Part 9 (1/2)

It had been a severe Canadian winter, but the bright spring suns.h.i.+ne was now honeycombing the great snow-heap, which all winter had beset farmer Frechette's farm-house, and which, on this early March morning, was still banked almost as high as the kitchen window.

Glinting through the old-fas.h.i.+oned narrow panes, the generous rays fell upon the white bowed head of farmer Frechette, who sat warming himself at the square box wood-stove, gazing the while with furrowed brow at the roystering wood sparks, as at short intervals they shot aggressively from the partly open door.

Suddenly there floated through the raised window the joyous chimes of church bells. With an angry exclamation the old man sprang to his feet, hurried to the window, and violently drew it down. His extreme weakness made the anger that convulsed his thin, wrinkled face painful to see. Straightening up his bent frame, he shook his hand at the church, which he could see in the distance, and uttered anathemas against it. As he did so, the door leading from the little bedroom at the back of the kitchen was burst open, and his wife, a woman many years younger than he, ran over to his side, dragged down his still uplifted arm, and led him over to his seat. She then sat down beside him, and burying her face in her hands, began to cry.

Her distress moved him and he told her somewhat doggedly, but not unkindly, to cease. ”Do you know what the bells are ringing for?” he asked cynically, after a short pause.

”Why worry about it? We must submit,” she answered, trying to keep out of her voice the discontent that a.s.sailed her.

”They are ringing,” he went on in a hard voice, ”for farmer Cadieux's daughter, who is to take her life vows to-day. Already he has one daughter a nun, and his honor among French-Canadians will increase. I have lived in St. Jerome all my life, and have neither daughter nor son in the Church; they pity me. It was only yesterday we received the letter from Quebec telling us of the honor that had come to my brother through his daughter taking the veil. None of our neighbors were more pa.s.sionately attached to their children than we; yet death pa.s.sed by their doors, came to ours, and took them all. Continued disappointment has made me weary of life. The sound of the church bells, which I have heard so often sing honor for others, drives me to outbursts of shameful anger. At times I think I shall go mad. As for the Church, I have nearly lost all faith in it.”

As he ceased, his wife rose, kissed his cheek and said, with a little break in her voice, ”We have suffered much, Hormisdas; would to the Virgin we had not been so sorely afflicted.”

”Such affliction is nothing but cruelty,” he went on, scornfully. ”It was cruel when death took all our little ones in childhood. But it was still more cruel, when we had grown old and were striving to be content and kiss the rod, for the Virgin to give us another daughter; to let us keep her till she had grown into womanhood; till we had given her an education which would have fitted her to be the superioress of a convent, and then strike her with a fatal illness just as she was about to take the veil, and once more ruthlessly crush out all our hopes.”

”So long as Adele lives there is hope,” said his wife, trying to be brave.

”Doctor Prenoveau says she will die,” he answered fiercely.

”She was resting easier when I came down to you. I cannot get the idea out of my mind, that if we got Doctor Chalmers from Montreal, he would cure her. They say, although he is young, he is very clever. As for Doctor Prenoveau, you know people say he is too old to practise now.”

”When Doctor Prenoveau said the others would die, they died,” he replied, looking at her as though he feared she would no longer argue with him.

With a hopeful ring in her voice the brave mother said, ”That is true, but this time he may be mistaken; Doctor Chalmers would know.”

”If we only dared hope,” he said under his breath.

”Doctor Chalmers would know,” she repeated eagerly.

”Send for him,” he replied, turning his face away.

The sun had hardly sunk behind the Laurentian range of mountains, which for hundreds of miles towers above the great St. Lawrence River, and dictates its course to the Gulf, when the wind from the north, bringing with it flurries of fine snow, began to blow cold and strong.

Doctor Chalmers drew the buffalo robes tighter about him, and settled back in a corner of the sleigh; he had three miles yet to drive before he reached farmer Frechette's house. ”Had I known it was going to be this cold I would have arranged for some other doctor to take up the case,” he muttered. Had he only done so, how different his life would have been!

”We were afraid you would not come to-day,” said Madame Frechette as she led him into the kitchen, where the stove was throwing out a genial heat.

”Had the message been less urgent, I should not have done so,” he replied, stooping and warming his benumbed hands. Farmer Frechette sat facing the doctor at the opposite side of the stove, furtively glancing at the young physician, dissatisfaction imprinted on every line of his face; he was bitterly disappointed. ”He is little better than a boy,” the old man repeated to himself, over and over again.

”This is the doctor from Montreal, Adele,” said the mother, bending over her sick daughter. Doctor Chalmers drew near the bed, and as the light from the coal-oil lamp fell across Adele's face, he could not help but think how beautiful she was even in her illness.

For a long time nothing could be heard in the kitchen but the loud ticking of the yellow-faced clock, hung high above the old deal table, and the occasional murmur of voices in the sick girl's room. Unable any longer to sit and endure the suspense, the farmer rose, and began, fretfully, to walk to and fro. Finally he stopped at the window, and his gaze travelled across the great expanse of white, beautified by the pale light of the early moon, to the tin-clad church tower in the distance, which shone like burnished silver as the moon's rays fell upon it.

”If she dies there is no Virgin and the priests have deceived us,” he said, looking steadily at the tower; ”but if she lives”--and he straightened out his bent figure--”I shall die happy in the faith. I will leave money to help build the new church which Father Sauvalle so long has wished to have built.” Hearing a slight noise behind him, he turned quickly. His wife, followed by the doctor, was entering the room.

”Well?” he queried, in a peculiar tone, looking at the doctor as though he knew he would tell him there was no hope.

”She certainly is very ill, but I cannot agree with Doctor Prenoveau, if he says there is no hope.” The words were kindly spoken, for he had noticed how the old man trembled and how poorly a.s.sumed was his air of defiance.

”You really think she may not die, doctor?” he asked, almost incredulously.

”I really think not.”