WHEREIN ELNORA GRADUATES, AND FRECKLES AND THE ANGEL SEND GIFTS
That was Friday night. Elnora came home Saturday morning and began
work. Mrs. Comstock asked no questions, and the girl only told her that
the audience had been large enough to more than pay for the piece of
statuary the class had selected for the hall. Then she inquired about
her dresses and was told they would be ready for her. She had been
invited to go to the Bird Woman’s to prepare for both the sermon and
Commencement exercises. Since there was so much practising to do, it
had been arranged that she should remain there from the night of the
sermon until after she was graduated. If Mrs. Comstock decided to
attend she was to drive in with the Sintons. When Elnora begged her to
come she said she cared nothing about such silliness.
It was almost time for Wesley to come to take Elnora to the city, when
fresh from her bath, and dressed to her outer garment, she stood with
expectant face before her mother and cried: “Now my dress, mother!”
Mrs. Comstock was pale as she replied: “It’s on my bed. Help yourself.”
Elnora opened the door and stepped into her mother’s room with never a
misgiving. Since the night Margaret and Wesley had brought her
clothing, when she first started to school, her mother had selected all
of her dresses, with Mrs. Sinton’s help made most of them, and Elnora
had paid the bills. The white dress of the previous spring was the
first made at a dressmaker’s. She had worn that as junior usher at
Commencement; but her mother had selected the material, had it made,
and it had fitted perfectly and had been suitable in every way. So with
her heart at rest on that point, Elnora hurried to the bed to find only
her last summer’s white dress, freshly washed and ironed. For an
instant she stared at it, then she picked up the garment, looked at the
bed beneath it, and her gaze slowly swept the room.
It was unfamiliar. Perhaps this was the third time she had been in it
since she was a very small child. Her eyes ranged over the beautiful
walnut dresser, the tall bureau, the big chest, inside which she never
had seen, and the row of masculine attire hanging above it. Somewhere a
dainty lawn or mull dress simply must be hanging: but it was not.
Elnora dropped on the chest because she felt too weak to stand. In less
than two hours she must be in the church, at Onabasha. She could not
wear a last year’s washed dress. She had nothing else. She leaned
against the wall and her father’s overcoat brushed her face. She caught
the folds and clung to it with all her might.
“Oh father! Father!” she moaned. “I need you! I don’t believe you would
have done this!” At last she opened the door.
“I can’t find my dress,” she said.
“Well, as it’s the only one there I shouldn’t think it would be much
trouble.”
“You mean for me to wear an old washed dress to-night?”
“It’s a good dress. There isn’t a hole in it! There’s no reason on
earth why you shouldn’t wear it.”
“Except that I will not,” said Elnora. “Didn’t you provide any dress
for Commencement, either?”
“If you soil that to-night, I’ve plenty of time to wash it again.”
Wesley’s voice called from the gate.
“In a minute,” answered Elnora.
She ran upstairs and in an incredibly short time came down wearing one
of her gingham school dresses. Her face cold and hard, she passed her
mother and went into the night. Half an hour later Margaret and Billy
stopped for Mrs. Comstock with the carriage. She had determined fully
that she would not go before they called. With the sound of their
voices a sort of horror of being left seized her, so she put on her
hat, locked the door and went out to them.
“How did Elnora look?” inquired Margaret anxiously.
“Like she always does,” answered Mrs. Comstock curtly.
“I do hope her dresses are as pretty as the others,” said Margaret.
“None of them will have prettier faces or nicer ways.”
Wesley was waiting before the big church to take care of the team. As
they stood watching the people enter the building, Mrs. Comstock felt
herself growing ill. When they went inside among the lights, saw the
flower-decked stage, and the masses of finely dressed people, she grew
no better. She could hear Margaret and Billy softly commenting on what
was being done.
“That first chair in the very front row is Elnora’s,” exulted Billy,
“cos she’s got the highest grades, and so she gets to lead the
procession to the platform.”
“The first chair!” “Lead the procession!” Mrs. Comstock was
dumbfounded. The notes of the pipe organ began to fill the building in
a slow rolling march. Would Elnora lead the procession in a gingham
dress? Or would she be absent and her chair vacant on this great
occasion? For now, Mrs. Comstock could see that it was a great
occasion. Every one would remember how Elnora had played a few nights
before, and they would miss her and pity her. Pity? Because she had no
one to care for her. Because she was worse off than if she had no
mother. For the first time in her life, Mrs. Comstock began to study
herself as she would appear to others. Every time a junior girl came
fluttering down the aisle, leading some one to a seat, and Mrs.
Comstock saw a beautiful white dress pass, a wave of positive illness
swept over her. What had she done? What would become of Elnora?
As Elnora rode to the city, she answered Wesley’s questions in
monosyllables so that he thought she was nervous or rehearsing her
speech and did not care to talk. Several times the girl tried to tell
him and realized that if she said the first word it would bring
uncontrollable tears. The Bird Woman opened the screen and stared
unbelievingly.
“Why, I thought you would be ready; you are so late!” she said. “If you
have waited to dress here, we must hurry.”
“I have nothing to put on,” said Elnora.
In bewilderment the Bird Woman drew her inside.
“Did—did—” she faltered. “Did you think you would wear that?”
“No. I thought I would telephone Ellen that there had been an accident
and I could not come. I don’t know yet how to explain. I’m too sick to
think. Oh, do you suppose I can get something made by Tuesday, so that
I can graduate?”
“Yes; and you’ll get something on you to-night, so that you can lead
your class, as you have done for four years. Go to my room and take off
that gingham, quickly. Anna, drop everything, and come help me.”
The Bird Woman ran to the telephone and called Ellen Brownlee.
“Elnora has had an accident. She will be a little late,” she said. “You
have got to make them wait. Have them play extra music before the
march.”
Then she turned to the maid. “Tell Benson to have the carriage at the
gate, just as soon as he can get it there. Then come to my room. Bring
the thread box from the sewing-room, that roll of wide white ribbon on
the cutting table, and gather all the white pins from every dresser in
the house. But first come with me a minute.”
“I want that trunk with the Swamp Angel’s stuff in it, from the cedar
closet,” she panted as they reached the top of the stairs.
They hurried down the hall together and dragged the big trunk to the
Bird Woman’s room. She opened it and began tossing out white stuff.
“How lucky that she left these things!” she cried. “Here are white
shoes, gloves, stockings, fans, everything!”
“I am all ready but a dress,” said Elnora.
The Bird Woman began opening closets and pulling out drawers and boxes.
“I think I can make it this way,” she said.
She snatched up a creamy lace yoke with long sleeves that recently had
been made for her and held it out. Elnora slipped into it, and the Bird
Woman began smoothing out wrinkles and sewing in pins. It fitted very
well with a little lapping in the back. Next, from among the Angel’s
clothing she caught up a white silk waist with low neck and elbow
sleeves, and Elnora put it on. It was large enough, but distressingly
short in the waist, for the Angel had worn it at a party when she was
sixteen. The Bird Woman loosened the sleeves and pushed them to a puff
on the shoulders, catching them in places with pins. She began on the
wide draping of the yoke, fastening it front, back and at each
shoulder. She pulled down the waist and pinned it. Next came a soft
white dress skirt of her own. By pinning her waist band quite four
inches above Elnora’s, the Bird Woman could secure a perfect Empire
sweep, with the clinging silk. Then she began with the wide white
ribbon that was to trim a new frock for herself, bound it three times
around the high waist effect she had managed, tied the ends in a knot
and let them fall to the floor in a beautiful sash.
“I want four white roses, each with two or three leaves,” she cried.
Anna ran to bring them, while the Bird Woman added pins.
“Elnora,” she said, “forgive me, but tell me truly. Is your mother so
poor as to make this necessary?”
“No,” answered Elnora. “Next year I am heir to my share of over three
hundred acres of land covered with almost as valuable timber as was in
the Limberlost. We adjoin it. There could be thirty oil wells drilled
that would yield to us the thousands our neighbours are draining from
under us, and the bare land is worth over one hundred dollars an acre
for farming. She is not poor, she is—I don’t know what she is. A great
trouble soured and warped her. It made her peculiar. She does not in
the least understand, but it is because she doesn’t care to, instead of
ignorance. She does not——”
Elnora stopped.
“She is—is different,” finished the girl.
Anna came with the roses. The Bird Woman set one on the front of the
draped yoke, one on each shoulder and the last among the bright masses
of brown hair. Then she turned the girl facing the tall mirror.
“Oh!” panted Elnora. “You are a genius! Why, I will look as well as any
of them.”
“Thank goodness for that!” cried the Bird Woman. “If it wouldn’t do, I
should have been ill. You are lovely; altogether lovely! Ordinarily I
shouldn’t say that; but when I think of how you are carpentered, I’m
admiring the result.”
The organ began rolling out the march as they came in sight. Elnora
took her place at the head of the procession, while every one wondered.
Secretly they had hoped that she would be dressed well enough, that she
would not appear poor and neglected. What this radiant young creature,
gowned in the most recent style, her smooth skin flushed with
excitement, and a rose-set coronet of red gold on her head, had to do
with the girl they knew was difficult to decide. The signal was given
and Elnora began the slow march across the vestry and down the aisle.
The music welled softly, and Margaret began to sob without knowing why.
Mrs. Comstock gripped her hands together and shut her eyes. It seemed
an eternity to the suffering woman before Margaret caught her arm and
whispered, “Oh, Kate! For any sake look at her! Here! The aisle
across!”
Mrs. Comstock opened her eyes and directing them where she was told,
gazed intently, and slid down in her seat close to collapse. She was
saved by Margaret’s tense clasp and her command: “Here! Idiot! Stop
that!”
In the blaze of light Elnora climbed the steps to the palm-embowered
platform, crossed it and took her place. Sixty young men and women,
each of them dressed the best possible, followed her. There were manly,
fine-looking men in that class which Elnora led. There were girls of
beauty and grace, but not one of them was handsomer or clothed in
better taste than she.
Billy thought the time never would come when Elnora would see him, but
at last she met his eye, then Margaret and Wesley had faint signs of
recognition in turn, but there was no softening of the girl’s face and
no hint of a smile when she saw her mother.
Heartsick, Katharine Comstock tried to prove to herself that she was
justified in what she had done, but she could not. She tried to blame
Elnora for not saying that she was to lead a procession and sit on a
platform in the sight of hundreds of people; but that was impossible,
for she realized that she would have scoffed and not understood if she
had been told. Her heart pained until she suffered with every breath.
When at last the exercises were over she climbed into the carriage and
rode home without a word. She did not hear what Margaret and Billy were
saying. She scarcely heard Wesley, who drove behind, when he told her
that Elnora would not be home until Wednesday. Early the next morning
Mrs. Comstock was on her way to Onabasha. She was waiting when the
Brownlee store opened. She examined ready-made white dresses, but they
had only one of the right size, and it was marked forty dollars. Mrs.
Comstock did not hesitate over the price, but whether the dress would
be suitable. She would have to ask Elnora. She inquired her way to the
home of the Bird Woman and knocked.
“Is Elnora Comstock here?” she asked the maid.
“Yes, but she is still in bed. I was told to let her sleep as long as
she would.”
“Maybe I could sit here and wait,” said Mrs. Comstock. “I want to see
about getting her a dress for to-morrow. I am her mother.”
“Then you don’t need wait or worry,” said the girl cheerfully. “There
are two women up in the sewing-room at work on a dress for her right
now. It will be done in time, and it will be a beauty.”
Mrs. Comstock turned and trudged back to the Limberlost. The bitterness
in her soul became a physical actuality, which water would not wash
from her lips. She was too late! She was not needed. Another woman was
mothering her girl. Another woman would prepare a beautiful dress such
as Elnora had worn the previous night. The girl’s love and gratitude
would go to her. Mrs. Comstock tried the old process of blaming some
one else, but she felt no better. She nursed her grief as closely as
ever in the long days of the girl’s absence. She brooded over Elnora’s
possession of the forbidden violin and her ability to play it until the
performance could not have been told from her father’s. She tried every
refuge her mind could conjure, to quiet her heart and remove the fear
that the girl never would come home again, but it persisted. Mrs.
Comstock could neither eat nor sleep. She wandered around the cabin and
garden. She kept far from the pool where Robert Comstock had sunk from
sight for she felt that it would entomb her also if Elnora did not come
home Wednesday morning. The mother told herself that she would wait,
but the waiting was as bitter as anything she ever had known.
When Elnora awoke Monday another dress was in the hands of a seamstress
and was soon fitted. It had belonged to the Angel, and was a soft white
thing that with a little alteration would serve admirably for
Commencement and the ball. All that day Elnora worked, helping prepare
the auditorium for the exercises, rehearsing the march and the speech
she was to make in behalf of the class. The following day was even
busier. But her mind was at rest, for the dress was a soft delicate
lace easy to change, and the marks of alteration impossible to detect.
The Bird Woman had telephoned to Grand Rapids, explained the situation
and asked the Angel if she might use it. The reply had been to give the
girl the contents of the chest. When the Bird Woman told Elnora, tears
filled her eyes.
“I will write at once and thank her,” she said. “With all her beautiful
gowns she does not need them, and I do. They will serve for me often,
and be much finer than anything I could afford. It is lovely of her to
give me the dress and of you to have it altered for me, as I never
could.”
The Bird Woman laughed. “I feel religious to-day,” she said. “You know
the first and greatest rock of my salvation is ‘Do unto others.’ I’m
only doing to you what there was no one to do for me when I was a girl
very like you. Anna tells me your mother was here early this morning
and that she came to see about getting you a dress.”
“She is too late!” said Elnora coldly. “She had over a month to prepare
my dresses, and I was to pay for them, so there is no excuse.”
“Nevertheless, she is your mother,” said the Bird Woman, softly. “I
think almost any kind of a mother must be better than none at all, and
you say she has had great trouble.”
“She loved my father and he died,” said Elnora. “The same thing, in
quite as tragic a manner, has happened to thousands of other women, and
they have gone on with calm faces and found happiness in life by loving
others. There was something else I am afraid I never shall forget; this
I know I shall not, but talking does not help. I must deliver my
presents and photographs to the crowd. I have a picture and I made a
present for you, too, if you would care for them.”
“I shall love anything you give me,” said the Bird Woman. “I know you
well enough to know that whatever you do will be beautiful.”
Elnora was pleased over that, and as she tried on her dress for the
last fitting she was really happy. She was lovely in the dainty gown:
it would serve finely for the ball and many other like occasions, and
it was her very own.
The Bird Woman’s driver took Elnora in the carriage and she called on
all the girls with whom she was especially intimate, and left her
picture and the package containing her gift to them. By the time she
returned parcels for her were arriving. Friends seemed to spring from
everywhere. Almost every one she knew had some gift for her, while
because they so loved her the members of her crowd had made her
beautiful presents. There were books, vases, silver pieces,
handkerchiefs, fans, boxes of flowers and candy. One big package
settled the trouble at Sinton’s, for it contained a dainty dress from
Margaret, a five-dollar gold piece, conspicuously labelled, “I earned
this myself,” from Billy, with which to buy music; and a gorgeous
cut-glass perfume bottle, it would have cost five dollars to fill with
even a moderate-priced scent, from Wesley.
In an expressed crate was a fine curly-maple dressing table, sent by
Freckles. The drawers were filled with wonderful toilet articles from
the Angel. The Bird Woman added an embroidered linen cover and a small
silver vase for a few flowers, so no girl of the class had finer gifts.
Elnora laid her head on the table sobbing happily, and the Bird Woman
was almost crying herself. Professor Henley sent a butterfly book, the
grade rooms in which Elnora had taught gave her a set of volumes
covering every phase of life afield, in the woods, and water. Elnora
had no time to read so she carried one of these books around with her
hugging it as she went. After she had gone to dress a queer-looking
package was brought by a small boy who hopped on one foot as he handed
it in and said: “Tell Elnora that is from her ma.”
“Who are you?” asked the Bird Woman as she took the bundle.
“I’m Billy!” announced the boy. “I gave her the five dollars. I earned
it myself dropping corn, sticking onions, and pulling weeds. My, but
you got to drop, and stick, and pull a lot before it’s five dollars’
worth.”
“Would you like to come in and see Elnora’s gifts?”
“Yes, ma’am!” said Billy, trying to stand quietly.
“Gee-mentley!” he gasped. “Does Elnora get all this?”
“Yes.”
“I bet you a thousand dollars I be first in my class when I graduate.
Say, have the others got a lot more than Elnora?”
“I think not.”
“Well, Uncle Wesley said to find out if I could, and if she didn’t have
as much as the rest, he’d buy till she did, if it took a hundred
dollars. Say, you ought to know him! He’s just scrumptious! There ain’t
anybody any where finer ’an he is. My, he’s grand!”
“I’m very sure of it!” said the Bird Woman. “I’ve often heard Elnora
say so.”
“I bet you nobody can beat this!” he boasted. Then he stopped, thinking
deeply. “I don’t know, though,” he began reflectively. “Some of them
are awful rich; they got big families to give them things and wagon
loads of friends, and I haven’t seen what they have. Now, maybe Elnora
is getting left, after all!”
“Don’t worry, Billy,” she said. “I will watch, and if I find Elnora is
‘getting left’ I’ll buy her some more things myself. But I’m sure she
is not. She has more beautiful gifts now than she will know what to do
with, and others will come. Tell your Uncle Wesley his girl is
bountifully remembered, very happy, and she sends her dearest love to
all of you. Now you must go, so I can help her dress. You will be there
to-night of course?”
“Yes, sir-ee! She got me a seat, third row from the front, middle
section, so I can see, and she’s going to wink at me, after she gets
her speech off her mind. She kissed me, too! She’s a perfect lady,
Elnora is. I’m going to marry her when I am big enough.”
“Why isn’t that splendid!” laughed the Bird Woman as she hurried
upstairs.
“Dear!” she called. “Here is another gift for you.”
Elnora was half disrobed as she took the package and, sitting on a
couch, opened it. The Bird Woman bent over her and tested the fabric
with her fingers.
“Why, bless my soul!” she cried. “Hand-woven, hand-embroidered linen,
fine as silk. It’s priceless! I haven’t seen such things in years. My
mother had garments like those when I was a child, but my sisters had
them cut up for collars, belts, and fancy waists while I was small.
Look at the exquisite work!”
“Where could it have come from?” cried Elnora.
She shook out a petticoat, with a hand-wrought ruffle a foot deep, then
an old-fashioned chemise the neck and sleeve work of which was
elaborate and perfectly wrought. On the breast was pinned a note that
she hastily opened.
“I was married in these,” it read, “and I had intended to be buried in
them, but perhaps it would be more sensible for you to graduate and get
married in them yourself, if you like. Your mother.”
“From my mother!” Wide-eyed, Elnora looked at the Bird Woman. “I never
in my life saw the like. Mother does things I think I never can
forgive, and when I feel hardest, she turns around and does something
that makes me think she just must love me a little bit, after all. Any
of the girls would give almost anything to graduate in hand-embroidered
linen like that. Money can’t buy such things. And they came when I was
thinking she didn’t care what became of me. Do you suppose she can be
insane?”
“Yes,” said the Bird Woman. “Wildly insane, if she does not love you
and care what becomes of you.”
Elnora arose and held the petticoat to her. “Will you look at it?” she
cried. “Only imagine her not getting my dress ready, and then sending
me such a petticoat as this! Ellen would pay fifty dollars for it and
never blink. I suppose mother has had it all my life, and I never saw
it before.”
“Go take your bath and put on those things,” said the Bird Woman.
“Forget everything and be happy. She is not insane. She is embittered.
She did not understand how things would be. When she saw, she came at
once to provide you a dress. This is her way of saying she is sorry she
did not get the other. You notice she has not spent any money, so
perhaps she is quite honest in saying she has none.”
“Oh, she is honest!” said Elnora. “She wouldn’t care enough to tell an
untruth. She’d say just how things were, no matter what happened.”
Soon Elnora was ready for her dress. She never had looked so well as
when she again headed the processional across the flower and palm
decked stage of the high school auditorium. As she sat there she could
have reached over and dropped a rose she carried into the seat she had
occupied that September morning when she entered the high school. She
spoke the few words she had to say in behalf of the class beautifully,
had the tiny wink ready for Billy, and the smile and nod of recognition
for Wesley and Margaret. When at last she looked into the eyes of a
white-faced woman next them, she slipped a hand to her side and raised
her skirt the fraction of an inch, just enough to let the embroidered
edge of a petticoat show a trifle. When she saw the look of relief
which flooded her mother’s face, Elnora knew that forgiveness was in
her heart, and that she would go home in the morning.
It was late afternoon before she arrived, and a dray followed with a
load of packages. Mrs. Comstock was overwhelmed. She sat half dazed and
made Elnora show her each costly and beautiful or simple and useful
gift, tell her carefully what it was and from where it came. She
studied the faces of Elnora’s particular friends. The gifts from them
had to be set in a group. Several times she started to speak and then
stopped. At last, between her dry lips, came a harsh whisper.
“Elnora, what did you give back for these things?”
“I’ll show you,” said Elnora cheerfully. “I made the same gifts for the
Bird Woman, Aunt Margaret and you if you care for it. But I have to run
upstairs to get it.”
When she returned she handed her mother an oblong frame, hand carved,
enclosing Elnora’s picture, taken by a schoolmate’s camera. She wore
her storm-coat and carried a dripping umbrella. From under it looked
her bright face; her books and lunchbox were on her arm, and across the
bottom of the frame was carved, “Your Country Classmate.”
Then she offered another frame.
“I am strong on frames,” she said. “They seemed to be the best I could
do without money. I located the maple and the black walnut myself, in a
little corner that had been overlooked between the river and the ditch.
They didn’t seem to belong to any one so I just took them. Uncle Wesley
said it was all right, and he cut and hauled them for me. I gave the
mill half of each tree for sawing and curing the remainder. Then I gave
the wood-carver half of that for making my frames. A photographer gave
me a lot of spoiled plates, and I boiled off the emulsion, and took the
specimens I framed from my stuff. The man said the white frames were
worth three and a half, and the black ones five. I exchanged those
little framed pictures for the photographs of the others. For presents,
I gave each one of my crowd one like this, only a different moth. The
Bird Woman gave me the birch bark. She got it up north last summer.”
Elnora handed her mother a handsome black-walnut frame a foot and a
half wide by two long. It finished a small, shallow glass-covered box
of birch bark, to the bottom of which clung a big night moth with
delicate pale green wings and long exquisite trailers.
“So you see I did not have to be ashamed of my gifts,” said Elnora. “I
made them myself and raised and mounted the moths.”
“Moth, you call it,” said Mrs. Comstock. “I’ve seen a few of the things
before.”
“They are numerous around us every June night, or at least they used to
be,” said Elnora. “I’ve sold hundreds of them, with butterflies,
dragonflies, and other specimens. Now, I must put away these and get to
work, for it is almost June and there are a few more I want dreadfully.
If I find them I will be paid some money for which I have been
working.”
She was afraid to say college at that time. She thought it would be
better to wait a few days and see if an opportunity would not come when
it would work in more naturally. Besides, unless she could secure the
Yellow Emperor she needed to complete her collection, she could not
talk college until she was of age, for she would have no money.