Maria Chapdelaine: A Tale of the Lake St. John Country

by Louis Hémon

  CHAPTER XV

  THAT WE PERISH NOT

  EPHREM SURPRENANT pushed open the door and stood upon the threshold.

  "I have come." He found no other words, and waited there motionlessfor a few seconds, tongue-tied, while his eyes travelled fromChapdelaine to Maria, from Maria to the children who sat very stilland quiet by the table; then he plucked off his cap hastily, as ifin amends for his forgetfulness, shut the door behind him and movedacross to the bed where the dead woman lay.

  They had altered its place, turning the head to the wall and thefoot toward the centre of the house, so that it might be approachedon both sides. Close to the wall two lighted candles stood onchairs; one of them set in a large candlestick of white metal whichthe visitors to the Chapdelaine home had never seen before, whilefor holding the other Maria had found nothing better than a glassbowl used in the summer time for blueberries and wild raspberries,on days of ceremony.

  The candlestick shone, the bowl sparkled in the flames which lightedbut feebly the face of the dead. The days of suffering through whichshe had passed, or death's final chill had given the features astrange pallor and delicacy, the refinement of a woman bred in thecity. Father and children were at first amazed, and then perceivedin this the tremendous consequence of her translation beyond and farabove them.

  Ephrem. Surprenant bent his eyes upon the face for a little, andthen kneeled. The prayers he began to murmur were inaudible, butwhen Maria and Tit'B? came and knelt beside him he drew from apocket his string of large beads and began to tell them in a lowvoice. The chaplet ended, he sat himself in silence by the table,shaking his head sadly from time to time as is seemly in the houseof mourning, and because his own grief was deep and sincere.

  At last he discovered speech. "It is a heavy loss. You werefortunate in your wife, Samuel; no one may question that. Truly youwere fortunate in your wife."

  This said, he could go no further; he sought in vain for some wordsof sympathy, and at the end stumbled into other talk. "The weatheris quite mild this evening; we soon shall have rain. Everyone issaying that it is to be an early spring."

  To the countryman, all things touching the soil which gives himbread, and the alternate seasons which lull the earth to sleep andawaken it to life, are of such moment that one may speak of themeven in the presence of death with no disrespect. Their eyes turnedquite naturally to the square of the little window, but the nightwas black and they could discern nothing.

  Ephrem Surprenant began anew to praise her who was departed. "Inall the parish there was not a braver-spirited woman than she, nor acleverer housewife. How friendly too, and what a kind welcome shealways gave a visitor! In the old parishes--yes! and even in thetowns on the railway, not many would be found to match her. It isonly the truth to say that you were rarely suited in your wife ...Soon afterwards he rose, and, leaving the house, his face was darkwith sorrow.

  A long silence followed, in which Samuel Chapdelaine's head noddedslowly towards his breast and it seemed as though he were fallingasleep. Maria spoke quickly to him, in fear of hisoffending:--"Father! Do not sleep!"

  "No! No!" He sat up straight on his chair and squared his shouldersbut since his eyes were closing in spite of him, he stood uphastily, saying:--"Let us recite another chaplet."

  Kneeling together beside the bed, they told the chaplet bead bybead. Rising from their knees they heard the rain patter against thewindow and on the shingles. It was the first spring rain andproclaimed their freedom: the winter ended, the soil soon toreappear, rivers once more running their joyous course, the earthagain transformed like some lovely girl released at last from anevil spell by touch of magic wand. But they did not allow themselvesto be glad in this house of death, nor indeed did they feel thehappiness of it in the midst of their hearts' deep affliction.

  Opening the window they moved back to it and hearkened to thetapping of the great drops upon the roof. Maria saw that herfather's head had fallen, and that he was very still; she thoughthis evening drowsiness was mastering him again, but when about towaken him with a word, he it was who sighed and began to speak.

  "Ephrem. Surprenant said no more than the truth. Your mother was agood woman, Maria; you will not find her like."

  Maria's head answered him "Yes," but her lips were pressed close.

  "Full of courage and good counsel, that she has been throughout herlife; but it was chiefly in the early days after we were married,and then again when Esdras and yourself were little, that she showedherself the woman she was. The wife of a small farmer looks for noeasy life, but women who take to their work as well and ascheerfully as she did in those days, Maria, are hard to find."

  Maria faltered:--"I know, father; I know it well;" and she driedher eyes for her heart was melting into tears.

  "When we took up our first land at Normandin we had two cows andvery little pasture for them, as nearly all our lot was in standingtimber and hard to win for the plough. As for me, I picked up my axand I said to her:--'Laura, I am going to clear land for you.' Andfrom morning till night it was chop, chop, chop, without ever comingback to the house except for dinner; and all that time she did thework of the house and the cooking, she looked after the cattle,mended the fences, cleaned the cow-shed, never rested from hertoiling; and then half-a-dozen times a day she would come outsidethe door and stand for a minute looking at me, over there by thefringe of the woods, where I was putting my back into felling thebirches and the spruce to make a patch of soil for her.

  "Then in the month of July our well must needs dry up; the cows hadnot a drop of water to slake their thirst and they almost stoppedgiving milk. So when I was hard at it in the woods the mother wentoff to the river with a pail in either hand, and climbed the steepbluff eight or ten times together with these brimming, and her feetthat slipped back in the running sand, till she had filled a barrel;and when the barrel was full she got it on a wheelbarrow, andwheeled it off herself to empty it into the big tub in thecow-pasture more than three hundred yards from the house, just belowthe rocks. It was not a woman's work, and I told her often enough toleave it to me, but she always spoke up briskly:--'Don't you thinkabout that--don't think about anything--clear a farm for me.' Andshe would laugh to cheer me up, but I saw well enough this was toomuch for her, and that she was all dark under the eyes with thelabour of it.

  "Well, I caught up my ax and was off to the woods; and I laid intothe birches so lustily that chips flew as thick as your wrist, allthe time saying to myself that the wife I had was like no other, andthat if the good God only kept me in health I would make her thebest farm in the countryside."

  The rain was ever sounding on the roof now and then a gust droveagainst the window great drops which ran down the panes likeslow-falling tears. Yet a few hours of rain and the soil would bebare, streams would dance down every slope; a few more days and theywould hear the thundering of the falls.

  "When we took up other land above Mistassini," Samuel Chapdelainecontinued, "it was the same thing over again; heavy work andhardship for both of us alike; but she was always full of courageand in good heart ... We were in the midst of the forest, but asthere were some open spaces of rich grass among the rocks we took toraising sheep. One evening He was silent for a little, and when hebegan speaking again his eyes were fixed intently upon Maria, asthough he wished to make very clear to her what he was about to say.

  "It was in September; the time when all the great creatures of thewoods become dangerous. A man from Mistassini who was coming downthe river in a canoe landed near our place and spoke to usthiswise:--'Look after your sheep; the bears came and killed aheifer last week quite close to the houses.' So your mother and Iwent off that evening to the pasture to drive the sheep into the penfor the night so that the bears would not devour them.

  "I took one side and she the other, as the sheep used to scatteramong the alders. It was growing dark, and suddenly I heard Lauracry out: 'Oh, the scoundrels!' Some animals were moving in thebushes, and it was plain to see they were not sheep, because i
n thewoods toward evening sheep are white patches. So, ax in hand, Istarted off running as hard as I could. Later on, when we were onthe way back to the house, your mother told me all about it. She hadcome across a sheep lying dead, and two bears that were just goingto eat it. Now it takes a pretty good man, one not easily frightenedand with a gun in his hand, to face a bear in September; as for awoman empty-handed, the best thing she can do is to run for it andnot a soul will blame her. But your mother snatched a stick from theground and made straight for the bears, screaming at them:--'Ourbeautiful fat sheep! Be off with you, you ugly thieves, or I will dofor you!' I got there at my best speed, leaping over the stumps;but by that time the bears had cleared off into the woods withoutshowing fight, scared as could be, because she had put the fear ofdeath into them."

  Maria listened breathlessly; asking herself if it was really hermother who had done this thing-the mother whom she had always knownso gentle and tender-hearted; who had never given Telesphore alittle rap on the head without afterwards taking him on her knees tocomfort him, adding her own tears to his, and declaring that to slapa child was something to break one's heart.

  The brief spring shower was already spent; through the clouds themoon was showing her face--eager to discover what was left of thewinter's snow after this earliest rain. As yet the ground waseverywhere white; the night's deep silence told them that many daysmust pass before they would hear again the dull roaring of thecataract; but the tempered breeze whispered of consolation andpromise.

  Samuel Chapdelaine lapsed into silence for a while, his head bowed,his hands resting upon his knees, dreaming of the past with itstoilsome years that were yet so full of brave hopes. When he took uphis tale it was in a voice that halted, melancholy withself-reproach.

  "At Normandin, at Mistassini and the other places we have lived Ialways worked hard; no one can say nay to that. Many an acre offorest have I cleared and I have built houses and barns, alwayssaying to myself that one day we should have a comfortable farmwhere your mother would live as do the women in the old parishes,with fine smooth fields all about the house as far as the eye couldsee, a kitchen garden, handsome well-fed cattle in the farm-yard ...And, after it all, here is she dead in this half-savage spot,leagues from other houses and churches, and so near the bush thatsome nights one can hear the foxes bark. And it is my fault that shehas died so ... My fault ... My fault." Remorse seized him; heshook his head at the pity of it, his eyes upon the floor.

  "Many times it happened, after we had spent five or six years inone place and all had gone well, that we were beginning to gettogether a nice property--good pasturage, broad fields ready forsowing, a house lined inside with pictures from the papers ...Then people came and settled about us; we had but to wait a little,working on quietly, and soon we should have been in the midst of awell-to-do settlement where Laura could have passed the rest of herdays in happiness ... And then all of a sudden I lost heart; Igrew sick and tired of my work and of the countryside; I began tohate the very faces of those who had taken up land near-by and usedto come to see us, thinking that we should be pleased to have avisitor after being so long out of the way of them. I heard peoplesaying that farther off toward the head of the Lake there was goodland in the forest; that some folk from St. Gedeon spoke of settlingover on that side; and forthwith I began to hunger and thirst forthis spot they were talking about, that I had never seen in my lifeand where not a soul lived, as for the place of my birth ...

  "Well, in those days, when the work was done, instead of smokingbeside the stove I would go out to the door-step and sit therewithout moving, like a man homesick and lonely; and everything I sawin front of me--the place I had made with these two hands after somuch of labour and sweat--the fields, the fences, over to the rockyknoll that shut us in--I detested them all till I seemed ready to goout of my mind at the very sight of them.

  "And then your mother would come quietly up behind me. She alsowould look out across our place, and I knew that she was pleasedwith it to the bottom of her heart because it was beginning to looklike the old parish where she had grown up, and where she would sogladly have spent her days. But instead of telling me that I was nobetter than a silly old fool for wishing to leave--as most womenwould have done-and finding hard things to say about my folly, sheonly sighed a little as she thought of the drudgery that was tobegin all over again somewhere back in the woods, and kindly andsoftly she would say to me:--'Well, Samuel! Are we soon to be on themove once more?' When she said that I could not answer, for I wasspeechless with very shame at thinking of the wretched life I hadgiven her; but I knew well enough that it would end in our movingagain and pushing on to the north, deeper into the woods, and thatshe would be with me and take her share in this hard business ofbeginning anew--as cheerful and capable and good-humoured as ever,without one single word of reproach or spitefulness."

  He was silent after that, and seemed to ponder long his sorrow andthe things which might have been. Maria, sighing, passed a handacross her face as though she would brush away a disquieting vision;but in very truth there was nothing she wished to forget. What sheheard had moved her profoundly, and she felt in a dim and troubledway that this story of a hard life so bravely lived had for her adeep and timely significance and held some lesson if only she mightunderstand it.

  "How little do we know people!" was the thought that filled hermind. Since her mother had crossed the threshold of death she seemedto wear a new aspect, not of this world; and now all the homely andfamiliar traits endearing her to them were being overshadowed byother virtues well-nigh heroic in their quality.

  To pass her days in these lonely places when she would have dearlyloved the society of other human beings and the unbroken peace ofvillage life; to strive from dawn till nightfall, spending all herstrength in a thousand heavy tasks, and yet from dawn till nightfallnever losing patience nor her happy tranquillity; continually to seeabout her only the wilderness, the great pitiless forest, and tohold in the midst of it all an ordered way of life, the gentlenessand the joyousness which are the fruits of many a century shelteredfrom such rudeness--was it not surely a hard thing and a worthy? Andthe recompense? After death, a little word of praise.

  Was it worth the cost? The question scarcely framed itself with suchclearness in her mind, but so her thoughts were tending. Thus tolive, as hardly, as courageously, and to be so sorely missed whenshe departed, few women were fit for this. As for herself ...

  The sky, flooded with moonlight, was of a wonderful lambency anddepth; across the whole arch of heaven a band of cloud, fashionedstrangely into carven shapes, defiled in solemn march. The whiteground no longer spoke of chill and desolateness, for the air wassoft; and by some magic of the approaching spring the snow appearedto be only a mask covering the earth's face, in nowise terrifying--amask one knew must soon be lifted.

  Maria seated by the little window fixed her unconscious eyes uponthe sky and the fields stretching away whitely to the environingwoods, and of a sudden it was borne to her that the question she wasasking herself had just received its answer. To dwell in this landas her mother had dwelt, and, dying thus, to leave behind her asorrowing husband and a record of the virtues of her race, she knewin her heart she was fit for that. In reckoning with herself therewas no trace of vanity; rather did the response seem from without.Yes, she was able; and she was filled with wonderment as though atthe shining of some unlooked-for light.

  Thus she too could live; but ... it was not as yet in her heart soto do ... In a little while, this season of mourning at an end,Lorenzo Surprenant would come back from the States for the thirdtime and would bear her away to the unknown delights of thecity--away from the great forest she hated--away from that cruelland where men who go astray perish helplessly, where women endureendless torment the while ineffectual aid is sought for them overthe long roads buried in snow. Why should she stay here to toil andsuffer when she might escape to the lands of the south and a happierlife.

  The soft breeze telling of spring came against the win
dow, bringinga confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swayingand touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl. Then thegreat silence reigned once more. Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping;but in this repose beside the dead was nothing unseemly or wantingin respect; chin fallen on his breast, hands lying open on hisknees, he seemed to be plunged into the very depths of sorrow orstriving to relinquish life that he might follow the departed alittle way into the shades.

  Again Maria asked herself:--"Why stay here, to toil and sufferthus? Why? ..." And when she found no answer, it befell at lengththat out of the silence and the night voices arose.

  No miraculous voices were these; each of us hears them when he goesapart and withdraws himself far enough to escape from the pettyturmoil of his daily life. But they speak more loudly and withplainer accents to the simple-hearted, to those who dwell among thegreat northern woods and in the empty places of the earth. While yetMaria was dreaming of the city's distant wonders the first voicebrought murmuringly to her memory a hundred forgotten charms of theland she wished to flee.

  The marvel of the reappearing earth in the springtime after the longmonths of winter ... The dreaded snow stealing away in prankishrivulets down every slope; the tree-roots first resurgent, then themosses drenched with wet, soon the ground freed from its burdenwhereon one treads with delighted glances and sighs of happinesslike the sick man who feels glad life returning to his veins ...Later yet, the birches, alders, aspens swelling into bud; the laurelclothing itself in rosy bloom ... The rough battle with the soil aseeming holiday to men no longer condemned to idleness; to draw thehard breath of toil from morn till eve a gracious favour ...

  --The cattle, at last set free from their shed, gallop to thepasture and glut themselves with the fresh grass. All the new-borncreatures--the calves, the fowls, the lambs, gambol in the sun andadd daily to their stature like the hay and the barley. The poorestfarmer sometimes halts in yard or field, hands in pockets, andtastes the great happiness of knowing that the sun's heat, the warmrain, the earth's unstinted alchemy--every mighty force ofnature--is working as a humble slave for him ... for him.

  --And then, the summertide; the glory of sunny noons, the heatedquivering air that blurs the horizon and the outline of the forest,the flies swarming and circling in the sun's rays, and but threehundred paces from the house the rapids and the fall--white foamagainst dark water--the mere sight of it filling one with adelicious coolness. In its due time the harvest; the grain thatgives life heaped into the barns; then autumn and soon the returningwinter ... But here was the marvel of it, that the winter seemedno longer abhorrent or terrifying; it brought in its train the sweetintimacies of a house shut fast, and beyond the door, with thesameness and the soundlessness of deep-drifted snow, peace, a greatpeace . .

  In the cities were the strange and wonderful things whereof LorenzoSurprenant had told, with others that she pictured to herselfconfusedly: wide streets suffused with light, gorgeous shops, aneasy life of little toil with a round of small pleasures anddistractions. Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of thisrestlessness, and, yearning some evening only for repose and quiet,where would one discover the tranquillity of field and wood, thesoft touch of that cooler air that draws from the north-west afterset of sun, the wide-spreading peacefulness that settles on theearth sinking to untroubled sleep.

  "And yet they must be beautiful!" thought she, still dreaming ofthose vast American cities ... As though in answer, a second voicewas raised.

  --Over there was it not a stranger land where people of an alienrace spoke of unfamiliar things in another tongue, sang other songs?Here ...

  --The very names of this her country, those she listened to everyday, those heard but once, came crowding to memory: a thousand namespiously bestowed by peasants from France on lakes, on rivers, onthe settlements of the new country they were discovering andpeopling as they went--lac a l'Eau-Claire--laFamine--Saint-Coeur--de-Marie--Trois-Pistoles--SainteRose-du-Degel--Pointe-aux-Outardes--Saint-Andre-de-l' Epouvante ...An uncle of Eutrope Gagnon's lived at Saint-Andre-de-l'Epouvante;Racicot of Honfleur spoke often of his son who was a stoker on aGulf coaster, and every time new names were added to the old;names of fishing villages and little harbours on the St. Lawrence,scattered here and there along those shores between which the shipsof the old days had boldly sailed toward an unknownland--Pointe-Mille-Vaches--les Escoumins--Notre-Dame-du-Portage--lesGrandes-Bergeronnes--Gaspe.

  --How sweet to hear these names where one was talking of distantacquaintance and kinsfolk, or telling of far journeys! How dear andneighbourly was the sound of them, with a heart-warming friendlyring that made one feel as he spoke them:--"Throughout all thisland we are at home ... at home ..."

  --Westward, beyond the borders of the Province; southward, acrossthe line were everywhere none but English names. In time one mightlearn to speak them, even might they at last come familiarly to theear; but where should one find again the happy music of the Frenchnames?

  --Words of a foreign speech from every lip, on every street, inevery shop ... Little girls taking hands to dance a round andsinging a song one could not understand ... Here ...

  Maria turned toward her father who still slept with his chin sunk onhis breast, looking like a man stricken down by grief whosemeditation is of death; and the look brought her swift memory of thehymns and country songs he was wont to teach his children in theevenings.

  A la claire fontaine M'en allant promener ...

  In those cities of the States, even if one taught the children howto sing them would they not straightway forget!

  The clouds a little while ago drifting singly across a moonlit skywere now spread over the heavens in a vast filmy curtain, and thedim light passing through it was caught by the earth's pale coverletof melting snow; between the two wan expanses the ranks of theforest darkly stretched their long battle-front.

  Maria shuddered; the emotion which had glowed in her heart wasdying; once again she said to herself: "And yet it is a harshland, this land of ours ... Why should I linger here?"

  Then it was that a third voice, mightier than the others, lifteditself up in the silence: the voice of Quebec--now the song of awoman, now the exhortation of a priest. It came to her with thesound of a church bell, with the majesty of an organ's tones, like aplaintive love-song, like the long high call of woodsmen in theforest. For verily there was in it all that makes the soul of theProvince: the loved solemnities of the ancestral faith; the lilt ofthat old speech guarded with jealous care; the grandeur and thebarbaric strength of this new land where an ancient race has againfound its youth.

  Thus spake the voice.--"Three hundred years ago we came, and wehave remained ... They who led us hither might return among uswithout knowing shame or sorrow, for if it be true that we havelittle learned, most surely nothing is forgot.

  "We bore oversea our prayers and our songs; they are ever the same.We carried in our bosoms the hearts of the men of our fatherland,brave and merry, easily moved to pity as to laughter, of all humanhearts the most human; nor have they changed. We traced theboundaries of a new continent, from Gaspe to Montreal, from St. Jeand'Iberville to Ungava, saying as we did it.--Within these limitsall we brought with us, our faith, our tongue, our virtues, our veryweaknesses are henceforth hallowed things which no hand may touch,which shall endure to the end.

  "Strangers have surrounded us whom it is our pleasure to callforeigners; they have taken into their hands most of the rule, theyhave gathered to themselves much of the wealth; but in this land ofQuebec nothing has changed. Nor shall anything change, for we arethe pledge of it. Concerning ourselves and our destiny but one dutyhave we clearly understood: that we should hold fast--should endure.And we have held fast, so that, it may be, many centuries hence theworld will look upon us and say:--These people are of a race thatknows not how to perish ... We are a testimony.

  "For this is it that we must abide in that Province where ourfathers dwelt, living as they have lived, so to obey the unwrittencommand t
hat once shaped itself in their hearts, that passed toours, which we in turn must hand on to descendants innumerable:--Inthis land of Quebec naught shall die and naught shall sufferchange ..."

  The veil of gray cloud which hid-the whole heavens had becomeheavier and more louring, and suddenly the rain began afresh,bringing yet a little nearer that joyous hour when the earth wouldlie bare and the rivers be freed. Samuel Chapdelaine sleptprofoundly, his head sunk upon his breast, an old man yielding atlast to the long fatigues of his lifetime of toil. Above thecandlestick of metal and the glass bowl the candle flames waveredunder gentle breaths from the window, and shadows flitting acrossthe face of the dead woman made her lips seem to be moving in prayeror softly telling secrets.

  Maria Chapdelaine awaked from her dream to the thought:--"So Ishall stay--shall. stay here after all!" For the voices had spokencommandingly and she knew she could not choose but obey. It was onlythen that the recollection of other duties came, after she hadsubmitted, and a sigh had passed her lips. Alma Rose was still achild; her mother dead, there must be a woman in the house. But intruth it was the voices which had told her the way.

  The rain was pattering on the roof, and nature, rejoicing thatwinter was past, sent soft little wandering airs through thecasement as though she were sighing in content. Throughout the hoursof the night Maria moved not; with hands folded in her lap, patientof spirit and without bitterness, yet dreaming a little wistfully ofthe far-off wonders her eyes would never behold and of the landwherein she was bidden to live with its store of sorrowful memories;of the living flame which her heart had known awhile and lostforever, and the deep snowy woods whence too daring youths shall nomore return.

  CHAPTER XVI

  PLEDGED TO THE RACE

  ESDRAS and Da'Be came down from the shanties in May, and theirgrieving brought freshly to the household the pain of bereavement.But the naked earth was lying ready for the seed, and mourning mustnot delay the season's labours.

  Eutrope Gagnon was there one evening to pay them a visit, and aglance he stole at Maria's face perhaps told him of a change in her,for when, they were alone he put the question:--"Maria, do youstill think of going away?"

  Her eyes were lowered, as with a motion of her head she signified"No."

  "Then ... I know well that this is no time to speak of suchthings, but if only you could say there would be a chance for me oneday, then could I bear the waiting better."

  And Maria answered him:--"Yes ... If you wish I will marry youas you asked me to ... In the spring--the spring after this springnow--when the men come back from the woods for the sowing."