Read Ebook: Cape Breton Tales by Smith Harry James Smith Edith Contributor Wiard Oliver M Illustrator

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Ebook has 535 lines and 32122 words, and 11 pages

"Well, you can believe that No?mi was not very happy when they brought back that poor Beno?t to Pig Cove. Her eyes were like two brooks, and for a long time she could not say anything, and then finally, summoning a little voice of courage:

"'I am glad of one thing,' she said, 'which is that he had saved all that money, for without it I would never know how to live through the winter.'

"And one of those brothers said, with an innocent voice of a dove, 'what money then?'--and she said, 'He had it with him.' And so they look for it; but no, there is not any.

"'You must have deceived yourself,' said that brother. 'I am sure he would have spoken of it if he had had any money with him; but he said never a word of such a thing.'

"Now was not that a wicked lie for him to tell? It is hard to understand how abominable can be some of those men! But you may be sure they will be punished for it in the end; and that is what happened to those four serpents, the Bucherons.

"For listen. The old mother had taken the money and had put it inside a sort of covered bowl, like a sugar bowl, but there was no sugar in it; and then she had set this bowl away on a shelf in the cupboard where they kept the dishes and such things; and the Bucherons thought it would be safe until the time when they had something to spend it for in Port l'?v?que; and they were telling themselves how no one would ever know what they had done; and they were glad that the promise they had made to Beno?t had not been heard by anyone but themselves. And so that poor No?mi was left all alone without man or money; but sometimes the neighbors would give her a little food; but for all that those two lambs were often hungry, and their mother too, when it came bedtime.

"But do you think the Bucherons cared--those four hearts of stone? They would not even give her so much as a crust of dry, mouldy bread; and No?mi was too proud to go and beg; and beside something seemed to tell her that there had been a wickedness somewhere, and that the Bucherons perhaps knew more than they had told her about that money. So she waited to see if anything would happen.

"Now one night in December, when all those four were in the house alone, the beginning of their punishment arrived, and surely nothing more strange was ever heard of in this world.

"'Ah, mon Dieu!' cries out the married woman all of a sudden--'mon Dieu, what is that!'

"They all looked where she was looking, and what do you think they saw? There was a chair standing with three legs in the air, and only the little point of one on the floor.

"The old woman pushed a scream and jumped to her feet and went over to it, and with much force set it back on the floor, the way a chair is meant to stand; but immediately when she let go of it, there it was again, as before, all on one leg.

"And then, there cries out the younger woman again, with a voice shrill as a frightened horse that throws up its head and then runs away--'Oh, m?re Bucheron, m?re Bucheron,' cries she, 'the chair you were just sitting in is three legs in air too!'

"And so it was! With that all the family got up in terror; but no sooner had they done that than at once all the chairs behaved just like the first, which made five chairs. These chairs did not seem to move at all, but stood there on one leg just as if they were always like that. Those Bucherons were almost dead with fright, and all four of them fled out of the house as fast as ever their legs could carry them--you would have said sheep chased by a mad dog--and never stopped for breath till they reached Gros Nez.

"And pell-mell into old Pierre Leblanc's house all together, and shaking like ague. Hardly able to talk, they tell what has happened; and he will not believe them but says, well, he will go back with them and see. So he does, and they re-enter the house together, and look! the chairs are all just as usual.

"'You have been making some crazy dreams,' says Pierre, rather angry, 'or else,' he says, 'you have something bad in your hearts.' And with that he goes home again; and there is nothing more to be told about that night, though I daresay none of those wicked persons slept very well.

"But that was only the beginning of what happened to them during that winter. Sometimes it would be these knockings about the roof, as of someone with a great hammer; and again it was as if they had seen a face at the window--just an instant, all white, in the dark--and then it would be gone. And often, often, the chairs would be standing as before on one leg. The table likewise, which once let fall a great crowd of dishes, and not a few were broken. But worst of all were these strange sounds that made themselves heard in the cupboard, like the hand of a corpse going rap--rap, rap--rap--rap, rap,--against the lid of its coffin. You may well believe it was a dreadful fright for those four infamous ones; but still they would do nothing, because of their desire to keep all that money and buy things with it.

"Everybody on the Cape soon knew about what was happening at the Bucherons', but some pretended it was to laugh at, saying that such things did not happen nowadays; and others said the Bucherons must have gone crazy, and had better be left alone--and their arms and legs would sometimes keep jerking a little when they talked to anyone, as my stepmother told me a thousand times; and they had a way of looking behind them--so!--as if they were afraid of being pursued. So however that might be, nobody would go and see them.

"Well, things went on like that for quite a while, and finally, one day in February, through all the snow that it made on the ground then, that poor No?mi marched on her feet from Pig Cove to her mother-in-law's, having left her two infants at a neighbor's; for she had resolved herself to ask for some help, seeing that she had had nothing but a little bite since three days. And when they saw her coming they were taken with a fright, and at first they were not going to let her in; but that old snake of a mother, she said:

"'If we refuse to let her in, my children, she will go and suspect something.'

"So they let her in, and when she was in, they let her make all her story, or as much as she had breath for, and then:

"'I am sorry,' said this old snake of a mother, 'that we cannot possibly do anything for you. Alas, my dear little daughter, it is barely even if we can manage to hold soul and body together ourselves, with the terrible winter it makes these days.'

"And just as she said that, what do you think happened? A chair got on one leg and went rap--rap, rap--against the floor.

"That No?mi would often be telling about it afterwards to my stepmother, and she said never of her life had she seen anything so terrifying. But she did not scream or do anything like that, because something, she said, inside her seemed to bid her keep quiet just then. And she used to tell how that old Bucheron woman's face turned exactly the color of an oyster on a white plate, and a trembling took her, and finally she said, scarcely able to make the sound of the words:

"'Though perhaps--I might find--a crust of bread somewhere that--that we could spare.'

"No?mi crosses herself, but does not say anything, for she knows it is a time to keep still.

"'And perhaps,' says the old woman then, in a voice of the most piteous, as if someone were giving her a pinch, 'and perhaps, if only I had it, a dollar or two to help buy some medicine and a pair of shoes for that ?vang?line.... But no, I do not think we have so much as that anywhere in the house.'

"Now was not that like the old serpent, to be telling a lie even at the last; and surely if God had struck her dead by a ball of lightning at that moment it would have been none too good for her. But no, he was going to give her a chance to repent and not to have to go to Hell for a punishment. So what do you think He made happen then?

"Hardly had those abominable words jumped out of her when with a great crash, down off the top shelf comes that sugar bowl , and as it hits the floor, it breaks into a thousand pieces; and there, in a little pile, are those thirteen dollars, just as on the day when that poor Beno?t had been carrying them with him to Port l'?v?que.

"Now just as if they are not doing it at all of their own wish, but something makes them act that way, all of a sudden those four Bucherons are kneeling on the floor, saying their prayers in a strange voice like the prayers you might hear in a tomb; and with that, the chair goes back quietly to its four legs, and the noise ceases on the roof, and those two cupboard doors draw shut without human hands. As for No?mi, she grabs up the money, and out she goes, swift as a bird that is carrying a worm to its children, leaving her parents by marriage still there on their knees, like so many images; but as she opens the door she says:

"'May the good God have pity on all the four of you!'--which was a Christian thing to say, seeing how much she had suffered at their hands.

"Well, there is not much more to tell. No?mi got through the rest of that winter without any more trouble; and the next year she married a fisherman from Little Anse, and went away from the Cape. As for the Bucherons, they were not like the same people any more. You would not have known them--so pious they were and charitable, though always, perhaps, a little strange in their ways. But when the old woman died, two years later, or three, all the people of Pig Cove and Gros Nez followed the corpse in to Port l'?v?que; and her grave is there in the cemetery.

"The rest of the family are gone now too, as you see; and soon, I suppose, there will not be many left, even out here on the Cape, who know all about what happened to the Bucherons, because of their hard hearts; which is a pity, seeing that the story has such a good lesson to it...."

LA ROSE WITNESSETH

Included with permission of and by arrangements with Houghton Mifflin Company authorized publishers.

It is what they call a bad country over there. Alder and scrub balsam grow sparsely over the low rocky hills, where little flocks of sheep nibble all day at the thin herbage; and from the marshes that lie, green and mossy, at the foot of every slope, a solitary loon may occasionally be seen rising into the air with a great spread of slow wings. A single thread of a road makes its way somehow across the region, twisting in and out among the small hills, now climbing suddenly to a bare elevation, from which the whole sweep of the sea bursts upon the view, now shelving off along the side of a knoll of rocks, quickly dipping into some close hollow, where the world seems to reach no farther than to the strange sky-line, wheeling sharply against infinite space.

Two miles back from the inner shore, the road forks at the base of a little hill more conspicuously bare than the rest, and close to the naked summit of it, overlooking all the Cape, stands a Calvary. Nobody knows how long it has stood there, or why it was first erected; though tradition has it that long, long ago, a certain man by the name of Toussaint was there set upon by wild beasts and torn to pieces. However that may be, the tall wooden cross, painted black, and bearing on its center, beneath a rude penthouse, a small iron crucifix, has been there longer than any present memory records--an encouragement, as they say, for those who have to cross the bad country after dark.

"That makes courage for you," they say. "It is good to know it is there on the windy nights."

"It was just there outside the house, pawing the ground. Almost paralyzed for terror, I ran to the window and looked out. It was as tall as the church door,--that animal,--all white, and there was no head to it.

"'Oh, m?re Babinot,' I whispered, scarcely able to make the sound of the words. 'It is as tall as the church door and all white.'

"She sits up in bed and stares at me like a corpse. 'La Rose,' she says,--just like that, shrill as a whistle of wind,--'La Rose, do you see a head to it?'

"'No, not any!'

"'Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu! Then it's sure! It is the very one, the horse without head!'

"And the next day she took only a little spoonful of tea, and in two weeks she was dead, poor m?re Babinot; and that's as true as that I made my communion last Easter. Oh, it's often seen hereabouts, that horse. It's a sign that something will happen, and never has it failed yet."

She picked rapidly, with her alert, spry movements, her head always cocked a little to one side, almost humorously, as she peered about among the bushes for the best spots. And wherever he was, Michel heard her chattering softly to herself, in an inconsequential undertone, now humming a scrap of some pious song, now commenting on the quality of the berry crop--never had she seen so few and so small as these last years. Surely there must be something to account for it. Perhaps the birds had learned the habitude of devouring them--now addressing some strayed sheep that had ventured with timid bleats within range: "Te voil?, petit m?chant! Little rogue! What are you looking about for? Did the others go off and leave you? Eh bien, that's how it happens, mon petit. They'll leave you. The world's like that. Eh, l?, l?!"

"La Rose!" he would call. "?tes-vous toujours l??"

"Mais oui, mon enfant. What do you want?"

"Nothing. It is only that I was thinking."

"The strange child that you are!" she would exclaim. "You are not like the others."

"La Rose," he would ask, "was it by here that La Belle M?lanie passed on the night she saw the death fire?"

"Yes, by this very spot. She was on her way to Pig Cove, over beyond the Calvary to the east. It is a desolate little rat-hole, Pig Cove, nowadays; but then it was different--as many as two dozen houses. My stepmother lived in one of them. Now there are scarcely six, and falling to pieces at that. La Belle M?lanie, she was a Boudrot, sister of the Pierre Boudrot whose son, Th?obald, was brother-in-law of stepmother. That was many years ago. They are all dead now, or gone away from here--to Boston, I daresay."

It was the story Michel liked the best, most of all when he could sit beside La Rose, on a moss-hummock of some rough hill on the barrens. Perhaps there would be cloud shadows flitting like dream presences across the shining face of the moor. In the distance, over the backs of the hills that crouched so thickly about them, he saw the stretch of the ocean, a motionless floor of azure and purple, flecked, it might be, by a leaning sail far away; and now and then a gull or two would fly close over their heads, wheeling and screaming for a few seconds, and then off again through the blue.

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