CHAPTER IV
A COMMISSION FOR THE SOUTH WIND
The next morning the larks trailed ecstasy all over the valley,
the following day cuckoos were calling in the thickets, a warm wind
swept from the south and set swollen buds bursting, while the sun
shone, causing the Harvester to rejoice. Betsy's white coat was
splashed with the mud of the valley road; the feet of Belshazzar
left tracks over lumber piles; and the Harvester removed his muck-covered
shoes at the door and wore slippers inside. The skunk cabbage appeared
around the edge of the forest, rank mullein and thistles lay over
the fields in big circles of green, and even plants of delicate
growth were thrusting their heads through mellowing earth and dead
leaves, to reach light and air.
Then the Harvester took his mattock and began to dig. His level
best fell so far short of what he felt capable of doing and desired
to accomplish that the following day he put two more men on the
job. Then the earth did fly, and so soon as the required space was
excavated the walls were lined with stone and a smooth basement
floor was made of cement. The night the new home stood, a skeleton
of joists and rafters, gleaming whitely on the banks of Loon Lake,
the Harvester went to the bridge crossing Singing Water and slowly
came up the driveway to see how the work appeared. He caught his
breath as he advanced. He had intended to stake out generous rooms,
but this, compared with the cabin, seemed like a big hotel. ``I
hope I haven't made it so large it will be a burden,'' he soliloquized.
``It's huge! But while I am at it I want to build big enough, and
I think I have.''
He stood on the driveway, his arms folded, and looked at the structure
as he occasionally voiced his thoughts.
``The next thing is to lay up the side walls and get the roof over.
Got to have plenty of help, for those logs are hewed to fourteen
inches square and some of them are forty feet long. That's timber!
Grew with me, too. Personally acquainted with almost every tree
of it. We will bed them in cement, use care with the roof, and if
that doesn't make a cool house in the summer, and a warm one in
winter, I'll be disappointed. It sets among the trees, and on the
hillside just right. We must have a wide porch, plenty of flowers,
vines, ferns, and mosses, and when I get everything finished and
she sees it----perhaps it will please her.''
A great horned owl swept down the hill, crossed the lake, and hooted
from the forest of the opposite bank. The Harvester thought of his
dream and turned.
``Any women walking the water to-night? Come if you like,'' he bantered,
``I don't mind in the least. In fact, I'd rather enjoy it. I'd be
so happy if you would come now and tell me how this appears to you,
for it's all yours. I'd have enlarged the store-room, dry-houses
and laboratory for myself, but this cabin, never! The old one suited
me as it was; but for you----I should have a better home.''
The Harvester glanced from the shining skeleton to the bridge of
gold and back again.
``Where are you to-night?'' he questioned. ``What are you doing?
Can't you give me a hint of where to search for you when this is
ready? I don't know but I am beginning wrong. My little brothers
of the wood do differently. They announce their intentions the first
thing, flaunt their attractions, and display their strength. They
say aloud, for all the listening world to hear, what is in their
hearts. They chip, chirp, and sing, warble, whistle, thrill, scream,
and hoot it. They are strong on self-expression, and appreciative
of their appearance. They meet, court, mate, and THEN build their
home together after a mutual plan. It's a good way, too! Lots surer
of getting things satisfactory.''
The Harvester sat on a lumber pile and gazed questioningly at the
framework.
``I wish I knew if I am going at things right,'' he said. ``There
are two sides to consider. If she is in a good home, and lovingly
cared for, it would be proper to court her and get her promise,
if I could----no I'm blest if I'll be so modest----get her promise,
as I said, and let her wait while I build the cabin. But if she
should be poor, tired, and neglected, then I ought to have this
ready when I find her, so I could pick her up and bring her to it,
with no more ceremony than the birds.''
The Harvester's clear skin flushed crimson.
``Of course, I don't mean no wedding ceremony,'' he amended. ``I
was thinking of a long time wasted in preliminaries when in my soul
I know I am going to marry my Dream Girl before I ever have seen
her in reality. What would be the use in spending much time in courting?
She is my wife now, by every law of God. Let me get a glimpse of
her, and I'll prove it. But I've got to make tracks, for if she
were here, where would I put her? I must hurry!''
He went to the work room and began polishing a table top. He had
bought a chest of tools and was spending every spare minute on tables,
chair seats, and legs. He had decided to make these first and carve
candlesticks later when he had more time. Two hours he worked at
the furniture, and then went to bed. The following morning he put
eggs under several hens that wanted to set, trimmed his grape-vines,
examined the precious ginseng beds, attended his stock, got breakfast
for Belshazzar and himself, and was ready for work when the first
carpenter arrived. Laying hewed logs went speedily, and before the
Harvester believed it possible the big shingles he had ordered were
being nailed on the roof. Then came the plumber and arranged for
the bathroom, and the furnace man placed the heating pipes. The
Harvester had intended the cabin to be mostly the work of his own
hands, but when he saw how rapidly skilled carpenters worked, he
changed his mind and had them finish the living-room, his room,
and the upstairs, and make over the dining-room and kitchen.
Her room he worked on alone, with a little help if he did not know
how to join the different parts. Every thing was plain and simple,
after plans of his own, but the Harvester laid floors and made window
casings, seats, and doors of wood that the big factories of Grand
Rapids used in veneering their finest furniture. When one of his
carpenters pointed out this to him, and suggested that he sell his
lumber to McLean and use pine flooring from the mills the Harvester
laughed at him.
``I don't say that I could afford to buy burl maple, walnut, and
cherry for wood-work,'' said the Harvester. ``I could not, but since
I have it, you can stake your life I won't sell it and build my
home of cheap, rapidly decaying wood. The best I have goes into
this cabin and what remains will do to sell. I have an idea that
when this is done it is going to appear first rate. Anyway, it will
be solid enough to last a thousand years, and with every day of
use natural wood grows more beautiful. When we get some tables,
couches, and chairs made from the same timber as the casings and
the floors, I think it will be fine. I want money, but I don't want
it bad enough to part with the BEST of anything I have for it. Go
carefully and neatly there; it will have to be changed if you don't.''
So the work progressed rapidly. When the carpenters had finished
the last stroke on the big veranda they remained a day more and
made flower boxes, and a swinging couch, and then the greedy Harvester
kept the best man with him a week longer to help on the furniture.
``Ain't you going to say a word about her, Langston?'' asked this
man as they put a mirror-like surface on a curly maple dressing
table top.
``Her!'' ejaculated the Harvester. ``What do you mean?''
``I haven't seen you bathe anywhere except in the lake since I have
been here,'' said the carpenter. ``Do you want me to think that
a porcelain tub, this big closet, and chest of drawers are for you?''
A wave of crimson swept over the Harvester.
``No, they are not for me,'' he said simply. ``I don't want to be
any more different from other men than I can help, although I know
that life in the woods, the rigid training of my mother, and the
reading of only the books that would aid in my work have made me
individual in many of my thoughts and ways. I suppose most men,
just now, would tell you anything you want to know. There is only
one thing I can say: The best of my soul and brain, the best of
my woods and store-house, the best I can buy with money is not good
enough for her. That's all. For myself, I am getting ready to marry,
of course. I think all normal men do and that it is a matter of
plain common-sense that they should. Life with the right woman must
be infinitely broader and better than alone. Are you married?''
``Yes. Got a wife and four children.''
``Are you sorry?''
``Sorry!'' the carpenter shrilled the word. ``Sorry! Well that's
the best I ever heard! Am I sorry I married Nell and got the kids?
Do I look sorry?''
``I am not expecting to be, either,'' said the Harvester calmly.
``I think I have done fairly well to stick to my work and live alone
until I am twenty-six. I have thought the thing all over and made
up my mind. As soon as I get this house far enough along that I
feel I can proceed alone I am going to rush the marrying business
just as fast as I can, and let her finish the remainder to her liking.''
``Well this ought to please her.''
``That's because you find your own work good,'' laughed the Harvester.
``Not altogether!'' The carpenter polished the board and stood it
on end to examine the surface as he talked. ``Not altogether! Nothing
but good work would suit you. I was thinking of the little creek
splashing down the hill to the lake; and that old log hewer said
that in a few more days things here would be a blaze of colour until
fall.''
``Almost all the drug plants and bushes leaf beautifully and flower
brilliantly,'' explained the Harvester. ``I studied the location
suitable to each variety before I set the beds and planned how to
grow plants for continuity of bloom, and as much harmony of colour
as possible. Of course a landscape gardener would tear up some of
it, but seen as a whole it isn't so bad. Did you ever notice that
in the open, with God's blue overhead and His green for a background,
He can place purple and yellow, pink, magenta, red, and blue in
masses or any combination you can mention and the brighter the colour
the more you like it? You don't seem to see or feel that any grouping
clashes; you revel in each wonderful growth, and luxuriate in the
brilliancy of the whole. Anyway, this suits me.''
``I guess it will please her, too,'' said the carpenter. ``After
all the pains you've taken, she is a good one if it doesn't.''
``I'll always have the consolation of having done my best,'' replied
the Harvester. ``One can't do more! Whether she likes it or not
depends greatly on the way she has been reared.''
``You talk as if you didn't know,'' commented the carpenter.
``You go on with this now,'' said the Harvester hastily. ``I've
got to uncover some beds and dig my year's supply of skunk cabbage,
else folk with asthma and dropsy who depend on me will be short
on relief. I ought to take my sweet flag, too, but I'm so hurried
now I think I'll leave it until fall; I do when I can, because the
bloom is so pretty around the lake and the bees simply go wild over
the pollen. Sometimes I almost think I can detect it in their honey.
Do you know I've wondered often if the honey my bees make has medicinal
properties and should be kept separate in different seasons. In
early spring when the plants and bushes that furnish the roots and
barks of most of the tonics are in bloom, and the bees gather the
pollen, that honey should partake in a degree of the same properties
and be good medicine. In the summer it should aid digestion, and
in the fall cure rheumatism and blood disorders.''
``Say you try it!'' urged the carpenter. ``I want a lot of the fall
kind. I'm always full of rheumatism by October. Exposure, no doubt.''
``Over eating of too much rich food, you mean,'' laughed the Harvester.
``I'd like to see any man expose his body to more differing extremes
of weather than I do, and I'm never sick. It's because I am my own
cook and so I live mostly on fruits, vegetables, bread, milk, and
eggs, a few fish from the lake, a little game once in a great while
or a chicken, and no hot drinks; plenty of fresh water, air, and
continuous work out of doors. That's the prescription! I'd be ashamed
to have rheumatism at your age. There's food in the cupboard if
you grow hungry. I am going past one of the neighbours on my way
to see about some work I want her to do.''
The Harvester stopped for lunch, carried food to Belshazzar, and
started straight across country, his mattock, with a bag rolled
around the handle, on his shoulder. His feet sank in the damp earth
at the foot of the hill, and he laughed as he leaped across Singing
Water.
``You noisy chatterbox!'' cried the man. ``The impetus of coming
down the curves of the hill keeps you talking all the way across
this muck bed to the lake. With small work I can make you a thing
of beauty. A few bushes grubbed, a little deepening where you spread
too much, and some more mallows along the banks will do the trick.
I must attend to you soon.''
``Now what does the boy want?'' laughed a white- haired old woman,
as the Harvester entered the door. ``Mebby you think I don't know
what you're up to! I even can hear the hammering and the voices
of the men when the wind is in the south. I've been wondering how
soon you'd need me. Out with it!''
``I want you to get a woman and come over and spend a day with me.
I'll come after you and bring you back. I want you to go over mother's
bedding and have what needs it washed. All I want you to do is to
superintend, and tell me now what I will want from town for your
work.''
``I put away all your mother's bedding that you were not using,
clean as a ribbon.''
``But it has been packed in moth preventives ever since and out
only four times a year to air, as you told me. It must smell musty
and be yellow. I want it fresh and clean.''
``So what I been hearing is true, David?''
``Quite true!'' said the Harvester.
``Whose girl is she, and when are you going to jine hands?''
The Harvester lifted his clear eyes and hesitated.
``Doc Carey laid you in my arms when you was born, David. I tended
you 'fore ever your ma did. All your life you've been my boy, and
I love you same as my own blood; it won't go no farther if you say
so. I'll never tell a living soul. But I'm old and 'til better weather
comes, house bound; and I get mighty lonely. I'd like to think about
you and her, and plan for you, and love her as I always did you
folks. Who is she, David? Do I know the family?''
``No. She is a stranger to these parts,'' said the unhappy Harvester.
``David, is she a nice girl 'at your ma would have liked?''
``She's the only girl in the world that I'd marry,'' said the Harvester
promptly, glad of a question he could answer heartily. ``Yes. She
is gentle, very tender and----and affectionate,'' he went on so
rapidly that Granny Moreland could not say a word, ``and as soon
as I bring her home you shall come to spend a day and get acquainted.
I know you will love her! I'll come in the morning, then. I must
hurry now. I am working double this spring and I'm off for the skunk
cabbage bed to-day.''
``You are working fit to kill, the neighbours say. Slavin' like
a horse all day, and half the night I see your lights burning.''
``Do I appear killed?'' laughingly inquired the Harvester.
``You look peart as a struttin' turkey gobbler,'' said the old woman.
``Go on with your work! Work don't hurt a-body. Eat a-plenty, sleep
all you ort, and you CAN'T work enough to hurt you.''
``So the neighbours say I'm working now? New story, isn't it? Usually
I'm too lazy to make a living, if I remember.''
``Only to those who don't sense your purceedings, David. I always
knowed how you grubbed and slaved an' set over them fearful books
o' yours.''
``More interesting than the wildest fiction,'' said the man. ``I'm
making some medicine for your rheumatism, Granny. It is not fully
tested yet, but you get ready for it by cutting out all the salt
you can. I haven't time to explain this morning, but you remember
what I say, leave out the salt, and when Doc thinks it's safe I'll
bring you something that will make a new woman of you.''
He went swinging down the road, and Granny Moreland looked after
him.
``While he was talkin','' she muttered, ``I felt full of information
as a flock o' almanacs, but now since he's gone, 'pears to me I
don't know a thing more 'an I did to start on.''
``Close call,'' the Harvester was thinking. ``Why the nation did
I admit anything to her? People may talk as they please, so long
as I don't sanction it, but I have two or three times. That's a
fool trick. Suppose I can't find her? Maybe she won't look at me
if I can. Then I'd have started something I couldn't finish. And
if anybody thinks I'll end this by taking any girl I can get, if
I can't find Her, why they think wrongly. Just the girl of my golden
dream or no woman at all for me. I've lived alone long enough to
know how to do it in comfort. If I can't find and win her I have
no intention of starting a boarding house.''
The Harvester began to laugh. `` `I'd rather keep bachelor's hall
in Hell than go to board in Heaven!' '' he quoted gaily. ``That's
my sentiment too. If you can't have what you want, don't have anything.
But there is no use to become discouraged before I start. I haven't
begun to hunt her yet. Until I do, I might as well believe that
she will walk across the bridge and take possession just as soon
as I get the last chair leg polished. She might! She came in the
dream, and to come actually couldn't be any more real. I'll make
a stiff hunt of it before I give up, if I ever do. I never yet have
made a complete failure of anything. But just now I am hunting skunk
cabbage. It's precisely the time to take it.''
Across the lake, in the swampy woods, close where the screech owl
sang and the girl of the golden dream walked in the moonlight the
Harvester began operations. He unrolled the sack, went to one end
of the bed and systematically started a swath across it, lifting
every other plant by the roots. Flowering time was almost past,
but the bees knew where pollen ripened, and hummed incessantly over
and inside the queer cone-shaped growths with their hooked beaks.
It almost appeared as if the sound made inside might be to give
outsiders warning not to poach on occupied territory, for the Harvester
noticed that no bee entered a pre-empted plant.
With skilful hand each stroke brought up a root and he tossed it
to one side. The plants were vastly peculiar things. First they
seemed to be a curled leaf with no flower. In colour they shaded
from yellow to almost black mahogany, and appeared as if they were
a flower with no leaf. Closer examination proved there was a stout
leaf with a heavy outside mid-rib, the tip of which curled over
in a beak effect, that wrapped around a peculiar flower of very
disagreeable odour. The handling of these plants by the hundred
so intensified this smell the Harvester shook his head.
``I presume you are mostly mine,'' he said to the busy little workers
around him. ``If there is anything in my theory of honey having
varying medicinal properties at different seasons, right now mine
should be good for Granny's rheumatism and for nervous and dropsical
people. I shouldn't think honey flavoured with skunk cabbage would
be fit to eat. But, of course, it isn't all this. There is catkin
pollen on the wind, hazel and sassafras are both in bloom now, and
so are several of the earliest little flowers of the woods. You
can gather enough of them combined to temper the disagreeable odour
into a racy sweetness, and all the shrub blooms are good tonics,
too, and some of the earthy ones. I'm going to try giving some of
you empty cases next spring and analyzing the honey to learn if
it isn't good medicine.''
The Harvester straightened and leaned on the mattock to fill his
lungs with fresh air and as he delightedly sniffed it he commented,
``Nothing else has much of a chance since I've stirred up the cabbage
bed. I can scent the catkins plainly, being so close, and as I came
here I could detect the hazel and sassafras all right.''
Above him a peculiar, raucous chattering for an instant hushed other
wood voices. The Harvester looked up, laughing gaily.
``So you've decided to announce it to your tribe at last, have you?''
he inquired. ``You are waking the sleepers in their dens to-day?
Well, there's nothing like waiting until you have a sure thing.
The bluebirds broke the trail for the feathered folk the twenty-fourth
of February. The sap oozed from the maples about the same time for
the trees. The very first skunk cabbage was up quite a month ago
to signal other plants to come on, and now you are rousing the furred
folk. I'll write this down in my records----`When the earliest bluebird
sings, when the sap wets the maples, when the skunk cabbage flowers,
and the first striped squirrel barks, why then, it is spring!' ''
He bent to his task and as he worked closer the water he noticed
sweet-flag leaves waving two inches tall beneath the surface.
``Great day!'' he cried. ``There you are making signs, too! And
right! Of course! Nature is always right. Just two inches high and
it's harvest for you. I can use a rake, and dried in the evaporator
you bring me ten cents a pound; to the folks needing a tonic you
are worth a small fortune. No doubt you cost that by the time you
reach them; but I fear I can't gather you just now. My head is a
little preoccupied these days. What with the cabbage, and now you,
and many of the bushes and trees making signs, with a new cabin
to build and furnish, with a girl to find and win, I'm what you
might call busy. I've covered my book shelf. I positively don't
dare look Emerson or Maeterlinck in the face. One consolation! I've
got the best of Thoreau in my head, and if I read Stickeen a few
times more I'll be able to recite that. There's a man for you, not
to mention the dog! Bel, where are you? Would you stick to me like
that? I think you would. But you are a big, strong fellow. Stickeen
was only such a mite of a dog. But what a man he followed! I feel
as if I should put on high-heeled slippers and carry a fan and a
lace handkerchief when I think of him. And yet, most men wouldn't
consider my job so easy!''
The Harvester rapidly pitched the evil-smelling plants into big
heaps and as he worked he imitated the sounds around him as closely
as he could. The song sparrow laughed at him and flew away in disgust
when he tried its notes. The jay took time to consider, but was
not fooled. The nut-hatch ran head first down trees, larvae hunting,
and was never a mite deceived. But the killdeer on invisible legs,
circling the lake shore, replied instantly; so did the lark soaring
above, and the dove of the elm thicket close beside. The glittering
black birds flashing over every tree top answered the ``T'check,
t'chee!'' of the Harvester quite as readily as their mates.
The last time he paused to rest he had studied scents. When he straightened
again he was occupied with every voice of earth and air around and
above him, and the notes of singing hens, exultant cocks, the scream
of geese, the quack of ducks, the rasping crescendo of guineas running
wild in the woods, the imperial note of Ajax sunning on the ridge
pole and echoes from all of them on adjoining and distant farms.
`` `Now I see the full meaning and beauty of that word sound!' ''
quoted the Harvester. `` `I thank God for sound. It always mounts
and makes me mount!' ''
He breathed deeply and stood listening, a superb figure of a man,
his lean face glowing with emotion.
``If she could see and hear this, she would come,'' he said softly.
``She would come and she would love it as I do. Any one who understands,
and knows how to translate, cares for this above all else earth
has to offer. They who do not, fail to read as they run!''
He shifted feet mired in swamp muck, and stood as if loath to bend
again to his task. He lifted a weighted mattock and scraped the
earth from it, sniffing it delightedly the while. A soft south wind
freighted with aromatic odours swept his warm face. The Harvester
removed his hat and shook his head that the breeze might thread
his thick hair.
``I've a commission for you, South Wind,'' he said whimsically.
``Go find my Dream Girl. Go carry her this message from me. Freight
your breath with spicy pollen, sun warmth, and flower nectar. Fill
all her senses with delight, and then, close to her ear, whisper
it softly, `Your lover is coming!' Tell her that, O South Wind!
Carry Araby to her nostrils, Heaven to her ears, and then whisper
and whisper it over and over until you arouse the passion of earth
in her blood. Tell her what is rioting in my heart, and brain, and
soul this morning. Repeat it until she must awake to its meaning,
`Your lover is coming.' ''