Madame de Courament excels at Bridge.
Hers is a clever hand,
Coloured with age and wrinkled;
But beautiful and tapering too,
Quite in accord with this old, stately room,
With crystal chandeliers,
And flowers and the warm tapestry of books.
Silent the cards fall.
Down the long avenue a dog howls at the moon,
A far, frost-sharpened sound.
The wind swirls up a little storm of snow
That blows against the casement.
A skilled opponent, Madame makes few mistakes
Like that a moment since,
When suddenly the dog howled--and we lost a trick.
She has a flashing wit,
Dinners at Rideau Hall are incomplete without her.
As someone said the other day,
"These elderly, elaborate folk
Are like a passing pageantry,
Gorgeous and of another day."
Silent the cards fall.
Again the far-off dog howls at the moon.
An hour later, "Chateau Laurier" she told the chauffeur.
And, alert and gay,
Wrapped in her sables,
She was motoring me the long white way to town
And gossiping of little this and that.
But just as we were nearing city lights
She said, "I saw you noticed that dog's bark.
It sounded almost like a wolf's;
It took me back to the Red River days.
Oh, it was fifty years ago, my dear;
I was as young as you ... It seems like yesterday.
Hardships! I loved it all!
Even the wolves, baying far out of sight,
Failed to disturb our rest
When we were safe at home.
The Indians were quite friendly--
And the eternal glamour of the snow!
And yet to-night, just when I heard that sound,
Sharpened by frost,
I felt an old pain strike me,
The knife-like thrust, before a child is born.
I was alone that night.
My husband had been called to Edmonton,
My Indian maid had let her family in
Looking for whiskey.
I dared not call to her.
For hours the Indians danced and sang and yelled.
I watched them from my icy-cold bedroom
Through great cracks in the floor.
Before they slept they sat crouched by the fire,
As I crouched up above in fright and pain.
And all night long I heard the wolves;
They kept a sort of savage company
With my own stifled cries.
To-night, my mind went back a moment strangely--
I always thought he had the sweetest face
Of any of my seven ... But then he was the first!"
She raised her glittering hand
And found the speaking tube, to modify her chauffeur's pace.
"And that, my dear, was fifty years ago," she said.
"The prairie was a very different place--
I never thought, then, I should come to Bridge!"