The Wind Before the Dawn Part 36

Susan Hornby turned and started to the house. Nathan followed her aquiver with the slight that his common sense told him had been put upon her by those whom she had so faithfully and fully served.

Susan stumbled and put her hands to her head with a harsh laugh. Nathan hurried forward a step and looked searchingly into her face. With a great sob, he put his arms about her. Susan paid not the slightest attention to him, but let herself be guided along the path without actual resistance.

Her face was flushed and her eyes did not see. She went docilely to her room and permitted the stricken husband to place her on the bed, where he loosened her collar and, removing her clothing, dressed her for bed as if she had been a little child. When nothing more could be done, he knelt by her and fondling her unresponsive hand let the tears he could no longer control pour over his ashen cheeks.

"Don't you know me, Sue? Don't you know your old Nate at all?" he quavered, but there was no reply except the puffing breath which was every moment growing more and more laboured. Nathan knew what it meant--she had been so once before.

As the Hunter family sat about the dinner table on Tuesday, Silas Chamberlain drove up to the side gate, and after tying his team came to the door. He entered when bidden, but would not sit down, and looked about him with an effort to adjust his impressions with what he saw before him.

"Ain't you goin' t' th' funeral?" he asked when he saw that there seemed to be no air of mourning in the house.

"Funeral?" John Hunter exclaimed. "Who's dead?"

"I told Nate Hornby you didn't know nothin' about it."

"Hornby? We haven't heard of any one being dead. Who is it?" John Hunter asked, puzzled at the reticence of the old man, who stood with his straw hat in his hand and slid his fingers about its greasy brim uneasily.

"Is--is it possible you all didn't know Mrs. Hornby was sick?" he asked, unable to lift his eyes.

There was a low cry from Elizabeth Hunter, the noise of her escape to the privacy of her own room, the sound of moans and cries after the door was shut, and Silas Chamberlain paid bitter toll for delivering his message.

The family sat stunned and silent in the presence of those sounds of grief. The bowed head of the old man told his comprehension of the news and left Jake Ransom with an understanding of him which words could never have given.

As soon as Elizabeth could get control of her feelings and command her scattered senses, she s.n.a.t.c.hed her bonnet from the chair beside the bed where she had dropped it before dinner and flew to the dining room again, her one impulse to get to the side of the friend whose spirit had gone from her. Going to Silas, she clutched him by the arm with fingers that sank into the flesh like a vise.

"Take me to her!--take me now!" she cried, pushing him toward the door.

"I'll take you, Elizabeth," John Hunter said, rising, and Jake Ransom saw the look of nameless horror she took on at thought of her husband's presence.

"Take me to her at once, Mr. Chamberlain. Do, for G.o.d's sake, take me to her!" she cried, and pulled the old man through the door with nervous hands, and then ran down the path before him and began to pull at the straps with which the horses were tied.

John followed them out, still protesting that he would take her himself if she would wait, but without a look in his direction she urged Silas on.

"Hurry! Hurry! Do!" she implored, and Silas gave the horses such a sharp slap with the lines that they started on a swift trot almost before they were seated, leaving John Hunter in the midst of his expostulations.

"I'll bring her back safe," Silas called over his shoulder.

Now that no further action was possible, Elizabeth sat with her hands clasped, her teeth set, and her eyes looking into vacancy, numbed beyond words, asking no questions and making no complaints. Silas's heart beat with an anguish of sympathy. He stopped at his own house a moment to tell Liza Ann that he would come back for her within the hour, and still Elizabeth gave no sign of realizing what was going on about her.

At last a terrible thought took hold of Silas, and he pulled up his team, which was sweating heavily.

"You ain't fit t' go, Lizzie. You ain't fit t' go, child. I'm goin' t'

take you back home." He began to turn the horses' heads toward home, and then stopped for her wandering wits to gather.

"Why, oh, why don't you hurry?" Elizabeth exclaimed when she realized that they were standing still.

The old man's heart was torn with pity, and it was in the voice of a mother that he addressed her.

"You ain't fit t' go," he repeated. "I'm going t' take you back home."

There was a white look about her mouth that frightened him.

The girl grasped his arm with fingers that closed with a grip like a drowning person.

"I couldn't see her when she was living--surely I can see her dead." Then with a wail, "Oh, no--no, not dead! Oh, my G.o.d!"

She sobbed in a dry sort of way that contracted Silas's throat to witness, and left the old man almost as undone as herself, and without further argument he drove on to Nathan Hornby's desolated home, where he lifted her tenderly down from the high seat, with a mist before his eyes that blurred her image till it was unrecognizable, and stood watching her go up the path.

A woman met her at the door, but she did not know who, and brushed past her hurriedly and ran into the kitchen, where she could see Nathan Hornby sitting with his head on his arms beside the kitchen table.

Going down on her knees with a swift movement, Elizabeth threw her arm across his shoulder, and laid her head beside his, sobbing convulsively.

Nathan raised his head in dull surprise, and seeing who it was, shook her arm off resentfully and rose to his feet. Elizabeth crawled after him on her knees and clasped his own with both arms, turning her stricken face up to his and crying:

"Oh, I know! I know how you feel, but truly, truly, Uncle Nate, I am not to blame. For G.o.d's sake--for G.o.d's sake, forgive!"

He looked down on her coldly and was tempted to spurn her from him with his foot, but there was such anguish in voice and eye as he himself had hardly felt, and his wife's words, her last words, flashed through his bewildered brain: "We can't tell what anybody has to contend with." He stood irresolute while she rose to her feet. When he did not answer her, Elizabeth threw herself down in the chair from which he had just risen and bowing her head on the table moaned in such bitterness of spirit that Nathan was moved to pity, and would have comforted her if he could.

Silas, having tied his team, came to the kitchen door, but on seeing its occupants turned hastily and went out to his wagon again, where he stood choking and swallowing in helpless misery.

Presently, Nathan Hornby, at a loss to check her grief, laid a hand on her shoulder and said:

"Come and see her, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth Hunter arose like one walking in her sleep and followed Nathan to the sitting room. The black casket resting on two chairs in the middle of the room was a worse shock than any she had yet had, and with a horror-stricken cry of fright she fled to the kitchen again, and when Nathan reached her side, her teeth were chattering and great beads of sweat covered her quivering face; she sank into Nathan's chair unable to support herself.

When at last she was a.s.sisted tenderly to her feet, she begged feebly to be taken home.

"But you can't ride that far," Silas protested, pityingly. "You just naturally can't ride that far in th' big wagon, child."

For answer she dragged herself forward and staggered to the chair where they had put her bonnet. Nathan saw that her strength was returning and gave Silas a little nod. They each took an arm to steady her, and so Elizabeth pa.s.sed from the presence of her one dear friend into a life as colourless as the form she left behind.

"He's an awful sick child, Mrs. Hunter, but we may--I believe we will pull him through."

It was Thursday, and Doctor Morgan sat opposite Elizabeth, holding the hand of the shadow of the baby of three days ago.

"You see that milk has not agreed with him. Mr. Hunter says you took a drive over to Hornby's the day of the funeral. The heat and excitement has been too much for you. You nursed him immediately on getting home?"

"Yes," she replied lifelessly.

"Well, we'll have to wean him now," the old doctor said, looking the unresponsive mother over sharply. "It won't do to try any experiments with him. Your milk may be all right now, but he wouldn't stand a relapse."

Elizabeth made no reply and listened patiently to his directions for preparing the new food. After he was gone, she laid the shrunken little body on the bed and went to the kitchen to prepare the milk. She took up the new bottle with the rubber on the end and looked at it in stupefied, aimless disgust. Her impulse was to fling it out of the open door, but remembering that she would but poison him by putting his lips to her own breast, she turned to the table and placing the bottle in a pan covered it with cold water and set it on the stove to come to a slow boil.

Going back to the bedroom she picked up the pillow--the child was so limp that they had to handle him on a pillow--and sat down, holding it close to her heart.

John came in. She did not look up. He came over to her and stooped to look at the half-conscious child, who lay with half-open eyes and under jaw dropped down. There were deep greenish rings under those eyes, and a great sob broke from John Hunter's throat.

Elizabeth stirred dully and looked up, but did not speak. There was that about her which made her unapproachable. She showed no resentment, no anger, no emotion of any sort. She had come home from Nathan's house as she was now. She had refused to go to the funeral, but she had had supper ready when John and his mother had returned from the graveyard, and it had been as orderly and as well cooked as usual, but she had not talked at the meal, nor seemed to hear when she was spoken to, but there was evidently no pouting. John had tried to explain, and she had given silent opportunity, and when it had been finished had said, "Yes," in a hollow voice, and had moved on about her work without looking up, but there had been no apparent resentment.