WILD LAND
After a few chilly days, June suddenly brought veritable spring
weather. A blazing sun warmed field and forest, the lingering
patches of snow vanished even in the deep shade of the woods; the
Peribonka rose and rose between its rocky banks until the alders and
the roots of the nearer spruces were drowned; in the roads the mud
was incredibly deep. The Canadian soil rid itself of the last traces
of winter with a semblance of mad haste, as though in dread of
another winter already on the way.
Esdras and Da'Bé returned from the shanties where they had worked
all the winter. Esdras was the eldest of the family, a tall fellow
with a huge frame, his face bronzed, his hair black; the low
forehead and prominent chin gave him a Neronian profile,
domineering, not without a suggestion of brutality; but he spoke
softly, measuring his words, and was endlessly patient. In face
alone had he anything of the tyrant; it was as though the long
rigours of the climate and the fine sense and good humour of the
race had refined his heart to a simplicity and kindliness that his
formidable aspect seemed to deny.
Da'Bé, also tall, was less heavily built and more lively and merry.
He was like his father.
The married couple had given their first children, Esdras and Maria,
fine, high-sounding, sonorous names; but they had apparently wearied
of these solemnities, for the next two children never heard their
real names pronounced; always had they been called by the
affectionate diminutives of childhood, Da'Bé and Tit'Bé. With the
last pair, however, there had been a return to the earlier
ceremonious manner--Telesphore ... Alma Rose. "When the boys get
back we are going to make land," the father had promised. And, with
the help of Edwige Legare, their hired man, they set about the task.
In the Province of Quebec there is much uncertainty in the spelling
and the use of names. A scattered people in a huge half-wild
country, unlettered for the most part and with no one to turn to for
counsel but the priests, is apt to pay attention only to the sound
of names, caring nothing about their appearance when written or the
sex to which they pertain. Pronunciation has naturally varied in one
mouth or another, in this family or that, and when a formal occasion
calls for writing, each takes leave to spell his baptismal name in
his own way, without a passing thought that there may be a canonical
form. Borrowings from other languages have added to the
uncertainties of orthography and gender. Individuals sign
indifferently, Denise, Denije or Deneije; Conrad or Courade; men
bear such names as Hermenegilde, Aglae, Edwige.
Edwige Legare had worked for the Chapdelaines these eleven summers.
That is to say, for wages of twenty dollars a month he was in
harness each day from four in the morning till nine at night at any
and every job that called for doing, bringing to it a sort of
frenzied and inexhaustible enthusiasm; for he was one of those men
incapable by his nature of working save at the full pitch of
strength and energy, in a series of berserk rages. Short and broad,
his eyes were the brightest blue--a thing rare in Quebec--at once
piercing and guileless, set in a visage the colour of clay that
always showed cruel traces of the razor, topped by hair of nearly
the same shade. With a pride in his appearance that was hard to
justify he shaved himself two or three times a week, always in the
evening, before the bit of looking-glass that hung over the pump and
by the feeble light of the little lamp--driving the steel through his
stiff beard with groans that showed what it cost him in labour and
anguish. Clad in shirt and trousers of brownish homespun, wearing
huge dusty boots, he was from head to heel of a piece with the soil,
nor was there aught in his face to redeem the impression of rustic
uncouthness.
Chapdelaine, his three sons and man, proceeded then to "make land."
The forest still pressed hard upon the buildings they had put up a
few years earlier: the little square house, the barn of planks that
gaped apart, the stable built of blackened logs and chinked with
rags and earth. Between the scanty fields of their clearing and the
darkly encircling woods lay a broad stretch which the ax had but
half-heartedly attacked. A few living trees had been cut for timber,
and the dead ones, sawn and split, fed the great stove for a whole
winter; but the place was a rough tangle of stumps and interlacing
roots, of fallen trees too far rotted to burn, of others dead but
still erect amid the alder scrub.
Thither the five men made their way one morning and set to work at
once, without a word, for every man's task had been settled
beforehand.
The father and Da'Bé took their stand face to face on either side of
a tree, and their axes, helved with birch, began to swing in rhythm.
At first each hewed a deep notch, chopping steadily at the same spot
for some seconds, then the ax rose swiftly and fell obliquely on the
trunk a foot higher up; at every stroke a great chip flew, thick as
the hand, splitting away with the grain. When the cuts were nearly
meeting, one stopped and the other slowed down, leaving his ax in
the wood for a moment at every blow; the mere strip, by some miracle
still holding the tree erect, yielded at last, the trunk began to
lean and the two axmen stepped back a pace and watched it fall,
shouting at the same instant a warning of the danger.
It was then the turn of Edwige Legare and Esdras; when the tree was
not too heavy each took an end, clasping their strong hands beneath
the trunk, and then raised themselves--backs straining, arms cracking
under the stress--and carried it to the nearest heap with short
unsteady steps, getting over the fallen timber with stumbling
effort. When the burden seemed too heavy, Tit'Bé came forward leading
Charles Eugene dragging a tug-bar with a strong chain; this was
passed round the trunk and fastened, the horse bent his back, and
with the muscles of his hindquarters standing out, hauled away the
tree which scraped along the stumps and crushed the young alders to
the ground.
At noon Maria came out to the door-step and gave a long call to tell
them that dinner was ready. Slowly they straightened up among the
stumps, wiping away with the backs of their hands the drops of sweat
that ran into their eyes, and made their way to the house.
Already the pea-soup smoked in the plates. The five men set
themselves at table without haste, as if sensation were somewhat
dulled by the heavy work; but as they caught their breath a great
hunger awoke, and soon they began to eat with keen appetite. The two
women waited upon them, filling the empty plates, carrying about the
great dish of pork and boiled potatoes, pouring out the hot tea.
When the meat had vanished the diners filled their saucers with
molasses in which they soaked large pieces of bread; hunger was
quickly appeased, because they had eaten fast and without a word,
and then plates were pushed back and chairs tilted with sighs of
satisfaction, while hands were thrust into pockets for their pipes,
and the pigs' bladders bulging with tobacco.
Edwige Legare, seating himself on the door-step, proclaimed two or
three times:--"I have dined well ... I have dined well ...
with the air of a judge who renders an impartial decision; after
which he leaned against the post and let the smoke of his pipe and
the gaze of his small light-coloured eyes pursue the same
purposeless wanderings. The elder Chapdelaine sank deeper and deeper
into his chair, and ended by falling asleep; the others smoked and
chatted about their work.
"If there is anything," said the mother, "which could reconcile me
to living so far away in the woods, it is seeing my men-folk make a
nice bit of land--a nice bit of land that was all trees and stumps
and roots, which one beholds in a fortnight as bare as the back of
your hand, ready for the plough; surely nothing in the world can be
more pleasing or better worth doing." The rest gave assent with
nods, and were silent for a while, admiring the picture. Soon
however Chapdelaine awoke, refreshed by his sleep and ready for
work; then all arose and went out together.
The place where they had worked in the morning was yet full of
stumps and overgrown with alders. They set themselves to cutting and
uprooting the alders, gathering a sheaf of branches in the hand and
severing them with the ax, or sometimes digging the earth away about
the roots and tearing up the whole bush together. The alders
disposed of, there remained the stumps.
Legare and Esdras attacked the smaller ones with no weapons but
their axes and stout wooden prizes. They first cut the roots
spreading on the surface, then drove a lever well home, and, chests
against the bar, threw all their weight upon it. When their efforts
could not break the hundred ties binding the tree to the soil Legare
continued to bear heavily that he might raise the stump a little,
and while he groaned and grunted under the strain Esdras hewed away
furiously level with the ground, severing one by one the remaining
roots.
A little distance away the other three men handled the
stumping-machine with the aid of Charles Eugene. The pyramidal
scaffolding was put in place above a large stump and lowered, the
chains which were then attached to the root passed over a pulley,
and the horse at the other end started away quickly, flinging
himself against the traces and showering earth with his hoofs. A
short and desperate charge, a mad leap often arrested after a few
feet as by the stroke of a giant fist; then the heavy steel blades
would swing up anew, gleaming in the sun, and fall with a dull sound
upon the stubborn wood, while the horse took breath for a moment,
awaiting with excited eye the word that would launch him forward
again. And afterwards there was still the labour of hauling or
rolling the big stumps to the pile--at fresh effort of back, of
soil-stained hands with swollen veins, and stiffened arms that
seemed grotesquely striving with the heavy trunk and the huge
twisted roots.
The sun dipped toward the horizon, disappeared; the sky took on
softer hues above the forest's dark edge, and the hour of supper
brought to the house five men of the colour of the soil.
While waiting upon them Madame Chapdelaine asked a hundred questions
about the day's work, and when the vision arose before her of this
patch of land they had cleared, superbly bare, lying ready for the
plough, her spirit was possessed with something of a mystic's
rapture.
With hands upon her hips, refusing to seat herself at table, she
extolled the beauty of the world as it existed for her: not the
beauty wherein human beings have no hand, which the townsman makes
such an ado about with his unreal ecstasies--mountains, lofty and
bare, wild seas--but the quiet unaffected loveliness of the level
champaign, finding its charm in the regularity of the long furrow
and the sweetly-flowing stream--the naked champaign courting with
willing abandon the fervent embraces of the sun.
She sang the great deeds of the four Chapdelaines and Edwige Legare,
their struggle against the savagery of nature, their triumph of the
day. She awarded praises and displayed her own proper pride, albeit
the five men smoked their wooden or clay pipes in silence,
motionless as images after their long task; images of earthy hue,
hollow-eyed with fatigue.
"The stumps are hard to get out," at length said the elder
Chapdelaine, "the roots have not rotted in the earth so much as I
should have imagined. I calculate that we shall not be through for
three weeks." He glanced questioningly at Legare who gravely
confirmed him.
"Three weeks ... Yes, confound it! That is what I think too."
They fell silent again, patient and determined, like men who face a
long war.
The Canadian spring had but known a few weeks of life when, by
calendar, the summer was already come; it seemed as if the local
weather god had incontinently pushed the season forward with august
finger to bring it again into accord with more favoured lands to the
south. For torrid heat fell suddenly upon them, heat well-nigh as
unmeasured as was the winter's cold. The tops of the spruces and
cypresses, forgotten by the wind, were utterly still, and above the
frowning outline stretched a sky bare of cloud which likewise seemed
fixed and motionless. From dawn till nightfall a merciless sun
calcined the ground.
The five men worked on unceasingly, while from day to day the
clearing extended its borders by a little; deep wounds in the
uncovered soil showed the richness of it.
Maria went forth one morning to carry them water. The father and
Tit'Bé were cutting alders, Da'Bé and Esdras piled the cut trees.
Edwige Legare was attacking a stump by himself; a hand against the
trunk, he had grasped a root with the other as one seizes the leg of
some gigantic adversary in a struggle, and he was fighting the
combined forces of wood and earth like a man furious at the
resistance of an enemy. Suddenly the stump yielded and lay upon the
ground; he passed a hand over his forehead and sat down upon a root,
running with sweat, overcome by the exertion. When Maria came near
him with her pail half full of water, the others having drunk, he
was still seated, breathing deeply and saying in a bewildered
way:--"I am done for ... Ah! I am done for." But he pulled himself
together on seeing her, and roared out:--"Cold water! Perdition! Give
me cold water."
Seizing the bucket he drank half its contents and poured the rest
over his head and neck; still dripping, he threw himself afresh upon
the vanquished stump and began to roll it toward a pile as one
carries off a prize.
Maria stayed for a few moments looking at the work of the men and
the progress they had made, each day more evident, then hied her
back to the house swinging the empty bucket, happy to feel herself
alive and well under the bright sun, dreaming of all the joys that
were to be hers, nor could be long delayed if only she were earnest
and patient enough in her prayers. Even at a distance the voices of
the men came to her across the surface of the ground baked by the
heat; Esdras, his hands beneath a young jack pine, was saying in his
quiet tones:--"Gently ... together now!"
Legare was wrestling with some new inert foe, and swearing in his
half-stifled way:--"Perdition! I'll make you stir, so I will." His
gasps were nearly as audible as the words. Taking breath for a
second he rushed once more into the fray, arms straining, wrenching
with his great back. And yet again his voice was raised in oaths and
lamentations:--"I tell you that I'll have you ... Oh you rascal!
Isn't it hot? . . I'm pretty nearly finished ..." His complaints
ripened into one mighty cry:--"Boss! We are going to kill
ourselves making land."
Old Chapdelaine's voice was husky but still cheerful as he answered:
"Tough! Edwige, tough! The pea-soup will soon be ready."
And in truth it was not long before Maria, once more on the
door-step, shaping her hands to carry the sound, sent forth the
ringing call to dinner.
Toward evening a breeze arose and a delicious coolness fell upon the
earth like a pardon. But the sky remained cloudless.
"If the fine weather lasts," said mother Chapdelaine, "the
blueberries will be ripe for the feast of Ste. Anne."