In the middle of the afternoon the Harvester arose and went into the lake, ate a hearty dinner, and then took up his watch again. For two days and nights he kept his place, until he had the Girl out of danger, and where careful nursing was all that was required to insure life and health. As he sat beside her the last day, his physical endurance strained to the breaking point, she laid her hand over his, and looked long and steadily into his eyes.
“There are so many things I want to know,” she said.
The Harvester’s firm fingers closed over hers. “Ruth, have you ever been sorry that you trusted me?”
“Never!” said the Girl instantly.
“Then suppose you keep it up,” said he. “Whatever it is that you want to know, don’t use an iota of strength to talk or to think about it now. Just say to yourself, he loves me well enough to do what is right, and I know that he will. All you have to do is to be patient until you grow stronger than you ever have been in your life, and then you shall have exactly what you want, Ruth. Sleep like a baby for a week or two. Then, slowly and gradually, we will build up such a constitution for you that you shall ride, drive, row, swim, dance, play, and have all that your girlhood has missed in fun and frolic, and all that your womanhood craves in love and companionship. Happiness has come at last, Ruth. Take it from me. Everything you crave is yours. The love you want, the home, and the life. As soon as you are strong enough, you shall know all about it. Your business is to drink stimulants and sleep now, dear.”
“So tired of this bed!”
“It won’t be long until you can lie on the couch and the veranda swing again.”
“Glory!” said the Girl. “David, I must have been full of fever for a long time. I can’t remember everything.”
“Don’t try, I tell you. Life is coming out right for you; that’s all you need know now.”
“And for you, David?”
“Whenever things are right for you, they are for me, Ruth.”
“Don’t you ever think of yourself?”
“Not when I am close you.”
“Ah! Then I shall have to grow strong very soon and think of you.”
The Harvester’s smile was pathetic. He was unspeakably tired again.
“Never mind me!” he said. “Only get well.”
“David, was there a little horse?”
“There certainly was and is,” said the Harvester.
“You had not named him yet, but in a few days I can lead him to the window.”
“Was there something said about a boat?”
“Two of them.”
“Two?”
“Yes. A row boat for you, and a launch that will take you all over the lake with only the exertion of steering on your part.”
“David, I want my pendant and ring. I am so tired of lying here, I want to play with them.”
“Where do you keep them, Ruth?”
“In the willow teapot. I thought no one would look there.”
The Harvester laughed and brought the little boxes. He had to open them, but the Girl put on the ring and asked him if he would not help her with the pendant. He slipped the thread around her neck and clasped it. With a sigh of satisfaction she took the ornament in one hand and closed her eyes. He thought she was falling asleep, but presently she looked at him.
“You won’t allow them to take it from me?”
“Indeed no! There is no reason on earth why you should not have that thread around your neck if you want it.”
“I am going to sleep now. I want two things. May I have them?”
“You may,” said the Harvester promptly, “provided they are not to eat.”
“No,” said the Girl. “I’ve suffered and made others trouble. I won’t bother you by asking for anything more than is brought me. This is different. You are completely worn out. Your face frightens me, David, and white hairs that were not there a few days ago have come along your temples. I can see them.”
“You gave me a mighty serious scare, Ruth.”
“I know,” said the Girl. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to. I want you to leave me to Doctor Harmon and the nurse and go sleep a week. Then I will be ready for the swing, and to hear some more about the trees and birds.”
“I can keep it up if you really need me, but if you don’t I am sleepy. So, if you feel safe, I think I will go.”
“Oh I am safe enough,” said the Girl. “It isn’t that. I’m so lonely. I’ve made up my mind not to grieve for mother, but I miss her so now. I feel so friendless.”
“But, honey,” said the Harvester, “you mustn’t do that! Don’t you see how all of us love you? Here is Granny shutting up her house and living here, just to be with you. The nurse will do anything you say. Here is the man you know best, and think so much of, staying in the cabin, and so happy to give you all his time, and anything else you will have, dear. And the Careys come every day, and will do their best to comfort you, and always I am here for you to fall back on.”
“Yes, I’m falling right now,” said the Girl. “I almost wish I had the fever again. No one has touched me for days. I feel as if every one was afraid of me.”
The Harvester was puzzled.
“Well, Ruth, I’m doing the best I know,” he said. “What is it you want?”
“Nothing!” answered the Girl with slightly dejected inflection. “Say good-bye to me, and go sleep your week. I’ll be very good, and then you shall take me a drive up the hill when you awaken. Won’t that be fine?”
“Say good-bye to me!” She felt a “little lonely!” They all acted as if they were “afraid” of her. The Harvester indulged in a flashing mental review and arrived at a decision. He knelt beside the bed, took both slender, cool hands and covered them with kisses. Then he slid a hand under the pillow and raised the tired head.
“If I am to say good-bye, I have to do it in my own way, Ruth,” he said.
Thereupon he began at the tumbled mass of hair and kissed from her forehead to her lips, kisses warm and tender.
“Now you go to sleep, and grow strong enough by the time I come back to tell me whom you love,” he said, and went from the room without waiting for any reply.
With short intervals for food and dips in the lake the Harvester very nearly slept the week. When he finally felt himself again, he bathed, shaved, dressed freshly, and went to see the Girl. He had to touch her to be sure she was real. She was extremely weak and tremulous, but her face and hands were fuller, her colour was good, she was ravenously hungry. Doctor Harmon said she was a little tryant, and the nurse that she was plain cross. The first thing the Harvester noticed was that the dull blue look in the depth of the dark eyes was gone. They were clear, dusky wells, with shining lights at the bottom.
“Well I never would have believed it!” he cried. “Doctor Harmon, you are a great physician! You have made her all over new, and in a few more days she will be on the veranda. This is great!”
“Do I appear so much better to you, Harvester?” asked the Girl.
“Has no one thought to show you,” cried the Harvester. “Here, let me!”
He stepped to her dressing table, picked up a mirror, and held it before her so that she could see herself.
“Seems to me I am dreadfully white and thin yet!”
“If you had seen what I saw ten days ago, my Girl, you would think you appear like a pink, rosy angel now, or a wonderful dream.”
“Truly, do I in the least resemble a dream, David?”
“You are a dream. The loveliest one a man ever had. With three months of right care and exercise you’ll be the beautiful woman nature intended. I’m so proud of you. You are being so brave! Just lie there in patience a few more days, and out you come again to life; and life that will thrill your being with joy.”
“All right,” said the Girl, “I will. David are you attending to your herbs?”
“Not for a few weeks.”
“You are very much behind?”
“No. Nothing important. I don’t make enough to count on what is ready now. I can soon gather jimson leaves and seed to fill orders, the hemlock is about right to take the fruit, the mustard is yet in pod, and the saffron and wormseed can be attended later. I can catch up in two days.”
“What about——about the big bed on the hill?”
The Harvester experienced an inward thrill of delight. She was so impressed with the value of the ginseng she would not mention it, even before the man she loved——no more than that——“adored”—— “worshipped!” He smiled at her in understanding.
“I’ll have to take a peep at that and report,” he said.
“Are you rested now?”
“Indeed yes!”
“You are dreadfully thin.”
“I always am. I’ll pick up a little when I get back to work.”
“David, I want you to go to work now.”
“Can you spare me?”
“Haven’t we done well these last few days?”
“I can’t tell you how well.”
“Then please go gather everything you need to fill orders except the big bed, and by that time maybe you could take another week off, and I could go to the hill top and on the lake. I’m so anxious to put my feet on the earth. They feel so dead.”
“Are your feet well rubbed to draw down the circulation?”
“They are rubbed shiny and almost skinned, David. No one ever had better care, of that I am sure. Go gather what you should have.”
“All right,” said the Harvester.
He arose and as he started to leave the room he took one last look at the Girl to see if he could detect anything he could suggest for her comfort, and read a message in her eyes. Instantly there was an answering flash in his.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “I just noticed discorea villosa has the finest rattle boxes formed. I’ve been waiting to show you. And the hop tree has its castanets all green and gold. In a few more weeks it will begin to play for you. I’ll bring you some.”
Soon he returned with the queer seed formations, and as he bent above her, with his back to Doctor Harmon, he whispered, “What is it?”
Her lips barely formed the one word, “Hurry!”
The Harvester straightened.
“All comfortable, Ruth?” he asked casually.
“Yes.”
“You understand, of course, that there is not the slightest necessity for my going to work if you really want me for anything, even if it’s nothing more than to have me within calling distance, in case you SHOULD want something. The whole lot I can gather now won’t amount to twenty dollars. It’s merely a matter of pride with me to have what is called for. I’d much rather remain, if you can use me in any way at all.”
“Twenty dollars is considerable, when expenses are as heavy as now. And it’s worth more than any money to you not to fail when orders come. I have learned that, and David, I don’t want you to either. You must fill all demands as usual. I wouldn’t forgive myself this winter if you should be forced to send orders only partly filled because I fell ill and hindered you. Please go and gather all you possibly will need of everything you take at this season, only remember!”
“There is no danger of my forgetting. If you are going to send me away to work, you will allow me to kiss your hand before I go, fair lady?”
He did it fervently.
“One word with you, Harmon,” he said as he left the room.
Doctor Harmon arose and followed him to the gold garden, and together they stood beside the molten hedge of sunflowers, coneflowers, elecampane, and jewel flower.
“I merely want to mention that this is your inning,” said the Harvester. “Find out if you are essential to the Girl’s happiness as soon as you can, and the day she tells me so, I will file her petition and take a trip to the city to study some little chemical quirks that bother me. That’s all.”
The Harvester went to the dry-house for bags and clipping shears, and the doctor returned to the sunshine room.
“Ruth,” he said, “do you know that the Harvester is the squarest man I ever met?”
“Is he?” asked the Girl.
“He is! He certainly is!”
“You must remember that I have little acquaintance with men,” said she. “You are the first one I ever knew, and the only one except him.”
“Well I try to be square,” said Doctor Harmon, “but that is where Langston has me beaten a mile. I have to try. He doesn’t. He was born that way.”
The Girl began to laugh.
“His environment is so different,” she said. “Perhaps if he were in a big city, he would have to try also.”
“Won’t do!” said the doctor. “He chose his location. So did I. He is a stronger physical man than I ever was or ever will be. The struggle that bound him to the woods and to research, that made him the master of forces that give back life, when a man like Carey says it is the end, proves him a master. The tumult in his soul must have been like a cyclone in his forest, when he turned his back on the world and stuck to the woods. Carey told me about it. Some day you must hear. It’s a story a woman ought to know in order to arrive at proper values. You never will understand the man until you know that he is clean where most of us are blackened with ugly sins we have no right on God’s footstool to commit and not so much reason as he. Every man should be as he is, but very few are. Carey says Langston’s mother was a wonderful element in the formation of his character; but all mothers are anxious, and none of them can build with no foundation and no soul timber. She had material for a man to her hand, or she couldn’t have made one.”
“I see what you mean.”
“So far as any inexperienced girl ever sees,” said the doctor. “Some day if you live to fifty you will know, but you can’t comprehend it now.”
“If you think I lived all my life in Chicago’s poverty spots and don’t know unbridled human nature!”
“I found you and your mother unusually innocent women. You may understand some things. I hope you do. It will help you to decide who is the real man among the men who come into your life. There are some men, Ruth, who are fit to mate with a woman, and to perpetuate themselves and their mental and moral forces in children, who will be like them, and there are others who are not. It is these ‘others’ who are responsible for the sin of the world, the sickness and suffering. Any time you are sure you have a chance at a moral man, square and honest, in control of his brain and body, if you are a wise woman, Ruth, stick to him as the limpet to the rock.”
“You mean stick to the Harvester?”
“If you are a wise woman!”
“When was a woman ever wise?”
“A few have been. They are the only care-free, really happy ones of the world, the only wives without a big, poison, blue-bottle fly in their ointment.”
“I detest flies!” said the Girl.
“So do I,” said the doctor. “For this reason I say to you choose the ointment that never had one in it. Take the man who is ‘master of his fate, captain of his soul.’ Stick to the Harvester! He is infinitely the better man!”
“Well have you seen anything to indicate that I wasn’t sticking?” asked the Girl.
“No. And for your sake I hope I never will.”
She laughed softly.
“You do love him, Ruth?”
“As I did my mother, yes. There is not a trace in my heart of the thing he calls love.”
“You have been stunted, warped, and the fountains of life never have opened. It will come with right conditions of living.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so. At least there is no one else you love, Ruth?”
“No one except you.”
“And do you feel about me just as you do him?”
“No! It is different. What I owe him is for myself. What I owe you is for my mother. You saw! You know! You understand what you did for her, and what it meant to me. The Harvester must be the finest man on earth, but when I try to think of either God or Heaven, your face intervenes.”
“That’s all right, Ruth, I’m so glad you told me,” said Doctor Harmon. “I can make it all perfectly clear to you. You just go on and worship me all you please. It’s bound to make a cleaner, better man of me. What you feel for me will hold me to a higher moral level all my life than I ever have known before; but never forget that you are not going to live in Heaven. You will be here at least sixty years yet, so when you come to think of selecting a partner for the relations of the world, you stick to the finest man on earth; see?”
“I do!” said the Girl. “I saw you kiss Molly a week ago. She is lovely, and I hope you will be perfectly happy. It won’t interfere with my worshipping you; not the least in the world. Go ahead and be joyful!”
The doctor sprang to his feet in crimson confusion. The Girl lay and laughed at him.
“Don’t!” she cried. “It’s all right! It takes a weight off my soul as heavy as a mountain. I do adore you, as I said. But every hour since I left Chicago a big, black cloud has hung over me. I didn’t feel free. I didn’t feel absolved. I felt that my obligations to you were so heavy that when I had settled the last of the money debt I was in honour bound——”
“Don’t, Ruth! Forget those dreadful times, as I told you then! Think only of a happy future!”
“Let me finish,” said the Girl. “Let me get this out of my system with the other poison. From the day I came here, I’ve whispered in my heart, ‘I am not free!’ But if you love another woman! If you are going to take her to your heart and to your lips, why that is my release. Oh Man, speak the words! Tell me I am free indeed!”
“Ruth, be quiet, for mercy sake! You’ll raise a temperature, and the Harvester will pitch me into the lake. You are free, child, of course! You always have been. I understood the awful pressure that was on you with the very first glimpse I had of your mother. Who was she, Ruth?”
“She never would tell me.”
“She thought you would appeal to her people?”
“She knew I would! I couldn’t have helped it.”
“Would you like to know?”
“I never want to. It is too late. I infinitely prefer to remain in ignorance. Talk of something else.”
“Let me read a wonderful book I found on the Harvester’s shelves.”
“Anything there will contain wonders, because he only buys what appeals to him, and it takes a great book to do that. I am going to learn. He will teach me, and when I come within comprehending distance of him, then we are going on together.”
“What an attractive place this is!”
“Isn’t it? I only have seen enough to understand the plan. I scarcely can wait to set my feet on earth and go into detail. Granny Moreland says that when spring comes over the hill, and brings up the flowers in the big woods, she’d rather walk through them than to read Revelation. She says it gives her an idea of Heaven she can come closer realizing and it seems more stable. You know she worries about the foundations. She can’t understand what supports Heaven. But up there in Medicine Woods the old dear gets so close her God that some day she is going to realize that her idea of Heaven there is quite as near right as marble streets and gold pillars and vastly more probable. The day I reach that hill top again, Heaven begins for me. Do you know the wonderful thing the Harvester did up there?”
“Under the oak?”
“Yes.”
“Carey told me. It was marvellous.”
“Not such a marvel as another the doctor couldn’t have known. The Harvester made passing out so natural, so easy, so a part of elemental forces, that I almost have forgotten her tortured body. When I think of her now, it is to wonder if next summer I can distinguish her whisper among the leaves. Before you go, I’ll take you up there and tell you what he says, and show you what he means, and you will feel it also.”
“What if I shouldn’t go?”
“What do you mean?”
“Doctor Carey has offered me a splendid position in his hospital. There would be work all day, instead of waiting all day in the hope of working an hour. There would be a living in it for two from the word go. There would be better air, longer life, more to be got out of it, and if I can make good, Carey’s work to take up as he grows old.”
“Take it! Take it quickly!” cried the Girl. “Don’t wait a minute! You might wear out your heart in Chicago for twenty years or forever, and not have an opportunity to do one half so much good. Take it at once!”
“I was waiting to learn what you and Langston would say.”
“He will say take it.”
“Then I will be too happy for words. Ruth, you have not only paid the debt, but you have brought me the greatest joy a man ever had. And there is no need to wait the ages I thought I must. He can tell in a year if I can do the work, and I know I can now; so it’s all settled, if Langston agrees.”
“He will,” said the Girl. “Let me tell him!”
“I wish you would,” said the doctor. “I don’t know just how to go at it.”
Then for two days the Harvester and Belshazzar gathered herbs and spread them on the drying trays. On the afternoon of the third, close three, the doctor came to the door.
“Langston,” he said, “we have a call for you. We can’t keep Ruth quiet much longer. She is tired. We want to change her bed completely. She won’t allow either of us to lift her. She says we hurt her. Will you come and try it?”
“You’ll have to give me time to dip and rub off and get into clean clothing,” he said. “I’ve been keeping away, because I was working on time, and I smell to strangulation of stramonium and saffron.”
“Can’t give you ten seconds,” said the doctor. “Our temper is getting brittle. We are cross as the proverbial fever patient. If you don’t come at once we will imagine you don’t want to, and refuse to be moved at all.”
“Coming!” cried the Harvester, as he plunged his hands in the wash bowl and soused his face. A second later he appeared on the porch.
“Ruth,” he said, “I am steeped in the odours of the dry-house. Can’t you wait until I bathe and dress?”
“No, I can’t,” said a fretful voice. “I can’t endure this bed another minute.”
“Then let Doctor Harmon lift you. He is so fresh and clean.”
The Harvester glanced enviously at the shaven face and white trousers and shirt of the doctor.
“I just hate fresh, clean men. I want to smell herbs. I want to put my feet in the dirt and my hands in the water.”
The Harvester came at a rush. He brought a big easy chair from the living-room, straightened the cover, and bent above the Girl. He picked her up lightly, gently, and easing her to his body settled in the chair. She laid her face on his shoulder, and heaved a deep sigh of content.
“Be careful with my back, Man,” she said. “I think my spine is almost worn through.”
“Poor girl,” said the Harvester. “That bed should be softer.”
“It should not!” contradicted the Girl. “It should be much harder. I’m tired of soft beds. I want to lie on the earth, with my head on a root; and I wish it would rain dirt on me. I am bathed threadbare. I want to be all streaky.”
“I understand,” said the Harvester. “Harmon, bring me a pad and pencil a minute, I must write an order for some things I want. Will you call up town and have them sent out immediately?”
On the pad he wrote: “Telephone Carey to get the highest grade curled-hair mattress, a new pad, and pillow, and bring them flying in the car. Call Granny and the girl and empty the room. Clean, air, and fumigate it thoroughly. Arrange the furniture differently, and help me into the living-room with Ruth.” He handed the pad to the doctor.
“Please attend to that,” he said, and to the Girl: “Now we go on a journey. Doc, you and Molly take the corners of the rug we are on and slide us into the other room until you get this aired and freshened.”
In the living-room the Girl took one long look at the surroundings and suddenly relaxed. She cuddled against the Harvester and lifting a tremulous white hand, drew it across his unshaven cheek.
“Feels so good,” she said. “I’m sick and tired of immaculate men.”
The Harvester laughed, tucked her feet in the cover and held her tenderly. The Girl lay with her cheek against the rough khaki, palpitant with the excitement of being moved.
“Isn’t it great?” she panted.
He caught the hand that had touched his cheek in a tender grip, and laughed a deep rumble of exultation that came from the depths of his heart.
“There’s no name for it, honey,” he said. “But don’t try to talk until you have a long rest. Changing positions after you have lain so long may be making unusual work for your heart. Am I hurting your back?”
“No,” said the Girl. “This is the first time I have been comfortable in ages. Am I tiring you?”
“Yes,” laughed the Harvester. “You are almost as heavy as a large sack of leaves, but not quite equal to a bridge pillar or a log. Be sure to think of that, and worry considerably. You are in danger of straining my muscles to the last degree, my heart included.”
“Where is your heart?” whispered the Girl.
“Right under your cheek,” answered the Harvester. “But for Heaven’s sake, don’t intimate that you are taking any interest in it, or it will go to pounding until your head will bounce. It’s one member of my body that I can’t control where you are concerned.”
“I thought you didn’t like me any more.”
“Careful!” warned the Harvester. “You are yet too close Heaven to fib like that, Ruth. What have I done to indicate that I don’t love you more than ever?”
“Stayed away nearly every minute for three awful days, and wouldn’t come without being dragged; and now you’re wishing they would hurry and fix that bed, so you can put me down and go back to your rank old herbs again.”
“Well of all the black prevarications! I went when you sent me, and came when you called. I’d willingly give up my hope of what Granny calls ‘salvation’ to hold you as I am for an hour, and you know it.”
“It’s going to be much longer than that,” said the Girl nestling to him. “I asked for you because you never hurt me, and they always do. I knew you were so strong that my weight now wouldn’t be a load for one of your hands, and I am not going back to that bed until I am so tired that I will be glad to lie down.”
For a long time she was so silent the Harvester thought her going to sleep; and having learned that for him joy was probably transient, he deliberately got all he could. He closely held the hand she had not withdrawn, and often lifted it to his lips. Sometimes he stroked the heavy braid, gently ran his hands across the tired shoulders, or eased her into a different position. There was not a doubt in his mind of one thing. He was having a royal, good time, and he was thankful for the work he had set his assistants that kept them out of the room. They seemed in no hurry, and from scuffling, laughing, and a steady stream of talk, they were entertained at least. At last the Girl roused.
“There is something I want to ask you,” she said. “I promised Doctor Harmon I would.”
Instantly the heart of the Harvester gave a leap that jarred the head resting on it.
“You don’t like him?” questioned the Girl.
“I do!” declared the Harvester. “I like him immensely. There is not a fine, manly good-looking feature about him that I have missed. I don’t fail to do him justice on every point.”
“I’m so glad! Then you will want him to remain.”
“Here?” asked the Harvester with a light, hot breath.
“In Onabasha! Doctor Carey has offered him the place of chief assistant at the hospital. There is a good salary and the chance of taking up the doctor’s work as he grows older. It means plenty to do at once, healthful atmosphere, congenial society——everything to a young man. He only had a call once in a while in Chicago, often among people who received more than they paid, like me, and he was very lonely. I think it would be great for him.”
“And for you, Ruth?”
“It doesn’t make the least difference to me; but for his sake, because I think so much of him, I would like to see him have the place.”
“You still think so much of him, Ruth?”
“More, if possible,” said the Girl. “Added to all I owed him before, he has come here and worked for days to save me, and it wasn’t his fault that it took a bigger man. Nothing alters the fact that he did all he could, most graciously and gladly.”
“What do you mean, Ruth?” stammered the Harvester.
“Oh they have worn themselves out!” cried the Girl impatiently. “First, Granny Moreland told me every least little detail of how I went out, and you resurrected me. I knew what she said was true, because she worked with you. Then Doctor Carey told me, and Mrs. Carey, and Doctor Harmon, and Molly, and even Granny’s little assistant has left the kitchen to tell me that I owe my life to you, and all of them might as well have saved breath. I knew all the time that if ever I came out of this, and had a chance to be like other women, it would be your work, and I’m glad it is. I’d hate to be under obligations to some people I know; but I feel honoured to be indebted to you.”
“I’m might