Between Ruth and Abe a new relationship had sprung up. It arose from the mutual recognition of the right of every human being to live his own life. Ruth encouraged Abe in the very things which she had once opposed, proposing innovations and improvements in house and farm; and Abe recognized this yielding of her spirit to his or to what she still thought was his. Abe gave her a free hand with regard to the children. Marion, the older girl, was, in 1917, sent to the high school at Somerville where she boarded out, of course; Jim and Frances were still attending the district school; but already it was understood that Jim was to join Marion if at last he passed his entrance to high-school examinations. He was a year older than Marion but behind her in school.
As for the children, Abe felt lost. At first, after Charlie’s death, he had borne them an outright grudge because they lived when the boy was dead. In 1915, he had one day come upon the three as they were playing on the lawn east of the house. He had given no more than a glance; but it had produced an utter silence. As Abe passed on, Jim and Frances had resumed their game; but Marion, twelve years old, had withdrawn behind the old house to cry. A distant bond had established itself between him and this older girl: she resembled Charlie. “When his ambitions were realized…” Abe had thought in the past. They were realized; but there was still much to think about, though it was of a different kind these days.
The farm? It had lost its right to exist. Yet Abe enlisted Jim’s help in spring and fall. Since Hilmer, Shilloe, and Nawosad had in a modest way become prosperous; since Hartley had turned agent, selling brooms and brushes now; since Bill Crane and others, lured by a soldier’s pay and a separation allowance, had enlisted, while conscription had claimed the younger men, outside help could simply not be had any longer. Immigration had ceased; and that was the reason why the old house had never been moved. Now even Horanski had filed a “cancellation claim” on the school quarter where Blaine had squatted down years ago.
Blaine and Horanski had come to a mutually profitable arrangement, for Blaine was willing to pay for the lot on which his cottage stood. The current year, 1918, was the last which Horanski was to spend on Abe’s farm. Yet Abe gave the problem little thought. The children, he felt, would drift away; for whom should he go on working on that large scale on which he had worked in the past? He would retrench.
He had other things to think of. Often, strangers wondered when they saw him; occasionally Ruth shook her head.
He would stand at a corner of his huge house and look closely at brick and mortar. It was five years since the house had been built. Five years only! Yet already little sand grains embedded in the mortar were crumbling away; already the edges of the bricks were being rounded by a process of weathering. When he bent and looked closely at the ground, near the wall, he saw a thin layer of red dust mixed with those sand grains. The weathering process would go on and on; and what would come of it? Dr. Vanbruik told him of the clay mounds covering the sites of ancient Babylonian cities, loaning him a book or two on excavations. The moment a work of man was finished, nature set to work to take it down again. A queer thought, that. And so with everything, with his machines, his field, his pool; they were all on the way of being levelled to the soil again. What would happen when the supply of iron ores was exhausted? For that supply had its limits. This great mechanical age was bound to come to an end; and the resources of the planet would be scattered all over its surface.
Abe looked about and seemed to see for the first time. There were his wind-breaks, tall, rustling trees, full-grown: poplars interspersed with spruces, maturing. They would age and decay and die; already some showed black knots of disease; others, their bark having burst, grew huge buttresses resembling proud flesh. They would die and decay; unless they reseeded themselves as they seemed to do; then they would spread and conquer his fields and the prairie, converting it into a forest-clad plain. Yet, if that prairie were capable of bearing a forest, would not the forest have invaded it long ago?
Even the prairie was engaged in a process which would do away with it. Abe looked at the ditches running full of a muddy flood; and his mind lost itself in the mysteries of cosmic change.
Sometimes, on his way from Somerville, when he came from a meeting of the council, or from having taken Marion back to school–his mind seemed to hover over the landscape as in flight.
There was the Somerville Line which parsed through the village of Morley, hesitating on its way, forming something like the node in the stem of a plant, to run on again, to the west. Man’s work!
North of that line – in the past it had been the same south of it–stretched the flat prairie, unique in America. The exceedingly slight slope with which it drained northeast to the river was hardly perceptible; it amounted to less than a foot in a mile. To the casual glance, it seemed flat as a table-top. No native irregularity, whether of soil accumulation or plant growth, broke its monotony. Whatever relieved the sky-line was man’s work. The only native growth was the long, slender prairie grass which, in a summer breeze, gave the surface of the soil the appearance of a sheet of watered silk.
Once the buffalo had roamed here, supplying the eye with contours to rest on; they had been replaced by these scattered homes of man. A phenomenon characteristic of this prairie, though not restricted to it, lent it some interest: the frequency of mirages. Often a distant strip of land was lifted above the horizon like a low-flung cloud; a town or a group of farmsteads, ordinarily hidden behind the intervening shoulder of the world, stood up clearly against the whitish sky which only overhead shaded off into a pale blue. The strip of featureless air between the mirage and the solid earth below was of that silvery, polished whiteness which we see otherwise only in the distant mirror of a smooth sheet of water.
On this prairie, near things often seemed to be distant–a haystack no more than a quarter of a mile away loomed gigantic as though separated from the eye by two or three miles. Far things, especially such as in themselves loomed high–the huge storage granaries along the railways, for instance–seemed near. In certain states of the atmosphere, the layered air worked like a lens: roofs five, six miles away showed details of construction as though magnified by the glass.
Far in the west, a low swinging line indicated the series of hills which, geologists tell us, once formed the shore of the lake whose bottom has become the prairie. Occasionally, though rarely–mostly prior to one of the major storms of the summer season–these hills, too, seemed lifted and drawn nearer, but without the silvery strip below which was characteristic of the mirages on the unbroken prairie.
In the particular section where Abe’s life as chronicled here unfolded itself, a traveller might, at the time, have gone in an east-west direction for a hundred miles without finding the slightest change in the essentials of the landscape. Two railway lines had been built, both branching from the international trunk line which ran roughly north-south, parallel to the highway. Both turned west in almost straight lines, twenty-five miles apart, till, at the foot of the western hills, they joined in a loop. Both were strung with towns at intervals of ten or twelve miles. From a distance, all looked alike, their salient features consisting in the tall, spire-like elevators which dominate western landscapes everywhere; below them clustered a few stores, a few dozen dwellings, and such groups or lines of trees as the aesthetic sense of their inhabitants had impelled them to plant.
But had such a traveller chosen to go from north to south, he would have been arrested at regular intervals by those enormous ditches, all running parallel to each other and sloping, at the rate of four feet in a mile, towards the river which bounds this steppe of the prairie in the east. To those who lived here, these ditches were of importance not only because they were the only means which enabled them to grow their crops by carrying away the water which once flooded the prairie for months at a stretch; but also because they determined the distances which the settler had to travel when going from one point to another not in exactly the same latitude. They could be crossed only wher
e bridges were provided, which was once in four miles. People might be neighbours, their yards separated by nothing but a ditch; yet they might have to travel four miles to get from one farm to the other.
Even at the time these man-made diggings impressed the beholder who came from a distance, with perceptions undulled by familiarity–and it was less than twenty years since they had been dug–like the prehistoric remains of a system devised by some mightier race gone to its accountings; so completely had the prairie grass obliterated the traces of the tools used in their excavation.
Altogether it is even to-day a landscape which in spite of the ever encroaching settlements of man, seems best to be appreciated by a low, soaring flight, as by that of the marsh-hawk so commonly seen in the open season. Wild life is little abundant. Gophers–even they are rare–field mice, an occasional rabbit, meadow-larks, blackbirds–especially the redwing–and ground sparrows, in addition to hawks and burrowing owls, pretty well exhaust the native share of the vertebrate orders. Insects are represented by a few butterflies and enormous numbers of beetles and crickets–subterranean kinds–with clouds upon clouds of mosquitoes in spring and early summer. Birds that are recent immigrants congregate about towns and farms surrounded by wind-breaks.
Owing to the peculiar difficulties of drainage with which the farmer has to contend, man remains distinctly an interloper; the floods, though tamed, have not been done away with by the ditches; and in places these ditches have furnished the soil for willow-thickets which are choking them up. True, where the water once used to stand for months, it now stood only for weeks, at least in those elusive seasons which farmers call normal; but these weeks came toward the end of April and often the beginning of May when seeding was in full swing elsewhere; and the land, being the lowest, except in the far north, of the prairie provinces, seems to attract early frosts which hinder the due maturing of the grains when seeding was delayed by the flood in spring.
Such as live here, brought by those accidents of choice which commonly determine location in a new country: the nearness to the western metropolis, the possibility of breaking large tracts without the previous labour of clearing away stumps or stones, the vicinity of friends or relations, or lastly a predilection for this peculiar, melancholy landscape, bred into the blood by some atavism of sentimental tendency, are developing what is so far exceedingly rare on this cosmopolitan continent, namely, a distinct local character and mentality.
If they have lived here for some time, a decade or longer, and have stayed on in the face of all the inevitable and unforeseen discouragements and difficulties, so that the landscape has had time to enforce in them a reaction to its own character, they seem slow, deliberate, earthbound. In their features lingers something wistful; in their speech, something hesitating, groping, almost deprecatory and apologetic; in their silences, something almost eloquent.
It is a landscape in which, to him who surrenders himself, the sense of one’s life as a whole seems always present, birth and death being mere scansions in the flow of a somewhat debilitated stream of vitality. It is not surprising, then, that, physical facts notwithstanding, the difference in the mood produced by day or night, or by summer or winter, seems less pronounced than elsewhere. True, the average day is hot in summer; and the night is cold. But the discomfort caused by the heat does not seem essentially different from the discomfort caused by the cold; the effect of both partakes of the effect of a lid placed over slow ebullition. Perhaps the time best fitted to bring out the characteristic impression of the landscape is neither noon nor midnight but the first grey dawn of day, especially a dull day; or the first dim dusk of night, that dusk in which horizons become blurred and the height of human buildings seems diminished. And similarly the time of year most in harmony with the scene is neither summer nor winter; but rather the first few days of spring while the snow still lies in dirty patches and, from the heights in the west, the floods send down their first invading trickles which follow the imperceptible hollows of the ground; or the first drear approach of November days, with indurating winds and desolate flurries of snow in the air.
The prevailing silence–for, apart from man’s dwellings, not even the wind finds anything to play its tunes on–is accentuated rather than disturbed by the sibilant hum, in early summer, of the myriads of mosquitoes that haunt the air, bred in stagnant pools, and the shrill notes, in the early autumn, of the swarm of black crickets that literally cover the soil. That silence, like the flat landscape itself, has something haunted about it, something almost furtive….
Abe, now that he was becoming conscious of this landscape at last, and of its significance, could at first hardly understand that he, of all men, should have chosen this district to settle in, though it suited him well enough now. But even that became clear. He had looked down at his feet; had seen nothing but the furrow; had considered the prairie only as a page to write the story of his life upon. His vision had been bounded by the lines of his farm; his farm had been floated on that prairie as the shipwright floats a vessel on the sea, looking not so much at the waves which are to batter it as at the fittings which secure the comfort of those within. But such a vessel may be engulfed by such a sea.
When, these days, he approached his place, the place built to dominate the prairie, he succumbed to the illusion that he who had built it was essentially different from him who had to live in it. More and more the wind-break surrounding his yard seemed to be a rampart which, without knowing it, he had erected to keep out a hostile world. Occasionally the great house seemed nothing less than a mausoleum to enshrine the memory of a child.
Abe felt defeated; at least in so far as he was what he had been; perhaps that defeat would slowly become apparent to the outside world. But the world defeats only him who has already been defeated in his heart. And was it a defeat? He was changing his aim; that aim was now to live on, not in a material sense, through his economic achievement, but in what he did for district and municipality. No rural school of the west had ever been guided like his; no municipality had weathered the war like that of Somerville. As far as his economic ambitions went, he had reached his goal. He might go on making money; what for? Material aspirations meant nothing. He had the house; and he found no pleasure in it. For fifteen years he had dreamed of what he would do when he had it; now it seemed useless.
Economically, the war had been hard on him. The price of wheat had been fixed for the farmer; for nobody else had the price of anything been fixed; by legislation, the farmer had been the prey of all preying interests. Everybody else in the district felt the same way; nobody was surprised at the fact that Abe had arrested progress. He was biding his time. For outwardly he had changed little. He had replaced his ageing bronchos by another driving team, still more magnificent. When he drove to town, he sat as straight in buggy or sleigh as ever. He spoke as little; whatever he had to say was always concerned with business; and it was always said to the point.
Abe was well-to-do. Did he not show it by the way in which his children were dressed? Was not Marion, at Somerville, paying thirty dollars a month for her board? Abe might be a little heavier and older. He was as headstrong as ever. Was he not running school and district?
How was it, then, that he was more and more discussed? That it was necessary for his friends to contradict such assertions as that he was “land poor,” that he had sunk his wealth in the soil which, sooner or later, he would find himself unable to till? That the time was coming when he would have to withdraw from the offices which he held? That others would shortly take hold?
THE CHANGING DISTRICT
The fact was there was unrest in the district; and that unrest was greatly increased by the coming of another settler. The story of John Elliot’s coming was that of the rise in the price of flax.
Throughout the years of the war, flax had shown erratic tendencies; now its price was soaring towards a peak. John Elliot had repeatedly appeared in the district to look things over. He was a short, stout, round-shouldered man
of thirty, with a round, full face, tanned brick-red from his eyebrows down; above that line, his bulging forehead was white, protected by a wide-brimmed sombrero. He had been farming in the short-grass country of Saskatchewan, a wheat district pure and simple. He seemed to have money and an equipment superior to that of any one but Abe; and he was what Abe was not, a “mixer.” Though he was ugly–his mouth was large, and his nether lip shovel-shaped and pendent–he made friends at once. He was always laughing and joking, displaying gold-filled teeth. Even while travelling, he wore a white-and-blue checked shirt and a pair of cotton trousers; and somehow he conveyed the impression that he was too well off to need the appearance of prosperity.
He wanted land; and flax land at that. Nearly the whole district was flax land; and plenty of it was available. The trouble was that a man could homestead only a hundred and sixty acres. “Do you think I’d be satisfied with a measly quarter? I want a half at the least. Any of you fellows willing to sell? Good night, boys. Nothing doing. Not for me. What’s that? Hudson’s Bay land? Where?”
The south half and north-west quarter of section twenty-six, opposite Hilmer’s Corner, were vacant; and these three quarters, like Abe’s north section, were part of that twentieth of land which was left to the Company when they surrendered their sovereignty.
“Ye-es,” John Elliot said. That might suit him.
But land values had gone up since the war. Abe had bought his section for three thousand six hundred dollars. Now the price was four thousand dollars a quarter section. Time to pay in? Pay ten per cent down; the balance within thirty years.
One day somebody picked up the news at Somerville that a deal had been struck. Rumour, always willing to believe what flatters the interests of the many, had it that Elliot had paid spot cash for the land; but a private loan company registered a mortgage on the land which amounted to three thousand dollars more than the purchase price.
Fruits of the Earth Page 16
