“Maria is not at her best this evening,” said Madame Chapdelaine by way of excusing her, “she is really not used to having visitors you see …” Had she but known! …
Four hundred miles away, at the far headwaters of the rivers, those Indians who have held aloof from missionaries and traders are squatting round a fire of dry cypress before their lodges, and the world they see about them, as in the earliest days, is filled with dark mysterious powers: the giant Wendigo pursuing the trespassing hunter; strange potions, carrying death or healing, which wise old men know how to distil from roots and leaves; incantations and every magic art. And here on the fringe of another world, but a day’s journey from the railway, in this wooden house filled with acrid smoke, another all-conquering spell, charming and bewildering the eyes of three young men, is being woven into the shifting cloud by a sweet and guileless maid with downcast eyes.
The hour was late; the visitors departed; first the two Surprenants, then Eutrope Gagnon, only François Paradis was left—standing there and seeming to hesitate.
“You will sleep here tonight, François?” asked the father.
His wife heard no reply. “Of course!” said she. “And tomorrow we will all gather blueberries. It is the feast of Ste. Anne.”
When a few moments later François mounted to the loft with the boys, Maria’s heart was filled with happiness. This seemed to bring him a little nearer, to draw him within the family circle.
The morrow was a day of blue sky, a day when from the heavens some of the sparkle and brightness descends to earth. The green of tender grass and young wheat was of a ravishing delicacy, even the dun woods borrowed something from the azure of the sky.
François came down in the morning looking a different man, in clothes borrowed from Da’Bé and Esdras, and after he had shaved and washed Madame Chapdelaine complimented him on his appearance.
When breakfast was over and the hour of the mass come, all told their chaplet together; and then the long delightful idle Sunday lay before them. But the day’s programme was already settled. Eutrope Gagnon came in just as they were finishing dinner, which was early, and at once they all set forth, provided with pails, dishes and tin mugs of every shape and size.
The blueberries were fully ripe. In the burnt lands the purple of the clusters and the green of the leaves now overcame the paling rose of the laurels. The children began picking at once with cries of delight, but their elders scattered through the woods in search of the larger patches, where one might sit on one’s heels and fill a pail in an hour. The noise of footsteps on dry twigs, of rustling in the alder bushes, the calls of Telesphore and Alma Rose to one another, all faded slowly into the distance, and about each gatherer was only the buzzing of flies drunk with sunshine, and the voice of the wind in the young birches and aspens.
“There is a fine clump over here,” said a voice. Maria’s heart beat faster as she arose and went toward François Paradis who was kneeling behind the alders. Side by side they picked industriously for a time, then plunged farther into the woods, stepping over fallen trees, looking about them for the deep blue masses of the ripe berries.
“There are very few this year,” said François. “It was the spring frosts that killed the blossoms.” He brought to the berry-seeking his woodsman’s knowledge. “In the hollows and among the alders the snow was lying longer and kept them from freezing.”
They sought again and made some happy finds: broad clumps of bushes laden with huge berries which they heaped into their pails. In the space of an hour these were filled; they rose and went to sit on a fallen tree to rest themselves.
Mosquitos swarmed and circled in the fervent afternoon heat. Every moment the hand must be raised to scatter them; after a panic-stricken flight they straightway returned, reckless and pitiless, bent only on finding one tiny spot to plant a sting; with their sharp note was blended that of the insatiate black-fly, filling the woods with unceasing sound. Living trees there were not many; a few young birches, some aspens, alder bushes were stirring in the wind among the rows of lifeless and blackened trunks.
François Paradis looked about him as though to take his bearings. “The others cannot be far away,” he said.
“No,” replied Maria in a low voice. But neither he nor she called to summon them.
A squirrel ran down the bole of a dead birch tree and watched the pair with his sharp eyes for some moments before venturing to earth. The strident flight of heavy grasshoppers rose above the intoxicated clamour of the flies; a wandering air brought the fall’s dull thunder through the alders.
François Paradis stole a glance at Maria, then turned his eyes away and tightly clasped his hands. Ah, but she was good to look upon! Thus to sit beside her, to catch these shy glimpses of the strong bosom, the sweet face so modest and so patient, the utter simplicity of attitude and of her rare gestures; a great hunger for her awoke in him, and with it a new and marvellous tenderness, for he had lived his life with other men, in hard give-and-take, among the wild forests and on the snowy plains.
Well he knew she was one of those women who, giving themselves, give wholly, reckoning not the cost; love of body and of soul, strength of arm in the daily task, the unmeasured devotion of a spirit that does not waver. So precious the gift appeared to him that he dared not ask it.
“I am going down to
