“You sit in the carriage until I put away the horse, and then I’ll help you to the cabin, and save you being alone while I work. Would you like that?”
“Yes.”
She leaned her head against the carriage top the Harvester had raised to screen her, and watched him stable the horse. Evidently he was very fond of animals for he talked as if it were a child he was undressing and kept giving it extra strokes and pats as he led it away. Ajax disliked the newcomer instantly, noticed the carriage and the woman’s dress, and screamed his ugliest. The Girl smiled. As the Harvester appeared she inquired, “Is Ajax now sending a wireless to Ceylon asking for a mate?”
The Harvester looked at her quizzically and saw a gleam of mischief in the usually dull dark eyes that delighted him.
“That is the customary supposition when he finds voice,” he said. “But since this has become your home, you are bound to learn some of my secrets. One of them I try to guard is the fact that Ajax has a temper. No my dear, he is not always sending a wireless, I am sorry to say. I wish he was! As a matter of fact he is venting his displeasure at any difference in our conditions. He hates change. He learned that from me. I will enjoy seeing him come for favour a year from now, as I learned to come for it, even when I didn’t get much, and the road lay west of Onabasha. Ajax, stop that! There’s no use to object. You know you think that horse is nice company for you, and that two can feed you more than one. Don’t be a hypocrite! Cease crying things you don’t mean, and learn to love the people I do. Come on, old boy!”
The peacock came, but with feathers closely pressed and stepping daintily. As the bird advanced, the Harvester retreated, until he stood beside the Girl, and then he slipped some grain to her hand and she offered it. But Ajax would not be coaxed. He was too fat and well fed. He haughtily turned and marched away, screaming at intervals.
“Nasty temper!” commented the Harvester. “Never mind! He soon will become accustomed to you, and then he will love you as Belshazzar does. Feed the doves instead. They are friendly enough in all conscience. Do you notice that there is not a coloured feather among them? The squab that is hatched with one you may have for breakfast. Now let’s go find something to eat, and I will finish the bridge so you can rest there to-night and watch the sun set on Singing Water.”
So they went into the cabin and prepared food, and then the Harvester told the Girl to make herself so pretty that she would be a picture and come and talk to him while he finished the roof. She went to her room, found a pale lavender linen dress and put it on, dusted the pink powder thickly, and went where a wide bench made an inviting place in the shade. There she sat and watched her lightly expressed whim take shape.
“Soon as this is finished,” said the Harvester, “I am going to begin on that tea table. I can make it in a little while, if you want it to match the other furniture.”
“I do,” said the Girl.
“Wonder if you could draw a plan showing how it should appear. I am a little shy on tea tables.”
“I think I can.”
The Harvester brought paper, pencil, and a shingle for a drawing pad.
“Now remember one thing,” he said. “If you are in earnest about using those old blue dishes, this has got to be a big, healthy table. A little one will appear top heavy with them. It would be a good idea to set out what you want to use, arranged as you would like them, and let me take the top measurement that way.”
“All right! I’ll only indicate how its legs should be and we will find the size later. I could almost weep because that wonderful set is broken. If I had all of it I’d be so proud!”
The Girl bent over the drawing. The Harvester worked with his attention divided between her, the bridge, and the road. At last he saw the big red car creeping up the valley.
“Seems to be some one coming, Ruth! Guess it must be Doc. I’ll go open the gate?”
“Yes,” said the Girl. “I’m so glad. You won’t forget to ask him to help me if he can?”
The Harvester wheeled hastily. “I won’t forget!” he said, as he hurried to the gate. The car ran slowly, and the Girl could see him swing to the step and stand talking as they advanced. When they reached her they stopped and all of them came forward. She went to meet them. She shook hands with Mrs. Carey and then with the doctor.
“I am so glad you have come,” she said.
“I hope you are not lonesome already,” laughed the doctor.
“I don’t think any one with brains to appreciate half of this ever could become lonely here,” answered the Girl. “No, it isn’t that.”
“A-ha!” cried the doctor, turning to his wife. “You see that the beautiful young lady remembers me, and has been wishing I would come. I always said you didn’t half appreciate me. What a place you are making, David! I’ll run the car to the shade and join you.”
For a long time they talked under the trees, then they went to see the new home and all its furnishings.
“Now this is what I call comfort,” said the doctor. “David, build us a house exactly similar to this over there on the hill, and let us live out here also. I’d love it. Would you, Clara?”
“I don’t know. I never lived in the country. One thing is sure: If I tried it, I’d prefer this to any other place I ever saw. David, won’t you take me far enough up the hill that I can look from the top to the lake?”
“Certainly,” said the Harvester. “Excuse us a little while, Ruth!”
As soon as they were gone the Girl turned to the doctor.
“Doctor Carey, David says you are great. Won’t you exercise your art on me. I am not at all well, and oh! I’d so love to be strong and sound.”
“Will you tell me,” asked the doctor, “just enough to show me what caused the trouble?”
“Bad air and water, poor light and food at irregular times, overwork and deep sorrow; every wrong condition of life you could imagine, with not a ray of hope in the distance, until now. For the sake of the Harvester, I would be well again. Please, please try to cure me!”
So they talked until the doctor thought he knew all he desired, and then they went to see the gold flower garden.
“I call this simply superb,” said he, taking a seat beneath the tree roof of her porch. “Young woman, I don’t know what I’ll do to you if you don’t speedily grow strong here. This is the prettiest place I ever saw, and listen to the music of that bubbling, gurgling little creek!”
“Isn’t he wonderful?” asked the Girl, looking up the hill, where the tall form of the Harvester could be seen moving around. “Just to see him, you would think him the essence of manly strength and force. And he is! So strong! Into the lake at all hours, at the dry-house, on the hill, grubbing roots, lifting big pillars to support a bridge roof, and with it all a fancy as delicate as any dreaming girl. Doctor, the fairies paint the flowers, colour the fruit, and frost the windows for him; and the winds carry pollen to tell him when his growing things are ready for the dry-house. I don’t suppose I can tell you anything new about him; but isn’t he a perpetual surprise? Never like any one else! And no matter how he startles me in the beginning, he always ends by convincing me, at least, that he is right.”
“I never loved any other man as I do him,” said the doctor. “I ushered him into the world when I was a young man just beginning to practise, and I’ve known him ever since. I know few men so scrupulously clean. Try to get well and make him happy, Mrs. Langston. He so deserves it.”
“You may be sure I will,” answered the Girl.
After the visitors had gone, the Harvester told her to place the old blue dishes as she would like to arrange them on her table, so he could get a correct idea of the size, and he left to put a few finishing strokes on the bridge cover. She went into the dining-room and opened the china closet. She knew from her peep in the work- room that there would be more pieces than she had seen before; but she did not think or hope that a full half dozen tea set and plates, bowl, platter, and pitcher would be waiting for her.
“Why Ruth, what made you tire yourself to come down? I intended to return in a few minutes.”
“Oh Man!” cried the laughing Girl, as she clung pantingly to a bridge pillar for support, “I just had to come to tell you. There are fairies! Really truly ones! They have found the remainder of the willow dishes for me, and now there are so many it isn’t going to be a table at all. It must be a little cupboard especially for them, in that space between the mantel and the bookcase. There should be a shining brass tea canister, and a wafer box like the arts people make, and I’ll pour tea and tend the chafing dish and you can toast the bread with a long fork over the coals, and we will have suppers on the living-room table, and it will be such fun.”
“Be seated!” cried the Harvester. “Ruth, that’s the longest speech I ever heard you make, and it sounded, praise the Lord, like a girl. Did Doc say he would fix something for you?”
“Yes, such a lot of things! I am going to shut my eyes and open my mouth and swallow all of them. I’m going to be born again and forget all I ever knew before I came here, and soon I will be tagging you everywhere, begging you to suggest designs for my pencil, and I’ll simply force life to come right for you.”
The Harvester smiled.
“Sounds good!” he said. “But, Ruth, I’m a little dubious about force work. Life won’t come right for me unless you learn to love me, and love is a stubborn, contrary bulldog element of our nature that won’t be driven an inch. It wanders as the wind, and strikes us as it will. You’ll arrive at what I hope for much sooner if you forget it and amuse yourself and be as happy as you can. Then, perhaps all unknown to you, a little spark of tenderness for me will light in your breast; and if it ever does we will buy a fanning mill and put it in operation, and we’ll raise a flame or know why.”
“And there won’t be any force in that?”
“What you can’t compel is the start. It’s all right to push any growth after you have something to work on.”
“That reminds me,” said the Girl, “there is a question I want to ask you.”
“Go ahead!” said the Harvester, glancing at her as he hewed a joist.
She turned away her face and sat looking across the lake for a long time.
“Is it a difficult question, Ruth?” inquired the Harvester to help her.
“Yes,” said the Girl. “I don’t know how to make you see.”
“Take any kind of a plunge. I’m not usually dense.”
“It is really quite simple after all. It’s about a girl—-a girl I knew very well in Chicago. She had a problem—-and it worried her dreadfully, and I just wondered what you would think of it.”
The Harvester shifted his position so that he could watch the side of the averted face.
“You’ll have to tell me, before I can tell you,” he suggested.
“She was a girl who never had anything from life but work and worry. Of course, that’s the only kind I’d know! One day when the work was most difficult, and worry cut deepest, and she really thought she was losing her mind, a man came by and helped her. He lifted her out, and rescued all that was possible for a man to save to her in honour, and went his way. There wasn’t anything more. Probably there never would be. His heart was great, and he stooped and pitied her gently and passed on. After a time another man came by, a good and noble man, and he offered her love so wonderful she hadn’t brains to comprehend how or why it was.”
The Girl’s voice trailed off as if she were too weary to speak further, while she leaned her head against a pillar and gazed with dull eyes across the lake.
“And your question,” suggested the Harvester at last.
She roused herself. “Oh, the question! Why this—- if in time, and after she had tried and tried, love to equal his simply would not come would—-would—-she be wrong to PRETEND she cared, and do the very best she could, and hope for real love some day? Oh David, would she?”
The Harvester’s face was whiter than the Girl’s. He pounded the chisel into the joist savagely.
“Would she, David?”
“Let me understand you clearly,” said the man in a dry, breathless voice. “Did she love this first man to whom she came under obligations?”
The Girl sat gazing across the lake and the tortured Harvester stared at her.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t know whether she knew what love was or ever could. She never before had known a man; her heart was as undeveloped and starved as her body. I don’t think she realized love, but there was a SOMETHING. Every time she would feel most grateful and long for the love that was offered her, that `something’ would awake and hurt her almost beyond endurance. Yet she knew he never would come. She knew he did not care for her. I don’t know that she felt she wanted him, but she was under such obligations to him that it seemed as if she must wait to see if he might not possibly come, and if he did she should be free.”
“If he came, she preferred him?”
“There was a debt she had to pay—-if he asked it. I don’t know whether she preferred him. I do know she had no idea that he would come, but the POSSIBILITY was always before her. If he didn’t come in time, would she be wrong in giving all she had to the man who loved her?”
The Harvester’s laugh was short and sharp.
“She had nothing to give, Ruth! Talk about worm- wood, colocynth apples, and hemlock! What sort of husks would that be to offer a man who gave honest love? Lie to him! Pretend feeling she didn’t experience. Endure him for the sake of what he offered her? Well I don’t know how calmly any other man would take that proceeding, Ruth, but tell your friend for me, that if I offered a woman the deep, lasting, and only loving passion of my heart, and she gave back a lie and indifferent lips, I’d drop her into the deepest hole of my lake and take my punishment cheerfully.”
“But if it would make him happy? He deserves every happiness, and he need never know!”
The Harvester’s laugh raised to an angry roar.
“You simpleton!” he cried roughly. “Do you know so little of human passion in the heart that you think love can be a successful assumption? Good Lord, Ruth! Do you think a man is made of wood or stone, that a woman’s lips in her first kiss wouldn’t tell him the truth? Why Girl, you might as well try to spread your tired arms and fly across the lake as to attempt to pretend a love you do not feel. You never could!”
“I said a girl I knew!”
“ `A Girl you knew,’ then! Any woman! The idea is monstrous. Tell her so and forget it. You almost scared the life out of me for a minute, Ruth. I thought it was going to be you. But I remember your debt is to be paid with the first money you earn, and you can not have the slightest idea what love is, if you honestly ask if it can be simulated. No ma’am! It can’t! Not possibly! Not ever! And when the day comes that its fires light your heart, you will come to me, and tell of a flood of delight that is tingling from the soles of your feet through every nerve and fibre of your body, and you will laugh with me at the time when you asked if it could be imitated successfully. No, ma’am! Now let me help you to the cabin, serve a good supper, and see you eat like a farmer.”
All evening the Harvester was so gay he kept the Girl laughing and at last she asked him the cause.
“Relief, honey! Relief!” cried the man. “You had me paralyzed for a minute, Ruth. I thought you were trying to tell me that there was some one so possessing your heart that it failed every time you tried to think about caring for me. If you hadn’t convinced me before you finished that love never has touched you, I’d be the saddest man in the world to-night, Ruth.”
The Girl stared at him with wide eyes and silently turned away.
Then for a week they worked out life together in the woods. The Harvester was the housekeeper and the cook. He added to his store many delicious broths and stimulants he brought from the city. They drove every day through the cool woods, often rowed on the lake in the evenings, walked up the hill to the oak and scattered fresh flowers on the two mounds there, and sat beside them talking for a time. The Harvester kept up his work with the herbs, and the little closet for the blue dishes was finished. They celebrated installing them by having supper on the living-room table, with the teapot on one end, and the pitcher full of bellflowers on the other.
The Girl took everything prescribed for her, bathed, slept all she could, and worked for health with all the force of her frail being, and as the days went by it seemed to the Harvester her weight grew lighter, her hands hotter, and she drove herself to a gayety almost delirious. He thought he would have preferred a dull, stupid sleep of malaria. There was colour in plenty on her cheeks now, and sometimes he found her wrapped in the white shawl at noon on the warmest days Medicine Woods knew in early August; and on cool nights she wore the thinnest clothing and begged to be taken on the lake. The Careys came out every other evening and the doctor watched and worked, but he did not get the results he desired. His medicines were not effective.
“David,” he said one evening, “I don’t like the looks of this. Your wife has fever I can’t break. It is eating the little store of vitality she has right out of her, and some of these days she is coming down with a crash. She should yield to the remedies I am giving her. She acts to me like a woman driven wild by trouble she is concealing. Do you know anything that worries her?”
“No,” said the Harvester, “but I’ll try to find out if it will help you in your work.”
After they were gone he left the Girl lying in the swing guarded by the dog, and went across the marsh on the excuse that he was going to a bed of thorn apple at the foot of the hill. There he sat on a log and tried to think. With the mists of night rising around him, ghosts arose he fain would have escaped. “What will you give me in cold cash to tell you who she is, and who her people are?” Times untold in the past two weeks he had smothered, swallowed, and choked it down. That question she had wanted to ask—-was it for a girl she had known, or was it for herself? Days of thought had deepened the first slight impression he so bravely had put aside, not into certainty, but a great fear that she had meant herself. If she did, what was he to do? Who was the man? There was a debt she had to pay if he asked it? What debt could a woman pay a man that did not involve money? Crouched on a log he suffered and twisted in agonizing thought. At last he arose and returned to the cabin. He carried a few frosty, blue-green leaves of velvet softness and unusual cutting, prickly thorn apples full of seeds, and some of the smoother, more yellowish-green leaves of the jimson weed, to give excuse for his absence.
“Don’t touch them,” he warned as he came to her. “They are poison and have disagreeable odour. But we are importing them for medicinal purposes. On the far side of the marsh, where the ground rises, there is a waste place just suited to them, and so long as they will seed and flourish with no care at all, I might as well have the price as the foreign people who raise them. They don’t bring enough to make them worth cultivating, but when they grow alone and with no care, I can make money on the time required to clip the leaves and dry the seeds. I must go wash before I come close to you.”
The next day he had business in the city, and again she lay in the swing and talked to the dog while the Harvester was gone. She was startled as Belshazzar arose with a gruff bark. She looked down the driveway, but no one was coming. Then she followed the dog’s eyes and saw a queer, little old woman coming up the bank of Singing Water from the north. She remembered what the Harvester had said, and rising she opened the screen and went down the path. As the Girl advanced she noticed the scrupulous cleanliness of the calico dress and gingham apron, and the snowy hair framing a bronzed face with dancing dark eyes.
“Are you David’s new wife?” asked Granny Moreland with laughing inflection.
“Yes,” said the Girl. “Come in. He told me to expect you. I am so sorry he is away, but we can get acquainted without him. Let me help you.”
“I don’t know but that ought to be the other way about. You don’t look very strong, child.”
“I am not well,” said the Girl, “but it’s lovely here, and the air is so fine I am going to be better soon. Take this chair until you rest a little, and then you shall see our pretty home, and all the furniture and my dresses.”
“Yes, I want to see things. My, but David has tried himself! I heard he was just tearin’ up Jack over here, and I could get the sound of the hammerin’, and one day he asked me to come and see about his beddin’. He had that Lizy Crofter to wash for him, but if I hadn’t jest stood over her his blankets would have been ruined. She’s no more respect for fine goods than a pig would have for cream pie. I hate to see woollens abused, as if they were human. My, but things is fancy here since what David planted is growin’! Did you ever live in the country before?”
“No.”
“Where do you hail from?”
“Well not from the direction of hail,” laughed the Girl. “I lived in Chicago, but we were—-were not rich, and so I didn’t know the luxury of the city; just the lonely, difficult part.”
“Do you call Chicago lonely?”
“A thousand times more so than Medicine Woods. Here I know the trees will whisper to me, and the water laughs and sings all day, and the birds almost split their throats making music for me; but I can imagine no loneliness on earth that will begin to compare with being among the crowds and crowds of a large city and no one has a word or look for you. I miss the sea of faces and the roar of life; at first I was almost wild with the silence, but now I don’t find it still any more; the Harvester is teaching me what each sound means and they seem to be countless.”
“You think, then, you’ll like it here?”
“I do, indeed! Any one would. Even more than the beautiful location, I love the interesting part of the Harvester’s occupation. I really think that gathering material to make medicines that will allay pain is the very greatest of all the great work a man can do.”
“Good!” cried Granny Moreland, her dark eyes snapping. “I’ve always said it! I’ve tried to encourage David in it. And he’s just capital at puttin’ some of his stuff in shape, and combinin’ it in as good medicine as you ever took. This spring I was all crippled up with the rheumatiz until I wanted to holler every time I had to move, and sometimes it got so aggravatin’ I’m not right sure but I done it. ‘Long comes David and says, `I can fix you somethin’,’ and bless you, if the boy didn’t take the tucks out of me, until here I am, and tickled to pieces that I can get here. This time last year I didn’t care if I lived or not. Now seems as if I’m caperish as a three weeks’ lamb. I don’t see how a man could do a bigger thing than to stir up life in you like that.”
“I think this place makes an especial appeal to me, because, shortly before I came, I had to give up my mother. She was very ill and suffered horribly. Every time I see David going to his little laboratory on the hill to work a while I slip away and ask God to help him to fix something that will ease the pain of humanity as I should like to have seen her relieved.”
“Why you poor child! No wonder you are lookin’ so thin and peaked!”
“Oh I’ll soon be over that,” said the Girl. “I am much better than when I came. I’ll be coming over to trade pie with you before long. David says you are my nearest neighbour, so we must be close friends.”
“Well bless your big heart! Now who ever heard of a pretty young thing like you wantin’ to be friends with a plain old country woman?”
“Why I think you are lovely!” cried the Girl. “And all of us are on the way to age, so we must remember that we will want kindness then more than at any other time. David says you knew his mother. Sometime won’t you tell me all about her? You must very soon. The Harvester adored her, and Doctor Carey says she was the noblest woman he ever knew. It’s a big contract to take her place. Maybe if you would tell me all you can remember I could profit by much of it.”
Granny Moreland watched the Girl keenly.
“She wa’ant no ordinary woman, that’s sure,” she commented. “And she didn’t make no common man out of her son, either. I’ve always contended she took the job too serious, and wore herself out at it, but she certainly done the work up prime. If she’s above cloud leanin’ over the ramparts lookin’ down—-though it gets me as to what foundation they use or where they get the stuff to build the ramparts—-but if they is ramparts, and she’s peekin’ over them, she must take a lot of solid satisfaction in seeing that David is not only the man she fought and died to make him, but he’s give her quite a margin to spread herself on. She ‘lowed to make him a big man, but you got to know him close and plenty ‘fore it strikes you jest what his size is. I’ve watched him pretty sharp, and tried to help what I could since Marthy went, and I’m frank to say I druther see David happy than to be happy myself. I’ve had my fling. The rest of the way I’m willin’ to take what comes, with the best grace I can muster, and wear a smilin’ face to betoken the joy I have had; but it cuts me sore to see the young sufferin’.”
“Do you think David is unhappy?” asked the Girl eagerly.
“I don’t see how he could be!” cried the old lady. “Of course he ain’t! ‘Pears as if he’s got everythin’ to make him the proudest, best satisfied of men. I’ll own I was mighty anxious to see you. I know the kind o’ woman it would take to make David miserable, and it seems sometimes as if men—-that is good men—-are plumb, stone blind when it comes to pickin’ a woman. They jest hitch up with everlastin’ misery easy as dew rolling off a cabbage leaf. It’s sech a blessed sight to see you, and hear your voice and know you’re the woman anybody can see you be. Why I’m so happy when I set here and con-tem’-plate you, I want to cackle like a pullet announcin’ her first egg. Ain’t this porch the purtiest place?”
“Come see everything,” invited the Girl, rising.
Granny Moreland followed with alacrity.
“Bare floors!” she cried. “Wouldn’t that best you? I saw they was finished capital when I was over, but I ‘lowed they’d be covered afore you come. Don’t you like nice, flowery Brissels carpets, honey?”
“No I don’t,” said the Girl. “You see, when rugs are dusty they can be rolled, carried outside, and cleaned. The walls can be wiped, the floors polished and that way a house is always fresh. I can keep this shining, germ proof, and truly clean with half the work and none of the danger of heavy carpets and curtains.”
“I don’t doubt but them is true words,” said Granny Moreland earnestly. “Work must be easier and sooner done than it was in my day, or people jest couldn’t have houses the size of this or the time to gad that women have now. From the looks of tile streets of Onabasha, you wouldn’t think a woman ‘ud had a baby to tend, a dinner pot a-bilin’, or a bakin’ of bread sence the flood. And the country is jest as bad as the city. We’re a apin’ them to beat the monkeys at a show. I hardly got a neighbour that ain’t got figgered Brissels carpet, a furnace, a windmill, a pianny, and her own horse and buggy. Several’s got autermobiles, and the young folks are visitin’ around a-ridin’ the trolleys, goin’ to college, and copyin’ city ways. Amos Peters, next to us; goes bareheaded in the hay field, and wears gloves to pitch and plow in. I tell him he reminds me of these city women that only wears the lower half of a waist and no sleeves, and a yard of fine goods moppin’ the floors. Well if that don’t ‘beat the nation! Ain’t them Marthy’s old blue dishes?”
“Let me show you!” The Girl opened the little cupboard and exhibited the willow ware. The eyes of the old woman began to sparkle.
“Foundation or no foundation, I do hope them ramparts is a go!” she cried. “If Marthy Langston is squintin’ over them and she sees her old chany put in a fine cupboard, and her little shawl round as purty a girl as ever stepped, and knows her boy is gittin’ what he deserves, good Lord, she’ll be like to oust the Almighty, and set on the throne herself! ‘Bout everythin’ in life was a disappointment to her, ‘cept David. Now if she could see this! Won’t I rub it into the neighbours? And my boys’ wives!”
“I don’t understand,” said the bewildered Girl.
“ ‘Course you don’t, honey,” explained the visitor. “It’s like this: I don’t know anybody, man or woman, in these parts, that ain’t rampagin’ for CHANGE. They ain’t one of them that would live in a log cabin, though they’s not a house in twenty miles of here that fits its surroundin’s and looks so homelike as this. They run up big, fancy brick and frame things, all turns and gables and gay as frosted picnic pie, and work and slave to git these very carpets you say ain’t healthy, and the chairs you say you wouldn’t give house room, an’ they use their grandmother’s chany for bakin’, scraps, and grease dishes, and hide it if they’s visitors. All of them strainin’ after something they can’t afford, and that ain’t healthy when they git it, because somebody else is doin’ the same thing. Mary Peters says she is afeared of her life in their new steam wagon, and she says Andy gits so narvous runnin’ it, he jest keeps on a-jerkin’ and drivin’ all night, and she thinks he’ll soon go to smash himself, if the machine doesn’t beat him. But they are keepin’ it up, because Graceston’s is, and so it goes all over the country. Now I call it a slap right in the face to have a Chicagy woman come to the country to live and enjoy a log cabin, bare floors, and her man’s grandmother’s dishes. If there ain’t Marthy’s old blue coverlid also carefully spread on a splinter new sofy. Landy, I can’t wait to get to my son John’s! He’s got a woman that would take two coppers off the collection plate while she was purtendin’ to put on one, if she could, and then spend them for a brass pin or a string of glass beads. Won’t her eyes bung when I tell her about this? She wanted my Peter Hartman kiver for her ironin’ board. Show me the rest!”
“This is the dining-room,” said the Girl, leading the way.
Granny Moreland stepped in and sent her keen eyes ranging over the floor, walls, and furnishings. She sank on a chair and said with a chuckle, “Now you go on and tell me all about it, honey. Jest what things are and why you fixed them, and how they are used.”
The Girl did her best, and the old woman nodded in delighted approval.
“It’s the purtiest thing I ever saw,” she announced. “A minute ago, I’d ‘a’ said them blue walls back there, jest like October skies in Indian summer, and the brown rugs, like leaves in the woods, couldn’t be beat; but this green and yaller is purtier yet. That blue room will keep the best lookin’ part of fall on all winter, and with a roarin’ wood fire, it’ll be capital, and no mistake; but this here is spring, jest spring eternal, an’ that’s best of all. Looks like it was about time the leaves was bustin’ and things pushin’ up. It wouldn’t surprise me a mite to see a flock of swallers come sailin’ right through these winders. And here’s a place big enough to lay down and rest a spell right handy to the kitchen, where a-body gits tiredest, without runnin’ a half mile to find a bed, and in the mornin’ you can look down to the `still waters’; and in the afternoon, when the sun gits around here, you can pull that blind and `lift your eyes to the hills,’ like David of the Bible says. My, didn’t he say the purtiest things! I never read nothin’ could touch him!”
“Have you seen the Psalms arranged in verse as we would write it now?”
“You don’t mean to tell me David’s been put into real poetry?”
“Yes. Some Bibles have all the poetical books in our forms of verse.”
“Well! Sometimes I git kind o’ knocked out! As a rule I hold to old ways. I think they’re the healthiest and the most faver’ble to the soul. But they’s some changes come along, that’s got sech hard common-sense to riccomend them, that I wonder the past generations didn’t see sooner. Now take this! An hour ago I’d told you I’d read my father’s Bible to the end of my days. But if they’s a new one that’s got David, Solomon, and Job in nateral form, I’ll have one, and I’ll git a joy I never expected out of life. I ain’t got so much poetry in me, but it always riled me to read, `7. The law of the Lord is perfect, covertin’ the soul. 8. The statutes of the Lord are right. 9. The fear of the Lord is clean.’ And so it goes on, ’bout as much figgers as they is poetry. Always did worry me. So if they make Bibles ‘cordin’ to common sense, I’ll have one to-morrow if I have to walk to Onabasha to get it. Lawsy me! if you ain’t gathered up Marthy’s old pink tea set, and give it a show, too! Did you do that to please David, or do you honestly think them is nice dishes?”
“I think they are beautiful,” laughed the Girl, sinking to a chair. “I don’t know that it did please him. He had been studying the subject, but something saved him from buying anything until I came. I’d have felt dreadfully if he had gotten what he wanted.”
“What did he want, honey?” asked the old lady in an awestruck whisper.
“Egg-shell china and cut glass.”
“And you wouldn’t let him! Woman! What do you want?”
“A set of tulip-yellow dishes, with Dutch little figures on them. They are so quaint and they would harmonize perfectly with this room.”
The old lady laughed gleefully.
“My! I wouldn’t ‘a’ missed this for a dollar,” she cried. “It jest does my soul good. More’n that, if you really like Marthy’s dishes and are going to take care of them and use them right, I’ll give you mine, too. I ain’t never had a girl. I’ve always hoped she’d ‘a’ had some jedgment of her own, and not been eternally apin’, if I had, but the Lord may ‘a’ saved me many a disappointment by sendin’ all mine boys. Not that I’m layin’ the babies on to the Lord at all—-I jest got into the habit of sayin’ that, ‘cos everybody else does, but all mine, I had a purty good idy how I got them. If a girl of mine wouldn’t ‘a’ had more sense, raised right with me, I’d’ a’ been purty bad cut up over it. Of course, I can’t be held responsible for the girls my boys married, but t’other day Emmeline —-that’s John’s wife—-John is the youngest, and I sort o’ cling to him—-Emmeline she says to me, `Mother, can’t I have this old pink and green teapot?’ My heart warmed right up to the child, and I says, `What do you want it for, Emmeline?’ And she says, `To draw the tea in.’ Cracky Dinah! That fool woman meant to set my grandmother’s weddin’ present from her pa and ma, dishes same as Marthy Washington used, on the stove to bile the tea in. I jest snorted! `No, says I, `you can’t! ‘Fore I die,’ says I, `I’ll meet up with some woman that ‘ll love dishes and know how to treat them.’ I think jest about as much of David as I do my own boys, and I don’t make no bones of the fact that he’s a heap more of a man. I’d jest as soon my dishes went to his children as to John’s. I’ll give you every piece I got, if you’ll take keer of them.”
“Would it be right?” wavered the girl.
“Right! Why, I’m jest tellin’ you the fool wimmen would bile tea in them, make grease sassers of them, and use them to dish up the bakin’ on! Wouldn’t you a heap rather see them go into a cupboard like David’s ma’s is in, where they’d be taken keer of, if they was yours? I guess you would!”
“Well if you feel that way, and really want us to have them, I know David will build another little cupboard on the other side of the fireplace to put yours in, and I can’t tell you how I’d love and care for them.”
“I’ll jest do it!” said Granny Moreland. “I got about as many blue ones as Marthy had an’ mine are purtier than hers. And my lustre is brighter, for I didn’t use it so much. Is this the kitchen? Well if I ever saw sech a cool, white place to cook in before! Ain’t David the beatenest hand to think up things? He got the start of that takin’ keer of his ma all his life. He sort of learned what a woman uses, and how it’s handiest. Not that other men don’t know; it’s jest that they are too mortal selfish and keerless to fix things. Well this is great! Now when you bile cabbage and the wash, always open your winders wide and let tho steam out, so it won’t spile your walls.”
“I’ll be very careful,” promised the Girl. “Now come see my bathroom, closet and bedroom.”
“Well as I live! Ain’t this fine. I’ll bet a purty that if I’d ‘a’ had a room and a trough like this to soak in when I was wore to a frazzle, I wouldn’t ‘a’ got all twisted up with rheumatiz like I am. It jest looks restful to see. I never washed in a place like this in all my days. Must feel grand to be wet all over at once! Now everybody ought to have sech a room and use it at all hours, like David does the lake. Did you ever see his beat to go swimmin’? He’s always in splashin’! Been at it all his life. I used to be skeered when he was a little tyke. He soaked so much ‘peared like he’d wash all the substance out of him, but it only made him strong.”
“Has he ever been ill?”
“Not that I know of, and I reckon I’d knowed it if he had. Well what a clothespress! I never saw so many dresses at once. Ain’t they purty? Oh I wish I was young, and could have one like that yaller. And I’d like to have one like your lavender right now. My! You are lucky to have so many nice clothes. It’s a good thing most girls haven’t got them, or they’d stand primpin’ all day tryin’ to decide which one to put on. I don’t see how you tell yourself.”
“I wear the one that best hides how pale I am,” answered the Girl. “I use the colours now. When I grow plump and rosy, I’ll wear the white.”
Granny Moreland dropped on the couch and assured herself that it was Martha’s pink Peter Hartman. Then she examined the sunshine room.
“Well I got to go back to the start,” she said at last. “This beats the dinin’-room. This is the purtiest thing I ever saw. Oh I do hope they ain’t so run to white in Heaven as some folks seem to think! Used to be scandalized if a-body took anythin’ but a white flower to a funeral. Now they tell me that when Jedge Stilton’s youngest girl come from New York to her pa’s buryin’ she fetched about a wash tub of blood-red roses. Put them all over him, too! Said he loved red roses livin’ and so he was goin’ to have them when he passed over. Now if they are lettin’ up a little on white on earth, mebby some of the stylish ones will carry the fashion over yander. If Heaven is like this, I won’t spend none of my time frettin’ about the foundations. I’ll jest forget there is any, even if we do always have to be so perticler to get them solid on earth. Talk of gold harps! Can’t you almost hear them? And listen to the birds and that water! Say, you won’t get lonesome here, will you?”
“Indeed no!” answered the Girl. “Wouldn’t you like to lie on my beautiful couch that the Harvester made with his own hands, and I’ll spread Mother Langston’s coverlet over you and let you look at all my pretty things while I slip away a few minutes to something I’d like to do?”
“I’d love to!” said the old woman. “I never had a chance at such fine things. David told me he was makin’ your room all himself, and that he was goin’ to fill it chuck full of everythin’ a girl ever used, and I see he done it right an’ proper. Away last March he told me he was buildin’ for you, an’ I hankered so to have a woman here again, even though I never s’posed she’d be sochiable like you, that I egged him on jest all I could. I never would ‘a’ s’posed the boy could marry like this—- all by himself.”
The Girl went to the ice chest to bring some of the fruit juice, chilled berries, and to the pantry for bread and wafers to make a dainty little lunch that she placed on the veranda table; and then she and Granny Moreland talked, until the visitor said that she must go. The Girl went with her to the little bridge crossing Singing Water on the north. There the old lady took her hand.
“Honey,” she said, “I’m goin’ to tell you somethin’. I am so happy I can purt near fly. Last night I was comin’ down the pike over there chasin’ home a contrary old gander of mine, and I looked over on your land and I see David settin’ on a log with his head between his hands a lookin’ like grim death, if I ever see it. My heart plum stopped. Says I, `she’s a failure! She’s a bustin’ the boy’s heart! I’ll go straight over and tell her so.’ I didn’t dare bespeak him, but I was on nettles all night. I jest laid a-studyin’ and a-studyin’, and I says, `Come mornin’ I’ll go straight and give her a curry- combin’ that’ll do her good.’ And I started a-feelin’ pretty grim, and here you came to meet me, and wiped it all out of my heart in a flash. It did look like the boy was grievin’; but I know now he was jest thinkin’ up what to put together to take the ache out of some poor old carcass like mine. It never could have been about you. Like a half blind old fool I thought the boy was sufferin’, and here he was only studyin’! Like as not he was thinkin’ what to do next to show you how he loves you. What an old silly I was! I’ll sleep like a log to-night to pay up for it. Good-bye, honey! You better go back and lay down a spell. You do look mortal tired.”
The Girl said good-bye and staggering a few steps sank on a log and sat staring at the sky.
“Oh he was suffering, and about me!” she gasped. A chill began to shake her and feverish blood to race through her veins. “He does and gives everything; I do and give nothing! Oh why didn’t I stay at Uncle Henry’s until it ended? It wouldn’t have been so bad as this. What will I do? Oh what will I do? Oh mother, mother! if I’d only had the courage you did.”
She arose and staggered up the hill, passed the cabin and went to the oak. There she sank shivering to earth, and laid her face among the mosses. The frightened Harvester found her at almost dusk when he came from the city with the Dutch dishes, and helped a man launch a gay little motor boat for her on the lake.
“Why Ruth! Ruth-girl!” he exclaimed, kneeling beside her.
She lifted a strained, distorted face.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me!” she cried. “It is not true that I am better. I am not! I am worse! I never will be better. And before I go I’ve got to tell you of the debt I owe; then you will hate me, and then I will be glad! Glad, I tell you! Glad! When you despise me? then I can go, and know that some day you will love a girl worthy of you. Oh I want you to hate me I am fit for nothing else.”
She fell forward sobbing wildly and the Harvester tried in vain to quiet her. At last he said, “Well then tell me, Ruth. Remember I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I will believe nothing against you, not even from your own lips, when you are feverish and excited as now, but if it will quiet you, tell me and have it over. See, I will sit here and listen, and when you have finished I’ll pick you up and carry you to your room, and I am not sure but I will kiss you over and over. What is it you want to tell me, Ruth?”
She sat up panting and pushed back the heavy coils of hair.
“I’ve got to begin away at the beginning to make you see,” she said. “The first thing I can remember is a small, such a small room, and mother sewing and sometimes a man I called father. He was like Henry Jameson made over tall and smooth, and more, oh, much more heartless! He was gone long at a time, and always we had most to eat, and went oftener to the parks, and were happiest with him away. When I was big enough to understand, mother told me that she had met him and cared for him when she was an inexperienced girl. She must have been very, very young, for she was only a girl as I first remember her, and oh! so lovely, but with the saddest face I ever saw. She said she had a good home and every luxury, and her parents adored her; but they knew life and men, and they would not allow him in their home, and so she left it with him, and he married her and tried to force them to accept him, and they would not. At first she bore it. Later she found him out, and appealed to them, but they were away or would not forgive, and she was a proud thing, and would not beg more after she had said she was wrong, and would they take her back.
“I grew up and we were girls together. We embroidered, and I drew, and sometimes we had little treats and good times, and my father did not come often, and we got along the best we could. Always it was worse on her, because she was not so strong as I, and her heart was secretly breaking for her mother, and she was afraid he would come back any hour. She was tortured that she could not educate me more than to put me through the high school. She wore herself out doing that, but she was wild for me to be reared and trained right. So every day she crouched over delicate laces and embroidery, and before and after school I carried it and got more, and in vacation we worked together. But living grew higher, and she became ill, and could not work, and I hadn’t her skill, and the drawings didn’t bring much, and I’d no tools—-”
“Ruth, for mercy sake let me take you in my arms. If you’ve got to tell this to find peace, let me hold you while you do it.”
“Never again,” said the Girl. “You won’t want to in a minute. You must hear this, because I can’t bear it any longer, and it isn’t fair to let you grieve and think me worth loving. Anyway, I couldn’t earn what she did, and I was afraid, for a great city is heartless to the poor. One morning she fainted and couldn’t get up. I can see the awful look in her eyes now. She knew what was coming. I didn’t. I tried to be brave and to work. Oh it’s no use to go on with that! It was just worse and worse. She was lovely and delicate, she was my mother, and I adored her. Oh Man! You won’t judge harshly?”
“No!” cried the Harvester, “I won’t judge at all, Ruth. I see now. Get it over if you must tell me.”
“One day she had been dreadfully ill for a long time and there was no food or work or money, and the last scrap was pawned, and she simply would not let me notify the charities or tell me who or where her people were. She said she had sinned against them and broken their hearts, and probably they were dead, and I was desperate. I walked all day from house to house where I had delivered work, but it was no use; no one wanted anything I could do, and I went back frantic, and found her gnawing her fingers and gibbering in delirium. She did not know me, and for the first time she implored me for food.
“Then I locked the door and went on the street and I asked a woman. She laughed and said she’d report me and I’d be locked up for begging. Then I saw a man I passed sometimes. I thought he lived close. I went straight to him, and told him my mother was very ill, and asked him to help her. He told me to go to the proper authorities. I told him I didn’t know who they were or where, and I had no money and she was a woman of refinement, and never would forgive me. I offered, if he would come to see her, get her some beef tea, and take care of her while she lived, that afterward—-”
The Girl’s frail form shook in a storm of sobs. At last she lifted her eyes to the Harvester’s. “There must be a God, and somewhere at the last extremity He must come in. The man went with me, and he was a young doctor who had an office a few blocks away, and he knew what to do. He hadn’t much himself, but for several weeks he divided and she was more comfortable and not hungry when she went. When it was over I dressed her the best I could in my graduation dress, and folded her hands, and kissed her good-bye, and told him I was ready to fulfill my offer; and oh Man!—-He said he had forgotten!”
“God!” panted the Harvester.
“We couldn’t bury her there. But I remembered my father had said he had a brother in the country, and once he had been to see us when I was very little, and the doctor telegraphed him, and he answered that his wife was sick, and if I was able to work I could come, and he would bury her, and give me a home. The doctor borrowed the money and bought the coffin you found her in. He couldn’t do better or he would, for he learned to love her. He paid our fares and took us to the train. Before I started I went on my knees to him and worshipped him as the Almighty, and I am sure I told him that I always would be indebted to him, and any time he required I would pay. The rest you know.”
“Have you heard from him, Ruth?”
“No.”
“It WAS yourself the other day on the bridge?”
“Yes.”
“Did he love you?”
“Not that I know of. No! Nobody but you would love a girl who appeared as I did then.”
The Harvester strove to keep a set face, but his lips drew back from his teeth.
“Ruth, do you love him?”
“Love!” cried the Girl. “A pale, expressionless word! Adore would come closer! I tell you she was delirious with hunger, and he fed her. She was suffering horrors and he eased the pain. She was lifeless, and he kept her poor tired body from the dissecting table. I would have fulfilled my offer, and gone straight into the lake, but he spared me, Man! He spared me! Worship is a good word. I think I worship him. I tried to tell you. Before you got that license, I wanted you to know.”
“I remember,” said the Harvester. “But no man could have guessed that a girl with your face had agony like that in her heart, not even when he read deep trouble there.”
“I should have told you then! I should have forced you to hear! I was wild with fear of Uncle Henry, and I had nowhere to go. Now you know! Go away, and the end will come soon.”
The Harvester arose and walked a few steps toward the lake, where he paused stricken, but fighting for control. For him the light had gone out. There was nothing beyond. The one passion of his life must live on, satisfied with a touch from lips that loved another man. Broken sobbing came to him. He did not even have time to suffer. Stumblingly he turned and going to the Girl he picked her up, and sat on the bench holding her closely.
“Stop it, Ruth!” he said unsteadily. “Stop this! Why should you suffer so? I simply will not have it. I will save you against yourself and the world. You shall have all happiness yet; I swear it, my girl! You are all right. He was a noble man, and he spared you because he loved you, of course. I will make you well and rosy again, and then I will go and find him, and arrange everything for you. I have spared you, too, and if he doesn’t want you to remain here with me, Mrs. Carey would be glad to have you until I can free you. Judges are human. It will be a simple matter. Hush, Ruth, listen to me! You shall be free! At once, if you say so! You shall have him! I will go and bring him here, and I will go away. Ruth, darling, stop crying and hear me. You will grow better, now that you have told me. It is this secret that has made you feverish and kept you ill. Ruth, you shall have happiness yet, if I have got to circle the globe and scale the walls of Heaven to find it for you.”
She struggled from his arms and ran toward the lake. When the Harvester caught her, she screamed wildly, and struck him with her thin white hands. He lifted and carried her to the laboratory, where he gave her a few drops from a bottle and soon she became quiet. Then he took her to the sunshine room, laid her on the bed, locked the screens and her door, called Belshazzar to watch, and ran to the stable. A few minutes later with distended nostrils and indignant heart Betsy, under the flail of an unsparing lash, pounded down the hill toward Onabasha.
CHAPTER XVII
LOVE INVADES SCIENCE
The Harvester placed the key in the door and turned to Doctor Carey and the nurse.
“I drugged her into unconsciousness before I left, but she may have returned, at least partially. Miss Barnet, will you kindly see if she is ready for the doctor? You needn’t be in the least afraid. She has no strength, even in delirium.”
He opened the door, his head averted, and the nurse hurried into the room. The Girl on the bed was beginning to toss, moan, and mutter. Skilful hands straightened her, arranged the covers, and the doctor was called. In the living-room the Harvester paced in misery too deep for consecutive thought. As consciousness returned, the Girl grew wilder, and the nurse could not follow the doctor’s directions and care for her. Then Doctor Carey called the Harvester. He went in and sitting beside the bed took the feverish, wildly beating hands in his strong, cool ones, and began stroking them and talking.
“Easy, honey,” he murmured softly. “Lie quietly while I tell you. You mustn’t tire yourself. You are wasting strength you need to fight the fever. I’ll hold your hands tight, I’ll stroke your head for you. Lie quietly, dear, and Doctor Carey and his head nurse are going to make you well in a little while. That’s right! Let me do the moving; you lie and rest. Only rest and rest, until all the pain is gone, and the strong days come, and they are going to bring great joy, love, and peace, to my dear, dear girl. Even the moans take strength. Try just to lie quietly and rest. You can’t hear Singing Water if you don’t listen, Ruth.”
“She doesn’t realize that it is you or know what you say, David,” said Doctor Carey gently.
“I understand,” said the Harvester. “But if you will observe, you will see that she is quiet when I stroke her head and hands, and if you notice closely you will grant that she gets a word occasionally. If it is the right one, it helps. She knows my voice and touch, and she is less nervous and afraid with me. Watch a minute!”
The Harvester took both of the Girl’s fluttering hands in one of his and with long, light strokes gently brushed them, and then her head, and face, and then her hands again, and in a low, monotonous, half sing-song voice he crooned, “Rest, Ruth, rest! It is night now. The moon is bridging Loon Lake, and the whip-poor-will is crying. Listen, dear, don’t you hear him crying? Still, Girl, still! Just as quiet! Lie so quietly. The whip-poor-will is going to tell his mate he loves her, loves her so dearly. He is going to tell her, when you listen. That’s a dear girl. Now he is beginning. He says, `Come over the lake and listen to the song I’m singing to you, my mate, my mate, my dear, dear mate,’ and the big night moths are flying; and the katydids are crying, positive and sure they are crying, a thing that’s past denying. Hear them crying? And the ducks are cheeping, soft little murmurs while they’re sleeping, sleeping. Resting, softly resting! Gently, Girl, gently! Down the hill comes Singing Water, laughing, laughing! Don’t you hear it laughing? Listen to the big owl courting; it sees the coon out hunting, it hears the mink softly slipping, slipping, where the dews of night are dripping. And the little birds are sleeping, so still they are sleeping. Girls should be a-sleeping, like the birds a-sleeping, for to-morrow joy comes creeping, joy and life and love come creeping, creeping to my Girl. Gently, gently, that’s a dear girl, gently! Tired hands rest easy, tired head lies still! That’s the way to rest—-”
On and on the even voice kept up the story. All over and around the lake, the length of Singing Water, the marsh folk found voices to tell of their lives, where it was a story of joy, rest, and love. Up the hill ranged the Harvester, through the forest where the squirrels slept, the owl hunted, the fire-flies flickered, the fairies squeezed flower leaves to make colour to paint the autumn foliage, and danced on toadstool platforms. Just so long as his voice murmured and his touch continued, so long the Girl lay quietly, and the medicines could act. But no other touch would serve, and no other voice would answer. If the harvester left the room five minutes to show the nurse how to light the fire, and where to find things, he returned to tossing, restless delirium.
“It’s magic David,” said Doctor Carey. “Magic!”
“It is love,” said the Harvester. “Even crazed with fever, she recognizes its voice and touch. You’ve got your work cut out, Doc. Roll your sleeves and collect your wits. Set your heart on winning. There is one thing shall not happen. Get that straight in your mind, right now. And you too, Miss Barnet! There is nothing like fighting for a certainty. You may think the Girl is desperately ill, and she is, but make up your minds that you are here to fight for her life, and to save it. Save, do you understand? If she is to go, I don’t need either of you. I can let her do that myself. You are here on a mission of life. Keep it before you! Life and health for this Girl is the prize you are going to win. Dig into it, and I’ll pay the bills, and extra besides. If money is any incentive, I’ll give you all I’ve got for life and health for the Girl. Are you doing all you know?”
“I certainly am, David.”
“But when day comes you’ll have to go back to the hospital and we may not know how to meet crises that will arise. What then? We should have a competent physician in the house until this fever breaks.”
“I had thought of that, David. I will arrange to send one of the men from the hospital who will be able to watch symptoms and come for me when needed.”
“Won’t do!” said the Harvester calmly. “She has no strength for waiting. You are to come when you can, and remain as long as possible. The case is yours; your decisions go, but I will select your assistant. I know the man I want.”
“Who is he, David?”
“I’ll tell you when I learn whether I can get him. Now I want you to give the Girl the strongest sedative you dare, take off your coat, roll your sleeves, and see how well you can imitate my voice, and how much you have profited by listening to my song. In other words, before day calls, I want you to take my place so successfully that you deceive her, and give me time to make a trip to town. There are a few things that must be done, and I think I can work faster in the night. Will you?”
Doctor Carey bent over the bed. Gently he slipped a practised hand under the Harvester’s and made the next stroke down the white arm. Gradually he took possession of the thin hands and his touch fell on the masses of dark hair. As the Harvester arose the doctor took the seat.
“You go on!” he ordered gruffly. “I’ll do better alone.”
The Harvester stepped back. The doctor’s touch was easy and the Girl lay quietly for an instant, then she moved restlessly.
“You must be still now,” he said gently. “The moon is up, the lake is all white, and the birds are flying all around. Lie still or you’ll make yourself worse. Stiller than that! If you don’t you can’t hear things courting. The ducks are quacking, the bull frogs are croaking, and everything. Lie still, still, I tell you!”
“Oh good Lord, Doc!” groaned the Harvester in desperation.
The Girl wrenched her hands free and her head rolled on the pillow.
“Harvester! Harvester!” she cried.
The doctor started to arise.
“Sit still!” commanded the Harvester. “Take her hands and go to work, idiot! Give her more sedative, and tell her I’m coming. That’s the word, if she realizes enough to call for me.”
The doctor possessed himself of the flying hands, and gently held and stroked them.
“The Harvester is coming,” he said. “Wait just a minute, he’s on the way. He is coming. I think I hear him. He will be here soon, very soon now. That’s a good girl! Lie still for David. He won’t like it if you toss and moan. Just as still, lie still so I can listen. I can’t tell whether he is coming until you are quiet.”
Then he said to the Harvester, “You see, I’ve got it now. I can manage her, but for pity sake, hurry man! Take the car! Jim is asleep on the back seat—-Yes, yes, Girl! I’m listening for him. I think I hear him! I think he’s coming!”
Here and there a word penetrated, and she lay more quietly, but not in the rest to which the Harvester had lulled her.
“Hurry man!” groaned the doctor in a whispered aside, and the Harvester ran to the car, awakened the driver and told him he had a clear road to Onabasha, to speed up.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
“Dickson, of the First National.”
In a few minutes the car stopped before the residence and the Harvester made an attack on the front door. Presently the man came.
“Excuse me for routing you out at this time of night,” said the Harvester, “but it’s a case of necessity. I have an automobile here. I want you to go to the bank with me, and get me an address from your draft records. I know the rules, but I want the name of my wife’s Chicago physician. She is delirious, and I must telephone him.”
The cashier stepped out and closed the door.
“Nine chances out of ten it will be in the vault,” he said.
“That leaves one that it won’t,” answered the Harvester. “Sometimes I’ve looked in when passing in the night, and I’ve noticed that the books are not always put away. I could see some on the rack to-night. I think it is there.”
It was there, and the Harvester ordered the driver to hurry him to the telephone exchange, then take the cashier home and return and wait. He called the Chicago Information office.
“I want Dr. Frank Harmon, whose office address is 1509 Columbia Street. I don’t know the ‘phone number.”
Then came a long wait, and after twenty minutes the blessed buzzing whisper, “Here’s your party.”
“Doctor Harmon?”
“Yes.”
“You remember Ruth Jameson, the daughter of a recent patient of yours?”
“I do.”
“Well my name is Langston. The Girl is in my home and care. She is very ill with fever, and she has much confidence in you. This is Onabasha, on the Grand Rapids and Indiana. You take the Pennsylvania at seven o’clock, telegraph ahead that you are coming so that they will make connection for you, change at twelve- twenty at Fort Wayne, and I will meet you here. You will find your ticket and a check waiting you at the Chicago depot. Arrange to remain a week at least. You will be paid all expenses and regular prices for your time. Will you come?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Make no failure. Good-bye.”
Then the Harvester left an order with the telephone company to run a wire to Medicine Woods the first thing in the morning, and drove to the depot to arrange for the ticket and check. In less than an hour he was holding the Girl’s hands and crooning over her.
“Jerusalem!” said Doctor Carey, rising stiffly. “I’d rather undertake to cut off your head and put it back on than to tackle another job like that. She’s quite delirious, but she has flashes, and at such times she knows whom she wants; the rest of the time it’s a jumble and some of it is rather gruesome. She’s seen dreadful illness, hunger, and there’s a debt she’s wild about. I told you something was back of this. You’ve got to find out and set her mind at ease.”
“I know all about it,” said the Harvester patiently between crooning sentences to the Girl. “But the crash came before I could convince her that it was all right and I could fix everything for her easily. If she only could understand me!”
“Did you find your man?”
“Yes. He will be here this afternoon.”
“Quick work!”
“This takes quick work.”
“Do you know anything about him?”
“Yes. He is a young fellow, just starting out. He is a fine, straight, manly man. I don’t know how much he knows, but it will be enough to recognize your ability and standing, and to do what you tell him. I have perfect confidence in him. I want you to come back at one, and take my place until I go to meet him.”
`I can bring him out.”
“I have to see him myself. There are a few words to be said before he sees the Girl.”
“David, what are you up to?”
“Being as honourable as I can. No man gets any too decent, but there is no law against doing as you would be done by, and being as straight as you know how. When I’ve talked to him, I’ll know where I am and I’ll have something to say to you.”
“David, I’m afraid—-”
“Then what do you suppose I am?” said the Harvester. “It’s no use, Doc. Be still and take what comes! The manner in which you meet a crisis proves you a whining cur or a man. I have got lots of respect for a dog, as a dog; but I’ve none for a man as a dog. If you’ve gathered from the Girl’s delirium that I’ve made a mistake, I hope you have confidence enough in me to believe I’ll right it, and take my punishment without whining. Go away, you make her worse. Easy, Girl, the world is all right and every one is sleeping now, so you should be at rest. With the day the doctor will come, the good doctor you know and like, Ruth. You haven’t forgotten your doctor, Ruth? The kind doctor who cared for you. He will make you well, Ruth; well and oh, so happy! Harmon, Harmon, Doctor Harmon is coming to you, Girl, and then you will be so happy!”
“Why you blame idiot!” cried Doctor Carey in a harsh whisper. “Have you lost all the sense you ever had? Stop that gibber! She wants to hear about the birds and Singing Water. Go on with that woods line of talk; she likes that away the best. This stuff is making her restless. See!”
“You mean you are,” said the Harvester wearily. “Please leave us alone. I know the words that will bring comfort. You don’t.”
He began the story all over again, but now there ran through it a continual refrain. “Your doctor is coming, the good doctor you know. He will make you well and strong, and he will make life so lovely for you.”
He was talking without pause or rest when Doctor Carey returned in the afternoon to take his place. He brought Mrs. Carey with him, and she tried a woman’s powers of soothing another woman, and almost drove the Girl to fighting frenzy. So the doctor made another attempt, and the Harvester raced down the hill to the city. He went to the car shed as the train pulled in, and stood at one side while the people hurried through the gate. He was watching for a young man with a travelling bag and perhaps a physician’s satchel, who would be looking for some one.
“I think I’ll know him,” muttered the Harvester grimly. “I think the masculine element in me will pop up strongly and instinctively at the sight of this man who will take my Dream Girl from me. Oh good God! Are You sure You ARE good?”
In his brown khaki trousers and shirt, his head bare, his bronze face limned with agony he made no attempt to conceal, the Harvester, with feet planted firmly, and tightly folded arms, his head tipped slightly to one side, braced himself as he sent his keen gray eyes searching the crowd. Far away he selected his man. He was young, strong, criminally handsome, clean and alert; there was discernible anxiety on his face, and it touched the Harvester’s soul that he was coming just as swiftly as he could force his way. As he passed the gates the Harvester reached his side.
“Doctor Harmon, I think,” he said.
“Yes.”
“This way! If you have luggage, I will send for it later.”
The Harvester hurried to the car.
“Take the shortest cut and cover space,” he said to the driver. The car kept to the speed limit until toward the suburbs.
Doctor Harmon removed his hat, ran his fingers through dark waving hair and yielded his body to the swing of the car. Neither man attempted to talk. Once the Harvester leaned forward and told the driver to stop on the bridge, and then sat silently. As the car slowed down, they alighted.
“Drive on and tell Doc we are here, and will be up soon,” said the Harvester. Then he turned to the stranger. “Doctor Harmon, there’s little time for words. This is my place, and here I grow herbs for medicinal houses.”
“I have heard of you, and heard your stuff recommended,” said the doctor.
“Good!” exclaimed the Harvester. “That saves time. I stopped here to make a required explanation to you. The day you sent Ruth Jameson to Onabasha, I saw her leave the train and recognized in her my ideal woman. I lost her in the crowd and it took some time to locate her. I found her about a month ago. She was miserable. If you saw what her father did to her and her mother in Chicago, you should have seen what his brother was doing here. The end came one day in my presence, when I paid her for ginseng she had found to settle her debt to you. He robbed her by force. I took the money from him, and he threatened her. She was ill then from heat, overwork, wrong food—-every misery you can imagine heaped upon the dreadful conditions in which she came. It had been my intention to court and marry her if I possibly could. That day she had nowhere to go; she was wild with fear; the fever that is scorching her now was in her veins then. I did an insane thing. I begged her to marry me at once and come here for rest and protection. I swore that if she would, she should not be my wife, but my honoured guest, until she learned to love me and released me from my vow. She tried to tell me something; I had no idea it was anything that would make any real difference, and I wouldn’t listen. Last night, when the fever was beginning to do its worst, she told me of your entrance into her life and what it meant to her. Then I saw that I had made a mistake. You were her choice, the man she could love, not me, so I took the liberty of sending for you. I want you to cure her, court her, marry her, and make her happy. God knows she has had her share of suffering. You recognize her as a girl of refinement?”
“I do.”
“You grant that in health she would be lovelier than most women, do you not?”
“She was more beautiful than most in sickness and distress.”
“Good!” cried the Harvester. “She has been here two weeks. I give you my word, my promise to her has been kept faithfully. As soon as I can leave her to attend to it, she shall have her freedom. That will be easy. Will you marry her?”
The doctor hesitated.
“What is it?” asked the Harvester.
“Well to be frank,” said Doctor Harmon, “it is money! I’m only getting a start. I borrowed funds for my schooling and what I used for her. She is in every way attractive enough to be desired by any man, but how am I to provide a home and support her and pay these debts? I’ll try it, but I am afraid it will be taking her back to wrong conditions again.”
“If you knew that she owned a comfortable cottage in the suburbs, where it is cool and clean, and had, say a hundred a month of her own for the coming three years, could you see your way?”
“That would make all the difference in the world. I thought seriously of writing her. I wanted to, but I concluded I’d better work as hard as I could for some practice first, and see if I could make a living for two, before I tried to start anything. I had no idea she would not be comfortably cared for at her uncle’s.”
“I see,” said the Harvester. “If I had kept out, life would have come right for her.”
“On the contrary,” said the doctor, “it appears very probable that she would not be living.”
“It is understood between us, then, that you will court and marry her so soon as she is strong enough?”
“It is understood,” agreed the doctor.
“Will you honour me by taking my hand?” asked the Harvester. “I scarcely had hoped to find so much of a man. Now come to your room and get ready for the stiffest piece of work you ever attempted.”
The Harvester led the way to the guest chamber over looking the lake, and installed its first occupant. Then he hurried to the Girl. The doctor was holding her head and one hand, his wife the other, and the nurse her feet. It took the Harvester ten strenuous minutes to make his touch and presence known and to work quiet. All over he began crooning his story of rest, joy, and love. He broke off with a few words to introduce Doctor Harmon to the Careys and the nurse, and then calmly continued while the other men stood and watched him.
“Seems rather cut out for it,” commented Doctor Harmon.
“I never yet have seen him attempt anything that he didn’t appear cut out for,” answered Doctor Carey.
“Will she know me?” inquired the young man, approaching the bed.
When the Girl’s eyes fell on him she grew rigid and lay staring at him. Suddenly with a wild cry she struggled to rise.
“You have come!” she cried. “Oh I knew you would come! I felt you would come! I cannot pay you now! Oh why didn’t you come sooner?”
The young doctor leaned over and took one of the white hands from the Harvester, stroking it gently.
“Why you did pay, Ruth! How did you come to forget? Don’t you remember the draft you sent me? I didn’t come for money; I came to visit you, to nurse you, to do all I can to make you well. I am going to take care of you now so finely you’ll be out on the lake and among the flowers soon. I’ve got some medicine that makes every one well. It’s going to make you strong, and there’s something else that’s going to make you happy; and me, I’m going to be the proudest man alive.”
He reached over and took possession of the other hand, stroking them softly, and the Girl lay tensely staring at him and gradually yielding to his touch and voice. The Harvester arose, and passing around the bed, he placed a chair for Doctor Harmon and motioning for Doctor Carey left the room. He went to the shore to his swimming pool, wearily dropped on the bench, and stared across the water.
“Well thank God it worked, anyway!” he muttered.
“What’s that popinjay doing here?” thundered Doctor Carey. “Got some medicine that cures everybody. Going to make her well, is he? Make the cows, and the ducks, and the chickens, and the shitepokes well, and happy—-no name for it! After this we are all going to be well and happy! You look it right now, David! What under Heaven have you done?”
“Left my wife with the man she loves, and to whom I release her, my dear friend,” said the Harvester. “And it’s so easy for me that you needn’t give making it a little harder, any thought.”
“David, forgive me!” cried Doctor Carey. “I don’t understand this. I’m almost insane. Will you tell me what it means?”
“Means that I took advantage of the Girl’s illness, utter loneliness, and fear, and forced her into marrying me for shelter and care, when she loved and wanted another man, who was preparing to come to her. He is her Chicago doctor, and fine in every fibre, as you can see. There is only one thing on earth for me to do, and that is to get out of their way, and I’ll do it as soon as she is well; but I vow I won’t leave her poor, tired body until she is, not even for him. I thought sure I could teach her to love me! Oh but this is bitter, Doc!”
“You are a consummate fool to bring him here!” cried Doctor Carey. “If she is too sick to realize the situation now, she will be different when she is normal again. Any sane girl that wouldn’t love you, David, ain’t fit for anything!”
“Yes, I’m a whale of a lover!” said the Harvester grimly. “Nice mess I’ve made of it. But there is no real harm done. Thank God, Harmon was not the only white man.”
“David, what do you mean?”
“Is it between us, Doc?”
“Yes.”
“For all time?”
“It is.”
The Harvester told him. He ended, “Give the fellow his dues, Doc. He had her at his mercy, utterly alone and unprotected, in a big city. There was not a living soul to hold him to account. He added to his burdens, borrowed more money, and sent her here. He thought she was coming to the country where she would be safe and well cared for until he could support her. I did the remainder. Now I must undo it, that’s all! But you have got to go in there and practise with him. You’ve got to show him every courtesy of the profession. You must go a little over the rules, and teach him all you can. You will have to stifle your feelings, and be as much of a man as it is in you to be, at your level best.”
“I’m no good at stifling my feelings!”
“Then you’ll have to learn,” said the Harvester. “If you’d lived through my years of repression in the woods you’d do the fellow credit. As I see it, his side of this is nearly as fine as you make it. I tell you she was utterly stricken, alone, and beautiful. She sought his assistance. When the end came he thought only of her. Won’t you give a young fellow in a place like Chicago some credit for that? Can’t you get through you what it means?”
Doctor Carey stood frowning in deep thought, but the lines of his face gradually changed.
“I suppose I’ve got to stomach him,” he said.
The nurse came down the gravel path.
“Mr. Langston, Doctor Harmon asked me to call you,” she said.
The Harvester arose and went to the sunshine room.
“What does he want, Molly?” asked the doctor.
“Wants to turn over his job,” chuckled the nurse. “He held it about seven minutes in peace, and then she began to fret and call for the Harvester. He just sweat blood to pacify her, but he couldn’t make it. He tried to hold her, to make love to her, and goodness knows what, but she struggled and cried, `David,’ until he had to give it up and send me.”
“Molly,” said Doctor Carey, “we’ve known the Harvester a long time, and he is our friend, isn’t he?”
“Of course!” said the nurse.
“We know this is the first woman he ever loved, probably ever will, as he is made. Now we don’t like this stranger butting in here; we resent it, Molly. We are on the side of our friend, and we want him to win. I’ll grant that this fellow is fine, and that he has done well, but what’s the use in tearing up arrangements already made? And so suitable! Now Molly, you are my best nurse, and a good reliable aid in times like this. I gave you instructions an hour ago. I’ll add this to them. YOU ARE ON THE HARVESTER’S SIDE. Do you understand? In this, and the days to come, you’ll have a thousand chances to put in a lick with a sick woman. Put them in as I tell you.”
“Yes, Doctor Carey.”
“And Molly! You are something besides my best nurse. You’re a smashing pretty girl, and your occupation should make you especially attractive to a young doctor. I’m sure this fellow is all right, so while you are doing your best with your patient for the Harvester, why not have a try for yourself with the doctor? It couldn’t do any harm, and it might straighten out matters. Anyway, you think it over.”
The nurse studied his face silently for a time, and then she began to laugh softly.
“He is up there doing his best with her,” she said.
The doctor threw out his hands in a gesture of disdain, and the nurse laughed again; but her cheeks were pink and her eyes flashing as she returned to duty.
“Random shot, but it might hit something, you never can tell,” commented the doctor.
The Harvester entered the Girl’s room and stood still. She was fretting and raising her temperature rapidly. Before he reached the door his heart gave one great leap at the sound of her voice calling his name. He knew what to do, but he hesitated.
“She seems to have become accustomed to you, and at times does not remember me,” said Doctor Harmon. “I think you had better take her again until she grows quiet.”
The Harvester stepped to the bed and looked the doctor in the eye.
“I am afraid I left out one important feature in our little talk on the bridge,” he said. “I neglected to tell you that in your fight for this woman’s life and love you have a rival. I am he. She is my wife, and with the last fibre of my being I adore her. If you win, and she wants you to take her away, I will help you; but my heart goes with her forever. If by any chance it should occur that I have been mistaken or misinterpreted her delirium or that she has been deceived and finds she prefers me and Medicine Woods, to you and Chicago, when she has had opportunity to measure us man against man, you must understand that I claim her. So I say to you frankly, take her if you can, but don’t imagine that I am passive. I’ll help you if I know she wants you, but I fight you every inch of the way. Only it has got to be square and open. Do you understand?”
“You are certainly sufficiently clear.”
“No man who is half a man sees the last chance of happiness go out of his life without putting up the stiffest battle he knows,” said the Harvester grimly. “Ruth- girl, you are raising the fever again. You must be quiet.”
With infinite tenderness he possessed himself of her hands and began stroking her hair, and in a low and soothing voice the story of the birds, flowers, lake, and woods went on. To keep it from growing monotonous the Harvester branched out and put in everything he knew. In the days that followed he held a position none could take from him. While the doctors fought the fever, he worked for rest and quiet, and soothed the tortured body as best he could, that the medicines might act.
But the fever was stubborn, and the remedies were slow; and long before the dreaded coming day the doctors and nurse were quietly saying to each other that when the crisis came the heart would fail. There was no vitality to sustain life. But they did not dare tell the Harvester. Day and night he sat beside the maple bed or stretched sleeping a few minutes on the couch while the Girl slept; and with faith never faltering and courage unequalled, he warned them to have their remedies and appliances ready.
“I don’t say it’s going to be easy,” he said. “I just merely state that it must be done. And I’ll also mention that, when the hour comes, the man who discovers that he could do something if he had digitalis, or a remedy he should have had ready and has forgotten, that man had better keep out of my sight. Make your preparations now. Talk the case over. Fill your hypodermics. Clean your air pumps. Get your hot-water bottles ready. Have system. Label your stuff large and set it conveniently. You see what is coming, be prepared!”
One day, while the Girl lay in a half-drugged, feverish sleep, the Harvester went for a swim. He dressed a little sooner than was expected and in crossing the living-room he heard Doctor Harmon say to Doctor Carey on the veranda, “What are we going to do with him when the end comes?”
The Harvester stepped to the door. “That won’t be the question,” he said grimly. “It will be what will HE do with us?”
Then, with an almost imperceptible movement, he caught Doctor Harmon at the waist line, and lifted and dangled him as a baby, and then stood him on the floor. “Didn’t hardly expect that much muscle, did you?” he inquired lightly. “And I’m not in what you could call condition, either. Instead of wasting any time on fool questions like that, you two go over your stuff and ask each other, have we got every last appliance known to physics and surgery? Have we got duplicates on hand in case we break delicate instruments like hypodermic syringes and that sort of thing? Engage yourselves with questions pertaining to life; that is your business. Instead of planning what you’ll do in failure, bolster your souls against it. Granny Moreland beats you two put together in grip and courage.”