CHAPTER II
HOME IN THE CLEARING
It was supper-time before Maria had answered all the questions, toldof her journey down to the last and littlest item, and given notonly the news of St. Prime and Peribonka but everything else she hadbeen able to gather up upon the road.
Tit'B?, seated facing his sister, smoked pipe after pipe withouttaking his eyes off her for a single moment, fearful of missing somehighly important disclosure that she had hitherto held back. LittleAlma Rose stood with an arm about her neck; Telesphore was listeningtoo, as he mended his dog's harness with bits of string. MadameChapdelaine stirred the fire in the big cast-iron stove, came andwent, brought from the cupboard plates and dishes, the loaf of breadand pitcher of milk, tilted the great molasses jar over a glass jug.Not seldom she stopped to ask Maria something, or to catch what shewas saying, and stood for a few moments dreaming, hands on her hips,as the villages spoken of rose before her in memory--
"... And so the church is finished-a beautiful stone church, withpictures on the walls and coloured glass in the windows ... Howsplendid that must be! Johnny Bouchard built a new barn last year,and it is a little Perron, daughter of Abelard Perron of St. Jerome,who teaches school ... Eight years since I was at St. Prime, justto think of it! A fine parish indeed, that would have suited menicely; good level land as far as you can see, no rock cropping upand no bush, everywhere square-cornered fields with handsomestraight fences and heavy soil. Only two hours' drive to the railway... Perhaps it is wicked of me to say so; but all my married lifeI have felt sorry that your father's taste was for moving, andpushing on and on into the woods, and not for living on a farm inone of the old parishes."
Through the little square window she threw a melancholy glance overthe scanty cleared fields behind the house, the barn built ofill-joined planks that showed marks of fire, and the land beyondstill covered with stumps and encompassed by the forest, whence anyreturn of hay or grain could only be looked for at the end of longand patient waiting.
"O look," said Alma Rose, "here is Chien come for his share ofpetting." The dog laid his long head with the sad eyes upon herknee; uttering little friendly words, Maria bent and caressed him.
"He has been lonely without you like the rest of us," came from AlmaRose. "Every morning he used to look at your bed to see if you werenot back." She called him to her. "Come, Chien; come and let me petyou too."
Chien went obediently from one to the other, half closing his eyesat each pat. Maria looked about her to see if some change, unlikelythough that might be, had taken place while she was away.
The great three-decked stove stood in the centre of the house; thesheet-iron stove-pipe, after mounting for some feet, turned at aright angle and was carried through the house to the outside, sothat none of the precious warmth should be lost. In a corner was thelarge wooden cupboard; close by, the table; a bench against thewall; on the other side of the door the sink and the pump. Apartition beginning at the opposite wall seemed designed to dividethe house in two, but it stopped before reaching the stove and didnot begin again beyond it, in such fashion that these divisions ofthe only room were each enclosed on three sides and looked like astage setting-that conventional type of scene where the audience areinvited to imagine that two distinct apartments exist although theylook into both at once.
In one of these compartments the father and mother had their bed;Maria and Alma Rose in the other. A steep stairway ascended from acorner to the loft where the boys slept in the summer-time; with thecoming of winter they moved their bed down and enjoyed the warmth ofthe stove with the rest of the family.
Hanging upon the wall were the illustrated calendars of shopkeepersin Roberval and Chicoutimi; a picture of the infant Jesus in hismother's arms-a rosy-faced Jesus with great blue eyes, holding outhis chubby hands; a representation of some unidentified saintlooking rapturously heavenward; the first page of the Christmasnumber of a Quebec newspaper, filled with stars big as moons andangels flying with folded wings.
"Were you a good girl while I was away, Alma Rose?"
It was the mother who replied:--"Alma Rose was not too naughty;but Telesphore has been a perfect torment to me. It is not so muchthat he does what is wrong; but the things he says! One mightsuppose that the boy had not all his wits."
Telesphore busied himself with the dog-harness and made believe notto hear. Young Telesphore's depravities supplied this household withits only domestic tragedy. To satisfy her own mind and give him aproper conviction of besetting sin his mother had fashioned forherself a most involved kind of polytheism, had peopled the worldwith evil spirits and good who influenced him alternately to err orto repent. The boy had come to regard himself as a mere battlegroundwhere devils who were very sly, and angels of excellent purpose butlittle experience, waged endless unequal warfare.
Gloomily would he mutter before the empty preserve jar:--"It wasthe Demon of gluttony who tempted me."
Returning from some escapade with torn and muddy clothes he wouldanticipate reproach with his explanation:--"The Demon ofdisobedience lured me into that. Beyond doubt it was he." With thesame breath asserting indignation at being so misled, and protestingthe blamelessness of his intentions.
"But he must not be allowed to come back, eh, mother! He must not beallowed to come back, this bad spirit. I will take father's gun andI will shoot him ..."
"You cannot shoot devils with a gun," objected his mother. "But whenyou feel the temptation coming, seize your rosary and say yourprayers."
Telesphore did not dare to gainsay this; but he shook his headdoubtfully. The gun seemed to him both the surer and the moreamusing way, and he was accustomed to picture to himself atremendous duel, a lingering slaughter from which he would emergewithout spot or blemish, forever set free from the wiles of the EvilOne.
Samuel Chapdelaine came into the house and supper was served. Thesign of the cross around the table; lips moving in a silentBenedicite, which Telesphore and Alma Rose repeated aloud; again thesign of the cross; the noise of chairs and bench drawn in; spoonsclattering on plates. To Maria it was as though since her absenceshe was giving attention for the first time in her life to thesesounds and movements; that they possessed a different significancefrom movements and sounds elsewhere, and invested with some peculiarquality of sweetness and peace all that happened in that house faroff in the woods.
Supper was nearly at an end when a footstep sounded without; Chienpricked up his ears but gave no growl.
"A visitor," announced mother Chapdelaine, "Eutrope Gagnon has comeover to see us."
It was an easy guess, as Eutrope Gagnon was their only neighbour.The year before he had taken up land two miles away, with hisbrother; the brother had gone to the shanties for the winter, and hewas left alone in the cabin they had built of charred logs. Heappeared on the threshold, lantern in hand.
"Greeting to each and all," was the salutation as he pulled off hiswoollen cap. "A fine night, and there is still a crust on the snow-,as the walking was good I thought that I would drop in this eveningto find out if you were back."
Although he came to see Maria, as all knew, it was to the father ofthe house that he directed his remarks, partly through shyness,partly out of deference to the manners of the country. He took thechair that was offered him.
"The weather is mild; if it misses turning wet it will be by verylittle. One can feel that the spring rains are not far off ..."
It was the orthodox beginning to one of those talks among countryfolk which are like an interminable song, full of repetitions, eachspeaker agreeing with the words last uttered and adding more to thesame effect. And naturally the theme was the Canadian's never-endingplaint; his protest, falling short of actual revolt, against theheavy burden of the long winter. "The beasts have been in the stablesince the end of October and the barn is just about empty," saidmother Chapdelaine. "Unless spring comes soon I don't know what weare going to do."
"Three weeks at least before they can be turned out to pasture."
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p; "A horse, three cows, a pig and the sheep, without speaking of thefowls; it takes something to feed them!" this from Tit'B? with anair of grown-up wisdom.
He smoked and talked with the men now by virtue of his fourteenyears, his broad shoulders and his knowledge of husbandry. Eightyears ago he had begun to care for the stock, and to replenish thestore of wood for the house with the aid of his little sled.Somewhat later he had learned to call Heulle! Heulle! very loudlybehind the thin-flanked cows, and Hue! Dia! Harrie! when the horseswere ploughing; to manage a hay-fork and to build a rail-fence.These two years he had taken turn beside his father with ax andscythe, driven the big wood-sleigh over the hard snow, sown andreaped on his own responsibility; and thus it was that no onedisputed his right freely to express an opinion and to smokeincessantly the strong leaf-tobacco. His face was still smooth as achild's, with immature features and guileless eyes, and one notknowing him would probably have been surprised to hear him speakwith all the deliberation of an older and experienced man, and tosee him everlastingly charging his wooden pipe; but in the Provinceof Quebec the boys are looked upon as men when they undertake men'swork, and as to their precocity in smoking there is always theexcellent excuse that it affords some protection in summer againstthe attacking swarms of black-flies, mosquitos and sand-flies.
"How nice it would be to live in a country where there is hardly anywinter, and where the earth makes provision for man and beast. Uphere man himself, by dint of work, must care for his animals and hisland. If we did not have Esdras and Da'Be earning good wages in thewoods how could we get along?"
"But the soil is rich in these parts," said Eutrope Gagnon.
"The soil is good but one must battle for it with the forest; and tolive at all you must watch every copper, labour from morning tonight, and do everything yourself because there is no one near tolend a hand."
Mother Chapdelaine ended with a sigh. Her thoughts were ever fondlyrevisiting the older parishes where the land has long been clearedand cultivated, and where the houses are neighbourly-her lostparadise.
Her husband clenched his fists and shook his head with an obstinategesture. "Only you wait a few months ... When the boys are backfrom the woods we shall set to work, they two, Tit'B?, and I, andpresently we shall have our land cleared. With four good men ax inhand and not afraid of work things will go quickly, even in the hardtimber. Two years from now there will be grain harvested, andpasturage that will support a good herd of cattle. I tell you thatwe are going to make land."
"Make land!" Rude phrase of the country, summing up in two words allthe heartbreaking labour that transforms the incult woods, barren ofsustenance, to smiling fields, ploughed and sown. SamuelChapdelaine's eyes flamed with enthusiasm and determination as hespoke.
For this was the passion of his life; the passion of a man whosesoul was in the clearing, not the tilling of the earth. Five timessince boyhood had he taken up wild land, built a house, a stable anda barn, wrested from the unbroken forest a comfortable farm; andfive times he had sold out to begin it all again farther north,suddenly losing interest; energy and ambition vanishing once thefirst rough work was done, when neighbours appeared and thecountryside began to be opened up and inhabited. Some there were whoentered into his feelings; others praised the courage but thoughtlittle of the wisdom, and such were fond of saying that if goodsense had led him to stay in one place he and his would now be attheir ease.
"At their ease ..." O dread God of the Scriptures, worshipped bythese countryfolk of Quebec without a quibble or a doubt, who hastcondemned man to earn his bread in the sweat of his face, canst Thoufor a moment smooth the awful frown from Thy forehead when Thou arttold that certain of these Thy creatures have escaped the doom, andlive at their ease?
"At their ease..." Truly to know what it means one must havetoiled bitterly from dawn to dark with back and hands and feet, andthe children of the soil are those who have best attained theknowledge. It means the burden lifted; the heavy burden of labourand of care. It means leave to rest, the which, even if it beunused, is a new mercy every moment. To the old it means so much ofthe pride of life as no one would deny them, the late revelation ofunknown delights, an hour of idleness, a distant journey, a daintyor a purchase indulged in without anxious thought, the hundred andone things desirable that a competence assures.
So constituted is the heart of man that most of those who have paidthe ransom and won liberty-ease-have in the winning of it createdtheir own incapacity for enjoying the conquest, and toil on tilldeath; it is the others, the ill-endowed or the unlucky, who havebeen unable to overcome fortune and escape their slavery, to whomthe state of ease has all those charms of the inaccessible.
It may be that the Chapdelaines so were thinking, and each in hisown fashion; the father with the unconquerable optimism of a man whoknows himself strong and believes himself wise; the mother with agentle resignation; the others, the younger ones, in a less definiteway and without bitterness, seeing before them a long life in whichthey could not miss attaining happiness.
Maria stole an occasional glance at Eutrope Gagnon, but she quicklyturned away, for she always surprised his humbly worshipping eyes.For a year she had become used to his frequent visits, nor feltdispleasure when every Sunday evening added to the family circlethis brown face that was continually so patient and good-humoured;but the short absence of a month had not left things the same, forshe had brought home to the fireside an undefined feeling that apage of her life was turned, in which he would have no share.
The ordinary subjects of conversation exhausted, they played cards:quatre-sept and boeuf; then Eutrope looked at his big silver watchand said that it was time to be going. His lantern lit, thegood-byes said, he halted on the threshold for a moment to observethe night.
"It is raining!" he exclaimed. His hosts made toward the door to seefor themselves; the rain had in truth begun, a spring rain withgreat drops that fell heavily, under which the snow was alreadysoftening and melting. "The sou'east has taken hold," announced theelder Chapdelaine. "Now we can say that the winter is practicallyover."
Everyone had his own way of expressing relief and delight; but itwas Maria who stood longest by the door, hearkening to the sweetpatter of the rain, watching the indistinct movement of cloud in thedark sky above the darker mass of the forest, breathing the mild airthat came from the south.
"Spring is not far ... Spring is not far ..."
In her heart she felt that never since the earth began was there aspringtime like this springtime to-be.