"I hope you're good an' satisfied now," she repeated in endless reproach."I hope you're good an' satisfied.You was bound you'd make a farmer out of him, an' now you finished the job.You better try your hand at Dike now for a change."Dike was young Ben, sixteen; and old Ben had no need to try his hand at him.Young Ben was a born farmer, as was his father.He had come honestly by his nickname.In face, figure, expression, and manner he was a five-hundred-year throwback to his Holland ancestors.Apple- cheeked, stocky, merry of eye, and somewhat phlegmatic.When, at school, they had come to the story of the Dutch boy who saved his town from flood by thrusting his finger into the hole in the dike and holding it there until help came, the class, after one look at the accompanying picture in the reader, dubbed young Ben "Dike" Westerveld.And Dike he remained.
Between Dike and his father there was a strong but unspoken feeling.The boy was cropwise, as his father had been at his age.On Sundays you might see the two walking about the farm, looking at the pigs--great black fellows worth almost their weight in silver; eying the stock; speculating on the winter wheat showing dark green in April, with rich patches that were almost black.Young Dike smoked a solemn and judicious pipe, spat expertly, and voiced the opinion that the winter wheat was a fine prospect Ben Westerveld, listening tolerantly to the boy's opinions, felt a great surge of joy that he did not show.Here, at last, was compensation for all the misery and sordidness and bitter disappointment of his married life.
That married life had endured now for more than thirty years.Ben Westerveld still walked with a light, quick step--for his years.The stocky, broad-shouldered figure was a little shrunken.He was as neat and clean at fifty-five as he had been at twenty-five-a habit that, on a farm, is fraught with difficulties.The community knew and respected him.He was a man of standing.When he drove into town on a bright winter morning, in his big sheepskin coat and his shaggy cap and his great boots, and entered the First National Bank, even Shumway, the cashier, would look up from his desk to say:
"Hello, Westerveld!Hello!Well, how goes it?"When Shumway greeted a farmer in that way you knew that there were no unpaid notes to his discredit.
All about Ben Westerveld stretched the fruit of his toil; the work of hishands.Orchards, fields, cattle, barns, silos.All these things were dependent on him for their future well-being--on him and on Dike after him.His days were full and running over.Much of the work was drudgery; most of it was backbreaking and laborious.But it was his place.It was his reason for being.And he felt that the reason was good, though he never put that thought into words, mental or spoken.He only knew that he was part of the great scheme of things and that he was functioning ably.If he had expressed himself at all, he might have said:
"Well, I got my work cut out for me, and I do it, and do it right."There was a tractor, now, of course; and a sturdy, middle-class automobile in which Bella lolled red-faced when they drove into town.
As Ben Westerveld had prospered, his shrewish wife had reaped her benefits.Ben was not the selfish type of farmer who insists on twentieth- century farm implements and medieval household equipment.He had added a bedroom here, a cool summer kitchen there, an icehouse, a commodious porch, a washing machine, even a bathroom.But Bella remained unplacated.Her face was set toward the city.And slowly, surely, the effect of thirty years of nagging was beginning to tell on Ben Westerveld.He was the finer metal, but she was the heavier, the coarser.She beat him and molded him as iron beats upon gold.
Minnie was living in Chicago now--a good-natured creature, but slack like her mother.Her surly husband was still talking of his rights and crying down with the rich.They had two children.
Minnie wrote of them, and of the delights of city life.Movies every night.Halsted Street just around the corner.The big stores.State Street.The el took you downtown in no time.Something going on all the while.Bella Westerveld, after one of those letters, was more than a chronic shrew; she became a terrible termagant.
When Ben Westerveld decided to concentrate on hogs and wheat he didn't dream that a world would be clamoring for hogs and wheat for four long years.When the time came, he had them, and sold them fabulously.But wheat and hogs and markets became negligible things on the day that Dike, with seven other farm boys from the district, left for the nearest training camp that was to fit them for France and war.
Bella made the real fuss, wailing and mouthing and going into hysterics.Old Ben took it like a stoic.He drove the boy to town that day.When the train pulled out, you might have seen, if you had looked close, how the veins and cords swelled in the lean brown neck above the clean blue shirt.But that was all.As the weeks went on, the quick, light step began to lag a little.He had lost more than a son; his right-hand helper was gone.There were no farm helpers to be had.Old Ben couldn't do it all.A touch of rheumatism that winter half crippled him for eight weeks.Bella's voice seemed never to stop its plaint.
"There ain't no sense in you trying to make out alone.Next thing you'll die on me, and then I'll have the whole shebang on my hands." At that he eyed her dumbly from his chair by the stove.His resistance was wearing down.He knew it.He wasn't dying.He knew that, too.But something in him was.Something that had resisted her all these years.Something that had made him master and superior in spite of everything.
