Hands still in the pockets of his big coat, straightening himself and squaring his shoulders as he stood there upon the highest step, Napoleon Laliberté proceeded in loudest tones:—“A surveyor from Roberval will be in the parish next week. If anyone wishes his land surveyed before mending his fences for the summer, this is to let him know.”
The item was received without interest. Peribonka farmers are not particular about correcting their boundaries to gain or lose a few square feet, since the most enterprising among them have still two-thirds of their grants to clear—endless acres of woodland and swamp to reclaim.
He continued:—“Two men are up here with money to buy furs. If you have any bear, mink, muskrat or fox you will find these men at the store until Wednesday, or you can apply to François Paradis of Mistassini who is with them. They have plenty of money and will pay cash for first-class pelts.” His news finished, he descended the steps. A sharp-faced little fellow took his place.
“Who wants to buy a fine young pig of my breeding?” he asked, indicating with his finger something shapeless that struggled in a bag at his feet. A great burst of laughter greeted him. They knew them well, these pigs of Hormidas’ raising. No bigger than rats, and quick as squirrels to jump the fences.
“Twenty-five cents!” one young man bid chaffingly.
“Fifty cents!”
“A dollar!”
“Don’t play the fool, Jean. Your wife will never let you pay a dollar for such a pig as that.”
Jean stood his ground:—“A dollar, I won’t go back on it.”
Hormidas Berube with a disgusted look on his face awaited another bid, but only got jokes and laughter.
Meantime the women in their turn had begun to leave the church. Young or old, pretty or ugly, nearly all were well clad in fur cloaks, or in coats of heavy cloth; for, honouring the Sunday mass, sole festival of their lives, they had doffed coarse blouses and homespun petticoats, and a stranger might well have stood amazed to find them habited almost with elegance in this remote spot; still French to their fingertips in the midst of the vast lonely forest and the snow, and as tastefully dressed, these peasant women, as most of the middle-class folk in provincial France.
Cleophas Pesant waited for Louisa Tremblay who was alone, and they went off together along the wooden sidewalk in the direction of the house. Others were satisfied to exchange jocular remarks with the young girls as they passed, in the easy and familiar fashion of the country—natural enough too where the children have grown up together from infancy.
Pite Gaudreau, looking toward the door of the church, remarked:—“Maria Chapdelaine is back from her visit to St. Prime, and there is her father come to fetch her.” Many in the village scarcely knew the Chapdelaines.
“Is it Samuel Chapdelaine who has a farm in the woods on the other side of the river, above Honfleur?”
“That’s the man.”
“And the girl with him is his daughter? Maria …”
“Yes, she has been spending a month at St. Prime with her mother’s people. They are Bouchards, related to Wilfrid Bouchard of St. Gedeon …”
Interested glances were directed toward the top of the steps. One of the young people paid Maria the countryman’s tribute of admiration—“A fine hearty girl!” said he.
“Right you are! A fine hearty girl, and one with plenty of spirit too. A pity that she lives so far off in the woods. How are the young fellows of the village to manage an evening at their place, on the other side of the river and above the falls, more than a dozen miles away and the last of them with next to no road?”
The smiles were bold enough as they spoke of her, this inaccessible beauty; but as she came down the wooden steps with her father and passed near by, they were taken with bashfulness and awkwardly drew back, as though something more lay between her and them than the crossing of a river and twelve miles of indifferent woodland road.
Little by little the groups before the church dissolved. Some returned to their houses, after picking up all the news that was going; others, before departing, were for spending an hour in one of the two gathering places of the village; the curé’s house or the general store. Those who came from the back concessions, stretching along the very border of the forest, one by one untied their horses from the row and brought their sleighs to the foot of the steps for their women and children.
Samuel Chapdelaine and Maria had gone but a little way when a young man halted them.
“Good day to you, Mr. Chapdelaine. Good day, Miss Maria. I am in great luck at meeting you, since your farm is so high up the river and I don’t often come this way myself.”
His bold eyes travelled from one to the other. When he averted them it seemed by a conscious effort of politeness; swiftly they returned, and their glance, bright, keen, full of honest eagerness, was questioning and disconcerting.
“François Paradis!” exclaimed Chapdelaine.
“This is indeed a bit of luck, for I haven’t seen you this long while, François. And your father dead too. Have you held on to the farm?” The young man did not answer; he was looking expectantly at Maria with a frank smile, awaiting a word from her.
“You remember François Paradis of Mistassini, Maria? He has changed very little.”
“Nor have you, Mr. Chapdelaine. But your daughter, that is a different story; she is not the same, yet I should have known her at once.”
They had spent the last evening at St. Michel de Mistassini-viewing everything in the full light of the afternoon: the great wooden bridge, covered in and painted red, not unlike an amazingly long Noah’s ark; the high hills rising almost from the very banks of the river, the old monastery crouched between the river and the heights, the water that seethed and whitened, flinging itself in wild
