第91章 CHAPTER XVI(6)

"She was a girl who never had anything from life but work and worry. Of course, that's the only kind I'd know! One day when the work was most difficult, and worry cut deepest, and she really thought she was losing her mind, a man came by and helped her. He lifted her out, and rescued all that was possible for a man to save to her in honour, and went his way. There wasn't anything more. Probably there never would be. His heart was great, and he stooped and pitied her gently and passed on. After a time another man came by, a good and noble man, and he offered her love so wonderful she hadn't brains to comprehend how or why it was."

The Girl's voice trailed off as if she were too weary to speak further, while she leaned her head against a pillar and gazed with dull eyes across the lake.

"And your question," suggested the Harvester at last.

She roused herself. "Oh, the question! Why this----if in time, and after she had tried and tried, love to equal his simply would not come would----would----she be wrong to PRETEND she cared, and do the very best she could, and hope for real love some day? Oh David, would she?"

The Harvester's face was whiter than the Girl's. He pounded the chisel into the joist savagely.

"Would she, David?"

"Let me understand you clearly," said the man in a dry, breathless voice. "Did she love this first man to whom she came under obligations?"

The Girl sat gazing across the lake and the tortured Harvester stared at her.

"I don't know," she said at last. "I don't know whether she knew what love was or ever could. She never before had known a man; her heart was as undeveloped and starved as her body. I don't think she realized love, but there was a SOMETHING. Every time she would feel most grateful and long for the love that was offered her, that `something' would awake and hurt her almost beyond endurance. Yet she knew he never would come. She knew he did not care for her. I don't know that she felt she wanted him, but she was under such obligations to him that it seemed as if she must wait to see if he might not possibly come, and if he did she should be free."

"If he came, she preferred him?"

"There was a debt she had to pay----if he asked it.

I don't know whether she preferred him. I do know she had no idea that he would come, but the POSSIBILITY was always before her. If he didn't come in time, would she be wrong in giving all she had to the man who loved her?"

The Harvester's laugh was short and sharp.

"She had nothing to give, Ruth! Talk about worm-wood, colocynth apples, and hemlock! What sort of husks would that be to offer a man who gave honest love? Lie to him! Pretend feeling she didn't experience.

Endure him for the sake of what he offered her? Well I don't know how calmly any other man would take that proceeding, Ruth, but tell your friend for me, that if Ioffered a woman the deep, lasting, and only loving passion of my heart, and she gave back a lie and indifferent lips, I'd drop her into the deepest hole of my lake and take my punishment cheerfully."

"But if it would make him happy? He deserves every happiness, and he need never know!"

The Harvester's laugh raised to an angry roar.

"You simpleton!" he cried roughly. "Do you know so little of human passion in the heart that you think love can be a successful assumption? Good Lord, Ruth!

Do you think a man is made of wood or stone, that a woman's lips in her first kiss wouldn't tell him the truth?

Why Girl, you might as well try to spread your tired arms and fly across the lake as to attempt to pretend a love you do not feel. You never could!"

"I said a girl I knew!"

" `A Girl you knew,' then! Any woman! The idea is monstrous. Tell her so and forget it. You almost scared the life out of me for a minute, Ruth. I thought it was going to be you. But I remember your debt is to be paid with the first money you earn, and you can not have the slightest idea what love is, if you honestly ask if it can be simulated. No ma'am! It can't! Not possibly! Not ever! And when the day comes that its fires light your heart, you will come to me, and tell of a flood of delight that is tingling from the soles of your feet through every nerve and fibre of your body, and you will laugh with me at the time when you asked if it could be imitated successfully. No, ma'am! Now let me help you to the cabin, serve a good supper, and see you eat like a farmer."

All evening the Harvester was so gay he kept the Girl laughing and at last she asked him the cause.

"Relief, honey! Relief!" cried the man. "You had me paralyzed for a minute, Ruth. I thought you were trying to tell me that there was some one so possessing your heart that it failed every time you tried to think about caring for me. If you hadn't convinced me before you finished that love never has touched you, I'd be the saddest man in the world to-night, Ruth."

The Girl stared at him with wide eyes and silently turned away.

Then for a week they worked out life together in the woods. The Harvester was the housekeeper and the cook. He added to his store many delicious broths and stimulants he brought from the city. They drove every day through the cool woods, often rowed on the lake in the evenings, walked up the hill to the oak and scattered fresh flowers on the two mounds there, and sat beside them talking for a time. The Harvester kept up his work with the herbs, and the little closet for the blue dishes was finished. They celebrated installing them by having supper on the living-room table, with the teapot on one end, and the pitcher full of bellflowers on the other.