Summary
A sun-creased pastoral canvas unfurls: Gladiola Bain, wild as the crimson spikes that share her name, roams her father’s furrows arm-in-arm with Abner, the taciturn farmhand whose gaze lingers longer than any plough. Enter Ned Williams—city perfume on his cuffs, irony on his tongue—who treats the countryside like a souvenir. What begins as a lazy summer ripple becomes a torrent: stolen kisses behind hayricks, whispered promises under constellations that have never seen neon. Gladiola, drunk on the novelty of being desired rather than merely needed, trades paternal devotion for the mirage of metropolitan matrimony. The ceremony is counterfeit, the honeymoon brittle; soon the first Mrs. Williams surfaces, a shark’s fin slicing the dream’s surface. Humiliated, Gladiola flees back to loam and lullabies, gives birth beneath a scandalized village’s microscope, and grows roots tougher than the stalks surrounding her. Ned, widowed at last, slinks home to reclaim what he never legally possessed, only to find the woman who once trembled at his laugh now regards him with the same mild curiosity she might grant a stranger asking for directions. The final tableau—mother, child, and steadfast swain strolling through a sea of nodding gladiolas—feels less like closure than like a vow to the soil itself.
Synopsis
Although she has a strong friendship with Abner, a hand on her father's farm, saucy Gladiola Bain loves only her father, until she meets vacationing Ned Williams, a self-described "idler" from the city. When their seemingly harmless flirtation develops into love, Gladiola refuses to obey her father's wishes that she give Williams up, and when Williams, after some hesitation, offers her a beautiful home and clothes, they elope to the city, where Williams arranges a mock marriage. After a few months of happiness, Williams' real wife appears. Gladiola tells Williams that she despises him and returns to her welcoming father. Amid much gossip in the town, Gladiola gives birth to a child, while Williams, whose wife has refused to divorce him, has gone abroad. When he learns that his wife has died, he returns repentantly to Gladiola's farm, but although she is touched by his concern, her love has died, and she refuses his entreaties. At the end, Gladiola and her child stroll in the gladiola fields with the faithful Abner.
