Freckles

G >> Gene Stratton Porter >> Freckles


He started for Chicago, loaded with a big box of goldenrod, asters,
fringed gentians, and crimson leaves, that the Angel carefully had
gathered from Freckles' room, and a little, long slender package. He
traveled with biting, stinging jealousy in his heart. He would not
admit it even to himself, but he was unable to remain longer away from
Freckles and leave him to the care of Lord O'More.

In a few minutes' talk, while McLean awaited admission to Freckles'
room, his lordship had chatted genially of Freckles' rapid recovery,
of his delight that he was unspotted by his early surroundings, and
his desire to visit the Limberlost with Freckles before they sailed;
he expressed the hope that he could prevail upon the Angel's father to
place her in his wife's care and have her education finished in Paris.
He said they were anxious to do all they could to help bind Freckles'
arrangements with the Angel, as both he and Lady O'More regarded her as
the most promising girl they knew, and one who could be fitted to fill
the high position in which Freckles would place her.

Every word he uttered was pungent with bitterness to McLean. The swamp
had lost its flavor without Freckles; and yet, as Lord O'More talked,
McLean fervently wished himself in the heart of it. As he entered
Freckles' room he almost lost his breath. Everything was changed.

Freckles lay beside a window where he could follow Lake Michigan's
blue until the horizon dipped into it. He could see big soft clouds,
white-capped waves, shimmering sails, and puffing steamers trailing
billowing banners of lavender and gray across the sky. Gulls and curlews
wheeled over the water and dipped their wings in the foam. The room was
filled with every luxury that taste and money could introduce.

All the tan and sunburn had been washed from Freckles' face in sweats
of agony. It was a smooth, even white, its brown rift scarcely showing.
What the nurses and Lady O'More had done to Freckles' hair McLean could
not guess, but it was the most beautiful that he ever had seen. Fine as
floss, bright in color, waving and crisp, it fell around the white face.

They had gotten his arms into and his chest covered with a finely
embroidered, pale-blue silk shirt, with soft, white tie at the throat.
Among the many changes that had taken place during his absence, the
fact that Freckles was most attractive and barely escaped being handsome
remained almost unnoticed by the Boss, so great was his astonishment at
seeing both cuffs turned back and the right arm in view. Freckles was
using the maimed arm that previously he always had hidden.

"Oh Lord, sir, but I'm glad to see you!" cried Freckles, almost rolling
from the bed as he reached toward McLean. "Tell me quick, is the Angel
well and happy? Can me Little Chicken spread six feet of wing and
sail to his mother? How's me new father, the Bird Woman, Duncans, and
Nellie--darling little high-stepping Nelie? Me Aunt Alice is going to
choose the hat just as soon as I'm mended enough to be going with her.
How are all the gang? Have they found any more good trees? I've been
thinking a lot, sir. I believe I can find others near that last one.
Me Aunt Alice thinks maybe I can, and Uncle Terence says it's likely.
Golly, but they're nice, ilegant people. I tell you I'm proud to be same
blood with them! Come closer, quick! I was going to do this yesterday,
and somehow I just felt that you'd surely be coming today and I waited.
I'm selecting the Angel's ring stone. The ring she ordered for me is
finished and they sent it to keep me company. See? It's an emerald--just
me color, Lord O'More says."

Freckles flourished his hand.

"Ain't that fine? Never took so much comfort with anything in me life.
Every color of the old swamp is in it. I asked the Angel to have a
little shamrock leaf cut on it, so every time I saw it I'd be thinking
of the 'love, truth, and valor' of that song she was teaching me. Ain't
that a beautiful song? Some of these days I'm going to make it echo. I'm
a little afraid to be doing it with me voice yet, but me heart's tuning
away on it every blessed hour. Will you be looking at these now?"

Freckles tilted a tray of unset stones from Peacock's that would have
ransomed several valuable kings. He held them toward McLean, stirring
them with his right arm.

"I tell you I'm glad to see you, sir" he said. "I tried to tell me uncle
what I wanted, but this ain't for him to be mixed up in, anyway, and I
don't think I made it clear to him. I couldn't seem to say the words I
wanted. I can be telling you, sir."

McLean's heart began to thump as a lover's.

"Go on, Freckles," he said assuringly.

"It's this," said Freckles. "I told him that I would pay only three
hundred dollars for the Angel's stone. I'm thinking that with what he
has laid up for me, and the bigness of things that the Angel did for me,
it seems like a stingy little sum to him. I know he thinks I should be
giving much more, but I feel as if I just had to be buying that stone
with money I earned meself; and that is all I have saved of me wages. I
don't mind paying for the muff, or the drexing table, or Mrs. Duncan's
things, from that other money, and later the Angel can have every last
cent of me grandmother's, if she'll take it; but just now--oh, sir,
can't you see that I have to be buying this stone with what I have in
the bank? I'm feeling that I couldn't do any other way, and don't you
think the Angel would rather have the best stone I can buy with the
money I earned meself than a finer one paid for with other money?"

"In other words, Freckles," said the Boss in a husky voice, "you don't
want to buy the Angel's ring with money. You want to give for it
your first awful fear of the swamp. You want to pay for it with the
loneliness and heart hunger you have suffered there, with last winter's
freezing on the line and this summer's burning in the sun. You want it
to stand to her for every hour in which you risked your life to fulfill
your contract honorably. You want the price of that stone to be the
fears that have chilled your heart--the sweat and blood of your body."

Freckles' eyes were filled with tears and his face quivering with
feeling.

"Dear Mr. McLean," he said, reaching with a caress over the Boss's black
hair and his cheek. "Dear Boss, that's why I've wanted you so. I knew
you would know. Now you will be looking at these? I don't want emeralds,
because that's what she gave me."

He pushed the green stones into a little heap of rejected ones. Then he
singled out all the pearls.

"Ain't they pretty things?" he said. "I'll be getting her some of those
later. They are like lily faces, turtle-head flowers, dewdrops in the
shade or moonlight; but they haven't the life in them that I want in the
stone I give to the Angel right now."

Freckles heaped the pearls with the emeralds. He studied the diamonds a
long time.

"These things are so fascinating like they almost tempt one, though they
ain't quite the proper thing," he said. "I've always dearly loved to be
watching yours, sir. I must get her some of these big ones, too, some
day. They're like the Limberlost in January, when it's all ice-coated,
and the sun is in the west and shines through and makes all you can see
of the whole world look like fire and ice; but fire and ice ain't like
the Angel."

The diamonds joined the emeralds and pearls. There was left a little red
heap, and Freckles' fingers touched it with a new tenderness. His eyes
were flashing.

"I'm thinking here's me Angel's stone," he exulted. "The Limberlost, and
me with it, grew in mine; but it's going to bloom, and her with it, in
this! There's the red of the wild poppies, the cardinal-flowers, and the
little bunch of crushed foxfire that we found where she put it to save
me. There's the light of the campfire, and the sun setting over Sleepy
Snake Creek. There's the red of the blood we were willing to give for
each other. It's like her lips, and like the drops that dried on her
beautiful arm that first day, and I'm thinking it must be like the
brave, tender, clean, red heart of her."

Freckles lifted the ruby to his lips and handed it to McLean.

"I'll be signing me cheque and you have it set," he said. "I want you to
draw me money and pay for it with those very same dollars, sir."

Again the heart of McLean took hope.

"Freckles, may I ask you something?" he said.

"Why, sure," said Freckles. "There's nothing you would be asking that it
wouldn't be giving me joy to be telling you."

McLean's eyes traveled to Freckles' right arm with which he was moving
the jewels.

"Oh, that!" cried Freckles with a laugh. "You're wanting to know where
all the bitterness is gone? Well sir, 'twas carried from me soul, heart,
and body on the lips of an Angel. Seems that hurt was necessary in the
beginning to make today come true. The wound had always been raw, but
the Angel was healing it. If she doesn't care, I don't. Me dear new
father doesn't, nor me aunt and uncle, and you never did. Why should I
be fretting all me life about what can't be helped. The real truth is,
that since what happened to it last week, I'm so everlastingly proud of
it I catch meself sticking it out on display a bit."

Freckles looked the Boss in the eyes and began to laugh.

"Well thank heaven!" said McLean.

"Now it's me turn," said Freckles. "I don't know as I ought to be asking
you, and yet I can't see a reason good enough to keep me from it. It's
a thing I've had on me mind every hour since I've had time to straighten
things out a little. May I be asking you a question?"

McLean reached over and took Freckles' hand. His voice was shaken with
feeling as he replied: "Freckles, you almost hurt me. Will you never
learn how much you are to me--how happy you make me in coming to me with
anything, no matter what?"

"Then it's this," said Freckles, gripping the hand of McLean strongly.
"If this accident, and all that's come to me since, had never happened,
where was it you had planned to send me to school? What was it you meant
for me to do?"

"Why, Freckles," answered McLean, "I'm scarcely prepared to state
definitely. My ideas were rather hazy. I thought we would make a
beginning and see which way things went. I figured on taking you to
Grand Rapids first, and putting you in the care of my mother. I had an
idea it would be best to secure a private tutor to coach you for a
year or two, until you were ready to enter Ann Arbor or the Chicago
University in good shape. Then I thought we'd finish in this country at
Yale or Harvard, and end with Oxford, to get a good, all-round flavor."

"Is that all?" asked Freckles.

"No; that's leaving the music out," said McLean. "I intended to have
your voice tested by some master, and if you really were endowed for a
career as a great musician, and had inclinations that way, I wished to
have you drop some of the college work and make music your chief study.
Finally, I wanted us to take a trip through Europe and clear around the
circle together."

"And then what?" queried Freckles breathlessly.

"Why, then," said McLean, "you know that my heart is hopelessly in the
woods. I never will quit the timber business while there is timber to
handle and breath in my body. I thought if you didn't make a profession
of music, and had any inclination my way, we would stretch the
partnership one more and take you into the firm, placing your work with
me. Those plans may sound jumbled in the telling, but they have grown
steadily on me, Freckles, as you have grown dear to me."

Freckles lifted anxious and eager eyes to McLean.

"You told me once on the trail, and again when we thought that I was
dying, that you loved me. Do these things that have come to me make any
difference in any way with your feeing toward me?"

"None," said McLean. "How could they, Freckles? Nothing could make me
love you more, and you never will do anything that will make me love you
less."

"Glory be to God!" cried Freckles. "Glory to the Almighty! Hurry and
be telling your mother I'm coming! Just as soon as I can get on me feet
I'll be taking that ring to me Angel, and then I'll go to Grand Rapids
and be making me start just as you planned, only that I can be paying me
own way. When I'm educated enough, we'll all--the Angel and her father,
the Bird Woman, you, and me--all of us will go together and see me house
and me relations and be taking that trip. When we get back, we'll add
O'More to the Lumber Company, and golly, sir, but we'll make things hum!
Good land, sir! Don't do that! Why, Mr. McLean, dear Boss, dear father,
don't be doing that! What is it?"

"Nothing, nothing!" boomed McLean's deep bass; "nothing at all!"

He abruptly turned, and hurried to the window.

"This is a mighty fine view," he said. "Lake's beautiful this morning.
No wonder Chicago people are so proud of their city's location on its
shore. But, Freckles, what is Lord O'More going to say to this?"

"I don't know," said Freckles. "I am going to be cut deep if he cares,
for he's been more than good to me, and Lady Alice is next to me Angel.
He's made me feel me blood and race me own possession. She's talked to
me by the hour of me father and mother and me grandmother. She's made
them all that real I can lay claim to them and feel that they are mine.
I'm very sorry to be hurting them, if it will, but it can't be changed.
Nobody ever puts the width of the ocean between me and the Angel. From
here to the Limberlost is all I can be bearing peaceable. I want the
education, and then I want to work and live here in the country where I
was born, and where the ashes of me father and mother rest.

"I'll be glad to see Ireland, and glad especial to see those little
people who are my kin, but I ain't ever staying long. All me heart
is the Angel's, and the Limberlost is calling every minute. You're
thinking, sir, that when I look from that window I see the beautiful
water, ain't you? I'm not.

"I see soft, slow clouds oozing across the blue, me big black chickens
hanging up there, and a great feather softly sliding down. I see mighty
trees, swinging vines, bright flowers, and always masses of the wild
roses, with the wild rose face of me Ladybird looking through. I see the
swale rocking, smell the sweetness of the blooming things, and the damp,
mucky odor of the swamp; and I hear me birds sing, me squirrels bark,
the rattlers hiss, and the step of Wessner or Black Jack coming; and
whether it's the things that I loved or the things that I feared, it's
all a part of the day.

"Me heart's all me Swamp Angel's, and me love is all hers, and I have
her and the swamp so confused in me mind I never can be separating them.
When I look at her, I see blue sky, the sun rifting through the leaves
and pink and red flowers; and when I look at the Limberlost I see a pink
face with blue eyes, gold hair, and red lips, and, it's the truth, sir,
they're mixed till they're one to me!

"I'm afraid it will be hurting some, but I have the feeing that I can be
making my dear people understand, so that they will be willing to let
me come back home. Send Lady O'More to put these flowers God made in the
place of these glass-house ilegancies, and please be cutting the string
of this little package the Angel's sent me."

As Freckles held up the package, the lights of the Limberlost flashed
from the emerald on his finger. On the cover was printed: "To the
Limberlost Guard!" Under it was a big, crisp, iridescent black feather.