Fruits of the Earth (18 page)

“How could you think of all that, daddy?” Jim asked.

Abe felt flattered; but he destroyed the child's belief in his omniscience. “I've employed an architect to write the specifications. He's responsible for it all.”

“Does he get paid for that?”

“Of course. I paid him six hundred dollars for the plans.” Jim whistled.

Ruth betrayed no interest. Yet, with the warmer weather, she changed for the first time in years to lightcoloured clothing. Not all of her new things were to Abe's taste; nor did they all fit well; but she had made an attempt, and he gave her credit for it. He went further. One day he returned from Somerville with a parasol of pearl-grey silk; she stared as she thanked him; the thought of the money it had cost appalled her; yet he had thought of her while in town. He promptly bought her a fur coat, of grey Siberian squirrel.

Haying began. The work in the field became frantic.

Meanwhile the walls of the house went up. The crew that had been pouring concrete moved to the barn. Electricians wired house and farm buildings: horse-barn, granaries,
pig-pens, and the large hen-house the front wall of which was replaced by canvas. Two poles were erected in the yard; and power wires slung overhead. Four huge incandescent bulbs were suspended there: even the yard was to be lighted.

“Spalding,” said Hartley, “is wiring his hen-house.”

“What?” Wheeldon asked. “Chickens going to lay by electricity?”

“Exactly,” Nicoll replied. “If you want to get eggs in winter, you've got to give the hens as much light as in summer.”

“I'd put a lantern behind the roost,” Wheeldon said.

And the crowd at Nicoll's corner laughed an Homeric laugh–only Nicoll looked worried.

It became known that Abe had spent a week at the Agricultural College near the city, a new institution in course of construction.

“College farming!” said Wheeldon.

And Hartley added, “If I'd enough money to build a pig-pen like what I hear they've got there, I'd live in it myself.”

“I believe you,” Nicoll parried.

Yet Abe was anxious. Once more he had started a vast machinery going which he had controlled at the outset but which had begun to control him instead. The cost of the building had been fixed at fifteen thousand dollars; but point after point came up for reconsideration. This or that, the foreman said, could be done at the original figure; but…And Abe invariably decided for the better way which involved increased expense. Whenever that was done, the foreman made him sign an order authorizing the alteration in the plan. What would the total be when all was finished? Abe knew only that the total was growing, growing.

The roof was raised. More machinery arrived in town. This was for the new barn: hay-slings, elevators to raise the
grain into bins; grain crushers; pumps for the milking room; cooling vats for the cream; a huge cream separator to be driven by electricity. The district marvelled.

But more than anything else was one piece of machinery discussed, with long, flexible tubes that ended in rubber cups. Many a guess was made as to its purpose before any one dared to ask Abe. Nicoll ventured the question at last and was himself dumbfounded at the answer.

“That's a milking machine.”

The district roared with laughter.

At last, when Abe was cutting his crop, the dynamo was set up in a roofed-over pit behind the house. Four huge cement blocks were cast for it to rest on; four more to carry the gasoline engine that was to drive it; these were set to a depth of six feet below the floor of the pit in which holes had been left when it was laid. Nowhere did the concrete of the floor which was continuous with that of the basement touch the cement of these blocks; the interstices between them and the floor were filled with pitch. This was done to prevent any vibration from reaching the house. All this interested Jim more than anything else; he obtained permission to stay with the electricians.

Ruth was impatient for the work to be finished. The tall new structure took away the light from the old house. In fact, when the wiring system was to be tried out, even she was quite excited.

To the last, the electricians worked in the old barn where the wiring had given most trouble. All lights were to have a mysterious triple control: from a master switchboard in the dining-room of the house; from a smaller switchboard in each of the buildings; and from each individual light the turning on of which started the engine.

At last the day for the trial had come. It was half-past ten at night when the chief electrician announced that he was ready. There were two small lights on the gate-posts fronting the road, with individual switches under hoods of japanned tin. The system was to be tested by turning one of these guide-lights on–their bulbs were frosted, so as not to blind the nocturnal traveller seeking entrance.

The children had been allowed to remain awake for the occasion. Who could have slept? The men working in the field had scouted the idea of going home. They were assembled west of the low roof of the pit; that roof was provided with a skylight which was open.

There they stood, breathless with excitement. The engineer blew a whistle as a signal that he was going to switch the gatelights on; and as he did so, the underground cavern burst forth in a blaze of light. They heard nothing–which was disappointing; and, blinded, they saw nothing either.

Then Jim exclaimed, “Look, look, she's running!”

“Is she?”–from a dozen mouths, incredulously.

But Jim pointed to the dynamo. “See the sparks? At the brushes.”

“By golly!” someone said.

The wheels ran so true that their rotation was imperceptible. Jim skipped to the far side of the pit where the exhaust pierced the low wall. “Here you can hear it!” And everybody followed him with a rush.

Across the pitch-dark yard the electrician came to the house and went up the rear steps to what was going to be the kitchen. “I'll turn the whole system on,” he said, vanishing into the building.

Everybody ran to the gate in the ornamental fence dividing house-yard from farm-yard. A second later every window
in house, barns, granaries, pig-pens, and henhouse blazed forth as in the streets of a city; even the lights overhead came on, flooding the yard as with daylight. Mysteriously, all about, the leaves of the wind-break rustled in the reflection of the glow.

“Hip, hip…” cried a voice.

And all present broke into a cheer, the children most unreservedly.

“Well,” said Ruth, herself half aglow, “and now to bed.”

But they ran to hide behind the grown-ups, giving vent to their protest by a long-drawn-out “O-oh no-oh!”

Ruth smiled and yielded when Abe said, “Let them sleep to-morrow. I'll give them a holiday.” For school had started again.

The test was not finished. The electrician made the round with Abe, to turn on every light separately and to show him how the switches controlled the machinery in house and barns. This electrician, whose time was valuable, intended to leave on the morrow, delegating what was left to be done to subordinates.

One by one the men working in the field drifted away; it was past midnight; even the children grew sleepy, and Ruth took them to the old house. There was nothing spectacular any longer.

And the days went by; once more the crews changed; and only the cook remained through it all, a round-faced, pleasant little Chinaman. The new barn was painted; and when the new red did not harmonize with the darkened tint of the old barn, the latter was repainted, too. In the house, plastering was done; woodwork was stained; floors waxed.

Every night all lights were turned on, much to the surprise, no doubt, of horses, cows, pigs, and chickens; and the children verified the fact that the hens did not go to their
roosts but went on scratching in the litter of straw on the floor.

One evening Abe found a pretext to go to town after dark; and when the children exclaimed, “Oh, daddy! You just want to see the place from the road!” he grew almost angry because they had so accurately guessed his design. But when he gave orders that the lights were not to be turned off, and they crowed over him, he could not help laughing himself, thereby admitting that they had been right.

He went in the buggy; and he never looked back till he had reached town. From the Somerville Line he peered through the night at the pool of light on the horizon. It did not loom high but seemed rather to form a dent in the skyline. That was the proudest moment of his life; and he raised an arm as though reaching for the stars.

This lighting system had not formed part of the original plan; but dreams have a way of realizing their potential growth. The best thing a man can say of himself is that he has grown with the growth of his dreams.

Work in the house was not finished before the freeze-up. The year had been dry; the crop was fair but no more; and Abe's acreage had been small. He knew that he had exceeded all his estimates. If he wanted to furnish the house that winter, he would have to borrow. “If he wanted?” Not a piece of old furniture was going into that house, no matter what the cost. By and by he would draw the old patched-up place into the field beyond Horanski's, for a second hired man.

“Never again!” he had said last year when he stacked his crop; and the purchase of a grain separator had formed part and parcel of his plans; but as fall had come, he had made arrangements with Victor Lafontaine of St. Cecile. There was no money left for machinery.

It froze up early, with no snow covering the ground; and Abe could not haul his wheat to town. So, in November, he went to Somerville to make provision at the bank for credit and then took the train to the city in order to buy the furniture for the house. When he returned, he had spent an additional three thousand dollars.

They moved in in December. The old shack stood deserted behind the mansion, a bit of an eyesore for Abe whenever he looked at his place from anywhere but the road.

Again he urged Ruth to get help for the house, but she declined. “Well,” Abe said, “I've given you every labour-saving device known: electric washer and drier, dish-washing machine, vacuum-cleaner, septic tanks, bathroom, hardwood floors, and so on. You'll have to make out, then, as best you can.”

THE BRIDGE

O
nce more a year had gone by. On Abe's place, hens laid eggs in winter; cows were milked by a machine. In the west half of the new barn water was supplied to the animals by turning a single tap which caused twenty drinking pails to fill. Manure was rinsed away by a powerful jet of water and, in well-arranged drains, run into a concrete pit where it was rotted by fermentation and, therefore, never froze. The other half of the barn, accessible from stable or yard, held tractor and implements, milkroom and workshops.

Even in the old barn things were changed. Feed grain was elevated directly from the tanks into huge hopper bins whence the mixture was fed into a crusher and thence to the feed chutes. Water was pumped by a force-pump into an overhead tank.

At the house, there was a bathroom with a large tub and taps of hot and cold water. Every bedroom–there were six, one for each member of the household–had a white-tiled wash-basin set into the wall, it, too, with running water, hot and cold. Nobody needed to clean or light lamps; a switch was turned instead. The engine was fed with liquid fuel from an
outside tank. A huge furnace for which Abe bought anthracite by the carload needed to be looked after only twice a day.

Labour-saving devices galore; and they did save labour; but did they save time? There was less hard work; there were more errands to run; there was more fixing to do: annoying little jobs which, though he did not admit it, made Abe very impatient. Occasionally he had to send for a mechanic. There was less labour; but there was more ill temper.

The milking took less time; but when Horanski, who still proved skilful and adaptable, had finished with the cows, his wife had to clean and scald no end of tubes and bowls.

Perhaps Abe had, in 1913, not given quite as much thought and energy to the field work as he might have done. Perhaps the fertility of the soil was beginning to show the effects of many croppings. The yield, that fall, had been disappointing: less than fifteen bushels per acre; the fallow had not been extensive enough; there had been little fall-ploughing. In 1914, spring was late; Abe owed money; more than he had ever owed before. His credit was unquestioned; he could borrow when he pleased; but it was imperative that he seed a large acreage, larger than could be properly prepared. In desperation he did what he had never done yet; he seeded stubble, merely disking four hundred acres cropped the year before.

1913 had been dry. According to the weather-lore of the old-timers two more dry years were due. But 1914 denied their doctrine; there was plenty of rain. Abe was favoured by his usual luck. Had there been a drought as in 1913, his stubble seeding would have been a total loss; it had been a total loss for the Topp brothers and others when, after the disaster of 1912, they had threshed in spring and neglected their land.

For the first time, the district seemed actually retarded in its progress by the opportunity which Abe offered the settlers
of making good wages. Nicoll and Stanley, it was true, forged slowly ahead; even Wheeldon did well. But Nawosad, Hilmer, Shilloe, and the Topps were always working for Abe instead of attending to their own farms. How Hartley held out was a mystery. He peddled groceries and patent medicines; but who could make a living by such means?

In the fall of the year, war had come in Europe. As for the district, another quarter section, west of Hartley's, had been filed on by a young man by the name of McCrae; but he promptly enlisted. An example thus being set, further enlistments followed. First Dave Topp went, then Bill Stanley, glad, people said, to get away from home where it was now praying and Bible-reading from morning till night; and finally Tom Nicoll and Slim Topp left together. Henry Topp, too, volunteered; but, being below the minimum height, he was rejected. All which meant that Abe was suddenly deprived of half his help.