Her father had bought the farm during the winter from Dan Howe, who
moved away to Augusta. Dan, Fraternity said, made a good thing out of
it. He had paid eighteen hundred, two years before, and had sold off
three hundred dollars’ worth of hard wood for ship timbers, carted to
Camden. The price Moore paid him was thirty-three hundred dollars. Moore
had thought the figure high; but there was in the man a hunger for
contact with the soil. His father had been a farm boy, had harked back
to his youthful days in reminiscence during his later years. His death
left Moore some fifty-two hundred dollars, and made it possible for him
to escape from the small store he had run for years in Somerville, at a
yearly profit less than he might have earned as salary. He and his wife
had perceived, by that time, that Lucia--they had christened her
Lucy--was a problem in need of solving. Lucia liked moving pictures, and
dancing, and boys, and she was not strong. Country life, they thought,
would be good for her; and Moore did not cavil at Dan Howe’s price. Save
for a few hundred dollars, he put the remainder of his legacy, and his
own savings, into a newly organized automobile company which seemed to
him promising, and came to the hills above Fraternity.
Since then, he had been learning by experience that a horse which can be
bought for seventy dollars is probably not worth it, and that pigs
cannot profitably be raised with no milk to feed them, and that the
directions in printed manuals of the art of farming are not so complete
and so reliable as they seem. He was not a practical man. Even the
automobile investment had turned out badly; the company was now quietly
defunct, without even the formality of a receiver. And he owed a
mounting bill at Will Bissell’s store. If it had been possible, he would
have escaped from the farm and returned to bondage; but no one would buy
the place, and his debts anchored him.
It was Lucia--she had, it appeared, some grain of sense in her--who
suggested one day that he might raise apples. “Johnny Dree does,” she
explained. This was in early fall, and she had seen Johnny once or twice
since that first encounter--at her instance, and not at his. Also she
had asked questions, surprisingly shrewd.
Her father nodded. “He’s got a good orchard,” he agreed.
“He’s been picking Wolf Rivers right along,” said Lucia wisely. “He says
you can pick the big ones, and the others will grow to make up for it,
and he’s going to have hundreds of barrels to sell next month.”
“I’ve looked at our trees,” her father told her. “The apples aren’t good
for anything but cider. Full of worms and things.”
“Johnny Dree says you’ve got to take care of a tree,” she insisted
impatiently. “But he says--” She hesitated, seeking to remember the word
he had used. “He says your trees are good, thrifty stock.”
“It takes years to make an orchard, Lucy,” he said wearily. “You’re
talking about impossible things.”
The swift temper which sometimes possessed the girl flamed up at him.
“You make me sick!” she cried. “You just sit back and let the world walk
over you. You’ve stuck yourself with this damned farm, and now you’re
going to sit still and let it smother you. Why don’t you try to do
something, anyway? Johnny says you’ve got good orchard land as there is.
But you just look wise and think you know it all, and won’t do
anything.”
Her mother said wearily: “Lucy, you oughtn’t to swear at your father.”
“Well, he makes me mad!” the girl cried, furiously defiant. “He’s such a
damned stubborn fool!”
Moore wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and smiled weakly. “I
guess I’m a failure, all right, Lucia,” he agreed. “You’re right to
swear at a father like me.”
At his humility, her revulsion was as swift as her anger had been;
tenderness swept her. She pressed against him, where he sat beside the
table, and with her thin arm drew his head against her fleshless bosom.
“You’re not, either, papa!” she cried passionately. “You’re always so
patient with me. But I do wish you’d talk to Johnny Dree!”
He reached up to touch her cheek caressingly. “That’s all right, honey,”
he said.
“But you will talk to Johnny?”
The man nodded, at last. “All right, Lucy. Yes, I’ll talk to him.”