WELL FARES THE LAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 138, 13 February 1942, Page 18

WELL FARES THE LAND

The Edifying Tale of Martha, Who Wedded the Soil

(Remember Martha? She was the small farm girl, whose husband was away at the front and who spent all her time looking after her two children and her house and her poultry and a few spare minutes each day watching the docks grow in the vegetable garden. But last time we met her she had already started to reform. She had decided to spend the evening weeding the vegetable garden instead of baking cakes to send to her husband overseas. By special request from a correspondent last week, "M.I." has decided to carry Martha’s reform to its logical conclusion. NOW READ ON.)

USK spxead its warm fingers over the land, pushing still further into the soil the bent figure of Martha as she crouched at the edge of the forest of docks. She had been there for three hours. She had, weeded half a row. But she did not despair. The blood of the pioneer women of New Zealand beat in her veins-the blood of those women who, with bare hands and ten children clinging to their skirts, had hewn a home for themselves and their dear ones out ef the virgin forest. The pile of uprooted docks beside her grew. The long line in front of her steadily diminished. A deep exultant joy surged up inside her, born of the-

heady intoxication of her closeness to the teeming earth. From inside the house came a thin wail-the cry of her latest-born cutting its latest tooth-but for once Martha was oblivious. Her mother instinct was overlaid by a deeper more primeval earth-lust and the dark passionate currents of the earth-life held her enchained. HE did not know what hour it was when she straightened her weary back. She only knew she had weeded three-quarters of a row. She staggered into the house. The children, worn out by crying, had fallen asleep. The dinher dishes, with their congealed fat, were still lying on the kitchen bench. She fell into bed. ‘

Next morning Martha was up at five. In spite of her aching muscles she swept through the house like a whirlwind, leaving it clean and shining as the inside of a separator. Then out once more into the garden. There were thirty rows of vegetables in the garden. It took five hours to do a row. Martha calculated that it would take her three weeks to finish the weeding, and, allowing three hours a day for housework, this would still give her an odd half-hour here and three to do odd jobs round the place, such as planting out an orchard, milking the cows, and mending the hole in the poultry run fence. And once the vegetable garden was under control she might be able to start getting the hay in. HE three weeks passed. Martha had kept to her schedule and finished the last dock of the last row at 7.55 p.m. on the twenty-first day after her conversion. With a deep thankfulness in her heart she rose from her knees and surveyed her work. The onions, their weeding just completed, were immaculate But what of the French beans and the carrots? With such zeal had she applied herself to each day’s allotted task that she had paid no attention to the work of previous days. ‘The beans and carrots were completely hidden by a great forest of docks stretching on all sides of them. The tops of the next two rows of rhubarb could barely be seen above ‘the encroaching weeds. The next few rows of spinach were clearly visible rising from a weedy underground. In the rows nearest Martha the encroaching weeds formed. merely a green carpet round the roots of the red beet. But Martha’s spirit was uncowed. There were still a few moments of daylight. She marched to the other end of the vegetable plot and — once more on the beans. T was many days since she had had time to go as far as the front gate. She could not know that in the letterbox lay letters from Harry-plaintive letters in which he confessed himself worried that he had not heard from her, in which he wondered why he had not received the parcels she must have sent him. A neighbour brought them out to her one sweltering afternoon in February just as she was starting on the rhubarb for the third time. With difficulty Martha wrenshed herself from the close embrace of the soil and stretched out an earth-stained hand fog the envelopes. Remorse struck her. From the evening of her momentous decision to weed the vegetable garden instead of doing up ‘that parcel for Harry, the lure of the soil had crowded out all other considerations. For seven weeks now he had had no word from her-was still ignorant of the great moment that had changed her life for the better. She saw herself as she had been-a worthless, spineless parasite with no interests apart from her husband, her children, and her household duties, and with no conception of her duty towards her country and. the land from which all derived their life. How pleased he would be now, how proud of her!

That night she dashed off a line or two to Harry telling him of her new life and warning him to expect no more parcels. Before she fell into bed she looked at herself in the mirror, a thing she hadn’t had time to do for weeks. Harry would be pleased at the change in her. Gone were those kittenish curves, gone that smooth white skin (she never had time to put cold cream on it now). Instead there stared back at her a creature lean and brown of limb. There was added purpose in the squaring of the jaw, and a determined light in the once soft eyes. She now wrote to Harry regularly once a week, explaining that she could not spare the time to write every day as (Continued on next page)

WELL FARES THE LAND (Continued from previous page)

she used to. And the letters were different. They were full of details about the growth of the cabbages and swedes. In vain he sought for details of the children’s health and progress, but instead her letters were full of compara--tive growth tables for turnips v. carrots and passing mention of the butterfat returns. EARS passed. Martha, recollecting somewhat tardily her duty to the children, hired a domestic out of the profits from the vegetable garden, and from the egg-money she managed to pay a small boy to come every day to weed. This left her free t» devote her whole time to the care of the rest of the farm. Another year passed and Harry came home from the war. He was unprepared for the change in Martha. Could this be his little Martie, the mother of his children, this lean gaunt woman whose brown skin seemed to reflect the colour of the soil? Could this be the timid clinging housebound girl he had left behind him, this woman whose passion for the soil was such that she even had dirt in her finger-nails? He doubted it. He sought for consolation in the good earth, but Martha was there before him. His decisions were overruled. If he decided to put superphosphate in the bullpasture, Martha would insist upon blood and bone. If he suggested buying a few more Orpingtons for the poultry pen

Martha would plump for Leghorns. And if he wanted to plant maize Martha would point out that swedes were so much better. And Martha, having lived so close to the soil for so many years, was always right. O after a few months Harry found himself spending more and more of his time in the house with the children and the domestic help. She was a gentle, pliant yuung creature who reminded Harry very strongly of Martha when he had first known her. He taught her to play cribbage, and after they had put the children to bed they would while away the time in this manner till ten o’clock, when Martha would stagger in from the cowshed wearing gumboots and still rather redolent of the soil. They would invite her to join them, but she would be too tired to do anything but fall into bed and sleep the healthy sleep of one who lives close to the soil all day and rises with the first birdsong at dawn. The neighbours were. not surprised when they heard that Harry had eloped with the hired help, taking with him the two children and the cribbage board. A good thing, they said. As for Martha, it*was some weeks before she noticed it. And when she did a certain homely philosophy, acquired by all those who live close to the earth, prevented her from being unduly moved by the blow. Her deep and all-absorbing passion for the land she tilled crowded out all lesser passions and affections. She had lost her husband, but she was wedded to the soil.