Part 5 (1/2)
_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 s.h.i.+p'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.