Before bedtime that night the baby (who had gone to sleep while she had nursed him when she had come home), awoke crying. She had taken him up and had offered her breast, but it had turned away as if sickened, and had continued to cry till, presently, it had doubled its little body together with a sharp scream and vomited till its breath was nearly gone. There had been a sour odour to the contents of its stomach that had struck terror to their hearts, and before morning Doctor Morgan was at its side. He had noted the leaden movements of the mother and calling John outside had questioned him regarding her. John, troubled at her indifference to him and the lifelessness of her att.i.tude even toward the babe, had told him all he knew--as he understood it.

"Of course she boarded with them two years ago," he had said in concluding, "but I don't see that that needs to cut such a figure."

"Were your wife and Mrs. Hornby great friends?" Doctor Morgan asked, studying John Hunter and puzzling over the evident mystery of the situation.

"Ye-e-s-s!" with perplexed deliberation; "that is, she liked her better than any of the rest of the neighbours around here. She wanted to go there last Sunday and I thought the baby wasn't fit to take out. It looks now as if I was right."

"Well, she's had a shock of some kind, and if you don't look out She'll be down on our hands too. You'd better get a girl or let your mother do the work for a couple of weeks," Doctor Morgan advised.

And John Hunter had looked faithfully for some one to take his wife's place in the kitchen and had found what she had told him when Hepsie left to be true. In many places where there was no excuse given and girls were at home he had met with a sort of refusal which stung him to the quick.

Elizabeth rocked the baby with a mechanical dead sort of care. John was emotional enough to be badly broken up by the child's looks, but Elizabeth's unresponsiveness at such a time made of it a tragedy which he could not understand; he wanted greetings and discussion, and attentions showered upon him as usual, and they were not forthcoming. He could not understand what had brought this state of things to pa.s.s, but no more could he question one who was so evidently removed from present conditions. With a sense of forlornness he had never known, he fell on his knees by her side and laid his head against her arm, seeking comfort, and when she still did not speak, the fullness of his misery became apparent, and he got up unsteadily and left the house.

Slowly life and returning interest awakened in the child; still more slowly did the mother take up her threads in the web of living. The old routine was established, with a few exceptions. Elizabeth arose early and prepared breakfast before sunrise as before, the washing and ironing were as well done, but when she prepared to clean the kitchen floor the first washday after Aunt Susan's death, she took the mop down from its nail on the back porch and used it as she had done that first winter.

John and his mother came in with the clothes basket as she started to wring out the mop to wipe the first corner finished.

"Hadn't I better get down and scrub it for you with the brush?" John asked.

"There will be no more of that in my kitchen," replied Elizabeth, and she had quietly continued her work without looking up.

"Why not?" had been the astonished query.

"We will not argue it," she had said in the same spiritless tone in which she always spoke those days, and had been so quietly determined that she got her way. John could not argue with a woman who was so unresistant of manner: to him, manner const.i.tuted argument. Elizabeth went her own quiet way and took no part in the things that went on about her unless her services were required, then she served faithfully and uncomplainingly, but she held converse with no one in the happy way of old.

Thus summer pa.s.sed, and autumn also. Little Jack walked now and was beginning to lisp an occasional word, making of himself a veritable fairy in the household. With the close of the warm weather he grew less and less fretful, and when the first snow fell he became as happy and active as a kitten. The mother had kept him with her every minute, and when her work had been done, which was seldom, was satisfied to rock him and listen to his baby chatter.

Elizabeth had not been angry in the whole six months, neither had she been glad. She never vexed John by asking to be taken places. Gladly would he have taken her, if by so doing he could have brought back her old enthusiasm and girlish glee, for Elizabeth had been the life of the household, and things had settled into a dead monotony that made of their home but a house since Susan Hornby's death. Sometimes, vexed by her pa.s.sive acceptation of whatever came, John would throw out stinging observations about women who made their husbands turn to others for their society, and then be left in an uncomfortable situation by the fact that he had aroused neither anger nor annoyance, for Elizabeth would inquire in her lifeless tones what he wished her to do which was left undone. Puzzled by her real meekness of spirit, the man was compelled to admit that she made no vexatious demands upon him and that she laboured unceasingly to keep the soulless home in order. One of the strange and contradictory things in the situation was that John Hunter did not turn to the mother whom he had ever been ready to exalt for consolation in this time of trouble; the demand his feelings made was for the companionship which while it was his he had not desired. The revelation of the months showed him what he had lost. Mrs. Hunter was as much in the dark about the real cause of Elizabeth's changed condition as was John.

"The ride to Mr. Hornby's had something to do with it," she said dubiously when talking the matter over with her son after the baby began to get well and Elizabeth showed no improvement in a mental way.

"It comes from that ride in the hot sun. You see it made the baby sick too; but it ain't any use to say so to her," John replied, but in spite of the firmness of his tone there was a puzzled look on his face and the last word dragged with indecision.

"She was very fond of Mrs. Hornby, too, and that may have had something to do with it," Mrs. Hunter observed.

"Ye-e-s-s-s!" John replied. "But she couldn't care for that kind of people enough to make herself sick about them," he said more firmly.

Mrs. Hunter considered slowly for some moments.

"I guess you're right," she said at last. "She seemed to be attached to them, but she don't ask to go to see him since his wife's death; and I should think now's when her love for them would show out."

"I wish to G.o.d she would ask to go anywhere. I'm tired of the kind of life we're leading," John said in a manner which supported his words.

The weariness of life was modified, or at least shifted from one shoulder to the other for John Hunter by the increasing burden of financial worries. In this also he was denied any comfort or a.s.sistance from Elizabeth; she asked no questions, and if he talked of notes which were falling due, or of interest soon to be paid, she listened without remark, and moved about her endless round of cleaning, cooking, or sewing apparently absorbed in the work in hand. If he complained about expenses, the only reply he received was for the food on the table to be of a plainer quality and a lessened grocery bill the next time he went to town.

This he would not permit, being sensitive about the opinions of the men who worked for him. Elizabeth never remarked upon the matter of keeping three men through the winter as she would have done a year ago when there was little to do which counted in farm affairs. She left her husband free to do as he chose on all those matters. She did not sulk; she had lost hope, she was temporarily beaten. In that first hour after her return from Aunt Susan's death chamber she had meditated flight. She longed to get away, to go anywhere where she would never see her husband's face again, but there was Jack. Jack belonged to his father as much as to her, and Elizabeth was fair. Besides, she was helpless about the support of the child. Her health was quite seriously interfered with by the ache in her back which was always present since the baby's coming. She had told her mother but two short years before that she would not live with a man who would treat her as her father treated his wife, and here she found herself in those few months as enmeshed as her mother had ever been. Aye! even more so. Hers was a position even more to be feared, because it was more subtle, more intangible, more refined, and John's rule as determined and unyielding as that of Josiah Farnshaw.

Having failed to act in that first hour of her trouble, Elizabeth drifted into inaction. Even her thoughts moved slowly as she pondered on her situation; her thoughts moved slowly, but they moved constantly. Under all that quiet of manner was a slow fire of reasoning which was working things out. Gradually Elizabeth was getting a view of the real trouble. Two things absorbed her attention: one was the domination of men, and the other was the need of money adjustment. To live under the continual interference of a man who refused to listen to the story of one's needs was bad enough, but to live without an income while one had a small child was worse. She would leave this phase of her difficulties at times and wander back to the character of the treatment she received and compare it to that accorded to her mother. It occasioned great surprise to find herself admiring her father's manner more than that of her husband. Mr.

Farnshaw had the virtue of frankness in his mastery, John used subterfuges; Mr. Farnshaw was openly brutal, John secretly heartless; her father was a domineering man, her husband even more determined, more inflexible. While considering the possibility of escape by running away, many things were clarified in Elizabeth's mind regarding her position as a wife, and the position of all wives. She, for the first time, began to see the many whips which a determined husband had at his command, chief of which was the crippling processes of motherhood. She could not teach school--Jack was too young; neither could she take any other work and keep the child with her. As she meditated upon the impossibility of the various kinds of work a woman could do, another phase of her situation arose before her: even if the baby were older, and a school easily obtained, the gossip that would follow a separation would be unendurable. Having acc.u.mulated a reputation for sn.o.bbishness and aristocratic seclusion, people would not neglect so rare an opportunity to even old scores. She would be a gra.s.s widow, a subject for all the vulgar jest and loathsome wit of the community. Country people know how to sting and annoy in a thousand ways. However, the possibility of this sort of retribution was put entirely away by the baby's illness. By the time Jack had recovered, the young mother was worn to a lifeless machine, compelled to accept what came to her. Her youth, her health, her strength were gone; worse than all that, her interest in things, in her own affairs even, had almost gone.

John wandered about the house disconsolate and dissatisfied, and made amends in curious little ways, and from John's standpoint. He opened relations with Elizabeth's family and insisted upon taking her home for a visit. Elizabeth went with him, and accepted the more than half-willing recognition of her father, who wanted to get into communication with the baby. He was offering for sale a young team and John, thinking to do a magnanimous thing, bought Patsie. Elizabeth accepted the visit and the horse without emotions of any sort, and left her husband annoyed and her family floundering in perplexity at her pa.s.sive att.i.tude toward life. At home that night he said to her sneeringly:

"No matter what a man does for you, you pout, and act as if you didn't like it. If I don't offer to take you you're mad, and if I do you set around and act as if you were bored to death by having to go. What th'

devil's a man to do?"

"I was perfectly willing to go," was the reply, and she went on dressing Jack for bed without looking up.

John cast a baffled look at her as she carried the child out of the room, and returned to his uncomfortable thoughts without trying to talk of anything else when she returned and sat down to sew. The sitting room in which they spent their evenings was in perfect order; the whole house was never so orderly, nor their table better served, but John pined for companionship. The work he had worn her out in doing was never better performed, but there was no love in the doing, and when he addressed her, though her answer was always ready and kind, there was no love in it, and he was learning that our equity in the life of another has fixed and unalterable lines of demarkation.

Thus matters progressed till February, when Jake was called home to Iowa by the death of his mother. Jake had lived such a careless, happy-go-lucky sort of life that he was obliged to borrow a large part of his railroad fare from John Hunter, who was himself so badly in debt that he was wondering how he was to meet the interest which would fall due in May.

John gave him the money with the understanding that Jake would come back in time for the early seeding, and prepared to take him into town. Jake was the only man left on the farm, and there was consternation in John's heart at the prospect of having all the ch.o.r.es thrown upon his own shoulders in cold weather. Jake had been the only reliable man he had ever been able to hire. The more independent sort of hired men resented John Hunter's interference in the farm work, which they understood far better than he, and seldom stayed long, but Jake Ransom liked Elizabeth, was close friends with Luther Hansen, and since he saw the mistress of the house drooping and discouraged, doubly appreciated the home into which he had fallen. Jake had been devoted to Elizabeth with a dog-like devotion since his first meeting with her in the little schoolhouse six years before. He was more than glad that he could secure his return to the Hunter home by the simple method of borrowing money. More nearly than any one else in her whole circle of acquaintances, Jake Ransom had Elizabeth's situation figured out. He wanted to come back to her service, and it was with a satisfied security that he helped prepare the bobsled for the trip to town. They went early and took Mrs. Hunter with them to do some shopping for herself and Elizabeth. John hoped to find a man who could come back with them that afternoon and help with the work of watering and feeding the hundred and fifty head of cattle that made of their farm life a busy round of daily toil.

CHAPTER XV

HUGH NOLAND

Doctor Morgan folded his stethoscope and thrust it into his inner pocket.

"Your heart's been pounding like that for seven years, you say?" he asked of the man sitting before him.

"Seven years in May," was the brief answer.

The patient got up from the office chair and adjusted his waistcoat. The waistcoat was ample and covered a broad chest. The face also was broad, with a square chin, and eyes set well apart. The man was twenty-eight or thirty years old and nearly six feet in height.

"I know all you've got to tell me," he said, going to the mirror to brush his tumbled hair. "They sent me out to find a place on a farm because medicine wouldn't do anything for me. I'm tolerably comfortable if I don't overdo--that is, if I stay out of doors while I'm doing. I don't expect you to make a new man out of me; I only thought I'd have you look me over the first thing, because I might need you suddenly, and it's better for you to know what sort of patient you've got beforehand." He paused for an inspection of his well-groomed hands.

"You may not need me for years," Doctor Morgan interrupted hastily. "That kind of a heart outlasts the other organs sometimes. The doctor twisted the heavy-linked watch chain which dangled from his vest pocket as if calling upon it for words. Of course an out-of-doors life is best. What have you been doing of late?" he asked.

"Teaching in the old university since I got my degree, but they've sent me out like a broken-down fire horse. I'll get used to it," the young man said indifferently. He was accustomed to signs of hopelessness when his case was discussed, and was unmoved by them.

"Have you family ties?" the doctor asked. He liked the grit this man's manner indicated.

"None that need to be counted," was the brief reply.

The doctor noticed that his patient wasted no extra words in self-pity.

"That's good! It lessens a man's worries. And--where are you staying, Mr.

Noland?"

"At the hotel, till I get a place on a farm. Before I invest I'm going to get my bearings about farms, by working around till I get on to things.

You don't know of a place where a man could work for his board for a month till the spring seeding and things come on do you?"

He was pushing the cuticle back from his finger-nails as they talked, and Doctor Morgan smiled.

"Those hands don't look much like farm work," he said.

The man laughed easily. "Oh, that's habit. I'll get over it after a while."