Books: Maria Chapdelaine
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Louis Hemon >> Maria Chapdelaine
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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...
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