The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  All evening the Harvester was so gay he kept the Girl laughing and at last she asked him the cause.

  “Relief, honey! Relief!” cried the man. “You had me paralyzed for a minute, Ruth. I thought you were trying to tell me that there was some one so possessing your heart that it failed every time you tried to think about caring for me. If you hadn’t convinced me before you finished that love never has touched you, I’d be the saddest man in the world to-night, Ruth.”

  The Girl stared at him with wide eyes and silently turned away.

  Then for a week they worked out life together in the woods. The Harvester was the housekeeper and the cook. He added to his store many delicious broths and stimulants he brought from the city. They drove every day through the cool woods, often rowed on the lake in the evenings, walked up the hill to the oak and scattered fresh flowers on the two mounds there, and sat beside them talking for a time. The Harvester kept up his work with the herbs, and the little closet for the blue dishes was finished. They celebrated installing them by having supper on the living-room table, with the teapot on one end, and the pitcher full of bellflowers on the other.

  The Girl took everything prescribed for her, bathed, slept all she could, and worked for health with all the force of her frail being, and as the days went by it seemed to the Harvester her weight grew lighter, her hands hotter, and she drove herself to a gayety almost delirious. He thought he would have preferred a dull, stupid sleep of malaria. There was colour in plenty on her cheeks now, and sometimes he found her wrapped in the white shawl at noon on the warmest days Medicine Woods knew in early August; and on cool nights she wore the thinnest clothing and begged to be taken on the lake. The Careys came out every other evening and the doctor watched and worked, but he did not get the results he desired. His medicines were not effective.

  “David,” he said one evening, “I don’t like the looks of this. Your wife has fever I can’t break. It is eating the little store of vitality she has right out of her, and some of these days she is coming down with a crash. She should yield to the remedies I am giving her. She acts to me like a woman driven wild by trouble she is concealing. Do you know anything that worries her?”

  “No,” said the Harvester, “but I’ll try to find out if it will help you in your work.”

  After they were gone he left the Girl lying in the swing guarded by the dog, and went across the marsh on the excuse that he was going to a bed of thorn apple at the foot of the hill. There he sat on a log and tried to think. With the mists of night rising around him, ghosts arose he fain would have escaped. “What will you give me in cold cash to tell you who she is, and who her people are?” Times untold in the past two weeks he had smothered, swallowed, and choked it down. That question she had wanted to ask—was it for a girl she had known, or was it for herself? Days of thought had deepened the first slight impression he so bravely had put aside, not into certainty, but a great fear that she had meant herself. If she did, what was he to do? Who was the man? There was a debt she had to pay if he asked it? What debt could a woman pay a man that did not involve money? Crouched on a log he suffered and twisted in agonizing thought. At last he arose and returned to the cabin. He carried a few frosty, blue-green leaves of velvet softness and unusual cutting, prickly thorn apples full of seeds, and some of the smoother, more yellowish-green leaves of the jimson weed, to give excuse for his absence.

  “Don’t touch them,” he warned as he came to her. “They are poison and have disagreeable odour. But we are importing them for medicinal purposes. On the far side of the marsh, where the ground rises, there is a waste place just suited to them, and so long as they will seed and flourish with no care at all, I might as well have the price as the foreign people who raise them. They don’t bring enough to make them worth cultivating, but when they grow alone and with no care, I can make money on the time required to clip the leaves and dry the seeds. I must go wash before I come close to you.”

  The next day he had business in the city, and again she lay in the swing and talked to the dog while the Harvester was gone. She was startled as Belshazzar arose with a gruff bark. She looked down the driveway, but no one was coming. Then she followed the dog’s eyes and saw a queer, little old woman coming up the bank of Singing Water from the north. She remembered what the Harvester had said, and rising she opened the screen and went down the path. As the Girl advanced she noticed the scrupulous cleanliness of the calico dress and gingham apron, and the snowy hair framing a bronzed face with dancing dark eyes.

  “Are you David’s new wife?” asked Granny Moreland with laughing inflection.

  “Yes,” said the Girl. “Come in. He told me to expect you. I am so sorry he is away, but we can get acquainted without him. Let me help you.”

  “I don’t know but that ought to be the other way about. You don’t look very strong, child.”

  “I am not well,” said the Girl, “but it’s lovely here, and the air is so fine I am going to be better soon. Take this chair until you rest a little, and then you shall see our pretty home, and all the furniture and my dresses.”

  “Yes, I want to see things. My, but David has tried himself! I heard he was just tearin’ up Jack over here, and I could get the sound of the hammerin’, and one day he asked me to come and see about his beddin’. He had that Lizy Crofter to wash for him, but if I hadn’t jest stood over her his blankets would have been ruined. She’s no more respect for fine goods than a pig would have for cream pie. I hate to see woollens abused, as if they were human. My, but things is fancy here since what David planted is growin’! Did you ever live in the country before?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you hail from?”

  “Well not from the direction of hail,” laughed the Girl. “I lived in Chicago, but we were—were not rich, and so I didn’t know the luxury of the city; just the lonely, difficult part.”

  “Do you call Chicago lonely?”

  “A thousand times more so than Medicine Woods. Here I know the trees will whisper to me, and the water laughs and sings all day, and the birds almost split their throats making music for me; but I can imagine no loneliness on earth that will begin to compare with being among the crowds and crowds of a large city and no one has a word or look for you. I miss the sea of faces and the roar of life; at first I was almost wild with the silence, but now I don’t find it still any more; the Harvester is teaching me what each sound means and they seem to be countless.”

  “You think, then, you’ll like it here?”

  “I do, indeed! Any one would. Even more than the beautiful location, I love the interesting part of the Harvester’s occupation. I really think that gathering material to make medicines that will allay pain is the very greatest of all the great work a man can do.”

  “Good!” cried Granny Moreland, her dark eyes snapping. “I’ve always said it! I’ve tried to encourage David in it. And he’s just capital at puttin’ some of his stuff in shape, and combinin’ it in as good medicine as you ever took. This spring I was all crippled up with the rheumatiz until I wanted to holler every time I had to move, and sometimes it got so aggravatin’ I’m not right sure but I done it. ‘Long comes David and says, ‘I can fix you somethin’,’ and bless you, if the boy didn’t take the tucks out of me, until here I am, and tickled to pieces that I can get here. This time last year I didn’t care if I lived or not. Now seems as if I’m caperish as a three weeks’ lamb. I don’t see how a man could do a bigger thing than to stir up life in you like that.”

  “I think this place makes an especial appeal to me, because, shortly before I came, I had to give up my mother. She was very ill and suffered horribly. Every time I see David going to his little laboratory on the hill to work a while I slip away and ask God to help him to fix something that will ease the pain of humanity as I should like to have seen her relieved.”

  “Why you poor child! No wonder you are lookin’ so thin and peaked!”

  “Oh I’ll soon be over that,” said the Girl. �
�I am much better than when I came. I’ll be coming over to trade pie with you before long. David says you are my nearest neighbour, so we must be close friends.”

  “Well bless your big heart! Now who ever heard of a pretty young thing like you wantin’ to be friends with a plain old country woman?”

  “Why I think you are lovely!” cried the Girl. “And all of us are on the way to age, so we must remember that we will want kindness then more than at any other time. David says you knew his mother. Sometime won’t you tell me all about her? You must very soon. The Harvester adored her, and Doctor Carey says she was the noblest woman he ever knew. It’s a big contract to take her place. Maybe if you would tell me all you can remember I could profit by much of it.”

  Granny Moreland watched the Girl keenly.

  “She wa’ant no ordinary woman, that’s sure,” she commented. “And she didn’t make no common man out of her son, either. I’ve always contended she took the job too serious, and wore herself out at it, but she certainly done the work up prime. If she’s above cloud leanin’ over the ramparts lookin’ down—though it gets me as to what foundation they use or where they get the stuff to build the ramparts—but if they is ramparts, and she’s peekin’ over them, she must take a lot of solid satisfaction in seeing that David is not only the man she fought and died to make him, but he’s give her quite a margin to spread herself on. She ’lowed to make him a big man, but you got to know him close and plenty ’fore it strikes you jest what his size is. I’ve watched him pretty sharp, and tried to help what I could since Marthy went, and I’m frank to say I druther see David happy than to be happy myself. I’ve had my fling. The rest of the way I’m willin’ to take what comes, with the best grace I can muster, and wear a smilin’ face to betoken the joy I have had; but it cuts me sore to see the young sufferin’.”

  “Do you think David is unhappy?” asked the Girl eagerly.

  “I don’t see how he could be!” cried the old lady. “Of course he ain’t! ’Pears as if he’s got everythin’ to make him the proudest, best satisfied of men. I’ll own I was mighty anxious to see you. I know the kind o’ woman it would take to make David miserable, and it seems sometimes as if men—that is good men—are plumb, stone blind when it comes to pickin’ a woman. They jest hitch up with everlastin’ misery easy as dew rolling off a cabbage leaf. It’s sech a blessed sight to see you, and hear your voice and know you’re the woman anybody can see you be. Why I’m so happy when I set here and con-tem’-plate you, I want to cackle like a pullet announcin’ her first egg. Ain’t this porch the purtiest place?”

  “Come see everything,” invited the Girl, rising.

  Granny Moreland followed with alacrity.

  “Bare floors!” she cried. “Wouldn’t that best you? I saw they was finished capital when I was over, but I ’lowed they’d be covered afore you come. Don’t you like nice, flowery Brissels carpets, honey?”

  “No I don’t,” said the Girl. “You see, when rugs are dusty they can be rolled, carried outside, and cleaned. The walls can be wiped, the floors polished, and that way a house is always fresh. I can keep this shining, germ proof, and truly clean with half the work and none of the danger of heavy carpets and curtains.”

  “I don’t doubt but them is true words,” said Granny Moreland earnestly. “Work must be easier and sooner done than it was in my day, or people jest couldn’t have houses the size of this or the time to gad that women have now. From the looks of the streets of Onabasha, you wouldn’t think a woman ’ud had a baby to tend, a dinner pot a-bilin’, or a bakin’ of bread sence the flood. And the country is jest as bad as the city. We’re a apin’ them to beat the monkeys at a show. I hardly got a neighbour that ain’t got figgered Brissels carpet, a furnace, a windmill, a pianny, and her own horse and buggy. Several’s got autermobiles, and the young folks are visitin’ around a-ridin’ the trolleys, goin’ to college, and copyin’ city ways. Amos Peters, next to us; goes bareheaded in the hay field, and wears gloves to pitch and plow in. I tell him he reminds me of these city women that only wears the lower half of a waist and no sleeves, and a yard of fine goods moppin’ the floors. Well if that don’t beat the nation! Ain’t them Marthy’s old blue dishes?”

  “Let me show you!” The Girl opened the little cupboard and exhibited the willow ware. The eyes of the old woman began to sparkle.

  “Foundation or no foundation, I do hope them ramparts is a go!” she cried. “If Marthy Langston is squintin’ over them and she sees her old chany put in a fine cupboard, and her little shawl round as purty a girl as ever stepped, and knows her boy is gittin’ what he deserves, good Lord, she’ll be like to oust the Almighty, and set on the throne herself! ’Bout everythin’ in life was a disappointment to her, ’cept David. Now if she could see this! Won’t I rub it into the neighbours? And my boys’ wives!”

  “I don’t understand,” said the bewildered Girl.

  “’Course you don’t, honey,” explained the visitor. “It’s like this: I don’t know anybody, man or woman, in these parts, that ain’t rampagin’ for CHANGE. They ain’t one of them that would live in a log cabin, though they’s not a house in twenty miles of here that fits its surroundin’s and looks so homelike as this. They run up big, fancy brick and frame things, all turns and gables and gay as frosted picnic pie, and work and slave to git these very carpets you say ain’t healthy, and the chairs you say you wouldn’t give house room, an’ they use their grandmother’s chany for bakin’, scraps, and grease dishes, and hide it if they’s visitors. All of them strainin’ after something they can’t afford, and that ain’t healthy when they git it, because somebody else is doin’ the same thing. Mary Peters says she is afeared of her life in their new steam wagon, and she says Andy gits so narvous runnin’ it, he jest keeps on a-jerkin’ and drivin’ all night, and she thinks he’ll soon go to smash himself, if the machine doesn’t beat him. But they are keepin’ it up, because Graceston’s is, and so it goes all over the country. Now I call it a slap right in the face to have a Chicagy woman come to the country to live and enjoy a log cabin, bare floors, and her man’s grandmother’s dishes. If there ain’t Marthy’s old blue coverlid also carefully spread on a splinter new sofy. Landy, I can’t wait to get to my son John’s! He’s got a woman that would take two coppers off the collection plate while she was purtendin’ to put on one, if she could, and then spend them for a brass pin or a string of glass beads. Won’t her eyes bung when I tell her about this? She wanted my Peter Hartman kiver for her ironin’ board. Show me the rest!”

  “This is the dining-room,” said the Girl, leading the way.

  Granny Moreland stepped in and sent her keen eyes ranging over the floor, walls, and furnishings. She sank on a chair and said with a chuckle, “Now you go on and tell me all about it, honey. Jest what things are and why you fixed them, and how they are used.”

  The Girl did her best, and the old woman nodded in delighted approval.

  “It’s the purtiest thing I ever saw,” she announced. “A minute ago, I’d ’a’ said them blue walls back there, jest like October skies in Indian summer, and the brown rugs, like leaves in the woods, couldn’t be beat; but this green and yaller is purtier yet. That blue room will keep the best lookin’ part of fall on all winter, and with a roarin’ wood fire, it’ll be capital, and no mistake; but this here is spring, jest spring eternal, an’ that’s best of all. Looks like it was about time the leaves was bustin’ and things pushin’ up. It wouldn’t surprise me a mite to see a flock of swallers come sailin’ right through these winders. And here’s a place big enough to lay down and rest a spell right handy to the kitchen, where a-body gits tiredest, without runnin’ a half mile to find a bed, and in the mornin’ you can look down to the ‘still waters’; and in the afternoon, when the sun gits around here, you can pull that blind and ‘lift your eyes to the hills,’ like David of the Bible says. My, didn’t he say the purtiest things! I never read nothin’ could touch him!”

  “Have you seen the Psalms ar
ranged in verse as we would write it now?”

  “You don’t mean to tell me David’s been put into real poetry?”

  “Yes. Some Bibles have all the poetical books in our forms of verse.”

  “Well! Sometimes I git kind o’ knocked out! As a rule I hold to old ways. I think they’re the healthiest and the most faver’ble to the soul. But they’s some changes come along, that’s got sech hard common-sense to riccomend them, that I wonder the past generations didn’t see sooner. Now take this! An hour ago I’d told you I’d read my father’s Bible to the end of my days. But if they’s a new one that’s got David, Solomon, and Job in nateral form, I’ll have one, and I’ll git a joy I never expected out of life. I ain’t got so much poetry in me, but it always riled me to read, ‘7. The law of the Lord is perfect, covertin’ the soul. 8. The statutes of the Lord are right. 9. The fear of the Lord is clean.’ And so it goes on, ‘bout as much figgers as they is poetry. Always did worry me. So if they make Bibles ’cordin’ to common sense, I’ll have one to-morrow if I have to walk to Onabasha to get it. Lawsy me! if you ain’t gathered up Marthy’s old pink tea set, and give it a show, too! Did you do that to please David, or do you honestly think them is nice dishes?”

  “I think they are beautiful,” laughed the Girl, sinking to a chair. “I don’t know that it did please him. He had been studying the subject, but something saved him from buying anything until I came. I’d have felt dreadfully if he had gotten what he wanted.”

  “What did he want, honey?” asked the old lady in an awestruck whisper.

  “Egg-shell china and cut glass.”

  “And you wouldn’t let him! Woman! What do you want?”