Read Maria Chapdelaine: A Tale of the Lake St. John Country Page 7

  CHAPTER VII

  A MEAGER REAPING

  SEPTEMBER arrived, and the dryness so welcome for the hay-makingpersisted till it became a disaster. According to the Chapdelaines,never had the country been visited with such a drought as this, andevery day a fresh motive was suggested for the divine displeasure.

  Oats and wheat took on a sickly colour ere attaining their growth; amerciless sun withered the grass and the clover aftermath, and allday long the famished cows stood lowing with their heads over thefences. They had to be watched continually, for even the meagerstanding crop was a sore temptation, and never a day went by but oneof them broke through the rails in the attempt to appease her hungeramong the grain.

  Then, of a sudden one evening, as though weary of a constancy sounusual, the wind shifted and in the morning came the rain. It felloff and on for a week, and when it ceased and the wind hauled againto the north-west, autumn had come.

  The autumn! And it seemed as though spring were here but yesterday.The grain was yet unripe, though yellowed by the drought; nothingsave the hay was in barn; the other crops could draw nutriment fromthe soil only while the too brief summer warmed it, and alreadyautumn was here, the forerunner of relentless winter, of the frosts,and soon the snows ...

  Between the wet days there was still fine bright weather, hot towardnoon, when one might fancy that all was as it had been: the harveststill unreaped, the changeless setting of spruces and firs, and everthe same sunsets of gray and opal, opal and gold, and skies of mistyblue above the same dark woodland. But in the mornings the grass wassometimes white with rime, and swiftly followed the earliest dryfrosts which killed and blackened the tops of the potatoes.

  Then, for the first time, a film of ice appeared upon thedrinking-trough; melted by the afternoon sun it was there a few dayslater, and yet a third time in the same week. Frequent changes ofwind brought an alternation of mild rainy days and frosty mornings;but every time the wind came afresh from the north-west it was alittle colder, a little more remindful of the icy winter blasts.Everywhere is autumn a melancholy season, charged with regrets forthat which is departing, with shrinking from what is to come; butunder the Canadian skies it is sadder and more moving thanelsewhere, as though one were bewailing the death of a mortalsummoned untimely by the gods before he has lived out his span.

  Through the increasing cold, the early frosts, the threats of snow,they held back their hands and put off the reaping from day to day,encouraging the meager grain to steal a little nourishment from theearth's failing veins and the spiritless sun. At length, harvestthey must, for October approached. About the time when the leaves ofbirches and aspens were turning, the oats and the wheat were cut andcarried to the barn under a cloudless sky, but without rejoicing.

  The yield of grain was poor enough, yet the hay-crop had beenexcellent, so that the year as a whole gave occasion neither forexcess of joy nor sorrow. However, it was long before theChapdelaines, in evening talk, ceased deploring the unheard-ofAugust droughts, the unprecedented September frosts, which betrayedtheir hopes. Against the miserly shortness of the summer and theharshness of a climate that shows no mercy they did not rebel, wereeven without a touch of bitterness; but they did not give upcontrasting the season with that other year of wonders which fondimagination made the standard of their comparisons; and thus wasever on their lips the countryman's perpetual lament, so reasonableto the ear, but which recurs unfailingly: "Had it only been anordinary year!"