"You can't stay here. It's killing you. It's poisoning you. Did you ever
hear of toxins? That means poisons, and you're poisoning yourself.
You'll die of it. You've got another twenty years of work in you. What's
ailing you? You go back to your wheat and your apples and your hogs.
There isn't a bigger job in the world than that."
For a moment his face took on a glow from the warmth of her own
inspiring personality. But it died again. When they rose to go his
shoulders drooped again, his muscles sagged. At the doorway he paused a
moment, awkward in farewell. He blushed a little, stammered.
"Emma--I always wanted to tell you. God knows it was luck for you the
way it turned out--but I always wanted to--"
She took his hand again in her firm grip at that, and her kindly, bright
brown eyes were on him. "I never held it against you, Ben. I had to live
a long time to understand it. But I never held a grudge. It just wasn't
to be, I suppose. But listen to me, Ben. You do as I tell you. You go
back to your wheat and your apples and your hogs. There isn't a bigger
man-size job in the world. It's where you belong."
Unconsciously his shoulders straightened again. Again they sagged. And
so they parted, the two.
* * * * *
He must have walked almost all the long way home, through miles and
miles of city streets. He must have lost his way, too, for when he
looked up at a corner street sign it was an unfamiliar one.
So he floundered about, asked his way, was misdirected. He took the
right street car at last and got off at his own corner at seven o'clock,
or later. He was in for a scolding, he knew.
But when he came to his own doorway he knew that even his tardiness
could not justify the bedlam of sound that came from within.
High-pitched voices. Bella's above all the rest, of course, but there
was Minnie's, too, and Gus's growl, and Pearlie's treble, and the boy
Ed's, and--
At the other voice his hand trembled so that the key rattled in the
lock, and he could not turn it. But finally he did turn it, and stumbled
in, breathing hard. And that other voice was Dike's.
He must just have arrived. The flurry of explanation was still in
progress. Dike's knapsack was still on his back, and his canteen at his
hip, his helmet slung over his shoulder. A brown, hard, glowing Dike,
strangely tall and handsome and older, too. Older.
All this he saw in less than one electric second. Then he had the boy's
two shoulders in his hands, and Dike was saying: "Hello, pop."
Of the roomful, Dike and old Ben were the only quiet ones. The others
were taking up the explanation and going over it again and again, and
marvelling, and asking questions.
"He come in to--what's that place, Dike?--Hoboken--yesterday only. An'
he sent a dispatch to the farm. Can't you read our letters, Dike, that
you didn't know we was here now? And then he's only got an hour more
here. They got to go to Camp Grant to be, now, demobilized. He come out
to Minnie's on a chance. Ain't he big!"
But Dike and his father were looking at each other quietly. Then Dike
spoke. His speech was not phlegmatic, as of old. He had a new clipped
way of uttering his words:
"Say, pop, you ought to see the way the Frenchies farm! They got about
an acre each, and, say, they use every inch of it. If they's a little
dirt blows into the crotch of a tree, they plant a crop in there. I
never see nothin' like it. Say, we waste enough stuff over here to keep
that whole country in food for a hundred years. Yessir. And tools! Outta
the ark, believe me. If they ever saw our tractor, they'd think it was
the Germans comin' back. But they're smart at that. I picked up a lot of
new ideas over there. And you ought to see the old birds--womenfolks and
men about eighty years old--runnin' everything on the farm. They had to.
I learned somethin' off of them about farmin'."
"Forget the farm," said Minnie.
"Yeh," echoed Gus, "forget the farm stuff. I can get you a job here out
at the works for four a day, and six when you learn it right."
Dike looked from one to the other, alarm and unbelief on his face. "What
d'you mean, a job? Who wants a job! What you all--"
Bella laughed, jovially. "F'r Heaven's sakes, Dike, wake up! We're
livin' here. This is our place. We ain't rubes no more."
Dike turned to his father. A little stunned look crept into his face. A
stricken, pitiful look. There was something about it that suddenly made
old Ben think of Pearlie when she had been slapped by her quick-tempered
mother.
"But I been countin' on the farm," he said, miserably. "I just been
livin' on the idea of comin' back to it. Why, I--The streets here,
they're all narrow and choked up. I been countin' on the farm. I want to
go back and be a farmer. I want--"
And then Ben Westerveld spoke. A new Ben Westerveld--no, not a new, but
the old Ben Westerveld. Ben Westerveld, the farmer, the monarch over six
hundred acres of bounteous bottomland.
"That's all right, Dike," he said. "You're going back. So'm I. I've got
another twenty years of work in me. We're going back to the farm."
Bella turned on him, a wildcat. "We ain't! Not me! We ain't! I'm not
agoin' back to the farm."
But Ben Westerveld was master again in his own house. "You're goin'
back, Bella," he said, quietly. "An' things are goin' to be different.
You're goin' to run the house the way I say, or I'll know why. If you
can't do it, I'll get them in that can. An' me and Dike, we're goin'
back to our wheat and our apples and our hogs. Yessir! There ain't a
bigger man-size job in the world."