Fruits of the Earth (29 page)

Mary hesitated. “Personally, yes. But I must consult Charlie.”

“Of course,” Abe said. “No hurry. It's quite a responsibility to assume. I want the girl under strict supervision.”

“I see,” Mary said. “Very well, Abe. I'll talk it over.”

Thus, in February, Frances was taken to town to live with her aunt, coming home for the week-end only. Ruth did not know that Abe was trying, belatedly, to shoulder part of the responsibility for his children; she thought he had given in to her wishes and felt properly grateful.

When seeding time came and throughout the district people were getting ready for a record acreage of flax, Abe said, “I'll stick to wheat,” and when he saw to what an enormous expense people went in order to put their crops into the ground–no ploughing had been done in the fall–he felt justified on that score alone. Unless the price remained around five dollars a bushel, where it still stood in spring, every bushel raised would mean a loss. But the gambling spirit had taken
hold of the farmers; and had there been a prophet, they would not have listened to him. Harry Stobarn and Bill Crane were working for Elliot, at six dollars a day. Horanski, instead of hiring out himself, imported unskilled countrymen of his from the city; even Hilmer doubled his acreage by hiring a man. Wheeldon, Henry Topp, and others plunged to a ruinous extent. But all had credit at the bank. Abe Spalding, they said, had lost his grip.

His acreage, even of wheat, being unexpectedly small, he had seed left when he finished. Early in June he took it to town to sell.

He had just turned his horses beyond the elevator when he noticed that, near the crossing, the man who had preceded him had stopped and jumped to the ground. Abe knew him slightly; he was living three miles east of Morley, south of the track. As Abe approached, the man laid a mittened hand on the edge of his tank, lifting himself to the stepping board. “I want to talk to you,” he said. “Drive to the side.”

Abe did as bidden.

“You're Spalding from up north, aren't you? My name is Simpson. You've a girl going to that school over there? I know her. I have one myself. The two've been chums. I've seen them together.

“A week or so ago–it was the 1st June; I remember the date because I was hitching up to go to Somerville about a note at the bank; and the east-bound train was going by. My yard's right alongside the track. And there I saw your girl in the cab of the engine, sitting on the knees of the engineer. No. I know her well. Plump sort of a chit. Round cheeks and fair, curly hair. I know her. I've seen her often enough with my girl. The train was slowing down to go into that siding at Willett…. Well, I thought you should know. She recognized me, by the
way. Looked straight at me and stopped, laughing. The rest's up to you.” And Simpson dropped back to the ground.

Abe stood, the lines slack in his hand. He could not think clearly; he had the almost physical sensation of a wish that he were dead. What do? Go to the school and annihilate it with all it contained? Go to his sister's to talk it over? Go home to hide?

He went to the school, entered, and knocked at the principal's door. A tall, gaunt young man appeared.

“My name's Spalding. I want a list of the days on which my daughter Frances has been absent from school.”

“Just a moment.” The principal returned into the classroom. When he rejoined Abe, he led the way to a small room in the central part of the building where he bade Abe sit down. He himself went to fetch the register of attendance. “For what month?” he asked.

“May and June.”

The principal jotted down a few dates on a pad of paper. For June, there was only one, the third of the month.

“How about the first?” Abe asked.

“1st June? That was a Saturday.” Abe stared. Then Frances had been at home that day. He felt baffled. “Thanks,” he said at last. “And now I want the girl.”

“Very well, sir.”

When Frances appeared, she looked apprehensive. Was it guilt betraying itself? Abe said nothing, however, and led the way.

At Mary's house, his sister met them. “What is wrong, Abe?” Abe motioned her and Frances to sit down. “Why,” he asked the girl whose pallid face was flushed, “were you absent from school on 3rd June, last Monday?”

“I was ill.”

Abe looked at his sister, and Mary nodded. “I don't remember the date. But I can look it up.”

“Never mind. Any other day on which you missed school recently?”

“Not that I–” Mary began.

“Yes, auntie. The last Friday in May. Don't you remember? I had a terrible headache in the morning. I went home in the afternoon.”

Mary looked as though in doubt. “What is the meaning of this, Abe?”

“On that day Frances left here as if she were going to school but did not turn up there.”

There was the slightest pause before Frances said, “I never!”

“Be careful,” Abe threatened, “I've witnesses to prove what I say.”

“Abe,” Mary repeated, “will you tell me what are you driving at?”

“That day she was in the cab of the engine on the east-bound train.”

Frances rose in a paroxysm of sobbing.

“How could she have got back?” Mary asked.

“I don't know. I'll find out.”

“Just a moment, Abe,” Mary said. “The train leaves at nine-ten. It gets to Somerville at ten-twenty. There's no way of coming back till three-forty-five the next day.”

“She was seen.”

“What is the date?” Mary asked, reaching for a calendar.

Abe hesitated. “That is the one point on which I am not sure. 31st May or 3rd June.”

“Where does the doubt come in?”

“I don't care to explain just yet.”

Frances dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “Don't you
remember, auntie? I went to school in the afternoon and then home.

“I don't remember, my dear.”

“Friday?” Abe asked. “According to the register you were in school that day.”

At last Frances said, “Mistakes will occur.”

“They will.” Abe rose to leave the house.

He went to the station. He had thought of freight trains.

“Can you look up the dates on which freight trains have gone west of late?”

“Can I?” Kellogg, the agent, said; and, taking a file from the shelf above the wicket, he turned its pages. “Not a one for two weeks. They've all been going east. Apart from the regulars, there was only a special. 31st May, going west in the morning and east at night. Field-day at Ferney. The east-bound mixed was run on the siding at Willett.” Willett being a flag station half-way to Somerville.

“Thanks,” Abe said and left.

He returned to the school which was being dismissed for the noon recess. He found the principal in the hall. “My daughter claims she missed school on Friday morning, 31st May,” he said.

“Just a moment.” The principal swung lankily on his heels. Miss Carston, the high-school assistant, was coming down the stairway. “Miss Carston,” he said, “this is Mr. Spalding. Could there be a mistake in your register? Mr. Spalding claims his daughter was absent on Friday morning, 31st May. Your register marks her present.”

Miss Carston, a short, stout woman, frowned. “Mistakes will occur. But wait. 31st May? No. That morning we had a monthly test in French. Frances was present. I have her paper here.”

“Thanks,” Abe said and turned away.

He left town on the east road, going to Simpson's.

“Yes,” Simpson said as, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he came from the shack. “You can see for yourself. This is where I was.” And, placing a toothpick between his teeth, he led the way to the stable. “The train was slowing down to go into the siding. Another train was coming down the line as I left the yard.”

“But that was 31st May.”

“1st June. I had a note to renew before noon.”

“You are sure about the date?”

“Absolutely.”

“1st June was a Saturday. The girl was at home. Can I phone the bank for a confirmation?”

“If you want to.”

Abe returned to town and waited till one o'clock for the bank to reopen. When he called the manager over the telephone, Simpson's renewal of his note was confirmed as of 1st June.

The evidence was hopelessly confused….

At night, Abe gave a detailed account to Ruth, without disguising the fact that all seemed contradictory to a degree.

“Frances is truthful,” Ruth said with conviction.

“But she says she was at home on Friday morning. The teacher says she was at school; and she can prove it.”

Ruth spoke placidly. “We are human, Abe. Frances is a decent girl.”

“I hope so. I can't make it out. I have tried to deal with the case. I have failed. I leave it to you.”

A few days later Abe met his brother-in-law in the store.

“Bad business, Abe,” said the doctor with more emphasis than he was in the habit of giving to his words.

“I know, but what could I do?”

“Hard to say. But a suspicion cast on a girl's character does not remain without effect. If she is innocent, it is a revelation to her.”

Abe looked into an abyss.

That night, the matter came up once more between Ruth and Abe. Jim had gone to bed. Ruth was sewing at her end of the table. Abe was pacing the room, still baffled by his inability to see clear.

“Ruth,” he said at last in a more moving tone than he had used for years, “you seem to feel sure of the girl. I hold you responsible.”

Ruth looked up, resting her hands. “I am satisfied that Frances is truthful. I assume the responsibility…. Abe,'' she added after a while, responding to his tone, “I can't see what you worry about. Surely you don't believe the girl has been seduced?”

Abe drew a deep breath. For a moment it seemed in the profound silence which followed as though he were growing beyond the proportions of a mere man. When he spoke, his voice held a quality which sent little shivers over Ruth's spine. “I can't help myself. When Charlie died, he took something of me into his grave. I have been living like a shadow of myself these half-dozen years…. Seduced? The word is yours. But I want to say this, if a child of mine went wrong, in the sense in which the word is commonly used–” His look, as he swayed back against the frame of the door, had something erratic; and though he did not raise his voice, it assumed tone and pitch of an outbreak of primitive passion. “If that happened…I'd rather see that child dead before me in her coffin!”

And, having spoken, he seemed to shrink once more into his mere human form. Ruth sat, bent forward, staring into his face, white-lipped because she had had a revelation of his inner nature.

MARION

S
chool had closed, and Marion had come home, changed again. Abe felt more deeply disturbed than ever.

On 14th July, a Sunday, he was in the meadow west of his land, sitting with Jim in the latter's car. He was looking at the grass; it being short, they would have to cut a very large area.

Square miles of land! What for? To live on; not to know why or what for….

Jim's voice broke in on his musings. “If you want help, I can get a man for you, dad.” And he mentioned McCrae, the returned man who had settled west of Hartley's. Jim knew that Abe would not engage any one who had worked for him before. “You'd have to pay three dollars for a ten-hour day; and time and a half for overtime.”

“All right,” Abe said listlessly.

“You want him?”

“I suppose.”

They turned to go back to the farm. Abe had of late fallen into the habit, whenever he was outside on his yard, of
scanning the horizon. The weather was dry, the distance clear. Suddenly, the car crawling slowly over the prairie, Abe focused his eyes on a moving point in the south-east, just north of town. His eyes had learned to interpret the smallest trifles at great distances. It was not long before he knew that the moving point was a car.

“I wonder who that may be,” he said half to himself.

“Who? Oh, I see,” Jim said, following the direction of his father's glance; his chin was resting on the wheel. “That must be young Harrison. He's coming here, I bet.”

Abe frowned. “Who's Harrison?”

“Don't you know?” Jim laughed. “I thought you did. Young lawyer at Somerville. Bright young chap. Lots of money. Well, sis would hardly tell you. I bet mother knows all about it, though.”

“About what?”

“Well-l-l,” Jim squirmed, “he's Marion's beau.”

Abe's heart missed a beat. All about him a life was lived of which he knew nothing.

On the trail south of the farm Jim speeded up. In the yard, he alighted at once. “I'll tip sis off,” he said.

But that precaution proved unnecessary; for Abe was still sitting in the car which had stopped in the middle of the yard, when, on the steps of the house, the three women appeared, festively clad: Ruth in a long skirt of black satin, with a
crêpe-de-chine
blouse and a white fichu; Marion in a gown of light, clinging cloth, mouse-grey, boldly trimmed with a flame-red border; Frances in her ordinary Sunday clothes, a watchful expression on her precociously saucy face. Jim was coming from behind the house, tall, jaunty, conceited in spite of his ugly ears; he, too, wore a new suit and a sailor hat. Slowly Abe left the seat of the car. He was in striped
shirt-sleeves, though he wore a good pair of trousers and his vest, with a laundered collar and a blue silk tie; on Sundays he dressed when the chores were done. He did not cross the yard but looked at the family picture before him. He had dreamt of such scenes in the past; this might be fulfilment….

A low, expensive, single-seated car, light blue, swung into the yard and smoothly came to a stop at the little gate of the house-yard.

A smallish young man in blue-serge suit with very wide trousers–aggressively new and well-made, the coat excessively short–manoeuvred himself from behind the wheel and, taking off a light-grey hat of soft felt, uncovering abundant, glossy rather long black hair parted in the centre, eagerly rounded the car to meet Marion with outstretched hand.