HOME IN THE CLEARING
It was supper-time before Maria had answered all the questions, told
of her journey down to the last and littlest item, and given not
only the news of St. Prime and Peribonka but everything else she had
been able to gather up upon the road.
Tit'Bé, seated facing his sister, smoked pipe after pipe without
taking his eyes off her for a single moment, fearful of missing some
highly important disclosure that she had hitherto held back. Little
Alma Rose stood with an arm about her neck; Telesphore was listening
too, as he mended his dog's harness with bits of string. Madame
Chapdelaine stirred the fire in the big cast-iron stove, came and
went, brought from the cupboard plates and dishes, the loaf of bread
and pitcher of milk, tilted the great molasses jar over a glass jug.
Not seldom she stopped to ask Maria something, or to catch what she
was saying, and stood for a few moments dreaming, hands on her hips,
as the villages spoken of rose before her in memory--
"... And so the church is finished--a beautiful stone church, with
pictures on the walls and coloured glass in the windows ... How
splendid that must be! Johnny Bouchard built a new barn last year,
and it is a little Perron, daughter of Abelard Perron of St. Jerome,
who teaches school ... Eight years since I was at St. Prime, just
to think of it! A fine parish indeed, that would have suited me
nicely; good level land as far as you can see, no rock cropping up
and no bush, everywhere square-cornered fields with handsome
straight fences and heavy soil. Only two hours' drive to the railway
... Perhaps it is wicked of me to say so; but all my married life
I have felt sorry that your father's taste was for moving, and
pushing on and on into the woods, and not for living on a farm in
one of the old parishes."
Through the little square window she threw a melancholy glance over
the scanty cleared fields behind the house, the barn built of
ill-joined planks that showed marks of fire, and the land beyond
still covered with stumps and encompassed by the forest, whence any
return of hay or grain could only be looked for at the end of long
and patient waiting.
"O look," said Alma Rose, "here is Chien come for his share of
petting." The dog laid his long head with the sad eyes upon her
knee; uttering little friendly words, Maria bent and caressed him.
"He has been lonely without you like the rest of us," came from Alma
Rose. "Every morning he used to look at your bed to see if you were
not back." She called him to her. "Come, Chien; come and let me pet
you too."
Chien went obediently from one to the other, half closing his eyes
at each pat. Maria looked about her to see if some change, unlikely
though that might be, had taken place while she was away.
The great three-decked stove stood in the centre of the house; the
sheet-iron stove-pipe, after mounting for some feet, turned at a
right angle and was carried through the house to the outside, so
that none of the precious warmth should be lost. In a corner was the
large wooden cupboard; close by, the table; a bench against the
wall; on the other side of the door the sink and the pump. A
partition beginning at the opposite wall seemed designed to divide
the house in two, but it stopped before reaching the stove and did
not begin again beyond it, in such fashion that these divisions of
the only room were each enclosed on three sides and looked like a
stage setting--that conventional type of scene where the audience are
invited to imagine that two distinct apartments exist although they
look into both at once.
In one of these compartments the father and mother had their bed;
Maria and Alma Rose in the other. A steep stairway ascended from a
corner to the loft where the boys slept in the summer-time; with the
coming of winter they moved their bed down and enjoyed the warmth of
the stove with the rest of the family.
Hanging upon the wall were the illustrated calendars of shopkeepers
in Roberval and Chicoutimi; a picture of the infant Jesus in his
mother's arms--a rosy-faced Jesus with great blue eyes, holding out
his chubby hands; a representation of some unidentified saint
looking rapturously heavenward; the first page of the Christmas
number of a Quebec newspaper, filled with stars big as moons and
angels flying with folded wings.
"Were you a good girl while I was away, Alma Rose?"
It was the mother who replied:--"Alma Rose was not too naughty;
but Telesphore has been a perfect torment to me. It is not so much
that he does what is wrong; but the things he says! One might
suppose that the boy had not all his wits."
Telesphore busied himself with the dog-harness and made believe not
to hear. Young Telesphore's depravities supplied this household with
its only domestic tragedy. To satisfy her own mind and give him a
proper conviction of besetting sin his mother had fashioned for
herself a most involved kind of polytheism, had peopled the world
with evil spirits and good who influenced him alternately to err or
to repent. The boy had come to regard himself as a mere battleground
where devils who were very sly, and angels of excellent purpose but
little experience, waged endless unequal warfare.
Gloomily would he mutter before the empty preserve jar:--"It was
the Demon of gluttony who tempted me."
Returning from some escapade with torn and muddy clothes he would
anticipate reproach with his explanation:--"The Demon of
disobedience lured me into that. Beyond doubt it was he." With the
same breath asserting indignation at being so misled, and protesting
the blamelessness of his intentions.
"But he must not be allowed to come back, eh, mother! He must not be
allowed to come back, this bad spirit. I will take father's gun and
I will shoot him ..."
"You cannot shoot devils with a gun," objected his mother. "But when
you feel the temptation coming, seize your rosary and say your
prayers."
Telesphore did not dare to gainsay this; but he shook his head
doubtfully. The gun seemed to him both the surer and the more
amusing way, and he was accustomed to picture to himself a
tremendous duel, a lingering slaughter from which he would emerge
without spot or blemish, forever set free from the wiles of the Evil
One.
Samuel Chapdelaine came into the house and supper was served. The
sign of the cross around the table; lips moving in a silent
Benedicite, which Telesphore and Alma Rose repeated aloud; again the
sign of the cross; the noise of chairs and bench drawn in; spoons
clattering on plates. To Maria it was as though since her absence
she was giving attention for the first time in her life to these
sounds and movements; that they possessed a different significance
from movements and sounds elsewhere, and invested with some peculiar
quality of sweetness and peace all that happened in that house far
off in the woods.
Supper was nearly at an end when a footstep sounded without; Chien
pricked up his ears but gave no growl.
"A visitor," announced mother Chapdelaine, "Eutrope Gagnon has come
over to see us."
It was an easy guess, as Eutrope Gagnon was their only neighbour.
The year before he had taken up land two miles away, with his
brother; the brother had gone to the shanties for the winter, and he
was left alone in the cabin they had built of charred logs. He
appeared on the threshold, lantern in hand.
"Greeting to each and all," was the salutation as he pulled off his
woollen cap. "A fine night, and there is still a crust on the snow;
as the walking was good I thought that I would drop in this evening
to find out if you were back."
Although he came to see Maria, as all knew, it was to the father of
the house that he directed his remarks, partly through shyness,
partly out of deference to the manners of the country. He took the
chair that was offered him.
"The weather is mild; if it misses turning wet it will be by very
little. One can feel that the spring rains are not far off ..."
It was the orthodox beginning to one of those talks among country
folk which are like an interminable song, full of repetitions, each
speaker agreeing with the words last uttered and adding more to the
same effect. And naturally the theme was the Canadian's never-ending
plaint; his protest, falling short of actual revolt, against the
heavy burden of the long winter. "The beasts have been in the stable
since the end of October and the barn is just about empty," said
mother Chapdelaine. "Unless spring comes soon I don't know what we
are going to do."
"Three weeks at least before they can be turned out to pasture."
"A horse, three cows, a pig and the sheep, without speaking of the
fowls; it takes something to feed them!" this from Tit'Bé with an
air of grown-up wisdom.
He smoked and talked with the men now by virtue of his fourteen
years, his broad shoulders and his knowledge of husbandry. Eight
years ago he had begun to care for the stock, and to replenish the
store of wood for the house with the aid of his little sled.
Somewhat later he had learned to call Heulle! Heulle! very loudly
behind the thin-flanked cows, and Hue! Dia! Harrie! when the horses
were ploughing; to manage a hay-fork and to build a rail-fence.
These two years he had taken turn beside his father with ax and
scythe, driven the big wood-sleigh over the hard snow, sown and
reaped on his own responsibility; and thus it was that no one
disputed his right freely to express an opinion and to smoke
incessantly the strong leaf-tobacco. His face was still smooth as a
child's, with immature features and guileless eyes, and one not
knowing him would probably have been surprised to hear him speak
with all the deliberation of an older and experienced man, and to
see him everlastingly charging his wooden pipe; but in the Province
of Quebec the boys are looked upon as men when they undertake men's
work, and as to their precocity in smoking there is always the
excellent excuse that it affords some protection in summer against
the attacking swarms of black-flies, mosquitos and sand-flies.
"How nice it would be to live in a country where there is hardly any
winter, and where the earth makes provision for man and beast. Up
here man himself, by dint of work, must care for his animals and his
land. If we did not have Esdras and Da'Bé earning good wages in the
woods how could we get along?"
"But the soil is rich in these parts," said Eutrope Gagnon.
"The soil is good but one must battle for it with the forest; and to
live at all you must watch every copper, labour from morning to
night, and do everything yourself because there is no one near to
lend a hand."
Mother Chapdelaine ended with a sigh. Her thoughts were ever fondly
revisiting the older parishes where the land has long been cleared
and cultivated, and where the houses are neighbourly--her lost
paradise.
Her husband clenched his fists and shook his head with an obstinate
gesture. "Only you wait a few months ... When the boys are back
from the woods we shall set to work, they two, Tit'Bé, and I, and
presently we shall have our land cleared. With four good men ax in
hand and not afraid of work things will go quickly, even in the hard
timber. Two years from now there will be grain harvested, and
pasturage that will support a good herd of cattle. I tell you that
we are going to make land."
"Make land!" Rude phrase of the country, summing up in two words all
the heartbreaking labour that transforms the incult woods, barren of
sustenance, to smiling fields, ploughed and sown. Samuel
Chapdelaine's eyes flamed with enthusiasm and determination as he
spoke.
For this was the passion of his life; the passion of a man whose
soul was in the clearing, not the tilling of the earth. Five times
since boyhood had he taken up wild land, built a house, a stable and
a barn, wrested from the unbroken forest a comfortable farm; and
five times he had sold out to begin it all again farther north,
suddenly losing interest; energy and ambition vanishing once the
first rough work was done, when neighbours appeared and the
countryside began to be opened up and inhabited. Some there were who
entered into his feelings; others praised the courage but thought
little of the wisdom, and such were fond of saying that if good
sense had led him to stay in one place he and his would now be at
their ease.
"At their ease ..." O dread God of the Scriptures, worshipped by
these countryfolk of Quebec without a quibble or a doubt, who hast
condemned man to earn his bread in the sweat of his face, canst Thou
for a moment smooth the awful frown from Thy forehead when Thou art
told that certain of these Thy creatures have escaped the doom, and
live at their ease?
"At their ease..." Truly to know what it means one must have
toiled bitterly from dawn to dark with back and hands and feet, and
the children of the soil are those who have best attained the
knowledge. It means the burden lifted; the heavy burden of labour
and of care. It means leave to rest, the which, even if it be
unused, is a new mercy every moment. To the old it means so much of
the pride of life as no one would deny them, the late revelation of
unknown delights, an hour of idleness, a distant journey, a dainty
or a purchase indulged in without anxious thought, the hundred and
one things desirable that a competence assures.
So constituted is the heart of man that most of those who have paid
the ransom and won liberty--ease--have in the winning of it created
their own incapacity for enjoying the conquest, and toil on till
death; it is the others, the ill-endowed or the unlucky, who have
been unable to overcome fortune and escape their slavery, to whom
the state of ease has all those charms of the inaccessible.
It may be that the Chapdelaines so were thinking, and each in his
own fashion; the father with the unconquerable optimism of a man who
knows himself strong and believes himself wise; the mother with a
gentle resignation; the others, the younger ones, in a less definite
way and without bitterness, seeing before them a long life in which
they could not miss attaining happiness.
Maria stole an occasional glance at Eutrope Gagnon, but she quickly
turned away, for she always surprised his humbly worshipping eyes.
For a year she had become used to his frequent visits, nor felt
displeasure when every Sunday evening added to the family circle
this brown face that was continually so patient and good-humoured;
but the short absence of a month had not left things the same, for
she had brought home to the fireside an undefined feeling that a
page of her life was turned, in which he would have no share.
The ordinary subjects of conversation exhausted, they played cards:
quatre-sept and boeuf; then Eutrope looked at his big silver watch
and said that it was time to be going. His lantern lit, the
good-byes said, he halted on the threshold for a moment to observe
the night.
"It is raining!" he exclaimed. His hosts made toward the door to see
for themselves; the rain had in truth begun, a spring rain with
great drops that fell heavily, under which the snow was already
softening and melting. "The sou'east has taken hold," announced the
elder Chapdelaine. "Now we can say that the winter is practically
over."
Everyone had his own way of expressing relief and delight; but it
was Maria who stood longest by the door, hearkening to the sweet
patter of the rain, watching the indistinct movement of cloud in the
dark sky above the darker mass of the forest, breathing the mild air
that came from the south.
"Spring is not far ... Spring is not far ..."
In her heart she felt that never since the earth began was there a
springtime like this springtime to-be.