So loud was the wind that they did not hear the sound of sleigh-bells, and suddenly the door flew open against the wall and the curé of St. Henri entered, bearing the Host in his raised hands. Maria and Tit’Sèbe fell upon their knees; Tit’Bé ran to shut the door, then also knelt. The priest put off the heavy fur coat and the cap white with snow drawn down to his eyes, and instantly approached the sickbed as heaven’s envoy bringing pardon and peace.
Ah! the assurance, the comfort of the divine promise which dispels the awful mists of death! While the priest performed the sacred rites, and his low words mingled with the sighs of the dying woman, Samuel Chapdelaine and his children were praying with bended heads; in some sort consoled, released from anxiousness and doubt, confident that a sure pact was then concluding with the Almighty for the blue skies of Paradise spangled with stars of gold as a rightful heritage.
Afterwards the curé warmed himself by the stove; then they prayed together for a time, kneeling by the bed.
Toward four o’clock the wind leaped to the southeast, and the storm ended swiftly as a broken wave sinks backward from the shore; in the strange deep silence after the tumult the mother sighed, sighed once again, and died.
XV
That We Perish Not
Ephrem Surprenant pushed open the door and stood upon the threshold.
“I have come.” He found no other words, and waited there motionless for a few seconds, tongue-tied, while his eyes travelled from Chapdelaine to Maria, from Maria to the children who sat very still and quiet by the table; then he plucked off his cap hastily, as if in amends for his forgetfulness, shut the door behind him and moved across to the bed where the dead woman lay.
They had altered its place, turning the head to the wall and the foot toward the centre of the house, so that it might be approached on both sides. Close to the wall two lighted candles stood on chairs; one of them set in a large candlestick of white metal which the visitors to the Chapdelaine home had never seen before, while for holding the other Maria had found nothing better than a glass bowl used in the summer time for blueberries and wild raspberries, on days of ceremony.
The candlestick shone, the bowl sparkled in the flames which lighted but feebly the face of the dead. The days of suffering through which she had passed, or death’s final chill had given the features a strange pallor and delicacy, the refinement of a woman bred in the city. Father and children were at first amazed, and then perceived in this the tremendous consequence of her translation beyond and far above them.
Ephrem Surprenant bent his eyes upon the face for a little, and then kneeled. The prayers he began to murmur were inaudible, but when Maria and Tit’Bé came and knelt beside him he drew from a pocket his string of large beads and began to tell them in a low voice. The chaplet ended, he sat himself in silence by the table, shaking his head sadly from time to time as is seemly in the house of mourning, and because his own grief was deep and sincere.
At last he discovered speech. “It is a heavy loss. You were fortunate in your wife, Samuel; no one may question that. Truly you were fortunate in your wife.”
This said, he could go no further; he sought in vain for some words of sympathy, and at the end stumbled into other talk. “The weather is quite mild this evening; we soon shall have rain. Everyone is saying that it is to be an early spring.”
To the countryman, all things touching the soil which gives him bread, and the alternate seasons which lull the earth to sleep and awaken it to life, are of such moment that one may speak of them even in the presence of death with no disrespect. Their eyes turned quite naturally to the square of the little window, but the night was black and they could discern nothing.
Ephrem Surprenant began anew to praise her who was departed. “In all the parish there was not a braver-spirited woman than she, nor a cleverer housewife. How friendly too, and what a kind welcome she always gave a visitor! In the old parishes—yes! and even in the towns on the railway, not many would be found to match her. It is only the truth to say that you were rarely suited in your wife …” Soon afterwards he rose, and, leaving the house, his face was dark with sorrow.
A long silence followed, in which Samuel Chapdelaine’s head nodded slowly towards his breast and it seemed as though he were falling asleep. Maria spoke quickly to him, in fear of his offending:—“Father! Do not sleep!”
“No! No!” He sat up straight on his chair and squared his shoulders but since his eyes were closing in spite of him, he stood up hastily, saying:—“Let us recite another chaplet.”
Kneeling together beside the bed, they told the chaplet bead by bead. Rising from their knees they heard the rain patter against the window and on the shingles. It was the first spring rain and proclaimed their freedom: the winter ended, the soil soon to reappear, rivers once more running their joyous course, the earth again transformed like some lovely girl released at last from an evil spell by touch of magic wand. But they did not allow themselves to be glad in this house of death, nor indeed did they feel the happiness of it in the midst of their hearts’ deep affliction.
Opening the window they moved back to it and hearkened to the tapping of the great drops upon
