Wonder, Hope, Love, and Loss

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  Granny tremulously dried her eyes.

  “What an old sap-head I am!” she commented. “I stole your letters from your fireplace, pitched a willer plate into the lake—you got to fish that out, come day, David—fooled you into that trip to Doc Carey to get him to mail them to Ruth, and never turned a hair. But after I got home I commenced thinkin’ ’twas a pretty ticklish job to stick your nose into other people’s business, an’ every hour it got worse, until I ain’t had a fairly decent sleep since. If you hadn’t come soon, boy, I’d ’a’ been sick a-bed. Oh, David! Are you sure she’s over there, and loves you to suit you now?”

  “Yes dear, I am absolutely certain,” said the Harvester. “She was so determined to come that she brought the invalid grandmother she couldn’t leave and her grandfather. They arrived at midnight. We are all going to live together now.”

  “Well bless my stars! Fetched you a family! David, I do hope to all that’s peaceful I hain’t put my foot in it. The moon is the deceivingest thing on earth I know, but does her family ’pear to be an a-gre’-able family, by its light?”

  The Harvester’s laugh boomed a half mile down the road.

  “Finest people on earth, next to you, dear. I’m mighty glad to have them. I’m going to build them a house on my best location, and we are all going to be happy from now on. Go to bed! This night air may chill you. I can’t sleep. I wanted you to know first—so I came over. In mother’s stead, will you kiss me, and wish me happiness, dear friend?”

  Granny Moreland laid an eager, withered hand on each shoulder, and bent to the radiant young face.

  “God bless you, lad, and grant you as great happiness as life ort to fetch every clean, honest man,” she prayed fervently, with closed eyes and her lined old face turned skyward. “And, O God, bless Ruth, and help her as You never helped mortal woman before to know her own mind without ‘variableness, neither shadow of turnin’.’”

  The Harvester was on Singing Water bridge before he gave way. There he laughed as never before in his life. Finally he controlled himself and started toward the cabin; but he was chuckling as he passed the driveway, and walked down the broad cement floor leading to his bathing pool, where the moonlight bridged the lake, and fell as a benediction all around him.

  He stood a long time, when he recognized the familiar crash of a breaking backlog falling together, and heard the customary leap of the frightened dog. He walked to his door and listened intently, but there was no sound; so he decided the Girl had not been awakened. In the midst of a whitening sheet of gold the Harvester dropped to his stoop and leaned his head against the broad casing. He broke a twig from a hawthorn bush beside him, and sat twisting it in his fingers as he stared down the line of the gold bridge. Never had it seemed so material, so like a path that might be trodden by mortal feet and lead them straight to Heaven. As on the hill top, night again surrounded him and the Harvester’s soul drank deep wild draughts of a new joy. Sleep was out of the question. He was too intensely alive to know that he ever again could be weary. He sat there in the moonlight, and with unbridled heart gloried in the joy that had come to him.

  He turned his face from the bridge as he heard the click of Belshazzar’s nails on the floor of the bathing pool. Then his heart and breath stopped an instant. Beside the dog walked the Girl, one hand on his head the other holding the flowing white robe around her and grasping one of the Harvester’s lilies. His first thought was sheer amazement that she was not afraid, for it was evident now that the backlog had awakened her, and she had taken the dog and gone to her mother. Then she had followed the path leading down the hill, around the cabin, and into the sheet of moonlight gilding the shore. She stood there gazing over the lake, oblivious to all things save the entrancing allurement of a perfect spring night beside undulant water. Screened from her with bushes and trees the Harvester scarcely breathed lest he startle her. Then his head swam, and his still heart leaped wildly. She was coming toward him. On her left lay the path to the hill top. A few steps farther she could turn to the right and follow the driveway to the front of the cabin. He leaned forward watching in an agony of suspense. Her beautiful face was transfigured with joy, aflame with love, radiant with smiles, and her tall figure fleecy white, rimmed in gold. Up the shining path of light she steadily advanced toward his door. Then the Harvester understood, and from his exultant heart burst the wordless petition:

  “LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, HELP ME TO BE A MAN!”

  With outstretched arms he arose to meet her.

  “My Dream Girl!” he cried hoarsely. “My Dream Girl!”

  “Coming, Harvester!” she answered in tones of joy, as she dropped the white flower and lifted her hands to draw his face toward her.

  “Is that the kiss you wanted?” she questioned.

  “Yes, Ruth,” breathed the Harvester.

  “Then I am ready to be your wife,” she said. “May I share all the remainder of life’s joys and sorrows with you?”

  The Harvester gathered her in his arms and carried her to the bench on the lake shore. He wrapped the white robe around her and clasped her tenderly as behooved a lover, yet with arms that she knew could have crushed her had they willed. The minutes slipped away, and still he held her to his heart, the reality far surpassing his dream; for he knew that he was awake, and he realized this as the supreme hour that comes to the strongman who knows his love requited.

  When the first banner of red light arose above Medicine Woods and Singing Water the cocks on the hillside announced the dawn. As the gold faded to gray, a burst of bubbling notes swelled from a branch almost over their heads where stood a bark-enclosed little house.

  “Ruth, do you hear that?” asked the Harvester softly.

  “Yes,” she answered, “and I see it. A wonderful bird, with Heaven’s deepest blue on its back and a breast like a russet autumn leaf, came straight up the lake from the south, and before it touched the limb that song seemed to gush from its throat.”

  “And for that reason, the greatest nature lover who ever lived says that it ‘deserves preeminence.’ It always settles from its long voyage through the air in an ecstasy of melody. Do you know what it is, Ruth?”

  The Girl laid a hand on his cheek and turned his eyes from the bird to her face as she answered, “Yes, Harvester-man, I know. It is your first bluebird—but it is far too late, and Belshazzar has lost high office. I have usurped both their positions. You remain in the woods and reap their harvest, you enter the laboratory and make wonderful, life-giving medicines, you face the world and tell men of the high and holy life they may live if they will, and then—always and forever, you come back to Medicine Woods and to me, Harvester.”