F. P. Grove's In Search of Myself
e-Edition ©2007
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IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 272
And now
for the decisive event which was to
close the phase of my life with which
I have been dealing in this section
and to open the final struggle.
It is, of course, one of the duties of a principal of schools to visit the various rooms of his school and to report to the school-board on their progress. It was this duty which made me formally acquainted with Miss Wiens, the primary teacher. For fully eight or nine months our relation remained official and quite as impersonal as it could well be. I MANHOOD -- Page 273
heard a few things about her; her parents
had recently moved to Saskatchewan,
to the short-grass district near Moose
Jaw with which I was amply familiar;
gossip had it that she was engaged to
be married - a fact I regretted for
no other reason, so far, than that teachers
of the first rank are exceedingly rare;
and marriage usually ends their teaching
careers. That was the extent of my information.
Personally, I was grateful to her because, by assuming a burden of overcrowding in her room which she might well have declined, she had made it possible for me to carry my reorganization of the school to completion. The manner in which she fulfilled her duties earned her my admiration; her ability as a teacher was very exceptional. Her success with children seemed unique to me; and I might say that this judgment was more amply confirmed as my own experience widened. It is today shared by many hundreds of parents. Beyond that, there was no opportunity for us to become intimate; and perhaps neither of us had any desire for such an opportunity. She, being musically inclined, spent her leisure time at the piano. My own hands were more than full. We never met except officially. Meanwhile, at odd moments, mostly when going to or coming from school, I was subject to certain odd revulsions of feeling. The hotel was to me what his lair is to the beast of the field. Was that what I must now look forward to for the rest of my life? Financially I was going backward, not forward. The extreme pressure of work would relax, of course. Even in the year to come I could look forward to being familiar with every detail of the courses I taught. But any sort of social life simply did not exist for me. Even as a farm-hand, I had, at least in winter time, had more human contacts; for in IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 274 the west the hired man was socially
the equal of his employer, except when
that employer was a company or a millionnaire.
Once or twice, during the early months of my first year at Winkler it so happened that, on my way to or from school, I found myself walking behind the young lady; and at least once it had struck me that she was good to look at. She had an extraordinarily striking figure, tall and slender like my own, yet well modelled. Her appearance, I said to myself, was aesthetically satisfying; she dressed simply but in excellent taste. I remember the occasion so well that I can still tell what she wore. A number of trifling incidents brought the beginning of a friendship. At school, reviews were starting, for examination time was at hand. All courses had been faithfully covered; and I was at last relieved of the work of preparing my lessons. For that year, at any rate, the pressure had eased. Consequently, still unconscious of what was preparing in Europe, for it was the spring of 1914, I began to take walks on Saturday and Sunday mornings; and since Miss Wiens had long done the same, it was inevitable that, sooner or later, we should meet. Mostly it was a mile or two from town. There was no great choice of routes; one went south; or one went north. When we did meet, we found that our powers of pedestrian performance were evenly matched. We laughed about it as we swung along. Neither was there ever a great deal to talk about. But it was spring; the prairie was greening up; in the trees of the windbreaks planted around the farms, the leaves were burgeoning forth; the birds were singing. In the landscape there was nothing to distract us, except perhaps MANHOOD -- Page 275
an occasional mirage. All about lay
the featureless prairie, stretching
away to the distant horizon, utterly
flat. The fact threw us back on the
immediate then-and-there and ourselves
or each other. Of my former life I said
little; but I discussed an occasional
problem presented by the school. What
may have lent that sort of talk a certain
freshness and interest was perhaps precisely
the fact that every problem arising
was new to me and had to be grappled
with, not on the basis of tradition
or precedent - both, I found later,
were largely evasive -but by arguing
from first principles. Miss Wiens, on
the other hand, told me a few things
from her own uneventful life, and chiefly
of the two or three schools in which
she had taught since her seventeenth
year. I gathered that she came from
a large family, and that her parents
were not exactly wealthy. She had been
born in town and had grown up there,
prior to her parents' removal to Saskatchewan.
Then came the time when the school-board had to make provision for the coming year; and this provision presented some anxious and even awkward problems. I knew that hardly another primary teacher would have assumed the burden which Miss Wiens had been carrying; and, quite justly, she insisted on some slight recognition of her services in the form of an increase in salary. Through weeks I fought the school-board every inch of the way, a fact which was to lend itself to ample misinterpretation later on. Nearly all the negotiations were made through myself; and I had more than one occasion to consult with her on some new proposal or concession made. When the battle was won, I believe we both felt that we knew a little more of each other. IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 276
Examinations
began; my school work proper
was over; the night work ceased. In the long summer evenings I began to frequent a tennis court laid out by doctor, banker, and station-agent. Soon it was being discussed that I indulged in a thing so frivolous as a game of tennis! While it did not argue against the solidity of my knowledge of mathematics, it did seem to indicate that I did not take my religion seriously. This indulgence was to determine the direction of the rest of my life. No other meeting but the one about to be described might have had just the shade of meaning needed. The closing day had arrived for the rest of the school. In the morning of that day, and throughout the early afternoon, I attended to the clerical work connected with the end of the term: reports and records: Two of the other teachers lived in the district; only Miss Wiens was going to go away for her holidays in Saskatchewan. I myself had to report in Winnipeg to help in marking examination papers as a so-called sub-examiner, a task which, I hoped, would bring me the extra sixty dollars needed to see me through a presumably idle summer. I had no plans; in fact, I was very much at a loose end. Naturally, when I had finished my afternoon task, I remained sitting at my desk, taking stock of my situation. How did my finances stand? Compared with a year ago, I had lost ground. My old reserves, earned in my first years as a farm-hand, had been spent on the minimum of a wardrobe with which I thought I could get along. My salary, beyond the necessary living expenses, had gone into payments for the school equipment. Even of my next year's earnings a not inconsiderable fraction was MANHOOD -- Page 277
mortgaged to the supply house. Chemicals
and a few pieces of apparatus which
had been broken would have to be replaced.
My new relation to Miss Wiens was disturbing. The very slight degree of intimacy which had been established made me wish for more. Yet there was this limiting factor that she was engaged to be married. Once or twice I had ventured distantly to allude to the fact which was so far known to me only by hearsay. She had not contradicted the rumour. This limitation, it seemed, was removed in the evening of that last day of the school year. I was at the tennis court, playing a very bad game, for it was a quarter of a century since I had last played well. The court was surrounded by four rows 6f tall, rustling cottonwoods which stood darkly, almost blackly against the amber evening sky. And there, just as I missed my ball, I suddenly caught sight of Miss Wiens looking on. She was standing among the trees, dressed in white and wrapped in shadows. As soon as the game was finished, I went over to speak to her. Knowing that this was where, in the evening, I could most readily, perhaps also most casually, be found these days, she had come to say good-bye. From that fact alone nothing could be inferred. Had I not seen her that night, I should, as a matter of course, have been at the station next day when she boarded her train. That much I should have done for any colleague, male or female, with whom I had had none but the most pleasant relations. When she had said what the occasion seemed to demand, she hesitated. And then she asked what my own plans were for the holidays after my work at Winnipeg was IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 278
done. I had no plans; but, tentatively,
I said that I might go west to revisit
certain districts in Saskatchewan or
Alberta.
"If you go west," she said, "and care to spend a few days on a farm, I am sure my parents would be glad to have you." I looked at her. Did this mean anything? Or did it not? I could not decide on the spur of the moment. It left the question open at least. If I did go west, I replied, I should write her. ***
During
the two weeks or so which I spent at
Winnipeg, I was a prey to painful uncertainties.
If I went west, I felt it would be tantamount
to offering myself; and unless something
had gone wrong with Miss Wiens' engagement,
I was, of course, bound to meet with
a rejection. In fact, matters standing
as they did, did not my going west imply
that I presumed her engagement to have
been dissolved? That it had existed
I could not doubt; she had not contradicted
me when I referred to it.
Yet, all the time, it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to go west. If I met with the rejection which I had to anticipate, I should have to take that as a sign that the ordinary, happy relations of a domestic life were not for me. Perhaps such as I had necessarily to go through life alone. I knew I should not die of a broken heart; perhaps I should grow a little harder, a bit, perhaps, more brittle. On the other hand, I should refocus my whole mind on my former aims. Having garnered more than my share of the experience of life, I should strike all the more determinedly for my chance to digest it. MANHOOD -- Page 279
But suppose
I was not rejected?
Such a contingency presented a problem even more serious than the other. So far, Miss Wiens did not even know that I was a writer. If her invitation meant, as it seemed to me to mean, that she was waiting for me to declare myself; and if I, accepting it in that sense, offered myself, was it fair to her to leave her in ignorance of my real nature, which was that of an artist? Even if I told her, would she, with her utter inexperience of life, be able to grasp what was implied in the fact? That, for instance, an utter indifference was implied to the economic conditions under which my life was going to be lived, at least so long as I followed my own inclination? That, in the long run, I could be happy only if I did my work, whether there was bread in the cupboard or not? That I would rather starve than not do my work? That, if deprived of the possibility of doing my work, death by the roadside, as a tramp, would seem preferable to me to an existence of ease in a palace? There were other things. It was then, as it is today, part of my whole philosophy of life that, beyond a certain minimum necessary to sustain life, money was no more and no less than an irrelevancy. I was, of course, aware of the fact that, for most people, money, and more money, comprised the meaning of life. One built a house; and, having built it, one equipped it with all the gadgets of a mechanical age. Henceforth, one's whole or chief endeavour was, either to pay for what one had acquired, or to lay by enough to acquire more. Everything else was a side issue. If one could manage to squeeze in a little enjoyment of life, one did so, of course. But, fundamentally, the mechanical trend of the age had IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 280
reduced life to the phase of the primitive
hunter whose whole time, whose every
energy was consumed in the hunt for
the necessities, with only a very little
to spare. The average man never thought
of living first and having afterwards.
Having was a prerequisite to living.
It was an axiom that, the more you have,
the more abundantly you live.
But I was constitutionally unable to hunt for the sake of having. In that I was the son of my father; and of my mother as well. It seemed ridiculous to me to spend time and endeavour on the acquisition of things while life slipped by unlived. In a sense, that is the burden of more than one of my books. If, at the present moment, I wished to marry, it was because I wished to feel that I was living-no matter on which rung of the social or financial ladder. What did Miss Wiens think about it? Did she think about it at all? But, had such as I the right to want life? What she knew of me was limited to my very striking success as a teacher; that success, I knew, would shortly be confirmed by the results of the examinations. I knew those results before they were published; I was one of the examiners myself. What she did not know of me was that teaching could never be anything but a makeshift for me; nor that, as a writer, I had been an abject failure in more than one sense. The fact that, for the moment, I had very little money did not concern me to any extent. From such contacts as I had had with the higher officials of the Department of Education - and it had been they who had sought me out, not I them - I felt convinced that my success in the teaching profession, not necessarily as a teacher, would be precisely what I cared to make it. Within a few years, MANHOOD -- Page 281
so I felt, I might be among the leaders
of educational reform in the province.
In that I was right; many of the changes
I advocated and which seemed revolutionary
at the time are being adopted today.
Already a few people were looking towards
me for leadership; I had many offers
of better positions. The Deputy Minister
hinted to me that there was a place
for me in the city; I remember his words,
for they carried weight with me: "I
shall always be glad to do the city
of Winnipeg a favour by recommending
you." If my plans, so far, called for
my return to Winkler, the reason was
solely that I had left a task behind
which was only half done.
Of course, there was still the question of a university degree to be settled; but what difficulty could there possibly be about that? To me, then, the question was entirely whether I was willing to pursue this career which had so unexpectedly been thrust upon me; and I persuaded myself that I was. I must make clear at this point that my emotional involvement was already such that it prejudiced any impartial weighing of issues. I was simply searching for points which might justify a step I was determined to take. The matter was no longer under debate at all: I was going to Saskatchewan; I was going to offer myself; and, even of this I was firmly convinced, I was going to be accepted. Before I took the next step, I was as good as married. Many a man might have hesitated over the difference in age. I was forty-two; she, twenty-two. All the better, I said to myself. If I was no longer in my first youth, I had, in return, attained to, or at least approached, the age of reason; I had acquired a vast measure of toleration; "she" would keep me young. I might say she has done so. IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 282
As for
my literary work, I would have to
leave things to time. No doubt the
day would come when I should try once
more to get a book published. Since
at least one book written in the past
had now waited for twenty years, they
could all wait a little longer. What
did the years matter? For the moment
I must seize opportunity by the forelock
and concentrate on the career that
had opened; for, if I did get married,
I meant, at least for the moment,
to give my wife a comfortable existence;
and surely, I should have as much
leisure as I had had as a farm-hand?
To make certain that I did not read the signs wrongly, I wrote at last to Miss Wiens, not to accept her invitation, but to ask whether that invitation was still open. If she felt that her parents would welcome my visit, I should be glad to drop in for a day or two. As for the exact date and hour of my arrival I should wire in care of the post office. In her brief answer she simply confirmed the invitation, adding that her parents joined her in giving it. That settled the matter. Only now did I admit to myself that, for the last two or three weeks, I had lived in a state of painful suspense. For one thing, I had had no intention of going west except for the purpose which had defined itself; in fact, had the invitation not been confirmed, I should have been at a sad loss how to spend the remainder of the holidays. Perhaps I should have gone into the wilderness and written a book. I sent the wire; and the following day, at ten at night, I boarded the Imperial Limited. I burned my bridges. MANHOOD -- Page 283
About
noon of the next day the "flyer" set
me down at Moose Jaw, the last city
east of Rush Lake. There was an hour's
wait for the way tram which stopped
at all smaller stations. This hour I
used to hunt for a florist's shop where
I bought a bouquet of carnations.
At Rush Lake I was received by Miss Wiens herself who introduced me to two of her sisters and an older brother. A democrat drawn by two horses was waiting behind the station; and after a drive of a few miles, uphill and downhill, we reached the house of the parents which nestled in a hollow of the bare, treeless hills, with two farmsteads facing each other on opposite sides of the trail: those of the father and of his oldest son. Introductions followed; to the parents themselves, an older sister and her husband, another younger sister, three boys, and a little girl; the family was large indeed. Since none of them enters to any extent into the life I am depicting, and since certainly none of them had any bearing on the problems to be faced in that life, it is unnecessary to insist on details. Suffice it to say that I was the object of the closest scrutiny, especially on the part of the boys. Their ironical curiosity betrayed that my visit had been abundantly discussed before my arrival and that it had been correctly interpreted. Since this discussion had, in all likelihood, preceded the writing of the letter in which the invitation had been repeated, the fact seemed encouraging. By the following morning my presence was, to all appearances, taken for granted; and perhaps it would have continued to be taken for granted had I stayed on indefinitely without clarifying the situation. Knowing my own purpose in coming, I felt, however, sufficiently a foreign body in this environment of curious girls and mischievous boys to be aware of the need for a prompt decision. IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 284
The opportunity
offered in the afternoon of the second
day when Catherine and I found ourselves
alone in a small music room which was
somewhat removed from the more crowded
quarters of the house.
I came straight to the point. "There was a rumour," I said, perhaps a trifle tensely, "that you were engaged to be married." "I was," she said. "I have broken off the engagement." Two minutes later the thing was settled; and within a few hours the parents had been told, and the date of the marriage had been fixed for August 2, a fortnight away; at my suggestion it was to take place at the Anglican church in Swift Current, the nearest larger centre to the west of Rush Lake. Personally, I need hardly say, I should have preferred a civil marriage; but my indifference to church matters was so absolute that, in view of the atmosphere of this household, I never breathed word of my preference. To the parents, a marriage performed without a religious ceremony would not have appeared a marriage at all. Within a day or two I made the trip to the little city to secure the marriage licence and to make arrangements with the rector. On August 1 the news that there was war in Europe reached this outpost of civilization; but it did not in any way interfere with the arrangements made. The war was far away; and though I was probably the only one in this family to view its possible implications with misgivings, even I failed to see why it should interfere. On the following morning the parents, Catherine, the older brother, one of the sisters, and myself met at Swift Current. The simple ceremony was soon performed, MANHOOD -- Page 285
followed by a wedding breakfast at a
hotel. By two o'clock Catherine and
I were alone, for better or worse; the
intention was to spend a few days, by
way of honeymoon, at Winnipeg.
During the first night in that city we were awakened, in the old Empire Hotel, by a tremendous uproar sweeping the streets; we knew that Britain had entered the European war. By inference, Canada was at war. It was not an auspicious beginning; this war was bound to cast its shadow over our lives; and it created one immediate problem which had to be solved before we returned to Winkler. Even before its outbreak there had been a considerable scarcity of teachers. Everywhere opportunity beckoned in other fields. Americans have always been prone to ruin their heritage by a premature and wasteful exploitation which they call development. Perhaps it was only natural that education should be held in low esteem where men without it could make conspicuous money successes by native shrewdness and a willingness to work with the strong arm. We realized at once that this scarcity was bound to be increased by enlistments. For the moment, men of my age would be coming into their own in the educational field; so far, secondary teaching had been largely reserved for men. But how about women? Before we had gone into our holidays, yes, before the faintest thought had strayed in the direction of a possible marriage, we had both re-engaged at our school. Was it fair, on her part, under the circumstances, to withdraw on necessarily short notice? We made up our minds that she must at least offer to fulfil her contract. A few days later we returned to southern Manitoba; IN SEARCH OF MYSELF -- Page 286
and in some mysterious way the news
of our marriage had preceded us. We
were received by a noisy crowd throwing
rice and confetti.
For the moment we went to the hotel and meanwhile looked about for a house. But no house was vacant; and we were forced to rent an apartment over a store in the Main Street of the village. We furnished it with the most necessary furniture, engaged a maid to do the housework, and were soon installed with a minimum of comfort. The school-board was only too glad to retain my wife's services; and thus the first year of our marriage began with both of us working. Wily-nilly I continued my night work, though I restricted the hours which I had been giving to it and made it a point to get home soon after ten. The problem of literary work never presented itself. No matter how much I might have wished to write again, there would have been no time to do so. Domestically, we were happy enough. There was no social life; but to that we were accustomed; we did not feel the need of it. Even my wife was far too busy to miss it. By Christmas it became clear that there was going to be a child. To me, this news was more of a shock than I have ever let my wife know. Not that the child was unwelcome; on the contrary; but even unborn it asserted its rights. From that moment on I renounced my old aspirations: I must concentrate my whole endeavour on a worldly career. |
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