Fruits of the Earth (42 page)

Alighting at the little gate near the house, Abe said with sombre sobriety, “Go in. I'll turn the pony out. I won't need him again.”

A lump rose in Ruth's throat. His was a commonplace remark, meaning only that, for the day, Abe's driving was done. Yet, in the light of Mary's forebodings, it had a sinister sound. “Abe, I'll go with you.”

He looked at her. Then, “Come along if you want to.”

And so, as in years long gone by, Ruth stood in the door of the barn as Abe stripped the harness off the pony's back and turned him out.

Then, side by side, they went to the house and sat down in the dining-room. Abe was visibly, painstakingly collecting his thoughts.

“Tell me in detail just what you have done,” he said at last.

Ruth told her story without the slightest attempt to shield man or girl: for her, something more than Frances was at stake.

Abe listened patiently, letting her go back and forth over the story and asking her to repeat certain statements–as that regarding the significance of the amount at which bail had been fixed. At last he nodded. “You did right. You did right even in getting me out of the way. I might not have had the patience to go through with it.” And, after a while, “It is a case where the law fails us.”

“Then the law is evil,” Ruth cried.

“No. It is merely imperfect.” And again he sat and pondered, Ruth torturing a handkerchief in her hands. “You have done,” he repeated, “what I should have done. I am glad it isn't to do over again.”

“I felt that the man must be punished,” Ruth said as if still in self-defence.

“I could not have done what you did in getting the admission from the man,” Abe said, rising. “It clears the case. And now I want to be alone for a while. Don't follow me; and don't worry.”

He went out and across the yard, through the old barn, into the pasture where he stared unseeingly at horses and cows. Every now and then a tremor ran through his body.

In the hall of the house stood a gun-rack; and he thought of it. He might load one of these guns, go down to the man's shack, call him out, and shoot him down like a dog. His hand seemed to close about the weapon where stock and barrel join, a finger on the trigger….

But what would be gained by it? Abe's body relaxed. The district, the municipality, the province, the country would be supplied with a thrill, to be forgotten the next day or the day after; and then the matter would pass into the void of oblivion, to be revived perhaps now and then in tales around the stove.

What else? The district was calling. There, too, he had started a machinery which he could not stop and which imposed its law upon him. But suddenly he felt that, if he followed its call, that district would rally about him: the Ukrainians, Hilmer, the Jew, and Baker; Dave Topp, Stanley, Elliot, Nicoll–a clear majority over the gang–the moment he gave them a chance to align themselves by his side. The gang had been running the district because he, Abe, had stood aloof.

Resignation? The thing he had dreamt of for a week had been no resignation at all: he had nursed his anger and shut himself off. He had meant to do what, in his weariness, seemed fulfilment of his desires. True resignation meant accepting one's destiny; to him, it meant accepting the burden of leadership; and the moment he saw that, he felt at one with the district, with his brother-in-law who had told him his story, with Ruth in her sorrow, and, strangely, with himself; for here was something to do once more: the gang would vanish into thin air. His own life had been wrong, or all this
would not have happened. He had lied to himself and had had to learn that it could not be done….

There were further searchings, painfully proving; but all led to the same result. “Yes,” he muttered to himself, “I'll go on…. To the end…. Whatever it may be.”

And when, in the dusk, he returned to the house where he knew Ruth was waiting in distress and anxiety, his mind was made up.

He sat down in the dining-room; and in a sudden impulse Ruth came to his side and half bent over him. “Abe,” she said, “for my sake, let him go.”

He placed his hand on hers which rested on the table; and for the first time in many years, he felt her touch on his shoulder. “I can hardly do that,” he said with an effort. “He is not alone in his doings. And this is my district, founded by me and bearing my name. Shall his example stand for all time to come? What would it mean? That a man can do as he pleases, living the life of the beast within him. If Frances was in any way to blame, that is her concern. But McCrae is not a giddy boy. If he were, I'd make him marry the girl and keep him straight. But look at the case. He is married. He has children of his own. He is a ratepayer, entitled to office if he can muster followers enough to elect him as Wheeldon did. He enjoys all the rights and privileges of others. Has he none of their duties? I had withdrawn from the district; I did wrong; and this has risen up against me. I see my duty again. It is out of cases of self-help that the law has arisen; whatever I do will have its effect on the law; or at least on its interpretation within this district. No, I shall have to act. I shall have to drive him out.”

Ruth was tense, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I have wronged the district,” he went on. “And, Ruth, I have wronged you.”

She sobbed convulsively; her hand gripped his shoulder.

“And I have wronged my children as well,” he added painfully.

“Abe–––” But she could not speak.

“You thought I should kill him,” he went on more composedly. “It would not serve the case. On that score you may be at rest. The district as well as I will have to live this down; it will have to vindicate me and itself by casting him out. I shall have to take office again, and not only here but in the municipality as well.”

At ten o'clock, that night, Abe was at Nicoll's Corner, looking across at the meeting place of the gang; and then, through the utter darkness of a moonless night, he approached the building. As he came in line with the open door, he could see through the whole of the classroom to the far end where the three musicians sat: Slim, Henry, and a stranger. Abe stopped for a second and then went on till he was mounting the concrete steps and entering the vestibule. He passed the cloakroom to his left and the partition of the office to his right. Up to the moment when he actually entered the dance-floor where half a dozen couples were turning, he was in deep shade, for the gasoline lamp which lighted the dancers was suspended close to the ceiling.

His appearance there, in the entrance, caused an instant hush. The music broke off, and the dancing ceased. Two couples near the door disappeared at once behind his back. All others stood and stared.

Among the musicians, Henry Topp had risen. Through the door of the office, Abe was dimly aware of a group of girls sitting on chairs. McCrae was not present. Abe turned slowly, surveying the scene. The deep, trench-like frown on his brow made him look formidable.

“Who has the key to this building?” he asked.

Strangely, Slim Topp held it out to him.

He took it and went on, “This building is closed.” He looked like an irresistible force of nature; and his composure seemed uncanny.

For a second no one stirred. Then Henry Topp tried to spring. “Hold on!” he yelled. But Slim who was almost as tall as Abe held him back.

“Here, let me go!” Henry roared.

And a girl, a stranger to the district, dressed in an excessively short and provokingly open sleeveless dress–she was more than a little tipsy–asked with a hiccup, “What does that guy want?”

Abe fixed a look on her under which she was silenced.

“Go home,” he said, standing perfectly still.

“I'll be jiggered,” Henry Topp said from behind Abe's back; and, though his brother held him, he executed a dance step and, pantomimically, aimed a blow at Abe's head. A tall, gawky youth burst into a guffaw which ceased abruptly in the general silence; he reddened.

Abe, still standing perfectly still, was patiently waiting. Yet, to these people, his seeming mildness gave his words a compelling power; more than one of them shivered at his sight.

“Oh, come on!” Slim Topp said at last with an embarrassed grin.

Everybody was half convinced that Abe was insane.

There was a movement towards the door. The girls from the office slipped into the cloakroom. A moment later there was a stampede.

Only Henry Topp still wriggled in his brother's grasp. “Hold on, there!” he shouted.

“Shut up!” Slim hissed in his ear. “What's the use? Let's go!”

“Oh, all right then!” And arm in arm the two brothers followed the others, swaggering. Slim carried his saxophone; Henry his violin. In the cloakroom, there was a scramble. A moment later the school-house was empty except for Abe who locked the windows and turned the lamp off.

Outside, there was whispering and excited talk. Then Slim blew a rally on the saxophone, from the road. A burst of laughter answered him, sounding weirdly through the night. Then a shout and a summons to meet at Slim's house; and an answer from two or three, “No, I'm going home.” And, within five or ten minutes, silence utter and complete.

Abe went out, locked the door, and turned away….

The news of his action spread through the district that very night; and there were not a few who breathed the traditional sigh of relief.

Map of Spalding District

(within the broken line)

 

and adjacent territories in 1921

AFTERWORD

BY RUDY WIEBE

Fruits of the Earth
is not a novel. It is strange that Frederick Philip Grove, who by 1933 when the book was published had spent two separate lifetimes (as it were) theorizing about literature and practising it in two different languages, seems not to be believed in this matter. In the first written response he made to a review of one of his books, he insisted the book was not a novel. He labelled Robert Ayre's piece on
Fruits of the Earth
in
The Canadian Forum
of April, 1933, an “ill-humoured and ill-mannered effusion,” and went on to explain:

The original title of the book–which I still think it a mistake on the part of the publishers not to have retained–was “The Chronicles of Spalding District.” I am not aware that I call the book a novel. My task was to infuse a dramatic interest into agricultural operations and the attendant rural life of an emerging settlement…. This is the very point in which the present book differs fundamentally from
Our Daily Bread….
At no point have I been concerned with Abe Spalding's inner life except where it touches the district or where the
district touches it; whereas, in
Our Daily Bread
I was concerned with nothing but the inner life of the hero while the district is not so much as mentioned. In one word, the hero of
Fruits of the Earth
is the Prairie.

Now, effusive or not, a reviewer cannot be held responsible for an argument Grove lost with his publisher, in this instance J.M. Dent and Sons. “The Chronicles of Spalding District” is not given as a subtitle in the book, nor is the word “Chronicles” mentioned in the “Author's Note” preceding the text. In fact, Grove seems to avoid an obvious use of it: after giving us a hint of where he got the original idea for the book, he concludes his “Note” with: “the result was the present story.” If he intended to make such a critical distinction between “novel” and “chronicle,” why did he here use “story,” the most general of all terms?

The publication history of
Fruits of the Earth
is a tangled one which cannot be analysed in detail here. It may be enough to simplify and say that Grove tried to take advantage of the huge publicity surrounding his trans-Canada lecture tours in 1928–29 by pitting one eager publisher against another, hoping thereby to gain a better contract. Every writer applauds such an effort–at a certain stage in their necessary marriage, writer and publisher are invariably antagonists–but Grove's problem was that the strong initial sales of
A Search for America
(1927 and 1928) and
Our Daily Bread
(1928) and the re-publication of
Over Prairie Trails
and
The Turn of the Year
(both 1929) were not followed by success with
The Yoke of Life
(1930), which was a sales disaster. Publicity is usually ephemeral; no publisher wanted either Grove or “The Chronicles of Spalding District.” And when Dent finally risked publishing it in 1933 because of the persistence of one
editor, Henry Button, the re-named
Fruits of the Earth
also “fell flat” fewer than 500 copies were sold in Canada, and Dent never published another of his manuscripts.