“Why not give it to me. Wouldn’t she like me to wear her things better than to have them lying in moth balls?”
The Harvester looked at her and shook his head, marvelling.
“I can’t tell how pleased she would be,” he said.
“Where are her belongings?” asked the Girl. “I could use them to help furnish the house, and it wouldn’t appear so strange to you.”
The Harvester liked that.
“All the washed things are in those boxes upstairs; also some fine skins I’ve saved on the chance of wanting them. Her dishes are in the bottom of the china closet there; she was mighty proud of them. The furniture and carpets were so old and abused I burned them. I’ll go bring a wrap.”
He took the candle and climbed the stairs, soon returning with a little white wool shawl and a big pink coverlet.
“Got this for her Christmas one time,” he said. “She’d never had a white one and she thought it was pretty.”
He folded it around the Girl’s shoulders and picked up the coverlet.
“You’re never going to take that to the woods!” she cried.
“Why not?”
She took it in her hands to find a corner.
“Just as I thought! It’s a genuine Peter Hartman! It’s one of the things that money can’t buy, or, rather, one that takes a mint of money to own. They are heirlooms. They are not manufactured any more. At the art store where I worked they’d give you fifty dollars for that. It is not faded or worn a particle. It would be lovely in my room; you mustn’t take a treasure like that out of doors.”
“Ruth, are you in earnest?” demanded the Harvester. “I believe there are six of them upstairs.”
“Plutocrat!” cried the Girl. “What colours?”
“More of this pinkish red, blue, and pale green.”
“Famous! May I have them to help furnish with to-morrow?”
“Certainly! Anything you can find, any way on earth you want it, only in my room. That is taboo, as I told you. What am I going to take to-night?”
“Isn’t the rug you had in the woods in the wagon yet? Use that!”
“Of course! The very thing! Bel, proceed!”
“Are you going to leave the house like this?”
“Why not?”
“Suppose some one breaks in!”
“Nothing worth carrying away, except what you have on. No one to get in. There is a big swamp back of our woods, marsh in front, we’re up here where we can see the drive and bridge. There is nothing possible from any direction. Never locked the cabin in my life, except your room, and that was because it was sacred, not that there was any danger. Clear the way, Bel!”
“Clear it of what?”
“Katydids, hoptoads, and other carnivorous animals.”
“Now you are making fun of me! Clear it of what?”
“A coon that might go shuffling across, an opossum, or a snake going to the lake. Now are you frightened so that you will not go?”
“No. The path is broad and white and surely you and Bel can take care of me.”
“If you will trust us we can.”
“Well, I am trusting you.”
“You are indeed,” said the Harvester. “Now see if you think this is pretty.”
He indicated the hill sloping toward the lake. The path wound among massive trees, between whose branches patches of moonlight filtered. Around the lake shore and climbing the hill were thickets of bushes. The water lay shining in the light, a gentle wind ruffled the surface in undulant waves, and on the opposite bank arose the line of big trees. Under a giant oak widely branching, on the top of the hill, the Harvester spread the rug and held one end of it against the tree trunk to protect the Girl’s dress. Then he sat a little distance away and began to talk. He mingled some sense with a quantity of nonsense, and appreciated every hint of a laugh he heard. The day had been no amusing matter for a girl absolutely alone among strange people and scenes. Anything more foreign to her previous environment or expectations he could not imagine. So he talked to prevent her from thinking, and worked for a laugh as he laboured for bread.
“Now we must go,” he said at last. “If there is the malaria I strongly suspect in your system, this night air is none too good for you. I only wanted you to see the lake the first night in your new home, and if it won’t shock you, I brought you here because this is my holy of holies. Can you guess why I wanted you to come, Ruth?”
“If I wasn’t so stupid with alternate burning and chills, and so deadened to every proper sensibility, I suppose I could,” she answered, “but I’m not brilliant. I don’t know, unless it is because you knew it would be the loveliest place I ever saw. Surely there is no other spot in the world quite so beautiful.”
“Then would it seem strange to you,” asked the Harvester going to the Girl and gently putting his arms around her, “would it seem strange to you, that a woman who once homed here and thought it the prettiest place on earth, chose to remain for her eternal sleep, rather than to rest in a distant city of stranger dead?”
He felt the Girl tremble against him.
“Where is she?”
“Very close,” said the Harvester. “Under this oak. She used to say that she had a speaking acquaintance with every tree on our land, and of them all she loved this big one the best. She liked to come here in winter, and feel the sting of the wind sweeping across the lake, and in summer this was her place to read and to think. So when she slept the unwaking sleep, Ruth, I came here and made her bed with my own hands, and then carried her to it, covered her, and she sleeps well. I never have regretted her going. Life did not bring her joy. She was very tired. She used to say that after her soul had fled, if I would lay her here, perhaps the big roots would reach down and find her, and from her frail frame gather slight nourishment and then her body would live again in talking leaves that would shelter me in summer and whisper her love in winter. Of all Medicine Woods this is the dearest spot to me. Can you love it too, Ruth?”
“Oh I can!” cried the Girl; “I do now! Just to see the place and hear that is enough. I wish, oh to my soul I wish—”
“You wish what?” whispered the Harvester gently.
“I dare not! I was wild to think of it. I would be ungrateful to ask it.”
“You would be ungracious if you didn’t ask anything that would give me the joy of pleasing you. How long is it going to require for you to learn, Ruth, that to make up for some of the difficulties life has brought you would give me more happiness than anything else could? Tell me now.”
“No!”
He gathered her closer.
“Ruth, there is no reason why you should be actively unkind to me. What is it you wish?”
She struggled from his arms and stood alone in white moonlight, staring across the lake, along the shore, deep into the perfumed forest, and then at the mound she now could distinguish under the giant tree. Suddenly she went to him and with both shaking hands gripped his arm.
“My mother!” she panted. “Oh she was a beautiful woman, delicately reared, and her heart was crushed and broken. By the inch she went to a dreadful end I could not avert or allay, and in poverty and grime I fought for a way to save her body from further horror, and it’s all so dreadful I thought all feeling in me was dried and still, but I am not quite calloused yet. I suffer it over with every breath. It is never entirely out of my mind. Oh Man, if only you would lift her from the horrible place she lies, where briers run riot and cattle trample and the unmerciful sun beats! Oh if only you’d lift her from it, and bring her here! I believe it would take away some of the horror, the shame, and the heartache. I believe I could go to sleep without hearing the voice of her suffering, if I knew she was lying on this hill, under your beautiful tree, close the dear mother you love. Oh Man, would you—?”
The Harvester crushed the Girl in his arms and shuddering sobs shook his big frame, and choked his voice.
“Ruth, for God’s sake, be quiet!” he cried. “Why I’d be gla
d to! I’ll go anywhere you tell me, and bring her, and she shall rest where the lake murmurs, the trees shelter, the winds sing, and earth knows the sun only in long rays of gold light.”
She stared at him with strained face.
“You—you wouldn’t!” she breathed.
“Ruth, child,” said the Harvester, “I tell you I’d be happy. Look at my side of this! I’m in search of bands to bind you to me and to this place. Could you tell me a stronger than to have the mother you idolized lie here for her long sleep? Why Girl, you can’t know the deep and abiding joy it would give me to bring her. I’d feel I had you almost secure. Where is she, Ruth?”
“In that old unkept cemetery south of Onabasha, where it costs no money to lay away your loved ones.”
“Close here! Why I’ll go to-morrow! I supposed she was in the city.”
She straightened and drew away from him.
“How could I? I had nothing. I could not have paid even her fare and brought her here in the cheapest box the decency of man would allow him to make if her doctor had not given me the money I owe. Now do you understand why I must earn and pay it myself? Save for him, it was charity or her delicate body to horrors. Money never can repay him.”
“Ruth, the day you came to Onabasha was she with you?”
“In the express car,” said the Girl.
“Where did you go when you left the train shed?”
“Straight to the baggage room, where Uncle Henry was waiting. Men brought and put her in his wagon, and he drove with me to the place and other men lowered her, and that was all.”
“You poor Girl!” cried the Harvester. “This time to-morrow night she shall sleep in luxury under this oak, so help me God! Ruth, can you spare me? May I go at once? I can’t rest, myself.”
“You will?” cried the Girl. “You will?”
She was laughing in the moonlight. “Oh Man, I can’t ever, ever tell you!”
“Don’t try,” said the Harvester. “Call it settled. I will start early in the morning. I know that little cemetery. The man whose land it is on can point me the spot. She is probably the last one laid there. Come now, Ruth. Go to the room I made for you, and sleep deeply and in peace. Will you try to rest?”
“Oh David!” she exulted. “Only think! Here where it’s clean and cool; beside the lake, where leaves fall gently and I can come and sit close to her and bring flowers; and she never will be alone, for your dear mother is here. Oh David!”
“It is better. I can’t thank you enough for thinking of it. Come now, let me help you.”
He half carried her down the hill. Then he made the cabin a glamour of light by putting candles in the sticks he had carved and placing them everywhere.
“There is a lighting plant in the basement,” he said, “but I had not expected to use it until winter, and I have no acetylene. Candles were our grandmothers’ lights and they are the best anyway. Go bathe your face, Ruth, and wash away all trace of tears. Put on the pink powder, and in a few weeks you will have colour to outdo the wildest rose. You must be as gay as you can the remainder of this night.”
“I will!” cried the Girl. “I will! Oh I didn’t know a thing on earth could make me happy! I didn’t know I really could be glad. Oh if the ice in my heart would melt, and the wall break down, and the girlhood I’ve never known would come yet! Oh David, if it would!”
“Before the Lord it shall!” vowed the Harvester. “It shall come with the fulness of joy right here in Medicine Woods. Think it! Believe it! Keep it before you! Work for it! Happiness is worth while! All of us have a right to it! It shall be yours and soon.”
“I will try! I will!” promised the Girl. “I’ll go right now and I’ll put on the blessed pink powder so thickly you’ll never know what is under it, and soon it won’t be needed at all.”
She was laughing as she left the room. The Harvester restlessly walked the floor a few minutes and then sat with a notebook and began entering stems.
When the Girl returned, he brought the pillow from her bed, folded the coverlet, and she lay on them in the big swing. He covered her with the white shawl, and while Singing Water sang its loudest, katydids exulted over the delightful act of their ancestor, and a million gauze-winged creatures of night hummed against the screen, in a voice soft and low he told her in a steady stream, as he swayed her back and forth, what each sound of the night was, and how and why it was made all the way from the rumbling buzz of the June bug to the screech of the owl and the splash of the bass in the lake. All of it, as it appealed to him, was the story of steady evolution, the natural processes of reproduction, the joy of life and its battles, and the conquest of the strong in nature. At his hands every sound was stripped of terror. The leaping bass was exulting in life, the screeching owl was telling its mate it had found a fat mouse for the children, the nighthawk was courting, the big bull frogs booming around the lake were serenading the moon. There was not a thing to fear or a voice left with an unsympathetic note in it. She was half asleep when at last he helped her to her room, set a pitcher of frosty, clinking drink on her table, locked her door and window screens inside, spread Belshazzar’s blanket on her porch, and set his door wide open, that he might hear if she called, and then said good night and went back to his memorandum book.
“No bad beginning,” he muttered softly, “no bad beginning, but I’d almost give my right hand if she hadn’t forgotten—”
In her room the exhausted Girl slipped the pins from her hair and sank on the low chair before the dressing-table. She picked up the shining, silver backed brush and stared at the monogram, R. F. L., entwined on it.
“My soul!” she exclaimed. “WAS HE SO SURE AS THAT? Was there ever any other man like him?”
She dropped the brush and with tired hands pushed back the heavy braids. Then she arose and going to the chest of drawers began lifting lids to find a night robe. As she searched the boxes she found every dainty, pretty undergarment a girl ever used and at last the robes. She shook out a long white one, slipped into it, and walked to the bed. That stood as he had arranged it, white, clean, and dainty.
“Everything for me!” she said softly. “Everything for me! Shall there be nothing for him? Oh he makes it easy, easy!”
She stepped to the closet, picked down a lavender silk kimono and drawing it over her gown she gathered it around her and opening the bathroom door, she stepped into a little hall leading to the dining-room. As she entered the living-room the Harvester bent over his book. Her step was very close when he heard it and turned his head. In an instant she touched his shoulders. The Harvester dropped the pencil, and palm downward laid his hands on the table, his promise strong in his heart. The Girl slid a shaking palm under his chin, leaned his head against her breast, and dropped a sweet, tear-wet face on his. With all the strength of her frail arms she gripped him a second, and then gave the kiss, into which she tried to put all she could find no words to express.
Chapter 14
Snowy Wings
The Harvester sat at the table in deep thoughts until the lights in the Girl’s room were darkened and everything was quiet. Then he locked the screens inside and went into the night. The moon flooded all the hillside, until coarse print could have been read with keen eyes in its light. A restlessness, born of exultation he could not allay or control, was on him. She had not forgotten! After this, the dream would be effaced by reality. It was the beginning. He scarcely had dared hope for so much. Surely it presaged the love with which she some day would come to him and crown his life. He walked softly up and down the drive, passing her windows, unable to think of sleep. Over and over he dwelt on the incidents of the day, so inevitably he came to his promise.
“Merciful Heaven!” he muttered. “How can such things happen? The poor, overworked, tired, suffering girl. It will give her some comfort. She will feel better. It has to be done. I believe I will do the worst part of it while she sleeps.”
He went to the cabin, crept very close to one of her windows and list
ened intently. Surely no mortal awake could lie motionless so long. She must be sleeping. He patted Belshazzar, whispered, “Watch, boy, watch for your life!” and then crossed to the dry-house. Beside it he found a big roll of coffee sacks that he used in collecting roots, and going to the barn, he took a spade and mattock. Then he climbed the hill to the oak; in the white moonlight laid off his measurements and began work. His heart was very tender as he lifted the earth, and threw it into the tops of the big bags he had propped open.
“I’ll line it with a couple of sheets and finish the edge with pond lilies and ferns,” he planned, “and I’ll drag this earth from sight, and cover it with brush until I need it.”
Sometimes he paused in his work to rest a few minutes and then he stood and glanced around him. Several times he went down the hill and slipped close to a window, but he could not hear a sound. When his work was finished, he stood before the oak, scraping clinging earth from the mattock with which he had cut roots he had been compelled to remove. He was tired now and he thought he would go to his room and sleep until daybreak. As he turned the implement he remembered how through it he had found her, and now he was using it in her service. He smiled as he worked, and half listened to the steady roll of sound encompassing him. A cool breath swept from the lake and he wondered if it found her wet, hot cheek. A wild duck in the rushes below gave an alarm signal, and it ran in subdued voice, note by note, along the shore. The Harvester gripped the mattock and stood motionless. Wild things had taught him so many lessons he heeded their warnings instinctively. Perhaps it was a mink or muskrat approaching the rushes. Listening intently, he heard a stealthy step coming up the path behind him.
The Harvester waited. He soundlessly moved around the trunk of the big tree. An instant more the night prowler stopped squarely at the head of the open grave, and jumped back with an oath. He stood tense a second, then advanced, scratched a match and dropped it into the depths of the opening. That instant the Harvester recognized Henry Jameson, and with a spring landed between the man’s shoulders and sent him, face down, headlong into the grave. He snatched one of the sacks of earth, and tipping it, gripped the bottom and emptied the contents on the head and shoulders of the prostrate man. Then he dropped on him and feeling across his back took an ugly, big revolver from a pocket. He swung to the surface and waited until Henry Jameson crawled from under the weight of earth and began to rise; then, at each attempt, he knocked him down. At last he caught the exhausted man by the collar and dragged him to the path, where he dropped him and stood gloating.
The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter Page 82