Boldly enough he asked Maria to walk with him, but when they were dressed and outside the door, they saw that snow was falling. Maria stood dubiously on the step, a hand on the latch as though she would return; and Eutrope, unwilling to lose his chance, began forthwith to speak—hastening as though doubtful that he would be able to say all that was in his mind.

"You know very well, Maria, how I feel toward you. I said nothing before as my farm was not so forward that we could live there comfortably, and moreover I guessed that you liked Francois Paradis better than me. But as Francois is no longer here, and this young fellow from the States is courting you, I said to myself that I, too, might try my fortune ..."

The snow was coming now in serried flakes, fluttering whitely for an instant against the darkly-encircling forest, on the way to join that other snow with which five months of winter had burdened the earth.

"It is true enough that I am not rich; but I have two lots of my own, paid for out and out, and you know the soil is good. I shall work on it all spring, take the stumps out of the large field below the ridge of rock, put up some fences, and by May there will be a fine big field ready for seeding. I shall sow a hundred and thirty bushels, Maria,—a hundred and thirty bushels of wheat, barley and oats, without reckoning an acre of mixed grain for the cattle. All the seed, the best seed-grain, I am going to buy at Roberval, settling for it on the spot ... I have the money put aside; I shall pay cash, without running into debt to a soul, and if only we have an average season there will be a fine crop to harvest. Just think of it, Maria, a hundred and thirty bushels of good seed in first-rate land! And in the summer before the hay-making, and then again before the harvest, will be the best chance for building a nice tight warm little house, all of tamarack. I have the wood ready, cut and piled behind my barn; my brother will help me, perhaps Esdras and Da'Be as well, when they get home. Next winter I shall go to the shanties, taking a horse with me, and in the spring I shall bring back not less than two hundred dollars in my pocket. Then, should you be willing to wait so long for me, would be the time ..."

Maria was leaning against the door, a hand still upon the latch, her eyes turned away. Eutrope Gagnon had just this and no more to offer her: after a year of waiting that she should become his wife, and live as now she was doing in another wooden house on another half-cleared farm ... Should do the household work and the cooking, milk the cows, clean the stable when her man was away—labour in the fields perhaps, since she was strong and there would be but two of them ... Should spend her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patching old clothes ... Now arid then in summer resting for half an hour, seated on the door-step, looking across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and the forest ... The forest ... Always the inscrutable, inimical forest, with a host of dark things hiding there—closed round them with a savage grip that must be loosened little by little, year by year; a few acres won each spring and autumn as the years pass, throughout all the long days of a dull harsh life ... No, that she could not face ...

"I know well enough that we shall have to work hard at first," Eutrope went on, "but you have courage, Maria, and are well used to labour, as I am. I have always worked hard; no one can say that I was ever lazy, and if only you will marry me it will be my joy to toil like an ox all the day long to make a thriving place of it, so that we shall be in comfort before old age comes upon us. I do not touch drink, Maria, and truly I love you ..."

His voice quivered, and he put out his hand toward the latch to take hers, or perhaps to hinder her from opening the door and leaving him without his answer.

"My affection for you ... of that I am not able to speak ..."

Never a word did she utter in reply. Once more a young man was telling his love, was placing in her hands all he had to give; and once more she could but hearken in mute embarrassment, only saved from awkwardness by her immobility and silence. Town-bred girls had thought her stupid, when she was but honest and truthful; very close to nature which takes no account of words. In other days when life was simpler than now it is, when young men paid their court—masterfully and yet half bashfully—to some deep-bosomed girl in the ripe fullness of womanhood who had not heard nature's imperious command, she must have listened thus, in silence; less attentive to their pleading than to the inner voice, guarding herself by distance against too ardent a wooing, whilst she awaited ... Chapdelaine were not drawn to her by any charm of gracious speech, but by her sheer comeliness, and the transparent honest heart dwelling in her bosom; when they spoke to her of love she was true to herself, steadfast and serene, saying no word where none was needful to be said, and for this they loved her only the more.

"This young fellow from the States was ready with fine speeches, but you must not be carried away by them ..." He caught a hint of dissent and changed his tone.

"Of course you are quite free to choose, and I have not a word to say against him. But you would be happier here, Maria, amongst people like yourself."

Through the falling snow Maria gazed at the rude structure of planks, between stable and barn, which her father and brother had thrown together five years before; unsightly and squalid enough it appeared, now that her fancy had begun to conjure up the stately buildings of the town. Close and ill-smelling, the floor littered with manure and foul straw, the pump in one comer that was so hard to work and set the teeth on edge with its grinding; the weather-beaten outside, buffeted by wind and never-ending snow—sign and symbol of what awaited her were she to marry one like Eutrope Gagnon, and accept as her lot a lifetime of rude toil in this sad and desolate land ... She shook her head.

"I cannot answer, Eutrope, either yes or no; not just now. I have given no promise. You must wait."

It was more than she had said to Lorenzo Surprenant, and yet Lorenzo had gone away with hope in his heart, while Eutrope felt that he had made his throw and lost. Departing alone, the snow soon hid him. She entered the house.

* * * * *

March dragged through its melancholy days; cold winds drove the gray clouds back and forth across the sky, and swept the snow hither and thither; one must needs consult the calendar of the Roberval grain merchant to get an inkling that spring was drawing near.

Succeeding days were to Maria like those that had gone before, each one bringing its familiar duties and the same routine; but the evenings were different, and were filled with pathetic strivings to think. Beyond doubt her parents had guessed the truth; but they were unwilling to force her reserve with their advice, nor did she seek it. She knew that it rested with her alone to make a choice, to settle the future course of her life, and she, felt like a child at school, standing on a platform before watchful eyes, bidden to find by herself the answer to some knotty question.

And this was her problem: when a girl is grown to womanhood, when she is good-looking, healthy and strong, clever in all that pertains to the household and the farm, young men come and ask her to marry, and she must say "Yes" to this one and "No" to another.

If only Francois Paradis had not vanished forever in the great lonely woods, all were then so plain. No need to ask herself what she ought to do; she would have gone straight to him, guided by a wise instinct that she might not gainsay, sure of doing what was right as a child that obeys a command. But Francois was gone; neither in the promised springtime nor ever again to return, and the cure of St. Henri forbade regrets that would prolong the awaiting.

Ah, dear God! How happy had been the early days of this awaiting! As week followed week something quickened in her heart and shot upward, like a rich and beauteous sheaf whose opening ears bend low under their weight. Happiness beyond any dream came dancing to her ... No, it was stronger and keener yet, this joy of hers. It had been a great light shining in the twilight of a lonely land, a beacon toward which one journeys, forgetful of the tears that were about to flow, saying with glad defiance: "I knew it well—knew that somewhere on the earth was such a thing as this ..." It was over. Yes, the gleam was gone. Henceforth must she forget that once it had shone upon her path, and grope through the dark with faltering steps.

Chapdelaine and Tit'Be were smoking in silence by the stove; the mother knitted stockings; Chien, stretched out with his head between his paws, blinked sleepily in enjoyment of the good warmth. Telesphore had dozed off with the catechism open on his knees, and the little Alma Rose, not yet in bed, was hovering in doubt between the wish to draw attention to her brother's indolence, and a sense of shame at thus betraying him.

Maria looked down again, took her work in hand, and her simple mind pursued a little further its puzzling train of thought. When a girl does not feel, or feels no longer, that deep mysterious impulse toward a man singled out from all the rest of the world, what is left to guide her? For what things should she seek in her marriage? For a satisfying life, surely; to make a happy home for herself ...

Her parents would like her to marry Eutrope Gagnon—that she felt—because she would live near them, and again because this life upon the land was the only one they knew, and they naturally thought it better than any other. Eutrope was a fine fellow, hard-working and of kindly disposition, and he loved her; but Lorenzo Surprenant also loved her; he, likewise, was steady and a good worker; he was a Canadian at heart, not less than those amongst whom she lived; he went to church ... And he offered as his splendid gift a world dazzling to the eye, all the wonders of the city. He would rescue her from this oppression of frozen earth and gloomy forest.

She could not as yet resolve to say to herself: "I will marry Lorenzo Surprenant," but her heart had made its choice. The cruel north-west wind that heaped the snow above Francois Paradis at the foot of some desolate cypress bore also to her on its wings the frown and the harshness of the country wherein she dwelt, and filled her with hate of the northern winter, the cold, the whitened ground and the loneliness, of that boundless forest unheedful of the destinies of men where every melancholy tree is fit to stand in a home of the dead. Love—all-compelling love—for a brief space had dwelt within her heart ... Mighty flame, scorching and bright, quenched now, and never to revive. It left her spirit empty and yearning; she was fain to seek forgetfulness and cure in that life afar, among the myriad paler lights of the city.



CHAPTER XIV

INTO THE DEEP SILENCE

There came an evening in April when Madame Chapdelaine would not take her place at the supper table with the others.

"There are pains through my body and I have no appetite," she said, "I must have strained myself to-day lifting a bag of flour when I was making bread. Now something catches me in the back, and I am not hungry."

No one answered her. Those living sheltered lives take quick alarm when the mechanism of one of their number goes wrong, but people who wrestle with the earth for a living feel little surprise if their labours are too much for them now and then, and the body gives way in some fibre.

While father and children supped, Madame Chapdelaine sat very still in her chair beside the stove. She drew her breath hard, and her broad face was working.

"I am going to bed," she said presently. "A good night's sleep, and to-morrow morning I shall be all right again; have no doubt of that. You will see to the baking, Maria."

And indeed in the morning she was up at her usual hour, but when she had made the batter for the pancakes pain overcame her, and she had to lie down again. She stood for a minute beside the bed, with both hands pressed against her back, and made certain that the daily tasks would be attended to.

"You will give the men their food, Maria, and your father will lend you a hand at milking the cows if you wish it. I am not good for anything this morning."

"It will be all right, mother; it will be all right. Take it quietly; we shall have no trouble."

For two days she kept her bed, with a watchful eye over everything, directing all the household affairs.

"Don't be in the least anxious," her husband urged again and again. "There is hardly anything to be done in the house beyond the cooking, and Maria is quite fit to look after that—everything else too, by thunder! She is not a little child any longer, and is as capable as yourself. Lie there quietly, without stirring; and be easy in your mind, instead of tossing about all the time under the blankets and making yourself worse...."

On the third day she gave up thinking about the cares of the house and began to bemoan herself.

"Oh my God!" she wailed. "I have pains all over my body, and my bead is burning. I think that I am going to die."

Her husband tried to cheer her with his Clumsy pleasantries. "You are going to die when the good God wills it, and according to my way of thinking that will not be for a while yet. What would He be doing with you? Heaven is all cluttered with old women, and down here we have only the one, and she is able to make herself a bit useful, every now and then ..." But he was beginning to feel anxious, and took counsel with his daughter.

"I could put the horse in and go as far as La Pipe," he suggested. "It may be that they have some medicine for this sickness at the store; or I might talk things over with the cure, and he would tell me what to do."

Before they had made up their minds night had fallen, and Tit'Be, who had been at Eutrope Gagnon's helping him to saw his firewood, came back bringing Eutrope along with him.

"Eutrope has a remedy," said he. They all gathered round Eutrope, who took a little tin box from his pocket and opened it deliberately.

"This is what I have," he announced rather dubiously. "They are little pills. When my brother was bad with his kidneys three years ago he saw an advertisement in a paper about these pills, and it said they were the proper thing, so he sent the money for a box, and he declares it is a good medicine. Of course his trouble did not leave him at once, but he says that this did him good. It comes from the States ..."

Without word said they looked at the little gray pills rolling about on the bottom of the box ... A remedy compounded by some man in a distant land famed for his wisdom ... And they felt the awe of the savage for his broth of herbs simmered on a night of the full moon beneath the medicineman's incantations.

Maria asked doubtfully: "Is it certain that her trouble has only to do with the kidneys?"

"I thought it was just that, from what Tit'Be told me."

A motion of Chapdelaine's hand eked out his words.—"She strained herself lifting a bag of flour, as she says; and now she has pains everywhere. How can we tell ..."

"The newspaper that spoke of this medicine," Eutrope Gagnon went on, "put it that whenever a person falls sick and is in pain it is always the kidneys; and for trouble in the kidneys these pills here are first-rate. That is what the paper said, and my brother as well."

"Even if they are not for this very sickness," said Tit'Be deferentially, "they are a remedy all the same."

"She suffers, that is one thing certain; we cannot let her go on like this."

They drew near the bed where the sick woman was moaning and breathing heavily, attempting from time to time to make slight movements which were followed by sharper outcries.

"Eutrope has brought you a cure, Laura."

"I have no faith in your cures," she groaned out. But yet she was ready to look at the little gray pills ever running round in the tin box as if they were alive.

"My brother took some of these three years ago when he had the kidney trouble so badly that he was hardly able to work at all, and he says that they cured him. It is a fine remedy, Madame Chapdelaine, there is not a question of it!" His former doubts had vanished in speech and he felt wholly confident. "This is going to cure you, Madame Chapdelaine, as surely as the good God is above us. It is a medicine of the very first class; my brother had it sent expressly from the States. You may be sure that you would never find a medicine like this in the store at La Pipe."

"It cannot make her worse?" Maria asked, some doubt lingering. "It is not a poison, or anything of that sort?"

With one voice, in an indignant tone, the three men protested: "Do harm? Tiny pills no bigger than that!"

"My brother took nearly a box of them, and according to his account it was only good they did him."

When Eutrope departed he left the box of pills; the sick woman had not yet agreed to try them, but her objections grew weaker with their urging. In the middle of the night she took a couple, and two more in the morning, and as the hours passed they all waited in confidence of the virtue of the medicine to declare itself. But toward midday they had to bow to the facts: she was no easier and did not cease her moaning. By evening the box was empty, and at the falling of the night her groans were filling the household with anguished distress, all the keener as they had no medicine now in which to place their trust.

Maria was up several times in the night, aroused by her mother's more piercing cries; she always found her lying motionless on her side, and this position seemed to increase the suffering and the stiffness, so that her groans were pitiful to hear.

"What ails you, mother? Are you not feeling any better?"

"Ah God, how I suffer! How I do suffer! I cannot stir myself, not the least bit, and even so the pain is as bad as ever. Give me some cold water, Maria; I have the most terrible thirst."

Several times Maria gave her mother water, but at last she became afraid. "Maybe it is not good for you to drink so much. Try to bear the thirst for a little."

"But I cannot bear it, I tell you-the thirst and the pain all through my body, and my head that bums like fire ... My God! It is certain that I am to die."

A little before daylight they both fen asleep; but soon Maria was awakened by her father who laid his hand upon her shoulder and whispered:—"I am going to harness the horse to go to Mistook for the doctor, and on the way through La Pipe I shall also speak to the cure. It is heart-breaking to hear her moan Eke this."

Her eyes open in the ghostly dawn, Maria gave ear to the sounds of his departure: the banging of the stable door against the wall; the horse's hoofs thudding on the wood of the alley; muffled commands to Charles Eugene: "Hold up, there! Back ... Back up! Whoa!" Then the tinkle of the sleigh-bells. In the silence that followed, the sick woman groaned two or three times in her sleep; Maria watched the wan light stealing into the house and thought of her father's journey, trying to reckon up the distances he must travel.

From their house to Honfleur, eight miles; from Honfleur to La Pipe, six. There her father would speak with the cure, and then pursue his way to Mistook. She corrected herself, and for the ancient Indian name that the people of the country use, gave it the official one bestowed in baptism by the church—St. Coeur de Marie. From La Pipe to St. Coeur de Marie, eight miles ... —Eight and six and then eight. Growing confused, she said to herself—"Anyway it is far, and the roads will be heavy."

Again she felt affrighted at their loneliness, which once hardly gave her a thought. All was well enough when people were in health and merry, and one had no need of help; but with trouble or sickness the woods around seemed to shut them cruelly away from all succour—the woods where horses sink to the chest in snow, where storms smother one in mid-April.

The mother strove to turn in her sleep, waked with a cry of anguish, and the continual moaning began anew. Maria rose and sat by the bed, thinking of the long day just beginning in which she would have neither help nor counsel.

All the dragging hours were burdened with lamentable sound; the groaning from the bed where the sick woman lay never ceased, and haunted the narrow wooden dwelling. Now and then some household noise broke in upon it: the clashing of plates, the clang of the opened stove door, the sound of feet on the planking, Tit'Be stealing into the house, clumsy and anxious, to ask for news.

"Is she no better?"

Maria answered by a movement of the head. They both stood gazing for a time at the motionless figure under the woollen blankets, giving ear to the sounds of distress; then Tit'Be departed to his small outdoor duties. When Maria had put the house in order she took up her patient watching, and the sick woman's agonizing wails seemed to reproach her.

From hour to hour she kept reckoning the times and the distances. "My father should not be far from St. Coeur de Marie ... If the doctor is there they will rest the horse for a couple of hours and come back together. But the roads must be very bad; at this time, in the spring, they are sometimes hardly passable."

And then a little later:—"They should have left; perhaps in going through La Pipe they will stop to speak to the cure; perhaps again he may have started as soon as he heard, without waiting for them. In that case he might be here at any moment."

But the fall of night brought no one, and it was only about seven o'clock that the sound of sleigh-bells was heard, and her father and the doctor arrived. The latter came into the house alone, put his bag on the table and began to pull off his overcoat, grumbling all the while.

"With the roads in this condition," said he, "it is no small affair to get about and visit the sick. And as for you folk, you seem to have hidden yourselves as far in the woods as you could. Great Heavens! You might very well all die without a soul coming to help you."

After warming himself for a little while at the stove he approached the bedside. "Well, good mother, so we have taken the notion to be sick, just like people who have money to spend on such things!"

But after a brief examination he ceased to jest, saying:—"She really is sick, I do believe."

It was with no affectation that he spoke in the fashion of the peasantry; his grandfather and his father were tillers of the soil, and he had gone straight from the farm to study medicine in Quebec, amongst other young fellows for the most part like himself—grandsons, if not sons of farmers—who had all clung to the plain country manner and the deliberate speech of their fathers. He was tall and heavily built, with a grizzled moustache, and his large face wore the slightly aggrieved expression of one whose native cheerfulness is being continually dashed through listening to the tale of others' ills for which he is bound to show a decent sympathy.

Chapdelaine came in when he had unharnessed and fed the horse. He and his children sat at a little distance while the doctor was going through his programme.

Every one of them was thinking:—"Presently we shall know what is the matter, and the doctor will give her the right medicines." But when the examination was ended, instead of turning to the bottles in his bag, he seemed uncertain and began to ask interminable questions. How had it happened, and where, particularly, did she feel pain ... Had she ever before suffered from the same trouble ... The answers did not seem to enlighten him very much; then he turned to the sick woman herself, only to receive confused statements and complaints.

"If it is just a wrench that she has given herself," at length he announced, "she will get well without any meddling; there is nothing for her to do but to stay quietly in bed. But if there is some injury within, to the kidneys or another organ, it may be a grave affair." He was conscious that his state of doubt was disappointing to the Chapdelaines, and was anxious to restore his medical reputation.

"Internal lesions are serious things, and often one cannot detect them. The wisest man in the world could tell you no more than I. We shall have to wait ... But perhaps it is not that we have to deal with." After some further investigation he shook his head. "Of course I can give something that will keep her from suffering like this."

The leather bag now disclosed its wonderworking phials; fifteen drops of a yellowish drug were diluted with two fingers of water, and the sick woman, lifted up in bed, managed to swallow this with sharp cries of pain. Then there was apparently nothing more to be done; the men fit their pipes, and the doctor, with his feet against the stove, held forth as to his professional labours and the cures he had wrought.

"Illnesses like these," said he, "where one cannot discover precisely what is the matter, are more baffling to a doctor than the gravest disorders—like pneumonia now, or even typhoid fever which carry off three-quarters of the people hereabouts who do not die of old age. Well, typhoid and pneumonia, I cure these every month in the year. You know Viateur Tremblay, the postmaster at St. Henri ..."

He seemed a little hurt that Madame Chapdelaine should be the victim of an obscure malady, hard to diagnose, and had not been taken down with one of the two complaints he was accustomed to treat with such success, and he gave an account by chapter and verse of the manner in which he had cured the postmaster of St. Henri. From that they passed on to the country news—news carried by word of mouth from house to house around Lake St. John, and greeted a thousandfold more eagerly than tidings of wars and famines, since the gossipers always manage to connect it with friend or relative in a country where all ties of kinship, near or far, are borne scrupulously in mind.

Madame Chapdelaine ceased moaning and seemed to be asleep. The doctor, considering that he had done all that was expected of him, for the evening at least, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to go.

"I shall sleep at Honfleur," said he, "I suppose your horse is fit to take me so far? There is no need for you to come, I know the road. I shall stay with Ephrem, Surprenant, and come back in the morning."

Chapdelaine was a little slow to make reply, recalling the stiff day's work his old beast had already accomplished, but at the end he went out to harness Charles Eugene once more. In a few minutes the doctor was on the road, leaving the family to themselves as usual.

A great stillness reigned in the house. The comfortable thought was with them all:—"Anyway the medicine he has given her is a good one; she groans no longer." But scarce an hour had gone by before the sick woman ceased to feel the effect of the too feeble drug, became conscious again, tried to turn herself in bed and screamed out with pain. They were all up at once and crowding about her in their concern; she opened her eyes, and after groaning in an agonized way began to weep unrestrainedly.

"O Samuel, I am dying, there can be no doubt of it."

"No! No! You must not think that."

"Yes, I know that I am dying. I feel it. The doctor is only an old fool, and he cannot tell what to do. He is not even able to say what the trouble is, and the medicine he gave me is useless; it has done me no good. I tell you I am dying."

The failing words were hindered with her groaning, and tears coursed down the heavy cheeks. Husband and children looked at her, struck to the very earth with grief. The footstep of death was sounding in the house. They knew themselves cut off from all the world, helpless, remote, without even a horse to bring them succour. The cruel treachery of it all held them speechless and transfixed, with streaming eyes.

In their midst appeared Eutrope Gagnon.

"And I who was thinking to find her almost well. This doctor, now ..."

Chapdelaine broke out, quite beside himself:—"This doctor is not a bit of use, and I shall tell him so plainly, myself. He came here, he gave her a drop of some miserable stuff worth nothing at all in the bottom of a cup, and he is off to sleep in the village as if his pay was earned! Not a thing has he done but tire out my horse, but he shall not have a copper from me, not a single copper..."

Eutrope's face was very grave, and he shook his head as he declared:—"Neither have I any faith in doctors. Now if we had only thought of fetching a bone-setter—such a man as Tit'Sebe of St. Felicien ..." Every face was turned to him and the tears ceased flowing.

"Tit'Sebe!" exclaimed Maria. "And you think he could help in a case like this?" Both Eutrope and Chapdelaine hastened to avow their trust in him.

"There is no doubt whatever that Tit'Sebe can make people well. He was never through the schools, but he knows how to cure. You heard of Nazaire Gaudreau who fell from the top of a barn and broke his back. The doctors came to see him, and the best they could do was to give the Latin name for his hurt and say that he was going to die. Then they went and fetched Tit'Sebe, and Tit'Sebe cured him." Every one of them knew the healer's repute and hope sprang up again in their hearts.

"Tit'Sebe is a first-rate man, and a man who knows how to make sick people well. Moreover he is not greedy for money. You go and you fetch him, you pay him for his time, and he cures you. It was he who put little Romeo Boilly on his legs again after being run over by a wagon loaded with planks."

The sick woman had relapsed into stupor, and was moaning feebly with her eyes closed.

"I will go and get him if you like," suggested Eutrope.

"But what will you do for a horse?" asked Maria. "The doctor has Charles Eugene at Honfleur."

Chapdelaine clenched his fist in wrath and swore through his teeth:—"The old rascal!"

Eutrope thought a moment before speaking. "It makes no difference. I will go just the same. If I walk to Honfleur, I shall easily find someone there who will lend me a horse and sleigh—Racicot, or perhaps old Neron."

"It is thirty-five miles from here to St. Felicien and the roads are heavy."

"I will go just the same."

He, departed forthwith, thinking as he went at a jog-trot over the snow of the grateful look that Maria had given him. The family made ready for the night, computing meanwhile these new distances ... Seventy miles there and back ... Roads deep in snow. The lamp was left burning, and till morning the voice from the bed was never hushed. Sometimes it was sharp with pain; sometimes it weakly strove for breath. Two hours after daylight the doctor and the cure of St. Henri appeared together.

"It was impossible for me to come sooner," the cure explained, "but I am here at last, and I picked up the doctor in the village." They sat at the bedside and talked in low tones. The doctor made a fresh examination, but it was the cure who told the result of it. "There is little one can say. She does not seem any worse, but this is not an ordinary sickness. It is best that I should confess her and give her absolution; then we shall both go away and be back again the day after to-morrow."

He returned to the bed, and the others went over and sat by the window. For some, minutes the two voices were beard in question and response; the one feeble and broken by suffering; the other confident, grave, scarcely lowered for the solemn interrogation. After some inaudible words a hand was raised in a gesture which instantly bowed the heads of all those in the house. The priest rose.

Before departing the doctor gave Maria a little bottle with instructions. "Only if she should suffer greatly, so that she cries out, and never more than fifteen drops at a time. And do not let her have any cold water to drink."

She saw them to the door, the bottle in her hand. Before getting into the sleigh the cure took Maria aside and spoke a few words to her. "Doctors do what they can," said he in a simple unaffected way, "but only God Himself has knowledge of disease. Pray with all your heart, and I shall say a mass for her to-morrow—a high mass with music, you understand."

All day long Maria strove to stay the hidden advances of the disorder with her prayers, and every time that she returned to the bedside it was with a half hope that a miracle had been wrought, that the sick woman would cease from her groaning, sleep for a few hours and awake restored to health. It was not so to be; the moaning ceased not, but toward evening it died away to sighing, continual and profound—nature's protest against a burden too heavy to be borne, or the slow inroad of death-dealing poison.

About midnight came Eutrope Gagnon, bringing Tit'Sebe the bone-setter. He was a little, thin, sad-faced man with very kind eyes. As always when called to a sick-bed, he wore his clothes of ceremony, of dark wellworn cloth, which he bore with the awkwardness of the peasant in Sunday attire. But the strong brown hands beyond the thread-bare sleeves moved in a way to inspire confidence. They passed over the limbs and body of Madame Chapdelaine with the most delicate care, nor did they draw from her a single cry of pain; thereafter he sat for a long time motionless beside the couch, looking at her as though awaiting guidance from a source beyond himself. But when at last he broke the silence it was to say: "Have you sent for the cure? ... He has been here. And will he return? To-morrow; that is well."

After another pause he made his frank avowal.—"There is nothing I can do for her. Something has gone wrong within, about which I know nothing; were there broken bones I could have healed them. I should only have had to feel them with my hands, and then the good God would have told me what to do and I should have cured her. But in this sickness of hers I have no skill. I might indeed put a blister on her back, and perhaps that would draw away-the blood and relieve her for a time. Or I could give her a draught made from beaver kidneys; it is useful when the kidneys are affected, as is well known. But I think that neither the blister nor the draught would work a cure."

His speech was so honest and straightforward that he made them one and all feel what manner of thing was a disorder of the human frame—the strangeness and the terror of what is passing behind the closed door, which those without can only fight clumsily as they grope in dark uncertainty.

"She will die if that be God's pleasure."

Maria broke into quiet tears; her father, not yet understanding, sat with his mouth half-open, and neither moved nor spoke. The bone-setter, this sentence given, bowed his head and held his pitiful eyes for long upon the sick woman. The browned hands that now availed him not lay upon his knees; leaning forward a little, his back bent, the gentle sad spirit seemed in silent communion with its maker—"Thou hast bestowed upon me the gift of healing bones that are broken, and I have healed them; but Thou hast denied me power over such ills as these; so must I let this poor woman die."

For the first time now the deep marks of illness upon the mother's face appeared to husband and children as more than the passing traces of suffering, as imprints from the hand of death. The hard-drawn breath rattling in her throat no longer betokened conscious pain, but was the last blind remonstrance of the body rent by nearing dissolution.

"You do not think she will die before the cure comes back?" Maria asked.

Tit'Sebe's head and hand showed that he was helpless to answer. "I cannot tell ... If your horse is able you would do well to seek him with the daylight."

Their eyes searched the window, as yet only a square of darkness, and then returned to her who lay upon the bed ... But five days ago a hearty, high-spirited woman, in full health of mind and body ... It could not be that she was to die so soon as that. ... But knowing now the sad inevitableness, every glance found a subtle change, some fresh token that this bed-ridden woman groaning in her blindness was no more the wife and mother they had known so long.

Half an hour went by; after casting his eyes toward the window Chapdelaine arose hurriedly, saying.—"I am going to put the horse in."

Tit'Sebe nodded. "That is well; you had better harness; it is near day."

"Yes. I am going to put the horse in," Chapdelaine repeated. But at the moment of his departure it swept over him suddenly that in going to bring the Blessed Sacrament he would be upon a solemn and a final errand, significant of death. The thought held him still irresolute. "I am going to put the horse in." Shifting from foot to foot, he gave a last look at his wife and at length went out.

Not long after the coming of day the wind rose, and soon was sounding hoarsely about the house. "It is from the nor'west; there will be a blow," said Tit'Sebe.

Maria looked toward the window and sighed. "Only two days ago snow fell, and now it will be raised and drift. The roads were heavy enough before; father and the cure are going to have trouble getting through."

But the bone-setter shook his head. "They may have a little difficulty on the road, but they will get here all the same. A priest who brings the Blessed Sacrament has more than the strength of a man." His mild eyes shone with the faith that knows no bounds.

"Yes, power beyond the strength of a man has a priest bearing the Blessed Sacrament. It was three years ago that they summoned me to care for a sick man on the lower Mistassini; at once I saw that I could do nothing for him, and I bade them go fetch a priest. It was night-time and there was not a man in the house, the father himself being sick and his boys quite young. And so at the last it was I that went. On the way back we had to cross the river; the ice had just gone out—it was in the spring—and as yet not a boat had been put into the water. We found a great heavy tub that had been lying in the sand all winter, and when we tried to run her down to the water she was buried so deep in the sand and was so heavy that the four of us could not so much as make her budge. Simon Martel was there, big Lalancette of St. Methode, a third I cannot call to mind, and myself; and we four, hauling and shoving to break our hearts as we thought of this poor fellow on the other side of the river who was in the way of dying like a heathen, could not stir that boat a single inch. Well, the cure came forward; he laid his hand on the gunwale—just laid his hand on the gunwale, like that—'Give one more shove,' said he; and the boat seemed to start of herself and slipped down to the water as though she were alive. The sick man received the sacrament all right, and died like a Christian just as day was breaking. Yes, a priest has strength beyond the strength of men."

Maria was still sighing, but her heart discovered a melancholy peace in the certainty and nearness of death. This unknown disorder, the dread of what might be coming, these were dark and terrifying phantoms against which one strove blindly, uncomprehendingly. But when one was face to face with death itself all to be done was plain—ordained these many centuries by laws beyond dispute. By day or night, from far or near, the cure comes bearing the Holy Sacrament-across angry rivers in the spring, over the treacherous ice, along roads choked with snow, fighting the bitter north-west wind; aided by miracles, he never fails; he fulfils his sacred office, and thenceforward there is room for neither doubt nor fear. Death is but a glorious preferment, a door that opens to the joys unspeakable of the elect.

The wind had risen and was shaking the Partitions as window-panes rattle in a sudden gust. The nor'wester came howling over the dark tree-tops, fell upon the clearing about the little wooden buildings—house, stable, barn—in' squalls and-wicked whirlwinds that sought to lift the roof and smote the walls like a battering-ram, before sweeping onward to the forest in a baffled fury. The house trembled from base to chimneytop, and swayed on its foundation in such a fashion that the inmates, feeling the onslaught, hearing the roar and shriek of the foe, were almost as sensible of the terrors of the storm as though they were exposed to it; lacking the consciousness of safe retreat that belongs to those who are sheltered by strong walls of stone.

Tit'Sebe cast his eyes about. "A good house you have here; tightly made and warm. Your father and the boys built it, did they not? Moreover, you must have a good bit of land cleared by this time ..."

So loud was the wind that they did not hear the sound of sleigh-bells, and suddenly the door flew open against the wall and the cure of St. Henri entered, bearing the Host in his raised hands. Maria and Tit'Sebe fell upon their knees; Tit'Be ran to shut the door, then also knelt. The priest put off the heavy fur coat and the cap white with snow drawn down to his eyes, and instantly approached the sick-bed as heaven's envoy bringing pardon and peace.

Ah! the assurance, the comfort of the divine promise which dispels the awful mists of death! While the priest performed the sacred rites, and his low words mingled with the sighs of the dying woman, Samuel Chapdelaine and his children were praying with bended heads; in some sort consoled, released from anxiousness and doubt, confident that a sure pact was then concluding with the Almighty for the blue skies of Paradise spangled with stars of gold as a rightful heritage.

Afterwards the cure warmed himself by the stove; then they prayed together for a time, kneeling by the bed.

Toward four o'clock the wind leaped to the south-east, and the storm ended swiftly as a broken wave sinks backward from the shore; in the strange deep silence after the tumult the mother sighed, sighed once again, and died.



CHAPTER XV

THAT WE PERISH NOT

EPHREM SURPRENANT pushed open the door and stood upon the threshold.

"I have come." He found no other words, and waited there motionless for a few seconds, tongue-tied, while his eyes travelled from Chapdelaine to Maria, from Maria to the children who sat very still and quiet by the table; then he plucked off his cap hastily, as if in amends for his forgetfulness, shut the door behind him and moved across to the bed where the dead woman lay.

They had altered its place, turning the head to the wall and the foot toward the centre of the house, so that it might be approached on both sides. Close to the wall two lighted candles stood on chairs; one of them set in a large candlestick of white metal which the visitors to the Chapdelaine home had never seen before, while for holding the other Maria had found nothing better than a glass bowl used in the summer time for blueberries and wild raspberries, on days of ceremony.

The candlestick shone, the bowl sparkled in the flames which lighted but feebly the face of the dead. The days of suffering through which she had passed, or death's final chill had given the features a strange pallor and delicacy, the refinement of a woman bred in the city. Father and children were at first amazed, and then perceived in this the tremendous consequence of her translation beyond and far above them.

Ephrem. Surprenant bent his eyes upon the face for a little, and then kneeled. The prayers he began to murmur were inaudible, but when Maria and Tit'Be came and knelt beside him he drew from a pocket his string of large heads and began to tell them in a low voice. The chaplet ended, he sat himself in silence by the table, shaking his head sadly from time to time as is seemly in the house of mourning, and because his own grief was deep and sincere.

At last he discovered speech. "It is a heavy loss. You were fortunate in your wife, Samuel; no one may question that. Truly you were fortunate in your wife."

This said, he could go no further; he sought in vain for some words of sympathy, and at the end stumbled into other talk. "The weather is quite mild this evening; we soon shall have rain. Everyone is saying that it is to be an early spring."

To the countryman, all things touching the soil which gives him bread, and the alternate seasons which lull the earth to sleep and awaken it to life, are of such moment that one may speak of them even in the presence of death with no disrespect. Their eyes turned quite naturally to the square of the little window, but the night was black and they could discern nothing.

Ephrem Surprenant began anew to praise her who was departed. "In all the parish there was not a braver-spirited woman than she, nor a cleverer housewife. How friendly too, and what a kind welcome she always gave a visitor! In the old parishes—yes! and even in the towns on the railway, not many would be found to match her. It is only the truth to say that you were rarely suited in your wife ... Soon afterwards he rose, and, leaving the house, his face was dark with sorrow.

A long silence followed, in which Samuel Chapdelaine's head nodded slowly towards his breast and it seemed as though he were falling asleep. Maria spoke quickly to him, in fear of his offending:—"Father! Do not sleep!"

"No! No!" He sat up straight on his chair and squared his shoulders but since his eyes were closing in spite of him, he stood up hastily, saying:—"Let us recite another chaplet."

Kneeling together beside the bed, they told the chaplet bead by bead. Rising from their knees they heard the rain patter against the window and on the shingles. It was the first spring rain and proclaimed their freedom: the winter ended, the soil soon to reappear, rivers once more running their joyous course, the earth again transformed like some lovely girl released at last from an evil spell by touch of magic wand. But they did not allow themselves to be glad in this house of death, nor indeed did they feel the happiness of it in the midst of their hearts' deep affliction.

Opening the window they moved back to it and hearkened to the tapping of the great drops upon the roof. Maria saw that her father's head had fallen, and that he was very still; she thought his evening drowsiness was mastering him again, but when about to waken him with a word, he it was who sighed and began to speak.

"Ephrem. Surprenant said no more than the truth. Your mother was a good woman, Maria; you will not find her like."

Maria's head answered him "Yes," but her lips were pressed close.

"Full of courage and good counsel, that she has been throughout her life; but it was chiefly in the early days after we were married, and then again when Esdras and yourself were little, that she showed herself the woman she was. The wife of a small farmer looks for no easy life, but women who take to their work as well and as cheerfully as she did in those days, Maria, are hard to find."

Maria faltered:—"I know, father; I know it well;" and she dried her eyes for her heart was melting into tears.

"When we took up our first land at Normandin we had two cows and very little pasture for them, as nearly all our lot was in standing timber and hard to win for the plough. As for me, I picked up my ax and I said to her:—'Laura, I am going to clear land for you.' And from morning till night it was chop, chop, chop, without ever coming back to the house except for dinner; and all that time she did the work of the house and the cooking, she looked after the cattle, mended the fences, cleaned the cow-shed, never rested from her toiling; and then half-a-dozen times a day she would come outside the door and stand for a minute looking at me, over there by the fringe of the woods, where I was putting my back into felling the birches and the spruce to make a patch of soil for her.

"Then in the month of July our well must needs dry up; the cows had not a drop of water to slake their thirst and they almost stopped giving milk. So when I was hard at it in the woods the mother went off to the river with a pail in either hand, and climbed the steep bluff eight or ten times together with these brimming, and her feet that slipped back in the running sand, till she had filled a barrel; and when the barrel was full she got it on a wheelbarrow, and wheeled it off herself to empty it into the big tub in the cow-pasture more than three hundred yards from the house, just below the rocks. It was not a woman's work, and I told her often enough to leave it to me, but she always spoke up briskly:—'Don't you think about that—don't think about anything—clear a farm for me.' And she would laugh to cheer me up, but I saw well enough this was too much for her, and that she was all dark under the eyes with the labour of it.

"Well, I caught up my ax and was off to the woods; and I laid into the birches so lustily that chips flew as thick as your wrist, all the time saying to myself that the wife I had was like no other, and that if the good God only kept me in health I would make her the best farm in the countryside."

The rain was ever sounding on the roof now and then a gust drove against the window great drops which ran down the panes like slow-falling tears. Yet a few hours of rain and the soil would be bare, streams would dance down every slope; a few more days and they would hear the thundering of the falls.

"When we took up other land above Mistassini," Samuel Chapdelaine continued, "it was the same thing over again; heavy work and hardship for both of us alike; but she was always full of courage and in good heart ... We were in the midst of the forest, but as there were some open spaces of rich grass among the rocks we took to raising sheep. One evening He was silent for a little, and when he began speaking again his eyes were fixed intently upon Maria, as though he wished to make very clear to her what he was about to say.

"It was in September; the time when all the great creatures of the woods become dangerous. A man from Mistassini who was coming down the river in a canoe landed near our place and spoke to us thiswise:—'Look after your sheep; the bears came and killed a heifer last week quite close to the houses.' So your mother and I went off that evening to the pasture to drive the sheep into the pen for the night so that the bears would not devour them.

"I took one side and she the other, as the sheep used to scatter among the alders. It was growing dark, and suddenly I heard Laura cry out: 'Oh, the scoundrels!' Some animals were moving in the bushes, and it was plain to see they were not sheep, because in the woods toward evening sheep are white patches. So, ax in hand, I started off running as hard as I could. Later on, when we were on the way back to the house, your mother told me all about it. She had come across a sheep lying dead, and two bears that were just going to eat it. Now it takes a pretty good man, one not easily frightened and with a gun in his hand, to face a bear in September; as for a woman empty-handed, the best thing she can do is to run for it and not a soul will blame her. But your mother snatched a stick from the ground and made straight for the bears, screaming at them:—'Our beautiful fat sheep! Be off with you, you ugly thieves, or I will do for you!' I got there at my best speed, leaping over the stumps; but by that time the bears had cleared off into the woods without showing fight, scared as could be, because she had put the fear of death into them."

Maria listened breathlessly; asking herself if it was really her mother who had done this thing-the mother whom she had always known so gentle and tender-hearted; who had never given Telesphore a little rap on the head without afterwards taking him on her knees to comfort him, adding her own tears to his, and declaring that to slap a child was something to break one's heart.

The brief spring shower was already spent; through the clouds the moon was showing her face—eager to discover what was left of the winter's snow after this earliest rain. As yet the ground was everywhere white; the night's deep silence told them that many days must pass before they would hear again the dull roaring of the cataract; but the tempered breeze whispered of consolation and promise.

Samuel Chapdelaine lapsed into silence for a while, his head bowed, his hands resting upon his knees, dreaming of the past with its toilsome years that were yet so full of brave hopes. When he took up his tale it was in a voice that halted, melancholy with self-reproach.

"At Normandin, at Mistassini and the other places we have lived I always worked hard; no one can say nay to that. Many an acre of forest have I cleared and I have built houses and barns, always saying to myself that one day we should have a comfortable farm where your mother would live as do the women in the old parishes, with fine smooth fields all about the house as far as the eye could see, a kitchen garden, handsome well-fed cattle in the farm-yard ... And, after it all, here is she dead in this half-savage spot, leagues from other houses and churches, and so near the bush that some nights one can hear the foxes bark. And it is my fault that she has died so ... My fault ... My fault." Remorse seized him; he shook his head at the pity of it, his eyes upon the floor.

"Many times it happened, after we had spent five or six years in one place and all had gone well, that we were beginning to get together a nice property—good pasturage, broad fields ready for sowing, a house lined inside with pictures from the papers ... Then people came and settled about us; we bad but to wait a little, working on quietly, and soon we should have been in the midst of a well-to-do settlement where Laura could have passed the rest of her days in happiness ... And then all of a sudden I lost heart; I grew sick and tired of my work and of the countryside; I began to hate the very faces of those who had taken up land near-by and used to come to see us, thinking that we should be pleased to have a visitor after being so long out of the way of them. I heard people saying that farther off toward the head of the Lake there was good land in the forest; that some folk from St. Gedeon spoke of settling over on that side; and forthwith I began to hunger and thirst for this spot they were talking about, that I had never seen in my life and where not a soul lived, as for the place of my birth ...

"Well, in those days, when the work was done, instead of smoking beside the stove I would go out to the door-step and sit there without moving, like a man homesick and lonely; and everything I saw in front of me—the place I had made with these two hands after so much of labour and sweat—the fields, the fences, over to the rocky knoll that shut us in—I detested them all till I seemed ready to go out of my mind at the very sight of them.

"And then your mother would come quietly up behind me. She also would look out across our place, and I knew that she was pleased with it to the bottom of her heart because it was beginning to look like the old parish where she had grown up, and where she would so gladly have spent her days. But instead of telling me that I was no better than a silly old fool for wishing to leave—as most women would have done-and finding hard things to say about my folly, she only sighed a little as she thought of the drudgery that was to begin all over again somewhere back in the woods, and kindly and softly she would say to me:—'Well, Samuel! Are we soon to be on the move once more?' When she said that I could not answer, for I was speechless with very shame at thinking of the wretched life I had given her; but I knew well enough that it would end in our moving again and pushing on to the north, deeper into the woods, and that she would be with me and take her share in this hard business of beginning anew—as cheerful and capable and good-humoured as ever, without one single word of reproach or spitefulness."

He was silent after that, and seemed to ponder long his sorrow and the things which might have been. Maria, sighing, passed a hand across her face as though she would brush away a disquieting vision; but in very truth there was nothing she wished to forget. What she heard had moved her profoundly, and she felt in a dim and troubled way that this story of a hard life so bravely lived had for her a deep and timely significance and held some lesson if only she might understand it.

"How little do we know people!" was the thought that filled her mind. Since her mother had crossed the threshold of death she seemed to wear a new aspect, not of this world; and now all the homely and familiar traits endearing her to them were being overshadowed by other virtues well-nigh heroic in their quality.

To pass her days in these lonely places when she would have dearly loved the society of other human beings and the unbroken peace of village life; to strive from dawn till nightfall, spending all her strength in a thousand heavy tasks, and yet from dawn till nightfall never losing patience nor her happy tranquillity; continually to see about her only the wilderness, the great pitiless forest, and to hold in the midst of it all an ordered way of life, the gentleness and the joyousness which are the fruits of many a century sheltered from such rudeness—was it not surely a hard thing and a worthy? And the recompense? After death, a little word of praise.

Was it worth the cost? The question scarcely framed itself with such clearness in her mind, but so her thoughts were tending. Thus to live, as hardly, as courageously, and to be so sorely missed when she departed, few women were fit for this. As for herself ...

The sky, flooded with moonlight, was of a wonderful lambency and depth; across the whole arch of heaven a band of cloud, fashioned strangely into carven shapes, defiled in solemn march. The white ground no longer spoke of chill and desolateness, for the air was soft; and by some magic of the approaching spring the snow appeared to be only a mask covering the earth's face, in nowise terrifying—a mask one knew must soon be lifted.

Maria seated by the little window fixed her unconscious eyes upon the sky and the fields stretching away whitely to the environing woods, and of a sudden it was borne to her that the question she was asking herself had just received its answer. To dwell in this land as her mother had dwelt, and, dying thus, to leave behind her a sorrowing husband and a record of the virtues of her race, she knew in her heart she was fit for that. In reckoning with herself there was no trace of vanity; rather did the response seem from without. Yes, she was able; and she was filled with wonderment as though at the shining of some unlooked-for light.

Thus she too could live; but ... it was not as yet in her heart so to do ... In a little while, this season of mourning at an end, Lorenzo Surprenant would come back from the States for the third time and would bear her away to the unknown delights of the city—away from the great forest she hated—away from that cruel land where men who go astray perish helplessly, where women endure endless torment the while ineffectual aid is sought for them over the long roads buried in snow. Why should she stay here to toil and suffer when she might escape to the lands of the south and a happier life.

The soft breeze telling of spring came against the window, bringing a confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swaying and touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl. Then the great silence reigned once more. Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping; but in this repose beside the dead was nothing unseemly or wanting in respect; chin fallen on his breast, bands lying open on his knees, he seemed to be plunged into the very depths of sorrow or striving to relinquish life that he might follow the departed a little way into the shades.

Again Maria asked herself:—"Why stay here, to toil and suffer thus? Why? ..." And when she found no answer, it befell at length that out of the silence and the night voices arose.

No miraculous voices were these; each of us bears them when he goes apart and withdraws himself far enough to escape from the petty turmoil of his daily life. But they speak more loudly and with plainer accents to the simple-hearted, to those who dwell among the great northern woods and in the empty places of the earth. While yet Maria was dreaming of the city's distant wonders the first voice brought murmuringly to her memory a hundred forgotten charms of the land she wished to flee.

The marvel of the reappearing earth in the springtime after the long months of winter ... The dreaded snow stealing away in prankish rivulets down every slope; the tree-roots first resurgent, then the mosses drenched with wet, soon the ground freed from its burden whereon one treads with delighted glances and sighs of happiness like the sick man who feels glad life returning to his veins ... Later yet, the birches, alders, aspens swelling into bud; the laurel clothing itself in rosy bloom ... The rough battle with the soil a seeming holiday to men no longer condemned to idleness; to draw the hard breath of toil from morn till eve a gracious favour ...

—The cattle, at last set free from their shed, gallop to the pasture and glut themselves with the fresh grass. All the new-born creatures—the calves, the fowls, the lambs, gambol in the sun and add daily to their stature like the hay and the barley. The poorest farmer sometimes halts in yard or field, hands in pockets, and tastes the great happiness of knowing that the sun's heat, the warm rain, the earth's unstinted alchemy—every mighty force of nature—is working as a humble slave for him ... for him.

—And then, the surnmertide; the glory of sunny noons, the heated quivering air that blurs the horizon and the outline of the forest, the flies swarming and circling in the sun's rays, and but three hundred paces from the house the rapids and the fall—white foam against dark water—the mere sight of it filling one with a delicious coolness. In its due time the harvest; the grain that gives life heaped into the barns; then autumn and soon the returning winter ... But here was the marvel of it, that the winter seemed no longer abhorrent or terrifying; it brought in its train the sweet intimacies of a house shut fast, and beyond the door, with the sameness and the soundlessness of deep-drifted snow, peace, a great peace . .

In the cities were the strange and wonderful things whereof Lorenzo Surprenant had told, with others that she pictured to herself confusedly: wide streets suffused with light, gorgeous shops, an easy fife of little toil with a round of small pleasures and distractions. Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of this restlessness, and, yearning some evening only for repose and quiet, where would one discover the tranquillity of field and wood, the soft touch of that cooler air that draws from the north-west after set of sun, the wide-spreading peacefulness that settles on the earth sinking to untroubled sleep.

"And yet they must be beautiful!" thought she, still dreaming of those vast American cities ... As though in answer, a second voice was raised.

—Over there was it not a stranger land where people of an alien race spoke of unfamiliar things in another tongue, sang other songs? Here ...

—The very names of this her country, those she listened to every day, those heard but once, came crowding to memory: a thousand names piously best owed by peasants from France on lakes, on rivers, on the settlements of the new country they were discovering and peopling as they went—lac a l'Eau-Claire—la Famine—Saint-Coeur—de-Marie—Trois-Pistoles—Sainte Rose-du-Degel—Pointe-aux-Outardes—Saint-Andre-de-l' Epouvante ... An uncle of Eutrope Gagnon's lived at Saint-Andre-de-l'Epouvante; Racicot of Honfleur spoke often of his son who was a stoker on a Gulf coaster, and every time new names were added to the old; names of fishing villages and little harbours on the St. Lawrence, scattered here and there along those shores between which the ships of the old days had boldly sailed toward an unknown land—Pointe-Mille-Vaches—les Escoumins—Notre-Dame-du-Portage—les Grandes-Bergeronnes—Gaspe.

—How sweet to hear these names where one was talking of distant acquaintance and kinsfolk, or telling of far journeys! How dear and neighbourly was the sound of them, with a heart-warming friendly ring that made one feel as he spoke them:—"Throughout all this land we are at home ... at home ..."

—Westward, beyond the borders of the Province; southward, across the line were everywhere none but English names. In time one might learn to speak them, even might they at last come familiarly to the ear; but where should one find again the happy music of the French names?

—Words of a foreign speech from every lip, on every street, in every shop ... Little girls taking hands to dance a round and singing a song one could not understand ... Here ...

Maria turned toward her father who still slept with his chin sunk on his breast, looking like a man stricken down by grief whose meditation is of death; and the look brought her swift memory of the hymns and country songs he was wont to teach his children in the evenings.

A la claire fontaine M'en allant promener ...

In those cities of the States, even if one taught the children how to sing them would they not straightway forget!

The clouds a little while ago drifting singly across a moonlit sky were now spread over the heavens in a vast filmy curtain, and the dim light passing through it was caught by the earth's pale coverlet of melting snow; between the two wan expanses the ranks of the forest darkly stretched their long battle-front.

Maria shuddered; the emotion which had glowed in her heart was dying; once again she said to herself: "And yet it is a harsh land, this land of ours ... Why should I linger here?"

Then it was that a third voice, mightier than the others, lifted itself up in the silence: the voice of Quebec—now the song of a woman, now the exhortation of a priest. It came to her with the sound of a church bell, with the majesty of an organ's tones, like a plaintive love-song, like the long high call of woodsmen in the forest. For verily there was in it all that makes the soul of the Province: the loved solemnities of the ancestral faith; the lilt of that old speech guarded with jealous care; the grandeur and the barbaric strength of this new land where an ancient race has again found its youth.

Thus spake the voice.—"Three hundred years ago we came, and we have remained ... They who led us hither might return among us without knowing shame or sorrow, for if it be true that we have little learned, most surely nothing is forgot.

"We bore oversea our prayers and our songs; they are ever the same. We carried in our bosoms the hearts of the men of our fatherland, brave and merry, easily moved to pity as to laughter, of all human hearts the most human; nor have they changed. We traced the boundaries of a new continent, from Gaspe to Montreal, from St. Jean d'Iberville to Ungava, saying as we did it.—Within these limits all we brought with us, our faith, our tongue, our virtues, our very weaknesses are henceforth hallowed things which no hand may touch, which shall endure to the end.

"Strangers have surrounded us whom it is our pleasure to call foreigners; they have taken into their hands most of the rule, they have gathered to themselves much of the wealth; but in this land of Quebec nothing has changed. Nor shall anything change, for we are the pledge of it. Concerning ourselves and our destiny but one duty have we clearly understood: that we should hold fast—should endure. And we have held fast, so that, it may be, many centuries hence the world will look upon us and say:—These people are of a race that knows not how to perish ... We are a testimony.

"For this is it that we must abide in that Province where our fathers dwelt, living as they have lived, so to obey the unwritten command that once shaped itself in their hearts, that passed to ours, which we in turn must hand on to descendants innumerable:—In this land of Quebec naught shall die and naught shall suffer change ..."

The veil of gray cloud which hid-the whole heavens had become heavier and more louring, and suddenly the rain began afresh, bringing yet a little nearer that joyous hour when the earth would lie bare and the rivers be freed. Samuel Chapdelaine slept profoundly, his head sunk upon his breast, an old man yielding at last to the long fatigues of his lifetime of toil. Above the candlestick of metal and the glass bowl the candle flames wavered under gentle breaths from the window, and shadows flitting across the face of the dead woman made her lips seem to be moving in prayer or softly telling secrets.

Maria Chapdelaine awaked from her dream to the thought:—"So I shall stay—shall. stay here after all!" For the voices had spoken commandingly and she knew she could not choose but obey. It was only then that the recollection of other duties came, after she had submitted, and a sigh had passed her lips. Alma Rose was still a child; her mother dead, there must be a woman in the house. But in truth it was the voices which had told her the way.

The rain was pattering on the roof, and nature, rejoicing that winter was past, sent soft little wandering airs through the casement as though she were sighing in content. Throughout the hours of the night Maria moved not; with hands folded in her lap, patient of spirit and without bitterness, yet dreaming a little wistfully of the far-off wonders her eyes would never behold and of the land wherein she was bidden to live with its store of sorrowful memories; of the living flame which her heart had known awhile and lost forever, and the deep snowy woods whence too daring youths shall no more return.



CHAPTER XVI

PLEDGED TO THE RACE

ESDRAS and Da'Be came down from the shanties in May, and their grieving brought freshly to the household the pain of bereavement. But the naked earth was lying ready for the seed, and mourning must not delay the season's labours.

Eutrope Gagnon was there one evening to pay them a visit, and a glance he stole at Maria's face perhaps told him of a change in her, for when, they were alone he put the question:—"Maria, do you still think of going away?"

Her eyes were lowered, as with a motion of her head she signified "No."

"Then ... I know well that this is no time to speak of such things, but if only you could say there would be a chance for me one day, then could I bear the waiting better."

And Maria answered him:—"Yes ... If you wish I will marry you as you asked me to ... In the spring—the spring after this spring now—when the men come back from the woods for the sowing."

THE END