Wonder, Hope, Love, and Loss

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  “Whoa, Betsy!” The Girl tugged at the lines; but Betsy took the bit between her teeth, and plodded after the Harvester. She pulled with all her might, but her strength was not nearly sufficient to stop the stubborn animal.

  “Whoa, David!” cried the Girl.

  “What is it?” the Harvester turned.

  “Won’t you please wait until I can take off my hat? I love to ride bareheaded through the woods, and Betsy won’t stop until you do, no matter how hard I pull.”

  “Betsy, you’re no lady!” said the Harvester. “Why don’t you stop when you’re told?”

  “I shan’t waste any more strength on her,” said the Girl. “Hereafter I shall say, ‘Gee, David,’ ‘Haw, David,’ ‘Whoa, David,’ and then she will do exactly as you.”

  The Harvester stopped half way up the hill, and beside a large, shaded bed spread the rug, and set up the little table and chair for the Girl.

  “Want a plant to draw?” he asked. “This is very important to us. It has a string of names as long as a princess, but I call it goldenseal, because the roots are yellow. The chemists ask for hydrastis. That sounds formidable, but it’s a cousin of buttercups. The woods of Ohio and Indiana produce the finest that ever grew, but it is so nearly extinct now that the trade can be supplied by cultivation only. I suspect I’m responsible for its disappearance around here. I used to get a dollar fifty a pound, and most of my clothes and books when a boy I owe to it. Now I get two for my finest grade; that accounts for the size of these beds.”

  “It’s pretty!” said the Girl, studying a plant averaging a foot in height. On a slender, round, purplish stem arose one big, rough leaf, heavily veined, and having from five to nine lobes. Opposite was a similar leaf, but very small, and a head of scarlet berries resembling a big raspberry in shape. The Harvester shook the black woods soil from the yellow roots, and held up the plant.

  “You won’t enjoy the odour,” he said.

  “Well I like the leaves. I know I can use them some way. They are so unusual. What wonderful colour in the roots!”

  “One of its names is Indian paint,” explained the Harvester. “Probably it furnished the squaws of these woods with colouring matter. Now let’s see what we can get out of it. You draw the plant and I’ll dig the roots.”

  For a time the Girl bent over her work and the Harvester was busy. Belshazzar ranged the woods chasing chipmunks. The birds came asking questions. When the drawing was completed, other subjects were found at every turn, and the Girl talked almost constantly, her face alive with interest. The May-apple beds lay close, and she drew from them. She learned the uses and prices of the plant, and also made drawings of cohosh, moonseed and bloodroot. That was so wonderful in its root colour, the Harvester filled the little cup with water and she began to paint. Intensely absorbed she bent above the big, notched, silvery leaves and the blood-red roots, testing and trying to match them exactly. Every few minutes the Harvester leaned over her shoulder to see how she was progressing and to offer suggestions. When she finished she picked up a trailing vine of moonseed.

  “You have this on the porch,” she said. “I think it is lovely. There is no end to the beautiful combinations of leaves, and these are such pretty little grape-like clusters; but if you touch them the slightest you soil the wonderful surface.”

  “And that makes the fairies very sad,” said the Harvester. “They love that vine best of any, because they paint its fruit with the most care. ‘Bloom’ the scientists call it. You see it on cultivated plums, grapes, and apples, but never in any such perfection as on moonseed and black haws in the woods. You should be able to design a number of pretty things from the cohosh leaves and berries, too. You scarcely can get a start this fall, but early in the spring you can begin, and follow the season. If your work comes out well this winter, I’ll send some of it to the big publishing houses, and you can make book and magazine covers and decorations, if you would like.”

  “‘If I would like!’ How modest! You know perfectly well that if I could make a design that would be accepted, and used on a book or magazine, I would almost fly. Oh do you suppose I could?”

  “I don’t ‘suppose’ anything about it, I know,” said the Harvester. “It is not possible that the public can be any more tired of wild roses, golden-rod, and swallows than the poor art editors who accept them because they can’t help themselves. Dangle something fresh and new under their noses and see them snap. The next time I go to Onabasha I’ll get you some popular magazines, and you can compare what is being used with what you see here, and judge for yourself how glad they would be for a change. And potteries, arts and crafts shops, and wall paper factories, they’d be crazy for the designs I could furnish them. As for money, there’s more in it than the herbs, if I only could draw.”

  “I can do that,” said the Girl. “Trail the vine and give me an idea how to scale it. I’ll just make studies now, and this winter I’ll conventionalize them and work them into patterns. Won’t that be fun?”

  “That’s more than fun, Ruth,” said the Harvester solemnly. “That is creation. That touches the provinces of the Almighty. That is taking His unknown wonders and making them into pleasure and benefit for thousands, not to mention filling your face with awe divine, and lighting your eyes with interest and ambition. That is life, Ruth. You are beginning to live right now.”

  “I see,” said the Girl. “I understand! I am!”

  “You get your subjects now. When the harvest is over I’ll show you what I have in my head, and before Christmas the fun will begin.”

  “What next?”

  “Sketch a sarsaparilla plant and this yam vine. It grows on your veranda too—the rattle box, you remember. The leaves and seeding arrangements are wonderful. You can do any number of things with them, and all will be new.”

  He called her attention to and brought her samples of ginger leaves, Indian hemp, queen-of-the-meadow, cone-flower, burdock, baneberry, and Indian turnip, as he harvested them in turn. When they came to the large beds of orange pleurisy root the Girl cried out with pleasure.

  “We will take its prosaic features first,” said the Harvester. “It is good medicine and worth handling. Forget that! The Bird Woman calls it butterfly flower. That’s better. Now try to analyze a single bloom of this gaudy mass, and you will see why there’s poetry coming.”

  He knelt beside the Girl, separating the blooms and pointing out their marvellous colour and construction. She leaned against his shoulder, and watched with breathless interest. As his bare head brought its mop of damp wind-rumpled hair close, she ran her fingers through it, and with her handkerchief wiped his forehead.

  “Sometimes I almost wish you’d get sick,” she said irrelevantly.

  “In the name of common sense, why?” demanded the Harvester.

  “Oh it must be born in the heart of a woman to want to mother something,” answered the Girl. “I feel sometimes as if I would like to take care of you, as if you were a little fellow. David, I know why your mother fought to make you the man she desired. You must have been charming when small. I can shut my eyes and just see the boy you were, and I should have loved you as she did.”

  “How about the man I am?” inquired the Harvester promptly. “Any leanings toward him yet, Ruth?”

  “It’s getting worser and worser every day and hour,” said the Girl. “I don’t understand it at all. I wouldn’t try to live without you. I don’t want you to leave my sight. Everything you do is the way I would have it. Nothing you ever say shocks or offends me. I’d love to render you any personal service. I want to take you in my arms and hug you tight half a dozen times a day as a reward for the kind and lovely things you do for me.”

  A dull red flamed up the neck and over the face of the Harvester. One arm lifted to the chair back, the other dropped across the table so that the Girl was almost encircled.

  “For the love of mercy, Ruth, why haven’t I had a hint of this before?” he cried.

  “You said you’d hate me.
You said you’d drop me into the deepest part of the lake if I deceived you; and if I have to tell the truth, why, that is all of it. I think it is nonsense about some wonderful feeling that is going to take possession of your heart when you love any one. I love you so much I’d gladly suffer to save you pain or sorrow. But there are no thrills; it’s just steady, sober, common sense that I should love you, and I do. Why can’t you be satisfied with what I can give, David?”

  “Because it’s husks and ashes,” said the Harvester grimly. “You drive me to desperation, Ruth. I am almost wild for your love, but what you offer me is plain, straight affection, nothing more. There isn’t a trace of the feeling that should exist between man and wife in it. Some men might be satisfied to be your husband, and be regarded as a father or brother. I am not. The red bird didn’t want a sister, Ruth, he was asking for a mate. So am I. That’s as plain as I know how to put it. There is some way to awaken you into a living, loving woman, and, please God, I’ll find it yet, but I’m slow about it; there’s no question of that. Never you mind! Don’t worry! Some of these days I have faith to believe it will sweep you as a tide sweeps the shore, and then I hope God will be good enough to let me be where you will land in my arms.”

  The Girl sat looking at him between narrowed lids. Suddenly she took his head between her hands, drew his face to hers and deliberately kissed him. Then she drew away and searched his eyes.

  “There!” she challenged. “What is the matter with that?”

  The Harvester’s colour slowly faded to a sickly white.

  “Ruth, you try me almost beyond human endurance,” he said. “‘What’s the matter with that?’” He arose, stepped back, folded his arms, and stared at her. “‘What’s the matter with that?’” he repeated. “Never was I so sorely tempted in all my life as I am now to lie to you, and say there is nothing, and take you in my arms and try to awaken you to what I mean by love. But suppose I do—and fail! Then comes the agony of slow endurance for me, and the possibility that any day you may meet the man who can arouse in you the feelings I cannot. That would mean my oath broken, and my heart as well; while soon you would dislike me beyond tolerance, even. I dare not risk it! The matter is, that was the loving caress of a ten-year-old girl to a big brother she admired. That’s all! Not much, but a mighty big defect when it is offered a strong man as fuel on which to feed consuming passion.”

  “Consuming passion,” repeated the Girl. “David you never lie, and you never exaggerate. Do you honestly mean that there is something—oh, there is! I can see it! You are really suffering, and if I come to you, and try my best to comfort you, you’ll only call it baby affection that you don’t want. David, what am I going to do?”

  “You are going to the cabin,” said the Harvester, “and cook us a big supper. I am dreadfully hungry. I’ll be along presently. Don’t worry, Ruth, you are all right! That kiss was lovely. Tell me that you are not angry with me.”

  Her eyes were wet as she smiled at him.

  “If there is a bigger brute than a man anywhere on the footstool, I should like to meet it,” said the Harvester, “and see what it appears like. Go along, honey; I’ll be there as soon as I load.”

  He drove to the dry-house, washed and spread his reaping on the big trays, fed the stock, dressed in the white clothing and entered the kitchen. That the Girl had been crying was obvious, but he overlooked it, helped with the work, and then they took a boat ride. When they returned he proposed that she should select her favourite likeness of her mother, and the next time he went to the city he would take it with his, and order the enlargements he had planned. To save carrying a lighted lamp into the closet he brought her little trunk to the living-room, where she opened it and hunted the pictures. There were several, and all of them were of a young, elegantly dressed woman of great beauty. The Harvester studied them long.

  “Who was she, Ruth?” he asked at last.

  “I don’t know, and I have no desire to learn.”

  “Can you explain how the girl here represented came to marry a brother of Henry Jameson?”

  “Yes. I was past twelve when my father came the last time, and I remember him distinctly. If Uncle Henry were properly clothed, he is not a bad man in appearance, unless he is very angry. He can use proper language, if he chooses. My father was the best in him, refined and intensified. He was much taller, very good looking, and he dressed and spoke well. They were born and grew to manhood in the East, and came out here at the same time. Where Uncle Henry is a trickster and a trader in stock, my father went a step higher, and tricked and traded in men—and women! Mother told me this much once. He saw her somewhere and admired her. He learned who she was, went to her father’s law office and pretended he was representing some great business in the West, until he was welcomed as a promising client. He hung around and when she came in one day her father was forced to introduce them. The remainder is the same world-old story—a good looking, glib-tongued man, plying every art known to an expert, on an innocent girl.”

  “Is he dead, Ruth?”

  “We thought so. We hoped so.”

  “Your mother did not feel that her people might be suffering for her as she was for them?”

  “Not after she appealed to them twice and received no reply.”

  “Perhaps they tried to find her. Maybe she has a father or mother who is longing for word from her now. Are you very sure you are right in not wanting to know?”

  “She never gave me a hint from which I could tell who or where they were. In so gentle a woman as my mother that only could mean she did not want them to know of her. Neither do I. This is the photograph I prefer; please use it.”

  “I’ll put back the trunk in the morning, when I can see better,” said the Harvester.

  The Girl closed it, and soon went to bed. But there was no sleep for the man. He went into the night, and for hours he paced the driveway in racking thought. Then he sat on the step and looked at Belshazzar before him.

  “Life’s growing easier every minute, Bel,” said the Harvester. “Here’s my Dream Girl, lovely as the most golden instant of that wonderful dream, offering me—offering me, Bel—in my present pass, the lips and the love of my little sister who never was born. And I’ve hurt Ruth’s feelings, and sent her to bed with a heartache, trying to make her see that it won’t do. It won’t, Bel! If I can’t have genuine love, I don’t want anything. I told her so as plainly as I could find words, and set her crying, and made her unhappy to end a wonderful day. But in some way she has got to learn that propinquity, tolerance, approval, affection, even—is not love. I can’t take the risk, after all these years of waiting for the real thing. If I did, and love never came, I would end—well, I know how I would end—and that would spoil her life. I simply have got to brace up, Bel, and keep on trying. She thinks it is nonsense about thrills, and some wonderful feeling that takes possession of you. Lord, Bel! There isn’t much nonsense about the thing that rages in my brain, heart, soul, and body. It strikes me as the gravest reality that ever overtook a man.

  “She is growing wonderfully attached to me. ‘Couldn’t live without me,’ Bel, that is what she said. Maybe it would be a scheme to bring Granny here to stay with her, and take a few months in some city this winter on those chemical points that trouble me. There is an old saying about ‘absence making the heart grow fonder.’ Maybe separation is the thing to work the trick. I’ve tried about everything else I know.

  “But I’m in too much of a hurry! What a fool a man is! A few weeks ago, Bel, I said to myself that if Harmon were away and had no part in her life I’d be the happiest man alive. Happiest man alive! Bel, take a look at me now! Happy! Well, why shouldn’t I be happy? She is here. She is growing in strength and beauty every hour. She cares more for me day by day. From an outside viewpoint it seems as if I had almost all a man could ask in reason. But when was a strong man in the grip of love ever reasonable? I think the Almighty took a pretty grave responsibility when He made men as He did. If I had been He,
and understood the forces I was handling, I would have been too big a coward to do it. There is nothing for me, Bel, but to move on doing my level best; and if she doesn’t awaken soon, I will try the absent treatment. As sure as you are the most faithful dog a man ever owned, Bel, I’ll try the absent treatment.”

  The Harvester arose and entered the cabin, stepping softly, for it was dark in the Girl’s room, and he could not hear a sound there. He turned up the lights in the living-room. As he did so the first thing he saw was the little trunk. He looked at it intently, then picked up a book. Every page he turned he glanced again at the trunk. At last he laid down the book and sat staring, his brain working rapidly. He ended by carrying the trunk to his room. He darkened the living-room, lighted his own, drew the rain screens, and piece by piece carefully examined the contents. There were the pictures, but the name of the photographer had been removed. There was not a word that would help in identification. He emptied it to the bottom, and as he picked up the last piece his fingers struck in a peculiar way that did not give the impression of touching a solid surface. He felt over it carefully, and when he examined with a candle he plainly could see where the cloth lining had been cut and lifted.

  For a long time he knelt staring at it, then he deliberately inserted his knife blade and raised it. The cloth had been glued to a heavy sheet of pasteboard the exact size of the trunk bottom. Beneath it lay half a dozen yellow letters, and face down two tissue-wrapped photographs. The Harvester examined them first. They were of a man close forty, having a strong, aggressive face, on which pride and dominant will power were prominently indicated. The other was a reproduction of a dainty and delicate woman, with exquisitely tender and gentle features. Long the Harvester studied them. The names of the photographer and the city were missing. There was nothing except the faces. He could detect traces of the man in the poise of the Girl and the carriage of her head, and suggestions of the woman in the refined sweetness of her expression. Each picture represented wealth in dress and taste in pose. Finally he laid them together on the table, picked up one of the letters, and read it. Then he read all of them.