The Harvester (Romance Classic). Stratton-Porter Gene
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a block away before I got it all connected, and then came the crush in the street, and I was blocked.”
The doctor broke down and wiped his face and expressed his feelings unrestrainedly.
“Don't!” said the Harvester patiently. “It's no use to feel so badly, Doc. I know what you would give to have found her for me. I know you did all you could. I let her escape me. We will find her yet. It's glorious news that she's in the city. It gives me heart to hear that. Can't you just remember if she seemed ill?”
The doctor meditated.
“She wasn't the tallest girl I ever saw,” he said slowly, “but she was the tallest girl to be pretty. She had on a white waist and a gray skirt and black hat. Her eyes and hair were like you said, and she was plain, white faced, with a hue that might possibly be natural, and it might be confinement in bad light and air and poor food. She didn't seem sick, but she isn't well. There is something the matter with her, but it's not immediate or dangerous. She appeared like a flower that had got a little moisture and sprouted in a cellar.”
“You saw her all right!” said the Harvester, “and I think your diagnosis is correct too. That's the way she seemed to me. I've thought she needed sun and air. I told the South Wind so the other day.”
“Why you blame fool!” cried the doctor. “Is this thing going to your head? Say, I forgot! There is something else. I traced her in the store. She was at the embroidery counter and she bought some silk. If she ever comes again the clerk is going to hold her and telephone me or get her address if she has to steal it. Oh, we are getting there! We will have her pretty soon now. You ought to feel better just to know that she is in town and that I've seen her.”
“I do!” said the Harvester. “Indeed I do!”
“It can't be much longer,” said the doctor. “She's got to be located soon. But those policemen! I wouldn't give a nickel for the lot! I'll bet she's walked over them for two weeks. If I were you I'd discharge the bunch. They'd be peacefully asleep if she passed them. If they'd let me alone, I'd have had her. I could have turned around easily. I've been in dozens of closer places.”
“Don't worry! This can't last much longer. She's of and in the city or she wouldn't have picked up the flowers. Doc, are you sure they were mine?”
“Yes. Half the girls have been tricked out in yours the past two weeks. I can spot them as far as I can see.”
“Dear Lord, that's getting close!” said the Harvester intensely. “Seems as if the violets would tell her.”
“Now cut out flowers talking and the South Wind!” ordered the doctor. “This is business. The violets prove something all right, though. If she was in the country, she could gather plenty herself. She is working at sewing in some room in town, either over a store or in a house. If she hadn't been starved for flowers she never would have stopped for them on the street. I could see just a flash of hesitation, but she wanted them too much. David, one bouquet will go in water and be cared for a week. Man, it's getting close! This does seem like a link.”
“Since you say it, possibly I dare agree with you,” said the Harvester.
“How near are you through with that canvass of yours?”
“About three fourths.”
“Well I'd go on with it. After all we have got to find her ourselves. Those senile policemen!”
“I am going on with it; you needn't worry about that. But I've got to change to other flowers. I've stripped the violet beds. There's quite a crop of berries coming, but they are not ripe yet, and a tragedy to pick. The pond lilies are just beginning to open by the thousand. The lake border is blue with sweet-flag that is lovely and the marsh pale gold with cowslips. The ferns are prime and the woods solid sheets of every colour of bloom. I believe I'll go ahead with the wild flowers.”
“I would too! David, you do feel better, don't you?”
“I certainly do, Doctor. Surely it won't be long now!”
The Harvester was so hopeful that he whistled and sang on the return to Medicine Woods, and that night for the first time in many days he sat long over a candlestick, and took a farewell peep into her room before he went to bed.
The next day he worked with all his might harvesting the last remnants of early spring herbs, in the dry-room and store-house, and on furniture and candlesticks.
Then he went back to flower gathering and every day offered bunches of exquisite wood and field flowers and white and gold water lilies from door to door.
Three weeks later the Harvester, perceptibly thin, pale, and worried entered the office. He sank into a chair and groaned wearily.
“Isn't this the bitterest luck!” he cried. “I've finished the town. I've almost walked off my legs. I've sold flowers by the million, but I've not had a sight of her.”
“It's been almost a tragedy with me,” said the doctor gloomily. “I've killed two dogs and grazed a baby, because I was watching the sidewalks instead of the street. What are you going to do now?”
“I am going home and bring up the work to the July mark. I am going to take it easy and rest a few days so I can think more clearly. I don't know what I'll try next. I've punched up the depot and the policemen again. When I get something new thought out I'll let you know.”
Then he began emptying his pockets of money and heaping it on the table, small coins, bills, big and little.
“What on earth is that?”
“That,” said the Harvester, giving the heap a shove of contempt, “that is the price of my pride and humiliation. That is what it cost people who allowed me to cheek my way into their homes and rob them, as one maid said, for my own purposes. Doc, where on earth does all the money come from? In almost every house I entered, women had it to waste, in many cases to throw away. I never saw so much paid for nothing in all my life. That whole heap is from mushrooms and flowers.”
“What are you piling it there for?”
“For your free ward. I don't want a penny of it. I wouldn't keep it, not if I was starving.”
“Why David! You couldn't compel any one to buy. You offered something they wanted, and they paid you what you asked.”
“Yes, and to keep them from buying, and to make the stuff go farther, I named prices to shame a shark. When I think of that mushroom deal I can feel my face burn. I've made the search I wanted to, and I am satisfied that I can't find her that way. I have kept up my work at home between times. I am not out anything but my time, and it isn't fair to plunder the city to pay that. Take that cussed money and put it where I'll never see or hear of it. Do anything you please, except to ask me ever to profit by a cent. When I wash my hands after touching it for the last time maybe I'll feel better.”
“You are a fanatic!”
“If getting rid of that is being a fanatic, I am proud of the title. You can't imagine what I've been through!”
“Can't I though?” laughed the doctor. “In work of that kind you get into every variety of place; and some of it is new to you. Never mind! No one can contaminate you. It is the law that only a man can degrade himself. Knowing things will not harm you. Doing them is a different matter. What you know will be a protection. What you do ruins——if it is wrong. You are not harmed, you are only disgusted. Think it over, and in a few days come back and get your money. It is strictly honest. You earned every cent of it.”
“If you ever speak of it again or force it on me I'll take it home and throw it into the lake.”
He went after Betsy and slowly drove to Medicine Woods. Belshazzar, on the seat beside him, recognized a silent, disappointed master and whimpered as he rubbed the Harvester's shoulder to attract his attention.
“This is tough luck, old boy,” said the Harvester. “I had such hopes and I worked so hard. I suffered in the flesh for every hour of it, and I failed. Oh but