Maria Chapdelaine by Louis Hemon (page 2)

to tend the fire and change the position of the pans as the baking required.

Too small an oven had been built five years before, and ever since then the family did not escape a weekly discussion about the new oven it was imperative to construct, which unquestionably should have been put in hand without delay; but on each trip to the-village, by one piece of bad luck and another, someone forgot the necessary cement; and so it happened that the oven bad to be filled two or even three times to make weekly provision for the nine mouths of the household.

Maria invariably took charge of the first baking; invariably too, when the oven was ready for the second batch of bread and the evening well advanced, her mother would say considerately:–“You can go to bed, Maria, I will look after the second baking.” And Maria would reply never a word, knowing full well that the mother would presently stretch herself on the bed for a little nap and not awake till morning. She then would revive the smudge that smouldered every evening in the damaged tin pail, install the second batch of bread, and seat herself upon the door-step, her chin resting in her hands, upheld through the long hours of the night by her inexhaustible patience.

Twenty paces from the house the clay oven with its sheltering roof of boards loomed dark, but the door of the fireplace fitted badly and one red gleam escaped through the chink; the dusky border of the forest stole a little closer in the night. Maria sat very still, delighting in the quiet and the coolness, while a thousand vague dreams circled about her like a flock of wheeling birds.

There was a time when this night-watch passed in drowsiness, as she resignedly awaited the moment when the finished task would bring her sleep; but since the coming of Francois Paradis the long weekly vigil was very sweet to her, for she could think of him and of herself with nothing to distract her dear imaginings. Simple they were, these thoughts of hers, and never did they travel far afield. In the springtime he will come back; this return of his, the joy of seeing him again, the words he will say when they find themselves once more alone, the first touch of hands and lips. Not easy was it for Maria to make a picture for herself of how these things were to come about.

Yet she essayed. First she repeated his full name two or three times, formally, as others spoke it: Paradis, from St. Michel de Mistassini … Francois Paradis … Then suddenly, with sweet intimacy,–Francois!

The evocation fails not. He stands before her tall and strong, bold of eye, his face bronzed with sun and snow-glare. He is by her side, rejoicing at the sight of her, rejoicing that he has kept his faith, has lived the whole year discreetly, without drinking or swearing. There are no blueberries yet to gather-it is only springtime-yet some good reason they find for rambling off to the woods; he walks beside her without word or joining of hands, through the massed laurel flaming into blossom, and naught beyond does either need to flush the cheek, to quicken the beating of the heart.

Now they are seated upon a fallen tree, and thus he speaks: “Were you lonely without me, Maria?” Most surely it is the first question he will put to her; but she is able to carry the dream no further for the sudden pain stabbing her heart. Ah! dear God! how long will she have been lonely for him before that moment comes! A summer to be lived through, an autumn, and all the endless winter! She sighs, but the steadfast patience of the race sustains her, and her thoughts turn upon herself and what the future may be holding.

When she was at St. Prime, one of her cousins who was about to be wedded spoke often to her of marriage. A young man from the village and another from Normandin had both courted her; for long months spending the Sunday evenings together at the house.

“I was fond of them both,”–thus she declared to Maria. “And I really think I liked Zotique best; but he went off to the drive on the St. Maurice, and he wasn’t to be back till summer; then Romeo asked me and I said, ‘Yes.’ I like him very well, too.”

Maria made no answer, but even then her heart told her that all marriages are not like that; now she is very sure. The love of Francois Paradis for her, her love for him, is a thing apart-a thing holy and inevitable–for she was unable to imagine that between them it should have befallen otherwise; so must this love give warmth and unfading colour to every day of the dullest life. Always had she dim consciousness of such a presence-moving the spirit like the solemn joy of chanted masses, the intoxication of a sunny windy day, the happiness that some unlooked-for good fortune brings, the certain promise of abundant harvest …

In the stillness of the night the roar of the fall sounds loud and near; the north-west wind sways the tops of spruce and fir with a sweet cool sighing; again and again, farther away and yet farther, an owl is hooting; the chill that ushers in the dawn is still remote. And Maria, in perfect contentment, rests upon the step, watching the ruddy beam from her fire-flickering, disappearing, quickened again to birth.

She seems to remember someone long since whispering in her ear that the world and life were cheerless and gray. The daily round, brightened only by a few unsatisfying, fleeting pleasures; the slow passage of unchanging years; the encounter with some young man, like other young men, whose patient and hopeful courting ends by whining affection; a marriage then, and afterwards a vista of days under another roof, but scarce different from those that went before. So does one live, the voice had told her. Naught very dreadful in the prospect, and, even were it so, what possible but submission; yet all level, dreary and chill as an autumn field.

It is not true! Alone there in the darkness Maria shakes her head, a smile upon her lips, and knows how far from true it is. When she thinks of Paradis, his look, his bearing, of what they are and will be to one another, be and she, something within her bosom has strange power to burn with the touch of fire, and yet to make her shiver. All the strong youth of her, the long-suffering of her sooth-fast heart find place in it; in the upspringing of hope and of longing, this vision of her approaching miracle of happiness.

Below the oven the red gleam quivers and fails.

“The bread must be ready!” she murmurs to herself. But she cannot bring herself at once to rise, loth as she is to end the fair dream that seems only beginning.

CHAPTER VII

A MEAGER REAPING

SEPTEMBER arrived, and the dryness so welcome for the hay-making persisted till it became a disaster. According to the Chapdelaines, never had the country been visited with such a drought as this, and every day a fresh motive was suggested for the divine displeasure.

Oats and wheat took on a sickly colour ere attaining their growth; a merciless sun withered the grass and the clover aftermath, and all day long the famished cows stood lowing with their heads over the fences. They had to be watched continually, for even the meager standing crop was a sore temptation, and never a day went by but one of them broke through the rails in the attempt to appease her hunger among the grain.

Then, of a sudden one evening, as though weary of a constancy so unusual, the wind shifted and in the morning came the rain. It fell off and on for a week, and when it ceased and the wind hauled again to the north-west, autumn had come.

The autumn! And it seemed as though spring were here but yesterday. The grain was yet unripe, though yellowed by the drought; nothing save the hay was in barn; the other crops could draw nutriment from the soil only while the too brief summer warmed it, and already autumn was here, the forerunner of relentless winter, of the frosts, and soon the snows …

Between the wet days there was still fine bright weather, hot toward noon, when one might fancy that all was as it had been: the harvest still unreaped, the changeless setting of spruces and firs, and ever the same sunsets of gray and opal, opal and gold, and skies of misty blue above the same dark woodland. But in the mornings the grass was sometimes white with rime, and swiftly followed the earliest dry frosts which killed and blackened the tops of the potatoes.

Then, for the first time, a film of ice appeared upon the drinking-trough; melted by the afternoon sun it was there a few days later, and yet a third time in the same week. Frequent changes of wind brought an alternation of mild rainy days and frosty mornings; but every time the wind came afresh from the north-west it was a little colder, a little more remindful of the icy winter blasts. Everywhere is autumn a melancholy season, charged with regrets for that which is departing, with shrinking from what is to come; but under the Canadian skies it is sadder and more moving than elsewhere, as though one were bewailing the death of a mortal summoned untimely by the gods before he has lived out his span.

Through the increasing cold, the early frosts, the threats of snow, they held back their hands and put off the reaping from day to day, encouraging the meager grain to steal a little nourishment from the earth’s failing veins and the spiritless sun. At length, harvest they must, for October approached. About the time when the leaves of birches and aspens were turning, the oats and the wheat were cut and carried to the barn under a cloudless sky, but without rejoicing.

The yield of grain was poor enough, yet the hay-crop had been excellent, so that the year as a whole gave occasion neither for excess of joy nor sorrow. However, it was long before the Chapdelaines, in evening talk, ceased deploring the unheard-of August droughts, the unprecedented September frosts, which betrayed their hopes. Against the miserly shortness of the summer and the harshness of a climate that shows no mercy they did not rebel, were even without a touch of bitterness; but they did not give up contrasting the season with that other year of wonders which fond imagination made the standard of their comparisons; and thus was ever on their lips the countryman’s perpetual lament, so reasonable to the ear, but which recurs unfailingly: “Had it only been an ordinary year!”

CHAPTER VIII

ENTRENCHED AGAINST WINTER

ONE October morning Maria’s first vision on arising was of countless snow-flakes sifting lazily from the skies. The ground was covered, the trees white; verily it seemed that autumn was over, when in other lands it had scarce begun.

But Edwige Legare thus pronounced sentence: “After the first snowfall there is yet a month before winter sets in. The old folks always so declared, and I believe it myself.” He was right; for in two days a rain carried off the snow and the dark soil again lay bare. Still the warning was heeded, and they set about preparations; the yearly defences against the snow that may not be trifled with, and the piercing cold.

Esdras and Da’Be protected the foundation of their dwelling with earth and sand, making an embankment at the foot of the walls; the other men, armed with hammer and nails, went round the outside of the house, nailing up, closing chinks, remedying as best they could the year’s wear and tear. Within, the women forced rags into the crevices, pasted upon the wainscotting at the north-west side old newspapers brought from the village and carefully preserved, tested with their hands in every corner for draughts.

These things accomplished, the next task was to lay in the winter’s store of wood. Beyond the fields, at the border of the forest plenty of dead trees yet were standing. Esdras and Legare took ax in hand and felled for three days; the trunks were piled, awaiting another fall of snow when they could be loaded on the big wood-sleigh.

All through October, frosty and rainy days came alternately, and meanwhile the woods were putting on a dress of unearthly loveliness. Five hundred paces from the Chapdelaine house the bank of the Peribonka fell steeply to the rapid water and the huge blocks of stone above the fall, and across the river the opposite bank rose in the fashion of a rocky amphitheatre, mounting to loftier heights-an amphitheatre trending in a vast curve to the northward. Of the birches, aspens, alders and wild cherries scattered upon the slope, October made splashes of many-tinted red and gold. Throughout these weeks the ruddy brown of mosses, the changeless green of fir and cypress, were no more than a background, a setting only for the ravishing colours of those leaves born with the spring, that perish with the autumn. The wonder of their dying spread over the hills and unrolled itself, an endless riband following the river, ever as beautiful, as rich in shades brilliant and soft, as enrapturing, when they pawed into the remoteness of far northern regions and were unseen by human eye.

But ere long there sweeps from out the cold north a mighty wind like a final sentence of death, the cruel ending to a reprieve, and soon the poor leaves, brown, red and golden, shaken too unkindly, strow the ground; the snow covers them, and the white expanse has only for adornment the sombre green of trees that alter not their garb-triumphing now, as do those women inspired with bitter wisdom who barter their right to beauty for life everlasting.

In November Esdras, Da’Be and Edwige Legare went off again to the shanties. The father and Tit’Be harnessed Charles Eugene to the wood-sleigh, and laboured at hauling in the trees that had been cut, and piling them near the house; that done, the two men took the double-handed saw and sawed, sawed, sawed from morning till night; it was then the turn of the axes, and the logs were split as their size required. Nothing remained but to cord the split wood in the shed beside the house, where it was sheltered from the snow; the huge piles mingling the resinous cypress which gives a quick hot flame, spruce and red birch, burning steadily and longer, close-grained white birch with its marble-like surface, slower yet to be consumed and leaving red embers in the morning after a long winter’s night.

The moment for laying in wood is also that of the slaughtering. After entrenching against cold comes the defence against hunger. The quarters of pork went into the brine-tub; from a beam in the shed there hung the side of a fat heifer-the other half sold to people in Honfleur-which the cold would keep fresh till spring; sacks of flour were piled in a corner of the house, and Tit’Be, provided with a spool of brass wire, set himself to making nooses for hares.

After the bustle of summer they relapsed into easy-going ways, for the summer is painfully short and one must:-not lose a single hour of those precious weeks when it is possible to work on the land, whereas the winter drags slowly and gives all too much time for the tasks it brings.

The house became the centre of the universe; in truth the only spot where life could be sustained, and more than ever the great cast-iron stove was the soul of it. Every little while some member of the family fetched a couple of logs from under the staircase; cypress in the morning, spruce throughout the day, in the evening birch, pushing them in upon the live coals. Whenever the heat failed, mother Chapdelaine might be heard saying anxiously.-” Don’t let the fire out, children.” Whereupon Maria, Tit’Be or Telesphore would open the little door, glance in and hasten to the pile of wood.

In the mornings Tit’Be jumped out of bed long before daylight to see if the great sticks of birch had done their duty and burned all night; should, unluckily, the fire be out he lost no time in rekindling it with birch-bark and cypress branches, placed heavier pieces on the mounting flame, and ran back to snuggle under the brown woollen blankets and patchwork quilt till the comforting warmth once more filled the house.

Outside, the neighbouring forest, and even the fields won from it, were an alien unfriendly world, upon which they looked wonderingly through the little square windows. And sometimes this world was strangely beautiful in its frozen immobility, with a sky of flawless blue and a brilliant sun that sparkled on the snow; but the immaculateness of the blue and the white alike was pitiless and gave hint of the murderous cold.

Days there were when the weather was tempered and the snow fell straight from the clouds, concealing all; the ground and the low growth was covered little by little, the dark line of the woods was hidden behind the curtain of serried flakes. Then in the morning the sky was clear again, but the fierce northwest wind swayed the heavens. Powdery snow, whipped from the ground, drove across the burnt lands and the clearings in blinding squalls, and heaped itself behind whatever broke the force of the gale. To the south-east of the house it built an enormous cone, and between house and stable raised a drift five feet high through which the shovel had to carve a path; but to windward the ground was bare, scoured by the persistent blast.

On such days as these the men scarcely left the house except to care for the beasts, and came back on the run, their faces rasped with the cold and shining-wet with snow-crystals melted by the heat of the house. Chapdelaine would pluck the icicles from his moustache, slowly draw off his sheepskin-lined coat and settle himself by the stove with a satisfied sigh. “The pump is not frozen?” he asks. “Is there plenty of wood in the house?”

Assured that the frail wooden fortress is provided with water, wood and food, he gives himself up to the indolences of winter quarters, smoking pipes innumerable while the women-folk are busy with the evening meal. The cold snaps the nails in the plank walls with reports like pistol-shots; the stove crammed with birch roars lustily; the howling of the wind without is like the cries of a besieging host.

“It must be a bad day in the woods!” thinks Maria to herself; and then perceives that she has spoken aloud.

“In the woods they are better off than we are here,” answers her father. “Up there where the trees stand close together one does not feel the wind. You can be sure that Esdras and Da’Be are all right.”

“Yes?”

But it was not of Esdras and Da’Be that she had just been thinking.

CHAPTER IX

ONE THOUSAND AVES

SINCE the coming of winter they had often talked at the Chapdelaines about the holidays, and now these were drawing near.

“I am wondering whether we shall have any callers on New Year’s Day,” said Madame Chapdelaine one evening. She went over the list of all relatives and friends able to make the venture. “Azalma Larouche does not live so far away, but she–she is not very energetic. The people at St. Prime would not me to take the journey. Possibly Wilfrid or Ferdinand might drive from St. Gedeon if the ice on the lake were in good condition.” A sigh disclosed that she still was dreaming of the coming and going in the old parishes at the time of the New Year, the family dinners, the unlooked-for visits of kindred arriving by sleigh from the next village, buried under rugs and furs, behind a horse whom coat was white with frost.

Maria’s thoughts were turning in another direction. “If the roads are as bad as they were last year,” said she, “we shall not be able to attend the midnight mass. And yet I should so much have liked it this time, and father promised …”

Through the little window they looked on the gray sky, and found little to cheer them. To go to midnight mass is the natural and strong desire of every French-Canadian peasant, even of those living farthest from the settlements. What do they not face to accomplish it I Arctic cold, the woods at night, obliterated roads, great distances do but add to the impressiveness and the mystery. This anniversary of the birth of Jesus is more to them than a mere fixture in the calendar with rites appropriate; it signifies the renewed promise of salvation, an occasion of deep rejoicing, and those gathered in the wooden church are imbued with sincerest fervour, are pervaded with a deep sense of the supernatural. This year, more than ever, Maria yearned to attend the-mass after many weeks of remoteness from houses and from churches; the favours she would fain demand seemed more likely to be granted were she able to prefer them before the altar, aided in heavenward flight by the wings of music.

But toward the middle of December much snow fell, dry and fine as dust, and three days before Christmas the north-west wind arose and made an end of the roads. On the morrow of the storm Chapdelaine harnessed Charles Eugene to the heavy sleigh and departed with Tit’Be; they took shovels to clear the way or lay out another route. The two men returned by noon, worn out, white with snow, asserting that there would be no breaking through for several days. The disappointment must be borne; Maria sighed, but the idea came to her that there might be other means of attaining the divine goodwill.

“Is it true, mother,” she asked as evening was falling, “that if you repeat a thousand Aves on the day before Christmas you are always granted the thing you seek?”

“Quite true,” her mother reverently answered. “One desiring a favour who says her thousand Aves properly before midnight on Christmas Eve, very seldom fails to receive what she asks.”

On Christmas Eve the weather was cold but windless. The two men went out betimes in another effort to beat down the road, with no great hope of success; but long before they left, and indeed long before daylight, Maria began to recite her Aves. Awakening very early, she took her rosary from beneath the pillow and swiftly repeated the prayer, passing from the last word to the first without stopping, and counting, bead by bead.

The others were still asleep; but Chien left his place at the stove when he saw that she moved, and came to sit beside the bed, gravely reposing his head upon the coverings. Maria’s glance wandered over the long white muzzle resting upon the brown wool, the liquid eyes filled with the dumb creature’s pathetic trustfulness, the drooping glossy ears; while she ceased not to murmur the sacred words.-” Hail Mary, full of grace …”

Soon Tit’Be jumped from bed to put wood upon the fire; an impulse of shyness caused Maria to turn away and hide her rosary under the coverlet as she continued to pray. The stove roared; Chien went back to his usual spot, and for another half-hour nothing was stirring in the house save the fingers of Maria numbering the boxwood beads, and her lips as they moved rapidly in the task she had laid upon herself.

Then must she arise, for the day was dawning; make the porridge and the pancakes while the men went to the stable to care for the animals, wait upon them when they returned, wash the dishes, sweep the house. What time she attended to these things, Maria was ever raising a little higher toward heaven the monument of her Aves; but the rosary had to be laid aside and it was hard to keep a true reckoning. As the morning advanced however, no urgent duty calling, she was able to sit by the window and steadily pursue her undertaking.

Noon; and already three hundred Aves. Her anxiety lessens, for now she feels almost sure of finishing in time. It comes to her mind that fasting would give a further title to heavenly consideration, and might, with reason, turn hopes into certainties; wherefore she ate but little, foregoing all those things she liked the best.

Throughout the afternoon she must knit the woollen garment designed for her father as a New Year’s gift, and though the faithful repetition ceased not, the work of her fingers was something of a distraction and a delay; then came the long preparations for supper, and finally Tit’Be brought his mittens to be mended, so all this time the Ayes made slow and impeded progress, like some devout procession brought to halt by secular interruption.

But when it was evening and the tasks of the day were done, she could resume her seat by the window where the feeble light of the lamp did not invade the darkness, look forth upon the fields hidden beneath their icy cloak, take the rosary once more in her hands and throw her heart into the prayer. She was happy that so many Ayes were left to be recited, since labour and difficulty could only add merit to her endeavour; even did she wish to humble herself further and give force to her prayer by some posture that would bring uneasiness and pain, by some chastening of the flesh.

Her father and Tit’Be smoked, their feet against the stove; her mother sewed new ties to old moose-hide moccasins. Outside, the moon had risen, flooding the chill whiteness with colder light, and the heavens were of a marvellous purity and depth, sown with stars that shone like that wondrous star of old.

“Blessed art Thou amongst women…”

Through repeating the short prayer oftentimes and quickly she grew confused and sometimes stopped, her dazed mind lost among the well-known words. It is only for a moment; sighing she closes her eyes, and the phrase which rises at once to her memory and her lips ceases to be mechanical, detaches itself, again stands forth in all its hallowed meaning.

“Blessed art Thou amongst women …”

At length a heaviness weighs upon her, and the holy words are spoken with greater effort and slowly; yet the beads pass through her fingers in endless succession, and each one launches the offering of an Ave to that sky where Mary the compassionate is surely seated on her throne, hearkening to the music of prayers that ever rise, and brooding over the memory of that blest night.

“The Lord is with Thee …”

The fence-rails were very black upon the white expanse palely lighted by the moon; trunks of birch trees standing against the dark background of forest were like the skeletons of living creatures smitten with the cold and stricken by death; but the glacial night was awesome rather than affrighting.

“With the roads as they are we will not be the only ones who have to stay at home this evening,” said Madame Chapdelaine. “But is there anything more lovely than the midnight mass at Saint Coeur de Marie, with Yvonne Boilly playing the harmonium, and Pacifique Simard who sings the Latin so beautifully!” She was very careful to say nothing that might seem reproachful or complaining on such a night as this, but in spite of herself the words and tone had a sad ring of loneliness and remoteness. Her husband noticed it, and, himself under the influence of the day, was quick to take the blame.

“It is true enough, Laura, that you would have had a happier life with some other man than me, who lived on a comfortable farm, near the settlements.”

“No, Samuel; what the good God does is always right. I grumble … Of course I grumble. Is there anyone who hasn’t something to grumble about? But we have never been unhappy, we two; we have managed to live without faring over-badly; the boys are fine boys, hard-working, who bring us nearly all they earn; Maria too is a good girl…”

Affected by these memories of the past, they also were thinking of the candles already lit, of the hymns soon to be raised in honour of the Saviour’s birth. Life had always been a simple and a straightforward thing for them; severe but inevitable toil, a good understanding between man and wife, obedience alike to the laws of nature and of the. Church. Everything was drawn into the same woof; the rites of their religion and the daily routine of existence so woven together that they could not distinguish the devout emotion possessing them from the mute love of each for each.

Little Alma Rose heard praises in the air and hastened to demand her portion. “I have been a good girl too, haven’t I, father?”

“Certainly … Certainly. A black sin indeed if one were naughty on the day when the little Jesus was born.”

To the children, Jesus of Nazareth was ever “the little Jesus,” the curly-headed babe of the sacred picture; and in truth, for the parents as well, such was the image oftenest brought to mind by the Name. Not the sad enigmatic Christ of the Protestant, but a being more familiar and less august, a newborn infant in his mother’s arms, or at least a tiny child who might be loved without great effort of the mind or any thought of the coming sacrifice.

“Would you like me to rock you?”

“Yes.”

He took the little girl on his knees and began to swing her back and forth.

“And are we going to sing too?”

“Yes.”

“Very well; now sing with me:”

Dans son etable,
Que Jesus est charmant!
Qu’il est aimable
Dans son abaissement

He began in quiet tones that he might not drown the other slender voice; but soon emotion carried him away and he sang with all his might, his gaze dreamy and remote. Telesphore drew near and looked at him with worshipping eyes. To these children brought up in a lonely house, with only their parents for companions, Samuel Chapdelaine embodied all there was in the world of wisdom and might. As he was ever gentle and patient, always ready to take the children on his knee and sing them hymns, or those endless old songs he taught them one by one, they loved him with a rare affection.

… Tous les palais des rois
N’ont rien de comparable
Aux beautes que je vois
Dans cette etable.

“Once more? Very well.”

This time the mother and Tit’Be joined in. Maria could not resist staying her prayers for a few moments that she might look and hearken; but the words of the hymn renewed her ardour, and she soon took up the task again with a livelier faith … “Hail Mary, full of grace …”

Trois gros navires sont arrives,
Charges d’avoine, charges de ble. Nous irons sur l’eau nous y prom-promener, Nous irons jouer dans l’ile…

“And now? Another song: which?” With out waiting for a reply he struck in … “No? not that one … Claire Fontaine? Ah! That’s a beautiful one, that is! We shall all sing it together.”

He glanced at Maria, but seeing the beads ever slipping through her fingers he would not intrude.

A la claire fontaine
M’en allant promener,
J’ai trouve l’eau si belle
Que je m’y suis baigne …
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime,
Jamais je ne t’oublierai…

Words and tune alike haunting; the unaffected sadness of the refrain lingering in the ear, a song that well may find its way to any heart.

.. Sur la plus haute branche,
Le rossignol chantait.
Chante, rossignol, chante,
Toi qui a le coeur gai …
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime
Jamais je ne t’oublierai …

The rosary lay still in the long fingers. Maria did not sing with the others; but she was listening, and this lament of a love that was unhappy fell very sweetly and movingly on her spirit a little weary with prayer.

… Tu as le coeur a rire,
Moi je l’ai a pleurer,
J’ai perdu ma maitresse
Sans pouvoir la r’trouver,
Pour un bouquet de roses
Que je lui refusai
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime,
Jamais je ne t’oublierai.

Maria looked through the window at the white fields circled by mysterious forest; the passion of religious feeling, the tide of young love rising within her, the sound of the familiar voices, fused in her heart to a single emotion. Truly the world was filled with love that evening, with love human and divine, simple in nature and mighty in strength, one and the other most natural and right; so intermingled that the beseeching of heavenly favour upon dear ones was scarcely more than the expression of an earthly affection, while the artless love songs were chanted with solemnity of voice and exaltation of spirit fit for addresses to another world.

.. Je voudrais que la rose
Fut encore au rosier,
Et que le rosier meme
A la mer fut jete.
Il y a longtemps, que je t’aime,
Jamais je ne t’oublierai . .

“Hail Mary, full of grace …”

The song ended, Maria forthwith resumed her prayers with zeal refreshed, and once again the tale of the Aves mounted.

Little Alma Rose, asleep on her father’s knee, was undressed and put to bed; Telesphore followed; Tit’Be arose in turn, stretched himself, and fined the stove with green birch logs; the father made a last trip to the stable and came back running, saying that the cold was increasing. Soon all had retired, save Maria.

“You won’t forget to put out the lamp?”

“No, father.”

Forthwith she quenched the light, preferring it so, and seated herself again by the window to repeat the last Aves. When she had finished, a scruple assailed her, and a fear lest she had erred in the reckoning, because it had not always been possible to count the beads of her rosary. Out of prudence she recited yet another fifty and then was silent-jaded, weary, but full of happy confidence, as though the moment had brought her a promise inviolable.

The world outside was lit; wrapped in that frore splendour which the night unrolls over lands of snow when the sky is clear and the moon is shining. Within the house was darkness, and it seemed that wood and field had illumined themselves to signal the coming of the holy hour.

“The thousand Aves have been said,” murmured Maria to herself, “but I have not yet asked for anything … not in words.” She bad thought that perhaps it were not needful; that the Divinity might understand without hearing wishes shaped by lips–Mary above all … Who had been a woman upon earth. But at the last her simple mind was taken with a doubt, and she tried to find speech for the favour she was seeking.

Francois Paradis … Most surely it concerns Francois Paradis. Hast Thou already guessed it, O Mary, full of grace? How might she frame this her desire without impiety? That he should be spared hardship in the woods … That he should be true to his word and give up drinking and swearing … That he return in the spring

That he return in the spring … She goes no further, for it seems to her that when be is with her again, his promise kept, all the happiness in the world must he within their reach, unaided … almost unaided … If it be not presumptuous so to think …

That he return in the spring … Dreaming of his return, of Francois, the handsome sunburnt face turned to hers, Maria forgets all else, and looks long with unseeing eyes at the snow-covered ground which the moonlight has turned into a glittering fabric of ivory and mother-of-pearl-at the black pattern of the fences outlined upon it, and the menacing ranks of the dark forest.

CHAPTER X

STRAYING TRACKS

NEW YEAR’S DAY, and not a single caller! Toward evening the mother of the family, a trifle cast down, hid her depression behind a mask of extra cheeriness. “Even if no one comes,” said she, “that is no reason for allowing ourselves to be unhappy. We are going to make la tire.”

The children exclaimed with delight, and followed the preparations with impatient eyes. Molasses and brown sugar were set on the stove to boil, and when this had proceeded far enough Telesphore brought in a large dish of lovely white snow. They all gathered about the table as a few drops of the boiling syrup were allowed to fall upon the snow where they instantly became crackly bubbles, deliciously cold.

Each was helped in turn, the big people making a merry pretence of the children’s unfeigned greed; but soon, and very wisely, the tasting was checked, that appetite might not be in peril for the real la fire, the confection of which had only begun. After further cooking, and just at the proper moment, the cooling toffee must be pulled for a long time. The mother’s strong hands plied unceasingly for five minutes, folding and drawing out the sugary skein; the movement became slower and slower, until, stretched for the last time to the thickness of a finger, it was cut into lengths with scissors-not too easily, for it was already hard. The la tire was made.

The children were busy with their first portions, when a knocking was heard on the door. “Eutrope Gagnon,” at once declared Chapdelaine. “I was just saying to myself that it would be an odd thing if he did not come and spend the evening with us.”

Eutrope Gagnon it was in truth. Entering, he bade them all good evening, and laid his woollen cap upon the table. Maria looked at him, a blush upon her cheek. Custom ordains that on the first day of the year the young men shall kiss the women-folk, and Maria knew well enough that Eutrope, shy as he was, would exercise his privilege; she stood motionless by the table, unprotesting, yet thinking of another kiss she would have dearly welcomed. But the young man took the chair offered him and sat down, his eyes upon the floor.

“You are the only visitor who has come our way to-day,” said Chapdelaine, “and I suppose you have seen no one either. I felt pretty certain you would be here this evening.”

“Naturally … I would not let New Year’s Day go by without paying you a visit. But, besides that, I have news to tell.”

“News?”

Under the questioning eyes of the household he did not raise his eyes.

“By your face I am afraid you have bad news.”

“Yes.”

With a start of fear the mother half rose. “Not about the boys?”

“No, Madame Chapdelaine. Esdras and Da’Be are well, if that be God’s pleasure. The word I bring is not of them-not of your own kin. It concerns a young man you know.” Pausing a moment he spoke a name under his breath. :–“Francois Paradis.”

His glance was lifted to Maria and as quickly fell, but she did not so much as see his look of honest distress. Deep stillness weighed upon the house-upon the whole universe. Everything alive and dead was breathlessly awaiting news of such dreadful moment-touching him that was for her the one man in all the world …

“This is what happened. You knew perhaps that he was foreman in a shanty above La Tuque, on the Vermilion River. About the middle of December he suddenly told the boss that he was going off to spend Christmas and New Year at Lake St. John-up here. The boss objected, naturally enough; for if the men take ten or fifteen days’ leave right in the middle of the winter you might as well stop the work altogether. The boss did not wish him to go and said so plainly; but you know Francois-a man not be thwarted when a notion entered his head. He answered that he was set on going to the lake for the holidays, and that go he would. Then the boss let him have his way, afraid to lose a man useful beyond the common, and of such experience in the bush.”

Eutrope Gagnon was speaking with unusual ease, slowly, but without seeking words, as though his story had been shaped beforehand. Amid her overwhelming grief the thought flitted through Maria’s heart:– “Francois wished to come here … to me,” and a fugitive joy touched it as a swallow in flight ruffles the water with his wing.

“The shanty was not very far in the woods, only two days’ journey from the Transcontinental which passes La Tuque. Butastheluck was, something had happened to the line and the trains were not running. I heard all this through Johnny Niquette of St. Henri, who arrived from La Tuque two days ago.”

“Yes.”

“When Francois found that he could not take the train he burst into a laugh, and in that sort of a humour said that as it was a case of walking he would walk all the way-reaching the lake by following the rivers, first the Croche and then the Ouatchouan which falls in near Roberval.”

“That is so,” said Chapdelaine. “It can be done. I have gone that way.”

“Not at this time of year, Mr. Chapdelaine, certainly not just at this time. Everyone there told Francois that it would be foolhardy to attempt such a trip in midwinter, about Christmas, with the cold as great as it was, some four feet of snow lying in the woods, and alone. But he only laughed and told them that he was used to the woods and that a little difficulty was not going to frighten him, because he was bound to get to the upper side of the lake for the holidays, and that where the Indians were able to cross he could make the crossing too. Only-you know it very well, Mr. Chapdelaine-when the Indians take that journey it is in company, and with their dogs. Francois set of alone, on snow-shoes, pulling his blankets and provisions on a toboggan.” No one had uttered a word to hasten or check the speaker. They listened as to him whose story’s end stalks into view, before the eyes but darkly veiled, like a figure drawing near who hides his face.

“You will remember the weather a week before Christmas-the heavy snow that fell, and after it the nor’west gale. It happened that was then in the great burnt lands, where the fine snow drives and drifts so terribly. In such a place the best of men have little chance when it is very cold and the storm lasts. And, if you recall it, the nor’wester was blowing for three days on end, stiff enough-to flay you.”

“Yes, and then?”

The narrative he had framed did not carry him further, or perhaps he could not bring himself to speak the final words, for it was some time before the low-voiced answer came-” He went astray …”

Those who have passed their lives within the shadow of the Canadian forests know the meaning but too well. The daring youths to whom this evil fortune happens in the woods, who go astray-are lost-but seldom return. Sometimes a search-party finds their bodies in the spring, after the melting of the snows. In Quebec, and above all in the far regions of the north, the very word, ecarte, has taken on a new and sinister import, from the peril overhanging him who loses his way, for a short day only, in that limitless forest.

“He went astray … The storm caught him in the burnt country and he halted for a day. So much we know, for the Indians found a shelter of fir branches he had made for himself, and they saw his tracks. He set out again because his provisions were low and he was in haste to reach the end of his journey, as I suppose; but the weather did not mend, snow was falling, the nor’west wind never eased, and it is likely he caught no glimpse of the sun to guide him, for the Indians said that his tracks turned off from the river Croche which he had been following and wandered away, straight to the north.”

There was no further speech; neither from the two men who had listened with assenting motions of their heads while they followed every turn of Eutrope’s grim story; nor from the mother whose hands were clasped upon her knees,–as in a belated supplication; nor from Maria . .

“When they heard this, men from Ouatchouan set forth after the weather was a little better. But all his footsteps were covered, and they returned saying that they had found no trace; that was three days ago is lost …”

The listeners stirred, and broke the stillness with a sigh; the tale was told, nor was there a word that, anyone might speak. The fate of Francois Paradis was as mournfully sure as though he were buried in the cemetery at St. Michel de Mistassini to the sound of chants, with the blessing of a priest.

Silence fell upon the house and all within it. Chapdelaine was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his face working,– mechanically striking one fist upon the other. At length he spoke:–“It shows we are but little children in the hand of the good God. Francois was one of the best men of these parts in the woods, and at finding his way; people who came here used to take him as guide, and always did he bring them back without mishap. And now he himself is lost. We are but little children. Some there be who think themselves pretty strong-able to get on without God’s help in their houses and on their lands…but in the bush…” With solemn voice and slowly-moving head he repeated: “We are but little children.”

“A good man he was,” said Eutrope Gagnon, “in very truth a good man, strong and brave, with ill-will to none.’

“Indeed that is true. I am not saying that the good God had cause to send him to his death-him more than another. He was a fine fellow, hard-working, and I loved him well. But it shows you …”

“No one ever had a thing against him.” Eutrope’s generous insistence carried him on. “A man hard to match for work, afraid of nothing and obliging withal. Everyone who knew him was fond of him. You will not find his like.”

Raising his eyes to Maria he repeated with emphasis:–“He was a good man, you will. not find his like.”

“When we were at Mistassini,” began Madame Chapdelaine, “seven years ago, he was only a lad, but very strong and quick and as tall. as he is now-I mean as he was when he came here last summer. Always good-natured too. No one could help liking him.”

They all looked straight before them in speaking, and yet what they said seemed to be for Maria alone, as if the dear secret of her heart were open to them. But she spoke not, nor moved, her eyes fixed upon the frosted panes of the little window, impenetrable as the wall.

Eutrope Gagnon did not linger. The Chapdelaines, left to themselves, were long without speech. At last the father said in a halting voice:–” Francois Paradis was almost alone in the world; now, as we all had an affection for him, we perhaps might have a mass or two said. What do you think, Laura?”

“Yes indeed. Three high masses with music, and when the boys return from the woods–in health, if such be the will of the good God-three more for the repose of his soul, poor lad! And every Sunday we shall, say I a prayer for him.”

“He was like the rest of us,” Chapdelaine continued, “not without fault, of course, but kindly and well-living. God and the Holy Virgin will have pity on him.”

Again silence. Maria well. knew it was for her they said these things-aware of her grief and seeking to assuage it; but she was not able to speak, either to praise the dead or utter.-her sorrow. A hand had fastened upon her throat, stifling her, as the narrative unfolded and the end loomed inevitable; and now this hand found its way into her breast and was crushing her heart. Presently she would know a yet more intolerable pain, but now she only felt the deadly grasp of those five fingers closed about her heart.

Other words were said, but they scarce reached her ear; then came the familiar evening stir of preparation for the night, the father’s departure on a last visit to the stable and his swift return, face red with the cold, slamming the door hastily in a swirl of frosty vapour.

“Come, Maria.” The mother called her very gently, and laid a hand upon her shoulder. She rose and went to kneel and pray with the others. Voice answered to voice for ten minutes, murmuring the sacred words in low monotone.

The usual prayer at an end, the mother whispered:–” Yet five Paters and five Aves for the souls of those who have suffered misfortune in the forest.” And the voices again rose, this time more subdued, breaking sometimes to a sob.

When they were silent, and all had risen after the last sign of the cross, Maria went back to the window. The frost upon the panes made of them so many fretted squares through which the eye could not penetrate, shutting away the outside world; but Maria saw them not, for the tears welled to her eyes and blinded her. She stood there motionless, with arms hanging piteously by her side, a stricken figure of grief; then a sudden anguish yet keener and more unbearable seized upon her; blindly she opened the door and went out upon the step.

The world that lay beyond the threshold, sunk in moveless white repose, was of an immense serenity; but when Maria passed from the sheltering walls the cold smote her like the hungry blade of a sword and the forest leaped toward her in menace, its inscrutable face concealing a hundred dreadful secrets which called aloud to her in lamentable voices. With a little moan she drew back, and closing the door sat shivering beside the stove. Numbness was yielding, sorrow taking on an edge, and the hand that clutched her heart set itself to devising new agonies, each one subtler and more cruel than the last.

How he must have suffered, far off there amid the snows! So thought she, as still her own face remembered the sting of the bitter air. Men threatened by this fate had told her that death coming in such a guise smote with gentle and painless hand-a hand that merely lulled to sleep; but she could not make herself believe it, and all the sufferings that Francois, might have endured before giving up and falling to the white ground passed before her eyes.

No need for her to see the spot, too well she knew the winter terrors of the great forest, the snow heaped to the firs’ lower branches, alders almost buried beneath it, birches and aspens naked as skeletons and shuddering in the icy wind, a sunless sky above the massed and gloomy spires of green. She sees Francois making his way through the close-set trees, limbs stiffened with the cold, his skin raw with that pitiless nor’wester, gnawed by hunger, stumbling with fatigue, his feet so weary that with no longer strength to lift them his snowshoes often catch the snow and throw him to his knees.

Doubtless when the storm abated he saw his error, knew that he was walking toward the barren northland, turned at once and took the right course–he so experienced, the woods his home from boyhood. But his food is nearly gone, the cold tortures him; with lowered head and clenched teeth he fights the implacable winter, calling to aid his every reserve of strength and high courage. He thinks of the road he must follow, the miles to be overcome, measures his chances of life; and fitful memories arise of a house, so warm and snug, where all will greet him gladly; of Maria who, knowing what he has dared for her sake, will at length raise to him her truthful eyes shining with love.

Perhaps he fell for the last time when succour was near, a few yards only from house or shanty. Often so it happens. Cold and his ministers of death flung themselves upon him as their prey; they have stilled the strong limbs forever, covered his open handsome face with snow, closed the fearless eyes without gentleness or pity, changed his living body into a thing of ice … Maria has no more tears that she may shed, but she shivers and trembles as he must have trembled and shivered before he sank into merciful unconsciousness; horror and pity in her face, Maria draws nearer the stove as though she might thus bring him warmth and shield his dear life against the assassin.

“O Christ Jesus, who didst stretch forth Thine arm to those in need, why didst Thou not disperse the snows with those pale hands of Thine? Holy Virgin, why didst Thou not sustain him by Thy power when, for the last time, his feet were stumbling? In all the legions of heaven why was there found no angel to show him the way?”

But it is her grief that utters these reproaches, and the steadfast heart of Maria is fearful of having sinned in yielding to it. Another dread is soon to assail her. Perhaps Francois Paradis was not able quite faithfully to keep the promises he made to her. In the shanty, among rough and careless men, may he not have had moments of weakness; blasphemed or taken the names of the saints in vain, and thus have gone to his death with sin upon his conscience, under the weight of divine wrath.

Her parents had promised but a little ago that masses should be said. How good they were! Having guessed her secret how kindly had they been silent! But she herself might help with prayers the poor soul in torment. Her beads still lay upon the table; she takes them in her hands, and forthwith the words of the Ave mount to her lips,–“Hail Mary, full of grace…”

Did you doubt of her, O mother of the Galilean? Since that only eight days before she strove to reach your ear with her thousand prayers, and you but clothed yourself in divine impassivity while fate accomplished its purpose, think you that she questions your goodness or your power? It would indeed have been to misjudge her. As once she sought your aid for a man, so now she asks your pardon for a soul, in the same words, with the same humility and boundless faith.

“Blessed art Thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.”

But still she cowers by the great stove, and though the fire’s heat strikes through her, she ceases not to shudder as she thinks of the frozen world about her, of Paradis, who cannot be insentient, who must be so bitter cold in his bed of snow

CHAPTER XI

THE INTERPRETER OF GOD

ONE evening in February Samuel Chapdelaine said to his daughter: “The roads are passable; if you wish it, Maria, we shall go to La Pipe on Sunday for the mass.” “Very well, father;” but she replied in a voice so dejected, almost indifferent, that her parents exchanged glances behind her back.

Country folk do not die for love, nor spend the rest of their days nursing a wound. They are too near to nature, and know too well the stern laws that rule their lives. Thus it is perhaps, that they are sparing of high-sounding words; choosing to say “liking” rather than “loving … .. ennui” rather than “grief,” that so the joys and sorrows of the heart may bear a fit proportion to those more anxious concerns of life which have to do with their daily toil, the yield of their lands, provision for the future.

Maria did not for a moment dream that life for her was over, or that the world must henceforward be a sad wilderness, because Francis Paradis would not return in the spring nor ever again. But her heart was aching, and while sorrow possessed it the future held no promise for her.

When Sunday arrived, father and daughter early began to make ready for the two hours’ journey which would bring them to St. Henri de Taillon, and the church. Before half-past seven Charles Eugene was harnessed, and Maria, still wearing a heavy winter cloak, had carefully deposited in her purse the list of her mother’s commissions. A few minutes later the sleigh-bells were tinkling, and the rest of the family grouped themselves at the little square window to watch the departure.

For the first hour the horse could not go beyond a walk, sinking knee-deep in snow; for only the Chapdelaines used this road, laid out and cleared by themselves, and not enough travelled to become smooth and hard. But when they reached the beaten highway Charles Eugene trotted along briskly.

They passed through Honfleur, a hamlet of eight scattered houses, and then re-entered the woods. After a time they came upon clearings, then houses appeared dotted along the road; little by little the dusky ranks of the forest retreated, and soon they were in the village with other sleighs before and following them, all going toward the church.

Since the beginning of the year Maria had gone three times to hear mass at St. Henri de Taillon, which the people of the country persist in calling La Pipe, as in the gallant days of the first settlers. For her, besides being an exercise of piety, this was almost the only distraction possible and her father sought to furnish it whenever he could do so, believing that the impressive rites of the church and a meeting with acquaintances in the village would help to banish her grief.

On this occasion when the mass was ended, instead of paying visits they went to the curees house. It was already thronged with members of the congregation from remote farms, for the Canadian priest not only has the consciences of his flock in charge, but is their counsellor in all affairs, and the composer of their disputes; the solitary individual of different station to whom they can resort for the solving of their difficulties.

The cure of St. Henri sent none away empty who asked his advice; some he dealt with in a few swift words amidst a general conversation where he bore his cheerful part; others at greater length in the privacy of an adjoining room. When the turn of the Chapdelaines came he looked at his watch.

“We shall. have dinner first. What say you, my good friends? You must have found an appetite on the road. As for myself, singing mass makes me hungry beyond anything you could believe.”

He laughed heartily, more tickled than anyone at his own joke, and led his guests into the dining-room. Another priest was there from a neighbouring parish, and two or three farmers. The meal was one long discussion about husbandry, with a few amusing stories and bits of harmless gossip thrown in; now and then one of the farmers, suddenly remembering where he was, would labour some pious remark which the priests acknowledged with a nod or an absent-minded “Yes! Yes!”

The dinner over at last, some of the guests departed after lighting their pipes. The cure, catching a glance from Chapdelaine, seemed to recall something; arising, he motioned to Maria, and went before her into the next room which served him both for visitors and as his office.

A small harmonium stood against the wall; on the other side was a table with agricultural journals, a Civil Code and a few books bound in black leather; on the walls hung a portrait of Pius X., an engraving of the Holy Family, the coloured broadside of a Quebec merchant with sleighs and threshing-machines side by side, and a number of official notices as to precautions against forest fires and epidemics amongst cattle.

Turning to Maria, the cure said kindly enough;–“So it appears that you are distressing yourself beyond what is reasonable and right?”

She looked at him humbly, not far from believing that the priest’s supernatural power had divined her trouble without need of telling. He inclined his tall figure, and bent toward her his thin peasant face; for beneath the robe was still the tiller of the soil: the gaunt and yellow visage, the cautious eyes, the huge bony shoulders. Even his hands–hands wont to dispense the favours of Heaven-were those of the husbandman, with swollen veins beneath the dark skin. But Maria saw in him only the priest, the cure of the parish, appointed of God to interpret life to her and show her the path of duty.

“Be seated there,” he said, pointing to a chair. She sat down somewhat like a schoolgirl who is to have a scolding, somewhat like a woman in a sorcerer’s den who awaits in mingled hope and dread the working of his unearthly spells… … …

An hour later the sleigh was speeding over the hard snow. Chapdelaine drowsed, and the reins were slipping from his open hands. Rousing himself and lifting his head, he sang again in full-voiced fervour the hymn he was singing as they left the village:–

… Adorons-le dans le ciel.
Adorons-le sur l’autel …

Then he fell silent, his chin dropping slowly toward his breast, and the only sound upon the road was the tinkle of sleigh-bells.

Maria was thinking of the priest’s words: “If there was affection between you it is very proper that you should know regret. But you were not pledged to one another, because neither you nor he had spoken to your parents; therefore it is not befitting or right that you should sorrow thus, nor feel so deep a grief for a young man who, after all is said, was nothing to you…”

And again: “That masses should be sung, that you should pray for him, such things are useful and good, you could do no better. Three high masses with music, and three more when the boys return from the woods, as your father has asked me, most assuredly these will help him, and also you may be certain they will delight him more than your lamentations, since they will shorten by so much his time of expiation. But to grieve like this, and to go about casting gloom over the household is not well, nor is it pleasing in the sight of God.”

He did not appear in the guise of a comforter, nor of one who gives counsel in the secret affairs of the heart, but rather as a man of the law or a chemist who enunciates his bald formulas, invariable and unfailing.

“The duty of a girl like you–good-looking, healthy, active withal and a clever housewife–is in the first place to help her old parents, and in good time to marry and bring up a Christian family of her own. You have no call to the religious life? No. Then you must give up torturing yourself in this fashion, because it is a sacrilegious thing and unseemly, seeing that the young man was nothing whatever to you. The good God knows what is best for us; we should neither rebel nor complain …”

In all this, but one phrase left Maria a little doubting, it was the priest’s assurance that Francois Paradis, in the place where now he was, cared only for masses to repose his soul, and never at all for the deep and tender regrets lingering behind him. This she could not constrain herself to believe. Unable to think of him otherwise in death than in life, she felt it must bring him something of happiness and consolation that her sorrow was keeping alive their ineffectual love for a little space beyond death. Yet, since the priest had said it …

The road wound its way among the trees rising sombrely from the snow. Here and there a squirrel, alarmed by the swiftly passing sleigh and the tinkling bells, sprang upon a trunk and scrambled upward, clinging to the bark. From the gray sky a biting cold was falling and the wind stung the cheek, for this was February, with two long months of winter yet to come.

As Charles Eugene trotted along the beaten road, bearing the travellers to their lonely house, Maria, in obedience to the words of the cure at St. Henri, strove to drive away gloom and put mourning from her; as simple-mindedly as she would have fought the temptation of a dance, of a doubtful amusement or anything that was plainly wrong and hence forbidden.

They reached home as night was falling. The coming of evening was only a slow fading of the light, for, since morning, the heavens had been overcast, the sun obscured. A sadness rested upon the pallid earth; the firs and cypresses did not wear the aspect of living trees and the naked birches seemed to doubt of the springtime. Maria shivered as she left the sleigh, and hardly noticed Chien, barking and gambolling a welcome, or the children who called to her from the door-step. The world seemed strangely empty, for this evening at least. Love was snatched away, and they forbade remembrance. She went swiftly into the house without looking about her, conscious of a new dread and hatred for the bleak land, the forest’s eternal shade, the snow and the cold,–for all those things she had lived her life amongst, which now had wounded her.

CHAPTER XII

LOVE BEARING GIFTS

MARCH came, and one day Tit’Be brought the news from Honfleur that there would be a large gathering in the evening at Ephrem Surprenant’s to which everyone was invited.

But someone must stay to look after the house, and as Madame Chapdelaine had set her heart on this little diversion after being cooped up for all these months, it was Tit’Be himself who was left at home. Honfleur, the nearest village to their house, was eight miles away; but what were eight miles over the snow and through the woods compared with the delight of hearing songs and stories, and of talk with people from afar?

A numerous company was assembled under the Surprenant roof: several of the villagers, the three Frenchmen who had bought his nephew Lorenzo’s farm, and also, to the Chapdelaines’ great surprise, Lorenzo himself, back once more from the States upon business that related to the sale and the settling of his father’s affairs. He greeted Maria very warmly, and seated himself beside her.

The men lit their pipes; they chatted about the weather, the condition of the roads, the country news; but the conversation lagged, as though all were looking for it to take some unusual turn. Their glances sought Lorenzo and the three Frenchmen, expecting strange and marvellous tales of distant lands and unfamiliar manners from an assembly so far out of the common. The Frenchmen, only a few months in the country, apparently felt a like curiosity, for they listened, and spoke but little.

Samuel Chapdelaine, who was meeting them for the first time, deemed himself called upon to put them through a catechism in the ingenuous Canadian fashion.

“So you have come here to till the land. How do you like Canada?”

“It is a beautiful country, new and so vast … In the summer-time there are many flies, and the winters are trying; but I suppose that one gets used to these things in time.”

The father it was who made reply, his sons only nodding their heads in assent with eyes glued to the floor. Their appearance alone would have served to distinguish them from the other dwellers in the village, but as they spoke the gap widened, and the words that fell from their lips had a foreign ring. There was none of the slowness of the Canadian speech, nor of that indefinable accent found in no comer of France, which is only a peasant blend of the different pronunciations of former emigrants. They used words and turns of phrase one never hears in Quebec, even in the towns, and which to these simple men seemed fastidious and wonderfully refined.

“Before coming to these parts were you farmers in your own country?”

“No.”

“What trade then did you follow?”

The Frenchman hesitated a moment before. replying; possibly thinking that what he was about to say would be novel, and hard for them to understand. “I was a tuner myself, a piano-tuner; my two sons here were clerks, Edmond in an office, Pierre in a shop.”

Clerks–that was plain enough for anyone; but their minds were a little hazy as to the father’s business.

However Ephrem Surprenant chimed in with.–” Piano-tuner; that was it, just so!” And his glance at Conrad Neron his neighbour was a trifle superior and challenging, as though intimating.–” You would not believe me, and maybe you don’t know what it means, but now you see …”

“Piano-tuner,” Samuel Chapdelaine echoed in turn, slowly grasping the meaning of the words. “And is that a good trade? Do you earn handsome wages? Not too handsome, eh! … At any rate you are well educated, you and your sons; you can read and write and cipher? And here am I, not able even to read!”

“Nor I!” struck in Ephrem Surprenant, and Conrad Neron and Egide Racicot added: “Nor I!” “Nor I!” in chorus, whereupon the whole of them broke out laughing.

A motion of the Frenchman’s hand told them indulgently that they could very well dispense with these accomplishments; to himself of little enough use at the moment.

“You were not able to make a decent living out of your trades over there. That is so, is it not? And therefore you came here?”

The question was put simply, without thought of offence, for he was amazed that anyone should abandon callings that seemed so easy and so pleasant for this arduous life on the land.

Why indeed had they come? … A few months earlier they would have discovered a thousand reasons and clothed them in words straight from the heart: weariness of the footway and the pavement, of the town’s sullied air; revolt against the prospect of lifelong slavery; some chance stirring word of an irresponsible speaker preaching the gospel of vigour and enterprise, of a free and healthy life upon a fruitful soil. But a few months ago they could have found glowing sentences to tell it all … Now their best was a sorry effort to evade the question, as they groped for any of the illusions that remained to them.

“People are not always happy in the cities,” said the father. “Everything is dear, and one is confined.”

In their narrow Parisian lodging it had seemed so wonderful a thing to them, the notion that in Canada they would spend their days out of doors, breathing the taintless air of a new country, close beside the mighty forest. The black-flies they had not foreseen, nor comprehended the depth of the winter’s cold; the countless ill turns of a land that has no pity were undivined.

“Did you picture it to yourselves as you have found it,” Chapdelaine persisted, “the country here, the life?”

“Not exactly,” replied the Frenchman in a low voice. “No, not exactly …” And a shadow crossed his face which brought from Ephrem. Surprenant:–“It is rough here, rough and hard!”

Their heads assented, and their eyes fell: three narrow-shouldered men, their faces with the pallor of the town still upon them after six months on the land; three men whom a fancy had torn from counter, office, piano-stool-from the only lives for which they were bred. For it is not the peasant alone who suffers by uprooting from his native soil. They were seeing their mistake, and knew they were too unlike in grain to copy those about them; lacking the strength, the rude health, the toughened fibre, that training for every task which fits the Canadian to be farmer, woodsman or carpenter, according to season and need.

The father was dreamily shaking his head, lost in thought; one of the sons, elbows on knees, gazed wonderingly at the palms of his delicate hands, calloused by the rough work of the fields. All three seemed to be turning over and over in their minds the melancholy balance-sheet of a failure. Those about them were thinking– “Lorenzo sold his place for more than it was worth; they have but little money left and are in hard case; men like these are not built for living on the land.”

Madame Chapdelaine, partly in pity and partly for the honour of farming, let fall a few encouraging words:–” It is something of a struggle at the beginning-if you are not used to it; but when your land is in better order you will see that life becomes easier.”

“It is a queer thing,” said Conrad Neron, “how every man finds it equally hard to rest content. Here are three who left their homes and came this long way to settle and farm, and here am I always saying to myself that nothing would be so pleasant as to sit quietly in an office all the day, a pen behind my ear, sheltered from cold wind and hot sun.”

“Everyone to his own notion,” declared Lorenzo Surprenant, with unbiassed mind.

“And your notion is not to stick in Hon-fleur sweating over the stumps,” added Racicot with a loud laugh.

“You are quite right there, and I make no bones about it; that sort of thing would never have suited me. These men here bought my land-a good farm, and no one can gainsay it. They wanted to buy a farm and I sold them mine. But as for myself, I am well enough where I am, and have no wish to return.”

Madame Chapdelaine shook her head. “There is no better life than the life of a farmer who has good health and owes no debts. He is a free man, has no boss, owns his beasts, works for his own profit … The finest life there is!”

“I hear them all say that,” Lorenzo retorted, one is free, his own master. And you seem to pity those who work in factories because they have a boss, and must do as they are told. Free-on the land-come now!” He spoke defiantly, with more and more animation.

“There is no man in the world less free than a farmer … When you tell of those who have succeeded, who are well provided with everything needful on a farm, who have had better luck than others, you say.–‘Ah, what a fine life they lead! They are comfortably off, own good cattle.’ That is not how to put it. The truth is that their cattle own them. In all the world there is no ‘boss’ who behaves as stupidly as the beasts you favour. Pretty nearly every day they give you trouble or do you some mischief. Now it is a skittish horse that runs away or lashes out with his heels; then it is a cow, however good-tempered, that won’t keep still to be milked and tramples on your toes when the flies annoy her. And even if by good fortune they don’t harm you, they are forever finding a way to destroy your comfort and to vex you…”

“I know how it is; I was brought up on a farm. And you, most of you farmers, know how it is too. All the morning you have worked hard, and go to your house for dinner and a little rest. Then, before you are well seated at table, a child is yelling:–‘The cows are over the fence;’ or ‘The sheep are in the crop,’ and everyone jumps up and runs, thinking of the oats or the barley it has been such a trouble to raise, that these miserable fools are ruining. The men dash about brandishing sticks till they are out of breath; the women stand screaming in the farm-yard. And when you have managed to drive the cows or the sheep into their paddock and put up the rails, you get back to the house nicely ‘rested’ to find the pea-soup cold and full of flies, the pork under the table gnawed by dogs and cats, and you eat what you can lay your hands on, watching for the next trick the wretched animals are getting ready to play on you.”

“You are their slaves; that’s what you are. You tend them, you clean them, you gather up their dung as the poor do the rich man’s crumbs. It is you who must keep them alive by hard work, because the earth is miserly and the summer so short. That is the way of it, and there is no help, as you cannot get on without them; but for cattle there would be no living on the land. But even if you could … even if you could … still would you have other masters: the summer, beginning too late and ending too soon; the winter, eating up seven long months of the year and bringing in nothing; drought and rain which always come just at the wrong moment…”

“In the towns these things do not matter; but here you have no defence against them and they do you hurt; and I have not taken into account the extreme cold, the badness of the roads, the loneliness of being far away from everything, with no amusements. Life is one kind of hardship on top of another from beginning to end. It is often said that only those make a real success who are born and brought up on the land, and of course that is true; as for the people in the cities, small danger that they would ever be foolish enough to put up with such a way of living.”

He spoke with heat and volubly–a man of the town who talks every day with his equals, reads the papers, hears public speakers. The listeners, of a race easily moved by words, were carried away by his plaints and criticisms; the very real harshness of their lives was presented in such a new and startling light as to surprise even themselves.

However Madame Chapdelaine again shook her head. “Do not say such things as that; there is no happier life in the world than the life of a farmer who owns good land.”

“Not in these parts, Madame Chapdelaine. You are too far north; the summer is too short; the grain is hardly up before the frosts come. Each time that I return from the States, and see the tiny wooden houses lost in this wilderness-so far from one another that they seem frightened at being alone-and the woods hemming you in on every side … By Heaven! I lose heart for you, I who live here no longer, and I ask myself how it comes about that all you folk did not long ago seek a kinder climate where you would find everything that makes for comfort, where you could go out for a walk in the winter-time without being in fear of death …”

Without being in fear of death! Maria shuddered as the thought swiftly awoke of those dark secrets hidden beneath the ever-lasting green and white of the forest. Lorenzo Surprenant was right in what he had been saying; it was a pitiless ungentle land. The menace lurking just outside the door-the cold-the shrouding snows-the blank solitude-forced a sudden entrance and crowded about the stove, an evil swarm sneering presages of ill or hovering in a yet more dreadful silence:–“Do you remember, my sister, the men, brave and well-beloved, whom we have stain and hidden in the woods? Their souls have known how to escape us; but their bodies, their-bodies, their bodies, none shall ever snatch them from our hands …”

The voice of the wind at the comers of the house was loud with hollow laughter, and to Maria it seemed that all gathered within the wooden walls huddled and spoke low, like men whose lives are under a threat and who go in dread.

A burden of sadness was upon the rest of the evening, at least for her. Racicot told stories of the chase: of trapped bears struggling and growling so fiercely at the sight of the trapper that he loses courage and falls a-trembling; and then, giving up suddenly when the hunters come in force and the deadly guns are aimed–giving up, covering their heads with their paws and whimpering with groans and outcries almost human, very heart-rending and pitiful.

After these tales came others of ghosts and apparitions; of blood-curdling visitations or solemn warnings to men who had blasphemed or spoken ill of the priests. Then, as no one could be persuaded to sing, they played at cards and the conversation dropped to more commonplace themes. The only memory that Maria carried away of the later talk, as the sleigh bore them homeward through the midnight woods, was of Lorenzo Surprenant extolling the United States and the magnificence of its great cities, the easy and pleasant life, the never-ending spectacle of the fine straight streets flooded with light at evening.

Before she departed Lorenzo said in quiet tones, almost in her ear.–“To-morrow is Sunday; I shall be over to see you in the afternoon.”

A few short hours of night, a morning of sunlight on the snow, and again he is by her side renewing his tale of wonders, his interrupted plea. For it was to her he had been speaking the evening before; Maria knew it well. The scorn he showed for a country life, his praises of the town, these were but a preface to the allurements he was about to offer in all their varied forms, as one shows the pictures in a book, turning page by page.

“Maria,” he began, “you have not the faintest idea! As yet, the most wonderful things you ever saw were the shops in Roberval, a high mass, an evening entertainment at the convent with acting. City people would laugh to think of it! You simply cannot imagine … Just to stroll through the big streets in the evening–not on little plank-walks like those of Roberval, but on fine broad asphalt pavements as level as a table–just that and no more, what with the lights, the electric cars coming and going continually, the shops and the crowds, you would find enough there to amaze you for weeks together. And then all the amusements one has: theatres, circusses, illustrated papers, and places everywhere that you can go into for a nickel–five cents–and pass two hours laughing and crying. To think, Maria, you do not even know what the moving pictures are!”

He stopped for a little, reviewing in his mind the marvels of the cinematograph, asking himself whether he could hope to describe convincingly the fare it provided:–those thrilling stories of young girls, deserted or astray, which crowd the screen with twelve minutes of heart-rending misery and three of amends and heavenly reward in surroundings of incredible luxury;–the frenzied galloping of cowboys in pursuit of Indian ravishers; the tremendous fusillade; the rescue at the last conceivable second by soldiers arriving in a whirlwind, waving triumphantly the star-spangled banner … after pausing in doubt he shook his head, conscious that he had no words to paint such glories.

They walked on snow-shoes side by side over the snow, through the burnt lands that lie on the Peribonka’s high bank above the fall. Lorenzo had used no wile to secure Maria’s company, he simply invited her before them all, and now he told of his love, in the same straightforward practical way.

“The first day I saw you, Maria, the very first day … that is only the truth! For a long time I had not been back in this country, and I was thinking what a miserable place it was to live in, that the men were a lot of simpletons who had never seen anything and the girls not nearly so quick and clever as they are in the States … And then, the moment I set eyes on you, there was I saying to myself that I was the simpleton, for neither at Lowell nor Boston had I ever met a girl like yourself. When I returned I used to be thinking a dozen times a day that some wretched farmer would make love to you and carry you off, and every time my heart sank. It was on your account that I came back, Maria, came up here from near Boston, three days’ journey! The business I had, I could have done it all by letter; it was you I wished to see, to tell you what was in my heart to say and to hear the answer you would give me.”

Wherever the snow was clear for a few yards, free of dead trees and stumps, and be could lift his eyes without fear of stun-Ning, they were fixed upon Maria; between the woollen cap and the long woollen jersey curving to her vigorous form he saw the outline of her face, downward turned, expressing only gentleness and patience. Every glance gave fresh reason for his love but brought him no hint of a response.

“This … this is no place for you, Maria. The country is too rough, the work too hard; barely earning one’s bread is killing toil. In a factory over there, clever and strong as you are, soon you would be in the way of making nearly as much as I do; but no need of that if you were my wife. I earn enough for both of us, and we should have every comfort: good clothes to wear, a pretty flat in a brick house with gas and hot water, and all sorts of contrivances you never heard of to save you labour and worry every moment of the day. And don’t let the idea enter your head that all the people are English. I know many Canadian families who work as I do or even keep shops. And there is a splendid church with a Canadian priest as cure–Mr. Tremblay from St. Hyacinthe. You would never be lonesome …”

Pausing again he surveyed the white plain with its ragged crop of brown stumps, the bleak plateau dropping a little farther in a long slope to the levels of the frozen river; meanwhile ransacking his mind for some final persuasive word.

“I hardly know what to say … You have always lived here and it is not possible for you to guess what life is elsewhere, nor would I be able to make you understand were I to talk forever. But I love you, Maria, I earn a good wage and I never touch a drop. If you will marry me as I ask I will take you off to a country that will open your eyes with astonishment–a fine country, not a bit like this, where we can live in a decent way and be happy for the rest of our days.”

Maria still was silent, and yet the sentences of Lorenzo Surprenant beat upon her heart as succeeding waves roll against the shore. It was not his avowals of love, honest and sincere though they were, but the lures he used which tempted her. Only of cheap pleasures had he spoken, of trivial things ministering to comfort or vanity, but of these alone was she able to conjure up a definite idea. All else–the distant glamour of the city, of a life new and incomprehensible to her, full in the centre of the bustling world and no longer at its very confines–enticed her but the more in its shimmering remoteness with the mystery of a great light that shines from afar.

Whatsoever there may be of wonder and exhilaration in the sight and touch of the crowd; the rich harvests of mind and sense for which the city dweller has bartered his rough heritage of pride in the soil, Maria was dimly conscious of as part of this other life in a new world, this glorious re-birth for which she was already yearning. But above all else the desire was strong upon her now to flee away, to escape.

The wind from the cast was driving before it a host of melancholy snow-laden clouds. Threateningly they swept over white ground and sullen wood, and the earth seemed awaiting another fold of its winding-sheet; cypress, spruce and fir, close side by side and motionless, were passive in their attitude of uncomplaining endurance. The stumps above the snow were like floating wreckage on a dreary sea. In all the landscape there was naught that spoke of a spring to come–of warmth and growth; rather did it seem a shard of some disinherited planet under the eternal rule of deadly cold.

All of her life had Maria known this cold, this snow, the land’s death-like sleep, these austere and frowning woods; now was she coming to view them with fear and hate. A paradise surely must it be, this country to the south where March is no longer winter and in April the leaves are green! At midwinter one takes to the road without snowshoes, unclad in furs, beyond sight of the cruel forest. And the cities … the pavements …

Questions framed themselves upon her lips. She would know if lofty houses and shops stood unbrokenly on both sides of the streets, as she had been told; if the electric cars ran all the year round; if the living was very dear … And the answers to her questions would have satisfied but a little of this eager curiosity, would scarcely have disturbed the enchanting vagueness of her illusion.

She was silent, however, dreading to speak any word that might seem like the foreshadowing of a promise. Though Lorenzo gazed at her long as they walked together across the snow, he was able to guess nothing of what was passing in her heart.

“You will not have me, Maria? You have no liking for me, or is it, perhaps, that you cannot make up your mind?” As still she gave no reply he clung to this idea, fearing that she might hastily refuse him.

“No need whatever that you should say ‘Yes’ at once. You have not known me very long … But think of what I have said to you. I will come back, Maria. It is a long journey and costly, but I will come. And if only you give thought to it, you will see there is no young fellow here who could give you such a future as I can; because if you marry me we shall live like human beings, and not have to kill ourselves tending cattle and grubbing in the earth in this out-of-the-way comer of the world.”

They returned to the house. Lorenzo gossiped a little about his journey to the States, where the springtime would have arrived before him, of the plentiful and well-paid work to which his good clothes and prosperous air bore witness. Then he bade them adieu, and Maria, whose eyes had carefully been avoiding his, seated herself by the window, and watched the night and the snow falling together as she pondered in the deep unrest of her spirit.

CHAPTER XIII

LOVE BEARING CHAINS

No one asked Maria any questions that evening, or on the following evenings; but some member of the family must have told Eutrope Gagnon of Lorenzo Surprenant’s visit and his evident intentions, for the next Sunday after dinner came Eutrope in turn, and Maria heard another suitor declare his love.

Francois had come in the full tide of summer, from the land of mystery at the headwaters of the rivers; the memory of his artless words brought back the dazzling sunshine, the ripened blueberries and the last blossoms of the laurel fading in the undergrowth; after him appeared Lorenzo Surprenant offering other gifts,–visions of beautiful distant cities, of a life abounding in unknown wonders. When Eutrope spoke, it was in a shamefaced halting way, as though he foresaw defeat, knowing full well that he bore little in his hands wherewith to tempt her.

Boldly enough he asked Maria to walk with him, but when they were dressed and outside the door, they saw that snow was falling. Maria stood dubiously on the step, a hand on the latch as though she would return; and Eutrope, unwilling to lose his chance, began forthwith to speak–hastening as though doubtful that he would be able to say all that was in his mind.

“You know very well, Maria, how I feel toward you. I said nothing before as my farm was not so forward that we could live there comfortably, and moreover I guessed that you liked Francois Paradis better than me. But as Francois is no longer here, and this young fellow from the States is courting you, I said to myself that I, too, might try my fortune …”

The snow was coming now in serried flakes, fluttering whitely for an instant against the darkly-encircling forest, on the way to join that other snow with which five months of winter had burdened the earth.

“It is true enough that I am not rich; but I have two lots of my own, paid for out and out, and you know the soil is good. I shall work on it all spring, take the stumps out of the large field below the ridge of rock, put up some fences, and by May there will be a fine big field ready for seeding. I shall sow a hundred and thirty bushels, Maria,–a hundred and thirty bushels of wheat, barley and oats, without reckoning an acre of mixed grain for the cattle. All the seed, the best seed-grain, I am going to buy at Roberval, settling for it on the spot … I have the money put aside; I shall pay cash, without running into debt to a soul, and if only we have an average season there will be a fine crop to harvest. Just think of it, Maria, a hundred and thirty bushels of good seed in first-rate land! And in the summer before the hay-making, and then again before the harvest, will be the best chance for building a nice tight warm little house, all of tamarack. I have the wood ready, cut and piled behind my barn; my brother will help me, perhaps Esdras and Da’Be as well, when they get home. Next winter I shall go to the shanties, taking a horse with me, and in the spring I shall bring back not less than two hundred dollars in my pocket. Then, should you be willing to wait so long for me, would be the time …”

Maria was leaning against the door, a hand still upon the latch, her eyes turned away. Eutrope Gagnon had just this and no more to offer her: after a year of waiting that she should become his wife, and live as now she was doing in another wooden house on another half-cleared farm … Should do the household work and the cooking, milk the cows, clean the stable when her man was away–labour in the fields perhaps, since she was strong and there would be but two of them … Should spend her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patching old clothes … Now arid then in summer resting for half an hour, seated on the door-step, looking across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and the forest … The forest … Always the inscrutable, inimical forest, with a host of dark things hiding there–closed round them with a savage grip that must be loosened little by little, year by year; a few acres won each spring and autumn as the years pass, throughout all the long days of a dull harsh life … No, that she could not face …

“I know well enough that we shall have to work hard at first,” Eutrope went on, “but you have courage, Maria, and are well used to labour, as I am. I have always worked hard; no one can say that I was ever lazy, and if only you will marry me it will be my joy to toil like an ox all the day long to make a thriving place of it, so that we shall be in comfort before old age comes upon us. I do not touch drink, Maria, and truly I love you …”

His voice quivered, and he put out his hand toward the latch to take hers, or perhaps to hinder her from opening the door and leaving him without his answer.

“My affection for you … of that I am not able to speak …”

Never a word did she utter in reply. Once more a young man was telling his love, was placing in her hands all he had to give; and once more she could but hearken in mute embarrassment, only saved from awkwardness by her immobility and silence. Town-bred girls had thought her stupid, when she was but honest and truthful; very close to nature which takes no account of words. In other days when life was simpler than now it is, when young men paid their court–masterfully and yet half bashfully–to some deep-bosomed girl in the ripe fullness of womanhood who had not heard nature’s imperious command, she must have listened thus, in silence; less attentive to their pleading than to the inner voice, guarding herself by distance against too ardent a wooing, whilst she awaited … Chapdelaine were not drawn to her by any charm of gracious speech, but by her sheer comeliness, and the transparent honest heart dwelling in her bosom; when they spoke to her of love she was true to herself, steadfast and serene, saying no word where none was needful to be said, and for this they loved her only the more.

“This young fellow from the States was ready with fine speeches, but you must not be carried away by them …” He caught a hint of dissent and changed his tone.

“Of course you are quite free to choose, and I have not a word to say against him. But you would be happier here, Maria, amongst people like yourself.”

Through the falling snow Maria gazed at the rude structure of planks, between stable and barn, which her father and brother had thrown together five years before; unsightly and squalid enough it appeared, now that her fancy had begun to conjure up the stately buildings of the town. Close and ill-smelling, the floor littered with manure and foul straw, the pump in one comer that was so hard to work and set the teeth on edge with its grinding; the weather-beaten outside, buffeted by wind and never-ending snow–sign and symbol of what awaited her were she to marry one like Eutrope Gagnon, and accept as her lot a lifetime of rude toil in this sad and desolate land … She shook her head.

“I cannot answer, Eutrope, either yes or no; not just now. I have given no promise. You must wait.”

It was more than she had said to Lorenzo Surprenant, and yet Lorenzo had gone away with hope in his heart, while Eutrope felt that he had made his throw and lost. Departing alone, the snow soon hid him. She entered the house.

* * * * * * *

March dragged through its melancholy days; cold winds drove the gray clouds back and forth across the sky, and swept the snow hither and thither; one must needs consult the calendar of the Roberval grain merchant to get an inkling that spring was drawing near.

Succeeding days were to Maria like those that had gone before, each one bringing its familiar duties and the same routine; but the evenings were different, and were filled with pathetic strivings to think. Beyond doubt her parents had guessed the truth; but they were unwilling to force her reserve with their advice, nor did she seek it. She knew that it rested with her alone to make a choice, to settle the future course of her life, and she, felt like a child at school, standing on a platform before watchful eyes, bidden to find by herself the answer to some knotty question.

And this was her problem: when a girl is grown to womanhood, when she is good-looking, healthy and strong, clever in all that pertains to the household and the farm, young men come and ask her to marry, and she must say “Yes” to this one and “No” to another.

If only Francois Paradis had not vanished forever in the great lonely woods, all were then so plain. No need to ask herself what she ought to do; she would have gone straight to him, guided by a wise instinct that she might not gainsay, sure of doing what was right as a child that obeys a command. But Francois was gone; neither in the promised springtime nor ever again to return, and the cure of St. Henri forbade regrets that would prolong the awaiting.

Ah, dear God! How happy had been the early days of this awaiting! As week followed week something quickened in her heart and shot upward, like a rich and beauteous sheaf whose opening ears bend low under their weight. Happiness beyond any dream came dancing to her … No, it was stronger and keener yet, this joy of hers. It had been a great light shining in the twilight of a lonely land, a beacon toward which one journeys, forgetful of the tears that were about to flow, saying with glad defiance: “I knew it well–knew that somewhere on the earth was such a thing as this …” It was over. Yes, the gleam was gone. Henceforth must she forget that once it had shone upon her path, and grope through the dark with faltering steps.

Chapdelaine and Tit’Be were smoking in silence by the stove; the mother knitted stockings; Chien, stretched out with his head between his paws, blinked sleepily in enjoyment of the good warmth. Telesphore had dozed off with the catechism open on his knees, and the little Alma Rose, not yet in bed, was hovering in doubt between the wish to draw attention to her brother’s indolence, and a sense of shame at thus betraying him.

Maria looked down again, took her work in hand, and her simple mind pursued a little further its puzzling train of thought. When a girl does not feel, or feels no longer, that deep mysterious impulse toward a man singled out from all the rest of the world, what is left to guide her? For what things should she seek in her marriage? For a satisfying life, surely; to make a happy home for herself …

Her parents would like her to marry Eutrope Gagnon–that she felt–because she would live near them, and again because this life upon the land was the only one they knew, and they naturally thought it better than any other. Eutrope was a fine fellow, hard-working and of kindly disposition, and he loved her; but Lorenzo Surprenant also loved her; he, likewise, was steady and a good worker; he was a Canadian at heart, not less than those amongst whom she lived; he went to church … And he offered as his splendid gift a world dazzling to the eye, all the wonders of the city. He would rescue her from this oppression of frozen earth and gloomy forest.

She could not as yet resolve to say to herself: “I will marry Lorenzo Surprenant,” but her heart had made its choice. The cruel north-west wind that heaped the snow above Francois Paradis at the foot of some desolate cypress bore also to her on its wings the frown and the harshness of the country wherein she dwelt, and filled her with hate of the northern winter, the cold, the whitened ground and the loneliness, of that boundless forest unheedful of the destinies of men where every melancholy tree is fit to stand in a home of the dead. Love–all-compelling love–for a brief space had dwelt within her heart … Mighty flame, scorching and bright, quenched now, and never to revive. It left her spirit empty and yearning; she was fain to seek forgetfulness and cure in that life afar, among the myriad paler lights of the city.

CHAPTER XIV

INTO THE DEEP SILENCE

There came an evening in April when Madame Chapdelaine would not take her place at the supper table with the others.

“There are pains through my body and I have no appetite,” she said, “I must have strained myself to-day lifting a bag of flour when I was making bread. Now something catches me in the back, and I am not hungry.”

No one answered her. Those living sheltered lives take quick alarm when the mechanism of one of their number goes wrong, but people who wrestle with the earth for a living feel little surprise if their labours are too much for them now and then, and the body gives way in some fibre.

While father and children supped, Madame Chapdelaine sat very still in her chair beside the stove. She drew her breath hard, and her broad face was working.

“I am going to bed,” she said presently. “A good night’s sleep, and to-morrow morning I shall be all right again; have no doubt of that. You will see to the baking, Maria.”

And indeed in the morning she was up at her usual hour, but when she had made the batter for the pancakes pain overcame her, and she had to lie down again. She stood for a minute beside the bed, with both hands pressed against her back, and made certain that the daily tasks would be attended to.

“You will give the men their food, Maria, and your father will lend you a hand at milking the cows if you wish it. I am not good for anything this morning.”

“It will be all right, mother; it will be all right. Take it quietly; we shall have no trouble.”

For two days she kept her bed, with a watchful eye over everything, directing all the household affairs.

“Don’t be in the least anxious,” her husband urged again and again. “There is hardly anything to be done in the house beyond the cooking, and Maria is quite fit to look after that–everything else too, by thunder! She is not a little child any longer, and is as capable as yourself. Lie there quietly, without stirring; and be easy in your mind, instead of tossing about all the time under the blankets and making yourself worse….”

On the third day she gave up thinking about the cares of the house and began to bemoan herself.

“Oh my God!” she wailed. “I have pains all over my body, and my bead is burning. I think that I am going to die.”

Her husband tried to cheer her with his Clumsy pleasantries. “You are going to die when the good God wills it, and according to my way