The Wind Before the Dawn Part 60

"Come on, mamma! Grandma won't care. Come on!"

His mother looked down at the boy with a smile. How well she remembered the delights of threshing-day herself. She looked about the kitchen to see what had yet to be done.

"Wait a little, Jack. I've got to help get the table set and the dinner on to cook. You wouldn't have me leave grandma to do all the work alone, would you?" she asked suggestively.

As Jack hesitated between his great desire to see the marvel of the stackyard and his desire to show as much manliness as his mother evidently expected of him, there was a noise on the doorstep and Hepsie came smilingly in.

"I followed you all on th' pony," she said. "I fixed it up with th' boys yesterday t' take a cold dinner to-day an' let me come an' help here.

We're lookin' out that you don't hurt yourself to-day, Mis Farnshaw," she added, addressing the older woman.

"Now you can go to the threshing machine too, grandma!" Jack cried with delight. "Come on, let's go right now!"

"Not now, Jack," Elizabeth said. "Hepsie didn't come to get the dinner alone."

"Oh, yes, she did! She likes to," Jack replied so confidently that they all laughed, and Hepsie fell on the child and hugged him.

"Of course I did, Jack. Grandma will show me what to do, and then she and mamma can take you out to see the machine go round and round like a big coffee mill, and maybe Jack can ride one of the horses."

"Oh, Hepsie! Don't put that into the child's head," Elizabeth interposed hastily. "I wouldn't have him on one of those horses for anything."

"Mamma says I spoil you, Jack. Run along now, and let me look after this dinner."

As soon as the tables were set and the dinner on to cook, Elizabeth and her mother took the excited child and started to the barnyard. Mrs.

Farnshaw was pulled along by the impatient grandson, and Elizabeth came at some distance behind, having stopped to glance in the chicken house as she went. The marvellous ant-hill called a stackyard would not permit Jack to wait for his mother.

Mr. Farnshaw saw them coming. He would gladly have avoided his wife and daughter, but Jack took things for granted and always insisted upon dragging his mother into his grandfather's presence and mixing them up in the conversation. Elizabeth had dropped behind purposely, knowing her father's feelings toward her, and did not hear Jack say persuasively:

"Grandpa, let Jack drive and make the horses go round."

"No, no, Jack," Mrs. Farnshaw said quickly. "Mamma said you could not go on the horsepower."

Mr. Farnshaw gave his wife a look of disdain and, stooping, picked the child up. Mrs. Farnshaw gave a little cry. When his own team came around, Mr. Farnshaw walked in front of it and started toward the platform on which Albert stood swinging a long whip.

The "near horse" of the Farnshaw team was a stolid and reliable mare, mother of many colts. She was so placed because it had been decided to put a young stallion of uncertain temper beside her.

The restive, irritable beast sustained his reputation by nipping angrily at Mr. Farnshaw as he dodged under the straps with which the horses were tied to the reach ahead. To have pa.s.sed in front of this team unenc.u.mbered and alone when the power was in motion would have been foolhardy; but with Jack in his arms it was an act of mock-heroics typical of the whole bull-headed character of Josiah Farnshaw. He stumbled slightly in springing out of the horse's way, and with Jack, who was a load, in his arms, was barely able to keep his feet.

A shout went up from every man who saw the occurrence, and Albert shut off the power in the endeavour to stop the machine.

Mr. Farnshaw sprang toward the inner corner of the triangular s.p.a.ce occupied by the team, and as the machine slowly came to a full stop set Jack on the boards at Albert's feet and turned toward the horses. The stallion threw a challenge at the man who had escaped its teeth, reared angrily, shook its black mane, and, with teeth exposed and ears laid back, prepared for another lunge. Not only Mrs. Farnshaw but every man on the ground called to Josiah Farnshaw to get out of the way of the infuriated beast. Instead of heeding the frantic warnings, Mr. Farnshaw, determined to let his onlooking neighbours see that he was not afraid, sprang forward and struck the squealing animal a stinging blow on the nose with his fist.

Taken by surprise, the horse set back so suddenly that he broke the straps with which he and his mate were fastened to the reach, falling against the mare, who was thoroughly frightened by her master's menacing blow. The team behind them reared and snorted as the stallion sprang to its feet again.

Then a strange and terrible thing happened. The horse stopped and made ready for the plunge he had in mind. There were warning cries from every man in the stackyard, but there was no chance to escape. With a scream which struck terror to the hearts of the onlookers the brute sprang upon the man and sunk its teeth through flesh and bone alike as it grabbed the arm which was aiming a puny blow, and shook him as if he were a rag, flinging him against the ground under its feet, and shaking him as a dog shakes a rat it has captured. The men could not rush in, because the other horse was on the outside of the team and was kicking and struggling to free itself from the shrieking stallion. Every team attached to the machine was tearing at its moorings, and horrified as the men were they were obliged to attempt to control the other horses. The team immediately in front of the stallion broke away altogether, carrying away with it the reach to which it was fastened. Seeing his opportunity, Joe Farnshaw rushed into the s.p.a.ce left open by the disappearance of the other team, and with a well-directed blow from an iron bar he had s.n.a.t.c.hed up, he staggered the horse so that it dropped the nerveless thing it had been shaking, and stood stunned and trembling, sight, sound, and all other matters of sense gone. The body was s.n.a.t.c.hed away from in front of the tottering horse in time to save it from the heavy weight of the falling animal, which began to tremble, and then, losing control of its legs altogether, fell heavily toward the platform, dragging its mate to her knees as it went.

Elizabeth quieted her shrieking mother as best she could while she hugged her rescued child to her bosom, and the sons of Josiah Farnshaw helped the men to lay the broken body of their father upon an improvised stretcher to be removed to the house. Kind hands performed the little duties necessary on such occasions, and then the horrified men stayed on, gathered in little groups about the dead stallion in the stackyard.

When all was done and the family were reduced to that terrorizing state of idleness which comes to those who stand about their dead, Elizabeth took Jack and wandered out of the house to where she could see Joe standing near the well. Together they glanced across to the men standing around the torn and dismantled horsepower.

"Pa was like that horse, Joe," Elizabeth said with a sudden gleam of insight. "They were both ruled by unbridled pa.s.sions. Everything they did they mixed up with hate. You couldn't touch either of them without having them lay back their ears."

CHAPTER XXVIII

"TILL DEATH DO YOU PART" CONSIDERED

The day after Josiah Farnshaw was buried, Elizabeth sat down to answer John's letter. It was not easy to do, and she sat for a long time with her chin in her hand before she began to write. The death of her father related to the things of which she must speak. She began by telling him the circ.u.mstances of her father's death and showed him that the tragedy had been the result of pride and the habit of domination, of an unwillingness to listen to advice, or to discuss necessary matters. Her brothers had urged that the stallion be left in the barn and that another horse be subst.i.tuted, since by its outcries and prancings it would keep the strange horses nervous and irritable, but Mr. Farnshaw, having said in the beginning that the animal should be used, would not listen to anything that the family wished him to do in the matter. Mrs. Farnshaw had objected to Jack being placed upon the horsepower, but once having started to place him there, her husband would listen to no caution. Last but not least of those refusals to advise with those who knew as well as he what should be done had been the one of not heeding the cries of the men who had warned him not to approach the vicious brute. To dominate had been the keynote of her father's character; his death had been a fitting symbol of his overweening desire to pursue that phantom.

After enlarging upon the causes of the tragedy, she took up the matter of the refusal to listen to necessary explanations which had had so much to do with her separation from her husband.

Hugh Noland's life was sacrificed because he could not go to you and talk to you of necessary things, and I am determined that if you and I ever come together again that neither of us shall be afraid to talk out anything in this whole world that is of interest to us both. Hugh and I would have been so glad to go to you and ask you to let him be taken away, or to have asked you to help us to higher living till he was well enough to go. I need hardly tell you that we both recognized that it was wronging you for him to stay on in the house after we discovered that we loved each other. Hugh planned to go, and then came the accident, and we were helpless. At last, in order not to defeat me when he saw that I was trying to overcome the fault in myself, he thought it necessary to die so that I should be free. You know, John dear, I should never try to live with you again unless I could tell you _anything_ and know that you'd listen and be fair, even to my love for another man. There you have me as I am. If you don't want me, don't take me; but at least you are not deceived about the kind of woman you are going to live with this time.

Then Elizabeth pointed out to him how he had refused to read Hugh's innocent letter, and then went on to consider affairs between herself and John.

You will probably remember also that when we were talking over the coming of our second child five years ago you said that I was foolish to be disturbed about it--that if I had not had the wherewithal to feed and clothe it I might have had good cause for complaint, but otherwise not. That is another matter we must settle before we reopen life together. Mere food and clothes are but a part of a child's natural and proper rights of inheritance. My future children--and I hope I shall have more than the one I have now--must be prepared for earnestly and rightly. We are better prepared to have children now than when we were younger, but if we wish the best from our children, we must give the best to their beginnings as well as to their upbringings, and you and I would, I am sure, come much closer to each other and begin to understand each other much better after adopting such a policy. When we were married our love would not permit us to exact conditions, but I have learned to love you and myself enough to wish to consider all the conditions of which I have been speaking before we begin to live together again.

Years ago I was glibly willing to advise my mother to get a divorce--for her I am not sure yet but that it was the only way to freedom--but I have lived and learned, and you see that for myself I have not wanted it. I have come to understand that you and I are bound together--not by the fact of Jack's presence, I mean not by the mere knowledge that we have him, but by some other law of which he is but the outward evidence. No magistrate could separate us. I belong to you and you belong to me by some primal law of life, not because some minister said over us, "Till death do you part," but because _we have permitted ourselves to become one flesh_. Having set up these relations, let us struggle with the conditions they entail.

There must be freedom in our home if it is to be reorganized. I want you to be just as free as I am. I told you before you left that you should run the farm; I still prefer it. I don't care what you do on it, so long as you do not mortgage it. I think I have a right to keep a certain part of it free from debt if I choose to do so, so as to be sure of a home in my old age, since I have to suffer if we lose it; otherwise you are free to do as you wish with any part of it.

I think I have a better sort of love to offer you than I had before, just because it includes a knowledge of our weaknesses. I have had to tell you all this in order that we begin square, but I liked your letter, and I believe we can come to an understanding. My love for Hugh Noland is but a memory, but when your letter came I found that my love for you was a living thing, that I wanted you very much, and even as I write you these words I want you.

When her writing was finished Elizabeth went to the barn to saddle the horses, thinking that she would take Jack with her and ride into town to mail both letters in the cool of the evening. She saddled Jack's pony and started around the corner of the barn to tie it in the lane, when she saw, turning into that lane, John Hunter, with a valise in his hand. He had come in on the noon train and had caught a ride out home with a stranger pa.s.sing that way. John saw her and waved his hand, calling to her. To Elizabeth he was still fair to look upon. She walked toward him holding out the letters she had written.

THE END

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