In one of these compartments the father and mother had their bed; Maria and Alma Rose in the other. A steep stairway ascended from a corner to the loft where the boys slept in the summertime; with the coming of winter they moved their bed down and enjoyed the warmth of the stove with the rest of the family.
Hanging upon the wall were the illustrated calendars of shopkeepers in Roberval and Chicoutimi; a picture of the infant Jesus in his mother’s arms—a rosy-faced Jesus with great blue eyes, holding out his chubby hands; a representation of some unidentified saint looking rapturously heavenward; the first page of the Christmas number of a Quebec newspaper, filled with stars big as moons and angels flying with folded wings.
“Were you a good girl while I was away, Alma Rose?”
It was the mother who replied:—“Alma Rose was not too naughty; but Telesphore has been a perfect torment to me. It is not so much that he does what is wrong; but the things he says! One might suppose that the boy had not all his wits.”
Telesphore busied himself with the dog-harness and made believe not to hear. Young Telesphore’s depravities supplied this household with its only domestic tragedy. To satisfy her own mind and give him a proper conviction of besetting sin his mother had fashioned for herself a most involved kind of polytheism, had peopled the world with evil spirits and good who influenced him alternately to err or to repent. The boy had come to regard himself as a mere battleground where devils who were very sly, and angels of excellent purpose but little experience, waged endless unequal warfare.
Gloomily would he mutter before the empty preserve jar:—“It was the Demon of gluttony who tempted me.”
Returning from some escapade with torn and muddy clothes he would anticipate reproach with his explanation:—“The Demon of disobedience lured me into that. Beyond doubt it was he.” With the same breath asserting indignation at being so misled, and protesting the blamelessness of his intentions.
“But he must not be allowed to come back, eh, mother! He must not be allowed to come back, this bad spirit. I will take father’s gun and I will shoot him …”
“You cannot shoot devils with a gun,” objected his mother. “But when you feel the temptation coming, seize your rosary and say your prayers.”
Telesphore did not dare to gainsay this; but he shook his head doubtfully. The gun seemed to him both the surer and the more amusing way, and he was accustomed to picture to himself a tremendous duel, a lingering slaughter from which he would emerge without spot or blemish, forever set free from the wiles of the Evil One.
Samuel Chapdelaine came into the house and supper was served. The sign of the cross around the table; lips moving in a silent Benedicite, which Telesphore and Alma Rose repeated aloud; again the sign of the cross; the noise of chairs and bench drawn in; spoons clattering on plates. To Maria it was as though since her absence she was giving attention for the first time in her life to these sounds and movements; that they possessed a different significance from movements and sounds elsewhere, and invested with some peculiar quality of sweetness and peace all that happened in that house far off in the woods.
Supper was nearly at an end when a footstep sounded without; Chien pricked up his ears but gave no growl.
“A visitor,” announced mother Chapdelaine, “Eutrope Gagnon has come over to see us.”
It was an easy guess, as Eutrope Gagnon was their only neighbour. The year before he had taken up land two miles away, with his brother; the brother had gone to the shanties for the winter, and he was left alone in the cabin they had built of charred logs. He appeared on the threshold, lantern in hand.
“Greeting to each and all,” was the salutation as he pulled off his woollen cap. “A fine night, and there is still a crust on the snow-, as the walking was good I thought that I would drop in this evening to find out if you were back.”
Although he came to see Maria, as all knew, it was to the father of the house that he directed his remarks, partly through shyness, partly out of deference to the manners of the country. He took the chair that was offered him.
“The weather is mild; if it misses turning wet it will be by very little. One can feel that the spring rains are not far off …”
It was the orthodox beginning to one of those talks among country folk which are like an interminable song, full of repetitions, each speaker agreeing with the words last uttered and adding more to the same effect. And naturally the theme was the Canadian’s never-ending plaint; his protest, falling short of actual revolt, against the heavy burden of the long winter. “The beasts have been in the stable since the end of October and the barn is just about empty,” said mother Chapdelaine. “Unless spring comes soon I don’t know what we are going to do.”
“Three weeks at least before they can be turned out to pasture.”
“A horse, three
