Raising his eyes to Maria he repeated with emphasis:—“He was a good man, you will not find his like.”
“When we were at Mistassini,” began Madame Chapdelaine, “seven years ago, he was only a lad, but very strong and quick and as tall as he is now—I mean as he was when he came here last summer. Always good-natured too. No one could help liking him.”
They all looked straight before them in speaking, and yet what they said seemed to be for Maria alone, as if the dear secret of her heart were open to them. But she spoke not, nor moved, her eyes fixed upon the frosted panes of the little window, impenetrable as the wall.
Eutrope Gagnon did not linger. The Chapdelaines, left to themselves, were long without speech. At last the father said in a halting voice:—“François Paradis was almost alone in the world; now, as we all had an affection for him, we perhaps might have a mass or two said. What do you think, Laura?”
“Yes indeed. Three high masses with music, and when the boys return from the woods—in health, if such be the will of the good God—three more for the repose of his soul, poor lad! And every Sunday we shall say a prayer for him.”
“He was like the rest of us,” Chapdelaine continued, “not without fault, of course, but kindly and well-living. God and the Holy Virgin will have pity on him.”
Again silence. Maria well knew it was for her they said these things—aware of her grief and seeking to assuage it; but she was not able to speak, either to praise the dead or utter her sorrow. A hand had fastened upon her throat, stifling her, as the narrative unfolded and the end loomed inevitable; and now this hand found its way into her breast and was crushing her heart. Presently she would know a yet more intolerable pain, but now she only felt the deadly grasp of those five fingers closed about her heart.
Other words were said, but they scarce reached her ear; then came the familiar evening stir of preparation for the night, the father’s departure on a last visit to the stable and his swift return, face red with the cold, slamming the door hastily in a swirl of frosty vapour.
“Come, Maria.” The mother called her very gently, and laid a hand upon her shoulder. She rose and went to kneel and pray with the others. Voice answered to voice for ten minutes, murmuring the sacred words in low monotone.
The usual prayer at an end, the mother whispered:—“Yet five Paters and five Aves for the souls of those who have suffered misfortune in the forest.” And the voices again rose, this time more subdued, breaking sometimes to a sob.
When they were silent, and all had risen after the last sign of the cross, Maria went back to the window. The frost upon the panes made of them so many fretted squares through which the eye could not penetrate, shutting away the outside world; but Maria saw them not, for the tears welled to her eyes and blinded her. She stood there motionless, with arms hanging piteously by her side, a stricken figure of grief; then a sudden anguish yet keener and more unbearable seized upon her; blindly she opened the door and went out upon the step.
The world that lay beyond the threshold, sunk in moveless white repose, was of an immense serenity; but when Maria passed from the sheltering walls the cold smote her like the hungry blade of a sword and the forest leaped toward her in menace, its inscrutable face concealing a hundred dreadful secrets which called aloud to her in lamentable voices. With a little moan she drew back, and closing the door sat shivering beside the stove. Numbness was yielding, sorrow taking on an edge, and the hand that clutched her heart set itself to devising new agonies, each one subtler and more cruel than the last.
How he must have suffered, far off there amid the snows! So thought she, as still her own face remembered the sting of the bitter air. Men threatened by this fate had told her that death coming in such a guise smote with gentle and painless hand—a hand that merely lulled to sleep; but she could not make herself believe it, and all the sufferings that François might have endured before giving up and falling to the white ground passed before her eyes.
No need for her to see the spot, too well she knew the winter terrors of the great forest, the snow heaped to the firs’ lower branches, alders almost buried beneath it, birches and aspens naked as skeletons and shuddering in the icy wind, a sunless sky above the massed and gloomy spires of green. She sees François making his way through the close-set trees, limbs stiffened with the cold, his skin raw with that pitiless nor’wester, gnawed by hunger, stumbling with fatigue, his feet so weary that with no longer strength to lift them his snowshoes often catch the snow and throw him to his knees.
Doubtless when the storm abated he saw his error, knew that he was walking toward the barren northland, turned at once and took the right course—he so experienced, the woods his home from boyhood. But his food is nearly gone, the cold tortures him; with lowered head and clenched teeth he fights the implacable winter, calling to aid his every reserve of strength and high courage. He thinks of the road he must follow, the miles to be overcome, measures his chances of life; and fitful memories arise of a house, so warm and snug, where all will greet him gladly; of Maria who, knowing what he has dared for her sake, will at length raise to him her truthful eyes shining with love.
Perhaps he fell for the last time when succour was near,
