CHAPTER V
Wherein an Angel Materializes and a Man Worships
Perhaps there was a breath of sound--Freckles never afterward could
remember--but for some reason he lifted his head as the bushes parted
and the face of an angel looked between. Saints, nymphs, and fairies
had floated down his cathedral aisle for him many times, with forms
and voices of exquisite beauty.
Parting the wild roses at the entrance was beauty of which Freckles
never had dreamed. Was it real or would it vanish as the other dreams?
He dropped his book, and rising to his feet, went a step closer,
gazing intently. This was real flesh and blood. It was in every
way kin to the Limberlost, for no bird of its branches swung with
easier grace than this dainty young thing rocked on the bit of morass
on which she stood. A sapling beside her was not straighter or rounder
than her slender form. Her soft, waving hair clung around her face
from the heat, and curled over her shoulders. It was all of one
piece with the gold of the sun that filtered between the branches.
Her eyes were the deepest blue of the iris, her lips the reddest
red of the foxfire, while her cheeks were exactly of the same satin
as the wild rose petals caressing them. She was smiling at Freckles
in perfect confidence, and she cried:
"Oh, I'm so delighted that I've found you!"
The wildly leaping heart of Freckles burst from his body and fell
in the black swamp-muck at her feet with such a thud that he did
not understand how she could avoid hearing. He really felt that
if she looked down she would see.
Incredulous, he quavered: "An'--an' was you looking for me?"
"I hoped I might find you," said the Angel. "You
see, I didn't do as I was told, and I'm lost. The Bird Woman said
I should wait in the carriage until she came back. She's been gone
hours. It's a perfect Turkish bath in there, and I'm all lumpy with
mosquito bites. Just when I thought that I couldn't bear it another
minute, along came the biggest Papilio Ajax you ever saw. I knew
how pleased she'd be, so I ran after it. It flew so slow and so
low that I thought a dozen times I had it. Then all at once it went
from sight above the trees, and I couldn't find my way back to save
me. I think I've walked more than an hour. I have been mired to
my knees. A thorn raked my arm until it is bleeding, and I'm so
tired and warm."
She parted the bushes farther. Freckles saw that her blue cotton
frock clung to her, limp with perspiration. It was torn across the
breast. One sleeve hung open from shoulder to elbow. A thorn had
torn her arm until it was covered with blood, and the gnats and
mosquitoes were clustering around it. Her feet were in lace hose
and low shoes. Freckles gasped. In the Limberlost in low shoes!
He caught an armful of moss from his carpet and buried it in the
ooze in front of her for a footing.
"Come out here so I can see where you are stepping. Quick,
for the life of you!" he ordered.
She smiled on him indulgently.
"Why?" she inquired.
"Did anybody let you come here and not be telling you of the
snakes?" urged Freckles.
"We met Mr. McLean on the corduroy, and he did say something
about snakes, I believe. The Bird Woman put on leather leggings,
and a nice, parboiled time she must be having! Worst dose I ever
endured, and I'd nothing to do but swelter."
"Will you be coming out of there?" groaned Freckles.
She laughed as if it were a fine joke.
"Maybe if I'd be telling you I killed a rattler curled upon
that same place you're standing, as long as me body and the thickness
of me arm, you'd be moving where I can see your footing," he
urged insistently.
"What a perfectly delightful little brogue you speak,"
she said. "My father is Irish, and half should be enough to
entitle me to that much. `Maybe--if I'd--be telling you,'"
she imitated, rounding and accenting each word carefully.
Freckles was beginning to feel a wildness in his head. He had derided
Wessner at that same hour yesterday. Now his own eyes were filling
with tears.
"If you were understanding the danger!" he continued desperately.
"Oh, I don't think there is much!"
She tilted on the morass.
"If you killed one snake here, it's probably all there is near;
and anyway, the Bird Woman says a rattlesnake is a gentleman and
always gives warning before he strikes. I don't hear any rattling.
Do you?"
"Would you be knowing it if you did?" asked Freckles,
almost impatiently.
How the laugh of the young thing rippled!
"`Would I be knowing it?'" she mocked. "You should
see the swamps of Michigan where they dump rattlers from the marl-dredgers
three and four at a time!"
Freckles stood astounded. She did know. She was not in the least
afraid. She was depending on a rattlesnake to live up to his share
of the contract and rattle in time for her to move. The one characteristic
an Irishman admires in a woman, above all others, is courage. Freckles
worshiped anew. He changed his tactics.
"I'd be pleased to be receiving you at me front door,"
he said, "but as you have arrived at the back, will you come
in and be seated?"
He waved toward a bench. The Angel came instantly.
"Oh, how lovely and cool!" she cried.
As she moved across his room, Freckles had difficult work to keep
from falling on his knees; for they were very weak, while he was
hard driven by an impulse to worship.
"Did you arrange this?" she asked.
"Yis," said Freckles simply.
"Someone must come with a big canvas and copy each side of
it," she said. "I never saw anything so beautiful! How
I wish I might remain here with you! I will, some day, if you will
let me; but now, if you can spare the time, will you help me find
the carriage? If the Bird Woman comes back and I am gone, she will
be almost distracted."
"Did you come on the west road?" asked Freckles.
"I think so," she said. "The man who told the Bird
Woman said that was the only place the wires were down. We drove
away in, and it was dreadful--over stumps and logs, and we mired
to the hubs. I suppose you know, though. I should have stayed in
the carriage, but I was so tired. I never dreamed of getting lost.
I suspect I will be scolded finely. I go with the Bird Woman half
the time during the summer vacations. My father says I learn a lot
more than I do at school, and get it straight. I never came within
a smell of being lost before. I thought, at first, it was going
to be horrid; but since I've found you, maybe it will be good fun
after all."
Freckles was amazed to hear himself excusing: "It was so hot
in there. You couldn't be expected to bear it for hours and not
be moving. I can take you around the trail almost to where you were.
Then you can sit in the carriage, and I will go find the Bird Woman."
"You'll be killed if you do! When she stays this long, it means
that she has a focus on something. You see, when she has a focus,
and lies in the weeds and water for hours, and the sun bakes her,
and things crawl over her, and then someone comes along and scares
her bird away just as she has it coaxed up--why, she kills them.
If I melt, you won't go after her. She's probably blistered and
half eaten up; but she never will quit until she is satisfied."
"Then it will be safer to be taking care of you," suggested
Freckles.
"Now you're talking sense!" said the Angel.
"May I try to help your arm?" he asked.
"Have you any idea how it hurts?" she parried.
"A little," said Freckles.
"Well, Mr. McLean said We'd probably find his son here"
"His son!" cried Freckles.
"That's what he said. And that you would do anything you could
for us; and that we could trust you with our lives. But I would
have trusted you anyway, if I hadn't known a thing about you. Say,
your father is rampaging proud of you, isn't he?"
"I don't know," answered the dazed Freckles.
"Well, call on me if you want reliable information. He's so
proud of you he is all swelled up like the toad in AEsop's Fables.
If you have ever had an arm hurt like this, and can do anything,
why, for pity sake, do it!"
She turned back her sleeve, holding toward Freckles an arm of palest
cameo, shaped so exquisitely that no sculptor could have chiseled
it.
Freckles unlocked his case, and taking out some cotton cloth, he
tore it in strips. Then he brought a bucket of the cleanest water
he could find. She yielded herself to his touch as a baby, and he
bathed away the blood and bandaged the ugly, ragged wound. He finished
his surgery by lapping the torn sleeve over the cloth and binding
it down with a piece of twine, with the Angel's help about the knots.
Freckles worked with trembling fingers and a face tense with earnestness.
"Is it feeling any better?" he asked.
"Oh, it's well now!" cried the Angel. "It doesn't
hurt at all, any more."
"I'm mighty glad," said Freckles. "But you had best
go and be having your doctor fix it right; the minute you get home."
"Oh, bother! A little scratch like that!" jeered the Angel.
"My blood is perfectly pure. It will heal in three days."
"It's cut cruel deep. It might be making a scar," faltered
Freckles, his eyes on the ground. "'Twould--'twould be an awful
pity. A doctor might know something to prevent it."
"Why, I never thought of that!" exclaimed the Angel.
"I noticed you didn't," said Freckles softly. "I
don't know much about it, but it seems as if most girls would."
The Angel thought intently, while Freckles still knelt beside her.
Suddenly she gave herself an impatient little shake, lifted her
glorious eyes full to his, and the smile that swept her sweet, young
face was the loveliest thing that Freckles ever had seen.
"Don't let's bother about it," she proposed, with the
faintest hint of a confiding gesture toward him. "It won't
make a scar. Why, it couldn't, when you have dressed it so nicely."
The velvety touch of her warm arm was tingling in Freckles' fingertips.
Dainty lace and fine white ribbon peeped through her torn dress.
There were beautiful rings on her fingers. Every article she wore
was of the finest material and in excellent taste. There was the
trembling Limberlost guard in his coarse clothing, with his cotton
rags and his old pail of swamp water. Freckles was sufficiently
accustomed to contrasts to notice them, and sufficiently fine to
be hurt by them always.
He lifted his eyes with a shadowy pain in them to hers, and found
them of serene, unconscious purity. What she had said was straight
from a kind, untainted, young heart. She meant every word of it.
Freckles' soul sickened. He scarcely knew whether he could muster
strength to stand.
"We must go and hunt for the carriage," said the Angel,
rising.
In instant alarm for her, Freckles sprang up, grasped the cudgel,
and led the way, sharply watching every step. He went as close the
log as he felt that he dared, and with a little searching found
the carriage. He cleared a path for the Angel, and with a sigh of
relief saw her enter it safely. The heat was intense. She pushed
the damp hair from her temples.
"This is a shame!" said Freckles. "You'll never be
coming here again."
"Oh yes I shall!" said the Angel. "The Bird Woman
says that these birds remain over a month in the nest and she would
like to make a picture every few days for seven or eight weeks,
perhaps."
Freckles barely escaped crying aloud for joy.
"Then don't you ever be torturing yourself and your horse to
be coming in here again," he said. "I'll show you a way
to drive almost to the nest on the east trail, and then you can
come around to my room and stay while the Bird Woman works. It's
nearly always cool there, and there's comfortable seats, and water."
"Oh! did you have drinking-water there?" she cried. "I
was never so thirsty or so hungry in my life, but I thought I wouldn't
mention it."
"And I had not the wit to be seeing!" wailed Freckles.
"I can be getting you a good drink in no time."
He turned to the trail.
"Please wait a minute," called the Angel. "What's
your name? I want to think about you while you are gone." Freckles
lifted his face with the brown rift across it and smiled quizzically.
"Freckles?" she guessed, with a peal of laughter. "And
mine is----"
"I'm knowing yours," interrupted Freckles.
"I don't believe you do. What is it?" asked the girl.
"You won't be getting angry?"
"Not until I've had the water, at least."
It was Freckles' turn to laugh. He whipped off his big, floppy straw
hat, stood uncovered before her, and said, in the sweetest of all
the sweet tones of his voice: "There's nothing you could be
but the Swamp Angel."
The girl laughed happily.
Once out of her sight, Freckles ran every step of the way to the
cabin. Mrs. Duncan gave him a small bucket of water, cool from the
well. He carried it in the crook of his right arm, and a basket
filled with bread and butter, cold meat, apple pie, and pickles,
in his left hand.
"Pickles are kind o' cooling," said Mrs. Duncan.
Then Freckles ran again.
The Angel was on her knees, reaching for the bucket, as he came
up.
"Be drinking slow," he cautioned her.
"Oh!" she cried, with a long breath of satisfaction. "It's
so good! You are more than kind to bring it!"
Freckles stood blinking in the dazzling glory of her smile until
he scarcely could see to lift the basket.
"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "I think I had better be
naming you the `Angel.' My Guardian Angel."
"Yis," said Freckles. "I look the character every
day--but today most emphatic!"
"Angels don't go by looks," laughed the girl. "Your
father told us you had been scrapping. But he told us why. I'd gladly
wear all your cuts and bruises if I could do anything that would
make my father look as peacocky as yours did. He strutted about
proper. I never saw anyone look prouder."
"Did he say he was proud of me?" marveled Freckles.
"He didn't need to," answered the Angel. "He was
radiating pride from every pore. Now, have you brought me your dinner?"
"I had my dinner two hours ago," answered Freckles.
"Honest Injun?" bantered the Angel.
"Honest! I brought that on purpose for you."
"Well, if you knew how hungry I am, you would know how thankful
I am, to the dot," said the Angel.
"Then you be eating," cried the happy Freckles.
The Angel sat on a big camera, spread the lunch on the carriage
seat, and divided it in halves. The daintiest parts she could select
she carefully put back into the basket. The remainder she ate. Again
Freckles found her of the swamp, for though she was almost ravenous,
she managed her food as gracefully as his little yellow fellow,
and her every movement was easy and charming. As he watched her
with famished eyes, Freckles told her of his birds, flowers, and
books, and never realized what he was doing.
He led the horse to a deep pool that he knew of, and the tortured
creature drank greedily, and lovingly rubbed him with its nose as
he wiped down its welted body with grass. Suddenly the Angel cried:
"There comes the Bird Woman!"
Freckles had intended leaving before she came, but now he was glad
indeed to be there, for a warmer, more worn, and worse bitten creature
he never had seen. She was staggering under a load of cameras and
paraphernalia. Freckles ran to her aid. He took all he could carry
of her load, stowed it in the back of the carriage, and helped her
in. The Angel gave her water, knelt and unfastened the leggings,
bathed her face, and offered the lunch.
Freckles brought the horse. He was not sure about the harness, but
the Angel knew, and soon they left the swamp. Then he showed them
how to reach the chicken tree from the outside, indicated a cooler
place for the horse, and told them how, the next time they came,
the Angel could find his room while she waited.
The Bird Woman finished her lunch, and lay back, almost too tired
to speak.
"Were you for getting Little Chicken's picture?" Freckles
asked.
"Finely!" she answered. "He posed splendidly. But
I couldn't do anything with his mother. She will require coaxing."
"The Lord be praised!" muttered Freckles under his breath.
The Bird Woman began to feel better.
"Why do you call the baby vulture `Little Chicken'?" she
asked, leaning toward Freckles in an interested manner.
"'Twas Duncan began it," said Freckles. "You see,
through the fierce cold of winter the birds of the swamp were almost
starving. It is mighty lonely here, and they were all the company
I was having. I got to carrying scraps and grain down to them. Duncan
was that ginerous he was giving me of his wheat and corn from his
chickens' feed, and he called the birds me swamp chickens. Then
when these big black fellows came, Mr. McLean said they were our
nearest kind to some in the old world that they called `Pharaoh's
Chickens,' and he called mine `Freckles' Chickens.'"
"Good enough!" cried the Bird Woman, her splotched purple
face lighting with interest. "You must shoot something for
them occasionally, and I'll bring more food when I come. If you
will help me keep them until I get my series, I'll give you a copy
of each study I make, mounted in a book."
Freckles drew a deep breath.
"I'll be doing me very best," he promised, and from the
deeps he meant it.
"I wonder if that other egg is going to hatch?" mused
the Bird Woman. "I am afraid not. It should have pipped today.
Isn't it a beauty! I never before saw either an egg or the young.
They are rare this far north."
"So Mr. McLean said," answered Freckles.
Before they drove away, the Bird Woman thanked him for his kindness
to the Angel and to her. She gave him her hand at parting, and Freckles
joyfully realized that this was going to be another person for him
to love. He could not remember, after they had driven away, that
they even had noticed his missing hand, and for the first time in
his life he had forgotten it.
When the Bird Woman and the Angel were on the home road, she told
of the little corner of paradise into which she had strayed and
of her new name. The Bird Woman looked at the girl and guessed its
appropriateness.
"Did you know Mr. McLean had a son?" asked the Angel.
"Isn't the little accent he has, and the way he twists a sentence,
too dear? And isn't it too old-fashioned and funny to hear him call
his father `mister'?"
"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'
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!"