Part 8 (2/2)
_Same evening_
An old chap has just climbed over the rail, who looks like an early patriarch, but his dignity is impaired by the moth-eaten high silk hat which surmounts his white hair. The people regard him with apparent deference, due either to the hat or his inherent character. Looking at his fine old face, one is inclined to believe it is the latter.
The expressions these people use are so nautical and so apt! Every patient who comes aboard expressed the wish to be ”sounded” in some portion of his or her anatomy for the suspected ailment which has brought him. One burly fisherman solemnly took off his huge oily sea-boot, placed a grimy forefinger on his heel, and remarked sententiously that the doctor ”must sound him right there.” The prescription was soap and water--a diagnosis in which I entirely concurred. The next case was a young girl with a ”kink in her glutch.”
It has the sound of all too familiar motor trouble, but was dismissed as psychopathic. I wish that a similarly simple diagnosis accounted for the mysterious ailments of automobiles. My meditations on modern science were interrupted by an insistent voice proclaiming that ”my head is like to burst abroad.”
If I were a woman on this coast my temper would ”burst abroad” to see the men--some of them--spitting all over the floors of the cottages: disgusting and particularly dangerous in a country where the arch-enemy, tuberculosis, is ever on the watch for victims. But the new era is slowly dawning. Now, instead of hooking ”Welcome Home” into the fireside mat, you find ”DONT SPIT” worked in letters of flame. It is the harbinger of the feminist movement in the land.
Speaking of the feminist movement makes me think of a woman at Aquaforte Harbour. She deserves a book written about her. In the first place, Elmira had the courage of her convictions, and did not marry.
Her convictions were that marriage was desirable if you get the right man who can support you properly, and not otherwise. This is generations in advance of the local att.i.tude to the holy estate. She has lived a life of single blessedness to the coast. In every trouble along her section of the sh.o.r.e it is ”routine” to send for ”Aunt”
'Mira. She has more sense and unselfishness and native wit than you would meet in ten products of civilization. For a year she acted as nurse to the little boy of one of the staff, and never was child better cared for. They once told 'Mira she really must make baby take his bottle. (He had the habit of profound slumber at that time.) ”Oh!
I does, ma'm,” 'Mira replied. ”If he dwalls off, I gives him a scattered jolt.” The family took her to England with them, and her remarks on the trains showed where her ancestry lay. When they backed she exclaimed, ”My happy day! We're goin' astern!” She requested to be allowed to ”open the port”; and at a certain junction where there was a long delay she asked to go ”ash.o.r.e for a spell.”
That ”h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions” is no longer a glib phrase to me; it is a conviction born of seeing some of the suffering of this country. The doctor has just been ash.o.r.e to see a woman with a five-days old baby. No attempt whatever had been made to get her or her bed clean or comfortable. She had developed a violent fever, and the local midwives, with their congenital terror of the use of water--internal or external--had larded the miserable creature over from head to foot with b.u.t.ter, and finished off with a liberal coating of oak.u.m. The doctor said, by the time he had himself sc.r.a.ped and bathed her, put her in a fresh cool bed with a jug of spring water beside her to drink, she looked as if she thought the gates of Paradise had opened.
Mails reached us at the Moravian station, and your most welcome letters loomed large on the postal horizon. You ask if I have not found the year long. I will answer by telling you the accepted derivation of the name ”Labrador.” It comes from the Portuguese, and means ”the labourer,” because those early voyagers intended to send slaves back to His Majesty. Well-filled time, so the psychologists tell us, is short in pa.s.sing, and ”down North,” before you are half into the day's tasks, you look up to find that ”the embers of the day are red.” You must have guessed, too, that I should not have evinced such contentment during these months if my fellow workers had not been congenial. I shall always remember their devotion, and readiness to serve both one another and the people; and I know that the years to come will only deepen my appreciation of what their friends.h.i.+p has meant to me.
How glad I was when the winter came, and I was no longer cla.s.sed as a newcomer! I had heard so much about dog driving that I remember thinking the resultant sensations must be akin to those Elijah experienced in his chariot. But now I have driven with dogs in summer, and that is more than most of the older stagers can boast. In a prosperous little village in the Straits lives the rural dean. He is a devoted and practical example of what a shepherd and bishop of souls can be. There is not a good work for the benefit of his flock--and he is not bound by the conventional and unchristian denominational prejudices--which does not find in him a leader. His interests range from cooperation to a skin-boot industry. But the problem of getting about when you have no Aladdin's carpet is acute. He goes by dog sled and shanks' pony in winter, and used to go by boat and shanks' pony in summer. Then one day he had the inspiration of building a two-wheeled shay, and harnessing in his l.u.s.ty and idle dog team. Now he drives about at a rate that ”Jehu the son of Nims.h.i.+ would approve,” and is independent of winds and weather.
Sunday to-morrow. We are running south for the Ragged Islands. If I were not on the hospital s.h.i.+p, and therefore an involuntary example to the people, I would fall into my bunk at night with my clothes on, I am so weary.
_Ragged Islands Sunday night_
Just aboard again after Prayers at the little church. It is a quaint and crude little edifice, and the people were so kindly and the service so hearty that one feels ”wonderfu' lifted up.” To be sure, during the sermon I was suddenly brought up ”all standing” by the amazing statement that the ”Harch Hangels go Hup, Hup, Hup.” One felt in one's bones that this was a misapprehension. The very earnest clergyman may have noticed my obvious disagreement, for at the close he announced, ”We will now sing the 398th hymn”--
”Day of Wrath, oh! Day of Mourning, See fulfilled the Prophet's warning, Heaven and earth in ashes burning.”
This goes off into the blue on the chance of its reaching you before I come myself and share a secret with you; for to-morrow we are due at the Iron Bound Islands, and there I leave the Northern Light, and end the chapter of my life as a member of the Mission staff. The appropriateness of the closing hymn in the little church last night is borne more than ever forcibly in upon me with the chill light of early morning, for I verily feel as though my world were tottering about my ears.
I am still optimist enough to know that life will hold many experiences which will enrich it, but in my secret heart I cherish the conviction that this year will always stand out as a keynote, and a touchstone by which to judge those which succeed it. My greatest solace in the ache which I feel in taking so long a farewell of a people and country that I love is that I shall always possess them in memory--a treasure which no one can take from me. As I look back over the quickly speeding year I find that I have forgotten those trivial incidents of discomfort which p.r.i.c.ked my hurrying feet. All I can recall is the rugged beauty of the land, the brave and simple people with their hardy manhood and more than generous hospitality, and most of all my little bairns who hold in their tiny hands the future of Le Pet.i.t Nord.
[Ill.u.s.tration: P.S.]
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