The Wind Before the Dawn. Dell H. Munger
for the woman he could clearly see was going to encourage the child in extravagance. He had never spent so much money on the entire family in a winter as he had done on that girl, and yet it wasn’t enough. “He’d bet he’d never give ’er another year’s schoolin’. She’d come home an’ get a summer school—that’s what she’d do. All folks thought about nowadays was clothes!”
To Elizabeth Farnshaw every day of that busy month was full of unconscious growth. As soon as Mr. Farnshaw was out of sight, Mrs. Hornby said to Elizabeth:
“Now, my child, I am going to take up the seams in that basque.”
Elizabeth looked down at her “long basque” in dismay; she had striven hard over that waist and had thought that it would do very well, though conscious that it had faults. Her face flushed as she answered reluctantly:
“The seam in the back isn’t quite straight, but—I never made one like it before—and I thought it would do.”
“So it would, dear, but it can do better and we’ve got plenty of time to fix it. You’ll feel ever so much better about it when you see how the other girls are dressed.”
As Aunt Susan snipped and ripped and rebasted the refractory seam, Elizabeth brought out her little stores of finery to discuss their artistic features.
“Look,” she said, opening a pasteboard box which held her few ribbons. “I coaxed a long time for that, but I got it.” She held up for Aunt Susan’s approval a new Alsatian bow of pink ribbon. “I wanted the wide, but they didn’t have it, so I got a lot of the narrow and hid the joinings in the pleats. I think it’s pretty, don’t you?”
Susan Hornby looked at the bow critically, and then seeing Elizabeth’s face cloud over with a suspicion that she did not regard the treasure with favour, said slowly:
“It’s pretty—that is, it’s a pretty colour; but I was looking to see about how many yards there was in it, for the girls aren’t wearing Alsatian bows, as you call them, this year. They seem to be wearing their hair mostly in two plain braids. I’m glad of it, for you look ever so much better with your hair done that way. We can rip it up and press the ribbon. I’m awfully glad you’ve got such a lot; It’ll make lovely bows for the braids.”
While Elizabeth ripped her bow to pieces Aunt Susan’s tongue ran on with the subject nearest her heart.
“To-morrow morning I’m going to have you sit by that window and watch the girls that go past about school time. You’ll learn more this month doing that than you would in school, I expect. It’s just as well you can’t start till next term, since you didn’t get here at first.”
“Next term!” her new dresses with their long basques—long basques were more talked of than any other feature of dress that year, not by Elizabeth alone but all womankind—had seemed so magnificent that she could not think of it being necessary to take a whole month to make them over.
“Yes, not till after Christmas. You can’t start in at the middle of a term in high school like you can in the country. We’ll get you a wrap made before that time. I told your father I couldn’t think of your going without a coat of some sort. He didn’t feel that he could afford a coat, so I’m going to get the cloth and you and I will make you a circular this week.”
“A circular? What’s that?”
Aunt Susan explained the new kind of cape which came down to the bottom of the dress and had a hood lined with bright coloured silk and was puckered with rubber to make it fit the face.
It took all day to finish the basque, and the next morning Elizabeth watched the well-dressed city girls loiter past, and was glad that she could have a month to get ready to meet them in the schoolroom. She had never known anybody dressed so well for anything but a funeral, or a party, or to go to church. They actually wore gloves to school! Elizabeth looked at her brown hands and decided that she would wear her mittens to bed till her hands sweated themselves to a proper degree of whiteness, and Susan Hornby let her look on, and weigh, and exclaim. Thus was Elizabeth Farnshaw’s education begun.
The afternoon was spent selecting the goods for the new cape, and wandering about the great stores and the streets; a new pair of pretty gray gloves were obtained, and for the first time Elizabeth heard the term “lisle thread” used as against the common term of cotton for all things not silk or woollen. The new cape was to have a wonderful metal fastener called a clasp, and life ran like a silver stream the next two days as they sewed on the new-fangled garment.
Oh, father! could you have but seen truly, how great would have been your joy!
Each day Elizabeth watched the boys and girls come and go past Nathan Hornby’s house, and when the cape was finished she and Aunt Susan went daily on shopping expeditions. It was the most wonderful week of her fifteen years, and was well rounded out by going to church on Sunday and for the first time listening to a choir, and seeing a window of softly coloured glass. She almost wondered if she had been transported from the body to the heaven of crowns and harps which her mother loved to describe.
To heaven Elizabeth Farnshaw had gone in very truth, but it was the heaven of adolescence and developing womanhood. In the short time she had been observing the comings and goings of the boys and girls of their neighbourhood one young man had begun to stand out from the rest. Elizabeth was nearly sixteen, and when she saw him now in a pew a few seats ahead of her she made a little movement of astonishment.
Aunt Susan caught the sound of the indrawn breath and looked around inquiringly, but Elizabeth, with eyes modestly down, studied her gray-gloved hands and seemed unaware of her scrutiny. Happiness had been Elizabeth Farnshaw’s daily portion for weeks, but this was different. Here was happiness of another sort, with other qualities, composed of more compelling elements. The gamut of bliss had not all been run. Elizabeth had progressed from Arcadia to Paradise and was invoicing her emotions. She never shied around a subject, but looked all things in the face; and she found this delightfully surprising world of emotions as entrancing as the external one of mellow light, music, good clothes, and educational prospects. The rest of the hour was a blissful dream, in which the only thought was a wish for Luther and his stunted pony and the freedom of grassy slopes where she could pour out her newfound joy. With each new event of this life the loss of Luther was accentuated.
Nathan Hornby and his wife had no acquaintances in Topeka. They left the church as soon as the service was over. The young girl went with them, conscious that he was behind her, glad that her new cape was finished, wondering if he noticed it, eager to be seen yet wanting to hide, and foolishly aglow and wishing devoutly that she had eyes in the back of her head. Henceforth Elizabeth lived in the thought of seeing him. She dubbed him “The Unknown,” and if she looked out of the window at home, it was in the hope of seeing him pass; on the way to school she was alert and watchful for a glimpse of him in the distance; if she went to church it was to look for him as soon as seated, though he was rarely there. If she saw him in the morning her day was made glad; if she failed to see him she looked forward with anticipation to the next day.
The winter spent itself. January passed, and February. The glad days ran on in kaleidoscopic readjustment of joy, work, wonder, and unfoldment, as far as Elizabeth’s own life was concerned. After the manner of youth, her own affairs absorbed her. In fact the young girl was so filled with the delights of her own little world that it was only gradually that she began to understand that the life in Topeka was not as fortunate with the dear couple who had shared with her their home. The first signs of trouble were made manifest to her by the increasing tenderness with which Susan Hornby hovered around her mate, and her evident and growing solicitude.
Elizabeth was startled when she did at last comprehend the gloom and anxiety about her. The manner of the pair prevented questions, but, as she watched covertly, Aunt Susan’s distress was transferred to her. Elizabeth was not curious, but she was intensely sympathetic, and from disinterested motives she became keenly observant of all that took place about her. No opportunity to help offered. With a sharp realization that her best friends were in trouble, she was obliged to conceal any trace of that knowledge.