Fruits of the Earth (23 page)

Abe entered the den; and the doctor went through the ever-repeated ceremony of clearing a chair for him. “Sit down,” he said.

They sat in silence, the doctor sucking the stem of his pipe. “I can't understand it,” Abe said with darkening brow.

The doctor did not answer at once. When he did, his tone was didactic; he had said the same thing so often. “We can't know, Abe. But where knowledge is denied, faith comes in.”

“Faith in what?”

“In whatever we have made the canon of our lives.”

Another silence. Then, “What is yours?”

“I have discarded so-called beliefs. But there are obligations left, the more exacting since they are not imposed from without. Courage and fortitude; the search after truth–”

“If you can't know, what is truth?”

The doctor's small face seemed to contract. “That which we feel to be in harmony with the best and deepest within us.”

Abe brooded. Then, in a whisper, “Where's the kid?”

The doctor nursed the ankle of a foot with the palm of a hand. But before he could answer, Abe had resumed, “I can see him move. I can hear his voice. I can feel his arm about my neck. Where is he?” A silence again, “
He
!” Abe cried. “The rest of the body….”

An hour or so later, he entered Spalding School. Perhaps it was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the schoolmaster was engaged in the task of putting away maps, books, and papers used during the day.

Abe sat down in one of the larger seats; and for minutes, while the old man went on with his work, not a word was spoken. Blaine, too, had learned to recognize and respect Abe's moods. He knew how surcharged this giant was with perplexities. At last Blaine sat down, skinny, ridged hands clasped about a thin knee, huge head bent forward, trembling on its pedicel, with the long, curly, snow-white beard touching his thighs. On his short, fleshy nose reposed steel-rimmed glasses; and the ruddy cushions of flesh which formed his cheeks seemed singularly clear-skinned and transparent. He stared through the windows.

Abe stirred. “How old are you, Blaine?”

“Seventy-seven, Abe. Getting up in years.”

“Your time's coming. Ever think of it?”

“Yes…. Yes….”

“Believe in an after life?”

“I don't know. I have my doubts.”

Abe looked at him. “A man must up his mind one way or the other.”

Blaine's beard trembled. Then, slowly, “If sixty years ago my father had heard any one say that he doubted, he would have thought him insane or wicked. I believe in God; but it isn't the God my father believed in. He's changed.”

“How?”

The old man stared at his questioner. “It's all for the best, they say. That doesn't go down with me.”

The dreaded question came. “Where's the kid?”

The old man flung his hand in a helpless gesture….

Abe often thought of Nicoll who had lost a boy in the war, taking his loss with great fortitude. Was he right? He had been right in many things. Nicoll was the only man who understood him, Abe. All the others, friend and foe, thought of him as unchanged; and they imposed their conception of him on all who were moving in.

But not, of course, on Ruth.

As in the case of many marriages, the lines of Abe's and Ruth's lives had neither merged nor diverged; they had run parallel. Both were mellowed by age and sorrow. Just how deeply Ruth grieved, Abe did not know; it was not his way to talk about it. Only his silence showed how deeply he had been moved; and he reaped what he sowed, namely silence.

Outwardly, and that was all Abe could judge by, Ruth had made an understanding between them very difficult. In this house with its polished floors, its oaken stairway, its wide, high windows, its shiny metal appliances which saved labour and demanded it, she did all the work herself and did it faithfully and well. So there was no time left to dress in; from
morning till night she went about in the same house-dresses of dark print to which she had reverted. The two girls, especially Marion, were never behind the latest fashions; every few months they had new dresses; no expense was spared to make them attractive; and they were attractive. What little vanity Ruth might once have had she had transferred to her children. What did it matter how she looked herself? No wonder that, on the rare occasions when she went to town, or when the Vanbruiks came to the farm, Ruth, “dressed up,” looked even more awkward, more “countrified” than on weekdays at home; she had no taste; and her daughters were not quite old enough to guide her.

When she scanned herself in a mirror–as a rule she used it only as an indispensable means of putting hairpins and clothes in the approximately right places–she felt amazed at the change she had undergone in the last twenty years. Her massive jaw sprang forward from a triple chin; the skin of her neck was heavily corrugated. The line from her shoulder-blades sloped forward to the top of her head. On her back, the flesh bulged as much as on her bosom. In walking, she balanced her weight on one foot before she lifted the other.

It was tragic that this mockery of the human form should yet be the seat of poignant emotions. Abe did not doubt the fact; though tears, when he surprised her weeping, seemed facile to him. He withdrew: as though sorrow were a privilege reserved for himself.

But often they sat together of an evening now: Ruth sewing, Abe reading large-tomed books. They sat in the dining-room; both had sat too long on straight-backed chairs to feel at ease in an arm-chair. Perhaps the children were doing their home-work; or they were in bed.

Both Frances and Jim were backward in school; they did not apply themselves; they were preparing for a life of things among which scholarship held no place. In the spring of 1918, Jim had tried for the third time to pass his entrance examinations; he had failed again.

One evening Abe spoke of that. “He should help me on the farm. He's no good at school.”

“He can help you throughout the summer,” Ruth said. “In winter I want him to attend.” She dropped her sewing, looking up at Abe.

“What's the use if he can't pass that examination?”

“He can go on to high school,” Ruth said primly. “I have written to the Department of Education. Since he lost time through work in the field, they permit him to proceed.”

Abe mused. “If he hasn't the brains–”

“All the more does he need the schooling. People with brains get through life somehow; the rest need instruction.”

“A novel theory,” Abe said listlessly.

“I want Jim to go to Somerville next fall,” Ruth went on briskly. “If there is any trouble about the expense, I have the money.”

“If it's got to be, I'll finance it, of course.”…

Frances was still a grade behind Jim; but Blaine had said she would be ready for high school within a year. She was only a little over fourteen, a very pretty girl, plump as Ruth had been, but with Abe's fine, light hair. She was prettiest when she was hot; her hair assumed a natural curliness, and her pallid complexion took on a rose tint.

When, at the beginning of summer, Marion came home for the holidays, Abe was greatly struck by the change in her. Her aunt had brought her out in the car; Abe had not seen her
yet when he entered the dining-room for his supper; she looked like a strange young woman.

She was standing in the far corner, diagonally opposite the kitchen door through which Abe entered. She was holding her hands behind her back, a smile on her lips. Abe thought the pose arranged for effect; and the sight came indeed like a calculated surprise. It was the first time he saw her with her hair done up: beautiful hair, the dark brown of her mother's when young, with golden tints in reflected light. Her face showed that bony, thin-fleshed grace which had been Charlie's. Her body, tall and slender–the opposite of Frances's build–yet fully developed, held a note new to him in attitude and expression. She wore a maroon-coloured dress of light silk, very plainly cut, too plainly for a girl of not quite sixteen: too well adapted to display the forms of a young woman. According to the fashion it was open at the neck and reached just below the knee. The sleeves, wide, transparent, revealed long, slender arms. She came quickly forward, put an arm about Abe's shoulders, kissed him as he bent down, and stepped back. “Hello, daddy,” she said with a laugh as of abated breath. “I hope you are well?”

“Sure,” he said, sitting heavily down at the head of the table. “Why shouldn't I be well? What are all the lights on for?”

Marion, with a silvery laugh, switched them off.

“Well,” Abe asked in the course of supper. “Do you think you passed in your examinations?”

“I think so, daddy.” Which was said very readily, with a note of politeness foreign to ordinary intercourse in farmers' families.

Abe's eye was on Jim. Where in the world did these two get their complexions? Both were dark-skinned, with ruddy
cheeks; but Marion had an almost Spanish
morbidezza
of the flesh and a velvet bloom on ivory and red. That thin-fleshed slenderness of facial contour, too, they had in common. But what was beautiful in Marion was coarsened in Jim to an angular boniness. Jim was the only one of the children who promised to vie in height with his father. At seventeen he stood six feet tall. But one feature of his head was repulsive: his large, prominent ears showed a peculiar deformity: their lobes pointed horizontally forward….

The weeks went by. In the field, Jim was as good as a man. And, as fall came, Abe made arrangements for the boy to board at the same house with Marion, to attend high school at Somerville.

The crop was a failure. Drought was the trouble this time. In a drought Abe suffered more than his neighbours.

Twice before Abe had lived through a crisis: never through one like this. It would have relieved him to speak of his worries; but a habit of silence had established itself between man and wife. Every year Abe had given Ruth a cheque; and since the year of the great crop that cheque had been for a thousand dollars. In 1917, what with this cheque and the expense of sending Marion to Somerville, Abe had, for the first time, found himself unable to pay his taxes. The payment to Ruth was in the nature of a debt of honour on which he must not default; it had precedence over every other demand on his purse. He had waived all replacements on the farm; yet, throughout the year, he had not succeeded in straightening out his tax bill.

This fall, the wheat crop averaged eight bushels to the acre, on five hundred acres. The grade was low; his net income from the crop was less than three thousand six hundred dollars. The payment to Ruth and the cost of having two
children in town consumed half his surplus. Horanski who was leaving had to be paid in full. When Abe balanced his accounts, he had less than a thousand dollars left to see him through till next fall. The taxes, amounting to more than a thousand dollars a year, would have to stand over again.

At bottom, there was nothing to worry about. Everywhere on earth the farmer suffers set-backs through failure of the crop. Abe had had two bad years in succession; it was unlikely that another would follow. A single fair crop–twenty bushels to the acre–would take care of his indebtedness. His credit at the bank was good; he had owed money before. The trouble was that in previous years he had been expanding; income had been bound to increase. He was retrenching now; he was reorganizing his operations on a smaller scale. Well, his land was broken; his difficulties were momentary only.

Abe being reeve of the municipality, the business of the corporation had, during the last few years, rested largely in his hands. Throughout the war he had enforced a policy of the strictest economy: all new road work had been postponed; nothing had been done except what could not be left over. Statistics showed that no other municipality in the province was in a better financial position. This policy would, of course, involve an enormous expense when the war was over. The ditches, for instance, would have to be looked after; for, though the province had established the drainage system, the various municipalities had been saddled with the cost of upkeep; and for years the council had been aware of the fact that a considerable amount of work would have to be done to preserve their efficiency; in various places the banks had caved in; in others, deposits of silt choked the flow of the water; east of Spalding District, willows had invaded the bottom, damming all current. For this work funds had been set aside,
invested in war bonds. The fact that the taxes on two sections of land were unpaid could not possibly prevent the municipality from doing all that could be expected. Abe would see to that; in case of need he would go to the bank: at the worst, he would borrow from Ruth….

But that fall the war did come to an end.

THE CAMPAIGN

W
ith the armistice, the question of consolidation was an issue overnight, a long-prepared and hard-fought issue which was to unleash every dormant passion in the district and to divide its population into sharply differentiated camps. Abe forgot his personal worries and, for the first time, came out in a partisan fight.

How long-prepared the issue was Abe did not know till he stood in the battle. It became a test of the standing he had won in the community. At once, Wheeldon and he stood opposed as the leaders of two hostile factions.

John Elliot had moved in, after all; the moment hostilities had ceased in Europe, he had sold his place in Saskatchewan. For a few weeks the Elliots lived in a granary: John, his wife, a thin, cityfied woman who had once been a stenographer, and their three children, two girls and a boy. Meanwhile a small, square cottage was being run up by two carpenters: the Elliot glory was fading fast.

Another new settler, a Russo-German from White Russia, moved on to the south-west quarter of twenty-eight, a mile and a half west of Hilmer's Corner, a short, wiry man by
name of Baker, sullen and silent, with whom nobody became acquainted to any extent. He brought the total of farmsteads in the district up to sixteen. Only one settler, the youngest Topp, was still overseas, apart from Bill Stanley who was not going to return. Thus, since women had received the vote, the number of electors was twenty-nine.