_FAR-AWAY GREEN FIELDS._
A germ began to work in Evan's mind. It must have been some relation
to the garden-grubs that had infested Jim Japers' vineyard, for it
showed a predilection for fresh air and outside work. Two
incidents--the firing by the cashier of a clerk ahead of Nelson, and
the receiving of a letter from A. P. Henty--did not help matters any.
Henty's handwriting had such a substantial appearance it seemed to
indicate that some men were blessed with big fists to fall back on in
case their fingers lost employment. A. P.'s composition, too, was
solid and matter-of-fact; there were no flourishes, except occasional
slang; the letter was plainly the product of a free mind and a steady
nerve.
When the clerk who was discharged approached Evan with a smile and
said: "Well, kiddo, you're next in line," Evan wondered why the fellow
was so unconcerned about it. He asked him.
"Oh," answered the clerk, "we're used to that here, in New York. A
fellow can always land another job. I usually manage to get the hook
about twice a year; the work gets monotonous, and I suppose I lose
ambish."
Evan wondered where one would get to under those circumstances. If he
had stayed in the big city nine years instead of nine months he would
have ceased to wonder about position hunters; they would have become a
distinct element in urban life. As it was, the impression he received
was quite true to the actual condition of affairs: a large city was a
very precarious place.
However, the Canadian decided to stay in New York for the winter
anyway; it was lively then, he was told, with the presence of returned
"seasoners" and other summer absentees. He asked the cashier for
promotion, and received it, along with two dollars increase in salary.
He made up his mind to save five dollars a week; he could live and have
considerable pleasure on the other twelve dollars.
Mardi Gras was over; not a straw hat was to be seen; the mornings grew
chilly; theatres were in full swing. Then Miss Harris got Evan in with
a "crowd"; the department stores hauled out their Christmas things; and
with the first flurry of snow the whole town slid into winter.
The New York winter looked, at first, like a bluff. The man from
Canada refused to wear an overcoat until one day a breeze came sweeping
over the Atlantic and took him in hand; after that he had great respect
for the climate.
Ethel Harris made good as a comrade. She knew how to keep things
going. Evan was astonished at the ease with which he mixed in things;
the boys seemed to have a way of fixing up that he could hardly catch,
but they were a jovial bunch. An odd one was after the order of
Castle, but most of them resembled Bill Watson in manner. The girls
all expected to marry Riverside Drive property owners, but aside from
that they were sane and congenial. Evan knew about how much money they
made, and consequently took considerable delight in their
exaggerations. They were practically all stenographers.
It takes New Yorkers to be friendly. The city is so big it resembles
the world. In it there are as many countries as the world boasts, and
when the members of a social set meet they come like so many travellers
from the ends of the earth, bringing stories with them that Park Row
reporters never hear about. There is real life and entertainment in a
gathering of young Manhattanites.
Evan took great pleasure in those parties. Often he danced with some
girl who had gone on the stage (for about one performance), and there
was considerable romance in that. As the winter passed he wondered if
he really wanted to leave those friends and that gaiety. Ethel treated
him so well he was glad to spend all his spare money on her, at
theatres, suppers and so on. But he always put away the five dollars a
week just the same. He was led to believe that not many New York lads
did that much for their future.
In February a Southerner came on the scene. The first night of his
reception in the crowd he succeeded in breaking the hearts of half the
girls; the other half succumbed the second night. The Southerner was
not a flirt--that may have accounted for his elaborate success. He was
so far from being a flirt that he fell in love with Ethel Harris and
proposed to her.
Now, the real working-out kind of proposal is not so common in New York
as, judging from the population, one might suppose. Ethel began to
advise Nelson against spending so much money foolishly. For a while
her objections to his "friendship" were overruled; but finally she got
desperate and candidly told the Canuck he was up against Kentucky. He
had to take the hint.
Thus, again, Evan was impressed with the uncertainty of things in the
metropolis. He took Ethel's engagement to heart for a day or two,
until an office-girl accidentally slipped while passing his desk and
steadied herself on his neck. She proved to be a married woman,
however, and Evan turned his attention to spring.
Appearances are against the ex-bankclerk, but he must not be judged too
rashly on the head of his Manhattan experiences. It looks as if he had
forgotten all about Toronto and Hometon; but he had not. He had never
written Frankie, it is true, but he had heard about her from his sister
and had a dim idea that some day he would go back and marry her. It is
remarkable how a fellow sticks to his home-town girl! Through
jealousies about other girls, like Ethel Harris, through the maze of a
dance with actresses, he still sees the face that smiled on him across
the school-room hack in the old town.
In March a very exciting letter came from Henty.
"Dear Evan," it read, "wire me at once. Tell me if you'll come. I
mean to British Columbia. The Nicola Valley is awaiting our arrival.
There is a homestead there for each of us. My father will give me five
hundred dollars, and I'll share with you, on a loan for life, if you'll
come. A fellow only needs to pay ten dollars cash and hold down the
land six months a year for three years, and make 'reasonable
improvements.' I understand they are very lenient about improvements.
Our five hundred dollars will look after that part of it. The soil is
very fertile. I'm taking a cow with me and a clucking hen. In the
winter months we can get a job bookkeeping or lumbering; or if our crop
of onions turns out well this summer we won't need to work at all in
winter. Wire. Don't let anything penetrate your nut for the next few
hours but the word 'wire.' I must know. Don't let money keep you; if
you need some, _wire_. What I have said goes, if you will come. A. P."
Evan was sitting in the elevated when he read the letter. It had come
as he started to work and he had not had time to stop and read it at
his lodging. Again at the Bridge he read it. Around him the crowds
were surging, rushing to work with that morning vigor that looks as
though it would last forever. The merry throng about Evan seemed like
his friends; the thought that he should leave them made him lonesome.
What would he do without the morning paper? Where would he buy
peppermint chocolates at twenty-five cents a pound? Even more trivial
questions than these occupied his mind.
Stuffing the letter in his pocket, he boarded the up-town L, and got
off at Twenty-third Street. The Metropolitan tower looked disdainfully
at him: it was the New York flag-pole, and he was about to desert the
colors. At noon-hour he sat in the little restaurant on Twentieth
Street West. He had the letter memorized by this time, but he drew a
bank-book from his pocket to make sure he was familiar with its
contents. Yes, the eighty dollars were still there.
After work he was tired. He was always tired after a day's office
work. The hour before supper was always one of yawning, of hurry, dust
and reflection. Taking the subway down to the Bridge, he wedged up the
steps between two foreigners who had been regaling themselves with
garlic, and looked wistfully at Loft's. There was a candy-fiend in his
stomach crying for food. He was half way to the candy-shop when he
overcame the evil one with a sweet tooth; he turned back toward the
Bridge, but seeing a crowd in one of the newspaper offices, stepped in.
His ear caught the click of a telegraph instrument. He forgot the
crowd gazing at new aeroplane models, and found himself again on Park
Row. The ten-thousands faded from before his sight, the yapping of
newsies died away, there was no dust and no yawning: he saw a green
valley and heard the birds; he saw Henty in chaps astride of a pony;
and a shanty loomed up. The blood of Grandpa Nelson bubbled in his
veins; he was a proud son of Adam, doing business direct with Nature.
There was no car to catch on the morrow, and no hash-house to
patronize. His horses neighed to him, and he heard the sizzle of
frying ham in a clean frying-pan.
The telegraph instrument continued to click in the young book-keeper's
ears. He looked once more on the throng around him: it was the evening
throng--tired, nervous, hateful. Men climbed in the cars ahead of
pale, helpless girls; an old lady clung to the unwilling arm of a
convict-faced son; and a little newsboy cried brokenheartedly in the
gutter. Tiny girls wrestled with bundles of papers; a bald magnate
cursed his chauffeur for refusing to run down a dog and save time; and
a policeman chased half a dozen naked urchins who were puddling in City
Hall Fountain. When one is tired these things jar on him. The
telegraph still ticked in Evan's ear; the valleys still stretched
before his imagination. He was aware, now, of a discord in the music
of his dreaming: it was the noise around him, the shouting, the brutal
rush. He turned toward Broadway.
Evan had made up his mind. He wired Henty that he would go to British
Columbia. He asked A. P. to reply by day-message to Twenty-third
Street.
About noon next day the answer came: "Meet me in Buffalo in two days,
if possible. I will be staying at my cousin's, -- Forest Avenue. If
necessary I can wait a week for you."
But it was not necessary. Evan had no difficulty in getting away from
his position. The cashier was disappointed, but he did his best to
hide it; Evan heard him remark to the assistant cashier:
"When we do land a good man he gets offered more elsewhere. If I
wasn't afraid of the boss I'd raise Nelson to twenty-five dollars
rather than lose him."
Wondering, for a moment, if he had not done a foolish thing in
resigning, Evan scratched his head, but the friction set his
imagination aglow again--and he bade the office good-bye.
He met Henty in Buffalo the following night.
"What are you going by way of the States for?" he asked.
"So that the Canadian banks won't get you again," said Henty.
After sending his mother a silk scarf and Lou a pair of stockings and a
box of candy, as a partial atonement for the wrong he was doing them in
not visiting home, Evan bought a pair of corduroy breeches and heavy
boots, subscribed for a farm magazine, and set out, with big A. P., for
the far-away fields. They say those fields always look green;
sometimes, perhaps, they _are_ green.
Just as that "Overland Limited" sped along must this story speed. The
boys fell asleep in New York State and awakened many miles from its
border. And here in this story, as in a Pullman, only more
obliviously, must the reader sleep--to awaken at a distance.
In a certain part of the Nicola Valley stood a cottage known as the
"Bachelors' Bungalow." It, was alone except for the companionship of
stables and out-houses. It was evidently not built in a land where
lumber was scarce, for wide, heavy verandahs almost surrounded it.
From any of these verandahs one could get a splendid view of the
mountains; to the south a green vista of valley stretched away.
A young man sat in the open, not listening to the greybirds or the
meadowlarks sing of spring, and not revelling in the beauty before and
around him, but working assiduously at a typewriter. On either side of
his little table magazines and newspapers lay in heaps; there were
Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver and other papers, and
various Canadian magazines. Now and then he paused in his writing to
pick up one of these periodicals and take note of a paragraph he had
marked.
"I wonder if Alfy ever stops to read any of these articles?" murmured
Evan, and laughed quietly. "Judging from the opinion he always had of
my disability I doubt if he would attribute literary efforts to me."
Now that we know who the young man is and what he is doing at a
typewriter in the Nicola Valley, it may be well to explain the
situation.
Three years had passed since Henty and Nelson landed in the green
fields of their dreams. They bought seed and other agricultural
necessities on the way out, old man Henty shipped them two cows, two
horses, a few hens, a pig, and some farming utensils. They ordered
lumber from a Revelstoke company, erected a shack, a temporary shelter
for the stock, and built a hen-house with a pig-pen annex.
A. P. showed that he was born to be a farmer. The way he handled the
plow put Evan to shame; but Evan made up in willingness to work what he
lacked in physical efficiency. He learned to milk cows and make
butter; he went irregularly to the village for the raw food they
needed, talked the merchant into giving him a line of credit, and
surveyed the valley all the way home with the pride of Noah after the
flood. He developed into so good a cook that A. P. declared there must
have been a chef in the family away back.
The first crop the boys had was good because it was not very big. They
sold their early garden-stuff at a big price to the C.P.R., and in the
fall got twenty dollars a ton for their potatoes--on the ground. Every
drop of milk they could spare found a ready market in the village;
often they exchanged it for butter. And those hens of theirs made
good; they made very good. A. P. insisted on eating all the eggs, but
Evan managed to hide away enough each week to buy sugar, tea and bread.
It must be admitted, however, that bread was more frequently absent
from than present at the board; crackers and ginger-snaps made edible
substitutes.
When the first winter set in the bachelors of "Bachelors' Shack"--it
was not a bungalow yet--were prepared for it. They had money in the
bank.
"It's me for a Jew's harp and a line of novels," said Henty; "no
lumbering for mine this winter. I'm all calloused from wrestling with
our valley."
Nevertheless A. P. could not content himself to read longer than a week
at a time. He made irregular excursions into the village and juggled
scantling in a new lumber yard. Evan wanted to go, too, but Henty
grunted in disgust--and Nelson agreed to stay home and tend the stock.
The sow old man Henty had given them raised a family. One of the pigs
was killed for meat, and the others were dressed and sold to a butcher.
The winter was mild, and there was enough snow to protect and fertilize
the ground. It was a good winter for the young bachelors; the
wood-chopping they did gave them health abundant, their chores kept
Henty's superfluous masculinity worked off and taught Nelson the
practical way of things, and the simple food they ate gave their minds
an appetite for knowledge.
With all their wood-cutting and chores, though, the boys had more spare
time than they knew how to dispose of. Often in the evenings they
played cards, sang duets from a book of old songs, or read. To say
they were always content would not be true; many a time they felt the
weight of the great Silence about them, and above all they longed for
the fleeting image of a girl. If they could only just see one--it
would be like a drink of water on Sahara!
At long intervals they hired a boy from the village to watch their
flocks for a couple of days, while they made an excursion to some town.
There they filled up on candy and picture-shows until they were glad to
return home.
In many ways the first winter of their squatting in the Nicola Valley
was a tester on the ex-bankclerks. They sometimes felt like giving up;
not because they needed food or drink, but because of the youth in
them. Young men are impetuous animals; they want to be forever
shifting. Sometimes Evan had to walk in the beautiful winter night
until he was tired out, so that he could forget his yearnings for city
life, especially New York life. He felt the lure of the White Way at a
distance of three thousand miles. Others had felt it from the ends of
the earth, and had succumbed to it.
But Nelson did not succumb. He knew he must take his mind off the
East, if he would succeed in the West, and he did so. He read more and
more every week. When Henty was away at the scantlings Evan studied
and thought. At last he began to write down his thoughts; he
discovered that there was great satisfaction in expressing himself to a
sheet of paper. He eventually sent to Vancouver for a typewriter,
bought a book of instruction, and for twenty-one days studied the touch
method. He practised six and eight hours a day, with his eyes on the
chart before him. At the end of the twenty-one days he was a
touch-typist, accurate and fairly rapid. The typewriter off his mind,
he wrote and wrote. His heart was fast wrapping itself in vellum.
Henty looked on in silence for a few weeks, then shook his head and
said facetiously:
"I'm afraid you don't love me any more, Nelsy."
But spring soon came to A. P.'s relief, with the advent of which Evan
had to set aside his typewriter and dream without writing down his
dreams. Because of faculties newly awakened, however, he found more
beauty and entertainment in Nature than he had ever seen there before.
He began to think poems as he worked on the land. The plots of stories
came to him, and articles grew upward from the horizon to the sun, or
in columns like Oriental writings. At night he would sit up an hour
longer than his big red-faced friend, and pour out his imaginings to
the typewriter--the poor typewriter. The speed he developed was a
detriment to composition; the faster he went the more hyperbolic and
awful became his effusions, and so we repeat, the poor typewriter! It
had brought about its own terrible punishment.
The summer passed, bringing its crops again, and another batch of pigs.
A mare and a cow added to the animal creation, too. Old man Henty sent
out a reaper and commanded his son to grow hay the following year
instead of buying it from the Okanagan Valley. The boys built another
out-house, bought some calves, and kept adding to their effects. The
calves gave Evan copy for some humorous stories, several of which were
good enough to be rejected by an Eastern magazine. The young "writer"
thought the "not available" slip had been written especially for him,
and its wording flattered him to further submissions.
The second winter was almost a repetition of the first--for Henty; but
not for his companion. They made a trip to Vancouver at Christmas and
sent bundles of presents home. A. P. loaded up with novels, and, to
Evan's consternation, bought a guitar. But he learned to strum it,
although it took him all winter.
Henty was a marvel in his way. Nelson put him in many a sketch and
story. Not once during the long months had the Banfield ex-junior
acted the part of a weakling. Evan reflected that it was easy enough
for himself to keep within bounds, speaking after the manner of
Physical Culture, being mentally engaged all the time; but Henty seemed
to contain himself by force of will. His virility made a man of him
instead of being a snare to him. Evan conceived a hope, founded on the
respect he had for his companion, that was some day going to be
realized.
A. P. took increased interest in the writings of his friend.
"Evan," he said, one day, in his sudden way, "I should think that a
fellow with your habit of writing would tell the story a certain
ex-bankclerk has to tell about the bank."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Evan.
He went right to work on a long bank story. He wrote it over and over,
and submitted it over and over, but it did not meet with success. One
editor told him it was too lurid; another said it was immature. Henty
swore it was the best thing he had ever seen. Is it not unfortunate
that our manuscripts cannot be finally edited by someone who can
_appreciate_ us? Gods of Literature! what a bunch of stuff would be
printed. Typewriter companies would do away with the instalment plan
entirely.
Between seeding and haying the third spring, the boys built a bungalow,
enlarged their animals' quarters, and hired a man. They were blessed
with a pretty good crop, and the market was growing. Other settlers
had come into the valley, and there was talk of a village springing up
near-by. Henty began to wear a smile.
After the fall rush Evan settled down harder than ever to his literary
efforts. He wrote articles on the bank. As if his style had suddenly
come up to the required standard, editors began to write short letters
of excuse with returned manuscripts; then to accept. Why waste words
on the thrills Evan, yes, and Henty, experienced when they read the
breezy stuff of "X. Bankclerk" in print!
In his letters home Evan intimated that he would have a surprise for
them before long, but that was as much as he said. He filled pages
describing his and Henty's vines and figtrees, and his father came back
with: "I told you your grandfather was in you!" His mother rejoiced in
his health but longed for him home; Lou called him a "rube;" and
Frankie--Frankie did not have a chance to say anything because Evan had
never answered that letter she wrote to New York.
Now, as the young man sat on the verandah of his bungalow, not
listening to the greybirds and meadowlarks around him, he felt happy.
He and Henty were going to make a trip back to Ontario in the autumn,
and then he could meet the editors who had congratulated him on his
"good dope," as one of them had described his articles. He rattled
over the keys of his machine, after making the observation about Alfy,
and was so engrossed in his work that he did not notice the approach of
Henty.
A. P. had been to Vancouver, and was back sooner than expected. He
seemed excited.
"Evan," he cried, jumping on the verandah, "we're made men! A
syndicate wants our land! They're talking of a townsite!"
"The dickens!"
"Yes, sir. They offered me $60,000, half cash."
"You're drunk, A. P.!"
"No, sir. You know the head of the syndicate; his name is William
Watson."