The Harvester Part 54

"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 G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+pping 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+rt 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."