Le Petit Nord Part 5

_December 14_

The last boat of the season has come and gone and now we settle down to the real life of the winter. Plans innumerable are under way for winter activities, and the children are on tiptoe over the prospect of approaching Christmastide. Their jubilations fill the house, and writing is even more difficult than usual.

For days before the last steamer finally reached us there were speculations as to her coming. Rumour, a healthy customer in these parts, three times had it that she had gone back, having given up the unequal contest with the ice. As all our Christmas mail was aboard her, the atmosphere was tense. Then came the news from Croque that she was there, busily unloading freight. Six hours later her smoke was sighted, and from the yells my bairns set up, you would have thought that the mythical sea serpent was entering port. She b.u.t.ted her way into the standing harbour ice as far as she could get, and promptly began discharging cargo. Teams of dogs sprang up seemingly out of the snow-covered earth, and in a mere twinkling our frozen and silent harbour was an arena of activity. The freight is dumped on the ice over the ship's side with the big winch, and each man must hunt for his own as it descends. Some of the goods are dropped with such a thud that the packages "burst abroad." This is all very well if the contents are of a solid and resisting nature; but if b.u.t.ter, or beans, or such like receive the shock, most regrettable results ensue.

During the hours of waiting here she froze solidly into the ice, and had to be blasted out before she could commence her journey to the southward. She has taken the mails with her, and this letter must come to you by dog team--your first by that method.

In the early part of this summer three little orphan girls came to us from Mistaken Cove. Their names are Carmen, Selina, and Rachel, and their ages, ten, seven, and five. Their father has been dead for some years, and the mother recently died of tuberculosis. They did look such a pathetic little trio when they first arrived. I went down to the wharf to meet them, and three quaint little figures stepped from the hospital boat, with dresses almost to their feet. Carmen held the hands of her two sisters, and greeted me with "Are you the woman wot's going to look after we?" I a.s.sured her that I hoped to perform that function to the best of my ability, and then she confided to me that she had brought with her a box containing her mother's dresses and her mother's hair. I fancy the responsibility of the entire household must have rested on Carmen's tiny shoulders; she is like a little old woman, and even her voice is care-worn. I hunted up some dolls for the two younger kiddies, but had not the courage to offer one to their elder sister. She evidently felt that dolls were altogether too precious for common use, and carefully explained to her charges that they were only for Sundays! When I next went to the playroom it was to find the three little sisters sitting solemnly in a row on the locker with their dolls safely packed away beneath. I persuaded them that dolls were not too good for "human nature's daily food," and since then they have been supremely happy with their babies.

Carmen is so devoted to little Rachel that she cannot bear the thought of her being in trouble. Rachel is very human, and in the brief time she has been with us has had many falls from the paths of rect.i.tude.

One day shortly after their arrival Rachel had been naughty, and I had taken her upstairs to explain to her the enormity of her offence, Carmen standing meanwhile at the bottom of the stairs wringing her hands. When Rachel reappeared and announced that she had not even been punished, Carmen was seen to give her a good slap on her own account, although evidently well pleased that no one else had dared to touch her child. Carmen is extremely religious, and her prayers at night are lengthy and devout. She starts off with the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed; several collects follow, and she concludes with a "Hail Mary!"

You have already made the acquaintance of Billy the Ox, the now dear departed, who const.i.tutes our winter's frozen meat supply. Our allotted portion of him is hung in the balcony outside my window.

Being on the second floor it was thought to be sanctuary from marauders. Last night I was awakened by an uneasy feeling of a presence entering my room. Starting up, I made out in the moonlight the great tawny form of one of our biggest dogs. He was in the balcony making so far futile leaps to secure a section of Billy. My shout discouraged him, and he jumped off the roof to the snow beneath. He had managed to scale the side of the house--but how? For some time I was at a loss to discover, till I remembered a ladder which had been placed perpendicularly against the wall on the other side. One of the double windows had broken loose in a recent storm of wind, and the barn man had had to go up and mend it. True to type he had left the ladder _in statu quo_. Up master dog had climbed straight into the air, along the slippery rungs of the ladder. When he reached the level of the tempting odour, he had alighted on the balcony roof. Then, pursuing the odour to its lair, he had discovered Billy, and me!

At breakfast I told my adventurette, and the story was instantly capped with others. Only one shall you have. The doctor was away on a travel last winter, and late one bl.u.s.tersome night came to a little village. He happened to have a very beautiful leader of which he was inordinately careful, so he asked his host for the night if he had a shed into which he could put Spider out of the weather. "Why, to be sure, just at the left of the door." It was dark and blowing, and the doctor went outside and thrust the beastie into the only building in sight. After breakfast he went with his host to get the dogs. When he started to open the door of the shelter in which Spider was incarcerated, the fisherman burst out in dismay, "You never put him in there? That's where I keeps my only sheep." At that second the dog appeared, a spherical and satisfied specimen. He had taken the stranger in--completely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE HAD TAKEN THE STRANGER IN]

The cold is intense, and to combat it in these buildings of green lumber is a task worthy of Hercules. We make futile attempts to keep the pipes from freezing; but the north wind has a new trump each night. He squeezes in through every c.h.i.n.k and cranny, and once inside the house goes whistling malignantly through the chilly rooms and corridors. We keep an oil stove burning in our bathroom at night with a kettle of water on it ready for our morning ablutions. To-day, when I went in to dress--one does not dress in one's bedroom, but waits in bed till the bathroom door's warning slam informs that the coast is clear--there was the stove still merrily burning, and there was the kettle of water on it--FROZEN.

Next month there is to be a sale in Nameless Cove, twelve miles to the westward of us. The doctor has asked me to attend. I accepted delightedly, as twenty-four hours free from fear of rats and frozen pipes draws me like a magnet. Moreover, who wouldn't be on edge if it were one's first dog drive!

I found Gabriel crying bitterly in bed the other night because he had in a fit of mischief thrown a stone at the Northern lights, which is regarded as an act of impiety by the Eskimo people. It was some time before I could pacify the child, or get him to believe that no dire results would follow his dreadful deed. But at length when "comforting time" was come for him, he consoled himself by supposing that Teacher must be "stronger than the devil."

_December 27_

I certainly was never born to be a teacher and it is something to discover one's limitations. For several Sundays now I have been labouring to instruct our little ones in the story of the birth of Jesus, and I have repeated the details again and again in order to impress them upon their wandering minds. Last Sunday I questioned them, and finally asked triumphantly, "Well, David, who was the Babe in the manger?" With a wild look round the room for inspiration, David enunciated with swelling pride, "Beulah, Teacher."

We had a lovely time on Christmas. The night before the children hung up their stockings, but it was midnight before I could get round to fill them, they were so excited and wakeful. I "hied me softly to my stilly couch," and was just dropping off into delicious slumber when at 1 A.M. the strains of musical instruments (which you had sent) were heard below. Then I appreciated to the full the sentiment of that poet who sang:

"Were children silent, we should half believe That joy were dead, its lamp would burn so low."

Later in the day we had our Christmas tree, when Topsy was overjoyed at receiving her first doll. There is something very sweet about the child in spite of all her wilful ways, and she is a real little mother to her doll.

We had a great dinner, as you may imagine. I overheard some of the little boys teasing Solomon, who is only three, to see if he would not forgo some particular choice morsel upon his plate, to which an emphatic "no" was always returned. Then by varying gradations of importance came the question, would he give it to Teacher? The answer not being considered satisfactory, Gabriel felt that the time had come for the supreme test, Would Solomon give it to G.o.d and the angels? The reply left so much to be desired that it is better unrecorded.

In our harbour lives a blind Frenchman, Francois Detier by name. He came here in his youth to escape conscription. The fisher people have travelled a long road since the old feuds which scarred the early history of Le Pet.i.t Nord, and Francois is a much-loved member of the community. Since the oncoming of the inoperable tumour, which little by little has deprived him of his sight, the neighbours vie with each other by helping him. One day a load of wood will find its way to his door. The next a few fresh "turr," a very "fishy" sea auk, are left ever so quietly inside his woodshed--and so it goes. It is a constant marvel to me that these people, who live so perilously near the margin of want, are always so eager to share up. Francois is sitting in our cellar as I write pulling nails from old boxes with my new patent nail-drawer. A moment ago I could not resist the temptation of putting the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ on the gramophone, and I went down to find him with tears rolling down his cheeks as he hummed,

"Allons, enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive."

We've invented a new job for him; he is to "serve" our pipes with bandages. This means swathing them round and round, and finally adding an outer covering of newspaper, which has a much-vaunted reputation for keeping cold out.

Let me tell you the latest epic of the hospital pipes. Those to the bathroom run through the office. In the last blizzard they burst. The fire in the fireplace was a conflagration; the steam radiator was singing a credible song; and as the water trickled down the pipe from the little fissure, it froze solid before it was three inches on its way!

A friend sent me for Christmas a charming little poem. One verse runs:

"May nothing evil cross this door, And may ill fortune never pry About these Windows; may the roar And rains go by.

"Strengthened by faith, these rafters will Withstand the battering of the storm; This hearth, though all the world grow chill, Will keep us warm."

I am thinking of hanging the card opposite our pipes as a reminder of the "way they should go."

_January 15_

The journey to Nameless Cove Fair was all that I had hoped for and a little more thrown in to make weight. Clear and shining, with glittering white snow below and sparkling blue sky above, the day promised fair in spite of a mercury standing at ten below zero, and a number of komatiks from the Mission started merrily forth. All went well, and we reached Nameless Cove without adventure, but at sundown the wind rose. When we left the sale at ten o'clock to return to the house where I was to spend the night, we had to face the full fury of a living winter gale. I "caught" both my cheeks on the way, or in common parlance I froze them. All through that long tug we were cheered by the thought of a large jug of cream which we had placed on the stove to thaw when we left the house. Do you fancy that cream had thawed? Not a bit of it. The fire was doing its best, but old Boreas was holding our feast prisoner. It had not even begun to disintegrate around the edges. We cut lumps from the icy ma.s.s, dropped them into our cocoa (which we made by cooking it inside the stove and directly on top of the coals), hastily popped the mixture into our mouths before it should have a chance to freeze _en route_, and went promptly to bed. I draw a veil over that night. I drew everything else I could find over me in the course of it. A sadder and a wiser and a chillier woman I rose the morrow morn. Another member of the staff, who had slept in an adjoining house, froze his toe in bed.

When we reached home, and I left the komatik at the hospital door, I made out 'Senath dancing in an agitatedly aimless fashion on our platform. She was also waving her arms about. For a moment it crossed my mind that she had lost her modic.u.m of wits, but as she was immediately joined by Tryphena, I gave up the theory as untenable, and continued to hasten up the hill to the Home. Our boiler had sprung, not one but many leaks, and the precious hot water destined for the cleansing of forty was flooding the already spotless kitchen floor. As it is the middle of the week I had not suspected this calamity, Sunday being the invariable day selected for all burst pipes, special rat banquets, broken noses, toothaches, skinned shins, and such misadventures. The problem now presenting itself for prompt solution is: 20 below zero, a gale blowing from the northwest, twoscore small, unwashed orphans, and a burst boiler!

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE FROZE HIS TOE IN BED]

_January 21_

The oldest inhabitants, and all the others as well, claim that this is the most remarkable winter in thirty years. Not that one is deceived.

I suspect them rather of making excuses for the consistently disconcerting climate of Britain's oldest colony.

All the same, literally the worst storm I ever experienced has been in progress for the last two days. It began in the morning by the falling of a few innocent flakes. Then the north wind decided to take a hand.

All night and all day and all night again it shrieked around the house, driving incredible quant.i.ties of snow before it. Half an hour after it began, you could not see two yards in front of your face. The man who attends to the hospital heating-plant had to crawl on his hands and knees in order to reach his destination, taking exactly one hour to make the distance of two hundred yards.

At this inst.i.tution it is the time-honoured custom to rise at five-thirty each morning, which custom, although doubtless good for our immortal souls, is distinctly trying to our too painfully mortal flesh. Added to which, in spite of all our efforts, our pipes are frozen, and in this country the ground does not thaw out completely until July or August, when we are making preparations for being frozen in again. Think of what this means for a household of over forty when every drop of water has to be hauled in barrels by our boys, and the superintendent has to stand over them to compel them to bring enough.

Cleanliness at such a cost must surely be a long way towards G.o.dliness. I can now appreciate the story of the chaplain from a whaling ship who is said to have wandered into an encampment of the Eskimos. He told the people of heaven with all its glories, and it meant nothing to these children of the North; they were not interested in his story. But when he changed his theme and spoke of h.e.l.l, with its everlasting fires which needed no replenishing, they cried, "Where is it? Tell us that we may go"; and big and little, they clambered over him, eager for details.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LONG WAY ON THE HEAVENWARD ROAD]

By morning every room on the windward side of our house looked like the inside of an igloo. The fine drift had silted in through each most minute cranny and crevice--even though we have double windows all over the building; and on the night in question we had decided that sufficient fresh air was entering in spite of us to permit our disobeying our self-imposed anti-tuberculosis regulations. The wind and snow are so persistent and so penetrating that the merest slit gives them entrance, and the acc.u.mulations of such a night make one fancy in the morning that the King of the Golden River has paid an infuriated visit to our part of the globe. When I went into the babies' dormitory every little bed was snowed under, and only the children's dark hair contrasted with the universal whiteness.

The second night I verily thought the house would come about our ears.

The gale had increased in fury, the thermometer stood at thirty below, and I stayed up to be ready for emergencies. At midnight, thinking one room must surely be blown in, I carried the sleeping babes into another wing of the house. If for any reason we had had to leave the building that night, none of us could have lived to reach a place of safety. I wish you could have seen us the following morning. The snow had drifted in so that in places it was over six feet high. I ventured out and found that every exit but one from the Home was snowed up. We had therefore to dig ourselves out of the woodshed door and into the others from the outside. You make a dab with a shovel in the direction where you think you last saw the desired door before the storm, and trust the fates for results. Part of our roof has blown off and our chimney is in a tottering condition.

The greatest menace was the telegraph wires. The drifts in places were so huge that as one walked along, the wires were liable to trip one up. The doctor has just taken a picture of the dog team being fed from the third-story window of the hospital. They are cl.u.s.tered on the snow just outside and on a level with the bottom of the window. Some of the fishermen in their tiny cottages had to be dug out by kindly neighbours, as they were completely snowed under!

The storm will greatly delay travelling and it may be almost spring before this reaches you. It may interest you to know how my letters come to you in the winter-time, and then perhaps you will not wonder so much at the delays. The mail is carried across country to Mistaken Cove, on the west coast, and then by eight relays of couriers with their dog teams to Deerlake where the railway touches. It is a slow method of progress, and there are countless delays owing to the frequent blizzards. Often the mail men fail to make connections, and the letters may lie a week or a fortnight at some outlandish station.