Fruits of the Earth (37 page)

The only strange thing about it was that, in the morning, Frances had worn a light dress; and whoever sat on the near side of the buggy now wore dark clothes. Once seen and noted, this seemed sufficient to disquiet Abe. Who was with the girl?

Abe was still watching the buggy as it approached the washout in the grade when his attention was claimed by a buck which swung into line with the skids of the scaffold. Yet even while, with automatic precision, he dumped the load, he kept an eye on the vehicle as the horse hesitated on the brink and gingerly descended into the gap, completely eclipsed by the mirage. By the time the horses were circling away, the vehicle had reached the bridge at Nicoll's Corner. Before Abe began to work the newly-dumped load upwards, he stood for a moment leaning on the handle of his fork, up to his hips in hay.

The buggy turned at the corner, and the mystery resolved itself. Frances was not alone; but the person with her was a woman. At least there was nothing in her companion for gossip to take hold of; for Abe knew that everybody in the district, down to the men and boys in the field, had watched the vehicle as closely as he himself.

A few minutes later, the woman with Frances revealed her identity by a characteristic motion in readjusting herself on her seat, it was Mary. Quietly Abe went on creating order out of chaos.

Steadily the slow-trotting horse approached beyond the ditch; again a buck claimed Abe's attention. As he dumped it, he glanced about. Another half-day would finish their work.

When the buck departed, Abe could no longer see the buggy; it had disappeared behind the stack. He went on with his work; but when he had finished, he took a few plunging
steps upward, steadying himself with his fork, till he could look over the top of the now considerably lengthened stack, straight into his yard, through the gap in the wind-break. The buggy had turned in and was heading for the little gate in the fence of the house-yard. With the back of his hand Abe wiped the sweat off his brow.

Never before had Mary come in a vehicle not her own, except on that Christmas Day when Marion had tried to elope. But this was summer; the doctor kept a small car which Mary drove. How did she intend to go home? Did she mean to stay overnight? It must have been something of importance which had brought her out. Abe waited till she and Frances had alighted, tying the horse to the gate-post in which there was a ring. Then, on the way to the house, they disappeared behind the wind-break. Abe returned to his work. Had he been on his own side of the full-flowing ditch, he would have gone to the house to inquire; as it was, his gate, twenty rods away, was four miles distant.

For the rest of the afternoon a certain disquietude did not leave him, not even when, about six o'clock, he saw Mary returning to town, alone, in the buggy. He was restless. More and more frequently he looked about to see whether the next buck was not yet coming, as though to accelerate the work. Not that the speed would have made any difference, for the work would go on till dark in any case. It was just a feeling of impatience with a day which seemed unwilling to end.

Behind the wind-break, the house stood undisturbed, its dark-red walls showing here and there between the thinning masses of foliage. At times the pleasant picture darkened to his eye till it seemed silent and sinister, holding a secret. Till Mary had departed, the little horse had stood between its shafts, knock-kneed, its head hanging low.

At last the dark rose like a wave rolling up from the east. The mown grass and the stubble became beaded with dew, its scent intensified. Dusk comes fast on the level prairie, and with a tremendously accentuated contrast against the bright light of day. Horizons are hazy; the sun, perhaps still above the rim of the world, loses its power of orienting such light as remains. It turns into a vermilion disk. Dampness wells up with a chill…And still the work went on.

But at last, all sorts of uncanny changes having taken place, work had to stop. Abe spoke to Nicoll; and Nicoll sent a call through the thickening twilight, a signal for the boys to gather at the stack where Abe did the last capping-off. Then he, too, slipped to the ground, while his helpers unhooked the horses from the draw-chains of the bucks.

The ground being saturated with moisture, the lower air, heated by contact with the soil, had drunk itself full of vapour during the day. But radiation is swift on flat, unrelieved ground; and, with the gathering dusk, the moisture held by the air began to condense into a thick white mist. Already horses and men were wading about in this mist which, so far, lay knee-high. This gave a peculiar detached air to the scene: the day was done; the time to rest at hand; and a great, overwhelming lassitude came over the workers.

One of the two wagons east of the stack, Abe's, held two clothes-baskets filled with the dishes in which the noonday meal had been brought; besides, earthenware jugs which had held water, repair parts for mowers and rakes, a few spare forks, and a tin box used as a stove to make coffee on, with such of the hay for fuel as was rejected because it held too much skunk-tail. The other wagon, Nicoll's, was filled with fresh hay. Abe threw his fork into the former and spread a canvas sheet over its contents.

McCrae and Nicoll were hitching two horses each to the wagons; the Englishmen were stringing the others together into two lines, one long, consisting of Abe's ten Clydes; the other short, of two horses, which were Nicoll's. These they tied behind the wagons.

The mist was rising. At this moment the horses that had been working beyond the gully came galloping in like a herd of wild beasts, with cocked ears flicking forward and backward: horses are easily frightened in a mist at night. With them came McCrae's pony. Two of the draught horses that came thundering in bore their riders, the Nicoll boys.

For a minute the scene was one of utter confusion; for all horses pranced and stirred as if expecting an attack; some reared, others whinnied. Nicoll spoke a word of reproach to the boys, in subdued accents; but their voices and laughter sounded unnaturally loud. The mist was still rising, forming in ever-higher layers. Then the horses that had arrived last disappeared as they had come. McCrae had captured his mount. The others galloped away to the east, along the dam; and the laughter and the shouts of the boys echoed over the plain.

Abe climbed into the front of his wagon and took the lines. It was now so dark that he could no longer see his companions. He stood and listened, inferring the progress made from sounds.

“Ready?” he asked at last.

A grunt answered him, as if those who had no driving to do were too exhausted for articulate speech. The caravan started, the horses following the wagons like trains of satellites. Without raising himself from the floor of Abe's wagon where he was reclining, McCrae lighted a cigarette; and the flicker of the match showed Abe standing in front. The horses moved their ears; the mist enveloped them all.

They went on for half an hour. Apart from the creaking of the wheels there was silence till the hollow thud of the horses' hoofs proclaimed that they had turned on to the bridge. Abe stopped with a “Whoa there!”

McCrae jumped to the ground. His leap scared the pony which had been tied to the stepping board, and it wheeled, straining at the line. When McCrae had untied it, it backed away till it stood in front of Abe's horses so that, when Abe clicked his tongue, they fidgeted but did not move. McCrae had rolled another cigarette and, hooking the pony's bridle over a shoulder, proceeded to light it.

As the match flared up, its flame illuminated the raw, cynical face of the man and the wide, quivering nostrils of his frightened mount. All about, it threw a momentary sphere of visibility into the enveloping mist; and the pony, head raised, its eyes full of fright, was trying to break away. McCrae, once more in the dark, vaulted on to the bare back of the animal and galloped away through the night. By the gentle way in which Abe said, “Get up!” he seemed to express his disapproval of the man's methods in dealing with animals.

As he went on, Nicoll's wagon drew up behind him; and “Good night” sounded on every hand. Abe had turned west.

When he reached his barn and unhooked his horses, throwing the traces over their backs, he touched their rumps one by one, a signal that they might go and drink at the outside trough. The yard was unlighted. Abe had expressed his opinion that it was a waste to turn lights on when only he was working in the yard at night. Darkness felt grateful.

The last hour of the day's work had come: the hour he liked best. As he entered the horse barn, switching on a single light, he was greeted by a nicker from those of the animals
which had come in from the pasture at dark. The horses that had drunk at the trough filed in and went to their stalls; and, as Abe moved about, carrying them their rations, they turned their heads and touched his arm with exploring noses. Having finished, he stood for a moment in the open door.

The things of the day had fallen away before the utter peace of the night. Abe's disquietude was a mere memory now. The tiny droplets of the mist held, dissolved in them, a trace of the wood smoke from the chimney of the kitchen which imparted to them a scent as of spring.

Yet a remnant of curiosity remained; and before he went to the new barn to admit the cows crowding about its western door, he crossed over to the house through the driving gate north of the barn. The back doors of shed and kitchen stood open; and the light from the kitchen fell through the shed on the ground. Toned down by the mist, it, too, held a note of peace and drowsiness. Abe looked at his watch: a little after ten. The house was plunged in utter silence. Nothing stirred; curiosity vanished. In a strange impulse Abe reached for the coal-oil lantern. He did not light it till he was in the cow barn.

Having admitted the cows, some twenty of them, for steers and heifers were left in the pasture, he distributed hay and shorts–crushed wheat with most of the flour removed–fetched a milking stool, washed his hands, and squatted down by the side of one of the two cows which were to be milked; the rest had their calves at foot.

For many years Abe had not milked by lantern light. That he did so now, carried him back through the years to a time when he had been filled with ambition; when yard and barns as they were had existed only in dreams. He had been happy then; all his wishes had been of a realizable kind; he had lived in a future which he desired; that future had come
disappointingly. Youth and the ardent urge; age and poignant regret: where was the life in between? Peace and happiness? He sought them in the past. In the present were only exhaustion and weariness: weariness even unto death…. Yet this was the last turning point in Abe's life.

He took the milk to the separator in the milk room; and after a while, breathing deeply in the fresh, misty air, he took the skimmed milk to the pig-pen where he stirred barley chop into it before he poured it into the troughs, the animals squealing as they shouldered each other aside.

It was past eleven when, carrying the cream pail, he entered the house. Ruth was sitting in the dining-room, half asleep no doubt as was her custom when Abe was late. As he bent over the wash-basin, she came and busied herself at the white-panelled range.

It had never been Abe's way to speak readily. All things come to him who waits. What did it matter? Having finished, he turned, his limbs feeling heavy as lead. His question, when it was uttered at last, came as though advanced against some resistance. “Frances in bed?”

“Yes,” Ruth said without turning from the stove where the eggs were sizzling. “It's quite late.”

“I know.” That was all.

Abe entered the dining-room and dropped into his chair. When Ruth placed his supper before him, he ate slowly, enjoying the additional drowsiness induced by the food. He was half conscious of the fact that Ruth had not mentioned Mary's call. He looked at her where she sat sewing; but he lowered his eyes again to his plate. He felt drugged with sleep. When he pushed his chair back and rose, stretching, he had almost forgotten about Mary. Sleep! “Well,” he said, omitting the rest which was obvious.

But Ruth, putting her sewing away, said casually, “Mary was here.”

“So I saw.” He felt disinclined to go into that now.

“She had a telephone message from Rogers,” Ruth went on. “He has started cutting and wants you for stacking.”

“Was that what she came for?”

“Yes. He'll call for you and his men to-morrow after dinner.”

“All right.”

“Whom are you going to get for the chores?”

“McCrae, I suppose.”

Ruth winced. Abe hesitated at the door, frowning. But no. Not now. Let it go. Still, he asked, “Why did Mary not come in the car?”

“Charles was in the city. She'll send the buggy back with a boy.”

“That's all right.” A moment longer he lingered. There was something strange. Mary might have sent the message through Frances. But he gave in to his desire for sleep. He yawned. “Good night.”

RUTH

R
uth did not sleep that night. She cried into her pillow. In the dark, what had happened came back with cruel vividness; every word that had been spoken during Mary's visit.

Entering the house, Mary had nodded, saying nothing by way of greeting but “Ruth!” Frances had slunk in, a picture of dejection.

“You better sit down, Ruth,” Mary had said in the living-room.

“Why? What is wrong?”

“Sit down before I tell you.”

Frightened, Ruth had obeyed.

Mary, too, had sat down. “I am bringing Frances home as you see. She can't be trusted out of sight. The girl is with child.”

“No!”

“No use saying no, Ruth. She has confessed.”

There had been a silence, Ruth staring at Frances with tears in her eyes. The girl, head bent, had stood pale but defiant. No admission was needed. Once attention had been called to it, her condition was evident.

“You might at least have told me,” Ruth said bitterly to her child. “It would have saved half the disgrace.”