The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  Before he finished, tears were running down his cheeks, and his resolution was formed. These were the appeals of an adoring mother, crazed with fear for the safety of an only child, who unfortunately had fallen under the influence of a man the mother dreaded and feared, because of her knowledge of life and men of his character. They were one long, impassioned plea for the daughter not to trust a stranger, not to believe that vows of passion could be true when all else in life was false, not to trust her untried judgment of men and the world against the experience of her parents. But whether the tears that stained those sheets had fallen from the eyes of the suffering mother or the starved and deserted daughter, there was no way for the Harvester to know. One thing was clear: It was not possible for him to rest until he knew if that woman yet lived and bore such suffering. But every trace of address had been torn away, and there was nothing to indicate where or in what circumstances these letters had been written.

  A long time the Harvester sat in deep thought. Then he returned all the letters save one. This with the pictures he made into a packet that he locked in his desk. The trunk he replaced and then went to bed. Early the next morning he drove to Onabasha and posted the parcel. The address it bore was that of the largest detective agency in the country. Then he bought an interesting book, a box of fruit, and hurried back to the Girl. He found her on the veranda, Belshazzar stretched close with one eye shut and the other on his charge, whose cheeks were flushed with lovely colour as she bent over her drawing material. The Harvester went to her with a rush, and slipping his fingers under her chin, tilted back her head against him.

  “Got a kiss for me, honey?” he inquired.

  “No sir,” answered the Girl emphatically. “I gave you a perfectly lovely one yesterday, and you said it was not right. I am going to try just once more, and if you say again that it won’t do, I’m going back to Chicago or to my dear Uncle Henry, I haven’t decided which.”

  Her lips were smiling, but her eyes were full of tears.

  “Why thank you, Ruth! I think that is wonderful,” said the Harvester. “I’ll risk the next one. In the meantime, excuse me if I give you a demonstration of the real thing, just to furnish you an idea of how it should be.”

  The Harvester delivered the sample, and went striding to the marsh. The dazed Girl sat staring at her work, trying to realize what had happened; for that was the first time the Harvester had kissed her on the lips, and it was the material expression a strong man gives the woman he loves when his heart is surging at high tide. The Girl sat motionless, gazing at her study.

  In the marsh she knew the Harvester was reaping queen-of-the-meadow, and around the high borders, elecampane and burdock. She could hear his voice in snatches of song or cheery whistle; notes that she divined were intended to keep her from worrying. Intermingled with them came the dog’s bark of defiance as he digged for an escaping chipmunk, his note of pleading when he wanted a root cut with the mattock, his cry of discovery when he thought he had found something the Harvester would like, or his yelp of warning when he scented danger. The Girl looked down the drive to the lake and across at the hedge. Everywhere she saw glowing colour, with intermittent blue sky and green leaves, all of it a complete picture, from which nothing could be spared. She turned slowly and looked toward the marsh, trying to hear the words of the song above the ripple of Singing Water, and to see the form of the man. Slowly she lifted her handkerchief and pressed it against her lips, as she whispered in an awed voice,

  “My gracious Heaven, is that the kind of a kiss he is expecting me to give him? Why, I couldn’t—not to save my life.”

  She placed her brushes in water, set the colour box on the paper, and went to the kitchen to prepare the noon lunch. As she worked the soft colour deepened in her cheeks, a new light glowed in her eyes, and she hummed over the tune that floated across the marsh. She was very busy when the Harvester came, but he spoke casually of his morning’s work, ate heartily, and ordered her to take a nap while he washed roots and filled the trays, and then they went to the woods together for the afternoon.

  In the evening they came home to the cabin and finished the day’s work. As the night was chilly, the Harvester heaped some bark in the living-room fireplace, and lay on the rug before it, while the Girl sat in an easy chair and watched him as he talked. He was telling her about some wonderful combinations he was going to compound for different ailments and he laughingly asked her if she wanted to be a millionaire’s wife and live in a palace.

  “Of course I could if I wanted to!” she suggested.

  “You could!” cried the Harvester. “All that is necessary is to combine a few proper drugs in one great remedy and float it. That is easy! The people will do the remainder.”

  “You talk as if you believe that,” marvelled the Girl.

  “Want it proven?” challenged the Harvester.

  “No!” she cried in swift alarm. “What do we want with more than we have? What is there necessary to happiness that is not ours now? Maybe it is true that the ‘love of money is the root of all evil.’ Don’t you ever get a lot just to find out. You said the night I came here that you didn’t want more than you had and now I don’t. I won’t have it! It might bring restlessness and discontent. I’ve seen it make other people unhappy and separate them. I don’t want money, I want work. You make your remedies and offer them to suffering humanity for just a living profit, and I’ll keep house and draw designs. I am perfectly happy, free, and unspeakably content. I never dreamed that it was possible for me to be so glad, and so filled with the joy of life. There is only one thing on earth I want. If I only could—”

  “Could what, Ruth?”

  “Could get that kiss right—”

  The Harvester laughed.

  “Forget it, I tell you!” he commanded. “Just so long as you worry and fret, so long I’ve got to wait. If you quit thinking about it, all ‘unbeknownst’ to yourself you’ll awake some morning with it on your lips. I can see traces of it growing stronger every day. Very soon now it’s going to materialize, and then get out of my way, for I’ll be a whirling, irresponsible lunatic, with the wild joy of it. Oh I’ve got faith in that kiss of yours, Ruth! It’s on the way. The fates have booked it. There isn’t a reason on earth why I should be served so scurvy a trick as to miss it, and I never will believe that I shall—”

  “David,” interrupted the Girl, “go on talking and don’t move a muscle, just reach over presently and fix the fire or something, and then turn naturally and look at the window beside your door.”

  “Shall miss it,” said the Harvester steadily. “That would be too unmerciful. What do you see, Ruth?”

  “A face. If I am not greatly mistaken, it is my Uncle Henry and he appears like a perfect fiend. Oh David, I am afraid!”

  “Be quiet and don’t look,” said the Harvester.

  He turned and tossed a piece of bark on the fire. Then he reached for the poker, pushed it down and stirred the coals. He arose as he worked.

  “Rise slowly and quietly and go to your room. Stay there until I call you.”

  With the Girl out of the way, the Harvester pottered over the fire, and when the flame leaped he lifted a stick of wood, hesitated as if it were too small, and laying it down, started to bring a larger one. In the dining-room he caught a small stick from the wood box, softly stepped from the door, and ran around the house. But he awakened Belshazzar on the kitchen floor, and the dog barked and ran after him. By the time the Harvester reached the corner of his room the man leaped upon a horse and went racing down the drive. The Harvester flung the stick of wood, but missed the man and hit the horse. The dog sprang past the Harvester and vanished. There was the sound and flash of a revolver, and the rattle of the bridge as the horse crossed it. The dog came back unharmed. The Harvester ran to the telephone, called the Onabasha police, and asked them to send a mounted man to meet the intruder before he could reach a cross road; but they were too slow and missed him. However, the Girl was certain she had re
cognized her uncle, and was extremely nervous; but the Harvester only laughed and told her it was a trip made out of curiosity. Her uncle wanted to see if he could learn if she were well and happy, and he finally convinced her that this was the case, although he was not very sanguine himself.

  For the next three days the Harvester worked in the woods and he kept the Girl with him every minute. By the end of that time he really had persuaded himself that it was merely curiosity. So through the cooling fall days they worked together. They were very happy. Before her wondering eyes the Harvester hung queer branches, burs, nuts, berries, and trailing vines with curious seed pods. There were masses of brilliant flowers, most of them strange to the Girl, many to the great average of humanity. While she sat bending over them, beside her the Harvester delved in the black earth of the woods, or the clay and sand of the open hillside, or the muck of the lake shore, and lifted large bagfuls of roots that he later drenched on the floating raft on the lake, and when they had drained he dried them. Some of them he did not wet, but scraped and wiped clean and dry. Often after she was sleeping, and long before she awoke in the morning, he was at work carry-ing heaped trays from the evaporator to the store-room, and tying the roots, leaves, bark, and seeds into packages.

  While he gathered trillium roots the Girl made drawings of the plant and learned its commercial value. She drew lady’s slipper and Solomon’s seal, and learned their uses and prices; and carefully traced wild ginger leaves while nibbling the aromatic root. It was difficult to keep from protesting when the work carried them around the lake shore and to the pokeberry beds, for the colour of these she loved. It required careful explanation as to the value of the roots and seeds as blood purifier, and the argument that in a few more days the frost would level the bed, to induce her to consent to its harvesting. But when the case was properly presented, she put aside her drawing and stained her slender fingers gathering the seeds, and loved the work.

  The sun was golden on the lake, the birds of the upland were clustering over reeds and rushes, for the sake of plentiful seed and convenient water. Many of them sang fitfully, the notes of almost all of them were melodious, and the day was a long, happy dream. There was but little left to gather until ginseng time. For that the Harvester had engaged several boys to help him, for the task of digging the roots, washing and drying them, burying part of the seeds and preparing the remainder for market seemed endless for one man to attempt. After a full day the Harvester lay before the fire, and his head was so close the Girl’s knee that her fingers were in reach of his hair. Every time he mended the fire he moved a little, until he could feel the touch of her garments against him. Then he began to plan for the winter; how they would store food for the long, cold days, how much fuel would be required, when they would go to the city for their winter clothing, what they would read, and how they would work together at the drawings.

  “I am almost too anxious to wait longer to get back to my carving,” he said. “Whoever would have thought this spring that fall would come and find the birds talking of going, the caterpillars spinning winter quarters, the animals holing up, me getting ready for the cold, and your candlesticks not finished. Winter is when you really need them. Then there is solid cheer in numbers of candles and a roaring wood fire. The furnace is going to be a good thing to keep the floors and the bathroom warm, but an open fire of dry, crackling wood is the only rational source of heat in a home. You must watch for the fairy dances on the backwall, Ruth, and learn to trace goblin faces in the coals. Sometimes there is a panorama of temples and trees, and you will find exquisite colour in the smoke. Dry maple makes a lovely lavender, soft and fine as a floating veil, and damp elm makes a blue, and hickory red and yellow. I almost can tell which wood is burning after the bark is gone, by the smoke and flame colour. When the little red fire fairies come out and dance on the backwall it is fun to figure what they are celebrating. By the way, Ruth, I have been a lamb for days. I hope you have observed! But I would sleep a little sounder to-night if you only could give me a hint whether that kiss is coming on at all.”

  He tipped back his head to see her face, and it was glorious in the red firelight; the big eyes never appeared so deep and dark. The tilted head struck her hand, and her fingers ran through his hair.

  “You said to forget it,” she reminded him, “and then it would come sooner.”

  “Which same translated means that it is not here yet. Well, I didn’t expect it, so I am not disappointed; but begorry, I do wish it would materialize by Christmas. I think I will work for that. Wouldn’t it make a day worth while, though? By the way, what do you want for Christmas, Ruth?”

  “A doll,” she answered.

  The Harvester laughed. He tipped his head again to see her face and suddenly grew quiet, for it was very serious.

  “I am quite in earnest,” she said. “I think the big dolls in the stores are beautiful, and I never owned only a teeny little one. All my life I’ve wanted a big doll as badly as I ever longed for anything that was not absolutely necessary to keep me alive. In fact, a doll is essential to a happy childhood. The mother instinct is so ingrained in a girl that if she doesn’t have dolls to love, even as a baby, she is deprived of a part of her natural rights. It’s a pitiful thing to have been the little girl in the picture who stands outside the window and gazes with longing soul at the doll she is anxious to own and can’t ever have. Harvester, I was always that little girl. I am quite in earnest. I want a big, beautiful doll more than anything else.”

  As she talked the Girl’s fingers were idly threading the Harvester’s hair. His head lightly touched her knee, and she shifted her position to afford him a comfortable resting place. With a thrill of delight that shook him, the man laid his head in her lap and looked into the fire, his face glowing as a happy boy’s.

  “You shall have the loveliest doll that money can buy, Ruth,” he promised. “What else do you want?”

  “A roasted goose, plum pudding, and all those horrid indigestible things that Christmas stories always tell about; and popcorn balls, and candy, and everything I’ve always wanted and never had, and a long beautiful day with you. That’s all!”

  “Ruth, I’m so happy I almost wish I could go to Heaven right now before anything occurs to spoil this,” said the Harvester.

  The wheels of a car rattled across the bridge. He whirled to his knees, and put his arms around the Girl.

  “Ruth,” he said huskily. “I’ll wager a thousand dollars I know what is coming. Hug me tight, quick! and give me the best kiss you can—any old kind of a one, so you touch my lips with yours before I’ve got to open that door and let in trouble.”

  The Girl threw her arms around his neck and with the imprint of her lips warm on his the Harvester crossed the room, and his heart dropped from the heights with a thud. He stepped out, closing the door behind him, and crossing the veranda, passed down the walk. He recognized the car as belonging to a garage in Onabasha, and in it sat two men, one of whom spoke.

  “Are you David Langston?”

  “Yes,” said the Harvester.

  “Did you send a couple of photographs to a New York detective agency a few days ago with inquiries concerning some parties you wanted located?”

  “I did,” said the Harvester. “But I was not expecting any such immediate returns.”

  “Your questions touched on a case that long has been in the hands of the agency, and they telegraphed the parties. The following day the people had a letter, giving them the information they required, from another source.”

  “That is where Uncle Henry showed his fine Spencerian hand,” commented the Harvester. “It always will be a great satisfaction that I got my fist in first.”

  “Is Miss Jameson here?”

  “No,” said the Harvester. “My wife is at home. Her surname was Ruth Jameson, but we have been married since June. Did you wish to speak with Mrs. Langston?”

  “I came for that purpose. My name is Kennedy. I am the law partner and the closest f
riend of the young lady’s grandfather. News of her location has prostrated her grandmother so that he could not leave her, and I was sent to bring the young woman.”

  “Oh!” said the Harvester. “Well you will have to interview her about that. One word first. She does not know that I sent those pictures and made that inquiry. One other word. She is just recovering from a case of fever, induced by wrong conditions of life before I met her. She is not so strong as she appears. Understand you are not to be abrupt. Go very gently! Her feelings and health must be guarded with extreme care.”

  The Harvester opened the door, and as she saw the stranger, the Girl’s eyes widened, and she arose and stood waiting.

  “Ruth,” said the Harvester, “this is a man who has been making quite a search for you, and at last he has you located.”

  The Harvester went to the Girl’s side, and put a reinforcing arm around her.

  “Perhaps he brings you some news that will make life most interesting and very lovely for you. Will you shake hands with Mr. Kennedy?”

  The Girl suddenly straightened to unusual height.

  “I will hear why he has been making ‘quite a search for me,’ and on whose authority he has me ‘located,’ first,” she said.

  A diabolical grin crossed the face of the Harvester, and he took heart.

  “Then please be seated, Mr. Kennedy,” he said, “and we will talk over the matter. As I understand, you are a representative of my wife’s people.”