"They'll abuse him as a youngster, they will mock him as a man,
They'll make his life a thorny path in every way they can,
Till he curses his existence and the day that it began,
And he wishes he was rotting in the sod."
_The Empire Builders._
Hiram Riles and his wife lived on a farm about two miles from the Grant
homestead. They had come out from the East in the early days, when Riles
was a strong, sinewy fellow to whom money-getting had not yet become a
mania, and his wife still retained some of the roses and some of the
sentiment of youth. But it's a hardy rose that survives twenty years of
pioneer life, and it's a deep-rooted sentiment that can weather
prosperity unelevated by culture and unsweetened by self-sacrifice. And
in the Riles' home culture had come to be a thing misunderstood, and
self-sacrifice a thing unknown. There was only one end in life--to make
money; and there was only one way this could be done--by labour which
amounted to slavery, and stinginess which amounted to theft. Nothing
which could not be expressed in dollars and cents had any value to
Riles; no doctrine but mammon-worship had any part in his creed.
The years had dragged on and he had prospered after the standard of the
world, gaining money and losing everything that money cannot buy.
Quarter section had been added to quarter section, bought when land was
cheap and paid for by dint of untiring labour and at the sacrifice of
physical comforts and mental advantages which Riles considered of no
moment. But as, labouring from dawn to dusk, he added quarter to
quarter, the time came when even his dauntless energy could not keep up
with the growth of the farm. True, his wife helped him to the limit of
her strength, driving the plough and the binder, stooking in the fields,
or, drenched to the waist, working in the garden on days when the rain
prevented harvesting, and milking her dozen cows after the neighbours
were in bed. She was a model wife, as Riles admitted, but even in the
admission he took rather more credit to himself for selecting and
"breaking her in" than he allowed to her for her strength and industry.
But when their combined efforts could no longer furnish the labour
needed on the farm, Riles found it necessary to get a hired man. It took
him months to make up his mind that the expenditure was unavoidable, but
at length he drove to town and announced to a group of idle men that he
was looking for a good strong man, not afraid of work, and would pay
twenty dollars a month, board and keep.
Riles honestly believed that as soon as he made this offer all the idle
men in the town would crowd around him competing for the position, and
he was not prepared for the indifference with which they regarded it.
"Well, who wants it?" he demanded. "Speak up quick, I got no time to
lose. I've a field of oats there waitin' stookin', and if you fellows
don't want the job there's lots that does. Who's comin'?"
Nobody moved, and at last one of the men said, "I guess you better try
somewhere else, Mr. Riles. Everybody here seems to know you."
"They do, hey? And what of it? Ain't I good? Don't I pay my bills? Just
yuh walk down to the bank and ask 'em if Hiram Riles ever turned down a
bill he owed, and I guess you'll find----"
"I wasn't thinking about the bills," the man replied. "You pay them
because you have to. You're worth it, and you can't get out of it. But
you're as much a slave-driver as ever cracked a whip over a nigger in a
cotton field. Nobody 'at knows you'll work for you. You better get a
green Englishman--some poor fool that doesn't know any more than be a
victim for a blood-sucker of your class."
With an oath Riles jumped from his buckboard and struck a savage blow at
the frank labourer, but years of hardship in the fields had taken
greater toll than he guessed. The fist he aimed at the face of his
critic cut a circle in thin air as a sledge-hammer blow caught Riles
under the jaw and he fell with tremendous force against a hub of the
buckboard. When he staggered to his feet the flesh of his forehead was
cut in two and the eyes lobed forward as though they would fall out.
Riles had the wound dressed by a doctor and met the evening train, where
he engaged a harvester just out from Ontario. They drove home through
the darkness, the hired man so tired with three days and nights of
bumping in a slat-seated colonist car that he would have fallen out of
the buckboard had Riles not held him in. When the horses were stabled
the new comer was shown to his bedroom, which was reached by climbing up
steps nailed to the studs of the shanty where Riles and his wife lived.
In the loft was a little window looking out of a gable, a straw mattress
covered with two discarded horse-blankets lay in a corner, and a kitchen
chair, from which the back had been broken, completed the furniture of
the little room. It was, however, also used as a store-house for old
clothes and for drying vegetables, and the mice scampered in great
excitement at the approach of the lantern.
Long before daylight Riles wakened the hired man by thumping the wall
with a stick of firewood. "Come, yuh barnyard savage," he said, in his
playful humour, "roll out. Do yuh think I'm goin' to pay yuh twenty
dollars a month to _sleep_? Get down here an' get at those oats, an' be
quick about it, or I'll fire yuh before noon."
The sleepy harvester crawled out of the musty blankets, drew on his
clothes, and opened his suit-case. From a jumble of socks and underwear
he drew a revolver and a murderous-looking knife. Slinging the suit-case
by a strap over his shoulder, with the knife between his teeth, the
revolver in one hand and the lantern in the other, he made the
precipitous descent into the kitchen.
"What in thunder does this mean?" demanded the astonished Riles, as he
caught sight of the animated arsenal.
"I'm going after those oats," the man replied, in a hoarse whisper.
"They're wild oats, ain't they?"
"No, they're not wild oats, my smart young fellow. They're tame oats, if
yuh know the difference."
"Then if they're tame oats," said the other, in a wheedling tone, "if
they're tame oats, don't you think, Mr. Riles, if we were careful, we
might manage to sneak up on them in daylight?" And before the astonished
Riles could find an answer the hired man continued, "Ta, ta, Mr. Riles.
Much obliged for the night's lodging. Hope you catch the oats," and had
swung out into the darkness to find his way back to town.
His first experience with hired men was rather disconcerting, but out of
it dawned an important light. The illumination came upon Riles as he
stooked the oats himself that forenoon. After dinner he drove back to
town and called casually upon Bill Perkins, the lawyer. It was no part
of Riles' policy to encourage any such useless class as lawyers or
doctors by paying a fee, but he usually succeeded in getting the desired
information in process of conversation, and without appearing to have
sought it. He had already benefited several times by advice given by
Perkins in this way, and the lawyer had determined to be even with him.
Perkins was busy with a transfer of land when Riles dropped in, and for
a few minutes the conversation was of crops and harvest and the weather.
Skilfully enough the farmer introduced the subject of hired help,
lamenting how difficult it was to get good men and how the hired men
now-a-days took all the profit from the farm and left the owner with the
expense, in all of which Perkins concurred. As he was about to leave the
office Riles remarked--
"Oh, by the way, I guess there'll be a job fer one o' yuh fellows one o'
these days. I heard this mornin' of a hired man quittin' work before the
month was up, and the farmer wouldn't pay him, an he's goin' to have the
law on him. How'll a case o' that kind come out, do yuh think?"
"If the servant left without due provocation before the period of his
employment had expired, he will have difficulty in collecting his
wages."
"I was thinkin' so, Mr. Perkins. Well, it's a fine afternoon, an' I must
be gettin' back."
"Just a minute, Mr. Riles," the lawyer called, as his client was
stepping out of the office. "There is a small fee for the information
just given you. Five dollars, please."
"Five devils!" shouted Mr. Riles. "You go to ----. I beg yer pardon, Mr.
Perkins. I didn't mean to be so out-spoken, but yer little joke kinda
took me by surprise. Ha! ha! a very good one, too. There's no bein' even
with a lawyer."
"It's no joke, Mr. Riles. You've been sponging your legal advice around
this office long enough. To-day you will pay for it or I will collect it
at court."
"I'll pay it, will I? I'll see yuh in hell first," said the farmer, now
thoroughly beside himself.
"Very well," said Perkins. "There'll be no trouble here. But if it isn't
paid by Saturday night you know what will happen."
Riles started down town in a rage, and Perkins reached for his
telephone.
"Mr. Bradshaw? Hello, Bradshaw, this is Perkins speaking. Just had a
visit from Riles--sponging advice as usual. Socked him a fiver and
threatened if he didn't come through by Saturday night I'd have him up.
He's mad enough to eat the town, but he'll likely be round to you. Fix
him plenty.... That's right, George, go to it." Mr. Perkins set down his
telephone, sat back in his chair, and indulged in one of the few hearty
smiles to which he found occasion to treat himself.
Meanwhile Riles, stampeding down town, reached the door of Bradshaw's
office. Bradshaw stood on the step drinking in the afternoon autumn
sunshine. The warm rays rested graciously on his slightly bald cranium.
"Good-day, Mr. Riles. How is it you're not cutting to-day?"
Riles collected himself, and forced a smile. "A little business in town,
Mr. Bradshaw. I've just been in talkin' with that measly opposition o'
yours, and what d'ye s'pose the cur did?"
"Who, Perkins? Oh, you can never tell what he'll do. I gave it up long
ago."
"Well, sir, we was just talkin' about things in general an' I told him
likely there'd be a case one of these days about a man quittin' before
his time was up, an' I asked him how'd it likely come out. He said the
quitter would lose, an' yuh can eat me, Bradshaw, if he didn't try to
charge me five dollars fer it, and threatened soot if I didn't pay by
Saturday night."
Bradshaw laughed. "You can never be up to Perkins," he said. "But I must
say it serves you right for going to him at all. Why didn't you come to
me in the first place?"
"That's what I will do next time, you may be sure. But he can't collect
that five, can he, George?"
"I'm afraid he can, Hiram. Yes, I rather think you'd better settle with
him."
"Well, it's a strange law. Lawyers get everything their own way."
"Once in awhile it happens that way," Mr. Bradshaw agreed. "And when
you're settling anyway there will be a ten-spot coming to me."
"To you? For what?"
"Legal advice," answered Mr. Bradshaw, placing his thumbs in the upper
pockets of his vest with an air of great complacency. "Haven't I just
told you you'd have to pay it?"
Riles was so dumbfounded that he pulled out ten dollars, threw it at the
smiling lawyer, and proceeded down street without a word.
But having paid fifteen dollars for legal advice Riles was too shrewd a
business man not to profit by it. That night he engaged another
"barnyard savage," being careful to hire him for a month. The man worked
for four days and quit. Riles refused to pay him any wages, and hired
another stranger on the same terms. In this way he was able to get
through the fall without any direct outlay for help.
But the system was not very satisfactory. Too much time was lost hunting
for new men, and the labourers always quit before they got into Riles'
way of managing the farm. The suggestion of the man who knocked him into
the wheel of the buckboard stayed with him almost as tenaciously as the
scar he then received. "Hire a green Englishman--some poor fool that
doesn't know any more than be a victim of a blood-sucker of your class."
Of course the words were rather strong--even Riles objected to them--but
the sentiment was all right. Besides, it was doing the Englishman a good
turn. It brought him away from a congested country and gave him an
insight into life in a new land. With industry and application even an
Englishman might become--_might become_--as prosperous and successful a
farmer as he himself! There was something for a young man to look
forward to!
A good scheme had been worked by one or two of Riles's neighbours. These
men--transplanted Englishmen themselves--who, to tell the truth, had made
a very indifferent success of agriculture, had hit upon the idea of
giving instruction to young Englishmen of good family in the art of
farming as it is practised in the Canadian West. They had no difficulty
in finding fond fathers who, for reasons that need not be entered into
here, were anxious that their sons should have a "colonial" experience,
and were willing to pay from fifty to two hundred pounds a head per year
(according to the state of the paternal exchequer and the desirability
of the exodus) for the board, lodging and instruction of their sons in
the "colony." Of course it never occurred to these worthy parents that
there are state-controlled institutions for giving just the instruction
needed, where their sons would be brought in contact with the best
influences in the land. Even had they known of these institutions they
would probably have preferred to place their young hopefuls with some
old acquaintance whose Munchausian reports of his success in Canada were
accepted as gospel, but whose real accomplishments consisted mainly in
supporting the brewery and dodging the bailiff--two occupations which
usually go hand in hand.
But Riles was not of the blood. He knew no one in England, and one or
two advances which he made to the English neighbours mentioned with a
view to "getting in on a good thing" were met with a coldness which
amounted to a rebuff. There remained only one thing to be done--adopt a
Barnardo boy. Riles would have much preferred a grown-up man, but on
consultation with some of the neighbours who had adopted these boys he
was assured that they could be depended upon to do as much work as a
man, and were more easily controlled. Twenty years ago the latter
consideration would not have appealed to Riles, but he recalled the
incident where he received his scar, and he knew enough about Englishmen
to know that if they excelled in anything it was in their ability to
protect themselves from physical damage, and incidentally to administer
a thrashing to their assailants. On the whole, perhaps a boy would suit
his purpose better.
Before being entrusted with the foster-parentage of an English orphan,
Riles found that he must have his application supported by the
recommendation of two reputable citizens and a resident clergyman. He at
once appealed to his neighbour, David Grant, than whom there was no more
respected farmer in the community. He hardly was prepared for Mr.
Grant's frankness.
"No, Hiram, I can't sign that paper. If one of my boys, ten or twelve
years old, were to be left an orphan, I wouldn't want him to come under
your influence for the next five years of his life. You're a good
farmer, Riles, but being a good farmer is one thing, and being a good
father's another. A great many people in this country seem to think it
more important that a man should be able to break in a colt than bring
up a boy."
"Oh, well," Riles answered, good naturedly enough, "if it was yer son of
course it 'ud be different. They've always had a good home, better'n
most boys, I'm thinkin'. But these English brats, herded out of the
streets an' turned loose in this country to live or die--it's a charity
for anyone to take them in. They don't know nothin', an' never will, but
eat an' sleep an' lie an' steal when they get a chance. They've got to
be broke in severe, an' I reckon Hiram Riles can do it 's well as the
next one. 'Course, if yuh've got conscientious objections," continued
Riles, the habitual sneer creeping back into his disfigured face, "I
won't press you to sign the paper."
"After a speech like that I think you had better not," said Grant,
quietly, but there was a significance in his voice that did not appear
on the surface.
Nothing daunted, Riles called on his two English neighbours who were
giving instruction in agriculture at so much per head. They signed his
recommendation without question. A clergyman who had never been in
Riles' home, who had never met Mrs. Riles, who knew nothing of their
style of living, put his name to the paper, as he did so speaking some
cheap platitudes about the privilege of giving a Christian home to "one
of these little ones."
And so it came about that Wilfred Vickery, already introduced to the
reader as "London," became the bond-servant of Hiram Riles and his wife,
Eliza Riles.
For a week or so the little orphan boy found everything so strange and
unreal that he went around as one in a trance. Pure English was
difficult enough for him, but the slangy colloquialism of the Riles'
home was almost unintelligible. Half the time he did not know what they
said to him, but stared in a vacant, meaningless way which they ascribed
to downright stupidity. When he spoke they mocked his language, although
using an equally corrupted tongue themselves. For a few weeks, while
under the direct care of responsible officers of the Home, the little
fellow had experienced a kindness and a personal interest which had
begun to unfold before him a life of which he had never dreamed. He had
been taught to sing a few hymns, he had been taught to utter a simple
prayer, he had been taught that there is a great Father to whom every
child is dearer than to even the kindest earthly father. He had never
known what an earthly father was, but in the new, great land to which
they were going he should soon know--he should find that for every little
child in all God's world some heart beats with the joy of a father's
love, some bosom swells with the wealth of a mother's devotion. He had
been taught these things, and some glimpse of that great real world
which lies just beyond the realm of the intellect had come to his poor
dwarfed soul and fired his spirit with the unutterable yearning that no
man has ever answered in terms of time and sense. He had learned that
life is not merely a battle to fill the belly, that the earth is not
only for fighting and swearing in, that Love is a _real_ thing, more
powerful than hate. The slumbering germ of his spiritual life, deafened
by a decade of London's roar, had been wakened by a brief contact with
kindness, and in the birth of imagination the world had taken on a new
interest and a new possibility. All these hidden emotions, touched to
sudden life, were clamouring for expression, for utterance, when he had
come--to this.
The boy's disillusionment was terrible and complete. They thought him
stupid, but he found the guise of stupidity serve his purpose well, and
he was more cunning than they. He stole to fill his stomach; he lied to
cover his theft. He shirked his labour whenever he could; he destroyed
property whenever he dared. When they cuffed him he cursed them; when
they swore at him he swore back, and he had the advantage of vocabulary.
When they made him milk cows he would pour the milk on the ground and
say the cow kicked it; when he was old enough to drive a team he would
let it run away whenever opportunity offered. He was to have been sent
to school, but he went only on those rare occasions when nothing could
be found for him to do on the farm, but he was compelled to write
periodical letters to the Home saying how happy he was and how kind Mr.
and Mrs. Riles were to him. He was held up as an object of contempt
before neighbours and strangers; he was the butt of their coarse humour
and the victim of their bullying authority.
The kind officers of the Home had taught him a little prayer, and told
him never to forget the good people who were to be his foster-parents in
the new land. And every night as he crawled to his musty mattress and
blankets in the mouse-chamber already described he would kneel by the
broken chair and repeat:
"Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me,
Bless Thy little lamb to-night,
Through the darkness be Thou near me.
Keep me safe till morning's light.
God bless Mr. and Mrs. Riles and make me a good boy, for Jesus'
sake, Amen."
He had repeated this prayer nightly for months. One night he had
difficulty getting the calves into their pen; they would run every
direction except the way he would have them go. He still had his cows to
milk, his pigs to feed, his wood and water to carry in, but the calves
refused to be housed. When he had them almost in they broke away, and
raced into the darkness of the pasture field, jumping and frisking in
appreciation of the joke. He ran after them as fast as his tired little
legs would take him, sobbing and swearing as he ran, but without
success. They could not be found in the darkness, and as he came back,
defeated and utterly played out, he met Riles, who had just returned
from town and was none the better for his potations. Without a word the
ruffian knocked the boy down with a swinging blow on the face, and
kicked him almost into insensibility. As he crawled to bed that night,
stiff, bruised and battered, he knelt before his broken chair and
repeated his nightly prayer. When he came to the words "God bless Mr.
and Mrs. Riles" he stopped. The significance of the words dawned upon
him in a way he had never quite understood. He was only a little boy,
against whom environment and ancestry seemed to have conspired, but he
was no hypocrite. He was praying for a man he hated, and the words stuck
in his teeth. For a long time he remained there on his knees, looking at
the misty light in the half-blackened lantern, and thinking, thinking.
He was fighting one of those great fights which come earlier in boyhood
than we sometimes think, and which decide in large measure the whole
course of after life.
Finally his jaws closed with a snap. "Damn Mr. Riles," he said, and
climbed into bed.