Dr. Grenfell's Parish Part 10

The way now led through a district desperately impoverished--as much by ignorance and indolence as by anything else. At one settlement of tilts there were forty souls, "without a sc.r.a.p of food or money," who depended upon their neighbours--and the opening of navigation was still three months distant! In one tilt there lay what seemed to be a bundle of rags.

"And who is this?" the doctor asked.

It was a child. "The fair hair of a blue-eyed boy of about ten years disclosed itself," says the doctor. "Stooping over him I attempted to turn his face towards me. It was drawn, with pain, and a moan escaped the poor little fellow's lips. He had disease of the spine, with open sores in three places. He was stark naked, and he was starved to a skeleton. He gave me a bright smile before I left, but I confess to a shudder of horror at the thought that his lot might have been mine. Of course the 'fear of pauperizing' had to disappear before the claims of humanity. Yet, there, in the depth of winter," the doctor asks, with infinite compa.s.sion, "would not a lethal draught be the kindest friend of that little one of Him that loved the children?"

For five days the doctor laboured in Conch, healing many of the folk, helping more; and at the end of that period the man who has suffered the hemorrhage was so far restored that with new dogs the doctor set out for Canada Bay, still travelling southward. There, as he says, "we had many interesting cases." One of these involved an operation: that of "opening a knee-joint and removing a loose body," with the result that a fisherman who had long been crippled was made quite well again.

Then there came a second call from Conch. Seventeen men had come for the physician, willing to haul the komatik themselves, if no dogs were to be had. To this call the doctor immediately responded; and having treated patients at Conch and by the way, he set out upon the return journey to St. Anthony, fearing that his absence had already been unduly prolonged. And he had not gone far on the way before he fell in with another komatik, provided with a box, in which lay an old woman bound to St. Anthony hospital, in the care of her sons, to have her foot amputated.

Crossing Hare Bay, the doctor had a slight mishap--rather amusing, too, he thinks.

"One of my dogs fell through the ice," says he. "There was a biting nor'west wind blowing, and the temperature was ten degrees below zero.

When we were one mile from the land, I got off to run and try the ice. It suddenly gave way, and in I fell. It did not take me long to get out, for I have had some little experience, and the best advice sounds odd: it is 'keep cool.' But the nearest house being at least ten miles, it meant, then, almost one's life to have no dry clothing.

Fortunately, I had. The driver at once galloped the dogs back to the woods we had left, and I had as hard a mile's running as ever I had; for my clothing was growing to resemble the armour of an ancient knight more and more, every yard, and though in my youth I was accustomed to break the ice to bathe if necessary, I never tried running a race in a coat of mail. By the time I arrived at the trees and got out of the wind, my driver had a rubber poncho spread on the snow under a snug spruce thicket; and I was soon as dry and a great deal warmer than before."

At St. Anthony, the woman's foot was amputated; and in two days the patient was talking of "getting up." Meantime, a komatik had arrived in haste from a point on the northwest coast--a settlement one hundred and twenty miles distant. The doctor was needed there--and the doctor went!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE DOCTOR ON A WINTER'S JOURNEY"]

This brief and inadequate description of a winter's journey may not serve to indicate the hardship of the life the doctor leads: he has small regard for that; but it may faintly apprise the reader of the character of the work done, and of the will with which the doctor does it. One brief journey! The visitation of but sixty miles of coast! Add to this the numerous journeys of that winter, the various summer voyages of the _Strathcona_; conceive that the folk of two thousand miles are visited every year, often twice a year: then multiply by ten--for the mission has been in efficient existence for ten years--and the reader may reach some faint conception of the sum of good wrought by this man. But without knowing the desolate land--without observing the emaciated bodies of the children--without hearing the cries of distress--it is impossible adequately to realize the blessing his devotion has brought to the coast.

XII

_THE CHAMPION_

The Deep-sea Mission is not concerned chiefly with the souls of the folk, nor yet exclusively with their bodies: it endeavours to provide them with religious instruction, to heal their ailments; but it is quite as much interested, apparently, in improving their material condition. To the starving it gives food, to the naked clothing; but it must not be supposed that charity is indiscriminately distributed.

That is not the case. Far from it. When a man can cut wood for the steamer or hospitals in return for the food he is given, for example, he is required to do so; but the unhappy truth is that a man can cut very little wood "on a winter's diet" exclusively of flour. "You gets weak all of a suddent, zur," one expressed it to me. In his effort to "help the people help themselves" the doctor has established cooperative stores and various small industries. The result has been twofold: the regeneration of several communities, and an outbreak of hatred and dishonest abuse on the part of the traders, who have too long fattened on the isolation and miseries of the people. The cooperative stores, I believe, are thriving, and the small industries promise well. Thus the mission is at once the hope and comfort of the coast. The man on the _Strathcona_ is the only man, in all the long history of that wretched land, to offer a helping hand to the whole people from year to year without ill temper and without hope of gain.

"But I can't do everything," says he.

And that is true. There is much that the mission-doctor cannot do--delicate operations, for which the more skilled hand of a specialist is needed. For a time, one season, an eminent surgeon, of Boston, the first of many, it is hoped, cruised on the _Strathcona_, and most generously operated at Battle Harbour. The mission gathered the patients to the hospital from far and near before the surgeon arrived. Folk who had looked forward in dread to a painful death, fast approaching, were of a sudden promised life. There was a man coming, they were told, above the skill of the mission surgeons, who could surely cure them. The deed was as good as the promise: many operations were performed; all the sick who came for healing were healed; the hope of not one was disappointed. Folk who had suffered years of pain were restored. Never had such a thing been known on the Labrador. Men marvelled. The surgeon was like a man raising the dead. But there was a woman who is now, perhaps, dead; she lacked the courage. Day after day for two weeks she waited for the Boston surgeon; but when he came she fled in terror of the knife. Her ailment was mortal in that land; but she might easily have been cured; and she fled home when she knew that the healer had come. No doubt her children now know what it is to want a mother.

Dr. Grenfell will let no man oppress his people when his arm is strong enough to champion them. There was once a rich man (so I was told before I met the doctor)--a man of influence and wide acquaintance--whose business was in a remote harbour of Newfoundland.

He did a great wrong; and when the news of it came to the ears of the mission-doctor, the anchor of the _Strathcona_ came up in a hurry, and off she steamed to that place.

"Now," said the doctor to this man, "you must make what amends you can, and you must confess your sin."

The man laughed aloud. It seemed to him, no doubt, a joke that the mission-doctor should interfere in the affairs of one so rich who knew the politicians at St. Johns. But the mission-doctor was also a magistrate.

"I say," said he, deliberately, "that you must pay one thousand dollars and confess your sin."

The man cursed the doctor with great laughter, and dared him to do his worst. The joke still had point.

"I warn you," said the doctor, "that I will arrest you if you do not do precisely as I say."

The man pointed out to the doctor that his magisterial district lay elsewhere, and again defied him.

"Very true," said the doctor; "but I warn you that I have a crew quite capable of taking you into it."

The joke was losing its point. But the man bl.u.s.tered that he, too, had a crew.

"You must make sure," said the doctor, "that they love you well enough to fight for you. On Sunday evening," he continued, "you will appear at the church at seven o'clock and confess your sin before the congregation; and next week you will pay the money as I have said."

"I'll see you in h--ll first!" replied the man, defiantly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A CREW QUITE CAPABLE OF TAKING YOU INTO IT"]

At the morning service the doctor announced that a sinful man would confess his sin before them all that night. There was great excitement. Other men might be prevailed upon to make so humiliating a confession, the folk said, but not this one--not this rich man, whom they hated and feared, because he had so long pitilessly oppressed them. So they were not surprised when at the evening service the sinful man did not show his face.

"Will you please to keep your seats," said the doctor, "while I go fetch that man."

He found the man in a neighbour's house, on his knees in prayer, with his friends. They were praying fervently, it is said; but whether or not that the heart of the doctor might be softened I do not know.

"Prayer," said the doctor, "is a good thing in its place, but it doesn't 'go' here. Come with me."

The man meekly went with the doctor; he was led up the aisle of the church, was placed where all the people could see him; and then he was asked many questions, after the doctor had described the great sin of which he was guilty.

"Did you do this thing?"

"I did."

"You are an evil man, of whom the people should beware?"

"I am."

"You deserve the punishment of man and G.o.d?"

"I do."

There was much more, and at the end of it all the doctor told the man that the good G.o.d would forgive him if he should ask in true faith and repentance, but that the people, being human, could not. For a whole year, he charged the people, they must not speak to that man; but if at the end of that time he had shown an honest disposition to mend his ways, they might take him to their hearts.

The end of the story is that the man paid the money and left the place.

This relentless judge, on a stormy day of last July, carried many bundles ash.o.r.e at Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the Labrador. The wife of the Hudson Bay Company's agent exclaimed with delight when she opened them. They were Christmas gifts from the children of the "States" to the lads and little maids of that coast. With almost all there came a little letter addressed to the unknown child who was to receive the toy; they were filled with loving words--with good wishes, coming in childish sincerity from the warm little hearts. The doctor never forgets the Christmas gifts. He is the St. Nicholas of that coast. If he ever weeps at all, I should think it would be when he hears that despite his care some child has been neglected. The wife of the agent stowed away the gifts against the time to come.

"It makes them _very_ happy," said the agent's wife.

"Not long ago," I chanced to say, "I saw a little girl with a stick of wood for a dolly. Are they not afraid to play with these pretty things?"