“Abe,” she said breathlessly, “John and Marion–”
“Where?” Abe exclaimed, divining the plot; at a bound he was at the closet and reached for his sheepskin.
“At the barn,” Ruth answered.
Abe rushed through the back-door.
John Harrison had not yet returned to the sleigh when Abe laid a hand on Marion’s shoulder. “This will not do,” he said gently.
Marion felt as though she were going to faint.
“Come to the house,” Abe went on, speaking now to John as well as to her. “We shall set the date. I withdraw my objection.”
“Daddy!” Marion cried.
“Come in,” he repeated. “As far as I am concerned you can be married on New Year’s Day. But the wedding must be from the house.”
Marion’s arms closed about her father’s neck.
THE SCHOOL-HOUSE
Abe looked aged and tired. Throughout the district people watched him. It did not seem as if the marriage of his daughter had made him happy; again he took to driving about, often returning only after dark.
On one such occasion, he passed the old school-house at night when the building was brilliantly lighted, probably with the lamp which he had given years ago. The sound of music issued through its walls.
Abe stopped on the culvert and looked back. Through the windows in the north wall he saw human shapes moving in the figures of a dance. The music was more distinct on this side.
He alighted and walked over to the building. The music ceased, and the dancers stopped. Standing close to one of the windows, he saw someone pouring from a bottle into glasses held by half a dozen young men and women. He retraced his steps to the cutter. When he reached his gate, the small lights on the gate-posts which had been out of order for some time were incandescent: Jim would never stay on the farm!
Abe’s life had taken on an almost furtive cast when, in municipality and district, movements arose to draw him back into politics.
In the municipality, a leader was needed to co-ordinate those activities which had been suspended during the war. Nobody had forgotten the single-minded economy with which Abe had administered the business; many municipalities had gone into the hands of receivers; Somerville had never been in a sounder financial condition than at the time when Rogers took Abe’s place for the remainder of the latter’s term as reeve. Rogers had declined re-election; a new man had taken office; and already there was dissatisfaction. The roads were deteriorating; grades built at great expense were sinking back into a primeval swamp; the ditches were choked; farmers were suffering from the sudden deflation after the war; and, as in the way of farmers all over the world, they blamed the Government for their plight which was often the effect of their own improvidence; taxes were rising; incomes decreasing; public money was spent to no purpose; relief was given only in such districts as were directly represented on the council. It was the old story of democratic institutions exploited for the benefit of individuals.
Rogers, meeting Abe at Somerville, pleaded with him. He claimed to be voicing the wish of a large majority in urging Abe to accept nomination next fall. Abe did as he had done before: he listened; but, having listened, he shook his head and drove on. Rogers changed his tactics and came back to the attack. He asked Abe about the methods he used in haying; for Abe had the reputation of being the “uncrowned champion stacker” of the west. Abe did not know that Roger’s sole purpose was to bring him into contact with public opinion once more; for the scheme which Rogers proposed sounded reasonable enough in itself. He offered to loan Abe two of his men if Abe, in return, would come to direct operations on his place for an equal number of days. The offer was flattering, for it assumed that Abe’s help was worth the help of two men in return. Rogers claimed that his haying was done at a cost out of proportion to the value of the roughage secured. Abe promised.
Locally, in Spalding District, it was Nicoll, of course, who voiced what he called the wishes of many. When asked who they were, he named Stanley, Horanski, Hilmer, Shilloe, Elliot, and others. The complaints centred around the use to which the old school was put. Nicoll spoke of unbearable scandals. In spite of nation-wide prohibition liquor flowed freely at these dances which had become weekly, even twice-weekly affairs. Worse things were mentioned. Seeing that these meetings were sponsored by the returned men, a number of farmers, including Nicoll, had allowed their daughters to go. Some, like the Ukrainians, having once allowed it, found themselves unable to stop it. Girls from other districts came in: undesirable elements from town and city. To his amazement Abe was told that three or four children had been born out of wedlock; more were expected; the dances had degenerated into drunken orgies. The names mentioned as those of the guilty were McCrae and Henry and Slim Topp. McCrae, according to Nicoll, though a married man, could not be trusted with any woman.
Abe had nothing to say for those implicated, least of all for McCrae; but he needed the man; he was the only one on whom he could count when he wanted help; the others were making progress on their own farms; not many were working at a profit; but land once broken must be cultivated. John Elliot, for instance, had to work from dawn to dark in order to make at least part of his interest payments, helping to make the country prosperous while he remained poor himself.
“What could I do about it?” Abe asked.
“It’s the school board,” Nicoll said. “They rent the building to this gang. The school should be sold. But Wheeldon refuses to propose anything of the sort; he depends on the votes of these men. He wants to run the district. We need a man who will stand up for the good of the whole. We need you, Abe.”
Abe laughed mirthlessly. “You put consolidation over on me; now you want me to run it for you.”
“I know, Abe. But something has to be done. Wherever there are children going to school, they are getting out of hand.”
“That’s it, is it? Are you finding it out?”
Nicoll looked gloomy. “Even the little ones.”
“Of course.”
“Are we simply old-fashioned, Abe?”
“That may be; the fact remains that you are losing control.”
“We are between the devil and the deep sea,” Nicoll said.
But Abe replied in a tone of finality: “You have made your bed, you must lie in it.”
Yet Nicoll did not give up. He, too, was becoming an influence in the community; his corner now consisted of three farms; his third son Stan was taking up land. But his two youngest sons had taken the infection of the age and refused to work at home except for wages. Besides, Dick, now the oldest one, had given at least part of his allegiance to the gang. Nicoll felt old age approaching: the district had gone wild: nobody wanted to farm any longer; they wanted to make money instead.
Nicoll tried Elliot. “I know,” Elliot said, “you must count me out. I have my hands full. Get Spalding. My children are small. If things go on the way they’re going when they grow up, I’ll know what to do.”
“I wish you’d tell me what that is,” Nicoll said.
Elliot looked at him, pushed his sombrero back, and wiped his brow. Then, with a savage fling of his long arms, “Take the shotgun out and go after the gang.”
In the surrounding towns, Somerville, Morley, Ferney, Torquay, Arkwright, Spalding District was beginning to bear a “hard name.” Whenever McCrae and his cronies appeared–and wherever a dance was held, they furnished the music–social events, staid and wooden as they had been in the past, degenerated into drunkenness and immorality. Their professed intention was to show the older people post-war life.
Just before thaw-up of 1921, the oldest Stanley girl, somewhat “simple”–rumour said praying and fasting had made her so–disappeared from the district. The reason assigned by the one-armed man, that an aunt in the city wished to have one of her nieces with her, satisfied nobody; Nawosad had heard Stanley forbidding his yard to McCrae. Three Ukrainian girls were reported to have “gone wrong.” Indignation waxed furious. But since, with the d
isintegration of the district, the meetings at Nicoll’s Corner had ceased, there was no way for public opinion to crystallize and to express itself. Hartley was peddling groceries and buying chickens in competition with Schweigel. Shilloe, Nawosad, Hilmer had withdrawn during the war; as former Austrians and Russo-Germans they were under a cloud, perhaps more in their own imagination than in the minds of responsible settlers; though Henry Topp had done a great deal to make them feel that way, and Wheeldon not much less. The only public opinion which was organized was that of the gang.
Since, however, Nicoll did not despair of ultimately winning Abe back to his abandoned leadership, he was glad, in spring, of an opportunity to render Abe a great service.
The two great floods through which the district had lived were those of 1910 and 1919. People derived a comforting thought from the interval that had elapsed between them. But Nicoll and a few others, more clear-sighted, were well aware that the flood of 1919 had been caused only by the neglected state of the ditches. They saw with concern that, in spite of all their complaints, nothing had been done in 1920. When the flood of 1921 arrived, disastrous in its sequel, they were ready with their “I told you so.” The flood was less in volume than normal; but its effect was worse than that of either of the great floods.
If Abe had been cooperating with his district, Nicoll and others said, the disaster would have been avoided. He would, in 1920, have organized a volunteer crew to do what had to be done. True, nobody needed to stir a finger unless paid by the municipality; and that was the answer Nicoll had received from every one he had approached; though Nicoll knew what should be done, he lacked that compelling element which forced others to fall in line, be it against their will and inclination. Abe would have furnished ten or sixteen horses; and the rest would have followed.
The flood came late; it covered the fields to a depth of only a few inches; Abe’s yard remained dry. But very little of the water ran out. The ditches filled; and in them as well as the fields the flood stood stagnant. Slowly it disappeared; the weather having turned hot, most of it simply evaporated, leaving an alkaline slime behind. This slime ultimately dried into a whitish, hygroscopic incrustation which liquefied nightly by imbibing the dew, thus preventing the ground from drying.
It was a general condition: a new Egyptian plague afflicting the district and a large part of the province. There was a panic. The drought of the previous year, combined with the decline in the value of farm products, had prepared the minds of the people to expect the worst. The old superstition–or was it observation?–that disastrous years run in threes was revived. Farmers cast about in their minds for ways and means of weathering evil times. One single product commanded a price above the normal: hay.
In Spalding District and east and west of it the greater part of the land was wild prairie. Nobody had ever worried about hay; since less than half the land was cultivated, every settler had more wild land to cut from than he owned. So far, nobody had even known that there were ways of securing the exclusive right of cutting grass on a given area.
But this spring the flood had hardly disappeared when people came from south of the Line, from twenty, thirty miles away, and inquired, often in a secretive and circuitous manner, which were the best meadows; and, having received ungrudging information, they disappeared and were, for the time being, not seen again. Nicoll, happening to drop in at the municipal office at Somerville, was asked by the secretary why the settlers of Spalding District allowed the best hay lands to pass into the hands of outsiders. He learned that these outsiders had secured haying permits from province and Crown which gave them the exclusive right to cut on such areas as were designated in their permits. For these they had paid certain fees. Incidentally, Nicoll received one item of news which he promptly communicated to Abe.
This was that Wheeldon had taken out a permit for the section west of Abe’s land. Abe frowned. Within the district, that section was, by prescription, considered almost as part of his farm.
Money was scarce; Nicoll himself was in a bad plight. Abe saw it all at a glance and promptly went to Somerville.
On the way, he thought the situation over with the utmost care. If this was going to be a wet year, and though there might be little rain, the soil was bound to be wet for at least part of the summer–meadowlands might be inaccessible to horses and such heavy machinery as was used in haying. There was one section, however, even more than a section, south of his farm, which had a gravelly subsoil, forming part of the slight ridge on which his own land lay; it was higher than the rest of the district. In dry years, therefore, the grass was thin and short. Every trip into that meadow involved such loss of time for him as was required to travel four miles, to Nicoll’s Corner and back again, for there was no other bridge to cross the ditch. In an exceptionally wet season, however, it would prove his salvation.
At Somerville he found that the section in question was available. He wrote a cheque and secured a permit from the Crown.
When he met Nicoll, he said, “I’ll let you have what you need on shares.”
“All right,” Nicoll said. He still felt hurt by the way in which Abe restricted their intercourse to business; but there had been years when they had never exchanged a word.
Seeding time came and went, and no work was done in the district. Gumbo clay cannot be ploughed till the clods are dry enough to crumble; but wherever one stepped on the soil, one slipped; the crust was an alkaline smear. Even Abe did nothing till the second half of May had arrived. In Nicoll’s fallow water stood in the furrows; the ridges looked like brown sugar melting in the flood. It was the same with all the fields along the road to town; the road itself, though graded up to a height of two or three feet above the prairie, was deeply rutted; and the ruts remained full of water. In front of Hilmer’s, the grade had been washed out in 1919; and there remained a bad hole. Baker drove his van with four horses, at six and a half dollars a day. The ditches held the water like irrigation ditches–a curse instead of a blessing. People talked of suing province or municipality for their losses.
Meanwhile, a perhaps trifling occurrence disturbed Abe at Easter which came on 27th March that year; the roads, though still frozen, were almost bare of snow. On Thursday before the festival Abe was taking a cream-can to town; and, thinking of his children, he arranged to get there about four o’clock.
As soon as he issued from his gate, he began, according to his habit, to scan the horizon; and he was at once aware of something moving on the road from town. At once also, like the prairie dweller he had become, he followed that moving point with his eyes.
Suddenly he noticed that the car–for nothing but a car could have moved so fast–had come to a stop, half-way between town and Hilmer’s Corner. No settler had ever squatted down there; not even good grass grew in that alkaline marsh.
Then his attention was claimed by an unexpected snowdrift remaining in the trail. His horses were high-strung and restive and plunged in passing through. One of the traces broke; and in order to affect a temporary repair, Abe had to descend to the road.
When he resumed his seat, he swept the horizon again, searching for the spot he had seen; but a point at rest is not so easily found as a point in motion. His horses fell into a trot at the very moment when the point began to move once more. There was no doubt any longer about its being a car. North of Hilmer’s, it dipped steeply down into the hole, slowed, and rose again. Then it became more distinct; and the two vehicles would have met at Nicoll’s Corner had not Abe held his hackneys back: they were not entirely broken to cars. The car was slowing down and came to a stop on the culvert south of the corner. Some person who was with the driver alighted on the far side and stood a moment, talking or waiting. Then the car moved on.
Abe had just reached Nicoll’s wind-break when, to his amazement, he recognized in the person who had alighted his own daughter Frances. Waves of anger and passion ran through him. Was the school-house thrusting itself across his path? For the car had turned east; it was M
cCrae’s.
Abe turned at Nicoll’s gate and waited. When the girl reached him, she had just subdued the worst of a furious blush. “Hello,” she said briefly and climbed to her father’s side, the fact that he had waited becoming a summons. The cream-can being in her way, she had an excuse for turning her back to her father.
A hundred impulses urged Abe to angry speech; but he touched his horses with the whip in silence. When they had entered the yard, Abe drove to the small gate and tied the lead horse. Frances made at once for the house. “Wait for me in the living-room!” Abe said grimly. When he followed her, he saw Ruth coming down from upstairs.
“How did you come to be in that man’s car?” he asked.
Frances, plump, dimpled, with large blue eyes in a flushed face, winced at the sound of his voice. But she raised her glance to meet his with an almost hostile stare. “School was dismissed at three. He happened to pass and offered the ride. Why shouldn’t I take it?”
“Why did the car stop so long on the road?”
“Stop? Where?”
“On the road. North of town.”
“Oh, that! Engine trouble. How should I know?”
Abe stood and lowered down on the girl. Behind him, Ruth filled the door, silent, straight-lipped. All sorts of things passed through his mind: he did not know the girl very well; he doubted whether Ruth knew her. McCrae had a most unsavoury reputation; though he employed him, he objected to contact between him and members of his household. Yet he thought of a remark of his brother-in-law’s: “A suspicion cast on a girl’s character does not remain without its effect on the girl.”
“Listen here,” he said with an effort to speak evenly. “No matter what happens, you don’t accept favours from that man. If I ever see you with him again, that’s the end of your school days. You understand?”
“I understand you,” Frances said, callous, sullen, defiant.
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