So did I. He is a stronger physical man than I ever was or ever will be. The struggle that bound him to the woods and to research, that made him the master of forces that give back life, when a man like Carey says it is the end, proves him a master. The tumult in his soul must have been like a cyclone in his forest, when he turned his back on the world and stuck to the woods.
Carey told me about it. Some day you must hear. It's a story a woman ought to know in order to arrive at proper values. You never will understand the man until you know that he is clean where most of us are blackened with ugly sins we have no right on God's footstool to commit and not so much reason as he. Every man should be as he is, but very few are. Carey says Langston's mother was a wonderful element in the formation of his character; but all mothers are anxious, and none of them can build with no foundation and no soul timber.
She had material for a man to her hand, or she couldn't have made one."
"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 Iwasn'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 Icame 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.
