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

by Louis Hémon

  CHAPTER VIII

  ENTRENCHED AGAINST WINTER

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

  But Edwige Legare thus pronounced sentence: "After the firstsnowfall there is yet a month before winter sets in. The old folksalways so declared, and I believe it myself." He was right; for intwo days a rain carried off the snow and the dark soil again laybare. 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 withearth and sand, making an embankment at the foot of the walls; theother men, armed with hammer and nails, went round the outside ofthe house, nailing up, closing chinks, remedying as best they couldthe year's wear and tear. Within, the women forced rags into thecrevices, pasted upon the wainscotting at the north-west side oldnewspapers brought from the village and carefully preserved, testedwith their hands in every corner for draughts.

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

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

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

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

  The moment for laying in wood is also that of the slaughtering.After entrenching against cold comes the defence against hunger. Thequarters of pork went into the brine-tub; from a beam in the shedthere hung the side of a fat heifer-the other half sold to people inHonfleur-which the cold would keep fresh till spring; sacks of flourwere piled in a corner of the house, and Tit'B?, provided with aspool of brass wire, set himself to making nooses for hares.

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

  The house became the centre of the universe; in truth the only spotwhere life could be sustained, and more than ever the greatcast-iron stove was the soul of it. Every little while some memberof the family fetched a couple of logs from under the staircase;cypress in the morning, spruce throughout the day, in the eveningbirch, pushing them in upon the live coals. Whenever the heatfailed, mother Chapdelaine might be heard saying anxiously.--"Don'tlet the fire out, children." Whereupon Maria, Tit'B? or Telesphorewould open the little door, glance in and hasten to the pile ofwood.

  In the mornings Tit'B? jumped out of bed long before daylight to seeif the great sticks of birch had done their duty and burned allnight; should, unluckily, the fire be out he lost no time inrekindling it with birch-bark and cypress branches, placed heavierpieces on the mounting flame, and ran back to snuggle under thebrown woollen blankets and patchwork quilt till the comfortingwarmth 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 wonderinglythrough the little square windows. And sometimes this world wasstrangely beautiful in its frozen immobility, with a sky of flawlessblue and a brilliant sun that sparkled on the snow; but theimmaculateness of the blue and the white alike was pitiless and gavehint of the murderous cold.

  Days there were when the weather was tempered and the snow fellstraight from the clouds, concealing all; the ground and the lowgrowth was covered little by little, the dark line of the woods washidden behind the curtain of serried flakes. Then in the morning thesky was clear again, but the fierce northwest wind swayed theheavens. Powdery snow, whipped from the ground, drove across theburnt lands and the clearings in blinding squalls, and heaped itselfbehind whatever broke the force of the gale. To the south-east ofthe house it built an enormous cone, and between house and stableraised a drift five feet high through which the shovel had to carvea path; but to windward the ground was bare, scoured by thepersistent blast.

  On such days as these the men scarcely left the house except to carefor the beasts, and came back on the run, their faces rasped withthe cold and shining-wet with snow-crystals melted by the heat ofthe house. Chapdelaine would pluck the icicles from his moustache,slowly draw off his sheepskin-lined coat and settle himself by thestove 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, woodand food, he gives himself up to the indolences of winter quarters,smoking pipes innumerable while the women-folk are busy with theevening meal. The cold snaps the nails in the plank walls withreports like pistol-shots; the stove crammed with birch roarslustily; the howling of the wind without is like the cries of abesieging host.

  "It must be a bad day in the woods!" thinks Maria to herself; andthen perceives that she has spoken aloud.

  "In the woods they are better off than we are here," answers herfather. "Up there where the trees stand close together one does notfeel 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.