Wonder, Hope, Love, and Loss

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  “It sounds too good to be true,” said the Bird Woman, answering the last question first. “I am so tired of these present-day young men who patronizingly call their fathers ‘Dad,’ ‘Governor,’ ‘Old Man,’ and ‘Old Chap,’ that the boy’s attitude of respect and deference appealed to me as being fine as silk. There must be something rare about that young man.”

  She did not find it necessary to tell the Angel that for several years she had known the man who so proudly proclaimed himself Freckles’s father to be a bachelor and a Scotchman. The Bird Woman had a fine way of attending strictly to her own business.

  Freckles turned to the trail, but he stopped at every wild brier to study the pink satin of the petals. She was not of his world, and better than any other he knew it; but she might be his Angel, and he was dreaming of naught but blind, silent worship. He finished the happiest day of his life, and that night he returned to the swamp as if drawn by invisible force. That Wessner would try for his revenge, he knew. That he would be abetted by Black Jack was almost certain, but fear had fled the happy heart of Freckles. He had kept his trust. He had won the respect of the Boss. No one ever could wipe from his heart the flood of holy adoration that had welled with the coming of his Angel. He would do his best, and trust for strength to meet the dark day of reckoning that he knew would come sooner or later. He swung round the trail, briskly tapping the wire, and singing in a voice that scarcely could have been surpassed for sweetness.

  At the edge of the clearing he came into the bright moonlight and there sat McLean on his mare. Freckles hurried to him.

  “Is there trouble?” he inquired anxiously.

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you,” said the Boss. “I stopped at the cabin to see you a minute, before I turned in, and they said you had come down here. You must not do it, Freckles. The swamp is none too healthful at any time, and at night it is rank poison.”

  Freckles stood combing his fingers through Nellie’s mane, while the dainty creature was twisting her head for his caresses. He pushed back his hat and looked into McLean’s face. “It’s come to the ‘sleep with one eye open,’ sir. I’m not looking for anything to be happening for a week or two, but it’s bound to come, and soon. If I’m to keep me trust as I’ve promised you and meself, I’ve to live here mostly until the gang comes. You must be knowing that, sir.”

  “I’m afraid it’s true, Freckles,” said McLean. “And I’ve decided to double the guard until we come. It will be only a few weeks, now; and I’m so anxious for you that you must not be left alone further. If anything should happen to you, Freckles, it would spoil one of the very dearest plans of my life.”

  Freckles heard with dismay the proposition to place a second guard.

  “Oh! no, no, Mr. McLean,” he cried. “Not for the world! I wouldn’t be having a stranger around, scaring me birds and tramping up me study, and disturbing all me ways, for any money! I am all the guard you need! I will be faithful! I will turn over the lease with no tree missing—on me life, I will! Oh, don’t be sending another man to set them saying I turned coward and asked for help. It will just kill the honor of me heart if you do it. The only thing I want is another gun. If it railly comes to trouble, six cartridges ain’t many, and you know I am slow-like about reloading.” McLean reached into his hip pocket and handed a shining big revolver to Freckles, who slipped it beside the one already in his belt.

  Then the Boss sat brooding.

  “Freckles,” he said at last, “we never know the timber of a man’s soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong. You’ve the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture, my boy, and you shall have your own way these few weeks yet. Then, if you will go, I intend to take you to the city and educate you, and you are to be my son, my lad—my own son!”

  Freckles twisted his finger in Nellie’s mane to steady himself.

  “But why should you be doing that, sir?” he faltered.

  McLean slid his arm around the boy’s shoulder and gathered him close.

  “Because I love you, Freckles,” he said simply.

  Freckles lifted a white face. “My God, sir!” he whispered. “Oh, my God!”

  McLean tightened his clasp a second longer, then he rode down the trail.

  Freckles lifted his hat and faced the sky. The harvest moon looked down, sheeting the swamp in silver glory. The Limberlost sang her night song. The swale softly rustled in the wind. Winged things of night brushed his face; and still Freckles gazed upward, trying to fathom these things that had come to him. There was no help from the sky. It seemed far away, cold, and blue. The earth, where flowers blossomed, angels walked, and love could be found, was better. But to One, above, he must make acknowledgment for these miracles. His lips moved and he began talking softly.

  “Thank You for each separate good thing that has come to me,” he said, “and above all for the falling of the feather. For if it didn’t really fall from an angel, its falling brought an Angel, and if it’s in the great heart of you to exercise yourself any further about me, oh, do please to be taking good care of her!”

  Chapter 6

  Wherein a Fight Occurs and Women Shoot Straight

  The following morning Freckles, inexpressibly happy, circled the Limberlost. He kept snatches of song ringing, as well as the wires. His heart was so full that tears of joy glistened in his eyes. He rigorously strove to divide his thought evenly between McLean and the Angel. He realized to the fullest the debt he already owed the Boss and the magnitude of last night’s declaration and promises. He was hourly planning to deliver his trust and then enter with equal zeal on whatever task his beloved Boss saw fit to set him next. He wanted to be ready to meet every device that Wessner and Black Jack could think of to outwit him. He recognized their double leverage, for if they succeeded in felling even one tree McLean became liable for his wager.

  Freckles’s brow wrinkled in his effort to think deeply and strongly, but from every swaying wild rose the Angel beckoned to him. When he crossed Sleepy Snake Creek and the goldfinch, waiting as ever, challenged: “SEE ME?” Freckles saw the dainty swaying grace of the Angel instead. What is a man to do with an Angel who dismembers herself and scatters over a whole swamp, thrusting a vivid reminder upon him at every turn?

  Freckles counted the days. This first one he could do little but test his wires, sing broken snatches, and dream; but before the week would bring her again he could do many things. He would carry all his books to the swamp to show to her. He would complete his flower bed, arrange every detail he had planned for his room, and make of it a bower fairies might envy. He must devise a way to keep water cool. He would ask Mrs. Duncan for a double lunch and an especially nice one the day of her next coming, so that if the Bird Woman happened to be late, the Angel might not suffer from thirst and hunger. He would tell her to bring heavy leather leggings, so that he might take her on a trip around the trail. She should make friends with all of his chickens and see their nests.

  On the line he talked of her incessantly.

  “You needn’t be thinking,” he said to the goldfinch, “that because I’m coming down this line alone day after day, it’s always to be so. Some of these times you’ll be swinging on this wire, and you’ll see me coming, and you’ll swing, skip, and flirt yourself around, and chip up right spunky: ‘SEE ME?’ I’ll be saying ‘See you? Oh, Lord! See her!’ You’ll look, and there she’ll stand. The sunshine won’t look gold any more, or the roses pink, or the sky blue, because she’ll be the pinkest, bluest, goldest thing of all. You’ll be yelling yourself hoarse with the jealousy of her. The sawbird will stretch his neck out of joint, and she’ll turn the heads of all the flowers. Wherever she goes, I can go back afterward and see the things she’s seen, walk the path she’s walked, hear the grasses whispering over all she’s said; and if there’s a place too swampy for her bits of feet; Holy Mother! Maybe—maybe she’d be putting the beautiful arms of her around me neck and letting me carry her over!”

  Frec
kles shivered as with a chill. He sent the cudgel whirling skyward, dexterously caught it, and set it spinning.

  “You damned presumptuous fool!” he cried. “The thing for you to be thinking of would be to stretch in the muck for the feet of her to be walking over, and then you could hold yourself holy to be even of that service to her.

  “Maybe she’ll be wanting the cup me blue-and-brown chickens raised their babies in. Perhaps she’d like to stop at the pool and see me bullfrog that had the goodness to take on human speech to show me the way out of me trouble. If there’s any feathers falling that day, why, it’s from the wings of me chickens—it’s sure to be, for the only Angel outside the gates will be walking this timberline, and every step of the way I’ll be holding me breath and praying that she don’t unfold wings and sail away before the hungry eyes of me.”

  So Freckles dreamed his dreams, made his plans, and watched his line. He counted not only the days, but the hours of each day. As he told them off, every one bringing her closer, he grew happier in the prospect of her coming. He managed daily to leave some offering at the big elm log for his black chickens. He slipped under the line at every passing, and went to make sure that nothing was molesting them. Though it was a long trip, he paid them several extra visits a day for fear a snake, hawk, or fox might have found the baby. For now his chickens not only represented all his former interest in them, but they furnished the inducement that was bringing his Angel.

  Possibly he could find other subjects that the Bird Woman wanted. The teamster had said that his brother went after her every time he found a nest. He never had counted the nests that he knew of, and it might be that among all the birds of the swamp some would be rare to her.

  The feathered folk of the Limberlost were practically undisturbed save by their natural enemies. It was very probable that among his chickens others as odd as the big black ones could be found. If she wanted pictures of half-grown birds, he could pick up fifty in one morning’s trip around the line, for he had fed, handled, and made friends with them ever since their eyes opened.

  He had gathered bugs and worms all spring as he noticed them on the grass and bushes, and dropped them into the first little open mouth he had found. The babies gladly had accepted this queer tri-parent addition to their natural providers.

  When the week had passed, Freckles had his room crisp and glowing with fresh living things that represented every color of the swamp. He carried bark and filled all the muckiest places of the trail.

  It was middle July. The heat of the past few days had dried the water around and through the Limberlost, so that it was possible to cross it on foot in almost any direction—if one had an idea of direction and did not become completely lost in its rank tangle of vegetation and bushes. The brighter-hued flowers were opening. The trumpet-creepers were flaunting their gorgeous horns of red and gold sweetness from the tops of lordly oak and elm, and below entire pools were pink-sheeted in mallow bloom.

  The heat was doing one other thing that was bound to make Freckles, as a good Irishman, shiver. As the swale dried, its inhabitants were seeking the cooler depths of the swamp. They liked neither the heat nor leaving the field mice, moles, and young rabbits of their chosen location. He saw them crossing the trail every day as the heat grew intense. The rattlers were sadly forgetting their manners, for they struck on no provocation whatever, and did not even remember to rattle afterward. Daily Freckles was compelled to drive big black snakes and blue racers from the nests of his chickens. Often the terrified squalls of the parent birds would reach him far down the line and he would run to rescue the babies.

  He saw the Angel when the carriage turned from the corduroy into the clearing. They stopped at the west entrance to the swamp, waiting for him to precede them down the trail, as he had told them it was safest for the horse that he should do. They followed the east line to a point opposite the big chickens’ tree, and Freckles carried in the cameras and showed the Bird Woman a path he had cleared to the log. He explained to her the effect the heat was having on the snakes, and creeping back to Little Chicken, brought him to the light. As she worked at setting up her camera, he told her of the birds of the line, while she stared at him, wide-eyed and incredulous.

  They arranged that Freckles should drive the carriage into the east entrance in the shade and then take the horse toward the north to a better place he knew. Then he was to entertain the Angel at his study or on the line until the Bird Woman finished her work and came to them.

  “This will take only a little time,” she said. “I know where to set the camera now, and Little Chicken is big enough to be good and too small to run away or to act very ugly, so I will be coming soon to see about those nests. I have ten plates along, and I surely won’t use more than two on him; so perhaps I can get some nests or young birds this morning.”

  Freckles almost flew, for his dream had come true so soon. He was walking the timber-line and the Angel was following him. He asked to be excused for going first, because he wanted to be sure the trail was safe for her. She laughed at his fears, telling him that it was the polite thing for him to do, anyway.

  “Oh!” said Freckles, “So you was after knowing that? Well, I didn’t s’pose you did, and I was afraid you’d think me wanting in respect to be preceding you!”

  The astonished Angel looked at him, caught the irrepressible gleam of Irish fun in his eyes, so they stood and laughed together.

  Freckles did not realize how he was talking that morning. He showed her many of the beautiful nests and eggs of the line. She could identify a number of them, but of some she was ignorant, so they made notes of the number and color of the eggs, material, and construction of nest, color, size, and shape of the birds, and went to find them in the book.

  At his room, when Freckles had lifted the overhanging bushes and stepped back for her to enter, his heart was all out of time and place. The study was vastly more beautiful than a week previous. The Angel drew a deep breath and stood gazing first at one side, then at another, then far down the cathedral aisle. “It’s just fairyland!” she cried ecstatically. Then she turned and stared at Freckles as she had at his handiwork.

  “What are you planning to be?” she asked wonderingly.

  “Whatever Mr. McLean wants me to,” he replied.

  “What do you do most?” she asked.

  “Watch me lines.”

  “I don’t mean work!”

  “Oh, in me spare time I keep me room and study in me books.”

  “Do you work on the room or the books most?”

  “On the room only what it takes to keep it up, and the rest of the time on me books.”

  The Angel studied him closely. “Well, maybe you are going to be a great scholar,” she said, “but you don’t look it. Your face isn’t right for that, but it’s got something big in it—something really great. I must find out what it is and then you must work on it. Your father is expecting you to do something. One can tell by the way he talks. You should begin right away. You’ve wasted too much time already.”

  Poor Freckles hung his head. He never had wasted an hour in his life. There never had been one that was his to waste.

  The Angel, studying him intently, read the thought in his face. “Oh, I don’t mean that!” she cried, with the frank dismay of sixteen. “Of course, you’re not lazy! No one ever would think that from your appearance. It’s this I mean: there is something fine, strong, and full of power in your face. There is something you are to do in this world, and no matter how you work at all these other things, or how successfully you do them, it is all wasted until you find the ONE THING that you can do best. If you hadn’t a thing in the world to keep you, and could go anywhere you please and do anything you want, what would you do?” persisted the Angel.

  “I’d go to Chicago and sing in the First Episcopal choir,” answered Freckles promptly.

  The Angel dropped on a seat—the hat she had removed and held in her fingers rolled to her feet. “There!” she exclaimed veh
emently. “You can see what I’m going to be. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! You can sing? Of course you can sing! It is written all over you.”

  “Anyone with half wit could have seen he could sing, without having to be told,” she thought. “It’s in the slenderness of his fingers and his quick nervous touch. It is in the brightness of his hair, the fire of his eyes, the breadth of his chest, the muscles of his throat and neck; and above all, it’s in every tone of his voice, for even as he speak it’s the sweetest sound I ever heard from the throat of a mortal.”

  “Will you do something for me?” she asked.

  “I’ll do anything in the world you want me to,” said Freckles largely, “and if I can’t do what you want, I’ll go to work at once and I’ll try ’til I can.”

  “Good! That’s business!” said the Angel. “You go over there and stand before that hedge and sing something. Just anything you think of first.”

  Freckles faced the Angel from his banked wall of brown, blue, and crimson, with its background of solid green, and lifting his face to the sky, he sang the first thing that came into his mind. It was a children’s song that he had led for the little folks at the Home many times, recalled to his mind by the Angel’s exclamation:

  “To fairyland we go,

  With a song of joy, heigh-o.

  In dreams we’ll stand upon that shore

  And all the realm behold;

  We’ll see the sights so grand

  That belong to fairyland,

  Its mysteries we will explore,

  Its beauties will unfold.

  “Oh, tra, la, la, oh, ha, ha, ha!

  We’re happy now as we can be,

  Our welcome song we will prolong,

  And greet you with our melody.

  O fairyland, sweet fairyland,

  We love to sing—”

  No song could have given the intense sweetness and rollicking quality of Freckles’s voice better scope. He forgot everything but pride in his work. He was singing the chorus, and the Angel was shivering in ecstasy, when clip! clip! came the sharply beating feet of a swiftly ridden horse down the trail from the north. They both sprang toward the entrance.