Wonder, Hope, Love, and Loss

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  “What I get to-morrow pays for more books and tuition, and maybe a few, just a few, things to wear. These shoes are so dreadfully heavy and hot, and they make such a noise on the floor. There isn’t another calico dress in the whole building, not among hundreds of us. Why, what is that? Aunt Margaret, what are you hiding in your lap?”

  She snatched the waist and shook it out, and her face was beaming. “Have you taken to waists all fancy and buttoned in the back? I bet you this is mine!”

  “I bet you so too,” said Margaret Sinton. “You undress right away and try it on, and if it fits, it will be done for morning. There are some low shoes, too!”

  Elnora began to dance. “Oh, you dear people!” she cried. “I can pay for them to-morrow night! Isn’t it too splendid! I was just thinking on the way home that I certainly would be compelled to have cooler shoes until later, and I was wondering what I’d do when the fall rains begin.”

  “I meant to get you some heavy dress skirts and a coat then,” said Mrs. Comstock.

  “I know you said so!” cried Elnora. “But you needn’t, now! I can buy every single stitch I need myself. Next summer I can gather up a lot more stuff, and all winter on the way to school. I am sure I can sell ferns, I know I can nuts, and the Bird Woman says the grade rooms want leaves, grasses, birds’ nests, and cocoons. Oh, isn’t this world lovely! I’ll be helping with the tax, next, mother!”

  Elnora waved the waist and started for the bedroom. When she opened the door she gave a little cry.

  “What have you people been doing?” she demanded. “I never saw so many interesting bundles in all my life. I’m ‘skeered’ to death for fear I can’t pay for them, and will have to give up something.”

  “Wouldn’t you take them, if you could not pay for them, Elnora?” asked her mother instantly.

  “Why, not unless you did,” answered Elnora. “People have no right to wear things they can’t afford, have they?”

  “But from such old friends as Maggie and Wesley!” Mrs. Comstock’s voice was oily with triumph.

  “From them least of all,” cried Elnora stoutly. “From a stranger sooner than from them, to whom I owe so much more than I ever can pay now.”

  “Well, you don’t have to,” said Mrs. Comstock. “Maggie just selected these things, because she is more in touch with the world, and has got such good taste. You can pay as long as your money holds out, and if there’s more necessary, maybe I can sell the butcher a calf, or if things are too costly for us, of course, they can take them back. Put on the waist now, and then you can look over the rest and see if they are suitable, and what you want.”

  Elnora stepped into the adjoining room and closed the door. Mrs. Comstock picked up the bucket and started for the well with it. At the bedroom she paused.

  “Elnora, were you going to wash these arrow points?”

  “Yes. The Bird Woman says they sell better if they are clean, so it can be seen that there are no defects in them.”

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Comstock. “Some of them seem quite baked. Shall I put them to soak? Do you want to take them in the morning?”

  “Yes, I do,” answered Elnora. “If you would just fill the pail with water.”

  Mrs. Comstock left the room. Wesley Sinton sat with his back to the window in the west end of the cabin which overlooked the well. A suppressed sound behind him caused him to turn quickly. Then he arose and leaned over Margaret.

  “She’s out there laughing like a blamed monkey!” he whispered indignantly.

  “Well, she can’t help it!” exclaimed Margaret.

  “I’m going home!” said Wesley.

  “Oh no, you are not!” retorted Margaret. “You are missing the point. The point is not how you look, or feel. It is to get these things in Elnora’s possession past dispute. You go now, and to-morrow Elnora will wear calico, and Kate Comstock will return these goods. Right here I stay until everything we bought is Elnora’s.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Wesley.

  “I don’t know yet, myself,” said Margaret.

  Then she arose and peered from the window. At the well curb stood Katharine Comstock. The strain of the day was finding reaction. Her chin was in the air, she was heaving, shaking and strangling to suppress any sound. The word that slipped between Margaret Sinton’s lips shocked Wesley until he dropped on his chair, and recalled her to her senses. She was fairly composed as she turned to Elnora, and began the fitting. When she had pinched, pulled, and patted she called, “Come see if you think this fits, Kate.”

  Mrs. Comstock had gone around to the back door and answered from the kitchen. “You know more about it than I do. Go ahead! I’m getting supper. Don’t forget to allow for what it will shrink in washing!”

  “I set the colours and washed the goods last night; it can be made to fit right now,” answered Margaret.

  When she could find nothing more to alter she told Elnora to heat some water. After she had done that the girl began opening packages.

  The hat came first.

  “Mother!” cried Elnora. “Mother, of course, you have seen this, but you haven’t seen it on me. I must try it on.”

  “Don’t you dare put that on your head until your hair is washed and properly combed,” said Margaret.

  “Oh!” cried Elnora. “Is that water to wash my hair? I thought it was to set the colour in another dress.”

  “Well, you thought wrong,” said Margaret simply. “Your hair is going to be washed and brushed until it shines like copper. While it dries you can eat your supper, and this dress will be finished. Then you can put on your new ribbon, and your hat. You can try your shoes now, and if they don’t fit, you and Wesley can drive to town and change them. That little round bundle on the top of the basket is your stockings.”

  Margaret sat down and began sewing swiftly, and a little later opened the machine, and ran several long seams.

  Elnora returned in a few minutes holding up her skirts and stepping daintily in the new shoes.

  “Don’t soil them, honey, else you’re sure they fit,” cautioned Wesley.

  “They seem just a trifle large, maybe,” said Elnora dubiously, and Wesley knelt to feel. He and Margaret thought them a fit, and then Elnora appealed to her mother. Mrs. Comstock appeared wiping her hands on her apron. She examined the shoes critically.

  “They seem to fit,” she said, “but they are away too fine to walk country roads.”

  “I think so, too,” said Elnora instantly. “We had better take these back and get a cheaper pair.”

  “Oh, let them go for this time,” said Mrs. Comstock. “They are so pretty, I hate to part with them. You can get cheaper ones after this.”

  Wesley and Margaret scarcely breathed for a long time.

  When Wesley went to do the feeding. Elnora set the table. When the water was hot, Margaret pinned a big towel around Elnora’s shoulders and washed and dried the lovely hair according to the instructions she had been given the previous night. As the hair began to dry it billowed out in a sparkling sheen that caught the light and gleamed and flashed.

  “Now, the idea is to let it stand naturally, just as the curl will make it. Don’t you do any of that nasty, untidy snarling, Elnora,” cautioned Margaret. “Wash it this way every two weeks while you are in school, shake it out, and dry it. Then part it in the middle and turn a front quarter on each side from your face. You tie the back at your neck with a string—so, and the ribbon goes in a big, loose bow. I’ll show you.” One after another Margaret Sinton tied the ribbons, creasing each of them so they could not be returned, as she explained that she was trying to find the colour most becoming. Then she produced the raincoat which carried Elnora into transports.

  Mrs. Comstock objected. “That won’t be warm enough for cold weather, and you can’t afford it and a coat, too.”

  “I’ll tell you what I thought,” said Elnora. “I was planning on the way home. These coats are fine because they keep you dry. I thought I would get one, and
a warm sweater to wear under it cold days. Then I always would be dry, and warm. The sweater only costs three dollars, so I could get it and the raincoat both for half the price of a heavy cloth coat.”

  “You are right about that,” said Mrs. Comstock. “You can change more with the weather, too. Keep the raincoat, Elnora.”

  “Wear it until you try the hat,” said Margaret. “It will have to do until the dress is finished.”

  Elnora picked up the hat dubiously. “Mother, may I wear my hair as it is now?” she asked.

  “Let me take a good look,” said Katharine Comstock.

  Heaven only knows what she saw. To Wesley and to Margaret the bright young face of Elnora, with its pink tints, its heavy dark brows, its bright blue-gray eyes, and its frame of curling reddish-brown hair was the sweetest sight on earth, and at that instant Elnora was radiant.

  “So long as it’s your own hair, and combed back as plain as it will go, I don’t suppose it cuts much ice whether it’s tied a little tighter or looser,” conceded Mrs. Comstock. “If you stop right there, you may let it go at that.”

  Elnora set the hat on her head. It was only a wide tan straw with three exquisite peacock quills at one side. Margaret Sinton cried out, Wesley slapped his knee and sighed deeply while Mrs. Comstock stood speechless for a second.

  “I wish you had asked the price before you put that on,” she said impatiently. “We never can afford it.”

  “It’s not so much as you think,” said Margaret. “Don’t you see what I did? I had them take off the quills, and put on some of those Phoebe Simms gave me from her peacocks. The hat will only cost you a dollar and a half.”

  She avoided Wesley’s eyes, and looked straight at Mrs. Comstock. Elnora removed the hat to examine it.

  “Why, they are those reddish-tan quills of yours!” she cried. “Mother, look how beautifully they are set on! I’d much rather have them than those from the store.”

  “So would I,” said Mrs. Comstock. “If Margaret wants to spare them, that will make you a beautiful hat; dirt cheap, too! You must go past Mrs. Simms and show her. She would be pleased to see them.”

  Elnora sank into a chair and contemplated her toe. “Landy, ain’t I a queen?” she murmured. “What else have I got?”

  “Just a belt, some handkerchiefs, and a pair of top shoes for rainy days and colder weather,” said Margaret.

  “About those high shoes, that was my idea,” said Wesley. “Soon as it rains, low shoes won’t do, and by taking two pairs at once I could get them some cheaper. The low ones are two and the high ones two fifty, together three seventy-five. Ain’t that cheap?”

  “That’s a real bargain,” said Mrs. Comstock, “if they are good shoes, and they look it.”

  “This,” said Wesley, producing the last package, “is your Christmas present from your Aunt Maggie. I got mine, too, but it’s at the house. I’ll bring it up in the morning.”

  He handed Margaret the umbrella, and she passed it over to Elnora who opened it and sat laughing under its shelter. Then she kissed both of them. She brought a pencil and a slip of paper to set down the prices they gave her of everything they had brought except the umbrella, added the sum, and said laughingly: “Will you please wait till to-morrow for the money? I will have it then, sure.”

  “Elnora,” said Wesley Sinton. “Wouldn’t you—”

  “Elnora, hustle here a minute!” called Mrs. Comstock from the kitchen. “I need you!”

  “One second, mother,” answered Elnora, throwing off the coat and hat, and closing the umbrella as she ran. There were several errands to do in a hurry, and then supper. Elnora chattered incessantly, Wesley and Margaret talked all they could, while Mrs. Comstock said a word now and then, which was all she ever did. But Wesley Sinton was watching her, and time and again he saw a peculiar little twist around her mouth. He knew that for the first time in sixteen years she really was laughing over something. She had all she could do to preserve her usually sober face. Wesley knew what she was thinking.

  After supper the dress was finished, the pattern for the next one discussed, and then the Sintons went home. Elnora gathered her treasures. When she started upstairs she stopped. “May I kiss you good-night, mother?” she asked lightly.

  “Never mind any slobbering,” said Mrs. Comstock. “I should think you’d lived with me long enough to know that I don’t care for it.”

  “Well, I’d love to show you in some way how happy I am, and how I thank you.”

  “I wonder what for?” said Mrs. Comstock. “Mag Sinton chose that stuff and brought it here and you pay for it.”

  “Yes, but you seemed willing for me to have it, and you said you would help me if I couldn’t pay all.”

  “Maybe I did,” said Mrs. Comstock. “Maybe I did. I meant to get you some heavy dress skirts about Thanksgiving, and I still can get them. Go to bed, and for any sake don’t begin mooning before a mirror, and make a dunce of yourself.”

  Mrs. Comstock picked up several papers and blew out the kitchen light. She stood in the middle of the sitting-room floor for a time and then went into her room and closed the door. Sitting on the edge of the bed she thought for a few minutes and then suddenly buried her face in the pillow and again heaved with laughter.

  Down the road plodded Margaret and Wesley Sinton. Neither of them had words to utter their united thought.

  “Done!” hissed Wesley at last. “Done brown! Did you ever feel like a bloomin’, confounded donkey? How did the woman do it?”

  “She didn’t do it!” gulped Margaret through her tears. “She didn’t do anything. She trusted to Elnora’s great big soul to bring her out right, and really she was right, and so it had to bring her. She’s a darling, Wesley! But she’s got a time before her. Did you see Kate Comstock grab that money? Before six months she’ll be out combing the Limberlost for bugs and arrow points to help pay the tax. I know her.”

  “Well, I don’t!” exclaimed Sinton, “she’s too many for me. But there is a laugh left in her yet! I didn’t s’pose there was. Bet you a dollar, if we could see her this minute, she’d be chuckling over the way we got left.”

  Both of them stopped in the road and looked back.

  “There’s Elnora’s light in her room,” said Margaret. “The poor child will feel those clothes, and pore over her books till morning, but she’ll look decent to go to school, anyway. Nothing is too big a price to pay for that.”

  “Yes, if Kate lets her wear them. Ten to one, she makes her finish the week with that old stuff!”

  “No, she won’t,” said Margaret. “She’ll hardly dare. Kate made some concessions, all right; big ones for her—if she did get her way in the main. She bent some, and if Elnora proves that she can walk out barehanded in the morning and come back with that much money in her pocket, an armful of books, and buy a turnout like that, she proves that she is of some consideration, and Kate’s smart enough. She’ll think twice before she’ll do that. Elnora won’t wear a calico dress to high school again. You watch and see if she does. She may have the best clothes she’ll get for a time, for the least money, but she won’t know it until she tries to buy goods herself at the same rates. Wesley, what about those prices? Didn’t they shrink considerable?”

  “You began it,” said Wesley. “Those prices were all right. We didn’t say what the goods cost us, we said what they would cost her. Surely, she’s mistaken about being able to pay all that. Can she pick up stuff of that value around the Limberlost? Didn’t the Bird Woman see her trouble, and just give her the money?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Margaret. “Seems to me I’ve heard of her paying, or offering to pay those who would take the money, for bugs and butterflies, and I’ve known people who sold that banker Indian stuff. Once I heard that his pipe collection beat that of the Government at the Philadelphia Centennial. Those things have come to have a value.”

  “Well, there’s about a bushel of that kind of valuables piled up in the woodshed, that belongs to Elnora. At
least, I picked them up because she said she wanted them. Ain’t it queer that she’d take to stones, bugs, and butterflies, and save them. Now they are going to bring her the very thing she wants the worst. Lord, but this is a funny world when you get to studying! Looks like things didn’t all come by accident. Looks as if there was a plan back of it, and somebody driving that knows the road, and how to handle the lines. Anyhow, Elnora’s in the wagon, and when I get out in the night and the dark closes around me, and I see the stars, I don’t feel so cheap. Maggie, how the nation did Kate Comstock do that?”

  “You will keep on harping, Wesley. I told you she didn’t do it. Elnora did it! She walked in and took things right out of our hands. All Kate had to do was to enjoy having it go her way, and she was cute enough to put in a few questions that sort of guided Elnora. But I don’t know, Wesley. This thing makes me think, too. S’pose we’d taken Elnora when she was a baby, and we’d heaped on her all the love we can’t on our own, and we’d coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the woman that living alone, learning to think for herself, and taking all the knocks Kate Comstock could give, have made of her?”

  “You bet your life!” cried Wesley, warmly. “Loving anybody don’t hurt them. We wouldn’t have done anything but love her. You can’t hurt a child loving it. She’d have learned to work, to study, and grown into a woman with us, without suffering like a poor homeless dog.”

  “But you don’t see the point, Wesley. She would have grown into a fine woman with us; but as we would have raised her, would her heart ever have known the world as it does now? Where’s the anguish, Wesley, that child can’t comprehend? Seeing what she’s seen of her mother hasn’t hardened her. She can understand any mother’s sorrow. Living life from the rough side has only broadened her. Where’s the girl or boy burning with shame, or struggling to find a way, that will cross Elnora’s path and not get a lift from her? She’s had the knocks, but there’ll never be any of the thing you call ‘false pride’ in her. I guess we better keep out. Maybe Kate Comstock knows what she’s doing. Sure as you live, Elnora has grown bigger on knocks than she would on love.”