CHAPTER I
WHEREIN ELNORA GOES TO HIGH SCHOOL AND LEARNS MANY LESSONS NOT FOUND IN
HER BOOKS
"Elnora Comstock, have you lost your senses?" demanded the angry voice of
Katharine Comstock while she glared at her daughter.
"Why mother!" faltered the girl.
"Don't you 'why mother' me!" cried Mrs. Comstock. "You know very well
what I mean. You've given me no peace until you've had your way about
this going to school business; I've fixed you good enough, and you're
ready to start. But no child of mine walks the streets of Onabasha
looking like a play-actress woman. You wet your hair and comb it down
modest and decent and then be off, or you'll have no time to find where
you belong."
Elnora gave one despairing glance at the white face, framed in a most
becoming riot of reddish-brown hair, which she saw in the little kitchen
mirror. Then she untied the narrow black ribbon, wet the comb and
plastered the waving curls close to her head, bound them fast, pinned on
the skimpy black hat and opened the back door.
"You've gone so plumb daffy you are forgetting your dinner," jeered her
mother.
"I don't want anything to eat," replied Elnora.
"You'll take your dinner or you'll not go one step. Are you crazy? Walk
almost three miles and no food from six in the morning until six at
night. A pretty figure you'd cut if you had your way! And after I've
gone and bought you this nice new pail and filled it especial to start
on!"
Elnora came back with a face still whiter and picked up the lunch.
"Thank you, mother! Good-bye!" she said. Mrs. Comstock did not reply.
She watched the girl follow the long walk to the gate and go from sight
on the road, in the bright sunshine of the first Monday of September.
"I bet a dollar she gets enough of it by night!" commented Mrs.
Comstock.
Elnora walked by instinct, for her eyes were blinded with tears. She
left the road where it turned south, at the corner of the Limberlost,
climbed a snake fence and entered a path worn by her own feet. Dodging
under willow and scrub oak branches she came at last to the faint
outline of an old trail made in the days when the precious timber of the
swamp was guarded by armed men. This path she followed until she reached
a thick clump of bushes. From the debris in the end of a hollow log she
took a key that unlocked the padlock of a large weatherbeaten old box,
inside of which lay several books, a butterfly apparatus, and a small
cracked mirror. The walls were lined thickly with gaudy butterflies,
dragonflies, and moths. She set up the mirror and once more pulling
the ribbon from her hair, she shook the bright mass over her shoulders,
tossing it dry in the sunshine. Then she straightened it, bound it
loosely, and replaced her hat. She tugged vainly at the low brown calico
collar and gazed despairingly at the generous length of the narrow
skirt. She lifted it as she would have cut it if possible. That
disclosed the heavy high leather shoes, at sight of which she seemed
positively ill, and hastily dropped the skirt. She opened the pail,
removed the lunch, wrapped it in the napkin, and placed it in a small
pasteboard box. Locking the case again she hid the key and hurried down
the trail.
She followed it around the north end of the swamp and then entered a
footpath crossing a farm leading in the direction of the spires of the
city to the northeast. Again she climbed a fence and was on the open
road. For an instant she leaned against the fence staring before her,
then turned and looked back. Behind her lay the land on which she had
been born to drudgery and a mother who made no pretence of loving her;
before her lay the city through whose schools she hoped to find means
of escape and the way to reach the things for which she cared. When she
thought of how she appeared she leaned more heavily against the fence
and groaned; when she thought of turning back and wearing such clothing
in ignorance all the days of her life she set her teeth firmly and went
hastily toward Onabasha.
On the bridge crossing a deep culvert at the suburbs she glanced around,
and then kneeling she thrust the lunch box between the foundation and
the flooring. This left her empty-handed as she approached the big stone
high school building. She entered bravely and inquired her way to the
office of the superintendent. There she learned that she should have
come the previous week and arranged about her classes. There were many
things incident to the opening of school, and one man unable to cope
with all of them.
"Where have you been attending school?" he asked, while he advised the
teacher of Domestic Science not to telephone for groceries until
she knew how many she would have in her classes; wrote an order for
chemicals for the students of science; and advised the leader of the
orchestra to hire a professional to take the place of the bass violist,
reported suddenly ill.
"I finished last spring at Brushwood school, district number nine," said
Elnora. "I have been studying all summer. I am quite sure I can do the
first year work, if I have a few days to get started."
"Of course, of course," assented the superintendent. "Almost invariably
country pupils do good work. You may enter first year, and if it is too
difficult, we will find it out speedily. Your teachers will tell you the
list of books you must have, and if you will come with me I will show
you the way to the auditorium. It is now time for opening exercises.
Take any seat you find vacant."
Elnora stood before the entrance and stared into the largest room she
ever had seen. The floor sloped to a yawning stage on which a band of
musicians, grouped around a grand piano, were tuning their instruments.
She had two fleeting impressions. That it was all a mistake; this was
no school, but a grand display of enormous ribbon bows; and the second,
that she was sinking, and had forgotten how to walk. Then a burst from
the orchestra nerved her while a bevy of daintily clad, sweet-smelling
things that might have been birds, or flowers, or possibly gaily
dressed, happy young girls, pushed her forward. She found herself
plodding across the back of the auditorium, praying for guidance, to an
empty seat.
As the girls passed her, vacancies seemed to open to meet them. Their
friends were moving over, beckoning and whispering invitations. Every
one else was seated, but no one paid any attention to the white-faced
girl stumbling half-blindly down the aisle next the farthest wall. So
she went on to the very end facing the stage. No one moved, and she
could not summon courage to crowd past others to several empty seats she
saw. At the end of the aisle she paused in desperation, while she stared
back at the whole forest of faces most of which were now turned upon
her.
In a flash came the full realization of her scanty dress, her pitiful
little hat and ribbon, her big, heavy shoes, her ignorance of where to
go or what to do; and from a sickening wave which crept over her, she
felt she was going to become very ill. Then out of the mass she saw
a pair of big, brown boy eyes, three seats from her, and there was a
message in them. Without moving his body he reached forward and with a
pencil touched the back of the seat before him. Instantly Elnora took
another step which brought her to a row of vacant front seats.
She heard laughter behind her; the knowledge that she wore the only hat
in the room burned her; every matter of moment, and some of none at all,
cut and stung. She had no books. Where should she go when this was over?
What would she give to be on the trail going home! She was shaking with
a nervous chill when the music ceased, and the superintendent arose, and
coming down to the front of the flower-decked platform, opened a Bible
and began to read. Elnora did not know what he was reading, and she
felt that she did not care. Wildly she was racking her brain to decide
whether she should sit still when the others left the room or follow,
and ask some one where the Freshmen went first.
In the midst of the struggle one sentence fell on her ear. "Hide me
under the shadow of Thy wings."
Elnora began to pray frantically. "Hide me, O God, hide me, under the
shadow of Thy wings."
Again and again she implored that prayer, and before she realized what
was coming, every one had arisen and the room was emptying rapidly.
Elnora hurried after the nearest girl and in the press at the door
touched her sleeve timidly.
"Will you please tell me where the Freshmen go?" she asked huskily.
The girl gave her one surprised glance, and drew away.
"Same place as the fresh women," she answered, and those nearest her
laughed.
Elnora stopped praying suddenly and the colour crept into her face.
"I'll wager you are the first person I meet when I find it," she said
and stopped short. "Not that! Oh, I must not do that!" she thought in
dismay. "Make an enemy the first thing I do. Oh, not that!"
She followed with her eyes as the young people separated in the hall,
some climbing stairs, some disappearing down side halls, some entering
adjoining doors. She saw the girl overtake the brown-eyed boy and speak
to him. He glanced back at Elnora with a scowl on his face. Then she
stood alone in the hall.
Presently a door opened and a young woman came out and entered another
room. Elnora waited until she returned, and hurried to her. "Would you
tell me where the Freshmen are?" she panted.
"Straight down the hall, three doors to your left," was the answer, as
the girl passed.
"One minute please, oh please," begged Elnora: "Should I knock or just
open the door?"
"Go in and take a seat," replied the teacher.
"What if there aren't any seats?" gasped Elnora.
"Classrooms are never half-filled, there will be plenty," was the
answer.
Elnora removed her hat. There was no place to put it, so she carried
it in her hand. She looked infinitely better without it. After several
efforts she at last opened the door and stepping inside faced a smaller
and more concentrated battery of eyes.
"The superintendent sent me. He thinks I belong here," she said to the
professor in charge of the class, but she never before heard the voice
with which she spoke. As she stood waiting, the girl of the hall passed
on her way to the blackboard, and suppressed laughter told Elnora that
her thrust had been repeated.
"Be seated," said the professor, and then because he saw Elnora was
desperately embarrassed he proceeded to lend her a book and to ask her
if she had studied algebra. She said she had a little, but not the same
book they were using. He asked her if she felt that she could do the
work they were beginning, and she said she did.
That was how it happened, that three minutes after entering the room
she was told to take her place beside the girl who had gone last to the
board, and whose flushed face and angry eyes avoided meeting Elnora's.
Being compelled to concentrate on her proposition she forgot herself.
When the professor asked that all pupils sign their work she firmly
wrote "Elnora Comstock" under her demonstration. Then she took her seat
and waited with white lips and trembling limbs, as one after another
professor called the names on the board, while their owners arose and
explained their propositions, or "flunked" if they had not found a
correct solution. She was so eager to catch their forms of expression
and prepare herself for her recitation, that she never looked from the
work on the board, until clearly and distinctly, "Elnora Comstock,"
called the professor.
The dazed girl stared at the board. One tiny curl added to the top of
the first curve of the m in her name, had transformed it from a good
old English patronymic that any girl might bear proudly, to Cornstock.
Elnora sat speechless. When and how did it happen? She could feel the
wave of smothered laughter in the air around her. A rush of anger turned
her face scarlet and her soul sick. The voice of the professor addressed
her directly.
"This proposition seems to be beautifully demonstrated, Miss Cornstalk,"
he said. "Surely, you can tell us how you did it."
That word of praise saved her. She could do good work. They might wear
their pretty clothes, have their friends and make life a greater misery
than it ever before had been for her, but not one of them should
do better work or be more womanly. That lay with her. She was tall,
straight, and handsome as she arose.
"Of course I can explain my work," she said in natural tones. "What I
can't explain is how I happened to be so stupid as to make a mistake in
writing my own name. I must have been a little nervous. Please excuse
me."
She went to the board, swept off the signature with one stroke, then
rewrote it plainly. "My name is Comstock," she said distinctly. She
returned to her seat and following the formula used by the others made
her first high school recitation.
As Elnora resumed her seat Professor Henley looked at her steadily.
"It puzzles me," he said deliberately, "how you can write as beautiful a
demonstration, and explain it as clearly as ever has been done in any
of my classes and still be so disturbed as to make a mistake in your own
name. Are you very sure you did that yourself, Miss Comstock?"
"It is impossible that any one else should have done it," answered
Elnora.
"I am very glad you think so," said the professor. "Being Freshmen, all
of you are strangers to me. I should dislike to begin the year with you
feeling there was one among you small enough to do a trick like that.
The next proposition, please."
When the hour had gone the class filed back to the study room and Elnora
followed in desperation, because she did not know where else to go. She
could not study as she had no books, and when the class again left the
room to go to another professor for the next recitation, she went also.
At least they could put her out if she did not belong there. Noon
came at last, and she kept with the others until they dispersed on
the sidewalk. She was so abnormally self-conscious she fancied all the
hundreds of that laughing, throng saw and jested at her. When she passed
the brown-eyed boy walking with the girl of her encounter, she knew, for
she heard him say: "Did you really let that gawky piece of calico get
ahead of you?" The answer was indistinct.
Elnora hurried from the city. She intended to get her lunch, eat it in
the shade of the first tree, and then decide whether she would go back
or go home. She knelt on the bridge and reached for her box, but it
was so very light that she was prepared for the fact that it was empty,
before opening it. There was one thing for which to be thankful. The boy
or tramp who had seen her hide it, had left the napkin. She would not
have to face her mother and account for its loss. She put it in her
pocket, and threw the box into the ditch. Then she sat on the bridge and
tried to think, but her brain was confused.
"Perhaps the worst is over," she said at last. "I will go back. What
would mother say to me if I came home now?"
So she returned to the high school, followed some other pupils to the
coat room, hung her hat, and found her way to the study where she had
been in the morning. Twice that afternoon, with aching head and empty
stomach, she faced strange professors, in different branches. Once she
escaped notice; the second time the worst happened. She was asked a
question she could not answer.
"Have you not decided on your course, and secured your books?" inquired
the professor.
"I have decided on my course," replied Elnora, "I do not know where to
ask for my books."
"Ask?" the professor was bewildered.
"I understood the books were furnished," faltered Elnora.
"Only to those bringing an order from the township trustee," replied the
Professor.
"No! Oh no!" cried Elnora. "I will have them to-morrow," and gripped
her desk for support for she knew that was not true. Four books, ranging
perhaps at a dollar and a half apiece; would her mother buy them? Of
course she would not--could not.
Did not Elnora know the story of old. There was enough land, but no one
to do clearing and farm. Tax on all those acres, recently the new gravel
road tax added, the expense of living and only the work of two women to
meet all of it. She was insane to think she could come to the city to
school. Her mother had been right. The girl decided that if only she
lived to reach home, she would stay there and lead any sort of life to
avoid more of this torture. Bad as what she wished to escape had been,
it was nothing like this. She never could live down the movement that
went through the class when she inadvertently revealed the fact that she
had expected books to be furnished. Her mother would not secure them;
that settled the question.
But the end of misery is never in a hurry to come; before the day was
over the superintendent entered the room and explained that pupils from
the country were charged a tuition of twenty dollars a year. That
really was the end. Previously Elnora had canvassed a dozen methods for
securing the money for books, ranging all the way from offering to wash
the superintendent's dishes to breaking into the bank. This additional
expense made her plans so wildly impossible, there was nothing to do but
hold up her head until she was from sight.
Down the long corridor alone among hundreds, down the long street alone
among thousands, out into the country she came at last. Across the fence
and field, along the old trail once trodden by a boy's bitter agony, now
stumbled a white-faced girl, sick at heart. She sat on a log and began
to sob in spite of her efforts at self-control. At first it was physical
breakdown, later, thought came crowding.
Oh the shame, the mortification! Why had she not known of the tuition?
How did she happen to think that in the city books were furnished?
Perhaps it was because she had read they were in several states. But why
did she not know? Why did not her mother go with her? Other mothers--but
when had her mother ever been or done anything at all like other
mothers? Because she never had been it was useless to blame her now.
Elnora realized she should have gone to town the week before, called
on some one and learned all these things herself. She should have
remembered how her clothing would look, before she wore it in public
places. Now she knew, and her dreams were over. She must go home to
feed chickens, calves, and pigs, wear calico and coarse shoes, and with
averted head, pass a library all her life. She sobbed again.
"For pity's sake, honey, what's the matter?" asked the voice of the
nearest neighbour, Wesley Sinton, as he seated himself beside Elnora.
"There, there," he continued, smearing tears all over her face in an
effort to dry them. "Was it as bad as that, now? Maggie has been just
wild over you all day. She's got nervouser every minute. She said we
were foolish to let you go. She said your clothes were not right, you
ought not to carry that tin pail, and that they would laugh at you. By
gum, I see they did!"
"Oh, Uncle Wesley," sobbed the girl, "why didn't she tell me?"
"Well, you see, Elnora, she didn't like to. You got such a way of
holding up your head, and going through with things. She thought some
way that you'd make it, till you got started, and then she begun to see
a hundred things we should have done. I reckon you hadn't reached that
building before she remembered that your skirt should have been pleated
instead of gathered, your shoes been low, and lighter for hot September
weather, and a new hat. Were your clothes right, Elnora?"
The girl broke into hysterical laughter. "Right!" she cried. "Right!
Uncle Wesley, you should have seen me among them! I was a picture!
They'll never forget me. No, they won't get the chance, for they'll see
me again to-morrow!
"Now that is what I call spunk, Elnora! Downright grit," said Wesley
Sinton. "Don't you let them laugh you out. You've helped Margaret and me
for years at harvest and busy times, what you've earned must amount to
quite a sum. You can get yourself a good many clothes with it."
"Don't mention clothes, Uncle Wesley," sobbed Elnora, "I don't care now
how I look. If I don't go back all of them will know it's because I am
so poor I can't buy my books."
"Oh, I don't know as you are so dratted poor," said Sinton meditatively.
"There are three hundred acres of good land, with fine timber as ever
grew on it."
"It takes all we can earn to pay the tax, and mother wouldn't cut a tree
for her life."
"Well then, maybe, I'll be compelled to cut one for her," suggested
Sinton. "Anyway, stop tearing yourself to pieces and tell me. If it
isn't clothes, what is it?"
"It's books and tuition. Over twenty dollars in all."
"Humph! First time I ever knew you to be stumped by twenty dollars,
Elnora," said Sinton, patting her hand.
"It's the first time you ever knew me to want money," answered Elnora.
"This is different from anything that ever happened to me. Oh, how can I
get it, Uncle Wesley?"
"Drive to town with me in the morning and I'll draw it from the bank for
you. I owe you every cent of it."
"You know you don't owe me a penny, and I wouldn't touch one from you,
unless I really could earn it. For anything that's past I owe you and
Aunt Margaret for all the home life and love I've ever known. I know how
you work, and I'll not take your money."
"Just a loan, Elnora, just a loan for a little while until you can earn
it. You can be proud with all the rest of the world, but there are no
secrets between us, are there, Elnora?"
"No," said Elnora, "there are none. You and Aunt Margaret have given me
all the love there has been in my life. That is the one reason above all
others why you shall not give me charity. Hand me money because you find
me crying for it! This isn't the first time this old trail has known
tears and heartache. All of us know that story. Freckles stuck to what
he undertook and won out. I stick, too. When Duncan moved away he gave
me all Freckles left in the swamp, and as I have inherited his property
maybe his luck will come with it. I won't touch your money, but I'll
win some way. First, I'm going home and try mother. It's just possible
I could find second-hand books, and perhaps all the tuition need not
be paid at once. Maybe they would accept it quarterly. But oh, Uncle
Wesley, you and Aunt Margaret keep on loving me! I'm so lonely, and no
one else cares!"
Wesley Sinton's jaws met with a click. He swallowed hard on bitter words
and changed what he would have liked to say three times before it became
articulate.
"Elnora," he said at last, "if it hadn't been for one thing I'd have
tried to take legal steps to make you ours when you were three years
old. Maggie said then it wasn't any use, but I've always held on. You
see, I was the first man there, honey, and there are things you see,
that you can't ever make anybody else understand. She loved him Elnora,
she just made an idol of him. There was that oozy green hole, with the
thick scum broke, and two or three big bubbles slowly rising that were
the breath of his body. There she was in spasms of agony, and beside her
the great heavy log she'd tried to throw him. I can't ever forgive her
for turning against you, and spoiling your childhood as she has, but I
couldn't forgive anybody else for abusing her. Maggie has got no mercy
on her, but Maggie didn't see what I did, and I've never tried to make
it very clear to her. It's been a little too plain for me ever since.
Whenever I look at your mother's face, I see what she saw, so I hold my
tongue and say, in my heart, 'Give her a mite more time.' Some day it
will come. She does love you, Elnora. Everybody does, honey. It's just
that she's feeling so much, she can't express herself. You be a patient
girl and wait a little longer. After all, she's your mother, and you're
all she's got, but a memory, and it might do her good to let her know
that she was fooled in that."
"It would kill her!" cried the girl swiftly. "Uncle Wesley, it would
kill her! What do you mean?"
"Nothing," said Wesley Sinton soothingly. "Nothing, honey. That was just
one of them fool things a man says, when he is trying his best to be
wise. You see, she loved him mightily, and they'd been married only a
year, and what she was loving was what she thought he was. She hadn't
really got acquainted with the man yet. If it had been even one more
year, she could have borne it, and you'd have got justice. Having been a
teacher she was better educated and smarter than the rest of us, and
so she was more sensitive like. She can't understand she was loving a
dream. So I say it might do her good if somebody that knew, could tell
her, but I swear to gracious, I never could. I've heard her out at the
edge of that quagmire calling in them wild spells of hers off and on for
the last sixteen years, and imploring the swamp to give him back to her,
and I've got out of bed when I was pretty tired, and come down to see
she didn't go in herself, or harm you. What she feels is too deep for
me. I've got to respectin' her grief, and I can't get over it. Go home
and tell your ma, honey, and ask her nice and kind to help you. If she
won't, then you got to swallow that little lump of pride in your neck,
and come to Aunt Maggie, like you been a-coming all your life."
"I'll ask mother, but I can't take your money, Uncle Wesley, indeed I
can't. I'll wait a year, and earn some, and enter next year."
"There's one thing you don't consider, Elnora," said the man earnestly.
"And that's what you are to Maggie. She's a little like your ma. She
hasn't given up to it, and she's struggling on brave, but when we buried
our second little girl the light went out of Maggie's eyes, and it's
not come back. The only time I ever see a hint of it is when she thinks
she's done something that makes you happy, Elnora. Now, you go easy
about refusing her anything she wants to do for you. There's times in
this world when it's our bounden duty to forget ourselves, and think
what will help other people. Young woman, you owe me and Maggie all the
comfort we can get out of you. There's the two of our own we can't ever
do anything for. Don't you get the idea into your head that a fool thing
you call pride is going to cut us out of all the pleasure we have in
life beside ourselves."
"Uncle Wesley, you are a dear," said Elnora. "Just a dear! If I can't
possibly get that money any way else on earth, I'll come and borrow it
of you, and then I'll pay it back if I must dig ferns from the swamp and
sell them from door to door in the city. I'll even plant them, so that
they will be sure to come up in the spring. I have been sort of panic
stricken all day and couldn't think. I can gather nuts and sell them.
Freckles sold moths and butterflies, and I've a lot collected. Of
course, I am going back to-morrow! I can find a way to get the books.
Don't you worry about me. I am all right!
"Now, what do you think of that?" inquired Wesley Sinton of the swamp in
general. "Here's our Elnora come back to stay. Head high and right as a
trivet! You've named three ways in three minutes that you could earn
ten dollars, which I figure would be enough, to start you. Let's go to
supper and stop worrying!"
Elnora unlocked the case, took out the pail, put the napkin in it,
pulled the ribbon from her hair, binding it down tightly again and
followed to the road. From afar she could see her mother in the doorway.
She blinked her eyes, and tried to smile as she answered Wesley Sinton,
and indeed she did feel better. She knew now what she had to expect,
where to go, and what to do. Get the books she must; when she had them,
she would show those city girls and boys how to prepare and recite
lessons, how to walk with a brave heart; and they could show her how to
wear pretty clothes and have good times.
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