"Oh! Canada, mon pays, terre adorée,
Sol si cher à mes amours"
French Canadian Folk Song
It was a bright August afternoon. The sun was shining down with that
intense brilliancy which, I think, is only to be seen in Canada, or
in the sunny climes of those countries bordering on the Mediterranean
sea. The little village of Rimouski seemed this afternoon all asleep,
for the heat made every one drowsy, and the old French Canadian women
at their doorsteps were nodding sleepily over their spinning-wheels.
Spinning-wheels, improbable as it sounds to nineteenth century ears, are
not yet out of date in this part of the country, and many a table-cloth
and fine linen sheet, spun by the women of the district, find their way
to the shops of Quebec and Montreal. A quaint picturesque little village
this; the houses are scattered and at uneven distances from each other.
Nearly all of them have large verandahs projecting far out on the
roadside, which is covered with uneven planks,--pitfalls in many places
to the benighted traveller. There are not many houses of importance here,
but there is a fine convent, where the young women of the district are
sent to be educated. There is also a school for boys, which adjoins the
house of M. le curé. The shops--picture it, ye dwellers in Montreal or
Quebec!--are three in number, and are carried on in the co-operative
style. Everything may be bought in them, from a box of matches or a pound
of tobacco, to the fine black silk to serve for a Sunday gown for Madame
De la Garde, the lady of the Seigneury.
Then, of course, there is the church, for in what village, however small,
in Lower Canada is there not a church? This particular one is not very
interesting. It is very large, and has the inevitable tin roof common
to most Canadian churches, a glaringly ugly object to behold on a hot
afternoon, taking away by its obtrusiveness the restful feeling one
naturally associates with a sacred edifice. This on the outside; inside,
fortunately, all is different, and more like the Gothic architecture of
Northern France than one would imagine from the exterior.
Next comes the railway station, a large ugly building painted a neutral
brown. Here everything was very quiet this afternoon, for except at the
seasons of the pilgrimages to the church of the Good Saint Anne of Father
Point, five miles lower down the line, there is as a rule little traffic
going on.
Between Rimouski and Father Point (called by the French Pointe à Père) is
a long dusty road, very flat, and, except where the gulf comes in to the
coast in frequent little bays, very uninteresting.
There are few houses on this road, and these are far apart.
At the doorstep of one of these cottages--a well-kept, clean and neat
little dwelling--sat, this August afternoon, an old woman, spinning
busily. She, although some of her neighbors might be, was not asleep. Oh,
no! Seldom was Madame McAllister caught napping, save at orthodox hours,
between ten p.m. and six a.m. In spite of her seventy-six years, was she
hale and hearty, bright and active. She was a brisk little body, and had
a most intelligent face. Her eyes were dark and bright with animation,
and her coloring was brown and healthy, unlike that of her neighbors of
the same age, for, as a rule, French Canadian women of the lower classes
lead very hard-working lives, often marrying at sixteen or seventeen, and
have scarcely any youth, entering, as they do, on the trials and duties
of womanhood before an English girl of the same age has left the
schoolroom.
But, as I said before, Madame McAllister was hale and hearty. This
circumstance was due most probably to the admixture of Scottish blood
in her veins, for her grandfather, Peter Fraser, had been one of the
stanchest adherents of the young Pretender. Disappointed in his hopes,
he had come out to Quebec to help in the wars against the French, and,
after his regiment had been disbanded near Rimouski, he remained in the
district. His colonel, a certain Ivan McAllister, persuaded many of his
men to remain in that part of the country with him, cherishing the
quixotic hope that in this new world he might form a kingdom over which
his idol, Prince Chairlie, should reign.
However, after struggling for some years to make a stronghold for his
rather erratic chieftain, he at length lost heart and gave up his idea.
Most of his men remained in the district, and intermarried with the
French families already settled there.
Poor Colonel McAllister never got over the blow to his hopes. For the
sake of the bonnie prince, so unworthy of his true devotion, he had been
estranged from his family, and had spent his small fortune in coming to
Canada. Here he was, perforce, obliged to remain.
After a while he settled down as a farmer, and managed to make enough to
keep body and soul together. Perhaps one of the most sensible things he
ever did was to marry Eugenie Laforge, the daughter of the mayor of
Rimouski. She was a pretty girl, and had a nice little fortune, for money
went further in those days than it does now; and thus the McAllisters
were fairly well to do.
Their life for ten years was a happy, uneventful one, most of it spent by
the colonel in writing an account of Prince Charlie's adventures. This
unfortunate young man, I need hardly remind the reader, had long ago, in
the dissipations of various European courts, forgotten that there still
existed such a person as Ivan McAllister.
True, the colonel did give certain spare hours to the education of his
son, but the Prince was ever first in his mind. One morning,--strangely
enough, the anniversary of the battle of Culloden--Ivan McAllister died
quietly after a few hours' illness. Even at the last he was true to his
idol, for his parting words were not addressed to wife or child, but it
seemed that memory, bridging over the gulf of years, brought him back to
the old days, and there was something very pathetic in his dying words:
"Oh, my Prince, my bonnie Prince, I shall see you soon!"
He was buried, according to a wish he had expressed some years before,
in the churchyard of Rimouski, and at the head of his grave was placed
a roughly hewn cross, bearing on it this inscription: "Here lies Ivan
McAllister, Colonel, of the 200th Regiment of Highlanders, second son
of The McAllister of Dunmorton Castle Fife, Scotland. R. I. P."
In his later days Ivan McAllister had, under the influence of the curé of
Rimouski, become a devout Roman Catholic.
His son inherited his little savings, and lived on at the farm, situated
between Father Point and Rimouski, and the McAllisters continued there
from father to son up to the year 1877, when my story opens.
Madame McAllister, sitting at the doorstep this summer afternoon was the
widow of a Robert McAllister, who had died two years ago, leaving one
son, a promising young man of three-and-twenty. Just now she was waiting
for the home-coming of her son Noël, who had been absent on a long
fishing expedition to the north shore of the St. Lawrence.
Suddenly the old lady lifted her head, for her quick ear heard the sound
of an approaching footstep. She rose hurriedly, as her son drew near, and
cried out in her pretty French voice: "Oh, Noël, my son, is that you?--is
it indeed you? How long you have been away! and, oh! how I have missed
you! Noël, my son, it is good to see you again."
"Yes, my mother, it is I. We landed at Father Point early this morning.
We have had such good sport, and very hard work. I am hungry, though, my
mother, for the walk up to Rimouski gave me an appetite."
"Yes, my son, you must be. For three days, at this hour I have had a
meal prepared for you, and yet you did not come. I was beginning to get
anxious, though the Gulf is like glass, and the curé said there were no
signs of a storm. To-night also your supper awaits you, so come in."
The old lady led the way into the house, which was small, but exquisitely
neat and well kept. The first apartment, which opened from a tiny hall,
served as sitting and dining room. Like most other French Canadian
houses, Madame McAllister's was carpeted in all the rooms with a
rag carpet of three colors--red, white and blue. This carpeting is
extensively woven by the good nuns at Rimouski Convent, and is pretty
and effective, besides having the advantage of being cheap.
On the walls of Madame McAllister's sitting room hung the inevitable
pictures of the Good St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, and
of Pope Pius IX. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a house in the
district which did not possess one or more of these engravings.
Through a half-opened door could be seen a glimpse of madame's bedroom--a
dainty interior. The wooden floor was snowy white, with here and there a
bright-colored mat spread on it; the brown roughly-hewn bedstead was
covered with a quilt of palest pink and blue patchwork, the patient
result of the old lady's years of industrious toil.
Madame McAllister busied herself getting supper ready, all the while
talking to her son.
"Well, Noël, my son, what did you get this time? I trust a great
quantity."
"Yes, my mother, we did very well. The first day we captured a fine
porpoise, and after that six large seals."
"Ah! that was good," replied madame.
Both mother and son spoke French in the Lower Canadian _patois_, rather
puzzling to English ears trained to understand only Parisian French. For,
not only is the pronunciation different, but several Scotch words are
used by the inhabitants of this district, and one puzzles hopelessly over
their derivation, until remembering the origin of the people.
"Where did you leave your boat?" questioned madame.
"At Father Point light-house with Jean Gourdon. He is to drive up with the
pilot to-morrow, and by that time will have skinned the seals."
"Surely the steamer is late this week?"
"Yes, but she will pass Father Point early to-morrow morning; she was
telegraphed from Matane, where there has been a dense fog."
"I am glad, Noël, you had such good luck this time."
"Yes, the porpoise will keep us in oil all winter, and as for the
seal-skins, I can sell them at Quebec for a good round price. So far so
good. But this is the first stroke of luck this year. It has been a poor
season. Have you any news, my mother?"
"No, nothing much, my son. There is to be a great pilgrimage to the
shrine of the Good St. Anne next week. Hundreds of lame, blind and sick
folk are coming from all parts of the country--from Quebec, and even from
Gaspé. Oh, my son, it is wonderful what the Good St. Anne does for her
children."
"Yes, yes," said Noël, impatiently, "but I want to hear the news of the
people here. How is Marie Gourdon?"
"Marie Gourdon? Oh! much as usual--always singing or playing the organ
at the church, and M. Bois-le-Duc encourages her. I call it nonsense
myself," and the old lady shrugged her shoulders deprecatingly.
"But, my mother, she sings like an angel."
"Yes, yes, Noël; so Eugène Lacroix says too."
"Eugène Lacroix!" said Noël, starting; "I thought he was in Montreal."
"He has been here for the last week. He came down for a holiday, and is
always with Marie Gourdon."
"Yes, yes, they are old friends. I do not care much for Eugène Lacroix.
He seems to me a dreamy, impractical sort of person, and only thinks of
his books and those absurd pictures he is always making."
"You think them absurd?" replied madame.
"M. Bois-le-Duc told me he had great talent. You know that, for a time
the curé sent him to Laval at his own expense, and now talks of sending
him to Paris."
"To Paris! and for what purpose?"
"Oh! the curé thinks he will make a great painter. He is always painting
during his holidays. I'm sure I can't see the good of it."
"Well, my mother, M. Bois-le-Duc is a very clever man, and whatever he
does is good, but I, for one, have no very high opinion of Eugène
Lacroix."
While this conversation had been going on, Noël McAllister did ample
justice to the good fare his mother set before him. Madame McAllister was
nothing if not practical, and cooking was one of her strong points. Her
_bouillon_, a sort of hotch-potch, was so good that a hungry Esau might
well have bartered his birthright for it. Her pancakes and _galettes_
were marvels of culinary skill.
Noël, having appeased his appetite, sharpened by the salt sea breezes,
and after enjoying a pipe, said, "Now, my mother, I think I shall go out
for a walk and hear the news. I shall not be late."
"Very well, my son. Come back soon," said the old lady, and, as she heard
the door close on Noël, she smiled grimly to herself and muttered,
"The news, eh? The news! That is to say in plain words, Marie Gourdon."