The Girl stared at the Harvester.
“Take your chair, Ruth, and meet this as a matter of course,” he advised casually. “You always have known that some day it must come. You couldn’t look in the face of those photographs of your mother in her youth and not realize that somewhere hearts were aching and breaking, and brains were busy in a search for her.”
The Girl stood rigid.
“I want it distinctly understood,” she said, “that I have no use on earth for my mother’s people. They come too late. I absolutely refuse to see or to hold any communication with them.”
“But young lady, that is very arbitrary!” cried Mr. Kennedy. “You don’t understand! They are a couple of old people, and they are slowly dying of broken hearts!”
“Not so badly broken or they wouldn’t die slowly,” commented the Girl grimly. “The heart that was really broken was my mother’s. The torture of a starved, overworked body and hopeless brain was hers. There was nothing slow about her death, for she went out with only half a life spent, and much of that in acute agony, because of their negligence. David, you often have said that this is my home. I choose to take you at your word. Will you kindly tell this man that he is not welcome in this house, and I wish him to leave it at once?”
The Harvester stepped back, and his face grew very white.
“I can’t, Ruth,” he said gently.
“Why not?”
“Because I brought him here.”
“You brought him here! You! David, are you crazy? You!”
“It is through me that he came.”
The Girl caught the mantel for support.
“Then I stand alone again,” she said. “Harvester, I had thought you were on my side.”
“I am at your feet,” said the man in a broken voice. “Ruth dear, will you let me explain?”
“There is only one explanation, and with what you have done for me fresh in my mind, I can’t put it into words.”
“Ruth, hear me!”
“I must! You force me! But before you speak understand this: Not now, or through all eternity, do I forgive the inexcusable neglect that drove my mother to what I witnessed and was helpless to avert.”
“My dear! My dear!” said the Harvester, “I had hoped the woods had done a more perfect work in your heart. Your mother is lying in state now, Girl, safe from further suffering of any kind; and if I read aright, her tired face and shrivelled frame were eloquent of forgiveness. Ruth dear, if she so loved them that her heart was broken and she died for them, think what they are suffering! Have some mercy on them.”
“Get this very clear, David,” said the Girl. “She died of hunger for food. Her heart was not so broken that she couldn’t have lived a lifetime, and got much comfort out of it, if her body had not lacked sustenance. Oh I was so happy a minute ago. David, why did you do this thing?”
The Harvester picked up the Girl, placed her in a chair, and knelt beside her with his arms around her.
“Because of the pain in the world, Ruth,” he said simply. “Your mother is sleeping sweetly in the long sleep that knows neither anger nor resentment; and so I was forced to think of a gentle-faced, little old mother whose heart is daily one long ache, whose eyes are dim with tears, and a proud, broken old man who spends his time trying to comfort her, when his life is as desolate as hers.”
“How do you know so wonderfully much about their aches and broken hearts?”
“Because I have seen their faces when they were happy, Ruth, and so I know what suffering would do to them. There were pictures of them and letters in the bottom of that old trunk. I searched it the other night and found them; and by what life has done to your mother and to you, I can judge what it is now bringing them. Never can you be truly happy, Ruth, until you have forgiven them, and done what you can to comfort the remainder of their lives. I did it because of the pain in the world, my girl.”
“What about my pain?”
“The only way on earth to cure it is through forgiveness. That, and that only, will ease it all away, and leave you happy and free for life and love. So long as you let this rancour eat in your heart, Ruth, you are not, and never can be, normal. You must forgive them, dear, hear what they have to say, and give them the comfort of seeing what they can discover of her in you. Then your heart will be at rest at last, your soul free, you can take your rightful place in life, and the love you crave will awaken in your heart. Ruth, dear you are the acme of gentleness and justice. Be just and gentle now! Give them their chance! My heart aches, and always will ache for the pain you have known, but nursing and brooding over it will not cure it. It is going to take a heroic operation to cut it out, and I chose to be the surgeon. You have said that I once saved your body from pain Ruth, trust me now to free your soul.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to speak kindly to this man, who through my act has come here, and allow him to tell you why he came. Then I want you to do the kind and womanly thing your duty suggests that you should.”
“David, I don t understand you!”
“That is no difference,” said the Harvester. “The point is, do you TRUST me?”
The Girl hesitated. “Of course I do,” she said at last.
“Then hear what your grandfather’s friend has come to say for him, and forget yourself in doing to others as you would have them—really, Ruth, that is all of religion or of life worth while. Go on, Mr. Kennedy.”
The Harvester drew up a chair, seated himself beside the Girl, and taking one of her hands, he held it closely and waited.
“I was sent here by my law partner and my closest friend, Mr. Alexander Herron, of Philadelphia,” said the stranger. “Both he and Mrs. Herron were bitterly opposed to your mother’s marriage, because they knew life and human nature, and there never is but one end to men such as she married.”
“You may omit that,” said the Girl coldly. “Simply state why you are here.”
“In response to an inquiry from your husband concerning the originals of some photographs he sent to a detective agency in New York. They have had the case for years, and recognizing the pictures as a clue, they telegraphed Mr. Herron. The prospect of news after years of fruitless searching so prostrated Mrs. Herron that he dared not leave her, and he sent me.”
“Kindly tell me this,” said the Girl. “Where were my mother’s father and mother for the four years immediately following her marriage?”
“They went to Europe to avoid the humiliation of meeting their friends. There, in Italy, Mrs. Herron developed a fever, and it was several years before she could be brought home. She retired from society, and has been confined to her room ever since. When they could return, a search was instituted at once for their daughter, but they never have been able to find a trace. They have hunted through every eastern city they thought might contain her.”
“And overlooked a little insignificant place like Chicago, of course.”
“I myself conducted a personal search there, and visited the home of every Jameson in the directory or who had mail at the office or of whom I could get a clue of any sort.”
“I don’t suppose two women in a little garret room would be in the directory, and there never was any mail.”
“Did your mother ever appeal to her parents?”
“She did,” said the Girl. “She admitted that she had been wrong, asked their forgiveness, and begged to go home. That was in the second year of her marriage, and she was in Cleveland. Afterward she went to Chicago, from there she wrote again.”
“Her father and mother were in Italy fighting for the mother’s life, two years after that. It is very easy to become lost in a large city. Criminals do it every day and are never found, even with the best detectives on their trail. I am very sorry about this. My friends will be broken-hearted. At any time they would have been more than delighted to have had their daughter return. A letter on the day following the message from the agency brought news that she was dead, and now their only hope
for any small happiness at the close of years of suffering lies with you. I was sent to plead with you to return with me at once and make them a visit. Of course, their home is yours. You are their only heir, and they would be very happy if you were free, and would remain permanently with them.”
“How do they know I will not be like the father they so detested?”
“They had sufficient cause to dislike him. They have every reason to love and welcome you. They are consumed with anxiety. Will you come?”
“No. This is for me to decide. I do not care for them or their property. Always they have failed me when my distress was unspeakable. Now there is only one thing I ask of life, more than my husband has given me, and if that lay in his power I would have it. You may go back and tell them that I am perfectly happy. I have everything I need. They can give me nothing I want, not even their love. Perhaps, sometime, I will go to see them for a few days, if David will go with me.”
“Young woman, do you realize that you are issuing a death sentence?” asked the lawyer gently.
“It is a just one.”
“I do not believe your husband agrees with you. I know I do not. Mrs. Herron is a tiny old lady, with a feeble spark of vitality left; and with all her strength she is clinging to life, and pleading with it to give her word of her only child before she goes out unsatisfied. She knows that her daughter is gone, and now her hopes are fastened on you. If for only a few days, you certainly must go with me.”
“I will not!”
The lawyer turned to the Harvester.
“She will be ready to start with you to-morrow morning, on the first train north,” said the Harvester. “We will meet you at the station at eight.”
“I—I am afraid I forgot to tell my driver to wait.”
“You mean your instructions were not to let the Girl out of your sight,” said the Harvester. “Very well! We have comfortable rooms. I will show you to one. Please come this way.”
The Harvester led the guest to the lake room and arranged for the night. Then he went to the telephone and sent a message to an address he had been furnished, asking for an immediate reply. It went to Philadelphia and contained a description of the lawyer, and asked if he had been sent by Mr. Herron to escort his grand-daughter to his home. When the Harvester returned to the living-room the Girl, white and defiant, waited before the fire. He knelt beside her and put his arms around her, but she repulsed him; so he sat on the rug and looked at her.
“No wonder you felt sure you knew what that was!” she cried bitterly.
“Ruth, if you will allow me to lift the bottom of that old trunk, and if you will read any one of the half dozen letters I read, you will forgive me, and begin making preparations to go.”
“It’s a wonder you don’t hold them before me and force me to read them,” she said.
“Don’t say anything you will be sorry for after you are gone, dear.”
“I’m not going!”
“Oh yes you are!”
“Why?”
“Because it is right that you should, and right is inexorable. Also, because I very much wish you to; you will do it for me.”
“Why do you want me to go?”
“I have three strong reasons: First, as I told you, it is the only thing that will cleanse your heart of bitterness and leave it free for the tenanting of a great and holy love. Next, I think they honestly made every effort to find your mother, and are now growing old in despair you can lighten, and you owe it to them and yourself to do it. Lastly, for my sake. I’ve tried everything I know, Ruth, and I can’t make you love me, or bring you to a realizing sense of it if you do. So before I saw that chest I had planned to harvest my big crop, and try with all my heart while I did it, and if love hadn’t come then, I meant to get some one to stay with you, and I was going away to give you a free perspective for a time. I meant to plead that I needed a few weeks with a famous chemist I know to prepare me better for my work. My real motive was to leave you, and let you see if absence could do anything for me in your heart. You’ve been very nearly the creature of my hands for months, my girl; whatever any one else may do, you’re bound to miss me mightily, and I figured that with me away, perhaps you could solve the problem alone I seem to fail in helping you with. This is only a slight change of plans. You are going in my stead. I will harvest the ginseng and cure it, and then, if you are not at home, and the loneliness grows unbearable, I will take the chemistry course, until you decide when you will come, if ever.”
“‘If ever?’”
“Yes,” said the Harvester. “I am growing accustomed to facing big propositions—I will not dodge this. The faces of the three of your people I have seen prove refinement. Their clothing indicates wealth. These long, lonely years mean that they will shower you with every outpouring of loving, hungry hearts. They will keep you if they can, my dear. I do not blame them. The life I propose for you is one of work, mostly for others, and the reward, in great part, consists of the joy in the soul of the creator of things that help in the world. I realize that you will find wealth, luxury, and lavish love. I know that I may lose you forever, and if it is right and best for you, I hope I will. I know exactly what I am risking, but I yet say, go.”
“I don’t see how you can, and love me as you prove you do.”
“That is a little streak of the inevitableness of nature that the forest has ground into my soul. I’d rather cut off my right hand than take yours with it, in the parting that will come in the morning; but you are going, and I am sending you. So long as I am shaped like a human being, it is in me to dignify the possession of a vertical spine by acting as nearly like a man as I know how. I insist that you are my wife, because it crucifies me to think otherwise. I tell you to-night, Ruth, you are not and never have been. You are free as air. You married me without any love for me in your heart, and you pretended none. It was all my doing. If I find that I was wrong, I will free you without a thought of results to me. I am a secondary proposition. I thought then that you were alone and helpless, and before the Almighty, I did the best I could. But I know now that you are entitled to the love of relatives, wealth, and high social position, no doubt. If I allowed the passion in my heart to triumph over the reason of my brain, and worked on your feelings and tied you to the woods, without knowing but that you might greatly prefer that other life you do not know, but to which you are entitled, I would go out and sink myself in Loon Lake.”
“David, I love you. I do not want to go. Please, please let me remain with you.”
“Not if you could say that realizing what it means, and give me the kiss right now I would stake my soul to win! Not by any bribe you can think of or any allurement you can offer. It is right that you go to those suffering old people. It is right you know what you are refusing for me, before you renounce it. It is right you take the position to which you are entitled, until you understand thoroughly whether this suits you better. When you know that life as well as this, the people you will meet as intimately as me, then you can decide for all time, and I can look you in the face with honest, unwavering eye; and if by any chance your heart is in the woods, and you prefer me and the cabin to what they have to offer—to all eternity your place here is vacant, Ruth. My love is waiting for you; and if you come under those conditions, I never can have any regret. A clear conscience is worth restraining passion a few months to gain, and besides, I always have got the fact to face that when you say ‘I love,’ and when I say ‘I love,’ it means two entirely different things. When you realize that the love of man for woman, and woman for man, is a thing that floods the heart, brain, soul, and body with a wonderful and all-pervading ecstasy, and if I happen to be the man who makes you realize it, then come tell me, and we will show God and His holy angels what earth means by the Heaven inspired word, ‘radiance.’”
“David, there never will be any other man like you.”
“The exigencies of life must develop many a finer and better.”
“You still refuse me? Y
ou yet believe I do not love you?”
“Not with the love I ask, my girl. But if I did not believe it was germinating in your heart, and that it would come pouring over me in a torrent some glad day, I doubt if I could allow you to go, Ruth! I am like any other man in selfishness and in the passions of the body.”
“Selfishness! You haven’t an idea what it means,” said the Girl. “And what you call love—there I haven’t. But I know how to appreciate you, and you may be positively sure that it will be only a few days until I will come back to you.”
“But I don’t want you until you can bring the love I crave. I am sending you to remain until that time, Ruth.”
“But it may be months, Man!”
“Then stay months.”
“But it may be—”
“It may be never! Then remain forever. That will be proof positive that your happiness does not lie in my hands.”
“Why should I not consider you as you do me?”
“Because I love you, and you do not love me.”
“You are cruel to yourself and to me. You talk about the pain in the world. What about the pain in my heart right now? And if I know you in the least, one degree more would make you cry aloud for mercy. Oh David, are we of no consideration at all?”
The muscles of the Harvester’s face twisted an instant.
“This is where we lop off the small branches to grow perfect fruit later. This is where we do evil that good may result. This is where we suffer to-night in order we may appreciate fully the joy of love’s dawning. If I am causing you pain, forgive me, dear heart. I would give my life to prevent it, but I am powerless. It is right! We cannot avoid doing it, if we ever would be happy.”
He picked up the Girl, and held her crushed in his arms a long time. Then he set her inside her door and said, “Lay out what you want to take and I will help you pack, so that you can get some sleep. We must be ready early in the morning.”
When the clothing to be worn was selected, the new trunk packed, and all arrangements made, the Girl sat in his arms before the fire as he had held her when she was ill, and then he sent her to bed and went to the lake shore to fight it out alone. Only God and the stars and the faithful Belshazzar saw the agony of a strong man in his extremity.
The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter Page 97