The Harvester Part 33

"I was born that way," explained the Harvester, "and I've cultivated the faculty until I've developed real genius. Talking of sense, there never was a proper marriage in which the man didn't give the woman a present.

You seem likely to be more appreciative of this bridge than anything else I have, so right here and now would be the appropriate place to offer you my wedding gift. I didn't have much time, but I couldn't have found anything more suitable if I'd taken a year."

He held out a small, white velvet case.

"Doesn't that look as if it were made for a bride?" he asked.

"It does," answered the Girl. "But I can't take it. You are not doing right. Marrying as we did, you never can believe that I love you; maybe it won't ever happen that I do. I have no right to accept gifts and expensive clothing from you. In the first place, if the love you ask never comes, there is no possible way in which I can repay you. In the second, these things you are offering are not suitable for life and work in the woods. In the third, I think you are being extravagant, and I couldn't forgive myself if I allowed that."

"You divide your statements like a preacher, don't you?" asked the Harvester ingenuously. "Now sit thee here and gaze on the placid lake and quiet your troubled spirit, while I demolish your 'perfectly good'

arguments. In the first place, you are now my wife, and you have a right to take anything I offer, if you care for it or can use it in any manner. In the second, you must recognize a difference in our positions.

What seems nothing to you means all the world to me, and you are less than human if you deprive me of the joy of expressing feelings I am in honour bound to keep in my heart, by these little material offerings. In the third place, I inherited over six hundred acres of land and water, please observe the water----it is now in evidence on your left. All my life I have been taught to be frugal, economical, and to work. All I've earned either has gone back into land, into the bank, or into books, very plain food, and such clothing as you now see me wearing. Just the value of this place as it stands, with its big trees, its drug crops yielding all the year round, would be difficult to estimate; and I don't mind telling you that on the top of that hill there is a gold mine, and it's mine----ours since four o'clock."

"A gold mine!"

"Acres and acres of wild ginseng, seven years of age and ready to harvest. Do you remember what your few pounds brought?"

"Why it's worth thousands!"

"Exactly! For your peace of mind I might add that all I have done or got is paid for, except what I bought to-day, and I will write a check for that as soon as the bill is made out. My bank account never will feel it Truly, Ruth, I am not doing or going to do anything extravagant. I can't afford to give you diamond necklaces, yachts, and trips to Europe; but you can have the contents of this box and a motor boat on the lake, a horse and carriage, and a trip----say to New York perfectly well. Please take it."

"I wish you wouldn't ask me. I would be happier not to."

"Yes, but I do ask you," persisted the Harvester. "You are not the only one to be considered. I have some rights also, and I'm not so self-effacing that I won't insist upon them. From your standpoint I am almost a stranger. You have spent no time considering me in near relations; I realize that. You feel as if you were driven here for a refuge, and that is true. I said to Belshazzar one day that I must remember that you had no dream, and had spent no time loving me, and I do I know how this wedding seems to you, but it's going to mean something different and better soon, please G.o.d. I can see your side; now suppose you take a look at mine. I did have a dream, it was my dream, and beyond the sum of any delight I ever conceived. On the strength of it I rebuilt my home and remodelled these premises. Then I saw you, and from that day I worked early and late. I lost you and I never stopped until I found you; and I would have courted and won you, but the fates intervened and here you are! So it's my delight to court and win you now. If you knew the difference between having a dream that stirred the least fibre of your being and facing the world in a demand for realization of it, and then finding what you coveted in the palm of your hand, as it were, you would know what is in my heart, and why expression of some kind is necessary to me just now, and why I'll explode if it is denied. It will lower the tension, if you will accept this as a matter of fact; as if you rather expected and liked it, if you can."

The Harvester set his finger on the spring.

"Don't!" she said. "I'll never have the courage if you do. Give it to me in the case, and let me open it. Despite your unanswerable arguments, I am quite sure that is the only way in which I can take it."

The Harvester gave her the box.

"My wedding gift!" she exclaimed, more to herself than to him. "Why should I be the buffet of all the unkind fates kept in store for a girl my whole life, and then suddenly be offered home, beautiful gifts, and wonderful loving kindness by a stranger?"

The Harvester ran his fingers through his crisp hair, pulled it into a peak, stepped to the seat and sitting on the railing, he lifted his elbows, tilted his head, and began a motley outpouring of half-spoken, half-whistled trills and imploring cries. There was enough similarity that the Girl instantly recognized the red bird. Out of breath the Harvester dropped to the seat beside her.

"And don't you keep forgetting it!" he cried. "Now open that box and put on the trinket; because I want to take you to the cabin when the sun falls level on the drive."

She opened the case, exposing a thread of gold that appeared too slender for the weight of an exquisite pendant, set with s.h.i.+mmering pearls.

"If you will look down there," the Harvester pointed over the railing to the arrowhead lilies touched with the fading light, "you will see that they are similar."

"They are!" cried the Girl. "How lovely! Which is more beautiful I do not know. And you won't like it if I say I must not."

She held the open case toward the Harvester.

"'Possession is nine points in the law,'" he quoted. "You have taken it already and it is in your hands; now make the gift perfect for me by putting it on and saying nothing more."

"My wedding gift!" repeated the Girl. Slowly she lifted the beautiful ornament and held it in the light. "I'm so glad you just force me to take it," she said. "Any half-normal girl would be delighted. I do accept it. And what's more, I am going to keep and wear it and my ring at suitable times all my life, in memory of what you have done to be kind to me on this awful day."

"Thank you!" said the Harvester. "That is a flash of the proper spirit.

Allow me to put it on you."

"No!" said the Girl. "Not yet! After a while! I want to hold it in my hands, where I can see it!"

"Now there is one other thing," said the Harvester.

"If I had known for any length of time that this day was coming and bringing you, as most men know when a girl is to be given into their care, I could have made it different. As it is, I've done the best I knew. All your after life I hope you will believe this: Just that if you missed anything to-day that would have made it easier for you or more pleasant, the reason was because of my ignorance of women and the conventions, and lack of time. I want you to know and to feel that in my heart those vows I took were real. This is undoubtedly all the marrying I will ever want to do. I am old-fas.h.i.+oned in my ways, and deeply imbued with the spirit of the woods, and that means unending evolution along the same lines.

"To me you are my revered and beloved wife, my mate now; and I am sure nothing will make me feel any different. This is the day of my marriage to the only woman I ever have thought of wedding, and to me it is joy unspeakable. With other men such a day ends differently from the close of this with me. Because I have done and will continue to do the level best I know for you, this oration is the prologue to asking you for one gift to me from you, a wedding gift. I don't want it unless you can bestow it ungrudgingly, and truly want me to have it. If you can, I will have all from this day I hope for at the hands of fate. May I have the gift I ask of you, Ruth?"

She lifted startled eyes to his face.

"Tell me what it is?" she breathed.

"It may seem much to you," said the Harvester; "to me it appears only a gracious act, from a wonderful woman, if you will give me freely, one real kiss. I've never had one, save from a Dream Girl, Ruth, and you will have to make yours pretty good if it is anything like hers. You are woman enough to know that most men crush their brides in their arms and take a thousand. I'll put my hands behind me and never move a muscle, and I won't ask for more, if you will crown my wedding day with only one touch of your lips. Will you kiss me just once, Ruth?"

The Girl lifted a piteous face down which big tears suddenly rolled.

"Oh Man, you shame me!" she cried. "What kind of a heart have I that it fails to respond to such a plea? Have I been overworked and starved so long there is no feeling in me? I don't understand why I don't take you in my arms and kiss you a hundred times, but you see I don't. It doesn't seem as if I ever could."

"Never mind," said the Harvester gently. "It was only a fancy of mine, bred from my dream and unreasonable, perhaps. I am sorry I mentioned it.

The sun is on the stoop now; I want you to enter your home in its light.

Come!"

He half lifted her from the bench. "I am going to help you up the drive as I used to a.s.sist mother," he said, fighting to keep his voice natural. "Clasp your hands before you and draw your elbows to your sides. Now let me take one in each palm, and you will scoot up this drive as if you were on wheels."

"But I don't want to 'scoot'," she said unsteadily. "I must go slowly and not miss anything."

"On the contrary, you don't want to do any such thing----you should leave most of it for to-morrow."

"I had forgotten there would be any to-morrow. It seems as if the day would end it and set me adrift again."

"You are going to awake in the gold room with the sun s.h.i.+ning on your face in the morning, and it's going to keep on all your life. Now if you've got a smile in your anatomy, bring it to the surface, for just beyond this tree lies happiness for you."

His voice was clear and steady now, his confidence something contagious.

There was a lovely smile on her face as she looked at him, and stepped into the line of light crossing the driveway; and then she stopped and cried, "Oh lovely! Lovely! Lovely!" over and over. Then maybe the Harvester was not glad he had planned, worked unceasingly, and builded as well as he knew.

The cabin of large, peeled, golden oak logs, oiled to preserve them, nestled like a big mushroom on the side of the hill. Above and behind the building the trees arose in a green setting. The roof was stained to their shades. The wide veranda was enclosed in screening, over which wonderful vines climbed in places, and round it grew ferns and deep-wood plants. Inside hung big baskets of wild growth; there was a wide swinging seat, with a back rest, supported by heavy chains. There were chairs and a table of bent saplings and hickory withes. Two full stories the building arose, and the western sun warmed it almost to orange-yellow, while the graceful vines crept toward the roof.

The Girl looked at the rapidly rising hedge on each side of her, at the white floor of the drive, and long and long at the cabin.

"You did all this since February?" she asked.

"Even to transforming the landscape," answered the Harvester.

"Oh I wish it was not coming night!" she cried. "I don't want the dark to come, until you have told me the name of every tree and shrub of that wonderful hedge, and every plant and vine of the veranda; and oh I want to follow up the driveway and see that beautiful little creek--listen to it chuckle and laugh! Is it always glad like that? See the ferns and things that grow on the other side of it! Why there are big beds of them. And lilies of the valley by the acre! What is that yellow around the corner?"

"Never mind that now," said the Harvester, guiding her up the steps, along the gravelled walk to the screen that he opened, and over a flood of gold light she crossed the veranda, and entered the door.

"Now here it appears bare," said the Harvester, "because I didn't know what should go on the walls or what rugs to get or about the windows.