# Rare Earth/Chapter 1

Chapter I
It was spring in Galvey. Almost overnight the entire countryside had burst into bloom. Curtains of green had descended, rich warm rugs of green had been unrolled and the trees loomed out pungently as though hung with silken tapestries. Overhead the sky was a wondrous blue. The yellow sun glowed down warmly. And the blue of the sky and the yellow of the sun blended to form that magic covering of soft green splendor.
But for Scobee Trent sitting by his attic window there was no spring. The coldness of winter still remained. He could not see the glory of the awakening world about him. For Scobee did not live in Galvey. He dwelt in a Sad Country, a country where there was no ​sun, a weird black country of fog and fear and endless mystery. In the space of a year his life had changed completely. From a life of happiness and love, of dreams and friendship he had plunged into utter despair. 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. Men do not think on a higher plane today than they did a hundred years ago. Throughout the world bigger and better churches have been built but there are no bigger and better religions. The simple folk told about in many of the Biblical parables have never been improved upon. While such ​faithful wars can come to blight the world, to make of it a shambles of chaos and horrors such as ripped the world apart from 1914 till 1918, men cannot call themselves civilized. And what has all that carnage accomplished? What has the world gained? Today we sit back and wonder what it was all about. If it were a moral war that whitened the soul of humanity, it was a failure. If it were a purely commercial war to help along the destinies of huge corporations, it was a towering success.
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. His presence is proclaimed by the wind sighing through willows, the blue wide stretch of the cool night sky, the perfume of ​garden flowers. God to be real must be a God of Mercy. Men of the present day shape everything to suit themselves. They even would remake God into the strange image they would wish Him to be.
All through the years Hung Long Tom had watched over Scobee. He had raised him from babyhood. The lovely mother of Scobee had died in giving birth to him. Never had he beheld her face, never had he known the warm clasp of her arms. And yet by some strange twist of fate he had seemed to always have her close to him. His mother had built the house in which he dwelt. The plans she had made and every detail of the building had been under her supervision. And as she walked through the halls and rooms she sang snatches of songs that were caught by the walls and absorbed even as fields absorb moisture. Sometimes she told the house all the dreams which she had for the baby that was to come. The house listened and was in sympathy with her. Then, as her boy was born, she died. Her physical person was carried away and buried ​but her sweet personality still lived. It remained in the house to watch over her boy, to guide his footsteps, to see that no harm ever might befall him.
In his loneliness the odd little Scobee grew up thinking of the house as his mother. It was a rarely beautiful reverence which old Hung Long Tom, tranquil dreamer, did much to foster. Hung Long Tom was like a father to the boy but the house was his mother.
Meanwhile Jethro Trent, taciturn, grim, gaunt figure, had gone about his farm, planting, ever planting, trying to drag life from the soil to make up for the life of his wife, Ardell Trent, who had fallen under the scourge of the soil. What Jethro's true feeling for Ardell was no one ever knew. Certainly he had not looked after her as carefully as his broad fields of wheat and the animals in his stables. He had not been unkind to her. Within his capacity he had given her every material thing that she desired. He had permitted her to build a house to her liking, he had supplied her with abundant money, but all the real passion of his ​life was given to the soil. The soil was his mistress. When he was upon his knees in the fields his face glowed. He touched the lush warm earth with a reverent hand. Like his father and his father's father he was as much a part of the soil as the earth itself. He was a product of the soil, the soil had given him life, it had given him strength. From it he drew all the peace which his life had ever known. He was immensely wealthy. Each year his crops were bounteous, more abundant than the last as he slowly steadily added to his vast holdings. But he never thought of himself as rich. He still lived on in the simple manner of his boyhood. There was nothing that mere money could give him that he could not find in the soil. The wheat was more valuable in his eyes than the gold he got for it. He was not a religious man. Seldom did he go to church although on several occasions he rebuilt the little church in Galvey to which his wife Ardell had always gone. Ardell had been the daughter of John Fleming, the pastor. For some reason unknown to himself Jethro ​always looked upon that church as belonging to him. It must never appear shabby. Constantly he kept it painted and in repair. It was the shrine which he erected to Ardell although such a thought never entered his mind.
It had always been the wish of Jethro Trent to have a son who would follow in his footsteps, turn to the soil, carry on the Trent tradition. 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. If it were not, how then could it be the source of all life? Although Jethro Trent seldom stopped to reflect much about it, these were his beliefs. He worshipped the soil, he adored it. The first buds of spring ​pushing up through the sun-bathed earth always were a miracle to him. Hung Long Tom was right. Here was the fruit of the wedding of the sun and the soil upon the bridal bed of earth.
Jethro desired a son to carry on the Trent tradition.
But Scobee failed to measure up to his father's expectations. Scobee loved the countryside, Watson's Marsh, the flowing acres of wheat, the monstrous barns and stables. To him they helped make a beautiful landscape. He loved Galvey as an artist might love a picture in an impractical way. The fields never attracted him as much as clouds flying low on the distant horizon. From boyhood he had thought of them as little white ships, golden galleons with white sails racing out to sea. The gray and black clouds were pirate vessels cruising about in quest of plunder. Sometimes when Scobee and Hung Long Tom grew tired of leading an honorable existence they made believe that they were bold bad pirates. They had a favorite pirate ​song which they had fashioned themselves after the general model of Stevenson.
"Sixteen men On the Sky-Waves' Crest, Ho! Ho! Ho! And a bottle of ink— A pearl-like moon And a couple of stars, A planet or two And the sun's gold bars. Quite a nice haul—Don't you think?"
Hung Long Tom with his folklore and legends had helped to make real the images which the tiny boy created.
Scobee was a colossal dreamer. Had dreams been banished from his life there wouldn't have been much left. But he dreamed in an impractical way. He wondered who had written the song which the wind played at night in the willows? Who invented language? And how did other people first understand him when he talked it? Who made the first hammer so that they could use it to make other ​hammers? What changed the color of the sky? Why should the sunset be such a splash of lavish color? But to the planting and productive aspect of the soil he never gave a thought. 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. He must. It was in his blood. The call of all the long line of ancestors who had labored in the fields would be heard and answered. Then the War had come and Scobee had gone away to return sightless. He had been home several weeks ​before Jethro realized that his son was blind. Scobee had tried to hide it from everyone. Then one day suddenly Jethro knew what it was that accounted for the unnatural quietude that had descended upon the house. There was something wrong with Scobee. He commenced studying him at every opportunity without Scobee's being aware of his scrutiny. And then at last he knew. As full comprehension came to him of the awful horror that had come to his house, he did not cry out, nor did he even make known to anyone his discovery. His face became a trifle more gaunt and sad.
He rose to his feet and strode from the dining-room, his meal untouched. Out into the fields he went, trying to escape reality. But one cannot escape the unescapable. At last he was far out in the fields. There was no one near him. There were no houses nearby. He was utterly alone. The sun streamed down brightly despite the fact that it was early winter. Everything appeared the same as ever, yet everything had changed. He flung out his arms in mute supplication. For months and ​months he had worked in these fields raising wheat to give to the War. In return the War had destroyed the sight of his son. And though he stood there with arms extended as if he were praying, the words that came from his lips were curses. And because he had never cursed in his life the torrent which poured from his lips was frightful to an extreme. He cursed humanity, civilization, life. Nothing in the universe was worth one's struggle to live. Until he was exhausted the vile curses fell from his lips. It must have been hours that he stood in the midst of those silent fields utterly without reason.
At last he slipped to the ground and placed his face against the frozen soil. But now even on the breast of the earth there was no warmth. For the first time in his life the soil failed to comfort him. What good was the future? Scobee was part of his own flesh. Blindness to Scobee was blindness to him. Scobee in all his fine young manhood not to be able to see. Where, oh, where was there a God of justice? Scobee who since infancy had ​never harmed even a cat to have such a frightful doom bound about his neck? Jethro, lying there on the dry earth, commenced to sob. His whole body shook. But there were no tears in his eyes. Just dry, hard sobs that were awful to hear. This was his reward for all the years that he had given to the soil. Such was the ultimate end of the family of Trent.