Shadows on the Rock (13 page)

After dinner she escaped into the fields again, but this time the girls went with her. They had a grape-vine swing in the
wood; as she had never had a swing when she was little, she found it delightful. These children were nicer when they played
at games and did not stand staring at one.

But as the sunlight began to grow intensely gold on the tree-tops and the slanting fields, dread and emptiness awoke in
Cécile’s breast again, a chilling fear of the night. The mother had found her handkerchief spread out on the bolster and had
put on a clean bolster-slip. But that made little difference. She couldn’t possibly lie in that bed all night, not even if
the children had taken a bath before they got into it. As soon as they were asleep, she got up and sat by the window as on
the first night.

At breakfast Pierre Charron noticed that Cécile did not look at all like herself. When they left the table, he asked her
to go down to the spring with him, and as soon as they were alone, inquired if she were not feeling well.

“No, I don’t feel well, and truly I can’t stay here any longer. Please, please, Pierre, take me home today!”

Pierre had never seen her cry before, and he was greatly surprised. “Very good. There is not much wind, and perhaps we
had better go today, anyhow. Get your things, and I’ll tell the smith I’ve changed my mind.”

Cécile ran swiftly back to the house. She knew she had not been a very satisfactory visitor, and she felt remorseful. She
gave the little girls all the handkerchiefs she had brought with her, — they hadn’t any, but wiped their sweaty faces on
their sleeves or their skirts. Several of her handkerchiefs had come from her aunts, and she was very fond of them, but she
parted with them gladly and only wished she had more things to give the children.

She could scarcely believe in her good fortune when Pierre’s boat actually left the shore and he began pulling out into
the river, while the Harnois children stood waving to them from the cove.

“We needn’t hurry, eh?” Pierre asked.

“Oh, no! I love being on the river,” she replied unsteadily. He asked no further questions, but handled his oars, singing
softly to himself. Of course, she thought sadly, he would never want to take her anywhere again. She used to dream that one
day he might take her to Montreal in his boat, perhaps even to see the great falls at Niagara.

As soon as they were out of the south channel and had cleared the point of the island, they could see the rock of Kebec
and the glare of the sun on the slate roofs. Cécile began to struggle with her tears again. It was as if she were home
already. For a long while it did not grow much plainer; then it rose higher and higher against the sky.

“Now I can see the Château, and the Récollet spire,” she cried. “And, oh, Pierre, there is the Seminary!”

“Yes? It’s a fine building, but I never had any particular affection for it.” He saw that she was much too happy to
notice his banter.

Soon they could see the spire of Notre Dame de la Victoire — and then they were in the shadow of the rock itself. When
she stepped upon the shore, Cécile remembered how Sister Catherine de Saint–Augustin, when she landed with her companions,
had knelt down and kissed the earth. Had she been alone, she would have loved to do just that. They went hand in hand up La
Place street, across the market square, down Notre Dame street beside the church, and into Mountain Hill. It was wonderful
that everything should be just the same, when she had been away so long! Pierre did not bother her with questions, but she
knew he was watching her closely. She was ashamed, but it couldn’t be helped; some things are stronger than shame.

When they burst in upon her father, he was seated at his desk, rolling pills on a sheet of glass.

“What, back already?” He did not seem so overjoyed as Cécile had thought he would be.

“Yes, monsieur,” Pierre replied carelessly, “we were a little bored in the country, both of us.”

How grateful she was for that “tous les deux!” She might have known Pierre would not betray her.

“Father,” she said as she kissed him again, “please ask Pierre Charron to come to dinner tonight. I want to make
something very nice for him. I’ve given him a lot of trouble.”

After Pierre was gone, and she had peeped into the salon and the kitchen to see that everything was as she had left it,
Cécile came back into the shop.

“Father, Pierre took it on himself, but it was my fault we came home. I didn’t like country life very well. I was not
happy.”

“But aren’t they kind people, the Harnois? Haven’t they kind ways?”

“Yes, they have.” She sighed and put her hand to her forehead, trying to think. They had kind ways, those poor Harnois,
but that was not enough; one had to have kind things about one, too. . . .

But if she was to make a good dinner for Pierre, she had no time to think about the Harnois. She put on her apron and
made a survey of the supplies in the cellar and kitchen. As she began handling her own things again, it all seemed a little
different, — as if she had grown at least two years older in the two nights she had been away. She did not feel like a
little girl, doing what she had been taught to do. She was accustomed to think that she did all these things so carefully to
please her father, and to carry out her mother’s wishes. Now she realized that she did them for herself, quite as much. Dogs
cooked with blueberries — poor Madame Harnois’ dishes were not much better! These coppers, big and little, these brooms and
clouts and brushes, were tools; and with them one made, not shoes or cabinet-work, but life itself. One made a climate
within a climate; one made the days, — the complexion, the special flavour, the special happiness of each day as it passed;
one made life.

Suddenly her father came into the kitchen. “Cécile, why did you not call me to make the fire? And do you need a fire so
early?”

“I must have hot water, Papa. It is no trouble to make a fire.” She wiped her hands and threw her arms about him. “Oh,
Father, I think our house is so beautiful!”

At four o’clock in the morning Cécile was sitting by her upstairs window, dressed and wide awake. Across the river there
was already a red and purple glow above the black pines; but overhead spread the dark night sky, like a tent with its flap
up, letting in a new day, — the most important day of the year.

Word had come down by land that five ships from France had passed Tadousac and were beating up the river against head
winds. During the night the wind had changed; Cécile had only to hold her handkerchief outside her window and watch it
flutter, to reassure herself that a strong breeze was blowing in from the east, and the ships would be in today. She
wondered how her father could go on sleeping. Nicholas Pigeon and Blinker had been up all night, making a great deal of
noise as they turned out one baking after another to feed the hungry sailors. The smell of fresh bread was everywhere, very
tempting to one who had been awake so long.

At last she heard a door below open softly, and she ran down the stairs to the salon and out into the kitchen, where her
father was just beginning to make his fire.

“Oh, Father, the wind is right! I knew it would come! Yesterday all the nuns at the Ursulines’ were praying for the wind
to change. How soon do you suppose they will get in? You remember last year it rained all day when the first ships came. But
today will be beautiful. I expect Kebec will look very fine to them.”

“No better than they will to us, certainly. But there is no hurry. They will not be along for hours yet.”

Cécile told him she had been awake nearly all night and was very hungry, so would he please hurry the chocolate. She
herself ran out through the board fence that divided their back yard from the Pigeons’, to get a loaf from Blinker, as it
was not nearly time for the baker’s boy to come on his rounds.

They had just sat down to their breakfast when they heard the front door open, and heavy, rapid little steps crossed the
bare floor of the shop. Jacques came in, his pale eyes so round that he looked almost frightened.

“Hurry, Cécile, they’re coming!” he called. Then, remembering where he was, he snatched off his cap and murmured:
“Pardon, monsieur. Bonjour, monsieur. Bonjour, Cécile.”

Cécile sprang up. “You mean they are in sight, Jacques?”

“People say they are, nearly,” he answered vaguely.

“What nonsense, Cécile! You are as foolish as the little boy. You know the cannon would be sounding and the whole town
shouting if the ships were in sight. Sit down and calm yourselves, both of you. Jacques, here is some chocolate for
you.”

“Thank you, monsieur.” He sat down on the edge of the chair and took the cup carefully in both hands, at the same time
glancing at the clock. “But we must not be late,” he added fearfully.

“We shall not be. The ships cannot possibly pass this end of the island before noon.”

“Which ones do you think they will be, monsieur?”

“They will probably be old friends, that have come to us often before.”

“Jacques means he hopes one of them will be La Garonne, with the nice sailor who made our beaver,” Cécile explained.

Jacques blushed and looked up at her trustfully. But his anxiety was too strong for him. In a few moments he stole
another glance at the clock and resolutely put down his cup.

“If you please, monsieur, I think I will go now.”

Auclair laughed. “You may both go! You are as restless as kittens. I can do nothing with either of you about. I will
follow you in an hour or two. You will have a long wait.”

The children agreed they wouldn’t mind that, and they ran out into the early sunshine and down the hill hand in hand.

“Oh, look at the market square, Jacques, look! I have never seen so many carts before.”

Since long before daybreak the country people had been coming into town, bringing all they could carry in their carts and
on their backs; fresh pork, dressed rabbits and poultry, butter and eggs, salad, green beans, leeks, peas, cucumbers, wild
strawberries, maple sugar, spruce beer. The sailors, after two or three months on salt meat and ship’s bread, would sell
their very ear-rings for poultry and green vegetables. All the market-women, and the men, too, were dressed in their best,
in whatever was left of the holiday costume they used to wear at home, in their native town. A sailor would always make
straight for the head-dress or bonnet or jacket of his own pays.

The children found there was already a crowd at the waterside, and while they ran about, hunting for an advantageous post
of observation, people kept streaming down Mountain Hill. The whole of the Upper Town was emptying itself into the Lower.
The old people, who almost never left the house, came with the rest, and babies at the breast were carried along because
there was no one at home to leave them with. Not even on great feast-days did one see so many people come together. Bishop
Laval and his donné came down the hill and took their places in the crowd. Giorgio, the drummer boy, and Picard, the Count’s
valet, were sitting on one of the cannon that guarded the landing-place. Noël Pommier and his friend the wagon-maker came
carrying old Madame Pommier between them, and a boy followed bringing her chair. There were even new faces: a company of
Montreal merchants, who had been staying at the Château for several days, awaiting the ships.

All the poor and miserable were on the water front, as well as the great. ‘Toinette was moving about in the crowd,
looking fresh and handsome in a clean dress and a new kerchief. Her partner, the snail, with her hair curled very tight and
her hands hidden under her apron, was standing among the poor folk over by the King’s warehouse. Jacques was careful to keep
out of his mother’s way; but she had no wish to be bothered with him and was blind to his presence in the crowd. The Count
did not come down the hill, but he was in plain view on the terrace in front of the Château, and with him were the Intendant
and Madame de Champigny, and a group of officers with their wives. Everyone in Kebec, Cécile believed, except the cloistered
nuns, was out today. Even Monseigneur de Saint–Vallier, though he was so proud, had a chair placed in the highest part of
his garden and sat there looking down over the roofs, watching for the ships.

The hours dragged on. Babies began to cry and old people to murmur, but nobody went away. Giorgio and Picard made a place
for Jacques between them on the cannon. By the time her father arrived, Cécile was beginning to wonder whether she could
possibly stand any longer. But very soon a shout went up — something flashed in the south channel against the green fields
of the Île d’Orléans. Cécile held her breath and gripped her father’s hand. It dipped, it rose again, a gleam of white.
There could be no doubt now; larger and larger, the canvas of sails set full, with the wind well behind them. Soon the whole
rigging rose above the rapidly dropping shore, then the full figure of a square-rigged ship emerged, passed the point of the
island, and glided into the broad, undivided river. The cannon on the redoubt boomed the Governor’s salute, and all the
watchers on the waterside shouted a great welcoming cry, waving their caps, kerchiefs, aprons, anything at hand. Women, and
men, too, cried for joy. Cécile hid her face on her father’s shoulder, and Jacques stood up on the cannon, waving his little
cap.

“Les Deux Frères, Les Deux Frères!” people began to shout, while others laughed at them. She was not near enough for
anyone to be sure, but the townspeople knew those carrying boats by heart, held their lines and shape in mind all year. Sure
enough, as the vessel bore up the river toward the rock, everyone agreed that it was Les Deux Frères, from Le Havre. Her
anchor-chains had scarcely begun to rattle when the sound was drowned by new shouts; a second set of sails was sighted
between the green fields and the pine-clad shore.

“Le Profond, Le Profond!” the people cried, and again the ordnance thundered from the redoubt.

Within half an hour the Captain of Les Deux Frères came ashore in a little boat, bringing dispatches for the Governor.
But before he could make his way up to the Château, he had to stop to greet old friends and to answer the questions of the
crowd that pressed about him.

The King was well, and Monsieur le Dauphin was in good health. The young Duc de Bourgogne — the King’s grandson — was
married to a little Princess of Savoie, only twelve years old, mais bien sage. The war was at a standstill; but of that they
would hear later, — he tapped his dispatch-case. The wheat-harvest had been good last year, the vintage one of the best
within memory. Of the voyage he had no time to speak; they had got here, hadn’t they? That was the important thing.

The Captain made his way up the hill, and Bishop Laval went into the church of Notre Dame de la Victoire to thank God for
preserving the King’s health.

Sometimes, owing to bad weather and high winds, the ships of the first fleet came in four or five days apart; but this
year they came in close succession. By sunset five vessels were anchored in the roadstead before Quebec: Les Deux Frères, Le
Profond, La Reine du Nord, La Licorne, Le Faucon. They stood almost in a row, out in the river. Worn, battered old
travellers they looked. It brought tears to the eyes to think how faithful they were, and how much they had endured and
overcome in the years they had been beating back and forth between Canada and the Old World. What adverse winds those sails
had been trimmed to, what mountains of waves had beaten the sides of those old hulls, what a wilderness of hostile,
never-resting water those bows had driven through! Beaten southward, beaten backward, out of their course for days and even
weeks together; rolling helpless, with sails furled, water over them and under them, — but somehow wearing through. On bad
voyages they retraced their distance three and five times over, out-tiring the elements by their patience, and then drove
forward again — toward Kebec. Sometimes they went south of Newfoundland to enter the Gulf, sometimes they came south of
Labrador and through the straits of Belle Île; always making for this rock in the St. Lawrence. Cécile wondered how they
could ever find it, — a goal so tiny, out of an approach so vast.

Many a time a boat came in wracked and broken, and it took all summer to make repairs, before the captain dared face the
sea again. And all summer the hardships and mischances of the fleet were told over and over in Quebec. The greater part of
the citizens had made that voyage at least once, and they knew what a North Atlantic crossing meant: little wooden boats
matched against the immensity and brutality of the sea; the strength that came out of flesh and blood and goodwill, doing
its uttermost against cold, unspending eternity. The colonists loved the very shapes of those old ships. Here they were
again, in the roadstead, sending off the post-bags. And tomorrow they would give out of their insides food, wine, cloth,
medicines, tools, fire-arms, prayer-books, vestments, altars for the missions, everything to comfort the body and the
soul.

The next few days were like a continual festival, with sailors overrunning the town, and drinking and singing in the
Place half the night. Every day was market day, and both Blinker and his master worked double shifts, trying to bake bread
enough for five crews. The waterside was heaped with merchandise and casks of wine. The merchants employed every idle man
and boy to help them store their goods, and all the soldiers were detailed to receive the supplies for the Château and the
forts. Even the churches and the priests were busier than usual. The sailors, though they might indulge in godless
behaviour, were pious in their own way; went to confession soon after they got into port, and attended mass. They lived too
near the next world not to wish to stand well with it. Nobody begrudged them their rough pleasures; they never stole, and
they seldom quarrelled. Even the strictest people, like Bishop Laval, recognized that men who were wet and cold and poorly
fed for months together, who had to climb the rigging in the teeth of the freezing gales that blew down from Labrador, must
be allowed a certain licence during the few weeks they were on shore. The colony owed its life to these fellows; whatever
else they did, they got the ships to Quebec every year.

Cécile was allowed to take Jacques for an escort and go down to the waterside in the morning to watch the unloading, —
until the third day, when Auclair’s own goods, from the old drug house in the parish of Saint–Paul, were brought ashore from
Le Profond. In a few hours the orderly shop, and the salon behind it, were full of bales and boxes. M. Auclair said they
must begin unpacking at once, as with this confusion there was no room for customers to come and go. Jacques had followed
the carriers up the hill, and he decided that he would rather stay and see these boxes opened than share in the general
excitement on the waterside.

The apothecary took off his coat and set to work with his hammer and chisel. Blinker, very curious to see everything that
came out of the boxes, ran in between bakings to carry the lumber and straw down into the cellar. One by one the white jars
on the shelves, and the drawers of the cabinets, were filled up again; with powders, salts, gums, blue crystals,
strong-smelling spices, bay-leaves, lime flowers, camomile flowers, senna, hyssop, mustard, dried plants and roots in great
variety. There was the usual crate of small wooden boxes containing fruits conserved in sugar, very costly and much prized
in Quebec. These boxes could not be opened, of course, as they were the most expensive articles in Auclair’s stock, but it
delighted the children to read the names on the covers: figs, apricots, cherries, candied lemon rind, and crystallized
ginger.

While Cécile and Jacques were counting over these boxes of sweetmeats and wondering who would buy such luxuries, Auclair
told them he was much more interested in a jar labelled “Bitumen — oleum terræ” than in the conserves. It contained a dark,
ill-smelling paste which looked like wagon grease; a kind of petroleum jelly that seeped out of the rocks in a certain cairn
on the island of Barbados and was carried from thence to France. He had great need for it here in Canada; he purified it,
added a small amount of alcohol and borax, and prepared a remedy for snow-blindness, with which hunters and trappers and
missionaries were so cruelly afflicted in winter. So far, no cure had been discovered that gave such relief. A physician in
Montreal had tried a similar treatment, using goose grease and lard instead of the oleum terræ, with very bad results. This,
Auclair explained to the children, was because all animal fat contained impurities, and this “Barbados tar,” as it was
vulgarly called, might be regarded as a mineral fat. He went on to say that in general he distrusted remedies made of the
blood or organs of animals, though he must admit that some were of exceptional value. For a hundred years and more the
Breton fishermen, who went as far as Newfoundland and Labrador for their catch, had been making a medicinal oil from the fat
livers of the codfish, and had an almost fanatical faith in its benefits. He himself had used it in Quebec for cases of
general decline, and found it strengthening.

“But I detest all medicines made from lizards and serpents,” he concluded his lecture, “even viper broth.”

“Viper broth, Father? I have never heard of that. Is it an Indian medicine?”

“My dear, at the time when we came out to Canada, it was very much the fashion at home. Half the great ladies of France
were drinking a broth made from freshly killed vipers every morning, instead of their milk or chocolate, and believed
themselves much the better for it. Medicine is a dark science, as I have told you more than once.”

“Yes, but everything here in our shop is good for people. We know that, don’t we, Jacques? You shouldn’t speak against
medicines, Father, when our new ones have just come and we are feeling so happy to have them. You always worry, you know,
when any of the jars are nearly empty.”

“Oh, we do what we can, my dear! We can but try.” Her father took up his chisel again and began to pry the lid from
another box. “The perplexing thing is that honest pharmaciens get such different results from the same remedy. Your
grandfather, all his life, believed that he had helped many cases of epilepsy with powdered unicorn’s horn, which he got
from Africa at great expense; while I have so low an opinion of it that I never keep it in my shop.”

“But your cough-sirops, Papa, both kinds, help everyone. And Madame Renaude says she could never milk her cows in the
morning if she did not put your rheumatism ointment on her hands at night.”

Auclair laughed. “You are your mother over again. No matter on whom I tried a new remedy, she was always the first to
feel its good effects. But what is this, Cécile? A package addressed to you, and in Aunt Blanche’s handwriting, here among
my Arabian spices! Why, she must have taken it to the pharmacie and persuaded Monsieur Neuillant to pack it with his drugs,
to ensure quick delivery. Now we shall have something of whose goodness there can be no doubt. No, you must open it
yourself. Jacques and I will look on.”

Night-gowns, with yokes beautifully embroidered by Aunt Blanche herself; a pair of stockings knit by the little cousin
Cécile; a woollen dressing-gown; two jerseys, one red and one blue; a blue silk dress, all trimmed with velvet bands, to
wear to mass; a gold brooch and a string of coral beads from Aunt Clothilde. Cécile unfolded them one after another and held
them up to view. Never had a box from home brought such fine things before. What did it mean?

“It means that you are growing up now and must soon dress like a young lady. The aunts bear that fact in mind, — more
than I, perhaps.” Auclair sighed and became thoughtful.

Jacques clasped his two hands together and looked up at Cécile with his slow, utterly trustful and self-forgetful
smile.

“Oh, Cécile,” he breathed, “you will look so beautiful!”