The Wind Before the Dawn Part 32

"I believe you are," he said, expressing the confirmation of a thing he had never doubted. "I ain't askin' you any questions, Lizzie, I just know--that's all."

With something like a glow about his heart, he opened the door of his simple dwelling. He had never doubted her, nor believed the nonsense he had heard about her, but he had just had his faith refreshed. He carried the baby to the one little bedroom of his house, scuffing a wooden rocking chair behind him across the rough floor. He established Elizabeth in it beside Sadie, and then placing the sleeping child in its mother's arms went back to the potato field, hurrying his work to finish before dark. He understood in a measure why this was Elizabeth's first visit to them, and he did not resent it. Luther never resented. He lived his own kindly, industrious life. If people did not like Sadie he accepted it as a fact, but not as a thing to be aggrieved about. He could wait for Sadie to grow, and others must wait also. In the meantime, Luther watched Elizabeth and desired growth for her; her smallest movement was of interest to him.

Elizabeth as a mother was a new feature. He remembered the deft way she had nestled the baby to her as he had relinquished it a few moments before, and thought with a sigh, of the cowhide-covered trunk filled with little garments under the bed by which she sat. Not even Sadie knew what the loss of that first child meant to Luther. A new love for women's ways with babies grew up in him as he thought of Elizabeth's cuddling.

In the house, Elizabeth was getting into touch with the young mother who was childless. Sadie, in spite of a determination not to do so, was warming to that touch reluctantly. After all, it was pleasant to be telling Elizabeth about it, and to have her asking as if she wanted to know.

"Yes--I took bad about a week ago," she was saying. "I'd been kind of miserable for several days. I got a fall that last rain we had, an' I didn't seem t' get over it."

"I'd have come sooner if I'd known it," Elizabeth said, thinking of Luther's acceptance of a similar statement. "Jake didn't even tell us last night what was the matter."

"I guess he didn't know. Would you 'a' come if you'd 'a' known, Lizzie?"

Before Elizabeth could reply, she continued, "Ma used t' think it'd be kind o' nice for me t' live close t' you, but I knew you wouldn't never come t' see me. I used t' be kind o' jealous cause Luther liked you s'

much. I said everything mean I could think of about you, t' him--but law!

Luther ain't got no pride. He don't care. He defends you from everybody, whether you come t' see us 'r not."

It was a curious little confession and one Sadie had not intended to make.

Something big and sweet in Elizabeth had forced it from her. It embarra.s.sed Elizabeth Hunter, and it held things which could not be discussed, and she turned the subject without answering.

"When did you lose the baby?"

"Oh, it only lived a couple of hours. You see it was too soon an'--an' it wasn't right. Th' doctor didn't expect it t' live as long as it did, but Luther would have it that it could, an' kept 'em a tryin' everything that could be thought of."

Sadie's voice died away gradually and she lay looking out of the window retrospectively: the last two weeks had brought food for much thinking.

"I didn't know, Lizzie, that a man could be as good as Luther. I'd always kind o' hated men, an' I thought I'd have t' fight my way through, like th' rest of th' women, an'--an'--he's that good an' thoughtful of me, an'

of everybody else, that I'm clean ashamed of myself half th' time. He nearly had a fit when' he found out that I'd slipped with that wood. 'Twas ironing day, an' th' box got empty--an' then, when th' baby died, it just seemed as if he couldn't stand it."

She looked up at Elizabeth earnestly: "I never heard any one but th'

preacher pray out loud, Lizzie, an'--an'--somehow--well," she stumbled, "Luther prayed so sweet, when he see it was gone--I--I ain't thought of much else since. It--it seemed like th' baby'd done something good t' both of us."

The spiteful, pettish face was for the moment enn.o.bled by the reflected glory of another's goodness and love. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a condition which makes heaven here upon earth. There was the harmony here in the "shanty" such as she coveted and strove in vain to establish in her own home. Of course there would be harmony where Luther Hansen was concerned: Luther _was_ harmony. Ignoring his part in the little drama, she was wise enough to touch the other side of the story in her reply.

"These little ones bring blessings all their own, Sadie," she said, giving the hand on the patchwork quilt a little squeeze.

There was that in the impulsive little touch which was to be a lasting reminder to Sadie Hansen that Elizabeth Hunter responded to the things which were making of her life a different story. They had found common ground, where neither scoffed at the other.

"Did your baby make you feel that way?" she asked earnestly.

When Luther came at five o'clock to say that John was waiting he found them, at peace, with the baby between them.

Luther tucked Elizabeth and her child into the unprotected wagon seat with concern.

"This wind's a tartar. Pull th' covers down tight over its face, Lizzie.

What's become of th' buggy, Hunter?"

Luther saw Elizabeth's face harden in a sudden contraction of pain, and glanced across at John, but whatever there was about it that hurt belonged to Elizabeth alone, for John Hunter pulled at the flapping laprobes without seeming to have heard clearly and evidently thinking that the remark was addressed to his wife. Dusk was falling, and Luther watched them drive away with a premonition of trouble as the night seemed to close in about them. He turned his back to the wind and stood humped over, peering through the evening at their disappearing forms. He saw Elizabeth s.n.a.t.c.h at the corner of the robe as they turned into the main road, and dug his own hands deeper into his pockets with his attention turned from Elizabeth and her possible trouble to that of the child.

"Hope th' little feller don't ketch cold." He turned to the house filled with his vision of a baby being cuddled close in a mother's arms, and with a new understanding of the comfort of such cuddling. His breath flew before him in a frosty stream when he entered the kitchen, and he hastened to build a fire and set the teakettle on to heat. He lighted a lamp and set it on a chair, and also stirred the fire in the little stove in Sadie's room before he went to milk.

"Wisht Lizzie'd come oftener. Wonder why she don't. She don't seem near as stuck-up as she used to. Say, Luther, Lizzie told me th' queerest thing: she says th' way a mother feels before a baby's born makes a difference.

She says if a woman's mean before a child comes It'll make th' young one mean too. She told a lot of things that showed it's true, about folks we know? I wonder how she learns everything? Ain't she smart! I wisht she'd come oftener. Say, if I ever get that way again----" The sentence was unfinished.

"Wisht ours 'd 'a' lived," Luther said longingly.

"Did Lizzie's baby make you feel that way too?"

Luther went to milk with a song in his heart. The little word "too" told more than all the discussions they had ever had. Sadie had not been pleased about the coming of the child they had lost.

"If I could get 'em together more," he said wistfully. "It was a good thing t' have 'er see Lizzie an' 'er baby together. I hope th' little Tad don't ketch cold. That laprobe didn't stay tucked in very well."

As he rose from milking the last cow, his mind went back to his visitors.

"Somethin' hurt Lizzie about th' buggy 'r somethin'--she's too peaked for her, too."

Luther's premonitions about the Hunter baby were only too well founded.

The cold was not serious, but there was a frightened skirmish for hot water and lubricants before morning. The hoa.r.s.e little cough gave way under the treatment, but the first baby's first cold is always a thing of grave importance to inexperienced parents, and Elizabeth knew that her chances of getting to go home, or any other place, that winter, were lessened. Her growing fear of neighbourhood criticism outgrew her fear of refusal, however, and at the end of the next week she reminded her husband that she had planned to take the child to see her mother.

"You may be willing to take that child out again; I'm not," he replied severely.

A bright idea struck Elizabeth's imagination after she had gone to bed that night. Why not ask her own family, the Chamberlains, Aunt Susan's, and Luther Hansen's to a Thanksgiving dinner? She was so elated by the idea that she could hardly get to sleep at all, and before she could settle herself to rest she had killed in her imagination the half dozen or more turkeys she had raised that season. A big dinner given to those who could act as mouthpieces would silence a lot of talk; also, it would take away a certain questioning look the girl feared in Luther's and Aunt Susan's eyes. The latter was the sorest point of her married life, and the conviction that they were thinking much worse things than were true did not make her any more comfortable. All Sunday she planned, and Sunday night went to bed with the first secret thought she had ever harboured from her husband's knowledge.

Mrs. Hunter entered into the plan with zest when on Monday afternoon it became necessary to tell her. She had begun to love her son's wife in spite of her family history. Had Elizabeth known how to manage it she could have made of John's mother a comfortable ally, but Elizabeth, with characteristic straightforwardness, sought no alliance except the natural one with her husband. The two women planned the articles to be served in the dinner, and then turned to the discussion of other preparations about the house. Elizabeth was proud of the home of which she was a part, but her strength was limited since baby's coming, and after looking about her critically decided that there would be no necessity for any more cleaning than the regular weekly amount.

"We'll have to get the cleaning done on Wednesday instead of Friday, but I think that will be all that will be needed. The carpets were put down fresh the week before you came home, and I don't intend to take them up again till spring."

"I think so," Mrs. Hunter agreed, "but You'll have to have the curtains in the dining room washed, and the tidies and pillow-shams done up fresh."

"Now, mother!" Elizabeth exclaimed, "don't begin to lay out work I can't get done. The tidies are not hard, and I could do the shams, but those curtains are not to be thought of. I'd be so tired if I had to go to work and wash all that, after the washing I put on the line to-day, that I just wouldn't be able to get the dinner on the table Thursday. Talking about the dinner, I think we'd better have two turkeys. I can roast two by putting them in the one big pan."

Mrs. Hunter was willing that the younger woman should prove her talent as a cook, but she planned to take some of the necessary things upon her own shoulders, and to take her son into her schemes for brightening things up a bit. Accordingly, the next morning she asked John to help her take the curtains down.

Elizabeth had been so full of her own plans that she had forgotten to tell John's mother that she intended to keep them secret till she had all her preparations made. The next morning when she heard the thud of some one stepping down from a chair, and her husband say: "There you are! How do you happen to be taking the curtains down at this time of the week?" she realized as she had never done before how much afraid of him she really was, for her pulses bounded, and her ears boomed like cannon, long before John had time to appear in the door to inquire who was coming, and why they were to do so.

With a look very much like guilt, Elizabeth told over the names of her proposed guests, but with Mrs. Hunter in the next room she could not tell him why it meant so much to her to ask these people to dine with them.

The customary protest was offered without delay.

"I don't believe I'd do it, dear. Thanksgiving is a day for home folks, not neighbours, and, besides, see all the work it will make."

"The work is just what we choose to make it. If I'd known mother was going to clean house I wouldn't have said anything about it," Elizabeth answered sullenly.

"Sh!" John Hunter said in a low tone and with a look of anger that was direct and full of meaning.

Elizabeth was ready to cry. She was angry. In every move she made she was checkmated; not because it was not a good move, but because it was hers.

She could readily have given up any one thing as it came along, but the true meaning and spirit of these interferences were beginning to dawn upon her. However, once more she yielded to the unreasonable wishes of her husband and the dinner was given up. She made no attempt to finish the mincemeat they had planned to chop after dinner, but after putting the baby to sleep threw a shawl about her and slipping out of the house ran to the barn and down the creek in the pasture while John was helping his mother rehang the freshly ironed curtains.