Fruits of the Earth by Frederick Philip Grove Read Free Book Online Page B

hard; he won’t work so well. There’s more wear and tear on your implements, and on your horses. Right now, I believe, the greater your acreage, the less your yield per acre.”
    This argument told; for already, within five years, Abe had to contend against a decreasing yield. Yet he defended himself. “The soil gets poorer. You’ll be up against the same thing.”
    â€œPerhaps.” Nicoll shrugged his shoulders and pushed out his lips. “I don’t say. But the moment I gave up moving from place to place, my yield increased…. And it gets harder to find help.”
    â€œMachines,” Abe said, struck by the coincidence of Nicoll’s arguments with those of his brother-in-law.
    â€œThat’s so,” Nicoll said pensively. They were squatting in the narrow strip of shade along the east wall of the barn. “When you hitch an engine to your plough, you know it won’t slack. But the thing’s got to be built. You get your hired man one degree removed. He’s going to get the better of you. And then…I’ve been watching these threshing outfits. Do a lot of work. But…just for the fun of it, I threshed a strawstack over last year, in winter time, with the fanning mill.”
    â€œAnd what did you find? I’ve often wondered.”
    â€œI fanned a hundred and three bushels of wheat out of that stack.”
    â€œThat a fact? I’ll be hanged!”
    And with that Abe rose, more disquieted than ever….
    In the fall of the year Shilloe moved out to his claim; but not before section crews were dismissed for the winter. He proved to be a pleasant, round-faced, clean-shaven man of thirty-odd, good-looking in his way, though unmistakably Slavic. As for his wife, neither Abe nor Nicoll ever saw her; and whenever either of them passed the place, a flock of children scampered for house or stable to hide.

HUSBAND AND WIFE
    A be had been married for nearly six years; and in rapid succession four children had arrived. Then, there was a cessation of births.
    Just what had happened between Abe and Ruth? Neither of them knew; they had simply drifted. There had been a time when both had foreseen the coming estrangement and dreaded its approach. Both had tried to forestall it. Abe had asked Ruth to accompany him on necessary drives: calls here and there, rounds of inspection when planning operations for the following season. Ruth had again sought his company in the long summer evenings. Gradually such attempts had been abandoned till, in occasional retrospection, both were often struck by the fact that a day, a week, a month had gone by without their having spoken more than such few words as were demanded by the routine of life.
    Physical attraction had died in satiety, renewing itself in ever-lengthening intervals; on Abe’s part because he immersed himself more and more in his work: he came home exhausted and overtired; on Ruth’s part because, unperceived, a revolt flamed in her against she hardly knew what: the rural life, theisolation, the deadly routine of daily tasks. She had become used to exhausting her emotional powers on the children. These children had been born as the natural fruit of marriage, not anticipated with any great fervour of expectancy; yet they had come to absorb her life; for Abe, engrossed in other things, had left them to her. When, occasionally, she had told him of their progress in growth or development, he had listened absently, had treated her enthusiasm with an ironic coolness which made her close up in her shell. In his presence she had ceased to let herself go in her intercourse with them. When she was playing with them, and he entered, a mask fell over her face. Gradually, she ceased to play with them.
    A peculiar development was the consequence. The children, always thrown with her, began to take her for granted; Abe was the extraordinary, romantic element in their lives; mostly he was away, driving or working in the