A Cry in the Wilderness Part 32

There was no movement of the chair, and, to punish him, I locked the door on the inside and went out through the kitchen up to my room.

I recall that afternoon: the heavy first-of-December skies; the gray-black look on the hemlocks; the faded trunks of the lindens; the dullness of the unreflecting snow; the intermittent soughing of the wind in the pines. All without looked drear, jaded, almost lifeless; the cold was penetrating. I determined that all within should be bright with home cheer on the master's return. Did he not say I had made a home of the old manor?

I recall dressing myself with unusual care and wishing I had some light-colored gown to help brighten the interior for him.

For him! I was looking in the mirror and coiling my hair when I realized my thought; to my amazement my own face seemed to me almost the face of a stranger. I saw that its thin oval had rounded, the cheeks gained a faint color; animation was in every feature, life antic.i.p.ant in the eyes.

"That's what the change has done so soon; pure air, home life, good food and an abundance of it."

I failed to read the first sign.

There was nothing for it but to put on the well-worn skirt of brown panama serge, a clean shirt waist and a white four-in-hand. I promised myself not only a warm coat out of the first month's wages, but a light-colored inexpensive dress that would harmonize with the general feeling of youthfulness of which my inner woman was now aware. I sat down at the window to wait for the sound of the pung bells. Soon there was a soft tap at my door.

"Come in." Jamie made his appearance with a bunch of partridge berries in his hand.

"With Cale's compliments; he found them under the snow in the woods, and hopes you will do him the honor to wear them in your hair. He left them with me just before he went to meet Ewart; I had them under the arm-chair to present to you formally when you should come out of the den; instead of which, you ignominiously--"

"Please, don't, Jamie--no coals of fire; give me the lovely things."

"But, remember, you are to wear them in your hair, so Cale says."

"It's perfectly absurd--but I must do it to please him. Who would credit him with such an attention?"

"May I stay while you put them in?" he asked meekly.

"Of course you may, you sisterless youth."

I parted the bunch, and pinned a spray on each side, in the coils and plaits of my over heavy hair. Jamie said nothing till this finishing touch had been put to my toilet.

"I say, it's ripping, Marcia. Cale will be your abject slave from henceforth. By the way, I 've never heard him call you 'Happy', as he proposed to do."

"Nor I."

"I wonder what's the reason? Perhaps he thought he had been too fresh, and he does n't dare--There 's Ewart!" He was off on a run.

I thought I would wait for the various greetings to be over before going down. I felt sure I should not see his hand withdrawn this time, as on the occasion of his first home-coming. When I heard his voice below in the hall, I was aware of a warm thrill of delight, a joyous expectancy of good, a feeling as if the home-coming were my own; for never in my life had I been welcomed as he was, with a shout from Jamie, an outburst from the dogs, and joyful e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns from Angelique and Marie.

I went down, my cheeks glowing, my heart warm with the home-sense, and--I wondered at myself--my hand outstretched to his. When his closed upon it with the same cordial pressure of the week before, I knew for the first time in my life the joy of being "at home".

And I failed to read the second sign.

XVI

It was a busy winter and a joyous one for me; a short and happy one for Jamie, so he said. He was correcting proof for the first venture and collecting data for the second; trying his hand at a chapter here and there; alternately despairing, rejoicing, appealing to Mr. Ewart or me for criticism--something we were unable to give him, as from disjointed portions of his work we did not know the trend of his ideas; protesting one day that he could write nothing worth reading, then on the next proclaiming to the household, including Cale, his temporary triumph of mind over material. We enjoyed his moods, all of them, whether of despair or enthusiasm, guying him in the one and encouraging him in the other.

The cataloguing took me well into the first week in January. Mr. Ewart was often in the den with me of an afternoon, and I was glad to take advantage of his knowledge of the language in translation, and the use of obsolete words. His own time seemed over full for those first few months. On Tuesday and Sat.u.r.day mornings, he was always in the office to see the farmers on the estate and talk with them about his plans for future development. On other week-days, when weather permitted, he and Cale were much in the woods.

I found that Mr. Ewart did not intend it should be all work and no play for me. Twice in December he drove me in the pung--no sleigh had as yet been purchased, although a piano filled a corner of the living-room; once, early in the morning, before the sun had a chance to warm and partly melt the ice-crystals that encased every branch, every twig and twiglet. On that morning, we drove without speech for miles behind the swiftly trotting French coach horses; the beauty about us was indescribable, and silence was the best appreciation. We sped through the woods'-road, a prismatic arcade of interlaced crystals; along the river bank beside the vast frozen expanse of the St.

Lawrence, gleaming and glittering with blinding reflected radiance. It was so brilliant, that against it the trees by the roadside, laden as they were with ice, stood out black and gaunt. Then into Richelieu-en-Bas, where every roof, every fence, every post and rivet, looked to be pure rock crystal. Window-frames, eaves, doors, the old pump in the marketplace were behung with icicles. The world about us that morning was another world than the work-a-day one to which I was accustomed. I had seen this special condition of ice in northern New England, but never in such beauty and grandeur.

We drove home before the ice began to soften. Afterwards, I sat for an hour at my open window, listening to the musical tinkle and metallic clink of the falling ice from the trees in the woods across the creek.

With the reason given that Jamie and I needed exercise in the open every day,--our occupations being of the sedentary kind, as he said,--Mr. Ewart bade us fare forth with him to learn the art of snowshoeing. He was past master in it and a good teacher. By the middle of January we were well on our feet and independent of any help from him.

Oh, the joy of the fleet tracks over the unbroken white! Oh, the coursing of the blood, the deep, deep breaths of what Mr. Ewart called the "iced wine" air! Oh, the blessed hunger that was satisfied with wholesome food after the invigorating exercise! Oh, the refreshing sleep, with the temperature at zero and the still air touching my cheeks under the fur robe across my bed! And with it all the sense of security, the sense of peace, of rest!

In this atmosphere, the remembrance of the weary years in the great city grew dim. I rejoiced at it.

I was beginning, also, to make myself easily understood with the French. Their language I loved; their literature I cultivated. It was a delight to be able to visit the tiny homes in the village, whither I was sent on one errand or another by Mr. Ewart, so getting extra rides in the pung and longer hours in the bracing air. It was an education to make the acquaintance of various families, learn the names of every member of the households, their interests and occupations. They were such tiny homes, made so high of stoop to avoid the rising spring flood that the great river is apt to send far and wide and deep into the village streets, covering the n.o.ble park and flooding first floors, respecting neither twin-towered church nor manor house; so low in the walls, few-windowed, and those double and packed with moss.

And such expansive souls as I found in the tiny homes: the hostess of the inn, Mrs. Macleod's dressmaker who lived beneath the shadow of the great twin-towered church; the furrier and his wife on the market-square; from them I bought my warm coat; ancient Mere Guillardeau and her old daughter, weaver of rag carpets, and some of her friends who followed the same calling and showed me, during the short winter days, how to weave them on their rough looms.

Of the three or four English families, with the exception of the postmistress, I knew nothing, or knew of them only through Mr. Ewart and Jamie. The "Seignior" and "Seignioress", so-called although English, were in Montreal for the winter. The old General and his wife were housed through infirmities. Now and then I saw a bevy of red-cheeked English girls, driving over from their home-school in Upper Richelieu for a jolly lark on their half-holiday. Of other English I heard nothing; there were none in Richelieu-en-Bas.

As the season advanced and I was firm on my winter feet, I made many a snow-shoe call on the farmers' families who lived on the old seigniory lands. It was good to hear them tell their hopes and antic.i.p.ations; for Mr. Ewart's plan to do away with the old seigniorial rents and leases, and make of each farmer, at present paying rent, a freeholder, was welcomed, with almost pa.s.sionate enthusiasm, in this community, where, generally, change is looked at askance. It was not long before I discovered that, on entering these homes, I found myself antic.i.p.ating some word of praise, some expression of loyalty and devotion to the man who was to give them a new outlook on life. I listened with willing ears and led them, many times of my own accord, to speak of him.

In the long winter evenings I read thoroughly into the history of French Canada. It took me far afield, into English as well; into biography and the work of pioneers. It showed me the flaming enthusiasm of the fanatic, the faith of the apostle, the courage of high adventure, the chivalry of n.o.ble lives, the loyalty and devotion of the humble. It showed me, also, the cruelty of man to man, the divergence of race, the warring of nations, the battlefields, the conquests, the heavy hand of the conqueror, the red man's friendship, the red man's enmity, fire, sword, torture. But in and through and above all, it opened to me the high heart of the Canadian, the undaunted faith in established principles, and the patriotism that is a veritable pa.s.sion.

"O Canada, my Canada!" an old French Canadian once exclaimed to me as we sat by the box-stove in his little "cabin". "There is no land like it; no land where they live at peace as we do here; no land where they are so content by their own fireside." And he spoke the truth.

I began to understand, through my intercourse with our neighbors on the estate and the village people, those words of Drummond--Drummond who has shown us the hearts of Canada's children:

"Our fathers came to win us This land beyond recall-- And the same blood flows within us Of Briton, Celt and Gaul-- Keep alive each glowing ember Of our sireland, but remember Our country is Canadian Whatever may befall.

"Then line up and try us, Whoever would deny us The freedom of our birthright, And they 'll find us like a wall-- For we are Canadian, Canadian forever, Canadian forever--Canadian over all!"

One night in February, just before the Doctor's mid-winter visit, a friend of the dead poet pa.s.sed a night beneath the roof of the old manor house as Mr. Ewart's guest. After the yellow chintz curtains were close drawn, so shutting out the wintry night, and while the backlog was glowing, he read to us from those poems that at the author's will exact tears or smiles from their hearers. After the reading of "The Rossignol", Jamie took his seat at the piano and played softly that exquisite old French Canadian air "_Sur la montagne_".

Mr. Ewart rose and, taking his stand beside him, sang the words of the poem which have been set to this music.

"Jus' as de sun is tryin'

Climb on de summer sky Two leetle birds come flyin'

Over de mountain high-- Over de mountain, over de mountain, Hear dem call, Hear dem call--poor leetle rossignol!"

They recalled to me that twin song of Bjornson's which, despite its joyous note of antic.i.p.ation, holds the same pathos of unsatisfied longing.

The last note had scarcely been struck when Jamie broke into the jolly accompaniment to

"For he was a grand Seigneur, my dear, He was a grand Seigneur."

And, listening so to poems and music and the talk of these men of fine mind and high aspirations, to their hopes for Canada as a whole, to their expression of pride in her marvellous growth and their faith in her future, I said to myself:

"Am I the girl, or rather woman now, who a few years ago made her way up from the narrow thoroughfares about Barclay Street to her attic room in 'old Chelsea'--up through the traffic-congested streets of New York, in the dark of the late winter afternoon, the melting snow falling in black drops and streams from the elevated above her; the avenues running brown snow-water; the rails gleaming; the steaming horses plashing through slush; the fog making haloes about the dimmed arc-lights; the hurrying, pressing tide of humanity surging this way and that and nearly taking her off her feet at the crossings; the whole city reeking with a warm-chill mist, and the shrieking, grinding, grating, whistling, roaring polyglot din of the metropolis half deafening her?"