon her without any wish of
hers, that the thrill which had followed his use of her name was not a
thing she had deliberately fostered within herself; she demanded of
herself that she should not thrill at his voice, not knowing that she
demanded the impossible.
The rye was to be cut at Silas Chamberlain's. John suggested to Elizabeth
that she had better go over to help Liza Ann, since she was alone, saying
that he would take her over when he went. Hugh was to go with the machine.
Jake would drive the extra team over, and the other two men would plow
corn at home. A few minutes before nine o'clock John announced that he was
ready. He had come in to carry Jack to the buggy for her. John had gone
away with the impressions of Elizabeth's illness still upon him, and
looked out for her with the same care he had accorded her when an
invalid.
"How long?" he asked, dropping down on the foot of the bed beside the
machine upon which she had been putting in the spare time.
"Just this one little seam; I'll have it done then."
She stooped over the machine to finish the seam quickly, not liking to
keep John waiting when he was already somewhat late.
Jack slipped from his father's lap, and fascinated by the swiftly moving
wheel on a level with his face, put out a pudgy little forefinger to feel
of it as it went around. His mother saw it and stopped short with a little
cry of alarm.
"Don't do that, Jack!" she said sharply. "It'll take your finger right off
of your hand if you get it in there."
Jack put his hand behind his little back, and stood in round-eyed wonder
watching the wheel as she started to sew again.
John was getting restless and wanted to go.
"Aren't you about----"
Elizabeth looked up at him as he started to speak, and Jack's finger shot
out to the forbidden wheel on the instant. Elizabeth saw it at a point
when she could not control the pedal with her foot. Mother love brought a
scream to her lips, and to save the child she gave him a shove with her
hand. Jack fell on the floor in a heap, striking his head on the bedpost
as he did so.
John had clutched at him ineffectually as he fell and caught him up as
soon as he could get hold of him, turning him over in his arms to see
where he was hurt. The blood spurted from the little nose, giving an
appearance of serious injury to the matter all out of proportion to the
exact nature of the damage sustained, but as usual, when excited, John saw
only surface indications.
"What does possess you when you're cross?" he exclaimed as he relinquished
his hold on the baby, who, however badly he might be hurt, was struggling
to get to his mother's arms.
Elizabeth carried the screaming child to the kitchen to bathe the bruised
nose and apply a wet cloth to the nasty blue ridge beginning to form where
the little cheek had encountered the bedpost.
"I never saw any one act like you do with a child," John said with his
usual irritation.
"I didn't intend to knock him over, but I couldn't stop my foot and I
thought he'd get his little finger taken right off before my very eyes."
"Well, you shouldn't go at him so rough. You always treat him as if he
were a block of wood."
Elizabeth's lips closed down tight, and to keep Jack from hearing further
criticisms of her management she went back to the bedroom. When John was
ready to go he called to her from the lane, and she carried Jack to the
door instead of laying him down.
"Take Hepsie with you. Tell Mrs. Chamberlain that I got ready to come.
He'd probably be cross if I went now. Hepsie's in the potato patch,"
Elizabeth said in a low voice, and went back so promptly that John could
not reply.
John took Hepsie with him, and explained to Liza Ann, as Elizabeth
requested, that she was unable to come because Jack had hurt himself.
The day was dry and hot, and John Hunter consumed water like a fish upon
all occasions. The discovery that the water-jugs had been left at home
called for instant action when he arrived in the field. Silas had put his
team on the binder and Patsie was free for use on just such errands as
this. The machine had just been driven up to where Hugh could ask for
water also. John crossed over and laid his hand on the lines.
"Here, you take the horse and go for the water. I forgot the jugs; You'll
have to go clear home after them."
"Why don't you do it?" Hugh asked.
John Hunter looked him over rather sharply and replied:
"Because I'm going to drive this binder to-day. I don't like your voice
very well since I got home, Hugh."
"You won't hear very much more of it if I can get away day after
to-morrow," Hugh replied, smiling at the turn he had given to John's
sympathy.
John Hunter grinned back at him, but kept his hand on the lines, and Hugh
got down.
"You can't start day after to-morrow, for we won't get this rye done, and
you won't start then, my boy, with such a note in your voice as that. I've
spoken to Jake about it and he'll go. I don't propose to have you that far
away when you are not well--it ain't what we want you for. Go on and get
that water," he added when he saw the expression of protest in Hugh's
face.
Hugh went without argument, but his determination was as strong as ever.
Instead of going around the road he drove across the field to the fence
between the two places, and, tying Patsie, walked through the cornfield to
the pasture and on toward the house.
The hot sun blazed fiercely down on his thinly clad back, and he noticed
as he struggled through the tasselling corn that the leaves were already
firing about the roots. Rain was essential, but he reflected that enough
rain to do the corn any good would ruin the small grain now ready to cut.
"Kansas luck," he muttered as he crossed the deep ridges thrown up by his
own cultivator a few days before. Not a breath of air was stirring, and by
the time he had reached the house he was hot and tired. Reflecting that
John had taken Elizabeth to Chamberlain's, he decided to rest before he
started back with the heavy water-jugs. He stopped in the kitchen for a
drink and took a small bottle out of his pocket.
"Two, I guess, this time," he said as he poured the tablets into his hand.
He dropped his finger on the other wrist a moment, and then swallowed both
pellets.
Elizabeth heard him settle himself in a rocking chair with a long-drawn
breath of comfort. She was giving Jack little pats to ease him off to
sleep and the house was very quiet. She decided to keep still and let him
return to the field without seeing her tear-stained face, but Jack roused
with a low whimpering cry which she felt sure Hugh must have heard, and as
soon as the child was asleep she walked out without further effort at
concealment.
At the noise of the opening door Hugh Noland sprang to his feet in
surprise; he had been half-asleep.
"Why, I didn't know that you were here!" he exclaimed when he saw that it
was Elizabeth. "I thought you went to Chamberlain's."
His eyes riveted themselves upon her swollen eyelids, and when she stood
embarrassed before him and did not reply readily, conscious only of his
searching gaze, he misunderstood and added gravely:
"Elizabeth, there is something I must speak about. I cannot have you
worried over matters between us----"
Elizabeth Hunter's eyes ceased to be shy and troubled and came up to his
in such complete astonishment that he broke off in confusion.
There was a pause for one short second, and then Elizabeth spoke in
nervous haste, and as if to ward off something.
"I--I--I wasn't crying about--that is, I hurt Jack accidentally and--and
John misunderstood."
Even while the words were still in her mouth, she realized by his
expression that what she was saying sounded like a complaint, as if she
were exposing a difference between herself and her husband, and that was
the one thing that under no circumstances had she ever done. She made a
frightened stop without ending the sentence.
As if to save his mother from needless embarrassment, Jack slipped to the
floor and came stumbling out on sleepy legs, tired and cross, and rubbing
his sweaty little face with hot, sweaty little fists, and demanding his
mother's attention. Elizabeth turned to him with a relief beyond words.
Hugh Noland, who had always loved the child, was never so glad to see him,
and slipped away while he was being soothed and petted out of his tears
and discomfort. Both Hugh and Elizabeth knew that but for Jack's timely
interruption words would have escaped Hugh that they both preferred should
not be uttered. Both knew the situation, but both saw that it would be
easier, as well as safer and more honourable, not to discuss it.
"I'll not think any more about going away--I wouldn't do it if I had
money," she decided as she watched Hugh return with his jug. "I married
John Hunter in good faith, and I'll live with him in good faith and
straighten things out." The thought of her love for Hugh came up and she
added, "I don't care! I didn't go out to hunt up a love for him and I
can't help it if it has come to me; but I hope he gets away to Mitchell
County day after to-morrow."