Frank Owen

“ Enoch would stand speechless, gazing upon it open-mouthed in wonder. Even the fields would feel the glory of the moment. The smell of the wet loam would mingle with the sweet smell of hay. Nor would he move until the warm lights faded. A rainbow to him was an entrancing thing.
Perhaps it was natural for Enoch to love the rain. It may have been a heritage. For ever since childhood Linda had told him fairy tales about the raindrops. When he was very young she had held him in her lap when the rain was falling and crooned softly to him. ”

“ Such was the twisted way in which the mind of the Mandarin worked. He could not see that his daughter was lovelier than any flower that grew in the garden. He could not see that she was a jewel more precious than any poor dead stone that glitters only with a cold fire. He could not see that even birds stopped to listen when she spoke, so soft and sweet was her voice. But though the Mandarin was blinded by age-old custom and tradition, there was nothing wrong with the faculties of Hung Long Tom. All the love which was denied by her father was showered upon the exquisite Lotus Blossom by him. ”

“ Poor indeed is he who wears his mind upon his sleeve that all may read. Ideas, opinions are things to keep hidden within one's body. A man that is easy to read is a pitiful object. No matter how vast his wealth may be, unto him a coolie is a king. For at least the expression of a coolie is inscrutable. He has learned the important lesson of submerging his personality. A man is only as great as his hobbies for therein lies the single spark of his individuality that he may with discretion proclaim to the world.
One morning in the garden Loo Zoo stopped to talk with Scobee. ”

“ Unconsciously men turn to the soil. They love to have flowers about them. Even perfumes are popular because they make one think of hidden gardens. Somewhere it has been written that no house is completely furnished until the garden has been made into a living-room. It should be the most used room of a house. For there is something about a garden that brings comfort to the hearts of men. In summer a garden, in winter an open hearth. Desolate indeed is the man who cannot appreciate a country landscape, the breath-taking roll of far horizons. ”

“ It was some moments before Benda answered, then he said slowly, "I hardly know. Perhaps I did. Anyway I tried to pluck a star from the sky and you can't do that either. It is better to be a happy dwarf and live in the low side of the room than a sad giant and attain the heights."
"I don't wan' to be either," declared Enoch. "I wan' to be a man 'at drives a plow."
"That at least," mused Benda, "is something attainable. When a man turns to the earth, he succeeds." ”

“ Scobee had returned blind from the War.
His tragedy perhaps had its counterpart in countless other homes throughout the world. There is no genuine civilization. It is merely a sham, portières behind which countless menaces of treachery and hatred hide. Men have learned to build more elaborate buildings, splendid cathedrals and theatres. They have learned to travel faster, to drag music from the air, to explore the bottoms of oceans and the farthest realms of space. But man has advanced but little in his conscience and in his soul. ”

“ It would be a marvelous thing if the strain of Trent blood should be a part of the soil of America for hundreds of years. As long as America should last the family of Trent should be farmers, handing on the ruling of those vast acres as though it were a monarchy from father to son endlessly. For a farmer to be successful he must love the soil, he must make of it a friend. Then only will the soil respond and give its best. The soil is a living, pulsating thing. ”

“ Hung Long Tom, faithful servitor, guardian, dreamer, sat beside Scobee at the window in the attic of the great house and sighed softly to himself. At that moment he realized the futility of war, the futility of happiness, the futility of life. It is always the best people who bear the heaviest burdens. No use to say that God is testing their strength and courage for it is not true. God does not strike men down. If He exists at all He is a God of love and mercy. ”

“ The farm had grown to be a desolate place. Then Jethro Trent came and it seemed as though the soil itself ceased to be grim. He has changed everything. Even the house seems more contented. It knows there is someone to look after it. And when I sit alone on the porch in the afternoons and watch his figure working far off there in the fields an unexplainable feeling comes over me. The quietude of the garden is beautiful. The occasional swish of the trees or the cackle of a chicken seems to add to the peace that envelopes everything. ”

“ Into the halls my songs have been woven, into the long winding halls, my thoughts, my dreams, my hopes for you. If anything should happen to me and I am not able to walk with you through life, I want the house to be your mother. I want it to watch over you. Perhaps some day as you walk through the rooms you will hear my songs."
And Scobee felt very sad and melancholy. He could not help crying, the tears welled up in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He sat down in a huge chair and buried his head in his arms. He didn't want his mother to go away from him. ”

“ The psychology of war is amazing. Sitting in his attic studio, Scobee Trent thought grimly of these things. It has been said that the World War was a war to end war. Perhaps it was. Though one might say in like manner that a man committed suicide to escape death. By the War little has been accomplished. The minds of men are still as chaotic as ever. There are easily as many criminals. But at least the War taught men to view death lightly, for sometimes life itself is as grim as death. So had it become to Scobee Trent. ”

“ To Jethro Trent, love of the soil was almost a religion. He approached the fields with reverence and humility. He hated noise, while he was in the fields. Harsh discordant sounds are nauseating. He had the odd belief that wheat grew best where it was tranquil. Wheat he loved to raise because waving in the wind it looked like a billowing rolling sea. There was something immense about those broad silent acres. He always breathed more deeply as he walked slowly through his fields. ”

“ Linda looked more tiny and wraithlike than ever with the tall, gaunt Jethro on one side of her and the ponderous form of Samuel Gage looming up on the other. They were a strangely assorted trio which through some queer whim of fate had been thrown together. If the cataclysm of War had not scarred the earth their paths may never have crossed. Was there not a western author who once wrote, "Our greatest friends we ofttimes never meet?"
Jethro was in a good mood. He liked the farm. The simplicity of the homestead appealed to him. But it was Linda herself who appealed to him most. ”

“ He never tries to escape from it because it is not in written form. You see so long have I been away from China, I can view my countrymen in a detached way, almost through western eyes. Much has the Chinaman learned on his long trek through history. He knows that it is well to keep one's face blank and expressionless so that no man may fathom what is in one's thoughts. He hides a shrewd mind behind liquid eyes. Often his manner is almost infantile. You must infer most of his meanings for he will not explain them to you. Only those with keen imagination ever grow to understand a Chinaman. ”

“ Why should I feel that life has suddenly grown to be worth living, I who am hundreds of miles away from any of my kin, whose husband is dead and whose only boy was lost in the war? It is hard to find a reason. What has happened to change my life so completely? The answer lies in that silent, hard-working, thoughtful man out there in the fields. I don't know who he is, nor had I to my knowledge ever met him before you brought him to my door. You say his name is Jethro Trent. ”

“ But best of all the customs which Hung Long Tom told about was the Chinese love of gardens. There is no house too small to have a bit of a garden or at least a potted plant. Although when famine grips the land as happens only too frequently there are some who cannot even afford a single blossom. When one is too poor to purchase even a few parched grains of rice, miserable indeed is one's lot. Yet probably a million people die every year in China of starvation. There have been millions of people who in the course of a lifetime never were without the gnawing pangs of hunger. ”

“ During those first days home Scobee spent a great deal of time in the attic. He had much to think about. China had given him enormous food for thought. What did life mean? What did all those teeming millions of yellow men mean? What did the teeming millions of black men in Africa mean? What did the millions of white men mean? Were they merely notes in a mighty universal symphony? Were their entire lives lived merely to utter one bit of sound in the vast concert?
Perhaps after all his father was right. The soil is the single worth-while thing to which man may clutch. ”

“ Linda continued walking about the room. There was the chair in which Enoch had loved to drowse before the fire. He had sat in it so much, she almost imagined that she could see him there now. And she wondered if the old chair ever missed him. It is the most ancient furniture that gives the home-feeling to a little house. A room must be lived in, must be used to be cozy. That is why old country houses wherein families have lived for generations are so delightful. They've been lived in so long the very beams and rafters breathe forth comfort. ”

“ When one's soul is sick something more than drugs is needed. My people have an age-old proverb; 'You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.' That is the type of philosophy that you need. Come with me to China. I have plenty of money, more money than I shall ever need. I have never been a poor man."
"Yet you chose to come and work as a servant for my father!" cried Scobee in astonishment.
"Have I been treated like a servant?" asked Hung Long Tom. ”

“ Nevertheless Jethro turned to the soil with vast energy. In work alone can man find forgetfulness, hard physical toil that breaks down one's strength and even blunts one's remembrance. Perhaps it would be better if man were created without memory, the past to be forgotten completely. After all one need not believe in past things.
Now more than ever, if that were possible, Jethro remained in the fields. He seldom spoke to anyone. He worked alone. One of his means of deriving contentment had ever been to watch men working on their knees in the soil. ”

“ The earth is here. Nothing can be added. Nothing can be taken away. It is the earth that guides the destinies of men. Where the soil is least productive and the crops are scant, man is the most savage. Those who spend their lives working in the fields absorb something of its strength. So had it been with Jethro Trent. Much of the strength of the soil had flowed into his veins. He was in tune with the soil. He understood its moods. And the soil responded. It was in tune with him.
And now once more in the farm of Linda Joel he had a great work before him. ”

“ I have sown seed in a dozen states, perhaps I shall do so in a dozen countries. My name, my history does not matter but I like to sow seed that men may know that I have sauntered by."
Jethro Trent found himself gazing intently into the face of this casual acquaintance.
"Don't go just yet," he said slowly. "I would like to talk with you a bit longer. It is seldom that one meets a person who so truly understands the soil. A farmer's life is not merely an endless round of work. Always I have been a farmer. There is nothing I would rather be. ”

“ Why, that must be death. No, death cannot be light. Death is this awful grim place of blackness in which I live."
He must get out into the fields. He must get away, keep moving onward, onward. Although he did not know it his mother had once attempted to flee from the wraiths of mist and fog that engulfed the house upon a certain day. She was trying to escape from those drifting clouds of gray menace.
Scobee wished to flee not from a gray menace but a black, a black morass that was limitless. ”

“ Scobee did not understand such poetry but he loved it. It sounded beautiful as Hung Long Tom recited it and beauty was all that Scobee lived for. Beauty in the sky, beauty in a garden, beauty in a picture or in a fragrant song. ”

“ But there was something alluring, too, about following the plow across the fragrant fields in the moonlight. It was an excellent time to give to dreams and immortal longings. And all those dreams were of the comfort and happiness he was going to draw from the soil for his wife and Enoch. It was pleasant to muse about his boy. He wondered what Enoch would be when he grew up. He hoped he'd be a farmer. A farmer can work hard. No one can force him to be idle by disregarding his very existence. He can accomplish things. He need not depend on a fair skin for success. ”

“ Roma longed to go to him, to take his head in her arms, to comfort him. But men like Jethro must be left alone in their sorrow. They must suffer in silence. And she knew it. No woman, not even his wife, could bring peace to his soul, only the soil could do that, God speaking to him through the soil. ”

“ Always he had considered his father a legendary figure, less real than the Pied Piper of Hamelin or Pinocchio. The gaunt silent man who spoke so seldom failed to awaken in him any paternal love. He looked up to his father and admired him but it was upon Hung Long Tom that he lavished his affection.
Jethro could not believe that Scobee would never turn to the soil. Hope is the hardest thing to kill in a man. If it were not the world would soon die out. Somehow Jethro believed eventually Scobee's attitude would change. As the years advanced he would grow cognizant of the wealth of the soil. ”

“ The smells of China are like nothing else in the world, a dead dog lying in the sun, burning incense filtering through the lattice of a joss house, countless swarms of unwashed humanity as thick as flies around carrion, with now and then a whiff of sandalwood, jasmine or wistaria from the pack of an itinerant vendor of perfumes. ”