It was a busy winter and a joyous one for me; a short and happy one for
Jamie, so he said. He was correcting proof for the first venture and
collecting data for the second; trying his hand at a chapter here and
there; alternately despairing, rejoicing, appealing to Mr. Ewart or me
for criticism--something we were unable to give him, as from disjointed
portions of his work we did not know the trend of his ideas; protesting
one day that he could write nothing worth reading, then on the next
proclaiming to the household, including Cale, his temporary triumph of
mind over material. We enjoyed his moods, all of them, whether of
despair or enthusiasm, guying him in the one and encouraging him in the
other.
The cataloguing took me well into the first week in January. Mr. Ewart
was often in the den with me of an afternoon, and I was glad to take
advantage of his knowledge of the language in translation, and the use
of obsolete words. His own time seemed over full for those first few
months. On Tuesday and Saturday mornings, he was always in the office
to see the farmers on the estate and talk with them about his plans for
future development. On other week-days, when weather permitted, he and
Cale were much in the woods.
I found that Mr. Ewart did not intend it should be all work and no play
for me. Twice in December he drove me in the pung--no sleigh had as
yet been purchased, although a piano filled a corner of the
living-room; once, early in the morning, before the sun had a chance to
warm and partly melt the ice-crystals that encased every branch, every
twig and twiglet. On that morning, we drove without speech for miles
behind the swiftly trotting French coach horses; the beauty about us
was indescribable, and silence was the best appreciation. We sped
through the woods'-road, a prismatic arcade of interlaced crystals;
along the river bank beside the vast frozen expanse of the St.
Lawrence, gleaming and glittering with blinding reflected radiance. It
was so brilliant, that against it the trees by the roadside, laden as
they were with ice, stood out black and gaunt. Then into
Richelieu-en-Bas, where every roof, every fence, every post and rivet,
looked to be pure rock crystal. Window-frames, eaves, doors, the old
pump in the marketplace were behung with icicles. The world about us
that morning was another world than the work-a-day one to which I was
accustomed. I had seen this special condition of ice in northern New
England, but never in such beauty and grandeur.
We drove home before the ice began to soften. Afterwards, I sat for an
hour at my open window, listening to the musical tinkle and metallic
clink of the falling ice from the trees in the woods across the creek.
With the reason given that Jamie and I needed exercise in the open
every day,--our occupations being of the sedentary kind, as he
said,--Mr. Ewart bade us fare forth with him to learn the art of
snowshoeing. He was past master in it and a good teacher. By the
middle of January we were well on our feet and independent of any help
from him.
Oh, the joy of the fleet tracks over the unbroken white! Oh, the
coursing of the blood, the deep, deep breaths of what Mr. Ewart called
the "iced wine" air! Oh, the blessed hunger that was satisfied with
wholesome food after the invigorating exercise! Oh, the refreshing
sleep, with the temperature at zero and the still air touching my
cheeks under the fur robe across my bed! And with it all the sense of
security, the sense of peace, of rest!
In this atmosphere, the remembrance of the weary years in the great
city grew dim. I rejoiced at it.
I was beginning, also, to make myself easily understood with the
French. Their language I loved; their literature I cultivated. It was
a delight to be able to visit the tiny homes in the village, whither I
was sent on one errand or another by Mr. Ewart, so getting extra rides
in the pung and longer hours in the bracing air. It was an education
to make the acquaintance of various families, learn the names of every
member of the households, their interests and occupations. They were
such tiny homes, made so high of stoop to avoid the rising spring flood
that the great river is apt to send far and wide and deep into the
village streets, covering the noble park and flooding first floors,
respecting neither twin-towered church nor manor house; so low in the
walls, few-windowed, and those double and packed with moss.
And such expansive souls as I found in the tiny homes: the hostess of
the inn, Mrs. Macleod's dressmaker who lived beneath the shadow of the
great twin-towered church; the furrier and his wife on the
market-square; from them I bought my warm coat; ancient Mere
Guillardeau and her old daughter, weaver of rag carpets, and some of
her friends who followed the same calling and showed me, during the
short winter days, how to weave them on their rough looms.
Of the three or four English families, with the exception of the
postmistress, I knew nothing, or knew of them only through Mr. Ewart
and Jamie. The "Seignior" and "Seignioress", so-called although
English, were in Montreal for the winter. The old General and his wife
were housed through infirmities. Now and then I saw a bevy of
red-cheeked English girls, driving over from their home-school in Upper
Richelieu for a jolly lark on their half-holiday. Of other English I
heard nothing; there were none in Richelieu-en-Bas.
As the season advanced and I was firm on my winter feet, I made many a
snow-shoe call on the farmers' families who lived on the old seigniory
lands. It was good to hear them tell their hopes and anticipations;
for Mr. Ewart's plan to do away with the old seigniorial rents and
leases, and make of each farmer, at present paying rent, a freeholder,
was welcomed, with almost passionate enthusiasm, in this community,
where, generally, change is looked at askance. It was not long before
I discovered that, on entering these homes, I found myself anticipating
some word of praise, some expression of loyalty and devotion to the man
who was to give them a new outlook on life. I listened with willing
ears and led them, many times of my own accord, to speak of him.
In the long winter evenings I read thoroughly into the history of
French Canada. It took me far afield, into English as well; into
biography and the work of pioneers. It showed me the flaming
enthusiasm of the fanatic, the faith of the apostle, the courage of
high adventure, the chivalry of noble lives, the loyalty and devotion
of the humble. It showed me, also, the cruelty of man to man, the
divergence of race, the warring of nations, the battlefields, the
conquests, the heavy hand of the conqueror, the red man's friendship,
the red man's enmity, fire, sword, torture. But in and through and
above all, it opened to me the high heart of the Canadian, the
undaunted faith in established principles, and the patriotism that is a
veritable passion.
"O Canada, my Canada!" an old French Canadian once exclaimed to me as
we sat by the box-stove in his little "cabin". "There is no land like
it; no land where they live at peace as we do here; no land where they
are so content by their own fireside." And he spoke the truth.
I began to understand, through my intercourse with our neighbors on the
estate and the village people, those words of Drummond--Drummond who
has shown us the hearts of Canada's children:
"Our fathers came to win us
This land beyond recall--
And the same blood flows within us
Of Briton, Celt and Gaul--
Keep alive each glowing ember
Of our sireland, but remember
Our country is Canadian
Whatever may befall.
"Then line up and try us,
Whoever would deny us
The freedom of our birthright,
And they 'll find us like a wall--
For we are Canadian, Canadian forever,
Canadian forever--Canadian over all!"
One night in February, just before the Doctor's mid-winter visit, a
friend of the dead poet passed a night beneath the roof of the old
manor house as Mr. Ewart's guest. After the yellow chintz curtains
were close drawn, so shutting out the wintry night, and while the
backlog was glowing, he read to us from those poems that at the
author's will exact tears or smiles from their hearers. After the
reading of "The Rossignol", Jamie took his seat at the piano and played
softly that exquisite old French Canadian air "_Sur la montagne_".
Mr. Ewart rose and, taking his stand beside him, sang the words of the
poem which have been set to this music.
"Jus' as de sun is tryin'
Climb on de summer sky
Two leetle birds come flyin'
Over de mountain high--
Over de mountain, over de mountain,
Hear dem call,
Hear dem call--poor leetle rossignol!"
They recalled to me that twin song of Bjoernson's which, despite its
joyous note of anticipation, holds the same pathos of unsatisfied
longing.
The last note had scarcely been struck when Jamie broke into the jolly
accompaniment to
"For he was a grand Seigneur, my dear,
He was a grand Seigneur."
And, listening so to poems and music and the talk of these men of fine
mind and high aspirations, to their hopes for Canada as a whole, to
their expression of pride in her marvellous growth and their faith in
her future, I said to myself:
"Am I the girl, or rather woman now, who a few years ago made her way
up from the narrow thoroughfares about Barclay Street to her attic room
in 'old Chelsea'--up through the traffic-congested streets of New York,
in the dark of the late winter afternoon, the melting snow falling in
black drops and streams from the elevated above her; the avenues
running brown snow-water; the rails gleaming; the steaming horses
plashing through slush; the fog making haloes about the dimmed
arc-lights; the hurrying, pressing tide of humanity surging this way
and that and nearly taking her off her feet at the crossings; the whole
city reeking with a warm-chill mist, and the shrieking, grinding,
grating, whistling, roaring polyglot din of the metropolis half
deafening her?"
Thinking of this as I stared into the fire, listening to the good talk
on many subjects, something--was it the frost of homelessness?--melted
in my heart. The feelings and emotions that had been benumbed through
the icy chill of circumstance, thawed within me. The tears, usually
unready, filled my eyes. I bent my head that the others might not see,
but they fell faster and faster. And with every one that plashed on my
hands, as they lay folded in my lap, I felt the unbinding from my life
of one hard year after another, until the woman who rose to bring in
the porridge, in order to cover her emotion, was one who rose free of
all thwarting circumstance. I had come into my own--a woman's own.
But I failed to read the third sign.