Books: Maria Chapdelaine
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Louis Hemon >> Maria Chapdelaine
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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
of thinking that will not be for a while yet. What would He be doing
with you? Heaven is all cluttered with old women, and down here we
have only the one, and she is able to make herself a bit useful,
every now and then ..." But he was beginning to feel anxious, and
took counsel with his daughter.
"I could put the horse in and go as far as La Pipe," he suggested.
"It may be that they have some medicine for this sickness at the
store; or I might talk things over with the cure, and he would tell
me what to do."
Before they had made up their minds night had fallen, and Tit'Be,
who had been at Eutrope Gagnon's helping him to saw his firewood,
came back bringing Eutrope along with him.
Eutrope has a remedy," said he. They all gathered round Eutrope, who
took a little tin box from his pocket and opened it deliberately.
"This is what I have," he announced rather dubiously. "They are
little pills. When my brother was bad with his kidneys three years
ago he saw an advertisement in a paper about these pills, and it
said they were the proper thing, so he sent the money for a box, and
he declares it is a good medicine. Of course his trouble did not
leave him at once, but he says that this did him good. It comes from
the States ..."
Without word said they looked at the little gray pills rolling about
on the bottom of the box ... A remedy compounded by some man in a
distant land famed for his wisdom ... And they felt the awe of the
savage for his broth of herbs simmered on a night of the full moon
beneath the medicineman's incantations.
Maria asked doubtfully: "Is it certain that her trouble has only to
do with the kidneys?"
"I thought it was just that, from what Tit'Be told me."
A motion of Chapdelaine's hand eked out his words.--"She strained
herself lifting a bag of flour, as she says; and now she has pains
everywhere. How can we tell ..."
"The newspaper that spoke of this medicine," Eutrope Gagnon went on,
"put it that whenever a person falls sick and is in pain it is
always the kidneys; and for trouble in the kidneys these pills here
are first-rate. That is what the paper said, and my brother as
well."
"Even if they are not for this very sickness," said Tit'Be
deferentially, "they are a remedy all the same."
"She suffers, that is one thing certain; we cannot let her go on
like this."
They drew near the bed where the sick woman was moaning and
breathing heavily, attempting from time to time to make slight
movements which were followed by sharper outcries.
"Eutrope has brought you a cure, Laura."
"I have no faith in your cures," she groaned out. But yet she was
ready to look at the little gray pills ever running round in the tin
box as if they were alive.
"My brother took some of these three years ago when he had the
kidney trouble so badly that he was hardly able to work at all, and
he says that they cured him. It is a fine remedy, Madame
Chapdelaine, there is not a question of it!" His former doubts had
vanished in speech and he felt wholly confident. This is going to
cure you, Madame Chapdelaine, as surely as the good God is above us.
It is a medicine of the very first class; my brother had it sent
expressly from the States. You may be sure that you would never find
a medicine like this in the store at La Pipe."
"It cannot make her worse?" Maria asked, some doubt lingering. "It
is not a poison, or anything of that sort?"
With one voice, in an indignant tone, the three men protested: "Do
harm? Tiny pills no bigger than that!"
"My brother took nearly a box of them, and according to his account
it was only good they did him."
When Eutrope departed he left the box of pills; the sick woman had
not yet agreed to try them, but her objections grew weaker with
their urging. In the middle of the night she took a couple, and two
more in the morning, and as the hours passed they all waited in
confidence of the virtue of the medicine to declare itself. But
toward midday they had to bow to the facts: she was no easier and
did not cease her moaning. by evening the box was empty, and at the
falling of the night her groans were filling the household with
anguished distress, all the keener as they had no medicine now in
which to place their trust.
Maria was up several times in the night, aroused by her mother's
more piercing cries; she always found her lying motionless on her
side, and this position seemed to increase the suffering and the
stiffness, so that her groans were pitiful to hear.
"What ails you, mother? Are you not feeling any better?"
"Ah God, how I suffer! How I do suffer! I cannot stir myself, not
the least bit, and even so the pain is as bad as ever. Give me some
cold water, Maria; I have the most terrible thirst."
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