The Harvester bent over her to straighten the cover, when suddenly she reached both arms around his neck, and gripped him with all her strength.
“Thank you!” she said.
“May I hold you to-morrow?” whispered the Harvester, emboldened by this.
“Please do,” said the Girl.
The Harvester, with dog to heel, went to the oak to think.
“Belshazzar, kommen Sie!” said the man, dropping on the seat and holding out his hand. The dog laid his muzzle in the firm grip.
“Bel,” said the Harvester, “I am all at sea. One day I think maybe I have a little chance, the next—none at all. I had an hour of solid comfort to-day, now I’m in the sweat box again. It’s a little selfish streak in me, Bel, that hates to see Harmon go into the hospital and take my place with the Careys. They are my best and only friends. He is young, social, handsome, and will be ever present. In three months he will become so popular that I might as well be off the earth. I wish I didn’t think it, but I’m so small that I do. And then there is my Dream Girl, Bel. The girl you found for me, old fellow. There never was another like her, and she has my heart for all time. And he has hers. That hospital plan is the best thing in the world for her. It will keep her where Carey can have an eye on her, where the air is better, where she can have company without the city crush, where she is close the country, and a good living is assured. Bel, it’s the nicest arrangement you ever saw for every one we know, except us.”
The Harvester laughed shortly. “Bel,” he said, “tell me! If a man lived a hundred years, could he have the heartache all the way? Seems like I’ve had it almost that long now. In fact, I’ve had it such ages I’d be lonesome without it. This is some more of my very own medicine, so I shouldn’t make a wry face over taking it. I knew what would happen when I sent for him, and I didn’t hesitate. I must not now.
“Only I got to stop one thing, Bel. I told him I would play square, and I have. But here it ends. After this, I must step back and be big brother. Lots of fun in this brother business, Bel. But maybe I am cut out for it. Anyway it’s written! But if it is, how did she come to allow me such privileges as I took to-day? That wasn’t professional by any means. It was just the stiffest love-making I knew how to do, Bel, and she didn’t object by the quiver of an eyelash. God knows I was watching closely enough for any sign that I was distasteful. And I might have been well enough. Rough, herb-stained old clothes, unshaven, everything to offend a dainty girl. She said I might hold her again to-morrow. And, Bel, what the nation did she hug me like that for, if she’s going to marry him? Boy, I see my way clear to an hour more. While I’m at it, just to surprise myself, I believe I’ll take it like other men. I think I’ll go on a little bender, and make what probably will be the last day a plumb good one. Something worth remembering is better than nothing at all, Bel! He hasn’t told me that he has won. She didn’t SAY she was going to marry him, and she did say he hurt her, and she wanted me. Bel, how about the grimness of it, if she should marry him and then discover that he hurts her, and she wants me. Lord God Almighty, if you have any mercy at all, never put me up against that,” prayed the Harvester, “for my heart is water where she is concerned.”
The Harvester arose, and going to the lake, he cut an arm load of big, pink mallows, covered each mound with fresh flowers, whistled to the dog, and went to his work. Many things had accumulated, and he cleaned the barn, carried herbs from the dry-house to the store-room, and put everything into shape. Close noon the next day he went to Onabasha, and was gone three hours. He came back barbered in the latest style, and carrying a big bundle. When the hour for arranging the bed came, he was yet in his room, but he sent word he would be there in a second.
As he crossed the living-room he pulled a chair to the veranda and placed a footstool before it. Then he stepped into the sunshine room. A quizzical expression crossed the face of Doctor Harmon as he closed the book he was reading aloud to the Girl and arose. Wholly unembarrassed the Harvester smiled.
“Have I got this rigging anywhere near right?” he inquired.
“David, what have you done?” gasped the amazed Girl.
“I didn’t feel anywhere near up to the ‘mark of my high calling’ yesterday,” quoted the Harvester. “I don’t know how I appear, but I’m clean as shaving, soap, and hot water will make me, and my clothing will not smell offensively. Now come out of that bed for a happy hour. Where is that big coverlet? You are going on the veranda to-day.”
“You look just like every one else,” complained Doctor Harmon.
“You look perfectly lovely,” declared the Girl.
“The swale sends you this invitation to come and see star-shine at the foot of mullein hill,” said the Harvester, offering a bouquet. It was a loose bunch of long-stemmed, delicate flowers, each an inch across, and having five pearl-white petals lightly striped with pale green. Five long gold anthers arose, and at their base gold stamens and a green pistil. The leaves were heart-shaped and frosty, whitish-green, resembling felt. The Harvester bent to offer them.
“Have some Grass of Parnassus, my dear,” he said.
The Girl waved them away. “Go stand over there by the door and slowly turn around. I want to see you.”
The Harvester obeyed. He was freshly and carefully shaven. His hair was closely cropped at the base of the head, long, heavy, and slightly waving on top. He wore a white silk shirt, with a rolling collar and tie, white trousers, belt, hose, and shoes, and his hands were manicured with care.
“Have I made a mess of it, or do I appear anything like other men?” he asked, eagerly.
The Girl lifted her eyes to Doctor Harmon and smiled.
“Do you observe anything messy?” she inquired.
“You needn’t fish for compliments quite so obviously,” he answered. “I’ll pay them without being asked. I do not. He is quite correct, and infinitely better looking than the average. Distinguished is a proper word for the gentleman in my opinion. But why, in Heaven’s name, have we never had the pleasure of seeing you thus before?”
“Look here, Doc,” said the Harvester, “do you mean that you enjoy looking at me merely because I am dressed this way?”
“I do indeed,” said the doctor. “It is good to see you with the garb of work laid aside, and the stamp of cleanliness and ease upon you.”
“By gum, that is rubbing it in a little too rough!” cried the Harvester. “I bathe oftener than you do. My clothing is always clean when I start out. Of course, in my work I come hourly in contact with muck, water, and herb juices.”
“It’s understood that is unavoidable,” said Doctor Harmon.
“And if cleanliness is made an issue, I’d rather roll in any of it than put my finger tips into the daily work of a surgeon,” added the Harvester, and the Girl giggled.
“That’s enough Medicine Man!” she said. “You did not make a ‘mess’ of it, or anything else you ever attempted. As for appearing like other men, thank Heaven, you do not. You look just a whole world bigger and better and finer. Come, carry me out quickly. I am wild to go. Please put my lovely flowers in water, Molly, only give me a few to hold.”
The Harvester arranged the pink coverlet, picked up the Girl, and carried her to the living-room.
“We will rest here a little,” he said, “and then, if you feel equal to it, we will try the veranda. Are you easy now?”
She nestled her face against the soft shirt and smiled at him. She lifted her hand, laid it on his smooth cheek and then the crisp hair.
“Oh Man!” she cried. “Thank God you didn’t give me up, too! I want life! I want LIFE!”
The Harvester tightened his grip just a trifle. “Then I thank God, too,” he said. “Can you tell me how you are, dear? Is there any difference?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I grow tired lying so long, but there isn’t the ghost of an ache in my bones. I can just feel pure, delicious blood running in my veins. My hands and feet are always warm, and my head cool.”
“Yes, I am all over new inside and out. I want to shout, run, sing, and swim. Oh I’d give anything to have you carry me down and dip me in the lake right now.”
“Soon, Girl! That will come soon,” prophesied the Harvester.
“I scarcely can wait. And you did say a saddle, didn’t you? Won’t it be great to come galloping up the levee, when the leaves are red and the frost is in the air. Oh am I going fast enough?”
“Much faster than I expected,” said the Harvester. “You are surprising all of us, me most of any. Ruth, you almost make me hope that you regard this as home. Honey, you are thinking a little of me these days?”
The hand that had fallen from his hair lay on his shoulder. Now it slid around his neck, and gripped him with all its strength.
“Heaps and heaps!” she said. “All I get a chance to, for being bothered and fussed over, and everlastingly read mushy stuff that’s intended for some one else. Please take me to the veranda now; I want to tell you something.”
His head swam, but the Harvester set his feet firmly, arose, and carried his Dream Girl back to outdoor life. When he reached the chair, she begged him to go a few steps farther to the bench on the lake shore.
“I am afraid,” said the man.
“It’s so warm. There can’t be any difference in the air. Just a minute.”
The Harvester pushed open the screen, went to the bench, and seating himself, drew the cover closely around her.
“Don’t speak a word for a long time,” he said. “Just rest. If I tire you too much and spoil everything, I will be desperate.”
He clasped her to him, laid his cheek against her hair, and his lips on her forehead. He held her hand and kissed it over and over, and again he watched and could find no resentment. The cool, pungent breeze swept from the lake, and the voices of wild life chattered at their feet. Sometimes the water folks splashed, while a big black and gold butterfly mistook the Girl’s dark hair for a perching place and settled on it, slowly opening its wonderful wings.
“Lie quietly, Girl,” whispered the Harvester. “You are wearing a living jewel, an ornament above price, on your hair. Maybe you can see it when it goes. There!”
“Oh I did!” she cried. “How I love it here! Before long may I lie in the dining-room window a while so I can see the water. I like the hill, but I love the lake more.”
“Now if you just would love me,” said the Harvester, “you would have all Medicine Woods in your heart.”
“Don’t hurry me so!” said the Girl. “You gave me a year; and it’s only a few weeks, and I’ve not been myself, and I’m not now. I mustn’t make any mistake, and all I know for sure is that I want you most, and I can rest best with you, and I miss you every minute you are gone. I think that should satisfy you.”
“That would be enough for any reasonable man,” said the Harvester angrily. “Forgive me, Ruth, I have been cruel. I forgot how frail and weak you are. It is having Harmon here that makes me unnatural. It almost drives me to frenzy to know that he may take you from me.”
“Then send him away!”
“SEND HIM AWAY?”
“Yes, send him away! I am tired to death of his poetry, and seeing him spoon around. Send both of them away quickly!”
The Harvester gulped, blinked, and surreptitiously felt for her pulse.
“Oh, I’ve not developed fever again,” she said. “I’m all right. But it must be a fearful expense to have both of them here by the week, and I’m so tired of them, Granny says she can take care of me just as well, and the girl who helps her can cook. No one but you shall lift me, if I don’t get my nose out until I can walk alone. Both of them are perfectly useless, and I’d much rather you’d send them away.”
“There, there! Of course!” said the Harvester soothingly. “I’ll do it as soon as I possibly dare. You don’t understand, honey. You are yet delicate beyond measure, internally. The fever burned so long. Every morsel you eat is measured and cooked in sterilized vessels, and I’d be scared of my life to have the girl undertake it.”
“Why she is doing it straight along now! She and Granny! Molly isn’t out of Doctor Harmon’s sight long enough to cook anything. Granny says there is ‘a lot of buncombe about what they do, and she is going to tell them so right to their teeth some of these days, if they badger her much more,’ and I wish she would, and you, too.”
The Harvester gathered the Girl to him in one crushing bear hug.
“For the love of Heaven, Ruth, you drive me crazy! Answer me just one question. When you told me that you ‘adored and worshipped’ Doctor Harmon, did you mean it, or was that the delirium of fever?”
“I don’t know WHAT I told you! If I said I ‘adored’ him, it was the truth. I did! I do! I always will! So do I adore the Almighty, but that’s no sign I want him to read poetry to me, and be around all the time when I am wild for a minute with you. I can worship Doctor Harmon in Chicago or Onabasha quite as well. Fire him! If you don’t, I will!”
“Good Lord!” cried the Harvester, helpless until the Girl had to cling to him to prevent rolling from his nerveless arms. “Ruth, Ruth, will you feel my pulse?”
“No, I won’t! But you are going to drop me. Take me straight back to my beautiful new bed, and send them away.”
“A minute! Give me a minute!” gasped the Harvester. “I couldn’t lift a baby just now. Ruth, dear, I thought you loved the man.”
“What made you think so?”
“You did!”
“I didn’t either! I never said I loved him. I said I was under obligations to him; but they are as well repaid as they ever can be. I said I adored him, and I tell you I do! Give him what we owe him, both of us, in money, and send them away. If you’d seen as much of them as I have, you’d be tired of them, too. Please, please, David!”
“Yes,” said the Harvester, arising in a sudden tide of effulgent joy. “Yes, Girl, just as quickly as I can with decency. I—I’ll send them on the lake, and I’ll take care of you.”
“You won’t read poetry to me?”
“I will not.”
“You won’t moon at me?”
“No!”
“Then hurry! But have them take your boat. I am going to have the first ride in mine.”
“Indeed you are, and soon, too!” said the Harvester, marching up the hill as if he were leading hosts to battle.
He laid the Girl on the bed and covered her, and called Granny Moreland to sit beside her a few minutes. He went into the gold garden and proposed that the doctor and the nurse go rowing until supper time, and they went with alacrity. When they started he returned to the Girl and, sitting beside her, he told Granny to take a nap. Then he began to talk softly all about wild music, and how it was made, and what the different odours sweeping down the hill were, and when the red leaves would come, and the nuts rattle down, and the frost fairies enamel the windows, and soon she was sound asleep. Granny came back, and the Harvester walked around the lake shore to be alone a while and think quietly, for he was almost too dazed and bewildered for full realization.
As he softly followed the foot path he heard voices, and looking down, he saw the boat lying in the shade and beneath a big tree on the bank sat the doctor and the nurse. His arm was around her, and her head was on his shoulder; and she said very distinctly, “How long will it be until we can go without offending him?”
Chapter 19
A Vertical Spine
By middle September the last trace of illness had been removed from the premises, and it was rapidly disappearing from the face and form of the Girl. She was showing a beautiful roundness, there was lovely colour on her cheeks and lips, and in her dark eyes sparkled a touch of mischief. Rigidly she followed the rules laid down for diet and exercise, and as strength flowed through her body, and no trace of pain tormented her, she began revelling in new and delightful sensations. She loved
to pull her boat as she willed, drive over the wood road, study the books, cook the new dishes, rearrange furniture, and go with the Harvester everywhere.
But that was greatly the management of the man. He was so afraid that something might happen to undo all the wonders accomplished in the Girl, and again whiten her face with pain, that he scarcely allowed her out of his sight. He remained in the cabin, helping when she worked, and then drove with her and a big blanket to the woods, arranged her chair and table, found some attractive subject, and while the wind ravelled her hair and flushed her cheeks, her fingers drew designs. At noon they went to the cabin to lunch, and the Girl took a nap, while the Harvester spread his morning’s reaping on the shelves to dry. They returned to the woods until five o’clock; then home again and the Girl dressed and prepared supper, while the Harvester spread his stores and fed the stock. Then he put on white clothing for the evening. The Girl rested while he washed the dishes, and they explored the lake in the little motor boat, or drove to the city for supplies, or to see their friends.
“Are you even with your usual work at this time of the year?” she asked as they sat at breakfast.
“I am,” said the Harvester. “The only things that have been crowded out are the candlesticks. They will have to remain on the shelf until the herbs and roots are all in, and the long winter evenings come. Then I’ll use the luna pattern and finish yours first of all.”
“What are you going to do to-day?”
“Start on a regular fall campaign. Some of it for the sake of having it, and some because there is good money in it. Will you come?”
“Indeed yes. May I help, or shall I take my drawing along?”
“Bring your drawing. Next fall you may help, but as yet you are too close suffering for me to see you do anything that might be even a slight risk. I can’t endure it.”
“Baby!” she jeered.
“Christen me anything you please,” laughed the Harvester. “I’m short on names anyway.”
He went to harness Betsy, and the Girl washed the dishes, straightened the rooms, and collected her drawing material. Then she walked up the hill, wearing a shirt and short skirt of khaki, stout shoes, and a straw hat that shaded her face. She climbed into the wagon, laid the drawing box on the seat, and caught the lines as the Harvester flung them to her. He went swinging ahead, Belshazzar to heel, the Girl driving after. The white pigeons circled above, and every day Ajax allowed his curiosity to overcome his temper, and followed a little farther.
The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter Page 94
