It was different with Frances. In spite of her plumpness she was pale and of delicate health; she suffered from headaches. Often she felt excessively tired; and that made her ill-humoured. “Oh,” she would say when Jim, his work finished, tried to entice her into a game of cards or checkers, “leave me alone. All I want is to go to bed.” On Fridays, she heaved a great sigh. “Thank the Lord! Another week gone!”
She was nearly sixteen. Physically, she developed rapidly, though she remained small. Her face assumed a new and alluring prettiness, a plump and slightly anaemic charm, with fair curls hanging down in front of her ears. Abe watched and said nothing.
Every night after supper Ruth insisted on the two children doing their homework under her eyes. Two hours were reserved for the task. Jim sat down without a protest; but he often hid a cheap novel under his books. Frances groaned.
One Friday evening, however, shortly before Christmas, Frances, too, seemed willing enough. She and her brother occupied opposite seats at the dining table, under the frosted bowl of electric bulbs. Ruth sat at the far end in one of the straight-backed chairs, sewing. Opposite her sat Abe, turning the leaves of a great tome with illustrations of ancient buildings. Behind Ruth, in one of the deep, grey chairs from the living-room, Marion reclined, stitching a silky piece of lingerie–her usual occupation when at home.
For an hour a profound silence had reigned in that solemn room when Frances ceased writing and looked up with a laugh.
“Miss Garston gave us for a composition topic, ‘Why I like Consolidation,’” she said. “Anyone want to read what I’ve written?”
With a deep frown on his massive face, as though recalling himself from the infinity of space, Abe held out a hand. Frances handed the sheet of paper over with another laugh; she had hardly expected her father to ask for it. As he proceeded, she nervously chewed her pencil.
“Why I like Consolidation,” Abe read. “The fact is, I don’t like it at all. I have to get up at half-past five in the morning. Breakfast I have at a quarter past six. Before seven I leave the house, warmly wrapped, to walk to the corner of my father’s farm. At seven I hand myself over to the jailer who takes me to school. He tries to bandy impertinent jokes with me. In the van it is hot, and I take my wraps off. For the first half-hour it is not too bad. I have at least ample room. Then we pick up a bunch of nine children from three families. Four of them smell of garlic; some of unwashed bodies and unclean clothes. After another three-quarters of an hour we pick up eleven children, nearly all of them objectionable on the score of smell. The air we breathe over and over begins to be so foul that it nauseates me. Whenever the van stops, I bend forward to get a whiff of the delicious cold draught. By this time I am sitting on my wraps; for we are crowded. I hate to do that, for I have nice clothes and like to take care of them. None of the other children will sit still.
“At twenty minutes past nine we reach school and are handed over to a new set of jailers. I am so stupefied with bad air and so tired with jolting that to study is the last thing on earth I want to do. But that is what we are sent for. I should like the work if I reached school fresh after a reasonable night’s rest. As it is, I know that whatever I may still be able to do is not worth doing. All day long I watch the clock and resent that it is so slow. The only oasis in the desert of the day is the noon recess when I go down town.
“At four o’clock, which comes as a great relief at last, I must hand myself back to the jailer of the morning, for another drive of sixty or ninety minutes in evil-smelling captivity. When I get home, I have no life left and certainly no desire to write a good composition on ‘Why I dislike Consolidation.’”
Abe sat and frowned, his eyes on infinity. As for the contents of this exercise, it confirmed his aversion to the whole system. He might have laughed at it. But over and beyond what he had read, he had received a shattering revelation of the character of the girl. That she was precocious he had known; children were precocious these days. But she was advanced in a way which he could not have defined.
It was Frances who broke the silence in which everybody looked at the father. “I don’t think I’ll hand that in,” she said.
“Why not?” It had been half a minute before Abe spoke.
“They’d can me.”
“‘Can you?’ Can’t you speak decent English?”
“Expel me, then.”
“Let them try!” Abe got heavily to his feet. “You make a clean copy and hand it in. If they object, you tell them I’ve read it and approved.”
Frances looked at him with an uncertain light in her eyes.
“I want this sheet,” Abe said. “Stay where you are. Write it over.”
He turned to pace the room. In that writing the girl’s soul lay bared; could he allow her to show it to others? There was passion in that exercise. Had Ruth not heard, he would have retracted.
Ruth pushed her glasses back on her bulging forehead. “Let me see that, Frances.”
In a strange impulse Abe went through the swing-door into the white-tiled kitchen to reach for the sheepskin in the narrow closet by the side of the wash-basin. For an hour or longer he paced the yard; and not till the lights had flashed on upstairs did he re-enter the house.
Ruth was in the dining-room; she never went to bed before him now.
For a few minutes, Abe walking up and down, there was the silence usual between them. Then Ruth dropped her sewing.
“Abe,” she said, looking up, “what can we do about Frances?”
He stopped and pondered, weighing her. Did she see the problem?
“Can’t we make an arrangement for the children to drive themselves?”
No. She did not see the problem. Then, as if awaking, “You wanted consolidation, did you not?”
“I want the high school.”
Abe stood silent. “You have a problem on your hands,” he said at last, “in that girl of yours.”
“She is yours as well as mine, Abe.”
“Is she?”
This was a cruel thrust. In years gone by Ruth had consciously tried to raise the children so that they would be more hers than his. But Abe regretted what he had said; he knew only too well that he himself had failed his children in the past.
“You have a problem on your hands in the girl,” he repeated; “and every parent in the district will have a similar problem.”
“Just what do you mean by that, Abe?”
“Unless you feel it, I cannot explain,” Abe replied.
On Christmas Day the Spaldings had dinner in town with the Vanbruiks. The weather was mild; for a week it had thawed every day; the eaves of all buildings were strung with icicles; and from the ground their drippings grew up in corresponding cones.
Dinner over, the two women withdrew upstairs; the girls went for a walk; Jim disappeared. The conversation of the men turned to the school.
“I can’t say that I like what I see,” the doctor said. “Here are two hundred children coming in from the country, fifty adolescents, a few young men and women: all released from patriarchal homes into comparative freedom. The common objection to all public schools–that, in a moral sense, they level down, not up–takes on the proportions of a menace. All become unified–standardized, they call it–in a common smartness. Not to know, say, do certain things stamps a boy as a ‘sissy.’ They smoke, they use objectionable language, and worse. Above all, they acquire the slang of the day–a stereotyped language capable of expressing only coarsened reactions. It is the same with the girls, of course. They are suddenly brought into contact with the conveniences of an advanced material civilization: post office, telephone, and so on. They conduct correspondences of which they keep their parents in ignorance. Over the telephone, they speak to distant friends. I have overheard such conversations. The sort of letters they write I had an opportunity to see when chance placed one in my hands. It was lost in the store. Since I know neither writer nor addressee, I am not violating any confidence in letting you see it. I kept it as a docu
ment.”
He rose slowly–he was over sixty-five–went to his desk and abstracted a paper from one of its drawers. Abe opened it and read:
“My dear Vi,–Oh boy! I’m all tipsy and raring to go. Oh kid! Ma has relented. I’m going to attend a swell dance to-morrow night where the Tip Top Orchestra is playing. My togs are ready, compact filled, hair frizzed and all. Of course, Ma doesn’t know; but Jack will be there with bells on. She thinks he’s at Torquay yet. But this once I am going to have a fling. Dash it, though! I was mad at Jack the other day, a week ago. You know that nifty compact he gave me last Xmas? He smashed it; and I gave him Hail Columbia. He’ll bring me a new one to-morrow night; that’ll be jake with me. Didn’t I feel punk, though!
“Last night I met Agnes Strong on the ice. For the love of Pete! How that Jane carries on! I’d be ashamed of myself, honest to cats, I should. You know Frank Smith, the new sheik? He’s sweet on me, and, of course, I encourage him. Want some fun. But Agnes is cuckooed about him since he took her to a dance last week. It makes me puke to see her. Well, so long, kiddo. Must ring off. Think of me to-morrow night, all dolled up. Frank says I’m a spiff looker. Hug me tight. See you in the funnies!–Pansy Blossom.”
“The worst of that sort of thing,” the doctor said after a while, “is not the moral degeneracy which it may or may not imply. It is the coarsening of a whole generation.”…
At night, Abe gave Ruth that letter to read; she was amazed; but, of course, “her girls would never condescend to a thing like that.”
A few weeks later, having thought matters over, Abe went to town. It so happened that, in the store, Mr. Diamond mentioned casually that Mrs. Vanbruik was in. Abe, following up a half-matured thought, said at once, “I’d like to see her for a moment.”
But someone else was speaking to her. While waiting, Abe asked to see his account. When the book-keeper, an elderly man of military bearing, brought him his ledger page, Abe, amazed at the total, turned to the manager. “What are these items here, dry goods, with three amounts of thirty, twenty-five, and forty-five dollars?”
“Let me see.” Mr. Diamond, taking the paper, disappeared in the crowd. “Those,” he said, returning, “were dresses for the young ladies, ordered through a traveller on approval. Miss Frances took them out, and Mrs. Spalding signed the bills.”
Abe nodded as Mary approached, in fur coat, but without a hat on her still brown hair.
“Hello, Mary,” Abe said grimly. “Ruth would like to put Frances out to board. The drives are too much for her. Would you take the girl?”
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.”
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