CHAPTER XI
Wherein Elnora Graduates, and Freckles and the Angel Send Gifts
That was Friday night. Elnora came home Saturday morning and went to work. Mrs. Comstock asked no questions, and the girl only told her that the audience had been large enough to more than pay for the piece of statuary the class had selected for the hall. Then she inquired about her dresses and was told they would be ready for her. She had been invited to go to the Bird Woman's to prepare for both the sermon and Commencement exercises. Since there was so much practising to do, it had been arranged that she should remain there from the night of the sermon until after she was graduated. If Mrs. Comstock decided to attend she was to drive in with the Sintons. When Elnora begged her to come she said she thought not. She cared nothing about such silliness.
It was almost time for Wesley to come to take Elnora to the city when, fresh from her bath, with shining, crisply washed hair, and dressed to her outer garment, she stood with expectant face before her mother and cried, "Now my dress, mother!"
Mrs. Comstock was pale as she replied, "It's on my bed. Help yourself."
Elnora opened the door and stepped into her mother's room with never a misgiving. Since the night Margaret and Wesley had brought her clothing, when she first started to school, her mother had selected all of her dresses, with Mrs. Sinton's help made most of them, and Elnora had paid the bills. The white dress of the previous spring was her first made at a dressmaker's. She had worn that as junior usher at Commencement. But her mother had selected the goods, had it made, and it had fitted perfectly and had been suitable in every way. So with her heart at rest on that point, Elnora hurried to the bed to find only her last summer's white dress, freshly washed and ironed. For an instant she stared at it, then she picked up the garment, looked at the bed beneath it, and then her gaze slowly swept the room.
It was a very unfamiliar room. Perhaps this was the third time she had been in it since she was a very small child. Her eyes ranged over the beautiful walnut dresser, the tall bureau, the big chest, inside which she never had seen, and the row of masculine attire hanging above it. Somewhere a dainty lawn or mull dress simply must be hanging. But it was not. Elnora dropped on the chest because she felt too weak to stand. In less than two hours she must be in the church, at Onabasha. She could not wear a last year's washed dress. She had nothing else. She leaned against the wall and her father's overcoat brushed her face. She caught the folds and clung to it with all her might.
"Oh, father! father!" she moaned. "I need you! I don't believe you would have done this!"
She clung to the coat in dry-eyed agony and tried to think what she could do. At last she opened the door.
"I can't find my dress," she said.
"Well, as it's the only one there, I shouldn't think it would be much trouble."
"You mean for me to wear an old washed dress to-night?"
"It's a good dress. There isn't a hole in it! There's no reason on earth why you shouldn't wear it."
"Except that I will not," said Elnora. "Didn't you get me any dress for Commencement, either?"
"If you soil that to-night, I've plenty of time to wash it again."
Sinton's voice called from the gate.
"In a minute," answered Elnora.
She ran upstairs and in an incredibly short time came down wearing one of her gingham school dresses. With a cold, hard face she passed her mother and went into the night. A half hour later Margaret and Billy stopped for Mrs. Comstock with the carriage. She had determined fully that she would not go before they called. With the sound of their voices a sort of horror of being left seized her, so she put on her hat, locked the door and went out to them.
"How did Elnora look?" inquired Margaret anxiously.
"Like she always does," answered Mrs. Comstock curtly.
"I do hope her dresses are as pretty as the rest," said Margaret. "None of them will have prettier faces or nicer ways."
"They just don't have one half as pretty faces or one tenth as nice ways," boasted Billy, who was wrestling with fractions.
"Oh, you two make me tired!" scoffed Mrs. Comstock.
Wesley was waiting before the big church to take care of the team. As they stood watching the people enter the building, Mrs. Comstock felt herself growing ill, without knowing why. When they went inside among the lights, saw the flower-decked stage, and the masses of finely dressed people, she grew no better. She could hear Margaret and Billy softly commenting on what was being done.
"That first chair in the very front row is Elnora's," exulted Billy, "'cos she's got the highest grades, and so she gets to lead the procession to the platform."
"The first chair!" "Lead the procession!" Mrs. Comstock was dumfounded. The notes of the pipe organ began to fill the building in a slow rolling march. Would Elnora lead the procession in a gingham dress? Or would she be absent and her chair vacant on this great occasion? For now Mrs. Comstock could see that it was a great occasion. Every one would remember how Elnora had played a few nights before, and they would miss her and pity her. Pity? Because she had no one to care for her. Because she was worse off than if she had no mother. For the first time in her life, Mrs. Comstock began to study herself as she would appear to others. Every time a junior girl came fluttering down the aisle, leading some one to a seat, and Mrs. Comstock saw a beautiful white dress pass, a wave of positive illness swept over her. What had she done? What would become of Elnora?
As Elnora rode to the city, she answered Wesley's questions in monosyllables so that he thought she was nervous or rehearsing her speech and did not care to talk. Several times the girl tried to tell him and realized that if she said the first word it would bring a torrent of tears. The Bird Woman opened the screen and stared unbelievingly.
"Why, I thought you would be ready; you are so late!" she said. "If you have waited to dress here, we will have to hurry."
"I have nothing to put on," said Elnora.
In bewilderment the Bird Woman drew her inside.
"Did—did—" she faltered, "did you think you would wear that?"
"No. I thought I would telephone Ellen that there had been an accident and I could not come. I don't know yet how to explain. I'm too sick to think. Oh, do you suppose I can get something made by Tuesday, so that I can graduate?"
"Yes; and you'll get something on you to-night, so that you can lead your class, as you have done for four years. Go to my room and take off that gingham, quickly. Anna, drop everything, and come help me."
The Bird Woman ran to the telephone and called Ellen Brownlee.
"Elnora has had an accident. She will be a little late," she said. "You have got to make them wait. Have them play an extra musical number before the march."
Then she turned to the maid. "Tell Benson to have the carriage at the gate just as soon as he can get it there. Then come to my room. Bring the thread box from the sewing room, that roll of wide white ribbon on the cutting table, and gather all the white pins from every dresser in the house. But first come with me a minute."
"I want that trunk with the Swamp Angel's stuff in it, from the cedar closet," she panted as they reached the top of the stairs.
They hurried down the hall together and dragged the big trunk to the Bird Woman's room. She opened it and began tossing out white stuff.
"How lucky that she left these things!" she cried. "Here are white shoes, gloves, stockings, fans, everything!"
"I am all ready but a dress," said Elnora.
The Bird Woman began opening closets and pulling out drawers and boxes.
"I think I can make it this way," she said.
She snatched up a creamy lace yoke with long sleeves that recently had been made for her and held it out. Elnora slipped into it, and the Bird Woman began smoothing out wrinkles and sewing in pins. It fitted very well with a little lapping in the back. Next, from among the Angel's clothing she caught up a white silk waist with low neck and elbow sleeves, and Elnora put it on. It was large enough, but distressingly short in the waist, for the Angel had worn it at a party when she was sixteen. The Bird Woman loosened the sleeves and pushed them to a puff on the shoulders, catching them in places with pins. She began on the wide draping of the yoke, fastening it front, back and at each shoulder. She pulled down the waist and pinned it. Next came a soft white silk dress skirt of her own. By pinning her waist band quite four inches above Elnora's, the Bird Woman could secure a perfect Empire sweep, with the clinging silk. Then she began with the wide white ribbon that was to trim a new frock for herself, bound it three times around the high waist effect she had managed, tied the ends in a knot and let them fall to the floor in a beautiful sash.
"I want four white roses, each with two or three leaves," she cried.
Anna ran for them, while the Bird Woman added pins.
"Elnora," she said, "forgive me, but tell me truly. Is your mother so extremely poor as to make this necessary?"
"No," answered Elnora. "Next year I am heir to my share of over three hundred acres of land covered with almost as valuable timber as was in the Limberlost. We adjoin it. There could be dozens of oil wells drilled that would yield to us the thousands our neighbours are draining from under us, and the bare land is worth over one hundred dollars an acre for farming. She is not poor, she is—I don't know what she is. A great trouble soured and warped her. It made her peculiar. She does not in the least understand, but it is because she don't care to, instead of ignorance. She does not"
Elnora stopped.
"She is—is different," finished the girl.
Anna came with the roses. The Bird Woman set one on the front of the draped yoke, one on each shoulder and the last among the bright masses of brown hair. Then she turned the girl facing the tall mirror.
"Oh!" panted Elnora. "Is that me? You are a genius! Why, I will look as well as any of them."
"Well, thank goodness for that!" cried the Bird Woman. "If it wouldn't do, I should have been ill. You are lovely; altogether lovely! Ordinarily I shouldn't say that; but when I think of how you are carpentered, I'm adoring the result."
The organ began rolling out the march as they came in sight. Elnora took her place at the head of the procession, while every one wondered. Secretly they had hoped that she would be dressed well enough, that she would not appear poor and neglected. What this radiant young creature, gowned in the most recent style, her smooth skin flushed with excitement, and a rose-set coronet of red gold on her head, had to do with the girl they knew was difficult to decide. The signal was given and Elnora began the slow march across the vestry and down the aisle. The music welled softly, and Margaret began to sob without knowing why.
Mrs. Comstock gripped her hands together and shut her eyes. It seemed an eternity to the suffering woman before Margaret caught her arm and whispered, "Oh, Kate! For any sake look at her! Here! The aisle across!"
Mrs. Comstock opened her eyes and, directing them where she was told, gazed intently, and slid down in her seat on the verge of collapse. She was saved by Margaret's tense grip and her command, "Here! Idiot! Stop that!"
In the blaze of light Elnora climbed the steps to the palm-embowered platform, crossed it and took her place. Sixty young men and women, each of them dressed the best possible, followed her. There were manly, fine looking men in that class which Elnora led. There were girls of beauty and grace, but not one of them was handsomer or clothed in better taste than she.
Billy thought the time never would come when Elnora would see him, but at last she caught his eye, then Margaret and Wesley got faint signs of recognition in turn, but there was no softening of the girl's face and no hint of a smile when she saw her mother.
Heartsick, Katharine Comstock gripped her seat and tried to prove to herself that she was justified in what she had done, but she could not. She tried to blame Elnora for not saying that she was to lead a procession and sit on a platform in the sight of hundreds of people; but that was impossible, for she realized that she would have scoffed and not understood if she had been told. Her heart pained until she suffered acute agony with every breath.
When at last the exercises were over she climbed into the carriage and rode home without a word. She did not hear what Margaret and Billy were saying. She scarcely heard Sinton, who drove behind, when he told her that Elnora would not be home until Wednesday. Early the next morning Mrs. Comstock was on her way to Onabasha. She was waiting when the Brownlee store opened. She examined ready-made white dresses, but they had only one of the right size, and it was marked forty dollars. Mrs. Comstock did not hesitate over the price, but whether the dress would be suitable. She would have to ask Elnora. She inquired her way to the home of the Bird Woman and knocked.
"Is Elnora Comstock here?" she asked the maid.
"Yes, but she is still in bed. I was told to let her sleep as long as she would."
"Maybe I could sit here and wait," said Mrs. Comstock. "I want to see about getting her a dress for tomorrow. I am her mother."
"Then you don't need wait or worry," said the girl cheerfully. "There are two women up in the sewing room at work on a dress for her right now. It will be done in time, and it will be a beauty."
Mrs. Comstock turned and trudged back to the Limberlost. The bitterness in her soul became a physical actuality, and water would not wash the taste of wormwood from her lips. She was too late! She was not needed. Another woman was mothering her girl. Another woman would prepare a beautiful dress such as Elnora had worn last night. The girl's love and gratitude would go to her. Mrs. Comstock tried the old process of blaming some one else, but she felt no better. She nursed her grief as closely as ever in the long days of the girl's absence. She brooded over Elnora's possession of the forbidden violin and her ability to play it until the performance could not have been told from her father's. She tried every refuge her mind could conjure to quiet her heart and remove the fear that the girl never would come home again, but it persisted. Mrs. Comstock could neither eat nor sleep. She wandered about the cabin and garden. She kept far from the pool where Robert Comstock had sunk from sight, for she felt that it would entomb her also if Elnora did not come home Wednesday morning. The mother told herself that she would wait, but the waiting was bitter as anything she ever had known.
When Elnora awoke Monday another dress was in the hands of a seamstress and was soon fitted. It had belonged to the Angel, and was a soft white thing that with a little alteration would serve admirably for Commencement and the ball. All that day Elnora worked, helping prepare the auditorium for the exercises, rehearsing the march and the speech she was to make in behalf of the class. The next day was even more busy. But her mind was at rest, for the dress was a soft delicate lace, easy to change, and the marks of alteration impossible to detect.
The Bird Woman had telephoned to Grand Rapids, explained the situation and asked the Angel if she might use it. The reply had been to give the girl all the things the chest contained. When the Bird Woman told Elnora, tears filled her eyes.
"I will write at once and thank her," she said. "With all her beautiful things she does not need them, and I do. They will serve for me often, and be much finer than anything I could afford. It is lovely of her to give me the dress and of you to have it altered for me, as I never could."
The Bird Woman laughed. "I feel quite religious to-day," she said. "You know the first and greatest rock of my salvation is 'Do unto others.' I'm only doing to you what there was no one to do to me when I was a girl very like you. Anna tells me your mother was here early this morning and that she came to see about getting you a dress."
"She is too late!" said Elnora coldly. "She had over a month to prepare my dresses, and I was to pay for them, so there is no excuse."
"Nevertheless, she is your mother," said the Bird Woman, softly. "I think almost any kind of a mother must be better than none at all, and you say she has had great trouble."
"She loved my father, and he died," said Elnora. "The same thing, in quite as tragic a manner, has happened to thousands of other women, and they have gone on with calm faces and found happiness in life by loving others. There was something else I am afraid I never shall forget; this I know I shall not, but talking does not help. I must deliver my presents and photographs to the crowd. I have a picture and I made a present for you, too, if you would care for them."
"I shall love anything you give me," said the Bird Woman. "I know you well enough to know that whatever you do will be beautiful."
Elnora felt good over that, and as she tried on her dress for the last fitting she was really happy. She looked lovely in the dainty gown; it would serve finely for the ball and many other like occasions, and it was her very own.
The Bird Woman's driver took Elnora in the carriage and she called on all the girls with whom she was especially intimate, and left her picture and the package containing her gift to them. By the time she returned, parcels for her were arriving. Friends seemed to spring from everywhere. Almost every one she knew had some gift for her, while because they so loved her the members of her crowd had made her beautiful presents. There were books, vases, silver pieces, handkerchiefs, fans, boxes of flowers and candy. One big package settled the trouble at Sintons', for it contained a dainty dress from Margaret, a five-dollar gold piece, conspicuously labelled, "I earned this myself," from Billy, with which to buy music; and a gorgeous cut-glass perfume bottle it would have cost five dollars to fill with even a moderate-priced scent, from Wesley.
In an expressed crate was a fine curly-maple dressing table, sent by Freckles. The drawers were filled with wonderful toilet articles from the Angel. The Bird Woman added an embroidered linen cover and a small silver vase for a few flowers, and no girl of the class had finer gifts. Elnora laid her head on the table sobbing happily, and the Bird Woman was almost crying herself. Professor Henley sent an elegantly printed and illustrated butterfly book; the grade rooms in which Elnora had taught gave her a set of volumes covering every phase of life afield, in the woods, and water. Elnora had no time to read, so she just carried one of these books around with her, hugging it as she went. After she had gone to dress a queer looking package was brought by a small boy who hopped on one foot as he handed it in and said, "Tell Elnora that is from her ma."
"Who are you?" asked the Bird Woman, as she took the bundle.
"I'm Billy!" announced the boy. "I gave her the five dollars. I earned it myself dropping corn, sticking onions, and pulling weeds. My, but you got to drop, and stick, and pull a lot before it's five dollars' worth."
"Would you like to come in and see Elnora's gifts?"
"Yes, ma'm!" said Billy, trying to stand quietly.
He followed into the room and gazed around.
"Gee-mentley!" he gasped. "Does Elnora get all this?"
"Yes."
"I bet you a thousand dollars I be first in my class when I graduate. Say, have the others got a lot more than Elnora?"
"I think not."
"Well, Uncle Wesley said to find out if I could, and if she didn't have as much as the rest, he'd buy till she did, if it took a hundred dollars. Say, you ought to know him! He's just scrumptious! There ain't anybody anywhere finer 'an he is. My, he's grand!"
"I'm quite sure of it!" said the Bird Woman. "I've often heard Elnora say so."
Billy strutted around the table admiringly.
"I bet you nobody can beat this!" he boasted. Then he stopped, thinking deeply. "I don't know, though," he began reflectively. "Some of them are awful rich; they got big families to give them things and wagon loads of friends, and I haven't seen what they got. Now, maybe Elnora is getting left, after all!"
He lifted an anxious little freckled face to the Bird Woman. She cleared her throat.
"Don't worry, Billy," she said. "I will watch and if I find Elnora is 'getting left' I'll buy her some more things myself. But I'm sure she is not. She has more beautiful gifts now than she will know what to do with, and others will come. Tell your Uncle Wesley his girl is bountifully remembered, very happy, and she sends her dearest love to all of you. Now you must go, so I can help her dress. You will be there to-night to see her, of course?"
"Yes, sir-ee! She got me a seat, third row from the front, middle section, so I can see, and she's going to wink at me, after she gets her speech off her mind. She kissed me, too! She's a perfect lady, Elnora is. I'm going to marry her when I get big enough."
"Why, isn't that splendid!" laughed the Bird Woman as she hurried upstairs.
"Dear!" she called. "Here is another gift for you."
Elnora was half disrobed as she took the package and, sitting on a couch, opened it. The Bird Woman bent over her and tested the fabric with her fingers.
"Why, bless my soul!" she cried. "Hand-woven, hand-embroidered linen, fine as silk. It's priceless! I haven't seen such things in years. My mother had garments like those when I was a child, but my sisters had them cut up for collars, belts, and fancy waists while I was small. Look at the exquisite work!"
"Where could it have come from?" cried Elnora.
She shook out a petticoat, with a hand-wrought ruffle a foot deep, then an old-fashioned chemise the neck and sleeve work of which was elaborate and perfectly wrought. On the breast was pinned a note that she hastily opened.
"I was married in these," it read, "and I had intended to be buried in them, but perhaps it would be more sensible for you to graduate and get married in them yourself, if you would like. Your mother."
"From my mother!" Wide-eyed, Elnora looked at the Bird Woman. "I never in my life saw the like. Mother does things I think I never can forgive, and when I feel hardest she turns around and does something that makes me think she just must love me a little bit, after all. Any of the girls would give almost anything to graduate in hand-embroidered linen like that. Money can't buy such things. And they came just when I was thinking she didn't care what became of me. Do you suppose she can be insane?"
"Yes," said the Bird Woman. "Stark, staring mad! Wildly insane, if she does not love you and care what becomes of you."
Elnora arose and held the petticoat to her. "Will you look at it?" she cried. "Only imagine her not getting my dress ready, and then turning around and sending me such a petticoat as this! Ellen would pay a hundred dollars for it and never blink. I suppose mother has had it all my life, and I never saw it before."
"Go, take your bath and put on those things," said the Bird Woman. "Forget everything and be happy. She is not insane! She is embittered. She did not understand how things would be. When she saw, she came at once to get you a dress. This is her way of saying she is sorry she did not get the other. You notice she has not spent any money, so perhaps she is quite honest in saying she has none."
"Oh, she is honest!" said Elnora. "She wouldn't care enough to tell an untruth. She'd say just how things were, no matter what happened."
Soon Elnora was ready for her dress. She never had looked so well as when she again headed the procession across the flower and palm-decked stage of the high school auditorium. As she sat there she could have reached over and dropped a rose she carried into the seat she had occupied that September morning four years previously when she entered the high school. She spoke the few words she had to say in behalf of her class beautifully, had the tiny wink ready for Billy, and the smile and nod of recognition for Wesley and Margaret. When at last she looked into the eyes of a white-faced woman next them, she slipped a hand to her side and raised her skirt the fraction of an inch, just enough to let the embroidered edge of a petticoat show a trifle. When she saw the look of relief which flooded her mother's face, Elnora knew that forgiveness was in her heart, and that she would go home in the morning.
It was late afternoon before she arrived, and a dray followed with a load of packages. Mrs. Comstock was overwhelmed. She sat half dazed and made Elnora show her each costly and beautiful or simple and useful gift, tell her carefully what it was and from where it came. She studied the faces of Elnora's particular friends intently. The gifts from them had to be selected and set in a group. Several times she started to speak and then stopped. At last, between her dry lips, came a harsh whisper.
"Elnora, what did you give back for these things?"
"I'll show you," said Elnora cheerfully. "I got the same thing for the Bird Woman, Aunt Margaret and you, if you care for it. But I have to run upstairs to get it."
When she returned she handed her mother an oblong frame, hand-carved, enclosing Elnora's picture, taken by a schoolmate's camera. She wore her storm-coat and carried a dripping umbrella. From under it looked her bright face; her books and lunch box were on her arm, and across the bottom of the frame was carved, "Your Country Classmate."
Then she offered another frame.
"I am strong on frames," she said. "They seemed to be the best I could do without money. I located the maple and the black walnut myself, in a little corner that had been overlooked between the river and the ditch. They didn't seem to belong to any one, so I just took them. Uncle Wesley said it was all right, and he cut and hauled them for me. I gave the mill half of each tree for sawing and curing the remainder. Then I gave the wood-carver half of that for making my frames. A photographer gave me a lot of spoiled plates, and I boiled off the emulsion, and took the specimens I framed from my stuff. The man said the white frames were worth three and a half, and the black ones five. I exchanged those little framed pictures for the photographs of the others. For presents, I gave each one of my crowd one like this, only a different moth. The Bird Woman gave me the birch bark. She got it up north last summer."
Elnora handed her mother a handsome black-walnut frame a foot and a half wide by two long. It finished a small shallow glass-covered box of birch bark, to the bottom of which clung a big night moth with delicate pale green wings and long exquisite trailers. A more beautiful thing would have been difficult to imagine.
"So you see I did not have to be ashamed of my gifts," said Elnora. "I made them myself and raised and mounted the moths."
"Moth, you call it," said Mrs. Comstock. "I've seen a few of the things before."
"They are thick around us every June night, or at least they used to be," said Elnora. "I've sold hundreds of them with butterflies, dragon-flies and other specimens. Now, I must put away these and get to work, for it is almost June and there are a few more I want dreadfully. When I get them I will be paid some money for which I have worked a long time."
She was afraid to say college just then. She thought it would be better to wait a few days and see if an opportunity would not come when it would work in more naturally. Besides, unless she could secure the Yellow Emperor she needed to complete her collection, she could not talk college until she was of age, for she would have no money.