The Wind Before the Dawn. Dell H. Munger
her daughter’s knee under the table whenever Elizabeth seemed inclined to defensive retorts.
When Mr. Farnshaw had taken the milk pails on his arm and repaired to the corral, however, Mrs. Farnshaw turned from a belated churning and administered the caution in words:
“Don’t ever say anything back to your pa, Lizzie; he gets worse and worse all th’ time.”
Elizabeth considered the subject for some minutes. The wear and tear of the discords of her mother’s life she knew were far more responsible for her mother’s broken health than anything she did in the way of hard work. It seemed a good time to begin the reforms upon which her heart was set.
“Ma, I’ve been thinking about you a good deal this winter,” she began slowly. “Something is wrong with us all.” The girl thought again for a moment. Her mother watched her with sharp attention and waited. Reforms were not easy to discuss with her mother; they were very different, Elizabeth and her mother. Elizabeth hardly dared express her longing to reorganize their home. If only she could effect a reformation! Her heart had been set on it all winter. She knew now how people could live if only they understood how to do it. Her help here was needed. When she began to speak again it was very slowly, and with a careful consideration of the words she was using.
“We ought all of us to be different. We go along day after day hating our work, scolding and fretting at each other, and never really happy, any of us, and I’ve been wondering why?”
Her mother eyed her closely. Something of the girl’s mood stirred a responsive chord.
“I’ve thought of it too,” she said, “but I can’t never tell why it is though, unless”—she spoke slowly and Elizabeth was encouraged—“unless it’s because we don’t never belong to ourselves. Now your pa wants t’ run th’ house, an’ th’ farm, an’ you children, an’ me, an’ everything, an’ I’m so tired, an’ never have any help, that anybody’d be cross. Nobody ever pities me, though. Here, take this dasher an’ finish this here churnin’ for me.”
Elizabeth took the dasher into her own hand and stood looking down meditatively at the cream gathered about the hole in the churn lid. The first sentence of her mother’s remark struck her attention.
“Why can’t folks belong to themselves?” she asked, letting the dasher rest while she churned mental problems of greater moment.
Mrs. Farnshaw looked up quickly. “Well, if you think you can marry an’ belong t’ yourself, just you try it,” she replied.
“But, ma, if a man loved a woman couldn’t she get him to leave her free? Now—”
Mrs. Farnshaw cut her short. “Love! Men don’t know how to spell th’ word. They get a woman, an’ after she’s got children they know she can’t help herself. She’s got t’ stick to it ’cause she can’t raise ’em alone an’—an’ it don’t make no difference whether he takes care of ’em or not—” Words failed the exasperated woman.
Elizabeth studied her mother with a new interest. She began to apply her mother’s words to her own case. She knew that her mother had wanted her services this spring as much as her father, and remembered the letter calling her home.
“But that don’t cover your case, ma. You love pa more than you do us children; you know you do, and we know that you do too.”
Mrs. Farnshaw usually denied the most obvious thing if her protective instincts prompted her to do so, but her daughter had hit the bull’s-eye so exactly that for the moment she had no defence ready. Elizabeth was encouraged by her mother’s silence. Mrs. Farnshaw talked so much that it was not easy to get her attention. The young girl, glowing with the discoveries made in Aunt Susan’s home, desired to get at the bottom of the causes of inharmony in her own and to reorganize it on a better basis. It looked as if she was to be granted a hearing upon her schemes.
“I don’t care about him running over us so much,” she said diplomatically, “but you let him run over you in the same way. Now isn’t there some way to come at him and get him to see it. When we’re alone you talk about him domineering over you, but when he’s here you let him say anything he wants to and you never try to help yourself. Why don’t you strike out on a new tack and say you won’t do it when he makes unreasonable demands? Why don’t you reason with him good-naturedly, if you think that’s better, without crying, I mean, and then if he won’t listen at all——”
“I don’t know, Lizzie,” the mother interposed slowly. “I sometimes think I will an’ then when he’s here something won’t let me. It ain’t what he says to you; it’s—it’s—something he does to you when he looks at you. I’m as weak as water when he looks at me. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because I’ve always give up—an’—an’—I can’t tell why. A woman does just like a horse—there’s more’n one kind of whippin’ a man can give—an’ she gets scared—an’ minds. A man begins right from th’ first t’ tell her what to do an’ she loves ’im and wants t’ please ’im, an’ before long she don’t have her way no more’n a nigger.”
Some of the truth of the statement came within the grasp of the daughter, who was looking across the idle churn with her mind fixed in singleness of purpose upon remedies, and yet she felt that there was some other element in the matter not yet accounted for. The hopeless tone of the older woman, however, goaded her young spirit into forgetting the caution necessary to dealing with the subject. Her blood fired with resentment that one life should be so crushed by another. It was her mother whose shoulders drooped with a burden too heavy for her to throw off.
“If you’re sure of that, why don’t you leave him? We children are old enough to support ourselves and——”
“Lizzie!”
Elizabeth had overshot the mark. Her mother was of another generation.
“But, ma,” the girl protested quickly, “I don’t say leave him if you can find any way of settling matters. Can’t you have a talk with him—and get him to let you alone if you are willing to do the very best you can? That’s the best way. Have you tried it?”
“No I hain’t,” the mother replied shortly; “it wouldn’t do no good. But if my talkin’ t’ you is goin’ t’ make you say such things, I ain’t goin’t’ talk t’ you no more. When folks is married they’re married, an’ I don’t believe in partin’, nor talk of partin’.”
“Well, I think maybe you are right, but if you and pa are going to live together you ought to try and have it out, and be a help to each other instead——” She broke off and thought a moment, “Now Aunt Susan and Uncle Nate——”
“Stop right there!” Mrs. Farnshaw cried, afire with jealousy. “That woman’s brought more trouble into this house a’ready than She’ll ever take out. Your pa’s been rantin’ about her all winter an’—an’ he said you’d be pokin’ her ways into our faces th’ very day you got home. I ’spect she’s th’ one that got it into your head to talk of partin’, most likely.”
“Oh, now, ma, don’t go on like that. You don’t know about Aunt Susan. She’s the last person in the world to ever suggest such a thing. That’s just what I started out to say—they never have a word about anything. It’s the loveliest home to live in, and I was just thinking that they must have found——”
“I said I didn’t want t’ hear nothin’ more about them folks, an’ I don’t,” Mrs. Farnshaw cried, caught on the other horn of the argument and even more deeply offended than before. “She’ll most likely get all your love just like she got all your father’s money last winter. You needn’t mention her here no more. Th’ school directors ’ll be over to see you about fillin’ out that term, to-night,” Mrs. Farnshaw ended shortly, and turned the subject of conversation to other channels.
“Me? To fill out the term?” Elizabeth exclaimed in surprise. “What’s gone wrong