The Harvester Part 53

"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 s.h.i.+ny 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 pet.i.tion 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 G.o.d'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.