Thirty Acres, page 14
Albert turned right around to face him. But his voice remained perfectly calm.
“And what about France?”
“Why, sure. I just told you; France too.”
In the silence there was a distant sound like a tocsin: it was an empty tin on a fencepost, banging to and fro in the wind. Under the low rafters the cloud of pipe-smoke seemed to become motionless and then to billow down over the men sitting in the room. Euchariste suddenly remembered that Albert came from Europe, though he had never said exactly where. He turned towards him instinctively, but avoided looking right at him. Albert picked up the paper and scanned it quickly without any change in his expression.
“Who’s fighting who, Albert?” Lucinda asked.
“Well. On one side there’s Austria-Hungary with Germany and Turkey and probably Italy. On the other there’s France, Russia, England, Serbia, Belgium and … and pretty well everybody.”
“Whatever for, that’s what I’d like to know. But … how about? …”
Albert guessed what the question was going to be as well as if he had asked it himself.
“In the first place, it just isn’t possible; it’s too crazy. And if it is true, it won’t last more than a couple of months. And anyway … anyway, I’m a Canadian. I’ve been a Canadian for twelve years now; it’s none of my business. And what’s more, let me tell you, I don’t give a damn!”
Moisan said nothing and himself felt torn by two contrary feelings of which he was just becoming dimly aware. France! It had been upsetting to hear that one name among those of all the other countries mentioned. It was only a name to him, but it had a special savour. He had only to remember how gently the old people pronounced the word France, even the roughest and surliest of them, giving it the inflection one uses for the name of a woman once loved. On the other hand, he just couldn’t bring himself to visualize what was happening so far away among these unknown people, who were a prey to passions and hatreds which he, Euchariste Moisan, had never experienced. How could they think of going off to fight before the harvest was all in?
The sensuous, humid, enervating heat of a midsummer night came in through the wide-open door; the air throbbed with the rhythmic chirping of the crickets hidden between the boards of the veranda.
Then he recalled the words the parish priest had used on one occasion: “France will be punished for expelling the priests.” Now he understood.
Albert sat down in the big rocking-chair and said with unusual emphasis: “Oh, well! If they want to fight, they’ll have to get along without me.”
Through the open door and the windows the pipe-smoke drifted off into the night in long tenuous ribbons.
But Ephrem was looking at the newspaper again.
“Pa, Pa! You won’t believe me maybe, but do you know hay’s selling at fifteen dollars in Montreal?”
“Say, Ephrem, there must be a mistake somewhere,” said Euchariste, now really interested.
“No, it’s on the level; here’s oats up to a dollar and a half a bushel.”
What a soft and fragrant night it was! Euchariste thought of his thirty acres by three lying close at hand and of the tall serried ranks of oats and hay rustling gently under the sombre canopy of night; tomorrow they would quiver with ecstasy under the noonday sun. Soon, in a fortnight’s time, the mowing-machine would come through and mercilessly cut down the stalks and lay them in long even swaths before the ears were ripe enough to open and spill their seed on the ground.
Good!
It would be a fine harvest and it would sell well.
SEVEN
When the haying was over and the appointed day and hour came, each stalk of grain was severed by the reaper-binder, drawn by three horses, and all day long its clatter could be heard in the distance. Perched on his metal seat, Euchariste could hear the faint rustling of the ears of grain as they fell onto the canvas of the conveyor-belt. He sat enthroned above the plain, with the reins round his neck and his hands on the controls, and the arms of the beater revolved in the air above him. There was an abundant yield of both oats and wheat, and every five seconds a yellow sheaf bound with yellow twine fell to the ground. All the men of the household – Albert, Etienne, Ephrem and Napoléon – followed behind and they stuck their pitchforks into the sheaves and piled them up in stooks until the whole field looked like a village of straw huts. At last there was nothing left but the close-cropped carpet of golden stubble.
But when the time came for threshing, Albert was no longer there. Though formerly he never used to read the newspapers, he had begun to follow the course of events over on the other side. At first, when the news arrived of the early Allied victories in the valleys of Alsace, he was merely interested. Then whenever, in spite of optimistic reports, a dispatch made it clear that the Germans were advancing, he would shrug his shoulders like a man trying to throw off a sack too heavy to carry.
But one evening he turned very pale, got up suddenly, hesitated, and then threw down the paper he had been reading and went out into the night without saying a word. Euchariste picked up the paper and looked to see what it was that had upset his farm-hand. He read the headlines, which mentioned names of unknown places as usual; there didn’t seem to be anything there that could disturb a man as calm as Albert generally was. Euchariste turned to the inside pages, looked for the listings in the prices of hay, saw that it had touched eighteen dollars and twenty-two cents, and smiled as he thought of his hay-loft, which was filled to the rafters.
But when Albert, who didn’t come home all night, took him aside next morning and said quite simply: “I’ll have to go, Mr. Moisan,” he realized that what was happening over there, so far away from them, had reached out to a quiet Quebec parish and there touched a peaceable man who, seemingly, had never wanted to harm anybody, who had never coveted either his neighbour’s land or his house. He understood then that war meant going away. His own sons wouldn’t have to go, since it had nothing to do with them. But things might be different in the case of this fellow here, who had never been altogether one of them – and that in spite of the twelve years he had lived with them on this thirty-acre strip of farm-land.
“Just as you like, Albert; you know what you’re doing.”
“I can’t stay any longer, Mr. Moisan. I just can’t when I think of those damned Boches in France.”
“Yeah!”
“I’m off now. It won’t be for long. Don’t worry; at the latest I’ll be back next year in time for the haying.”
“Do as you please, Albert; you’re your own boss. You know what you’re doing. But” – he hesitated to ask so direct a question – “I thought you didn’t want to go back there.”
“Oh! That’s what I thought, Mr. Moisan. I don’t mind admitting it now – I left there so I wouldn’t have to be a soldier. I deserted; it was easy enough. But now …”
He couldn’t find words to express himself, though usually he was so fluent. He gazed round and wondered how it was that a few words of print on a piece of paper could suddenly make this sky and this horizon seem so foreign to him, all these things which had become so familiar that he had ceased to notice them. And now he turned to look at this man who, though his hair was just beginning to turn grey, was in the full flower of his strength and with whom he had spent twelve years of his life. What troubled him was not why he, Albert Chabrol, a French deserter, was going off, but why this other man had not a word to say and was remaining behind. Wasn’t he the real deserter, this man who had French blood in his veins, too, but who seemed quite untouched by the misfortunes of the mother country?
They parted next day. And both realized that whatever happened they would never meet again.
As a matter of fact, Euchariste Moisan did not greatly regret this departure. Of course, indirectly he owed a good deal of his reputation for modest wealth to Albert. He himself was fond of saying: “The more people there are on a farm, the better it pays.”
But he found it pretty hard to have to pay out wages to his hired man at the end of the year. Not to mention that with some people, the envious ones, respect was not unmixed with criticism. Albert had never been really popular in the tightly knit group which surrounded him and he had always remained aloof from this society, which restricted itself to the immediate neighbourhood and looked upon a man even from the next parish as almost a foreigner. People from outside were never fully accepted by such a group, nor were their sons. Complete fusion took place only after two generations.
What they were most suspicious of were his religious opinions. Not that he ever discussed them. But that was the first thing they suspected in any outsider, and particularly in a Frenchman from France. Ultimately he conformed to local custom and went to Mass on Sundays every now and then, but less from any religious conviction than because he had nothing better to do.
Of course, all this wouldn’t have really mattered so much to Euchariste if the parish priest hadn’t let him see that he secretly disapproved. And Oguinase, too, once asked why he kept this foreigner on and hinted that he might have a bad influence on Ephrem. He even mentioned Lucinda, but Euchariste couldn’t make out what he was driving at. Lucinda was just a child! He had found it hard, though, to be passed over for the honourable office of church-warden, to which it seemed that his position and his age – he would soon be fifty – gave him an undeniable right. His envious neighbours let him know that the reason why he wasn’t elected was because he had an unbeliever living under his roof.
This was shown to have been the real cause at the very first elections after Albert’s departure, when the priest had him appointed to the church-wardens’ pew.
When Athanase Picard nominated him after coming to a previous understanding with the parish priest, there was a slight stir in the corner where Phydime Raymond sat. But before anyone had time to rise the priest said:
“Euchariste Moisan has been nominated as churchwarden for the year. Any objections?”
And nobody said a word. The envious ones just had to keep their mouths shut.
The following Sunday, when the priest was reading the announcements for the week, he gave notice of a “solemn High Mass offered by Euchariste Moisan for the repose of the soul of the late Ephrem Moisan.” Euchariste hadn’t thought about the poor old fellow for a long time and he owed him at least this much. He sat right up in front, next to Athanase Picard, in the church-wardens’ pew, which was the only upholstered one in the whole church.
From now on, when he came out of church, one of the last to leave, he would stand for a bit on the steps, where the men gathered in little knots to light up their pipes and exchange news of their farms.
“Hullo, Mr. Moisan.” “How are you, Mr. Moisan?” “Morning, Mr. Moisan” – the young men would say politely.
“Why, hullo, ’Charis!” “Darn old ’Charis; he’s got a new hat again.” “Listen here, ’Charis, what do you think we ought to do about the school?” – said the men of his own age. And what he found most flattering was that nothing was done now in the concession, or even in the parish, before he had been consulted – he, Euchariste Moisan, a fatherless and motherless orphan who had been taken in out of charity by Uncle Ephrem but who since then … It was only natural to seek the advice of a man who had been so successful in his own affairs. Everybody knew he wasn’t a “no account,” not by a long sight; just imagine – here was a man who had thousands of dollars at the notary’s, or so people said who ought to know.
But he was happiest on those rare occasions when Oguinase came home on a visit. The latter had been ordained nearly three years now and was assistant to the priest of a distant parish, which was new and rather poor. It certainly didn’t live up to Euchariste’s dreams of what his son should have, and he had been greatly disappointed when he went to see the little church, with its roof of unweathered shingles, standing in a forlorn cluster of shacks. Fortunately the presbytery was more imposing, with its windows set in new brick. But he wasn’t really satisfied until he managed to have his son come on a Sunday. Father Moisan sang High Mass, which is the one all the parishioners go to, except the women in the village, who have to be content with Low Mass when they don’t attend both.
Euchariste wept with emotion; it was like a partial realization of his dream, in which he saw Oguinase as parish priest of Saint-Jacques, one of the fattest livings in the diocese. Perhaps this crowning reward of his life would come to him before very long and then he could die in peace, respected and, above all, envied, after a successful existence which had been the reward of his labour.
What made him all the more anxious for this to happen was that Oguinase was wearing himself out in his backwoods parish doing all the work of the old semi-invalid priest, an uncouth person who was hard to get on with. It did no good to urge him to take things easy, for each time he saw him he seemed thinner, his face more drawn, his eyes more sunken, hollow-chested and with a cough that shook him every now and then when he was speaking.
“Well, Oguinase, I guess they don’t look after you right in your parish. You’ve got thinner again.”
“Why, no, Pa. You’re wrong. I get well fed. There’s always more than I can eat.”
“Yeah! Maybe. You ought to get a new house-keeper; the one you have now spends all her time making fancy dishes. But that isn’t what you need to set you on your feet; good pea-soup, thick enough to stand a spoon up in like this here – see! – and good pancakes with salt pork. And no getting up in the middle of the night.”
“Yes. But listen, Pa; you have to go out and visit the sick, and a priest can’t let a Christian die without the sacraments.”
“That’s so!”
What a wonderful person a priest was after all.
His other sons had given him satisfaction too, except for a few arguments now and then with Ephrem, who had taken it into his head to try and get him to buy a machine called a tractor to take the place of the horses.
“Listen, son,” Euchariste replied, “I’m all for progress, and everybody knows that. I was the first man in the parish to get a cream-separator, and I almost had a fight with Uncle Ephrem to get him to buy a binder. But some things ain’t necessary. I once met a fellow who had one of them gasoline tractors. Just ruined his farm with it.”
“Now listen, Pa. Who told you that? I bet you can’t tell me who it was.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. We’ve got our horses and one of those things couldn’t do the work they do. While you’re at it, why don’t you suggest we buy an automobile?”
“Why not? The Barrettes have one, haven’t they?”
“Yeah! More fools they! You’ll have everybody laughing at you.”
Except for such crazy ideas and the occasional reference to the United States, Ephrem worked as well as Etienne did. The latter was already the father of three children and the old Moisan house, which had been patched up, had come to life again.
Etienne was a real peasant, both because of his gravity and his industry and because he seemed to have no particular age, like many people who live close to the ageless earth and are constantly bent towards it with mingled feelings of affection, respect, and perseverance but without fear. The workman crouching over his machine is not like that. For the machine can be crafty and mean. But the earth does everything on a grand and generous scale, whether it accepts man or rejects him, allows the plough to penetrate its fertile womb, or, indifferent to human despair, arches its back to the hail pelting down on its fleece of yellow wheat. When drought threatened and then when the long-awaited rain beat down for days and weeks on end from overcast skies, Etienne was just like all the others, like his father and the neighbours, and could only hang about the house or the stable and look towards the rain-soaked horizon in the west for signs of a change in the weather. And it was quite clear that he counted on becoming the owner of the farm, which was bound to come to him in due course. Every now and then Euchariste thought he could detect symptoms of this attitude in his son; he occasionally had the feeling that someone – namely, Etienne – was treacherously trying to shoulder him out of the way and deprive him of the farm, which after all still belonged to him.
And it was partly for this reason that he had not lost the habit of regarding Ephrem as his favourite son. And one day when his younger boy answered a reprimand with: “What’s the use of breaking my back on a farm that’ll go to someone else anyway?” he gave him clearly to understand that he intended before very long to give him a farm of his own, for he was delighted to see that he was still interested in farming and had apparently given up the idea of going off.
The youngest of the boys had begun to follow his chosen profession.
Now, instead of carving useless and childish objects out of soft wood, Pitou was learning to handle the plane and saw under Barnabé Boisclair, who had built a house in the settlement and went about the concession with his apprentice doing odd jobs of work.
Lucinda had lived up to her early promise and was now the belle of the township. She had plenty of suitors, but seemed in no hurry to set the church-bells ringing; she would have her pick of them all when the time came. That left Eva, Orpha and Marie-Louise, though the first-named wouldn’t be at home for long; it was easy to see that she would soon be off to join Malvina in the convent. Two nuns and a priest; God would be well pleased and would surely be generous in return.
Apart from a few unimportant favours from time to time, such as a little rain or making a sick animal well, all that Euchariste asked of Him was that life should go on just as it was, with good harvest and high prices. “Lucky as ’Charis Moisan” had become a saying in the district.
Twice a week he went to the station with crates of eggs which a dealer in the city paid a good price for. Euchariste was a shrewd business man, careful and never in too much of a hurry; he seemed to know when to sell and when to hold his produce. He capped his reputation for business ability when a government purchasing-agent from the remount department came to buy up all the available horses for the army, for Ephrem and he passed off a mangy five-year-old on him, which they had faked so cunningly that the buyer was completely fooled. Some people said that not all the profits of that deal went in Moisan’s pocket, but there was only one thing that mattered: he had made a good trade. As usual, the lucky devil!
