Thirty Acres, page 18
“Come, Pa, sit down and stay a while.”
He dropped listlessly into a low rocking-chair beside the bed. He would have had to raise himself up from where he sat to see his son’s face: that anguishing, unfamiliar face. It was a relief to look at the unfeeling walls of the hospital room; at the large cross on which Christ lay stretched, stiff and bloody in death; at the statuette of Saint Theresa in a corner, her arms filled with gaudy flowers below her pink-enamel face. Then there was the deep recess of the window, which framed the uniform pattern of the grey stone wall opposite. It was good stonework, though, well pointed, and two or three years old at most. The three windows were a nice bit of carpentering too.
The coughing began again, thin and dry at first, but developing into a violent upheaval which shook the bed before the sick man could clear his throat with a rasping sound and fall back onto the pillows.
It brought Euchariste’s gaze back to the face he couldn’t avoid any longer. But, as his chair was low and the bed very high, he had only to keep looking down and then all he could see was the white bedspread with that mummified hand he tried in vain to imagine was not his son’s.
But he couldn’t just sit there without saying anything. And for ten minutes he talked quietly about the house and the farm, the fields and the stock, and the family and their neighbours. And he kept on until he had nothing more to say and could only go on sitting there hypnotized by that cadaverous hand.
It was a relief when the nun knocked at the door and told him the chaplain wanted to see him. It was from him that he learned that his son had only six more weeks to live. It was longer than he had thought possible. Then both of them, the priest and Euchariste, went to acquiesce in the sacrifice and ask God for resignation. In the chapel, where the horizontal rays of the sun streamed in and lit up the pink paper flowers, the chaplain in a steady voice, that was rather too theatrical and practised, recited the act of submission to the Divine Will. Euchariste Moisan felt completely crushed and no prayers came to his heart or to his lips, for he could not imagine that all this concerned his son the priest, Father Oguinase Moisan.
FOUR
The doctors were right. Oguinase died five weeks later, just at the last of the ploughing. He seemed to be getting better right before the end. This sometimes happens with persons who are dying and leads those who are with them to hope there is just a chance they may recover. The sick man himself thought it was a miraculous cure brought about the intercession of the Blessed Canadian Jesuit Martyrs. His father got a letter from him about it and was beginning to believe it was true when the news of his son’s death arrived; it came just too late for him to get to town in time, though. Besides, it would have been difficult for him to go, for troubles never come singly and the mare had stumbled on a culvert and hurt herself badly.
So all he could do was to go to the station and fetch his son’s body. The whole concession was there. The baggage men hauled out a wooden box enclosing the coffin and on it were pasted, just as if it were an ordinary shipment, the name of the consignee and a description of the contents.
The carriages fell into line behind the humble village hearse and started off along the side road which led from the station to the highway. There was a whole swarm of vehicles of all kinds; there were even two automobiles, which they put at the head of the procession to give it tone. Euchariste and his brother-in-law, Jean-Paul Branchaud, rode together in the same buggy.
A warm sun shone down on the freshly turned furrows, where flocks of starlings twittered as they feasted among the dead stalks of last year’s stubble. On nearly every fencepost sat a solemn-looking crow, all in black like a beadle, watching the funeral as it approached and then flying off to settle further along. On either side of the road, where spring had just touched the banks of the ditches, the starry white flowers of the wild strawberry gleamed in the short grass and there were, here and there, occasional clusters of bachelor’s button and pleasant patches of early-flowering catkins on the particoloured branches of the willows.
As they turned into the highway, Euchariste’s brother-in-law leaned out of the buggy.
“I’m telling you, ’Charis, there’s an awful lot of people.”
“Yes, it’s a nice funeral. There’s a lot of people.”
“Sure is, ’Charis, a fine lot of people.”
Euchariste leaned out too, just far enough to be able to see the long procession winding away behind, but not too far to offend the proprieties. And then, feeling a little more cheerful, he looked out straight ahead again at the patch of landscape visible to him above the quivering rump of his yearling, whose short tail whisked the air.
“Looks like it’s going to be a pretty good year,” said Jean-Paul Branchaud. “The fields is in fine shape.”
“Yeah, there was enough frost to break the earth up good.”
“Please God there’ll be a good crop, if our luck holds out.”
“Yeah, the crop shouldn’t be so bad.”
But his heart wasn’t in it.
This death had struck him a cruel blow. He had lost his first-born. In itself that wouldn’t have been so hard to bear, easier perhaps than Ephrem’s departure. For it was a long time now since Oguinase had left home and quit farming; his death had been a gradual process stretching over many years. They had got used to his absence, because they knew it was final ever since that first day when he had left for the college.
But what Euchariste Moisan had just lost was his son the priest and that was hard to bear. It was for him he had painfully sacrificed so much money; it was he who had been his pride, he who had made him feel more important than other people when somebody asked: “Well, and how’s your son, Father Moisan?” This loss threw him back into the crowd of ordinary people whose families can boast only a nun or two or a son in a teaching brotherhood. He had hoped that some day later on he would be able to go and live with his son, who by that time would be the priest of a well-to-do parish, or perhaps even a canon, like the priest of Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue, who wore a beautiful violet sash round his middle.
In the weeks that followed, he thought he noticed that his son’s death had lowered his own prestige. And for the first time, too, he began to feel his age weighing on his shoulders and stiffening his limbs. Everything made him aware of it: the dull pains he had in his joints after working out in the rain and a tired feeling he never mentioned, but which showed itself by the way he dropped into his arm-chair in the evenings to get a little rest before supper. Sometimes, if he dared, he would have liked to stretch out on his bed right in the middle of the day. And then there was the fact that Etienne was taking more and more upon himself in connection with the farm.
And yet Etienne was only twenty-nine; hardly more than a child. Of course, he, Euchariste, had been only twenty-three when he inherited the farm on his Uncle Ephrem’s death; six years younger than Etienne. But he had belonged to a different generation. It was easy to see that young people nowadays were really just children.
Etienne had a special way of saying certain things to make them see quite innocent.
“If you like, Pa, I’ll go and dig the ditch along the field where the oats are. You don’t have to come. It’s pretty hard work and, anyway, I can manage by myself.”
But the real reason was that Etienne almost always took advantage of his father’s absence to change things about to suit himself. The time Euchariste went to town, he was flabbergasted on his return to find the pig-sty had been scrubbed out and scoured as though it were a kitchen. And his son was always talking of making changes. “Say, Pa, how would it be if we put a new floor in the hay-loft?” “Say, Pa, what about building a real good hen-house in the fall?” “Did you notice, Pa, the Gélinas have bought a pedigreed bull? We could do with one of them bulls too.”
Every day he had to fight harder against these crazy notions. The farm had no need to follow fashions. Progress? As a young man no one had been more in favour of it than he. Why, look at his discussions with the old folks who didn’t want to use reaper-binders, manure-spreaders or seed-drills. He had been the first person to use a cream-separator and a fodder-press.
But that was a very different story from turning everything upside down. Besides, had anybody invented anything worth while in the last fifteen years? Things were pretty nearly perfect and all this new stuff was just nonsense. Anyway, what was the use of building stables finer than houses, with cement floors that only hurt the animals’ feet? And now the government was talking of examining livestock with the excuse that they were looking for tubercular cattle! And tractors! Machines that cost a small fortune and did no better work than the horses they used in the good old days. Who ever heard of a farm without horses! People nowadays really didn’t know what to do with their money any more. A lot of good it would do them when they’d ruined their farms!
As for him, he preferred to leave his money with the notary. At least that brought in some returns, particularly with the new notary, who was an “A-one” business man.
He had turned up when Boulet, the old notary, died and had taken over his practice. Of course, at first people hesitated, and some of them even went to see him with the firm intention of withdrawing their money. But the way he spoke to them soon restored their confidence and now he had just raised the rate of interest, thanks to some investments he had made through one of his brothers in Montreal, who was also a notary. In three months he had become a man of consequence, especially since he was seen going to communion every Sunday and had taken part in a retreat.
But Moisan had had to fork out a certain amount of money, though, for his lawsuit against Phydime Raymond: “advance payments on costs” was what his lawyer called it. Fortunately he would get it all back when he won his case.
Months went by and still nothing happened. And then one day he got a notice saying the case was coming up the following Thursday.
He drove into town and went to the court-house. There he suddenly caught sight of Phydime sitting on a bench and talking to a young whipper-snapper in a gown. His own lawyer was much more imposing-looking; that comforting thought restored his ebbing courage. Before that he felt awkward, out of place and rather lost among all these strangers. He would never have believed so many people could be mixed up in lawsuits.
Suddenly Phydime looked up at him. Moisan took advantage of this to make the most of his triumph. He stared at his neighbour with a gloating expression and felt quite cocky. Raymond didn’t seem at all put out; on the contrary, he gave one of his little mocking smiles again, just as if he, too, were quite confident of the outcome.
At all events, this facing up to one another led to nothing that day. The case was postponed for a fortnight, though nobody knew exactly why. Moisan and Raymond both felt crestfallen at having to go back to Saint-Jacques. Their two buggies drove along one behind the other hour after hour and every time they turned out onto the side of the road, Euchariste had to swallow the dust kicked up by Phydime’s mettlesome horse.
They had to go back to town again and this time the trial really took place. After a two-hour wait the case was called and Moisan went into the witness-box.
As long as he was being questioned by his own lawyer and in spite of the terrible stage fright which made his knees shake and his speech falter, things went fairly well. Though Phydime had the cheek to sit right opposite him and stare at him with his thieving eyes. But everything went wrong when his lawyer tried to get him to make definite statements and bring out all the points he had confided to him in the privacy of his office to show him how it all happened. He never dreamt that he would be asked to repeat them in open court, in front of this distrustful-looking judge, who kept writing all the time.
But that was nothing compared to the cross-examination. The young whipper-snapper started asking him one question after another, interrupted him each time he began to explain what he meant, and did his best to get him to make a speech when he didn’t want to answer. Moisan felt like a pig being turned round and round in a vat of boiling water and having his hide peeled off. Finally he was asked about his relations with Phydime and then at last Euchariste had a chance to unburden himself. All they had to do was just to let him talk. The whole court learned what his real feelings were. It was useless for his lawyer to make frantic signs and even to interrupt him; he was off at full speed like a toboggan down a steep slope. When it was all over, he went and sat down, feeling relieved and rather pleased with himself.
Then it was Etienne’s turn, but he hadn’t much to say. Phydime came next. He gave his evidence in a self-righteous manner, lied like a Turk, and even went so far as to pretend that he had never had any but the most friendly feelings for Euchariste up to the time when the latter tried to pick a quarrel over a piece of land that belonged to him, Phydime. He almost gave the impression that it was he who had been robbed.
Then some of the neighbours gave their evidence. They were embarrassed and reticent, and avoided answering direct questions as long as possible, while the judge, who seemed to have made up his mind in favour of the plaintiff, stared absent-mindedly out of the grimy window, where a few flies clung in the damp heat. Those damn lawyers … They had such a way of twisting your words round that even when you were sure you hadn’t answered they made it seem as if you had said something compromising. The defence wound up by proving without much difficulty that since the sale, twenty-eight years before, Raymond had apparently considered the hillside “bordering the sugar-bush at the top of the hill” as part of his property and that he had acted accordingly. Of course, that was precisely what it was all about! Otherwise the case of “Euchariste Moisan versus Phydime Raymond” would never have started.
A few moments later Moisan was out in the street with his lawyer, who assured him, but without much conviction, that they would win their case. Euchariste would have liked nothing better than to believe him, but he had seen Phydime and his lawyer go by and they had looked just as confident. Besides, his own attorney didn’t seem to have taken things sufficiently to heart; he hadn’t realized what a crook Phydime Raymond was. He had seen him talking to his colleague for the defence in quite a friendly fashion, and he had even gone so far as to greet Raymond!
In any case, the only thing they could do was to wait.
He waited at home on the farm, day after day, week after week. The seeding was over, the hot sun hatched out the seed-grain, lengthened the stalks and headed the ears. But for the first time Euchariste was busy thinking of other things. When they were doing the harrowing and he came to the end of a field where he had to turn the horses, he was so absent-minded he would just let them come to a stop. And when the July sun yellowed the wheat, the barley and the oats, Euchariste looked out over his fields without really seeing them, for his gaze was fixed on Phydime’s crops, which he would have gladly seen burnt by the sun or flattened by hail even if his own had to suffer the same damage. It wasn’t right for a man like that to have crops as good as his.
Orpha’s marriage made him forget his troubles for the time being. He wanted to make an impression and he showed the whole concession what a first-class wedding was really like. Expense? It seemed well worth it when he thought of the wry faces his neighbours must be making.
But they missed poor Oguinase, for they had been counting on him to perform the ceremony. And Ephrem, and the two nuns, Eva and Malvina, and Lucinda, who had given no sign of life for two whole years now. There was another empty place at the table, but it was soon filled by Etienne’s eighth child. There were five of them now; three had died in infancy, but these had been forgotten as soon as they were replaced. Of Euchariste’s own family, apart from Etienne, there was only Marie-Louise and occasionally Pitou. Etienne’s brood swelled silently like a flood and invaded the table, the whole house and even the fields. Moisan was becoming more and more the grandfather and what hurt him more than anything was to hear the young people say: “Etienne Moisan’s place” when they were referring to the farm and the house that belonged to him. Etienne’s wife, Exilda, now reigned over the whole household. There were times when the old man almost felt he was in the way.
The last straw was when Etienne disapproved of the lawsuit against Raymond. One day when his father was seeking an encouraging word, he said: “To my way of thinking, Pa, all this law business is no good. Of course, it’s a damn shame to have Phydime rob you like that, but where’s it going to get you if you let the lawyers rob you too? You know darn well, Pa, that lawyers just eat up money.”
This piece of advice might have influenced his father, if he hadn’t been tactless enough to add: “Those damn shysters will maybe swallow up our whole farm, lock, stock and barrel.”
“In the first place the farm’s mine. It’s my farm. And it’s me that’ll be robbed. I aim to see if there’s any justice round here!”
After the trial he was at pains to tell his son how he’d spoken straight out about their neighbour and also about the lawyer’s high hopes, though he exaggerated these.
But as time went by without any news, his confidence began to wane. It was particularly puzzling not to hear from his lawyer. Perhaps the case had been settled and he’d kept all the money for himself. But surely people would have heard about it.
The harvest was nearly over when he got the news; his suit was dismissed with costs. And in case he failed to understand the meaning of that last word, the lawyer enclosed a statement; five hundred and seventy-five dollars which had to be paid within thirty days. Unless …
Unless, it was suggested, he wished to appeal the judge’s verdict. It was explained in the letter that the judgment was not final and that there were sufficient grounds to lodge an appeal. In any case, it would be better for Mr. Moisan to come to town, where it would be easier for him to decide what was the best thing to do.
Euchariste stood there holding the letter and the statement and looking from one to the other with a sick feeling in his stomach. Phydime had won! Besides being robbed, it was going to cost him plenty – a whole lot more than he had ever imagined.
