Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

“ It was just big enough to love. It was full of charms and changes, of varying moods and sudden surprises. Its voice stole in upon his ear with a melody far sweeter and more subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it was not without strength, and when it was swollen with the freshets of the spring and brimming with the bounty of its sister streams, it could dash and roar, boom and crash, with the best of them.
Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the sunrise, with the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the sweet loveliness of the summer landscape. ”

“ It was a favorite pastime; and although a man’s hand is ill adapted to it, being over-large and heavy; the game has obvious advantages for a lover in bringing his head very close to that of his beloved adversary. The jackstraws have to be watched with a hawk’s eagerness, since the “trembling” can be discerned only by a keen eye; but there were moments when Stephen was willing to risk the loss of a battle if he could watch Rose’s drooping eyelashes, the delicate down on her pink cheek, and the feathery curls that broke away from her hair. ”

“ She would then lay the table in the kitchen, and make ready the nicest breakfast that two people ever sat down to. And oh, would two people sit down to it; or would one go off in a rage and the other die of grief and disappointment?
Then, having done all, she would wait and palpitate, and palpitate and wait, until Stephen came. Surely no property-owner in the universe could drive along a road, observe his corn leveled to the earth, his sign removed, his house open, and smoke issuing from his chimney, without going in to surprise the rogue and villain who could be guilty of such vandalism. ”

“ Stephen saw his opportunity, and seized it.
“There’s a reason, Rose, why two logs go down stream better than one, and get into less trouble. They make a wider [Pg 75] path, create more force and a better current. It’s the same way with men and women. Oh, Rose, there isn’t a man in the world that’s loved you as long, or knows how to love you any better than I do. You’re just like a white birch sapling, and I’m a great, clumsy fir tree; but if you’ll only trust yourself to me, Rose, I’ll take you safely down river.” ”

“ Miss Dix’s figure was her strong point, and her dressmaker was particularly skillful in the arts of suggestion, concealment, and revelation. Beauty has its chosen backgrounds. Rose in white dimity, standing knee deep in her blossoming brier bushes, the river running at her feet, dark pine trees behind her graceful head, sounded depths and touched heights of harmony forever beyond the reach of the modish Miss Dix, but she was out [Pg 130] of her element and suffered accordingly.
Rose had gone to walk with Claude one evening when she first arrived. ”

“ So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward seeming, as it had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl’s heart was longing, and pining, and sickening, with hope deferred, and growing, too, with such astonishing rapidity that the very angels marveled! And on the other, a man’s whole vision of life an [Pg 149] duty was widening and deepening under the fructifying influence of his sorrow.
The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside cottage, but Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. ”

“ Rose Wiley had the brightest eyes in Edgewood. It was impossible to look at her without realizing that her physical sight was perfect. What mysterious species of blindness is it that descends, now and then, upon human creatures, and renders them incapable of judgment or discrimination?
Claude Merrill was a glove salesman in a Boston fancy-goods store. The calling itself is undoubtedly respectable, and it is quite conceivable that a man can sell gloves and still be a man; but Claude Merrill was a manikin. ”

“ Stephen must pass the house on his way from the River Farm to the bridge, where he was to join the river-drivers on Monday morning. She would be out of bed by the earliest peep of dawn, put on Stephen’s favorite pink calico, leave a note for her grandmother, run like a hare down her side of the river and up Stephen’s, steal into the house, open blinds and windows, light the fire, and set the kettle boiling. Then with a sharp knife she would cut down two rows of corn, and thus make a green pathway from the front kitchen steps to the road. ”

“ She had lost Stephen and ruined his life. Now, in order that she need not blight a second career, must she contrive to return Claude’s love! To be sure, she thought, it seemed indecent to marry any other man than Stephen, when they had built a house together, and chosen wall-papers, and a kitchen stove, and dining-room chairs; but was it not the only way to evade the difficulties?
Suppose that Stephen, in a fit of pique, should ask somebody else to share the new cottage?
As this dreadful possibility came into view, Rose’s sobs actually frightened the birds and the squirrels. ”

“ The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with one door opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the river; windows, too, framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She had chosen the furniture, but how differently it looked now that it was actually in place! The tiny shed had piles of split wood, with great boxes of kindlings and shavings, all in readiness for the bride, who would do her own cooking. Who but Stephen would have made the very wood ready for a woman’s home-coming ”

“ Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and over all the stone walls, as well as on every heap of rocks by the wayside, prickly blackberry vines ran and clambered and clung, yielding fruit and thorns impartially to the neighborhood children.
The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman [Pg 8] had spied from his side of the river was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the Edgewood side. As there was another of her name on Brigadier Hill, the Edgewood minister called one of them the climbing Rose and the other the brier Rose, or sometimes Rose of the river. ”

“ Rose thought, as she watched them, who but Stephen would have cared what became of the clump of delicate harebells. How [Pg 74] gentle such a man would be to a woman! How tender his touch would be if she were ill or in trouble!
Several single logs followed,—crooked ones, stolid ones, adventurous ones, feeble swimmers, deep divers. Some of them tried to start a small jam on their own account; others stranded themselves for good and all, as Rose and Stephen sat there side by side, with little Dan Cupid for an invisible third on the bench. ”

“ It would not be long before the gossips rolled under their tongues the delicious morsel of a broken engagement, and sooner or later she must brave the displeasure of her grandmother.
And the little house—that was worse than anything. Her tears flowed faster as she thought of Stephen’s joy in it, of his faithful labor, of the savings he had invested [Pg 120] in it. She hated and despised her self when she thought of the house, and for the first time in her life she realized the limitations of her nature, the poverty of her ideals. ”

“ By the time the jam neared the falls it had grown with its accumulations, until it was made up of tier after tier of huge ice cakes, piled side by side and one upon another, with heaps of trees and branches and drifting lumber holding them in place. ”

“ There’s three kinds o’ swearin’,—plain swearin’, profane swearin’, an’ blasphemious swearin’. Logs air jest like mules: there’s times when a man can’t seem to rip up a jam in good style ’thout a few words that’s too strong for the infant classes in Sunday-schools; but a man hedn’t ought to tempt Providence. When he’s ridin’ a log near the falls at high water, or cuttin’ the key-log in a jam, he ain’t in no place for blasphemious swearin’; jest a little easy, perlite ‘damn’ is ’bout all he can resk, if he don’t want to git drownded an’ hev his ghost walkin’ the river-banks till kingdom come. ”

“ I tell you when these fifty-five new doctors git scattered over the country there’ll be consid’able many folks keepin’ house under ground. Dick Bean’s goin’ to stop a spell with Rufe an’ Steve Waterman. That’ll make one more to play in the river.”
“Rufus ain’t hardly got his workin’ legs on yit,” allowed Mr. Wiley, “but Steve’s all right. He’s a turrible smart driver, an’ turrible reckless, too. He’ll take all the chances there is, though to a man that’s lived on the Kennebec there ain’t what can rightly be called any turrible chances on the Saco.” ”

“ Wiley, as she speared a soda-biscuit with her fork.
“Mindin’ your own business is a turrible selfish trade,” responded her husband loftily. “If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you are,—partic’larly if he’s as ignorant as Cooper’s cow,—you’d ought, [Pg 18] as a Kennebec man an’ a Christian, to set him on the right track, though it’s always a turrible risky thing to do.”
Rose’s grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger generation, sometimes “Turrible Wiley” and sometimes “Old Kennebec,” because of the frequency with which these words appeared in his conversation. ”

“ It’s turrible onsettlin’ to inspeck folks’ motives too turrible close.”
“Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says,” interposed Rose, to change the subject; “but I tell him that a horse doesn’t revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is going forwards.” [Pg 26]
“Log-ridin’ ain’t no trick at all to a man of sperit,” said Mr. Wiley. “There’s a few places in the Kennebec where the water’s too shaller to let the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an’ the logs would whiz down like arrers shot from a bow. ”

“ All winter long Stephen labored on the inside of the cottage, mostly by himself. He learned all trades in succession, Love being his only master. He had many odd days to spare from his farm work, and if he had not found days he would have taken nights. Scarcely a nail was driven without Rose’s advice ”

“ Horses or oxen, sometimes a line of men, stood on the river-bank. A long rope was attached by means of a steel spike to one log after another, and it was dragged from the tangled mass. Sometimes, after unloading [Pg 51] the top logs, those at the bottom would rise and make the task easier; sometimes the work would go on for hours with no perceptible progress, and Mr. Wiley would have opportunity to tell the bystanders of a “turrible jam” on the Kennebec that had cost the Lumber Company ten thousand dollars to break. ”

“ All Edgewood femininity united in saying that there never was such a perfect gentleman as Claude Merrill; and during the time when his popularity was at its height Rose lost sight of the fact that Stephen could have furnished the stuff for [Pg 108] a dozen Claudes and have had enough left for an ordinary man besides. ”

“ This exhibition of reckless energy on Stephen’s part did not wholly commend itself to the neighborhood.
“Steve’s too turrible spry,” said Rose’s grandfather; “he’ll trip himself up some o’ these times.”
“You never will,” remarked his better half, sagely. [Pg 84]
“The resks in life come along fast enough, without runnin’ to meet ’em,” continued the old man. “There’s good dough in Rose, but it ain’t more’n half riz. Let somebody come along an’ drop in a little more yeast, or set the dish a little mite nearer the stove, an’ you’ll see what’ll happen.” ”

“ Rose drove up to the bridge with the men’s luncheon, and the under boss came up to take the baskets and boxes from the back of the wagon.
“We’ve had a reg’lar tussle this mornin’, Rose,” he said. “The logs are determined not to move. Ike Billings, that’s the han’somest and fluentest all-round swearer on the Saco, has tried his best on the side jam. He’s all out o’ cuss-words and there hain’t a log budged. Now, stid o’ dog-warpin’ this afternoon, an’ lettin’ the oxen haul off all them stubborn logs by main force, we’re goin’ to ask you to set up on the bank and smile at the jam. ‘Land! ”

“ The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with braves, but it knew, as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the Company, only showing the Saco that man was master, only keeping the old Waterman name in good repute.
“Ye can’t drownd some folks,” Old Kennebec had said, as he stood in a group on the shore; “not without you tie sand-bags to’em an’ drop ’em in the Great Eddy. I’m the same kind; I remember when I was stranded on jest sech a rock in the Kennebec, only they left me there all night for dead, an’ I had to swim the rapids when it come daylight.” ”

“ The task consisted in taking a tiny pick-pole, scarcely bigger than a match, and with the bit of curved wire on the end lifting off the jackstraws one by one without stirring the pile or making it tremble. When this occurred, you gave place to your opponent, who relinquished his turn to you when ill fortune descended upon him, the game, which was a kind of river-driving and jam-picking in miniature, being decided by the number of pieces captured and their value. No wonder that the under boss asked Rose’s advice as to the key-log. ”

“ You know he’s always buying lumber and logs without knowing what he is going to do with them. They just lie and rot by the roadside. The boys always say that a toad-stool is the old Squire’s ‘mark’ on a log.” [Pg 73]
“And that stout, clumsy one is Short Dennett.—What are you doing, Stephen!”
“Only building a fence round this clump of harebells,” Stephen replied. “They’ve just got well rooted, and if the boys come skidding down the bank with their spiked shoes, the poor things will never hold up their heads again. Now they’re safe.—Oh, look, Rose! ”