Fruits of the Earth (38 page)

“It's plainly to be seen,” Mary had sternly gone on. “But I'll admit I did not suspect her till this afternoon. I was in the garden. Across the fence was Ethel Reilly with another girl. ‘Look at that Spalding kid!' one said to the other. ‘Surely, she's got herself into trouble?' I couldn't see Frances. But it struck me at once with the force of conviction. Only in the morning I had been thinking that she had grown astonishingly stout since school had closed. But you are stout yourself; and it hadn't been striking so far.”

“I wasn't stout when I was her age,” Ruth had said.

“Perhaps not. But she's been at home for two months, and you have noticed nothing yourself. I have blamed and blamed myself ever since. When she came in, I charged her with the fact. She denied it. I made her undress; and she broke down and admitted it all…No use crying, Ruth, now the thing's done. I came because I knew Abe wasn't at home. The problem is how to keep it from his knowledge.”

“How
can
it be kept from his knowledge?”

“That you will have to think out. I wonder whether you realize what this would mean to him. He would kill the man.”

“Who
is
the man?”

“Let Frances tell you. I don't mean to go into the details of the sordid story. But the man is married and has a family of his own. That ghost of an excuse Frances has. But it is all the worse for Abe.”

“Why?”

“Ruth, I know what this must mean to you. I don't want to be harsh. But I must speak. I wish to God I had said long ago what I have to say. You have not always been the right wife for Abe. When you saw what it meant to carve a farm
out of raw prairie, you gave up and threw the whole burden on him. You thought your children should have a freer and easier life. You taught them to look for fulfilment of their wishes away from home. They have learned the lesson.”

“If you want to speak ill of my children–”

“I am not speaking ill of them. If you had given them the right kind of home, this would not have happened. Marion would not have married against Abe's wishes. Jim would have stayed at home. Frances would be a decent girl. What has Abe left? He works like a slave to preserve that semblance of a home which he thinks he still has. He is over fifty. He has always worked too hard. And this is what you hold in reserve for him. Go if you want to. Tell him what you have done, yes, you! Tell him that this girl and a scoundrel have brought shame on his greying head. Do! And see what will come of it.”

Ruth had listened, half in despair half in revolt. Some of the things Mary had said were true; others were not. What did it matter? If Abe could be spared, he must be spared, with that she agreed.

“He will kill the man!” Mary had repeated.

“If he is a married man, he deserves it.”

“But what about Abe? He will hang.”

Ruth had started to her feet with a cry.

Mary had gone on speaking passionately. All that had stood between the two women had come from her lips, things just and unjust. To Ruth they had seemed irrelevant. Mary had concluded by saying, “He will do justice regardless of consequences.”

Yes, so Ruth had thought at that moment of emotional upheaval. Abe stood at the centre of it all. She understood him better than his sister. He must be protected. The whole load
of the crisis settled down on her shoulders. “Have you a plan?” she had asked.

“That,” Mary had said, rising and going to the window, “I will tell you when Frances has told you what she has told me. Better take her upstairs and keep her there, out of Abe's sight.”

Ruth, with the uneasy memory in her mind of what Abe had said at the mere thought of just what had happened, had done as Mary bade; and in this room where she spent the night Frances had told the tale of that ride from town in McCrae's car. Ruth had shuddered; but the thought of Abe had saved her from breaking down. As, during the night, she lay there, she was torn between two desires: that of saving Abe and that of handing “that man” over to him. A ruthless power had twisted her purpose into its opposite. An easier and higher life than she had led!

Abe was the child's father; he was the man to punish the offender; and yet he must be spared. Much of what Mary had said Ruth was willing to admit. It had come to the point where Abe, with all his faults, meant manhood to her, power, tenacity, perseverance in the face of adversity; yes, and forbearance. The very things which she had resented in him she had come to admire. He must be spared. And a crooked little by-thought had crept in: by sparing him, she could protect the girl from his wrath. For already Ruth was building a defence around her child; in defending her she was defending herself. McCrae alone was to blame; he must be punished, or she would lose her faith in life!

Abe must be kept in ignorance: that, the two women had agreed upon. A plan had suggested itself to Mary, starting from the coincidence of Mr. Rogers's telephone call; so she had made a definite arrangement for her brother to be fetched in the afternoon of the following day. Abe being out of the way, she would
run Ruth and Frances to the city where Marion's approaching confinement would furnish a pretext for this visit of her sister. Frances would remain in the city till all was over; she need never even see her own child; that remained to be arranged for.

There seemed to be no flaw in this plan, provided Ruth was willing to let McCrae go unpunished. That Ruth might for a moment weigh her desire for his punishment against the necessity of keeping the thing from Abe had never occurred to Mary. But Ruth plotted and planned till she seemed to see a way of achieving both ends. McCrae must be punished; he was the guilty one; Frances was his innocent victim. His punishment would restore to Ruth a measure of confidence in herself.

She had reached no definite conclusion yet when Abe stirred to rise for the day. He stretched and yawned in his room, stretched and yawned.

Frances was innocent. Ruth had told Mary so. “Force was used.”

“Why is force not used against other girls?”

“We don't need to discuss that,” Ruth had said….

She must get up to prepare breakfast and pack the noonday lunch. She waited till Abe had gone to the barn. Then, having washed, she slipped down to the kitchen….

At ten o'clock a boy from town brought the buggy, leading a saddle-horse behind. He came to the house and brought Ruth a note.

“I have arranged everything. Rogers will call for Abe at three. I shall come for you to-morrow morning at seven–Mary.”

“There is no answer,” Ruth had said to the messenger….

McCrae looked at Abe with a supercilious glance when he asked him that morning whether he would look after his stock for a few days.

“Sure. Going away?”

“Yes. I am going to help Mr. Rogers stack his hay.”

McCrae even inquired, “Leaving the missus and daughter at home?”

Abe nodded.

The mist had crawled south; the day was as brilliant as ever; the work would be finished by noon.

Abe could not remember the time when he had worked in such utter peace. Last night resignation had come to him. In no other way could he find happiness: a life in the present, looking neither backward nor forward. The air was crisp; the warmth of the rising sun felt grateful.

When, at two o'clock, his haying finished, he returned to the house, Frances had lain down with a headache.

Abe planned retrenchments: cross-fence his farm a mile north; seed the Hudson's Bay section to grass; keep stock there; rebuild life on a smaller scale; do things in a leisurely way; enjoy the doing of them; taste every season, every hour, every task to the full! Had he done so years ago, he would have saved much of life.

Shortly after three Rogers drove into the yard. Abe admired the man. Perfect in poise and control, endowed with the ease of speech, he took pleasure out of life; he never overreached himself; he spoke to his daughters as though flirting with them. The crow's-feet about his eyes came from much laughter. Abe felt as if he were going on a holiday.

Ruth watched from behind the curtains of a window. They went through the barns, the pig-pen, the fowl house. When they returned to the car, they were laughing….

Till Abe came back, all action was transferred to Ruth. She was gliding down a smooth river which plunged over a ledge of rock to a whirlpool beneath. She had seen Niagara in her youth.

For a moment, when the car swung out through the gate, she felt overwhelmed with the desire to call Abe back. She went to an arm-chair and sank down. Exhaustion hung over her like a threat. Glimpses of thought were endowed with a life of their own: of the dead child; of Jim who had not yet come home; of Marion who preferred to go to a hospital and did not call her mother to her side. And now this!

She rose. No use thinking; action was needed. She busied herself.

She must see a lawyer. The law was supposed to be just; if it was, it would protect her. Yet,
had
it protected her? This thing was done against all law! Then the law must set it right again!

A lawyer? Which lawyer? Her son-in-law? No. Her other children, too, must be protected from even the knowledge of this thing.

She would have to get rid of Mary. Mary must not know of her plan. She would argue that it was imperative to let the man go unpunished. That, Ruth could not concede. Never had she thought it possible that she should hate a man as she hated him who had brought this wreckage into her life. Again she began to plan, to weigh every circumstance. Yes, if she could hand the man over into the grip of the law, he would be removed from Abe; even for Abe her plan was best.

At night, she grimly watched the object of her hatred jauntily going about the yard and glancing up at the windows of the house, looking for an opportunity of seeing the girl, no doubt.

Then, right after dark, feeling the unescapable need for rest, she made preparations for going to bed.

Frances had kept out of her way all day, coming down only for her meals. She avoided all discussion.

After another sleepless night, Ruth rose on Wednesday excited and confused. As she pulled at the laces of her corsets, she burst into tears. She must find a lawyer…. But the difficulty about Mary remained unsolved.

She went to waken Frances and returned to her room. Ruth, too, was overwhelmed with the feeling of the uselessness of this great house. She looked at the costly fittings of her room: bedstead, dresser, chest of drawers, rug….

Before she went downstairs, she returned to the girl's room. She found her laying out her best clothes; she had rouged and powdered her face. “Frances!” she cried in an undefinable voice.

“Nonsense, mother!” Then, in a changed tone, “Mother, come here!” And, in a whisper, “I'm afraid, mother. Does it hurt much?”

“Too late to think of that,” Ruth replied and turned away.

The two were sitting at the breakfast table when the purr of a car in the yard announced Mary's arrival. They rose to get their hats.

It was another cloudless day, with the sun emerging hotly out of the eastern haze. The run to the city took three hours–a stifling run for the first thirty miles; for Mary kept the curtains of the car closed against prying eyes till they had left St. Cecile behind. Ruth sat with Mary in the front; Frances in the tonneau, dressed as for a conquest. On the way, Mary explained the arrangements she had made. Frances would go to a private hospital where such cases were taken care of. When they approached the city, the sun stood high in the sky, burning down through a hot, blue, charged air which made beads of perspiration stand on every brow.

In the city, thanks to Mary's foresight, everything concerning Frances was attended to by noon. When the two women
were alone, Mary asked, “I suppose you want to look in on Marion?”

Here was the looked-for pretext. “When do you wish to leave?”

“I'll run you out. I'll have lunch with Charles's sister. I can fetch you after that. It will be time if we leave at four.”

“Set me down at the Corner of Grande Pré,” Ruth said; for she knew that to be the principal business street. “I want to go to a store and I'll take a street car. We'll meet in front of the Parliament Buildings.”

Mary nodded and turned left at the next corner. When Ruth had alighted, she watched the car out of sight. She had no desire to call on Marion; other things were on her mind; she must do what she had never done before: she must act for herself.

She walked down the chief business artery of the city, looking uncouth and out of place. She kept scanning the signs in doors and windows, paying no attention to the passers-by who stared at her funny little mauve hat, many years old. She was melting with the heat but did not feel her discomfort.

She went a mile before she saw a sign such as she was looking for. It was across the street, in an upper window, “Craig, McPherson, McPherson, Barristers and Attorneys-at-Law.” She crossed the maze of the driveway, crowded with street cars, automobiles, and delivery wagons; and within a few minutes she found herself in a huge building where a man whom she asked beckoned her into a crowded elevator. She had to hold on to herself not to betray how unfamiliar it all was to her. When the cage shot up, she gave a half-stifled scream. Yet she kept her head by sheer effort. The elevator coming to a stop, the attendant touched her arm, naming a number and pointing a direction.

In a large deserted office a young lady approached her between the desks. With arrogant politeness she asked Ruth for her errand.

“I wish to see Mr. McPherson.”

“Junior or senior, madam?”

“Senior,” Ruth answered at random.

The young lady disappeared, not without smiling to herself at Ruth's hat. A few minutes later an elderly man came to the partition dividing the office, small, cool, distant, bored.

“I am Mr. McPherson, madam. What can I do for you?”

“Could I see you privately for a moment?”

The elderly man hesitated before he swung a small gate in the railing open. Ruth followed him into a private office. At a motion of the lawyer's she sat down on the edge of a chair.