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
Ruth 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.”
“It’s plainly to be seen,” Mary had sternly gone on. “But I’ll admit I did not suspect her till this afternoon. I was in the garden. Across the fence was Ethel Reilly with another girl. ‘Look at that Spalding kid!’ one said to the other. ‘Surely, she’s got herself into trouble?’ I couldn’t see Frances. But it struck me at once with the force of conviction. Only in the morning I had been thinking that she had grown astonishingly stout since school had closed. But you are stout yourself; and it hadn’t been striking so far.”
“I wasn’t stout when I was her age,” Ruth had said.
“Perhaps not. But she’s been at home for two months, and you have noticed nothing yourself. I have blamed and blamed myself ever since. When she came in, I charged her with the fact. She denied it. I made her undress; and she broke down and admitted it all…No use crying, Ruth, now the thing’s done. I came because I knew Abe wasn’t at home. The problem is how to keep it from his knowledge.”
“How can it be kept from his knowledge?”
“That you will have to think out. I wonder whether you realize what this would mean to him. He would kill the man.”
“Who is the man?”
“Let Frances tell you. I don’t mean to go into the details of the sordid story. But the man is married and has a family of his own. That ghost of an excuse Frances has. But it is all the worse for Abe.”
“Why?”
“Ruth, I know what this must mean to you. I don’t want to be harsh. But I must speak. I wish to God I had said long ago what I have to say. You have not always been the right wife for Abe. When you saw what it meant to carve a farm out of raw prairie, you gave up and threw the whole burden on him. You thought your children should have a freer and easier life. You taught them to look for fulfilment of their wishes away from home. They have learned the lesson.”
“If you want to speak ill of my children–”
“I am not speaking ill of them. If you had given them the right kind of home, this would not have happened. Marion would not have married against Abe’s wishes. Jim would have stayed at home. Frances would be a decent girl. What has Abe left? He works like a slave to preserve that semblance of a home which he thinks he still has. He is over fifty. He has always worked too hard. And this is what you hold in reserve for him. Go if you want to. Tell him what you have done, yes, you! Tell him that this girl and a scoundrel have brought shame on his greying head. Do! And see what will come of it.”
Ruth had listened, half in despair half in revolt. Some of the things Mary had said were true; others were not. What did it matter? If Abe could be spared, he must be spared, with that she agreed.
“He will kill the man!” Mary had repeated.
“If he is a married man, he deserves it.”
“But what about Abe? He will hang.”
Ruth had started to her feet with a cry.
Mary had gone on speaking passionately. All that had stood between the two women had come from her lips, things just and unjust. To Ruth they had seemed irrelevant. Mary had concluded by saying, “He will do justice regardless of consequences.”
Yes, so Ruth had thought at that moment of emotional upheaval. Abe stood at the centre of it all. She understood him better than his sister. He must be protected. The whole load of the crisis settled down on her shoulders. “Have you a plan?” she had asked.
“That,” Mary had said, rising and going to the window, “I will tell you when Frances has told you what she has told me. Better take her upstairs and keep her there, out of Abe’s sight.”
Ruth, with the uneasy memory in her mind of what Abe had said at the mere thought of just what had happened, had done as Mary bade; and in this room where she spent the night Frances had told the tale of that ride from town in McCrae’s car. Ruth had shuddered; but the thought of Abe had saved her from breaking down. As, during the night, she lay there, she was torn between two desires: that of saving Abe and that of handing “that man” over to him. A ruthless power had twisted her purpose into its opposite. An easier and higher life than she had led!
Abe was the child’s father; he was the man to punish the offender; and yet he must be spared. Much of what Mary had said Ruth was willing to admit. It had come to the point where Abe, with all his faults, meant manhood to her, power, tenacity, perseverance in the face of adversity; yes, and forbearance. The very things which she had resented in him she had come to admire. He must be spared. And a crooked little by-thought had crept in: by sparing him, she could protect the girl from his wrath. For already Ruth was building a defence around her child; in defending her she was defending herself. McCrae alone was to blame; he must be punished, or she would lose her faith in life!
Abe must be kept in ignorance: that, the two women had agreed upon. A plan had suggested itself to Mary, starting from the coincidence of Mr. Rogers’s telephone call; so she had made a definite arrangement for her brother to be fetched in the afternoon of the following day. Abe being out of the way, she would run Ruth and Frances to the city where Marion’s approaching confinement would furnish a pretext for this visit of her sister. Frances would remain in the city till all was over; she need never even see her own child; that remained to be arranged for.
There seemed to be no flaw in this plan, provided Ruth was willing to let McCrae go unpunished. That Ruth might for a moment weigh her desire for his punishment against the necessity of keeping the thing from Abe had never occurred to Mary. But Ruth plotted and planned till she seemed to see a way of achieving both ends. McCrae must be punished; he was the guilty one; Frances was his innocent victim. His punishment would restore to Ruth a measure of confidence in herself.
She had reached no definite conclusion yet when Abe stirred to rise for the day. He stretched and yawned in his room, stretched and yawned.
Frances was innocent. Ruth had told Mary so. “Force was used.”
“Why is force not used against other girls?”
> “We don’t need to discuss that,” Ruth had said….
She must get up to prepare breakfast and pack the noonday lunch. She waited till Abe had gone to the barn. Then, having washed, she slipped down to the kitchen….
At ten o’clock a boy from town brought the buggy, leading a saddle-horse behind. He came to the house and brought Ruth a note.
“I have arranged everything. Rogers will call for Abe at three. I shall come for you to-morrow morning at seven–Mary.”
“There is no answer,” Ruth had said to the messenger….
McCrae looked at Abe with a supercilious glance when he asked him that morning whether he would look after his stock for a few days.
“Sure. Going away?”
“Yes. I am going to help Mr. Rogers stack his hay.”
McCrae even inquired, “Leaving the missus and daughter at home?”
Abe nodded.
The mist had crawled south; the day was as brilliant as ever; the work would be finished by noon.
Abe could not remember the time when he had worked in such utter peace. Last night resignation had come to him. In no other way could he find happiness: a life in the present, looking neither backward nor forward. The air was crisp; the warmth of the rising sun felt grateful.
When, at two o’clock, his haying finished, he returned to the house, Frances had lain down with a headache.
Abe planned retrenchments: cross-fence his farm a mile north; seed the Hudson’s Bay section to grass; keep stock there; rebuild life on a smaller scale; do things in a leisurely way; enjoy the doing of them; taste every season, every hour, every task to the full! Had he done so years ago, he would have saved much of life.
Shortly after three Rogers drove into the yard. Abe admired the man. Perfect in poise and control, endowed with the ease of speech, he took pleasure out of life; he never overreached himself; he spoke to his daughters as though flirting with them. The crow’s-feet about his eyes came from much laughter. Abe felt as if he were going on a holiday.
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