Fruits of the Earth (31 page)

Time went by; and the district was shaken by things hardly noticed at Abe's farm. The crops had suffered from drought; partly because the spring work had been poorly done. Everybody except Abe had strained his credit in securing help at peak prices in order to put flax in the ground. But in mid-summer the price of that flax had broken at last, with the yield averaging less than five bushels an acre.

“Well,” Jim said to Abe, “this time you were right.”

From week to week farmers watched the market, hoping
it would recover. But, once broken, the price tumbled steadily till, late in the fall, it reached pre-war levels. All farm products fell in value in 1920, but none to the same ruinous extent; and therefore no land depreciated to the same extent as flax land.

It was staggering. John Elliot who, a year ago, had declined an offer of twenty thousand dollars was now anxious to sell but could find no buyer. He was told that he could not expect to get more than a thousand dollars a quarter. His annual interest charges would, under changed conditions, have paid for a farm.

Henry Topp, who had not succeeded in renewing his contract to drive the school van–Baker had taken his place–was in a similar plight; and Hilmer and the Ukrainians were hiring out by the month.

Again all eyes were focused on Abe Spalding. It was a repetition of his spectacular achievement of 1912, though in a negative sense. His crop was nothing to boast of; but it was raised at insignificant cost.

During the fall, a renewal of neighbourly relations came about between Nicoll and Abe. Nicoll's son Dick came home from overseas, with Slim Topp. According to the Soldier Settlement Act of 1919, they were entitled to financial assistance by the Federal Government: a loan of three thousand dollars for building, stock, and equipment. Dick, who had brought a wife from England, was still in the city but had filed a claim on the quarter west of his father's. Nicoll, seeing Abe pass one day, came out to the road.

“I've been thinking, Abe,” he said as if there had never been any break in their friendship. “Dick's coming home. Do you figure on putting another man on your place?”

Abe was looking straight ahead; his heart was beating faster. He had missed the friendly contact with his neighbour.
“Do you mean Dick…?”

“No. I'd like to buy the house you have on your place.”

“Oh? Yes, I might sell it.”

“How much do you want?”

Abe mused, then, in an impulse of generosity, “Two hundred dollars if you haul it yourself.”

“I'll haul it,” Nicoll replied, “as soon as there's snow.”

Abe nodded and clicked his tongue. Few words to pass between them! But they were precious to him. Yet, this was a first step towards the dismemberment of his farm.

Snow fell in November. One morning Nicoll came with ten horses, four trucks, a load of timbers, and a number of men to draw away the house.

Abe was feeding his horses when he saw them passing; and for half an hour he went on with his work. Already he had laid down the fence in front of the lot; Nicoll would notice that he had made things easy for him. After breakfast he did more; he went over to help. Among the men Abe noticed McCrae, Hilmer, and Shilloe. Abe's help was welcome, for he had moved a house before. As though it went without saying that, where he appeared, he would take the lead, everybody watched him, ready to assist, though it was Nicoll who spoke when explicit orders were needed.

This aid given to Nicoll set Abe thinking of another man whom, for no reason whatever, he had included in his stubborn avoidance of contacts: old man Blaine. The next time he passed his cottage, he stopped and went in. On the opposite quarter the frame of a new, unfinished structure was standing like a skeleton against the sky: Slim Topp's new barn. Neither he nor Dave Topp could live in peace with Henry any longer; and so the partnership had been dissolved. That gave Abe his opening as he knocked at Blaine's
kitchen door. “Getting married?” he asked with a nod across the road.

“So they say; so they say,” the old man replied in a childish treble. “He came back without a scratch.”

Abe went through the kitchen into the living-room beyond. Two rocking-chairs, a table, and a few bookshelves were covered with dust, testifying to the old man's diminishing eyesight.

As Blaine followed him, Abe realized with a shock how much his old friend had aged. While he had been at work, something outside him had sustained him; when he had retired, he had been left without that support. He looked shrunk; his limbs were like thin rods housed in his clothes. His hoary beard, white as snow, seemed the only part of his body undiminished in size. His step was uncertain. As Abe sat down, the old man stood in the door and grinned at him.

“How old are you now?” Abe asked, speaking as to a child.

“Eighty,” replied the senile voice proudly. “Eighty years and sixty-three days. And sound as a dollar.”

Abe looked out of the window. “I see you had a garden.” He inferred the fact from such dry vines as were standing up through the snow.

“Yes. I grew all the plants in the house. I've got a great recipe.” He looked about to make sure they were alone. “No ladies around, eh?” And he tittered. “I wrote to my brother in Ontario for a pound of sheep manure. The real thing. Of that I made a decoction–boiled it for three hours. That's a sweet smell! With that I watered the plants. Made them grow like a miracle. You must try that one day.” He was standing unsteadily, supporting himself now with one hand now with the other against the frame.

“All right,” Abe said, too painfully impressed to wish for a longer stay. “I must move on. I was going to town.”

But Blaine, anxious to detain his caller, began to talk precipitately. “They say they are going to use the school as a community hall and have dances there. Slim Topp has learned to play the saxophone; and McCrae, over there, hits it off on the trombone.” And he imitated the notes of these instruments, using his hands like a trumpet.

“You keeping all right?” Abe asked, not having the heart to leave.

“Fine,” Blaine boasted. “I take a walk every day. I still have the bicycle. But I'd rather walk now, all the way to Horanski's. His missus bakes my bread for me; and he brings me candy from town. I have a sweet tooth, Abe. How are the little ones?”

“The little ones? Oh, Marion's going to be married next year. Jim and Frances are attending high school in town.”

The old man looked sobered; but comprehension was beyond his powers. The near past had disappeared; he was living in years far removed from the present. “There was another one, wasn't there? A boy, Charlie?…Or was he not yours?”

“He was mine,” Abe said. “He is dead. Good-bye, Blaine.”

The decay of the human faculties impressed him as part of the human tragedy inherent in the fundamental conditions of man's life on earth. That was a thing ever present now. What, as compared with this fact–that, having lived, we must die–did such inessentials matter as economic success or the fleeting happiness of the moment?

When, at Somerville, he turned into Main Street, identical with the highway in town, he caught sight of young Harrison on the sidewalk to his right and stopped to speak to him. A few commonplace remarks were exchanged. Then Abe asked, “Have you told your father?”

“My father? Yes, I have told him.”

“Does he agree?”

“He disadvises. He does not object.”

“What's his reason?”

“He thinks a professional man married is a professional man arrested in his career.”

After a brief silence Abe nodded and drove on. On his way home, he was steeped in thought.

He knew nothing of what was going on in the district. Yet, as he passed Hilmer's Corner, he was conscious of a pair of malicious eyes in a wrinkled face following his progress from a square little window in the shack. Hilmer who had returned with the freeze-up was busy at the stable behind the house. Within, old Mrs. Grappentin was muttering to herself. “The great lord is going to build his fortunes still higher! A lawyer to be his son-in-law! He has grown too great for the likes of us! Too great indeed!”

For, as a consequence of the respect for any sort of education common to the peasant classes of Europe, this fact, known to every one, that a professional man was going to marry into the family, had almost succeeded in changing her attitude to Abe as a person.

Opposite Hilmer's, there was John Elliot's vastly greater establishment, well-kept, apart from a pile of opened tins near the house, a four-roomed cottage painted brown.

Abe noticed these things; before they became a thought, he had reverted to that girl in his house who, during the last few months, had so greatly changed. Throughout the weeks she was listless now, her face pale, her features drawn; only on Sundays did she revive. Abe was aware of the fact that between her and her mother there was often a pleasant and lively exchange of words; but when he entered, a silence fell.
With a pang Abe realized that, in the eyes of the girl, he lived as a sort of doom personified, as a law from the verdict of which there is no appeal. The misconception put him on the defensive; he justified himself to himself. But as a matter of fact he felt far from certain that what he did was the right thing to do.

A great task was ahead of him: the task of making clear to himself what his life had been worth to him; and this necessity filled him with a passionate longing for peace and moral support within his own house. No matter what he had said in the past, his isolation in the district weighed heavily on him. Since that August day when Harrison had interviewed him, he had seemed isolated even in his house.

All these things were coming to a head now, as a consequence of many things: of his renewed though slight contact with Nicoll; of the way in which Blaine's sight had affected him; even of his instinctive revolt against the opinion of Judge Harrison. Abe had had an unavowed suspicion that the judge's hostile attitude, never admitted by his son, had been against Marion as the daughter of a mere farmer. That was not the case. His objection was based on the opinion that marriage meant the end of ambition. But even ambition might be enhanced by the right marriage. Abe was suddenly inclined to think that Marion was the proper wife for the man. Why not let her have her desire?

Had he indeed lost his grip that such thoughts should come? How about the farm? He no longer raised crops to compare with that of 1912. Yet, a few days ago he had heard John Elliot say in town, “Thank the Lord it was a poor crop. The greater the yield, the greater the loss!” That, at any rate, was not his, Abe's case. He was earning enough to carry him from year to year.

But he wanted peace and goodwill in his house; and thus, a week or so before Christmas, he proposed to Ruth that they invite the Vanbruiks and young Harrison for their Christmas dinner. Ruth agreed at once. A year ago, the Spaldings had been the guests of the Vanbruiks; this was an opportunity to reciprocate.

From that moment on Abe nursed a secret plan. Every night when his family was assembled in the dining-room, he sat at the end of the table, apparently absorbed in a book or a paper, in reality watching Marion. Had she risen from that arm-chair in the corner of the room, and had she come to him to put an arm about him and to say, “I know you are against me only because you think you see more clearly into the future than I do, not because you wish to inflict pain upon me,” he would, for the moment, have been entirely happy.

THE CHRISTMAS DINNER

A
be slept little during the night before Christmas. Dimly and distantly he was aware, long before he rose, that the threatened break in the fine winter weather preceding the festival had come at last.

Dimly and distantly…. There had been a time when they would all have been aware of it in a very direct way; when the old house would have shaken and quivered under the impact of the blows which the wind levelled at its walls; when, even in bed, they would have shrunk into the smallest possible space in order to retain the warmth of their bodies. That had been before the wind-breaks had attained the height and density with which they protected them; before the great quadrangle of the yard had been closed by the double row of buildings in the north; and, above all, before that great house of his had been erected in which one had to listen closely in order to hear the tumult of the blizzard which raced and raged over the open prairie.

It was four o'clock. As a rule Abe rose at that hour; to-day he lingered in bed. It was not cold in the room, nor anywhere in the house. But he indulged in a feeling of infinite
comfort; this was what he had striven for; this brought home his achievement.

But a disquieting thought arose. This was the day on which he was to carry out his secret plan. Young Harrison's presence was essential to its success; what if the blizzard prevented his coming?

Abe switched on the reading light at the head of his bed and swung his feet to the floor. He went to the window to look out; but it was too dark to see. Hurriedly he dressed. When he had done so, he went down into the basement to shake the furnace into life. He called no one; nor did he light the kitchen fire.

Instead, he went out through the front door; and as he stood on the stoop, he shivered, drawing his sheepskin more closely about him. To realize the fury of the storm, one had to be in it.

Sheltered as the yard was, it was bitterly cold out there. In the huge enclosure the air swayed in canting sheets, now horizontal, now tilted, rising and falling as if the flawed blast of the wind were reaching down now and then into the basin of comparative calm; or as if it found a sudden entrance along the ground, through the wind-break, throwing the snow aloft in a fine, dusty, prickling spray.

He made his way to the barn; and, having entered, he felt impressed with the perfect shelter which even his brute beasts enjoyed. Not a stable on the windswept prairie offered such protection; on the inside the door was covered with a fur of hoar-frost.