The Wind Before the Dawn

by Dell H. Munger

“JOHN HUNTER’S FAMILIAR HANDWRITING STARED AT HER FROM THE TOP ENVELOPE”

All through the long ride home she pondered upon the past and upon the possibilities of the future. Not till after Jack was safely tucked away in his bed, not till Hepsie had her supper work done and had gone upstairs and all the various members of her household had retired for the night, and she was certain of hours for uninterrupted thinking, did Elizabeth Hunter bring out the unopened letter and lay it on the table before her. Even then she renewed her vow before she broke the seal. Was he the old John, who would fly out impulsively and cover them all with disgrace if she told him? she asked herself many times. In a cold sweat of terror, she asked herself also if it were possible to build right in this new endeavour without telling John of the love which she had shown to Hugh; the temptation was terrible, but she was compelled to shake her head. The habit of openness and fair dealing would not hold her excused; there was no other way, she must tell it out. Carefully she went over all the things that would be lost if this story should be bruited abroad. Jack would be disgraced, she would be stripped of her influence in the neighbourhood, slain in the sight of her friends who had fought her battles for her because they believed in her, stripped of everything which had gone to make life worth the living, and she would place herself in the power of a man whose only attitude toward the story might be one of self-righteous justification. Was it worth the price? Her own words rose up before her, “Without honesty no other virtue is a virtue at all.” Elizabeth pondered a long time, and again her own words rose up to confront her, “It does not matter who is wrong, the thing that matters is what is wrong,” and for Elizabeth there was no escape. This had been the philosophy of her life; she was called upon to stand or fall on that ground. With her head bowed in acknowledgment, she drew the missive out of its envelope and began to read:

Dear Elizabeth: This letter will no doubt surprise you, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I might begin by saying that I was homesick for Jack—which is true—but I’m going to confess that I’m homesick for you too. Is there still hope? I would have written you long ago, but I went into things too heavy and lost the money I got for the cattle—and then I couldn’t. It would have looked like asking to come back to the land. As you know, I mortgaged the home eighty—it hurt some to do that, knowing you’d have to sign it—and began slower. I got along very well, but it was terribly tedious, and at last, after three years of steady work, and no debts, I couldn’t wait any longer, and put half of what I had on the Board of Trade proceedings. I won! Last Saturday I sold all I had, and now while I can come to you right, I want to ask if you will take me? Take me quick, if you are going to, before I do some reckless thing and lose it again. I hear you have prospered; that was why I had to wait so long. I often think of dear old Hugh, and his interest in some of the things about the neighbourhood, and I have been given to see while living in this rotten hole of a city how much I underestimated the people about us in Kansas. I would be glad to come back and live among them. Will you let me? A telegram will bring me to you on the next train.

With love to both you and Jack, who will be seven years old this week,

Affectionately,

John.

The tension was broken. Elizabeth laid the letter back with a smile. How like John to suggest a telegram! John never could wait. How well she knew his little weaknesses; the written characters of the missive had the flowing curves of haste in their running letters. He had written on the impulse of the moment, no matter how long the desire had been in his heart. The very spontaneity of the confession was unpremeditated and worked in John Hunter’s favour. He had remembered Jack’s birthday too! That day seven years ago rose up in Elizabeth’s memory to plead for Jack’s father. She earnestly desired John’s presence, and yet—could it be done?

Far into the night Elizabeth Hunter sat with the letter before her, reading and rereading it, pondering upon the possibilities of the future, seeing them in the light of the past she had spent with him, wondering what sort of man her husband had become in the five years since she had seen him. The letter sounded as if those years might have been profitable ones. There was both the openness of real honesty and the reserve of real strength in the confession about his financial affairs. The most hopeful thing she found in the letter was the sentence about Hugh’s estimate of the neighbours among whom they had lived and the implied comparison regarding the city in which he now did business. Dear old John! Had Chicago business men tried the methods on him that he had thought it fair to apply to his dealings with her? In the midst of that question rose the one—would John Hunter feel the same toward Hugh Noland’s estimates when he was told the truth about his wife’s affection for Hugh, and of the weakness of both in the demonstrations of that affection? Well, it had to be told. Scandal would be hard to face with no denial possible. Doctor Morgan had known it all and still trusted her; likewise Luther; but Hepsie, and Jake, and Sadie? Besides, Jack would have to know, and would suffer for things of which he was innocent! The girl wrestled with the subject till midnight, and long after. At last, to put it where she could not deceive herself, she wrote a simple statement of the whole thing and sealed it up with John’s address upon the envelope, and then raising her hand solemnly promised herself that this letter which contained the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth should be mailed as she had written it without being opened to change a word. She would answer John’s letter in one apart from this and send it by the same mail, but this letter she would send as it stood.