The Wind Before the Dawn Part 46

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 ch.o.r.es 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 st.i.tch 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 G.o.d's name could she be otherwise? She couldn't do all he required of her without it. She had b.u.t.ter to make, and sh.e.l.lers to cook for, and then the d.a.m.ned 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 const.i.tute 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 h.e.l.l of nagging to protect herself against him. I tell you, Noland, Kansas would be a stronger state right now, and a d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.nable, 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 const.i.tution 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 sh.e.l.lers 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 Mitch.e.l.l County had been to part.i.tion 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, G.o.d 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 cla.s.sics, and Hugh Noland, whose profession it had been to teach, was surprised and delighted with the apt.i.tude 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 embarra.s.sment 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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sociation 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 r.e.t.a.r.ded the plowing, for try as he would the ch.o.r.es 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.