by Louis Hémon
CHAPTER XII
LOVE BEARING GIFTS
MARCH came, and one day Tit'B? brought the news from Honfleur thatthere would be a large gathering in the evening at EphremSurprenant's to which everyone was invited.
But someone must stay to look after the house, and as MadameChapdelaine had set her heart on this little diversion after beingcooped up for all these months, it was Tit'B? himself who was leftat home. Honfleur, the nearest village to their house, was eightmiles away; but what were eight miles over the snow and through thewoods compared with the delight of hearing songs and stories, and oftalk with people from afar?
A numerous company was assembled under the Surprenant roof: severalof the villagers, the three Frenchmen who had bought his nephewLorenzo's farm, and also, to the Chapdelaines' great surprise,Lorenzo himself, back once more from the States upon business thatrelated to the sale and the settling of his father's affairs. Hegreeted Maria very warmly, and seated himself beside her.
The men lit their pipes; they chatted about the weather, thecondition of the roads, the country news; but the conversationlagged, as though all were looking for it to take some unusual turn.Their glances sought Lorenzo and the three Frenchmen, expectingstrange and marvellous tales of distant lands and unfamiliar mannersfrom an assembly so far out of the common. The Frenchmen, only a fewmonths in the country, apparently felt a like curiosity, for theylistened, and spoke but little.
Samuel Chapdelaine, who was meeting them for the first time, deemedhimself called upon to put them through a catechism in the ingenuousCanadian fashion.
"So you have come here to till the land. How do you like Canada?"
"It is a beautiful country, new and so vast ... In thesummer-time there are many flies, and the winters are trying; but Isuppose that one gets used to these things in time."
The father it was who made reply, his sons only nodding their headsin assent with eyes glued to the floor. Their appearance alone wouldhave served to distinguish them from the other dwellers in thevillage, but as they spoke the gap widened, and the words that fellfrom their lips had a foreign ring. There was none of the slownessof the Canadian speech, nor of that indefinable accent found in nocorner of France, which is only a peasant blend of the differentpronunciations of former emigrants. They used words and turns ofphrase one never hears in Quebec, even in the towns, and which tothese simple men seemed fastidious and wonderfully refined.
"Before coming to these parts were you farmers in your own country?"
"No."
"What trade then did you follow?"
The Frenchman hesitated a moment before replying; possibly thinkingthat what he was about to say would be novel, and hard for them tounderstand. "I was a tuner myself, a piano-tuner; my two sons herewere clerks, Edmond in an office, Pierre in a shop."
Clerks--that was plain enough for anyone; but their minds were alittle hazy as to the father's business.
However Ephrem Surprenant chimed in with.--"Piano-tuner; that wasit, just so!" And his glance at Conrad Neron his neighbour was atrifle superior and challenging, as though intimating.--"You wouldnot believe me, and maybe you don't know what it means, but now yousee ..."
"Piano-tuner," Samuel Chapdelaine echoed in turn, slowly graspingthe meaning of the words. "And is that a good trade? Do you earnhandsome wages? Not too handsome, eh! ... At any rate you are welleducated, you and your sons; you can read and write and cipher? Andhere am I, not able even to read!"
"Nor I!" struck in Ephrem Surprenant, and Conrad Neron and EgideRacicot added: "Nor I!" "Nor I!" in chorus, whereupon the whole ofthem broke out laughing.
A motion of the Frenchman's hand told them indulgently that theycould very well dispense with these accomplishments; to himself oflittle enough use at the moment.
"You were not able to make a decent living out of your trades overthere. That is so, is it not? And therefore you came here?"
The question was put simply, without thought of offence, for he wasamazed that anyone should abandon callings that seemed so easy andso pleasant for this arduous life on the land.
Why indeed had they come? ... A few months earlier they would havediscovered a thousand reasons and clothed them in words straightfrom the heart: weariness of the footway and the pavement, of thetown's sullied air; revolt against the prospect of lifelong slavery;some chance stirring word of an irresponsible speaker preaching thegospel of vigour and enterprise, of a free and healthy life upon afruitful soil. But a few months ago they could have found glowingsentences to tell it all ... Now their best was a sorry effort toevade the question, as they groped for any of the illusions thatremained to them.
"People are not always happy in the cities," said the father."Everything is dear, and one is confined."
In their narrow Parisian lodging it had seemed so wonderful a thingto them, the notion that in Canada they would spend their days outof doors, breathing the taintless air of a new country, close besidethe mighty forest. The black-flies they had not foreseen, norcomprehended the depth of the winter's cold; the countless ill turnsof a land that has no pity were undivined.
"Did you picture it to yourselves as you have found it," Chapdelainepersisted, "the country here, the life?"
"Not exactly," replied the Frenchman in a low voice. "No, notexactly ..." And a shadow crossed his face which brought fromEphrem. Surprenant:--"It is rough here, rough and hard!"
Their heads assented, and their eyes fell: three narrow-shoulderedmen, their faces with the pallor of the town still upon them aftersix months on the land; three men whom a fancy had torn fromcounter, office, piano-stool-from the only lives for which they werebred. For it is not the peasant alone who suffers by uprooting fromhis native soil. They were seeing their mistake, and knew they weretoo unlike in grain to copy those about them; lacking the strength,the rude health, the toughened fibre, that training for every taskwhich fits the Canadian to be farmer, woodsman or carpenter,according to season and need.
The father was dreamily shaking his head, lost in thought; one ofthe sons, elbows on knees, gazed wonderingly at the palms of hisdelicate hands, calloused by the rough work of the fields. All threeseemed to be turning over and over in their minds the melancholybalance-sheet of a failure. Those about them were thinking--"Lorenzosold his place for more than it was worth; they have but littlemoney left and are in hard case; men like these are not built forliving on the land."
Madame Chapdelaine, partly in pity and partly for the honour offarming, let fall a few encouraging words:--"It is something of astruggle at the beginning-if you are not used to it; but when yourland is in better order you will see that life becomes easier."
"It is a queer thing," said Conrad Neron, "how every man finds itequally hard to rest content. Here are three who left their homesand came this long way to settle and farm, and here am I alwayssaying to myself that nothing would be so pleasant as to sit quietlyin an office all the day, a pen behind my ear, sheltered from coldwind and hot sun."
"Everyone to his own notion," declared Lorenzo Surprenant, withunbiassed mind.
"And your notion is not to stick in Hon-fleur sweating over thestumps," added Racicot with a loud laugh.
"You are quite right there, and I make no bones about it; that sortof thing would never have suited me. These men here bought my land-agood farm, and no one can gainsay it. They wanted to buy a farm andI sold them mine. But as for myself, I am well enough where I am,and have no wish to return."
Madame Chapdelaine shook her head. "There is no better life than thelife of a farmer who has good health and owes no debts. He is a freeman, has no boss, owns his beasts, works for his own profit ...The finest life there is!"
"I hear them all say that," Lorenzo retorted, "one is free, his ownmaster. And you seem to pity those who work in factories becausethey have a boss, and must do as they are told. Free-on theland-come now!" He spoke defiantly, with more and more animation.
"There is no man in the world less free than a farmer ... When youtell of those who have succeeded
, who are well provided witheverything needful on a farm, who have had better luck than others,you say.--'Ah, what a fine life they lead! They are comfortably off,own good cattle.' That is not how to put it. The truth is that theircattle own them. In all the world there is no 'boss' who behaves asstupidly as the beasts you favour. Pretty nearly every day they giveyou trouble or do you some mischief. Now it is a skittish horse thatruns away or lashes out with his heels; then it is a cow, howevergood-tempered, that won't keep still to be milked and tramples onyour toes when the flies annoy her. And even if by good fortune theydon't harm you, they are forever finding a way to destroy yourcomfort and to vex you..."
"I know how it is; I was brought up on a farm. And you, most of youfarmers, know how it is too. All the morning you have worked hard,and go to your house for dinner and a little rest. Then, before youare well seated at table, a child is yelling:--'The cows are overthe fence;' or 'The sheep are in the crop,' and everyone jumps upand runs, thinking of the oats or the barley it has been such atrouble to raise, that these miserable fools are ruining. The mendash about brandishing sticks till they are out of breath; the womenstand screaming in the farm-yard. And when you have managed to drivethe cows or the sheep into their paddock and put up the rails, youget back to the house nicely 'rested' to find the pea-soup cold andfull of flies, the pork under the table gnawed by dogs and cats, andyou eat what you can lay your hands on, watching for the next trickthe wretched animals are getting ready to play on you."
"You are their slaves; that's what you are. You tend them, youclean them, you gather up their dung as the poor do the rich man'scrumbs. It is you who must keep them alive by hard work, because theearth is miserly and the summer so short. That is the way of it, andthere is no help, as you cannot get on without them; but for cattlethere would be no living on the land. But even if you could ...even if you could ... still would you have other masters: thesummer, beginning too late and ending too soon; the winter, eatingup seven long months of the year and bringing in nothing; droughtand rain which always come just at the wrong moment..."
"In the towns these things do not matter; but here you have nodefence against them and they do you hurt; and I have not taken intoaccount the extreme cold, the badness of the roads, the lonelinessof being far away from everything, with no amusements. Life is onekind of hardship on top of another from beginning to end. It isoften said that only those make a real success who are born andbrought up on the land, and of course that is true; as for thepeople in the cities, small danger that they would ever be foolishenough to put up with such a way of living."
He spoke with heat and volubly--a man of the town who talks everyday with his equals, reads the papers, hears public speakers. Thelisteners, of a race easily moved by words, were carried away by hisplaints and criticisms; the very real harshness of their lives waspresented in such a new and startling light as to surprise eventhemselves.
However Madame Chapdelaine again shook her head. "Do not say suchthings as that; there is no happier life in the world than the lifeof a farmer who owns good land."
"Not in these parts, Madame Chapdelaine. You are too far north; thesummer is too short; the grain is hardly up before the frosts come.Each time that I return from the States, and see the tiny woodenhouses lost in this wilderness-so far from one another that theyseem frightened at being alone-and the woods hemming you in on everyside ... By Heaven! I lose heart for you, I who live here nolonger, and I ask myself how it comes about that all you folk didnot long ago seek a kinder climate where you would find everythingthat makes for comfort, where you could go out for a walk in thewinter-time without being in fear of death ..."
Without being in fear of death! Maria shuddered as the thoughtswiftly awoke of those dark secrets hidden beneath the ever-lastinggreen and white of the forest. Lorenzo Surprenant was right in whathe had been saying; it was a pitiless ungentle land. The menacelurking just outside the door-the cold-the shrouding snows-the blanksolitude-forced a sudden entrance and crowded about the stove, anevil swarm sneering presages of ill or hovering in a yet moredreadful silence:--"Do you remember, my sister, the men, brave andwell-beloved, whom we have slain and hidden in the woods? Theirsouls have known how to escape us; but their bodies, their-bodies,their bodies, none shall ever snatch them from our hands ..."
The voice of the wind at the corners of the house was loud withhollow laughter, and to Maria it seemed that all gathered within thewooden walls huddled and spoke low, like men whose lives are under athreat and who go in dread.
A burden of sadness was upon the rest of the evening, at least forher. Racicot told stories of the chase: of trapped bears strugglingand growling so fiercely at the sight of the trapper that he losescourage and falls a-trembling; and then, giving up suddenly when thehunters come in force and the deadly guns are aimed--giving up,covering their heads with their paws and whimpering with groans andoutcries almost human, very heart-rending and pitiful.
After these tales came others of ghosts and apparitions; ofblood-curdling visitations or solemn warnings to men who hadblasphemed or spoken ill of the priests. Then, as no one could bepersuaded to sing, they played at cards and the conversation droppedto more commonplace themes. The only memory that Maria carried awayof the later talk, as the sleigh bore them homeward through themidnight woods, was of Lorenzo Surprenant extolling the UnitedStates and the magnificence of its great cities, the easy andpleasant life, the never-ending spectacle of the fine straightstreets flooded with light at evening.
Before she departed Lorenzo said in quiet tones, almost in herear.--"To-morrow is Sunday; I shall be over to see you in theafternoon."
A few short hours of night, a morning of sunlight on the snow, andagain he is by her side renewing his tale of wonders, hisinterrupted plea. For it was to her he had been speaking the eveningbefore; Maria knew it well. The scorn he showed for a country life,his praises of the town, these were but a preface to the allurementshe was about to offer in all their varied forms, as one shows thepictures in a book, turning page by page.
"Maria," he began, "you have not the faintest idea! As yet, the mostwonderful things you ever saw were the shops in Roberval, a highmass, an evening entertainment at the convent with acting. Citypeople would laugh to think of it! You simply cannot imagine ...Just to stroll through the big streets in the evening--not on littleplank-walks like those of Roberval, but on fine broad asphaltpavements as level as a table--just that and no more, what with thelights, the electric cars coming and going continually, the shopsand the crowds, you would find enough there to amaze you for weekstogether. And then all the amusements one has: theatres, circusses,illustrated papers, and places everywhere that you can go into for anickel--five cents--and pass two hours laughing and crying. Tothink, Maria, you do not even know what the moving pictures are!"
He stopped for a little, reviewing in his mind the marvels of thecinematograph, asking himself whether he could hope to describeconvincingly the fare it provided:--those thrilling stories of younggirls, deserted or astray, which crowd the screen with twelveminutes of heart-rending misery and three of amends and heavenlyreward in surroundings of incredible luxury;--the frenzied gallopingof cowboys in pursuit of Indian ravishers; the tremendous fusillade;the rescue at the last conceivable second by soldiers arriving in awhirlwind, waving triumphantly the star-spangled banner ... afterpausing in doubt he shook his head, conscious that he had no wordsto paint such glories.
They walked on snow-shoes side by side over the snow, through theburnt lands that lie on the Peribonka's high bank above the fall.Lorenzo had used no wile to secure Maria's company, he simplyinvited her before them all, and now he told of his love, in thesame straightforward practical way.
"The first day I saw you, Maria, the very first day ... that isonly the truth! For a long time I had not been back in this country,and I was thinking what a miserable place it was to live in, thatthe men were a lot of simpletons who had never seen anything and thegirls not nearly so quick and clever as they are in the States ...And th
en, the moment I set eyes on you, there was I saying to myselfthat I was the simpleton, for neither at Lowell nor Boston had Iever met a girl like yourself. When I returned I used to be thinkinga dozen times a day that some wretched farmer would make love to youand carry you off, and every time my heart sank. It was on youraccount that I came back, Maria, came up here from near Boston,three days' journey! The business I had, I could have done it all byletter; it was you I wished to see, to tell you what was in my heartto say and to hear the answer you would give me."
Wherever the snow was clear for a few yards, free of dead trees andstumps, and he could lift his eyes without fear of stumbling, theywere fixed upon Maria; between the woollen cap and the long woollenjersey curving to her vigorous form he saw the outline of her face,downward turned, expressing only gentleness and patience. Everyglance gave fresh reason for his love but brought him no hint of aresponse.
"This ... this is no place for you, Maria. The country is toorough, the work too hard; barely earning one's bread is killingtoil. In a factory over there, clever and strong as you are, soonyou would be in the way of making nearly as much as I do; but noneed of that if you were my wife. I earn enough for both of us, andwe should have every comfort: good clothes to wear, a pretty flat ina brick house with gas and hot water, and all sorts of contrivancesyou never heard of to save you labour and worry every moment of theday. And don't let the idea enter your head that all the people areEnglish. I know many Canadian families who work as I do or even keepshops. And there is a splendid church with a Canadian priest ascure--Mr. Tremblay from St. Hyacinthe. You would never be lonesome ..."
Pausing again he surveyed the white plain with its ragged crop ofbrown stumps, the bleak plateau dropping a little farther in a longslope to the levels of the frozen river; meanwhile ransacking hismind for some final persuasive word.
"I hardly know what to say ... You have always lived here and itis not possible for you to guess what life is elsewhere, nor would Ibe able to make you understand were I to talk forever. But I loveyou, Maria, I earn a good wage and I never touch a drop. If you willmarry me as I ask I will take you off to a country that will openyour 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 ourdays."
Maria still was silent, and yet the sentences of Lorenzo Surprenantbeat upon her heart as succeeding waves roll against the shore. Itwas not his avowals of love, honest and sincere though they were,but the lures he used which tempted her. Only of cheap pleasures hadhe spoken, of trivial things ministering to comfort or vanity, butof these alone was she able to conjure up a definite idea. Allelse--the distant glamour of the city, of a life new andincomprehensible to her, full in the centre of the bustling worldand no longer at its very confines--enticed her but the more in itsshimmering remoteness with the mystery of a great light that shinesfrom afar.
Whatsoever there may be of wonder and exhilaration in the sight andtouch of the crowd; the rich harvests of mind and sense for whichthe city dweller has bartered his rough heritage of pride in thesoil, Maria was dimly conscious of as part of this other life in anew world, this glorious re-birth for which she was alreadyyearning. But above all else the desire was strong upon her now toflee away, to escape.
The wind from the east was driving before it a host of melancholysnow-laden clouds. Threateningly they swept over white ground andsullen wood, and the earth seemed awaiting another fold of itswinding-sheet; cypress, spruce and fir, close side by side andmotionless, were passive in their attitude of uncomplainingendurance. The stumps above the snow were like floating wreckage ona dreary sea. In all the landscape there was naught that spoke of aspring to come--of warmth and growth; rather did it seem a shard ofsome disinherited planet under the eternal rule of deadly cold.
All of her life had Maria known this cold, this snow, the land'sdeath-like sleep, these austere and frowning woods; now was shecoming to view them with fear and hate. A paradise surely must itbe, this country to the south where March is no longer winter and inApril the leaves are green! At midwinter one takes to the roadwithout 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 loftyhouses and shops stood unbrokenly on both sides of the streets, asshe had been told; if the electric cars ran all the year round; ifthe living was very dear ... And the answers to her questionswould have satisfied but a little of this eager curiosity, wouldscarcely have disturbed the enchanting vagueness of her illusion.
She was silent, however, dreading to speak any word that might seemlike the foreshadowing of a promise. Though Lorenzo gazed at herlong as they walked together across the snow, he was able to guessnothing 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 noreply he clung to this idea, fearing that she might hastily refusehim.
"No need whatever that you should say 'Yes' at once. You have notknown me very long ... But think of what I have said to you. Iwill come back, Maria. It is a long journey and costly, but I willcome. And if only you give thought to it, you will see there is noyoung fellow here who could give you such a future as I can; becauseif you marry me we shall live like human beings, and not have tokill ourselves tending cattle and grubbing in the earth in thisout-of-the-way corner of the world."
They returned to the house. Lorenzo gossiped a little about hisjourney to the States, where the springtime would have arrivedbefore him, of the plentiful and well-paid work to which his goodclothes and prosperous air bore witness. Then he bade them adieu,and Maria, whose eyes had carefully been avoiding his, seatedherself by the window, and watched the night and the snow fallingtogether as she pondered in the deep unrest of her spirit.