“A set of tulip-yellow dishes, with Dutch little figures on them. They are so quaint and they would harmonize perfectly with this room.”
The old lady laughed gleefully.
“My! I wouldn’t ’a’ missed this for a dollar,” she cried. “It jest does my soul good. More’n that, if you really like Marthy’s dishes and are going to take care of them and use them right, I’ll give you mine, too. I ain’t never had a girl. I’ve always hoped she’d ’a’ had some jedgment of her own, and not been eternally apin’, if I had, but the Lord may ’a’ saved me many a disappointment by sendin’ all mine boys. Not that I’m layin’ the babies on to the Lord at all—I jest got into the habit of sayin’ that, ’cos everybody else does, but all mine, I had a purty good idy how I got them. If a girl of mine wouldn’t ’a’ had more sense, raised right with me, I’d ’a’ been purty bad cut up over it. Of course, I can’t be held responsible for the girls my boys married, but t’other day Emmeline—that’s John’s wife—John is the youngest, and I sort o’ cling to him—Emmeline she says to me, ‘Mother, can’t I have this old pink and green teapot?’ My heart warmed right up to the child, and I says, ‘What do you want it for, Emmeline?’ And she says, ‘To draw the tea in.’ Cracky Dinah! That fool woman meant to set my grandmother’s weddin’ present from her pa and ma, dishes same as Marthy Washington used, on the stove to bile the tea in. I jest snorted! ‘No,’ says I, ‘you can’t! ’Fore I die,’ says I, ‘I’ll meet up with some woman that’ll love dishes and know how to treat them.’ I think jest about as much of David as I do my own boys, and I don’t make no bones of the fact that he’s a heap more of a man. I’d jest as soon my dishes went to his children as to John’s. I’ll give you every piece I got, if you’ll take keer of them.”
“Would it be right?” wavered the girl.
“Right! Why, I’m jest tellin’ you the fool wimmen would bile tea in them, make grease sassers of them, and use them to dish up the bakin’ on! Wouldn’t you a heap rather see them go into a cupboard like David’s ma’s is in, where they’d be taken keer of, if they was yours? I guess you would!”
“Well if you feel that way, and really want us to have them, I know David will build another little cupboard on the other side of the fireplace to put yours in, and I can’t tell you how I’d love and care for them.”
“I’ll jest do it!” said Granny Moreland. “I got about as many blue ones as Marthy had an’ mine are purtier than hers. And my lustre is brighter, for I didn’t use it so much. Is this the kitchen? Well if I ever saw sech a cool, white place to cook in before! Ain’t David the beatenest hand to think up things? He got the start of that takin’ keer of his ma all his life. He sort of learned what a woman uses, and how it’s handiest. Not that other men don’t know; it’s jest that they are too mortal selfish and keerless to fix things. Well this is great! Now when you bile cabbage and the wash, always open your winders wide and let the steam out, so it won’t spile your walls.”
“I’ll be very careful,” promised the Girl. “Now come see my bathroom, closet and bedroom.”
“Well as I live! Ain’t this fine. I’ll bet a purty that if I’d ’a’ had a room and a trough like this to soak in when I was wore to a frazzle, I wouldn’t ’a’ got all twisted up with rheumatiz like I am. It jest looks restful to see. I never washed in a place like this in all my days. Must feel grand to be wet all over at once! Now everybody ought to have sech a room and use it at all hours, like David does the lake. Did you ever see his beat to go swimmin’? He’s always in splashin’! Been at it all his life. I used to be skeered when he was a little tyke. He soaked so much ’peared like he’d wash all the substance out of him, but it only made him strong.”
“Has he ever been ill?”
“Not that I know of, and I reckon I’d knowed it if he had. Well what a clothespress! I never saw so many dresses at once. Ain’t they purty? Oh I wish I was young, and could have one like that yaller. And I’d like to have one like your lavender right now. My! You are lucky to have so many nice clothes. It’s a good thing most girls haven’t got them, or they’d stand primpin’ all day tryin’ to decide which one to put on. I don’t see how you tell yourself.”
“I wear the one that best hides how pale I am,” answered the Girl. “I use the colours now. When I grow plump and rosy, I’ll wear the white.”
Granny Moreland dropped on the couch and assured herself that it was Martha’s pink Peter Hartman. Then she examined the sunshine room.
“Well I got to go back to the start,” she said at last. “This beats the dinin’-room. This is the purtiest thing I ever saw. Oh I do hope they ain’t so run to white in Heaven as some folks seem to think! Used to be scandalized if a-body took anythin’ but a white flower to a funeral. Now they tell me that when Jedge Stilton’s youngest girl come from New York to her pa’s buryin’ she fetched about a wash tub of blood-red roses. Put them all over him, too! Said he loved red roses livin’ and so he was goin’ to have them when he passed over. Now if they are lettin’ up a little on white on earth, mebby some of the stylish ones will carry the fashion over yander. If Heaven is like this, I won’t spend none of my time frettin’ about the foundations. I’ll jest forget there is any, even if we do always have to be so perticler to get them solid on earth. Talk of gold harps! Can’t you almost hear them? And listen to the birds and that water! Say, you won’t get lonesome here, will you?”
“Indeed no!” answered the Girl. “Wouldn’t you like to lie on my beautiful couch that the Harvester made with his own hands, and I’ll spread Mother Langston’s coverlet over you and let you look at all my pretty things while I slip away a few minutes to something I’d like to do?”
“I’d love to!” said the old woman. “I never had a chance at such fine things. David told me he was makin’ your room all himself, and that he was goin’ to fill it chuck full of everythin’ a girl ever used, and I see he done it right an’ proper. Away last March he told me he was buildin’ for you, an’ I hankered so to have a woman here again, even though I never s’posed she’d be sochiable like you, that I egged him on jest all I could. I never would ’a’ s’posed the boy could marry like this—all by himself.”
The Girl went to the ice chest to bring some of the fruit juice, chilled berries, and to the pantry for bread and wafers to make a dainty little lunch that she placed on the veranda table; and then she and Granny Moreland talked, until the visitor said that she must go. The Girl went with her to the little bridge crossing Singing Water on the north. There the old lady took her hand.
“Honey,” she said, “I’m goin’ to tell you somethin’. I am so happy I can purt near fly. Last night I was comin’ down the pike over there chasin’ home a contrary old gander of mine, and I looked over on your land and I see David settin’ on a log with his head between his hands a lookin’ like grim death, if I ever see it. My heart plum stopped. Says I, ‘She’s a failure! She’s a bustin’ the boy’s heart! I’ll go straight over and tell her so.’ I didn’t dare bespeak him, but I was on nettles all night. I jest laid a-studyin’ and a-studyin’, and I says, ‘Come mornin’ I’ll go straight and give her a curry-combin’ that’ll do her good.’ And I started a-feelin’ pretty grim, and here you came to meet me, and wiped it all out of my heart in a flash. It did look like the boy was grievin’; but I know now he was jest thinkin’ up what to put together to take the ache out of some poor old carcass like mine. It never could have been about you. Like a half blind old fool I thought the boy was sufferin’, and here he was only studyin’! Like as not he was thinkin’ what to do next to show you how he loves you. What an old silly I was! I’ll sleep like a log to-night to pay up for it. Good-bye, honey! You better go back and lay down a spell. You do look mortal tired.”
The Girl said good-bye and staggering a few steps sank on a log and sat staring at the sky.
“Oh he was suffering, and about me!” she gasped. A chill began to shake her and feverish blood to race through her veins. “He does and gives everythi
ng; I do and give nothing! Oh why didn’t I stay at Uncle Henry’s until it ended? It wouldn’t have been so bad as this. What will I do? Oh what will I do? Oh mother, mother! if I’d only had the courage you did.”
She arose and staggered up the hill, passed the cabin and went to the oak. There she sank shivering to earth, and laid her face among the mosses. The frightened Harvester found her at almost dusk when he came from the city with the Dutch dishes, and helped a man launch a gay little motor boat for her on the lake.
“Why Ruth! Ruth-girl!” he exclaimed, kneeling beside her.
She lifted a strained, distorted face.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me!” she cried. “It is not true that I am better. I am not! I am worse! I never will be better. And before I go I’ve got to tell you of the debt I owe; then you will hate me, and then I will be glad! Glad, I tell you! Glad! When you despise me? then I can go, and know that some day you will love a girl worthy of you. Oh I want you to hate me I am fit for nothing else.”
She fell forward sobbing wildly and the Harvester tried in vain to quiet her. At last he said, “Well then tell me, Ruth. Remember I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I will believe nothing against you, not even from your own lips, when you are feverish and excited as now, but if it will quiet you, tell me and have it over. See, I will sit here and listen, and when you have finished I’ll pick you up and carry you to your room, and I am not sure but I will kiss you over and over. What is it you want to tell me, Ruth?”
She sat up panting and pushed back the heavy coils of hair.
“I’ve got to begin away at the beginning to make you see,” she said. “The first thing I can remember is a small, such a small room, and mother sewing and sometimes a man I called father. He was like Henry Jameson made over tall and smooth, and more, oh, much more heartless! He was gone long at a time, and always we had most to eat, and went oftener to the parks, and were happiest with him away. When I was big enough to understand, mother told me that she had met him and cared for him when she was an inexperienced girl. She must have been very, very young, for she was only a girl as I first remember her, and oh! so lovely, but with the saddest face I ever saw. She said she had a good home and every luxury, and her parents adored her; but they knew life and men, and they would not allow him in their home, and so she left it with him, and he married her and tried to force them to accept him, and they would not. At first she bore it. Later she found him out, and appealed to them, but they were away or would not forgive, and she was a proud thing, and would not beg more after she had said she was wrong, and would they take her back.
“I grew up and we were girls together. We embroidered, and I drew, and sometimes we had little treats and good times, and my father did not come often, and we got along the best we could. Always it was worse on her, because she was not so strong as I, and her heart was secretly breaking for her mother, and she was afraid he would come back any hour. She was tortured that she could not educate me more than to put me through the high school. She wore herself out doing that, but she was wild for me to be reared and trained right. So every day she crouched over delicate laces and embroidery, and before and after school I carried it and got more, and in vacation we worked together. But living grew higher, and she became ill, and could not work, and I hadn’t her skill, and the drawings didn’t bring much, and I’d no tools—”
“Ruth, for mercy sake let me take you in my arms. If you’ve got to tell this to find peace, let me hold you while you do it.”
“Never again,” said the Girl. “You won’t want to in a minute. You must hear this, because I can’t bear it any longer, and it isn’t fair to let you grieve and think me worth loving. Anyway, I couldn’t earn what she did, and I was afraid, for a great city is heartless to the poor. One morning she fainted and couldn’t get up. I can see the awful look in her eyes now. She knew what was coming. I didn’t. I tried to be brave and to work. Oh it’s no use to go on with that! It was just worse and worse. She was lovely and delicate, she was my mother, and I adored her. Oh Man! You won’t judge harshly?”
“No!” cried the Harvester, “I won’t judge at all, Ruth. I see now. Get it over if you must tell me.”
“One day she had been dreadfully ill for a long time and there was no food or work or money, and the last scrap was pawned, and she simply would not let me notify the charities or tell me who or where her people were. She said she had sinned against them and broken their hearts, and probably they were dead, and I was desperate. I walked all day from house to house where I had delivered work, but it was no use; no one wanted anything I could do, and I went back frantic, and found her gnawing her fingers and gibbering in delirium. She did not know me, and for the first time she implored me for food.
“Then I locked the door and went on the street and I asked a woman. She laughed and said she’d report me and I’d be locked up for begging. Then I saw a man I passed sometimes. I thought he lived close. I went straight to him, and told him my mother was very ill, and asked him to help her. He told me to go to the proper authorities. I told him I didn’t know who they were or where, and I had no money and she was a woman of refinement, and never would forgive me. I offered, if he would come to see her, get her some beef tea, and take care of her while she lived, that afterward—”
The Girl’s frail form shook in a storm of sobs. At last she lifted her eyes to the Harvester’s. “There must be a God, and somewhere at the last extremity He must come in. The man went with me, and he was a young doctor who had an office a few blocks away, and he knew what to do. He hadn’t much himself, but for several weeks he divided and she was more comfortable and not hungry when she went. When it was over I dressed her the best I could in my graduation dress, and folded her hands, and kissed her good-bye, and told him I was ready to fulfill my offer; and oh Man!—He said he had forgotten!”
“God!” panted the Harvester.
“We couldn’t bury her there. But I remembered my father had said he had a brother in the country, and once he had been to see us when I was very little, and the doctor telegraphed him, and he answered that his wife was sick, and if I was able to work I could come, and he would bury her, and give me a home. The doctor borrowed the money and bought the coffin you found her in. He couldn’t do better or he would, for he learned to love her. He paid our fares and took us to the train. Before I started I went on my knees to him and worshipped him as the Almighty, and I am sure I told him that I always would be indebted to him, and any time he required I would pay. The rest you know.”
“Have you heard from him, Ruth?”
“No.”
“It WAS yourself the other day on the bridge?”
“Yes.”
“Did he love you?”
“Not that I know of. No! Nobody but you would love a girl who appeared as I did then.”
The Harvester strove to keep a set face, but his lips drew back from his teeth.
“Ruth, do you love him?”
“Love!” cried the Girl. “A pale, expressionless word! Adore would come closer! I tell you she was delirious with hunger, and he fed her. She was suffering horrors and he eased the pain. She was lifeless, and he kept her poor tired body from the dissecting table. I would have fulfilled my offer, and gone straight into the lake, but he spared me, Man! He spared me! Worship is a good word. I think I worship him. I tried to tell you. Before you got that license, I wanted you to know.”
“I remember,” said the Harvester. “But no man could have guessed that a girl with your face had agony like that in her heart, not even when he read deep trouble there.”
“I should have told you then! I should have forced you to hear! I was wild with fear of Uncle Henry, and I had nowhere to go. Now you know! Go away, and the end will come soon.”
The Harvester arose and walked a few steps toward the lake, where he paused stricken, but fighting for control. For him the light had gone out. There was nothing beyond. The one passion of his life must live on, satisfied with
a touch from lips that loved another man. Broken sobbing came to him. He did not even have time to suffer. Stumblingly he turned and going to the Girl he picked her up, and sat on the bench holding her closely.
“Stop it, Ruth!” he said unsteadily. “Stop this! Why should you suffer so? I simply will not have it. I will save you against yourself and the world. You shall have all happiness yet; I swear it, my girl! You are all right. He was a noble man, and he spared you because he loved you, of course. I will make you well and rosy again, and then I will go and find him, and arrange everything for you. I have spared you, too, and if he doesn’t want you to remain here with me, Mrs. Carey would be glad to have you until I can free you. Judges are human. It will be a simple matter. Hush, Ruth, listen to me! You shall be free! At once, if you say so! You shall have him! I will go and bring him here, and I will go away. Ruth, darling, stop crying and hear me. You will grow better, now that you have told me. It is this secret that has made you feverish and kept you ill. Ruth, you shall have happiness yet, if I have got to circle the globe and scale the walls of Heaven to find it for you.”
She struggled from his arms and ran toward the lake. When the Harvester caught her, she screamed wildly, and struck him with her thin white hands. He lifted and carried her to the laboratory, where he gave her a few drops from a bottle and soon she became quiet. Then he took her to the sunshine room, laid her on the bed, locked the screens and her door, called Belshazzar to watch, and ran to the stable. A few minutes later with distended nostrils and indignant heart Betsy, under the flail of an unsparing lash, pounded down the hill toward Onabasha.
Chapter 17
Love Invades Science
The Harvester placed the key in the door and turned to Doctor Carey and the nurse.
“I drugged her into unconsciousness before I left, but she may have returned, at least partially. Miss Barnet, will you kindly see if she is ready for the doctor? You needn’t be in the least afraid. She has no strength, even in delirium.”
The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter Page 89
