The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  “I see what you mean.”

  “So far as any inexperienced girl ever sees,” said the doctor. “Some day if you live to fifty you will know, but you can’t comprehend it now.”

  “If you think I lived all my life in Chicago’s poverty spots and don’t know unbridled human nature!”

  “I found you and your mother unusually innocent women. You may understand some things. I hope you do. It will help you to decide who is the real man among the men who come into your life. There are some men, Ruth, who are fit to mate with a woman, and to perpetuate themselves and their mental and moral forces in children, who will be like them, and there are others who are not. It is these ‘others’ who are responsible for the sin of the world, the sickness and suffering. Any time you are sure you have a chance at a moral man, square and honest, in control of his brain and body, if you are a wise woman, Ruth, stick to him as the limpet to the rock.”

  “You mean stick to the Harvester?”

  “If you are a wise woman!”

  “When was a woman ever wise?”

  “A few have been. They are the only care-free, really happy ones of the world, the only wives without a big, poison, blue-bottle fly in their ointment.”

  “I detest flies!” said the Girl.

  “So do I,” said the doctor. “For this reason I say to you choose the ointment that never had one in it. Take the man who is ‘master of his fate, captain of his soul.’ Stick to the Harvester! He is infinitely the better man!”

  “Well have you seen anything to indicate that I wasn’t sticking?” asked the Girl.

  “No. And for your sake I hope I never will.”

  She laughed softly.

  “You do love him, Ruth?”

  “As I did my mother, yes. There is not a trace in my heart of the thing he calls love.”

  “You have been stunted, warped, and the fountains of life never have opened. It will come with right conditions of living.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I know so. At least there is no one else you love, Ruth?”

  “No one except you.”

  “And do you feel about me just as you do him?”

  “No! It is different. What I owe him is for myself. What I owe you is for my mother. You saw! You know! You understand what you did for her, and what it meant to me. The Harvester must be the finest man on earth, but when I try to think of either God or Heaven, your face intervenes.”

  “That’s all right, Ruth, I’m so glad you told me,” said Doctor Harmon. “I can make it all perfectly clear to you. You just go on and worship me all you please. It’s bound to make a cleaner, better man of me. What you feel for me will hold me to a higher moral level all my life than I ever have known before; but never forget that you are not going to live in Heaven. You will be here at least sixty years yet, so when you come to think of selecting a partner for the relations of the world, you stick to the finest man on earth; see?”

  “I do!” said the Girl. “I saw you kiss Molly a week ago. She is lovely, and I hope you will be perfectly happy. It won’t interfere with my worshipping you; not the least in the world. Go ahead and be joyful!”

  The doctor sprang to his feet in crimson confusion. The Girl lay and laughed at him.

  “Don’t!” she cried. “It’s all right! It takes a weight off my soul as heavy as a mountain. I do adore you, as I said. But every hour since I left Chicago a big, black cloud has hung over me. I didn’t feel free. I didn’t feel absolved. I felt that my obligations to you were so heavy that when I had settled the last of the money debt I was in honour bound—”

  “Don’t, Ruth! Forget those dreadful times, as I told you then! Think only of a happy future!”

  “Let me finish,” said the Girl. “Let me get this out of my system with the other poison. From the day I came here, I’ve whispered in my heart, ‘I am not free!’ But if you love another woman! If you are going to take her to your heart and to your lips, why that is my release. Oh Man, speak the words! Tell me I am free indeed!”

  “Ruth, be quiet, for mercy sake! You’ll raise a temperature, and the Harvester will pitch me into the lake. You are free, child, of course! You always have been. I understood the awful pressure that was on you with the very first glimpse I had of your mother. Who was she, Ruth?”

  “She never would tell me.”

  “She thought you would appeal to her people?”

  “She knew I would! I couldn’t have helped it.”

  “Would you like to know?”

  “I never want to. It is too late. I infinitely prefer to remain in ignorance. Talk of something else.”

  “Let me read a wonderful book I found on the Harvester’s shelves.”

  “Anything there will contain wonders, because he only buys what appeals to him, and it takes a great book to do that. I am going to learn. He will teach me, and when I come within comprehending distance of him, then we are going on together.”

  “What an attractive place this is!”

  “Isn’t it? I only have seen enough to understand the plan. I scarcely can wait to set my feet on earth and go into detail. Granny Moreland says that when spring comes over the hill, and brings up the flowers in the big woods, she’d rather walk through them than to read Revelation. She says it gives her an idea of Heaven she can come closer realizing and it seems more stable. You know she worries about the foundations. She can’t understand what supports Heaven. But up there in Medicine Woods the old dear gets so close her God that some day she is going to realize that her idea of Heaven there is quite as near right as marble streets and gold pillars and vastly more probable. The day I reach that hill top again, Heaven begins for me. Do you know the wonderful thing the Harvester did up there?”

  “Under the oak?”

  “Yes.”

  “Carey told me. It was marvellous.”

  “Not such a marvel as another the doctor couldn’t have known. The Harvester made passing out so natural, so easy, so a part of elemental forces, that I almost have forgotten her tortured body. When I think of her now, it is to wonder if next summer I can distinguish her whisper among the leaves. Before you go, I’ll take you up there and tell you what he says, and show you what he means, and you will feel it also.”

  “What if I shouldn’t go?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Doctor Carey has offered me a splendid position in his hospital. There would be work all day, instead of waiting all day in the hope of working an hour. There would be a living in it for two from the word go. There would be better air, longer life, more to be got out of it, and if I can make good, Carey’s work to take up as he grows old.”

  “Take it! Take it quickly!” cried the Girl. “Don’t wait a minute! You might wear out your heart in Chicago for twenty years or forever, and not have an opportunity to do one half so much good. Take it at once!”

  “I was waiting to learn what you and Langston would say.”

  “He will say take it.”

  “Then I will be too happy for words. Ruth, you have not only paid the debt, but you have brought me the greatest joy a man ever had. And there is no need to wait the ages I thought I must. He can tell in a year if I can do the work, and I know I can now; so it’s all settled, if Langston agrees.”

  “He will,” said the Girl. “Let me tell him!”

  “I wish you would,” said the doctor. “I don’t know just how to go at it.”

  Then for two days the Harvester and Belshazzar gathered herbs and spread them on the drying trays. On the afternoon of the third, close three, the doctor came to the door.

  “Langston,” he said, “we have a call for you. We can’t keep Ruth quiet much longer. She is tired. We want to change her bed completely. She won’t allow either of us to lift her. She says we hurt her. Will you come and try it?”

  “You’ll have to give me time to dip and rub off and get into clean clothing,” he said. “I’ve been keeping away, because I was working on time, and I smell to strangulation
of stramonium and saffron.”

  “Can’t give you ten seconds,” said the doctor. “Our temper is getting brittle. We are cross as the proverbial fever patient. If you don’t come at once we will imagine you don’t want to, and refuse to be moved at all.”

  “Coming!” cried the Harvester, as he plunged his hands in the wash bowl and soused his face. A second later he appeared on the porch.

  “Ruth,” he said, “I am steeped in the odours of the dry-house. Can’t you wait until I bathe and dress?”

  “No, I can’t,” said a fretful voice. “I can’t endure this bed another minute.”

  “Then let Doctor Harmon lift you. He is so fresh and clean.”

  The Harvester glanced enviously at the shaven face and white trousers and shirt of the doctor.

  “I just hate fresh, clean men. I want to smell herbs. I want to put my feet in the dirt and my hands in the water.”

  The Harvester came at a rush. He brought a big easy chair from the living-room, straightened the cover, and bent above the Girl. He picked her up lightly, gently, and easing her to his body settled in the chair. She laid her face on his shoulder, and heaved a deep sigh of content.

  “Be careful with my back, Man,” she said. “I think my spine is almost worn through.”

  “Poor girl,” said the Harvester. “That bed should be softer.”

  “It should not!” contradicted the Girl. “It should be much harder. I’m tired of soft beds. I want to lie on the earth, with my head on a root; and I wish it would rain dirt on me. I am bathed threadbare. I want to be all streaky.”

  “I understand,” said the Harvester. “Harmon, bring me a pad and pencil a minute, I must write an order for some things I want. Will you call up town and have them sent out immediately?”

  On the pad he wrote: “Telephone Carey to get the highest grade curled-hair mattress, a new pad, and pillow, and bring them flying in the car. Call Granny and the girl and empty the room. Clean, air, and fumigate it thoroughly. Arrange the furniture differently, and help me into the living-room with Ruth.” He handed the pad to the doctor.

  “Please attend to that,” he said, and to the Girl: “Now we go on a journey. Doc, you and Molly take the corners of the rug we are on and slide us into the other room until you get this aired and freshened.”

  In the living-room the Girl took one long look at the surroundings and suddenly relaxed. She cuddled against the Harvester and lifting a tremulous white hand, drew it across his unshaven cheek.

  “Feels so good,” she said. “I’m sick and tired of immaculate men.”

  The Harvester laughed, tucked her feet in the cover and held her tenderly. The Girl lay with her cheek against the rough khaki, palpitant with the excitement of being moved.

  “Isn’t it great?” she panted.

  He caught the hand that had touched his cheek in a tender grip, and laughed a deep rumble of exultation that came from the depths of his heart.

  “There’s no name for it, honey,” he said. “But don’t try to talk until you have a long rest. Changing positions after you have lain so long may be making unusual work for your heart. Am I hurting your back?”

  “No,” said the Girl. “This is the first time I have been comfortable in ages. Am I tiring you?”

  “Yes,” laughed the Harvester. “You are almost as heavy as a large sack of leaves, but not quite equal to a bridge pillar or a log. Be sure to think of that, and worry considerably. You are in danger of straining my muscles to the last degree, my heart included.”

  “Where is your heart?” whispered the Girl.

  “Right under your cheek,” answered the Harvester. “But for Heaven’s sake, don’t intimate that you are taking any interest in it, or it will go to pounding until your head will bounce. It’s one member of my body that I can’t control where you are concerned.”

  “I thought you didn’t like me any more.”

  “Careful!” warned the Harvester. “You are yet too close Heaven to fib like that, Ruth. What have I done to indicate that I don’t love you more than ever?”

  “Stayed away nearly every minute for three awful days, and wouldn’t come without being dragged; and now you’re wishing they would hurry and fix that bed, so you can put me down and go back to your rank old herbs again.”

  “Well of all the black prevarications! I went when you sent me, and came when you called. I’d willingly give up my hope of what Granny calls ‘salvation’ to hold you as I am for an hour, and you know it.”

  “It’s going to be much longer than that,” said the Girl nestling to him. “I asked for you because you never hurt me, and they always do. I knew you were so strong that my weight now wouldn’t be a load for one of your hands, and I am not going back to that bed until I am so tired that I will be glad to lie down.”

  For a long time she was so silent the Harvester thought her going to sleep; and having learned that for him joy was probably transient, he deliberately got all he could. He closely held the hand she had not withdrawn, and often lifted it to his lips. Sometimes he stroked the heavy braid, gently ran his hands across the tired shoulders, or eased her into a different position. There was not a doubt in his mind of one thing. He was having a royal, good time, and he was thankful for the work he had set his assistants that kept them out of the room. They seemed in no hurry, and from scuffling, laughing, and a steady stream of talk, they were entertained at least. At last the Girl roused.

  “There is something I want to ask you,” she said. “I promised Doctor Harmon I would.”

  Instantly the heart of the Harvester gave a leap that jarred the head resting on it.

  “You don’t like him?” questioned the Girl.

  “I do!” declared the Harvester. “I like him immensely. There is not a fine, manly good-looking feature about him that I have missed. I don’t fail to do him justice on every point.”

  “I’m so glad! Then you will want him to remain.”

  “Here?” asked the Harvester with a light, hot breath.

  “In Onabasha! Doctor Carey has offered him the place of chief assistant at the hospital. There is a good salary and the chance of taking up the doctor’s work as he grows older. It means plenty to do at once, healthful atmosphere, congenial society—everything to a young man. He only had a call once in a while in Chicago, often among people who received more than they paid, like me, and he was very lonely. I think it would be great for him.”

  “And for you, Ruth?”

  “It doesn’t make the least difference to me; but for his sake, because I think so much of him, I would like to see him have the place.”

  “You still think so much of him, Ruth?”

  “More, if possible,” said the Girl. “Added to all I owed him before, he has come here and worked for days to save me, and it wasn’t his fault that it took a bigger man. Nothing alters the fact that he did all he could, most graciously and gladly.”

  “What do you mean, Ruth?” stammered the Harvester.

  “Oh they have worn themselves out!” cried the Girl impatiently. “First, Granny Moreland told me every least little detail of how I went out, and you resurrected me. I knew what she said was true, because she worked with you. Then Doctor Carey told me, and Mrs. Carey, and Doctor Harmon, and Molly, and even Granny’s little assistant has left the kitchen to tell me that I owe my life to you, and all of them might as well have saved breath. I knew all the time that if ever I came out of this, and had a chance to be like other women, it would be your work, and I’m glad it is. I’d hate to be under obligations to some people I know; but I feel honoured to be indebted to you.”

  “I’m mighty sorry they worried you. I had no idea—”

  “They didn’t ‘worry,’ me! I am just telling you that I knew it all the time; that’s all!”

  “Forget that!” said the Harvester. “Come back to our subject. What was it you wanted, dear?”

  “To know if you have any objections to Doctor Harmon remaining in Onabasha?”

  “Cer
tainly not! It will be a fine thing for him.”

  “Will it make any difference to you in any way?”

  “Ruth, that’s probing too deep,” said the Harvester.

  “I don’t see why!”

  “I’m glad of it!”

  “Why?”

  “I’d least rather show my littleness to you than to any one else on earth.”

  “Then you have some feeling about it?”

  “Perhaps a trifle. I’ll get over it. Give me a little time to adjust myself. Doctor Harmon shall have the place, of course. Don’t worry about that!”

  “He will be so happy!”

  “And you, Ruth?”

  “I’ll be happy too!”

  “Then it’s all right,” said the Harvester.

  He laid down her hand, drew the cover over it, and slightly shifted her position to rest her. The door opened, and Doctor Harmon announced that the room was ready. It was shining and fresh. The bed was now turned with its head to the north, so that from it one could see the big trees in Medicine Woods, the sweep of the hillside, the sparkle of mallow-bordered Singing Water, the driveway and the gold flower garden. Everything was so changed that the room had quite a different appearance. The instant he laid her on it the Girl said, “This bed is not mine.”

  “Yes it is,” said the Harvester. “You see, we were a little excited sometimes, and we spilled a few quarts of perfectly good medicine on your mattress. It was hopelessly smelly and ruined; so I am going to cremate it and this is your splinter new one and a fresh pad and pillow. Now you try them and see if they are not much harder and more comfortable.”

  “This is just perfect!” she sighed, as she sank into the bed.