Gena of the Appalachians

by Clarence Monroe Wallin

He looked upon the lovely face of Gena Filson in the bright evening sun, and reasoned with his heart again. Tut! tut! she belonged to another. But how did he know so much? He had failed to learn the truth while at Blowing Rock. Why had he not the speech to say the things that were in his heart now? Why, Paul Waffington could recall the time when, in college debate, he had stood upon the floor and fearlessly battled against the best. Scores of times he had stood before public audiences and juggled with words and themes without embarrassment. Yes, he had stood in the very face of death, so far as he knew—not a rod distant from where he now sat—and shot out his fist into the face of old Jase Dillenburger, expecting nothing but death in the end—and had done it all without a tremor. But how was it now, that a woman, a daughter of the simple hills could without a single command hold him dumb?

He turned his head and looked away off down the mountainside as he turned it all over in his mind again. Suppose that Gena Filson was the daughter of Lucky Joe. She was now his equal. She had already proven that she had a wonderful brain capacity; that she could succeed, he had said so to her himself at the college. Suppose that her father had been a bandit—a moonshiner. Many another have yielded to the same temptation. But still there remained with her the memories and the sweet benediction of a kind and gentle mother. A mother who, when her heart was young, came into the hills with good blood in her veins, of sterling character, polished and refined.

But after all, he thought that he could have been, perhaps, long since mated to his mother’s choice, Imogene. She was of his station in life, he had been told. Culture, education, refinement, jewels and money were hers. But beyond the reach of the jewels and moneys Paul Waffington’s heart reached out and yearned for the true love of his heart, and he finds it in Gena Filson by his side.

He looked upon the face of the woman at his side again, and it was fair. She was born and bred in that congenial southern clime, among the beautiful green hills, where crystal streams purl and ripple on forever; where sweet song-birds dwell; where acres of wild flowers come forth in summer time, only for bees to plunder and birds to swing and sway in tuneful song. “I must know all,” he cried to himself, and his voice yielded to his heart’s desire.

“It’s been seven years since I first saw you there in the snow, Gena. You were thirteen then. And—then—old Jase managed to get you, and shifted the hard burdens from his own shoulders to yours. And then I came and saw you burning up there on the bunk with fever. Then I took you away, and, well, I thought I was doing right!” He paused and looked away to the west, and saw the sun sinking down into fathomless seas of purple and gray. Then he busied himself pushing the stem of a daisy into the worm-holes in the board on which they sat, as he went on, “And then Jase went to prison.”

“Yes, and it saved us both, Paul.” Her hands flew to her lips and held them, as if they had allowed something that was terrible to pass them. “Oh, forgive me, forgive me,” she cried. “I didn’t——”

“That’s it, that’s it, Gena. For seven years I have yearned for you to simply say Paul. I go away tomorrow, Gena, and I just as well have it out and be done with it. The first time that I ever saw you, it was there in the snow and the storm; I loved you, and I love you still. Tonight I want to know all. Tell me, Gena, will you be my wife?”

He lifted his eyes to hers as he finished. In the short interval of time his heart seemed to be dropping, dropping, dropping down through fathomless depths of space. The sun was gone now. But the big blue eyes at his side looked out over the mountains and watched the purple clouds with their rims of gold. Then they turned their vision upon him, and welled up with tears as she whispered:

“Yes.”

Under the starry dome of night he gently drew her within his arms, and there, together, they finished the bridge of love that spanned the present and reached into the future, that thitherland.