by Louis Hémon
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 LaPipe on Sunday for the mass."
"Very well, father;" but she replied in a voice so dejected, almostindifferent, that her parents exchanged glances behind her back.
Country folk do not die for love, nor spend the rest of their daysnursing a wound. They are too near to nature, and know too well thestern laws that rule their lives. Thus it is perhaps, that they aresparing of high-sounding words; choosing to say "liking" rather than"loving" ... "ennui" rather than "grief," that so the joys andsorrows of the heart may bear a fit proportion to those more anxiousconcerns of life which have to do with their daily toil, the yieldof their lands, provision for the future.
Maria did not for a moment dream that life for her was over, or thatthe world must henceforward be a sad wilderness, because FrancisParadis would not return in the spring nor ever again. But her heartwas aching, and while sorrow possessed it the future held no promisefor her.
When Sunday arrived, father and daughter early began to make readyfor the two hours' journey which would bring them to St. Henri deTaillon, and the church. Before half-past seven Charles Eugene washarnessed, and Maria, still wearing a heavy winter cloak, hadcarefully deposited in her purse the list of her mother'scommissions. A few minutes later the sleigh-bells were tinkling, andthe rest of the family grouped themselves at the little squarewindow to watch the departure.
For the first hour the horse could not go beyond a walk, sinkingknee-deep in snow; for only the Chapdelaines used this road, laidout and cleared by themselves, and not enough travelled to becomesmooth and hard. But when they reached the beaten highway CharlesEugene trotted along briskly.
They passed through Honfleur, a hamlet of eight scattered houses,and then re-entered the woods. After a time they came uponclearings, then houses appeared dotted along the road; little bylittle the dusky ranks of the forest retreated, and soon they werein the village with other sleighs before and following them, allgoing toward the church.
Since the beginning of the year Maria had gone three times to hearmass at St. Henri de Taillon, which the people of the countrypersist in calling La Pipe, as in the gallant days of the firstsettlers. For her, besides being an exercise of piety, this wasalmost the only distraction possible and her father sought tofurnish it whenever he could do so, believing that the impressiverites of the church and a meeting with acquaintances in the villagewould help to banish her grief.
On this occasion when the mass was ended, instead of paying visitsthey went to the curees house. It was already thronged with membersof the congregation from remote farms, for the Canadian priest notonly has the consciences of his flock in charge, but is theircounsellor in all affairs, and the composer of their disputes; thesolitary individual of different station to whom they can resort forthe 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 generalconversation where he bore his cheerful part; others at greaterlength in the privacy of an adjoining room. When the turn of theChapdelaines came he looked at his watch.
"We shall have dinner first. What say you, my good friends? Youmust have found an appetite on the road. As for myself, singing massmakes me hungry beyond anything you could believe."
He laughed heartily, more tickled than anyone at his own joke, andled his guests into the dining-room. Another priest was there from aneighbouring parish, and two or three farmers. The meal was one longdiscussion about husbandry, with a few amusing stories and bits ofharmless gossip thrown in; now and then one of the farmers, suddenlyremembering where he was, would labour some pious remark which thepriests acknowledged with a nod or an absent-minded "Yes! Yes!"
The dinner over at last, some of the guests departed after lightingtheir pipes. The cure, catching a glance from Chapdelaine, seemed torecall something; arising, he motioned to Maria, and went before herinto the next room which served him both for visitors and as hisoffice.
A small harmonium stood against the wall; on the other side was atable with agricultural journals, a Civil Code and a few books boundin black leather; on the walls hung a portrait of Pius X., anengraving of the Holy Family, the coloured broadside of a Quebecmerchant with sleighs and threshing-machines side by side, and anumber of official notices as to precautions against forest firesand epidemics amongst cattle.
Turning to Maria, the cure said kindly enough;--"So it appears thatyou are distressing yourself beyond what is reasonable and right?"
She looked at him humbly, not far from believing that the priest'ssupernatural power had divined her trouble without need of telling.He inclined his tall figure, and bent toward her his thin peasantface; for beneath the robe was still the tiller of the soil: thegaunt and yellow visage, the cautious eyes, the huge bony shoulders.Even his hands--hands wont to dispense the favours of Heaven-werethose 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 ofduty.
"Be seated there," he said, pointing to a chair. She sat downsomewhat like a schoolgirl who is to have a scolding, somewhat likea woman in a sorcerer's den who awaits in mingled hope and dread theworking of his unearthly spells... ... ...
An hour later the sleigh was speeding over the hard snow.Chapdelaine drowsed, and the reins were slipping from his openhands. Rousing himself and lifting his head, he sang again infull-voiced fervour the hymn he was singing as they left thevillage:--
... Adorons-le dans le ciel. Adorons-le sur l'autel ...
Then he fell silent, his chin dropping slowly toward his breast, andthe only sound upon the road was the tinkle of sleigh-bells.
Maria was thinking of the priest's words: "If there was affectionbetween you it is very proper that you should know regret. But youwere not pledged to one another, because neither you nor he hadspoken to your parents; therefore it is not befitting or right thatyou should sorrow thus, nor feel so deep a grief for a young manwho, after all is said, was nothing to you..."
And again: "That masses should be sung, that you should pray forhim, such things are useful and good, you could do no better. Threehigh masses with music, and three more when the boys return from thewoods, as your father has asked me, most assuredly these will helphim, and also you may be certain they will delight him more thanyour lamentations, since they will shorten by so much his time ofexpiation. But to grieve like this, and to go about casting gloomover the household is not well, nor is it pleasing in the sight ofGod."
He did not appear in the guise of a comforter, nor of one who givescounsel in the secret affairs of the heart, but rather as a man ofthe law or a chemist who enunciates his bald formulas, invariableand unfailing.
"The duty of a girl like you--good-looking, healthy, active withaland a clever housewife--is in the first place to help her oldparents, and in good time to marry and bring up a Christian familyof her own. You have no call to the religious life? No. Then youmust give up torturing yourself in this fashion, because it is asacrilegious thing and unseemly, seeing that the young man wasnothing whatever to you. The good God knows what is best for us; weshould neither rebel nor complain ..."
In all this, but one phrase left Maria a little doubting, it was thepriest's assurance that Fran?ois Paradis, in the place where now hewas, cared only for masses to repose his soul, and never at all forthe deep and tender regrets lingering behind him. This she could notconstrain herself to believe. Unable to think of him otherwise indeath than in life, she felt it must bring him something ofhappiness and consolation that her sorrow was keeping alive theirineffectual love for a little space beyond death. Yet, since thepriest had said it ...
The road wound its way among the trees rising sombrely from thesnow. Here and there a squirrel, alarmed by the swiftly passingsleigh and the tinkling bell
s, sprang upon a trunk and scrambledupward, clinging to the bark. From the gray sky a biting cold wasfalling and the wind stung the cheek, for this was February, withtwo long months of winter yet to come.
As Charles Eugene trotted along the beaten road, bearing thetravellers to their lonely house, Maria, in obedience to the wordsof the cure at St. Henri, strove to drive away gloom and putmourning from her; as simple-mindedly as she would have fought thetemptation of a dance, of a doubtful amusement or anything that wasplainly wrong and hence forbidden.
They reached home as night was falling. The coming of evening wasonly a slow fading of the light, for, since morning, the heavens hadbeen overcast, the sun obscured. A sadness rested upon the pallidearth; the firs and cypresses did not wear the aspect of livingtrees and the naked birches seemed to doubt of the springtime. Mariashivered as she left the sleigh, and hardly noticed Chien, barkingand gambolling a welcome, or the children who called to her from thedoor-step. The world seemed strangely empty, for this evening atleast. Love was snatched away, and they forbade remembrance. Shewent swiftly into the house without looking about her, conscious ofa new dread and hatred for the bleak land, the forest's eternalshade, the snow and the cold,--for all those things she had lived herlife amongst, which now had wounded her.