CHAPTER XI
WHEREIN ELNORA GRADUATES, AND FRECKLES AND THE ANGEL SEND GIFTS
That was Friday night. Elnora came home Saturday morning and began
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 cared nothing about
such silliness.
It was almost time for Wesley to come to take Elnora to the city,
when fresh from her bath, 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 the first made at a dressmaker's. She had worn that as junior
usher at Commencement; but her mother had selected the material,
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 her gaze slowly swept
the room.
It was unfamiliar. 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!" 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
provide any dress for Commencement, either?"
"If you soil that to-night, I've plenty of time to wash it
again."
Wesley'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. Her face cold and hard, she passed
her mother and went into the night. Half an 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 others," said
Margaret. "None of them will have prettier faces or nicer ways."
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. 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 dumbfounded. 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 uncontrollable
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 must 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 extra
music 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 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 to bring them, while the Bird Woman added pins.
"Elnora," she said, "forgive me, but tell me truly.
Is your mother so 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 thirty 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 doesn'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. "You are a genius! Why, I will
look as well as any of them."
"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 admiring 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 close to collapse. She
was saved by Margaret's tense clasp 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 met his eye, then Margaret and Wesley had 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 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 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 Wesley, 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 to-morrow. 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, which water would not wash
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 the previous 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 around 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 as 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 following
day was even busier. 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 the contents of the chest. When the Bird Woman told Elnora,
tears filled her eyes.
"I will write at once and thank her," she said. "With
all her beautiful gowns 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 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 for 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 was pleased over that, and as she tried on her dress for
the last fitting she was really happy. She was 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 Sinton's, 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, so 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
a 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 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'am!" said Billy, trying to stand quietly.
"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 any where finer 'an he is. My, he's grand!"
"I'm very sure of it!" said the Bird Woman. "I've
often heard Elnora say so."
"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 have. Now, maybe Elnora is getting left, after all!"
"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 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 am 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 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 when I was thinking she didn't care what
became of me. Do you suppose she can be insane?"
"Yes," said the Bird Woman. "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 sending me such a petticoat as this! Ellen would
pay fifty 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 provide 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 processional 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 when she entered
the high school. She spoke the few words she had to say in behalf
of the 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. The
gifts from them had to be 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 made
the same gifts 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 lunchbox 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.
"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 numerous around us every June night, or at least
they used to be," said Elnora. "I've sold hundreds of
them, with butterflies, dragonflies, 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. If I find them I will be paid
some money for which I have been working."
She was afraid to say college at that time. 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.