Fruits of the Earth by Frederick Philip Grove

fields; he did not encourage their familiarity; he tolerated them as an adjunct to his life; but he was also the dispenser of such rare glories as a ride on horseback, in buggy or wagon. When they begged for such favours and he briefly declined to comply with their wishes, they accepted his verdict as that of a higher power; but they soon learned that their mother’s “no” need not be accepted.
    Both Ruth and Abe were aware of these things. Ruth resented them; Abe, noticing that she did, took them with a humorous good nature which had often an ironical point. Suppose the children were noisy and Ruth tried vainly to quiet them. Abe waited till she had worked herself into a state of nervous excitement, the worse for his observant eye; then suddenly he would “settle them” by a word of command. His instant success had an effect as though he had said, “I’ll show you how to deal with them.” Ruth felt that it was easy for himto retain his power over them, but that he made no attempt of exerting it in her name or to her advantage. Although he corroborated her own demands, he did it in such a way as to damage her authority rather than to confirm it.
    On the rare occasions when Abe gave these things a definite thought, he realized his own lack of consideration; but somehow he seemed unable to remedy it. His regret was always retrospective; he could not foresee it. His material struggle absorbed him to the point where he had no energy left to ponder nice questions of conduct and to lay down rules to govern his intercourse with wife and children. When, in a flash of insight, this became clear to him, he postponed the difficulty. The “kids” were still small; he would take them in hand later; let him build up that farm first, an empire ever growing in his plans.
    There was another point of friction between him and Ruth: the house. Ruth did not forgive him the fact that the hired man of whom she disapproved had a better place to live in than herself. When Abe said that this was provisional, that one day he would build her a house which was to be the envy of everybody, she could not summon any enthusiasm; she wanted comfort, not splendour; convenience, not luxury. That was the reason, too, why she adopted an attitude hostile to the Nicolls; she envied them their house: but the Nicolls were mere peasants; she could not rid herself of the conceit of the city-born.
    She was city-born! In this she was handicapped.
    Abe had never expected Ruth to do any farm work, not even to carry water or fuel into the house. Winter or summer, he rose at four in the morning and started the fires. He milked the cows and fed the horses before he called her. But that call in the morning! In the first year of their marriage Abe hadentered the bedroom and sat down on the edge of her bed, awakening her with a caress. Now he knocked at her door.
    She was aware that he had begun to look critically at her. She had caught herself wishing that she could make herself invisible; she was getting stout. Not that Abe said a word about it; but she knew he disliked stout women. Abe was heavy himself; he weighed two hundred and fifty pounds; but, being so tall, he did not look it. Ruth had been slender at the time of their marriage; as she began to put on weight, she had become shapeless as she called it. She suffered from it herself but resented Abe’s disapproval. Perhaps he never meant to convey such a disapproval. It was true that the bed which they had so far shared was becoming uncomfortable; but when Abe, in the fourth year, jestingly referred to the fact, his very jest offended her, the more so since, ostentatiously, he spoke only of his own increase in girth. “By golly! he said. “Work agrees with me. It’s about time we bought another bedstead so I can turn around without bumping you.” A week later he brought that new bedstead home; and henceforth they slept apart. Ruth cried.
    Nor was she unaware of