“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” she moaned after the family had gone, referring to the figurative speech, “She’s afraid for her life of you.” That had been meant in a very different sense. The girl would have given much to have unsaid it, to have given any sort of explanation.
It was not possible to explain anything to Josiah Farnshaw, and remembering the threat to flog her as soon as he returned from meeting, Elizabeth began to put up her hair and prepare for the departure which was her only way of escape. Josiah Farnshaw never forgot a promise of that sort.
“I’ll go to Aunt Susan’s,” she resolved, and as soon as she could get her dress changed and a few things thrown quickly into the trunk which she had partially unpacked the day before, Elizabeth took her parasol and started toward the south. John lived in that direction also, and would be on his way to see her, for his mother had asked Elizabeth to spend the day with her. She would ask John to come for her trunk and then have him take her to Susan Hornby’s house. Aunt Susan would welcome her with open arms. She was covered with perspiration when she met her lover, who was hot and uncomfortable also, and had been cursing every mile of the shadeless Kansas road. John’s relief was so great at meeting her a couple of miles on the way that he did not inquire why she was there at that hour till she was seated beside him.
“But your father can’t do anything to you,” he objected when she had outlined her plan of going to Aunt Susan’s to stay till the wedding. “Everybody knows that you have left there and You’ll have to explain things and get into a scandal.”
Without going into details, Elizabeth insisted that he drive on at once and get her trunk before her father and the family should get home from church.
John Hunter argued the matter.
“If you leave home,” he said slowly, refusing to drive on, “people will talk, and it isn’t to be considered.”
There was a pause. Should she explain the case fully? It could not be done. John could not be made to understand. Elizabeth knew that even in the primitive community in which she had been brought up a man would be filled with disgust at the idea of striking a full-grown woman on any sort of provocation, and that a man reared as John Hunter had been reared would be alienated not only from her family but from her.
Caught like a rat in a trap, Elizabeth Farnshaw let her future husband study her curiously, while she deliberated and cast about for some means of getting his approval to her scheme without villifying her parents by telling the whole truth.
“I’ll be nearer you, and Aunt Susan’s always glad to have me,” she said coaxingly.