Maria was leaning against the door, a hand still upon the latch, her eyes turned away. Eutrope Gagnon had just this and no more to offer her: after a year of waiting that she should become his wife, and live as now she was doing in another wooden house on another half-cleared farm … Should do the household work and the cooking, milk the cows, clean the stable when her man was away—labour in the fields perhaps, since she was strong and there would be but two of them … Should spend her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patching old clothes … Now and then in summer resting for half an hour, seated on the doorstep, looking across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and the forest … The forest … Always the inscrutable, inimical forest, with a host of dark things hiding there—closed round them with a savage grip that must be loosened little by little, year by year; a few acres won each spring and autumn as the years pass, throughout all the long days of a dull harsh life … No, that she could not face …
“I know well enough that we shall have to work hard at first,” Eutrope went on, “but you have courage, Maria, and are well used to labour, as I am. I have always worked hard; no one can say that I was ever lazy, and if only you will marry me it will be my joy to toil like an ox all the day long to make a thriving place of it, so that we shall be in comfort before old age comes upon us. I do not touch drink, Maria, and truly I love you …”
His voice quivered, and he put out his hand toward the latch to take hers, or perhaps to hinder her from opening the door and leaving him without his answer.
“My affection for you … of that I am not able to speak …”
Never a word did she utter in reply. Once more a young man was telling his love, was placing in her hands all he had to give; and once more she could but hearken in mute embarrassment, only saved from awkwardness by her immobility and silence. Town-bred girls had thought her stupid, when she was but honest and truthful; very close to nature which takes no account of words. In other days when life was simpler than now it is, when young men paid their court—masterfully and yet half bashfully—to some deep-bosomed girl in the ripe fullness of womanhood who had not heard nature’s imperious command, she must have listened thus, in silence; less attentive to their pleading than to the inner voice, guarding herself by distance against too ardent a wooing, whilst she awaited … The three lovers of Maria Chapdelaine were not drawn to her by any charm of gracious speech, but by her sheer comeliness, and the transparent honest heart dwelling in her bosom; when they spoke to her of love she was true to herself, steadfast and serene, saying no word where none was needful to be said, and for this they loved her only the more.
“This young fellow from the States was ready with fine speeches, but you must not be carried away by them …” He caught a hint of dissent and changed his tone.
“Of course you are quite free to choose, and I have not a word to say against him. But you would be happier here, Maria, amongst people like yourself.”
Through the falling snow Maria gazed at the rude structure of planks, between stable and barn, which her father and brother had thrown together five years before; unsightly and squalid enough it appeared, now that her fancy had begun to conjure up the stately buildings of the town. Close and ill-smelling, the floor littered with manure and foul straw, the pump in one corner that was so hard to work and set the teeth on edge with its grinding; the weather-beaten outside, buffeted by wind and never-ending snow—sign and symbol of what awaited her were she to marry one like Eutrope Gagnon, and accept as her lot a lifetime of rude toil in this sad and desolate land … She shook her head.
“I cannot answer, Eutrope, either yes or no; not just now. I have given no promise. You must wait.”
It was more than she had said to Lorenzo Surprenant, and yet Lorenzo had gone away with hope in his heart, while Eutrope felt that he had made his throw and lost. Departing alone, the snow soon hid him. She entered the house.
March dragged through its melancholy days; cold winds drove the gray clouds back and forth across the sky, and swept the snow hither and thither; one must needs consult the calendar of the Roberval grain merchant to get an inkling that spring was drawing near.
Succeeding days were to Maria like those that had gone before, each one bringing its familiar duties and the same routine; but the evenings were different, and were filled with pathetic strivings to think. Beyond doubt her parents had guessed the truth; but they were unwilling to force her reserve with their advice, nor did she seek it. She knew that it rested with her alone to make a choice, to settle the future course of her life, and she, felt like a child at school, standing on a platform before watchful eyes, bidden to find by herself the answer to some knotty question.
And this was her problem: when a girl is grown to womanhood, when she is good-looking, healthy and strong, clever in all that pertains to the household and the farm, young men come and ask her to marry,
