The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  The Bird Woman explained to him that it was an easy matter with the subject she then had in hand; and as Little Chicken was too small to be frightened by him, and big enough to be growing troublesome, she was glad for his company. They went to the chicken log together, leaving to the happy Freckles the care of the Angel, who had brought her banjo and a roll of songs that she wanted to hear him sing. The Bird Woman told them that they might practice in Freckles’s room until she finished with Little Chicken, and then she and McLean would come to the concert.

  It was almost three hours before they finished and came down the west trail for their rest and lunch. McLean walked ahead, keeping sharp watch on the trail and clearing it of fallen limbs from overhanging trees. He sent a big piece of bark flying into the swale, and then stopped short and stared at the trail.

  The Bird Woman bent forward. Together they studied that imprint of the Angel’s foot. At last their eyes met, the Bird Woman’s filled with astonishment, and McLean’s humid with pity. Neither said a word, but they knew. McLean entered the swale and hunted up the bark. He replaced it, and the Bird Woman carefully stepped over. As they reached the bushes at the entrance, the voice of the Angel stopped them, for it was commanding and filled with much impatience.

  “Freckles James Ross McLean!” she was saying. “You fill me with dark-blue despair! You’re singing as if your voice were glass and might break at any minute. Why don’t you sing as you did a week ago? Answer me that, please.”

  Freckles smiled confusedly at the Angel, who sat on one of his fancy seats, playing his accompaniment on her banjo.

  “You are a fraud,” she said. “Here you went last week and led me to think that there was the making of a great singer in you, and now you are singing—do you know how badly you are singing?”

  “Yis,” said Freckles meekly. “I’m thinking I’m too happy to be singing well today. The music don’t come right only when I’m lonesome and sad. The world’s for being all sunshine at prisint, for among you and Mr. McLean and the Bird Woman I’m after being that happy that I can’t keep me thoughts on me notes. It’s more than sorry I am to be disappointing you. Play it over, and I’ll be beginning again, and this time I’ll hold hard.”

  “Well,” said the Angel disgustedly, “it seems to me that if I had all the things to be proud of that you have, I’d lift up my head and sing!”

  “And what is it I’ve to be proud of, ma’am?” politely inquired Freckles.

  “Why, a whole worldful of things,” cried the Angel explosively. “For one thing, you can be good and proud over the way you’ve kept the timber thieves out of this lease, and the trust your father has in you. You can be proud that you’ve never even once disappointed him or failed in what he believed you could do. You can be proud over the way everyone speaks of you with trust and honor, and about how brave of heart and strong of body you are I heard a big man say a few days ago that the Limberlost was full of disagreeable things—positive dangers, unhealthful as it could be, and that since the memory of the first settlers it has been a rendezvous for runaways, thieves, and murderers. This swamp is named for a man that was lost here and wandered around ’til he starved. That man I was talking with said he wouldn’t take your job for a thousand dollars a month—in fact, he said he wouldn’t have it for any money, and you’ve never missed a day or lost a tree. Proud! Why, I should think you would just parade around about proper over that!

  “And you can always be proud that you are born an Irishman. My father is Irish, and if you want to see him get up and strut give him a teeny opening to enlarge on his race. He says that if the Irish had decent territory they’d lead the world. He says they’ve always been handicapped by lack of space and of fertile soil. He says if Ireland had been as big and fertile as Indiana, why, England wouldn’t ever have had the upper hand. She’d only be an appendage. Fancy England an appendage! He says Ireland has the finest orators and the keenest statesmen in Europe today, and when England wants to fight, with whom does she fill her trenches? Irishmen, of course! Ireland has the greenest grass and trees, the finest stones and lakes, and they’ve jaunting-cars. I don’t know just exactly what they are, but Ireland has all there are, anyway. They’ve a lot of great actors, and a few singers, and there never was a sweeter poet than one of theirs. You should hear my father recite ‘Dear Harp of My Country.’ He does it this way.”

  The Angel arose, made an elaborate old-time bow, and holding up the banjo, recited in clipping feet and meter, with rhythmic swing and a touch of brogue that was simply irresistible:

  “Dear harp of my country” [The Angel ardently clasped the banjo];

  “In darkness I found thee” [She held it to the light];

  “The cold chain of silence had hung o’er thee long” [She muted the strings with her rosy palm];

  “Then proudly, my own Irish harp, I unbound thee” [She threw up her head and swept a ringing harmony];

  “And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song” [She crashed into the notes of the accompaniment she had been playing for Freckles].

  “That’s what you want to be thinking of!” she cried. “Not darkness, and lonesomeness, and sadness, but ‘light, freedom, and song.’ I can’t begin to think offhand of all the big, splendid things an Irishman has to be proud of; but whatever they are, they are all yours, and you are a part of them. I just despise that ‘saddest-when-I-sing’ business. You can sing! Now you go over there and do it! Ireland has had her statesmen, warriors, actors, and poets; now you be her voice! You stand right out there before the cathedral door, and I’m going to come down the aisle playing that accompaniment, and when I stop in front of you—you sing!”

  The Angel’s face wore an unusual flush. Her eyes were flashing and she was palpitating with earnestness.

  She parted the bushes and disappeared. Freckles, straight and tense, stood waiting. Presently, before he saw she was there, she was coming down the aisle toward him, playing compellingly, and rifts of light were touching her with golden glory. Freckles stood as if transfixed.

  The cathedral was majestically beautiful, from arched dome of frescoed gold, green, and blue in never-ending shades and harmonies, to the mosaic aisle she trod, richly inlaid in choicest colors, and gigantic pillars that were God’s handiwork fashioned and perfected through ages of sunshine and rain. But the fair young face and divinely molded form of the Angel were His most perfect work of all. Never had she appeared so surpassingly beautiful. She was smiling encouragingly now, and as she came toward him, she struck the chords full and strong.

  The heart of poor Freckles almost burst with dull pain and his great love for her. In his desire to fulfill her expectations he forgot everything else, and when she reached his initial chord he was ready. He literally burst forth:

  “Three little leaves of Irish green,

  United on one stem,

  Love, truth, and valor do they mean,

  They form a magic gem.”

  The Angel’s eyes widened curiously and her lips parted. A deep color swept into her cheeks. She had intended to arouse him. She had more than succeeded. She was too young to know that in the effort to rouse a man, women frequently kindle fires that they neither can quench nor control. Freckles was looking over her head now and singing that song, as it never had been sung before, for her alone; and instead of her helping him, as she had intended, he was carrying her with him on the waves of his voice, away, away into another world. When he struck into the chorus, wide-eyed and panting, she was swaying toward him and playing with all her might.

  “Oh, do you love? Oh, say you love

  You love the shamrock green!”

  At the last note, Freckles’s voice ceased and he looked at the Angel. He had given his best and his all. He fell on his knees and folded his arms across his breast. The Angel, as if magnetized, walked straight down the aisle to him, and running her fingers into the crisp masses of his red hair, tilted his head back and laid her lips on his forehead.

  Then she stepp
ed back and faced him. “Good boy!” she said, in a voice that wavered from the throbbing of her shaken heart. “Dear boy! I knew you could do it! I knew it was in you! Freckles, when you go into the world, if you can face a big audience and sing like that, just once, you will be immortal, and anything you want will be yours.”

  “Anything!” gasped Freckles.

  “Anything,” said the Angel.

  Freckles arose, muttered something, and catching up his old bucket, plunged into the swamp blindly on a pretence of bringing water. The Angel walked slowly across the study, sat on the rustic bench, and, through narrowed lids, intently studied the tip of her shoe.

  On the trail the Bird Woman wheeled to McLean with a dumbfounded look.

  “God!” muttered he.

  At last the Bird Woman spoke.

  “Do you think the Angel knew she did that?” she asked softly.

  “No,” said McLean; “I do not. But the poor boy knew it. Heaven help him!”

  The Bird Woman stared across the gently waving swale. “I don’t see how I am going to blame her,” she said at last. “It’s so exactly what I would have done myself.”

  “Say the remainder,” demanded McLean hoarsely. “Do him justice.”

  “He was born a gentleman,” conceded the Bird Woman. “He took no advantage. He never even offered to touch her. Whatever that kiss meant to him, he recognized that it was the loving impulse of a child under stress of strong emotion. He was fine and manly as any man ever could have been.”

  McLean lifted his hat. “Thank you,” he said simply, and parted the bushes for her to enter Freckles’s room.

  It was her first visit. Before she left she sent for her cameras and made studies of each side of it and of the cathedral. She was entranced with the delicate beauty of the place, while her eyes kept following Freckles as if she could not believe that it could be his conception and work.

  That was a happy day. The Bird Woman had brought a lunch, and they spread it, with Freckles’s dinner, on the study floor and sat, resting and enjoying themselves. But the Angel put her banjo into its case, silently gathered her music, and no one mentioned the concert.

  The Bird Woman left McLean and the Angel to clear away the lunch, and with Freckles examined the walls of his room and told him all she knew about his shrubs and flowers. She analyzed a cardinal-flower and showed him what he had wanted to know all summer—why the bees buzzed ineffectually around it while the humming-birds found in it an ever-ready feast. Some of his specimens were so rare that she was unfamiliar with them, and with the flower book between them they knelt, studying the different varieties. She wandered the length of the cathedral aisle with him, and it was at her suggestion that he lighted his altar with a row of flaming foxfire.

  As Freckles came to the cabin from his long day at the swamp he saw Mrs. Chicken sweeping to the south and wondered where she was going. He stepped into the bright, cosy little kitchen, and as he reached down the wash-basin he asked Mrs. Duncan a question.

  “Mother Duncan, do kisses wash off?”

  So warm a wave swept her heart that a half-flush mantled her face. She straightened her shoulders and glanced at her hands tenderly.

  “Lord, na! Freckles,” she cried. “At least, the anes ye get from people ye love dinna. They dinna stay on the outside. They strike in until they find the center of your heart and make their stopping-place there, and naething can take them from ye—I doubt if even death—Na, lad, ye can be reet sure kisses dinna wash off!”

  Freckles set the basin down and muttered as he plunged his hot, tired face into the water, “I needn’t be afraid to be washing, then, for that one struck in.”

  Chapter 11

  Wherein the Butterflies Go on a Spree and Freckles Informs the Bird Woman

  “I wish,” said Freckles at breakfast one morning, “that I had some way to be sending a message to the Bird Woman. I’ve something at the swamp that I’m believing never happened before, and surely she’ll be wanting it.”

  “What now, Freckles?” asked Mrs. Duncan.

  “Why, the oddest thing you ever heard of,” said Freckles; “the whole insect tribe gone on a spree. I’m supposing it’s my doings, but it all happened by accident, like. You see, on the swale side of the line, right against me trail, there’s one of these scrub wild crabtrees. Where the grass grows thick around it, is the finest place you ever conceived of for snakes. Having women about has set me trying to clean out those fellows a bit, and yesterday I noticed that tree in passing. It struck me that it would be a good idea to be taking it out. First I thought I’d take me hatchet and cut it down, for it ain’t thicker than me upper arm. Then I remembered how it was blooming in the spring and filling all the air with sweetness. The coloring of the blossoms is beautiful, and I hated to be killing it. I just cut the grass short all around it. Then I started at the ground, trimmed up the trunk near the height of me shoulder, and left the top spreading. That made it look so truly ornamental that, idle like, I chips off the rough places neat, and this morning, on me soul, it’s a sight! You see, cutting off the limbs and trimming up the trunk sets the sap running. In this hot sun it ferments in a few hours. There isn’t much room for more things to crowd on that tree than there are, and to get drunker isn’t noways possible.”

  “Weel, I be drawed on!” exclaimed Mrs. Duncan. “What kind of things do ye mean, Freckles?”

  “Why, just an army of black ants. Some of them are sucking away like old topers. Some of them are setting up on their tails and hind legs, fiddling with their fore-feet and wiping their eyes. Some are rolling around on the ground, contented. There are quantities of big blue-bottle flies over the bark and hanging on the grasses around, too drunk to steer a course flying; so they just buzz away like flying, and all the time sitting still. The snake-feeders are too full to feed anything—even more sap to themselves. There’s a lot of hard-backed bugs—beetles, I guess—colored like the brown, blue, and black of a peacock’s tail. They hang on until the legs of them are so wake they can’t stick a minute longer, and then they break away and fall to the ground. They just lay there on their backs, fably clawing air. When it wears off a bit, up they get, and go crawling back for more, and they so full they bump into each other and roll over. Sometimes they can’t climb the tree until they wait to sober up a little. There’s a lot of big black-and-gold bumblebees, done for entire, stumbling over the bark and rolling on the ground. They just lay there on their backs, rocking from side to side, singing to themselves like fat, happy babies. The wild bees keep up a steady buzzing with the beating of their wings.

  “The butterflies are the worst old topers of them all. They’re just a circus! You never saw the like of the beauties! They come every color you could be naming, and every shape you could be thinking up. They drink and drink until, if I’m driving them away, they stagger as they fly and turn somersaults in the air. If I lave them alone, they cling to the grasses, shivering happy like; and I’m blest, Mother Duncan, if the best of them could be unlocking the front door with a lead pencil, even.”

  “I never heard of anything sae surprising,” said Mrs. Duncan.

  “It’s a rare sight to watch them, and no one ever made a picture of a thing like that before, I’m for thinking,” said Freckles earnestly.

  “Na,” said Mrs. Duncan. “Ye can be pretty sure there didna. The Bird Woman must have word in some way, if ye walk the line and I walk to town and tell her. If ye think ye can wait until after supper, I am most sure ye can gang yoursel’, for Duncan is coming home and he’d be glad to watch for ye. If he does na come, and na ane passes that I can send word with today, I really will gang early in the morning and tell her mysel’.”

  Freckles took his lunch and went to the swamp. He walked and watched eagerly. He could find no trace of anything, yet he felt a tense nervousness, as if trouble might be brooding. He examined every section of the wire, and kept watchful eyes on the grasses of the swale, in an effort to discover if anyone had passed through them; but he
could discover no trace of anything to justify his fears.

  He tilted his hat brim to shade his face and looked for his chickens. They were hanging almost beyond sight in the sky.

  “Gee!” he said. “If I only had your sharp eyes and convenient location now, I wouldn’t need be troubling so.”

  He reached his room and cautiously scanned the entrance before he stepped in. Then he pushed the bushes apart with his right arm and entered, his left hand on the butt of his favorite revolver. Instantly he knew that someone had been there. He stepped to the center of the room, closely scanning each wall and the floor. He could find no trace of a clue to confirm his belief, yet so intimate was he with the spirit of the place that he knew.

  How he knew he could not have told, yet he did know that someone had entered his room, sat on his benches, and walked over his floor. He was surest around the case. Nothing was disturbed, yet it seemed to Freckles that he could see where prying fingers had tried the lock. He stepped behind the case, carefully examining the ground all around it, and close beside the tree to which it was nailed he found a deep, fresh footprint in the spongy soil—a long, narrow print, that was never made by the foot of Wessner. His heart tugged in his breast as he mentally measured the print, but he did not linger, for now the feeling arose that he was being watched. It seemed to him that he could feel the eyes of some intruder at his back. He knew he was examining things too closely: if anyone were watching, he did not want him to know that he felt it.

  He took the most open way, and carried water for his flowers and moss as usual; but he put himself into no position in which he was fully exposed, and his hand was close his revolver constantly. Growing restive at last under the strain, he plunged boldly into the swamp and searched minutely all around his room, but he could not discover the least thing to give him further cause for alarm. He unlocked his case, took out his wheel, and for the remainder of the day he rode and watched as he never had before. Several times he locked the wheel and crossed the swamp on foot, zigzagging to cover all the space possible. Every rod he traveled he used the caution that sprang from knowledge of danger and the direction from which it probably would come. Several times he thought of sending for McLean, but for his life he could not make up his mind to do it with nothing more tangible than one footprint to justify him.