Читать книгу Chez Nous (Our Old Quebec Home) - Adjutor Rivard - Страница 7

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The best room is to the right as you enter. Shut windows and closed door preserve within it a savour of ancient things. The daylight, tempered by green paper blinds, dies softly into shadow. Two strips of rag-carpet run from end to end across the painted floor. Upon the old mahogany table, cherished as a family heirloom and occupying the centre of the room, lie missals bound in leather, prizes won at the village school, tin-types in their hinged frames, an album and sundry keepsakes. The chairs, armchair and sofa, ranged along the walls, are covered with black horse-hair. A grandfather’s clock, the face yellow with age, stands in one corner. It is not ticking: no one has wound it since the day when an itinerant clock-mender found a wheel too many in the works. On the walls hang a crucifix, some family portraits and a sampler worked on canvas:—‘God guard us.’ Such is the best room.

Seldom does it open, and you enter reverently, as into a place of worship.

Only on momentous occasions does one cross the threshold: to honour a visitor, to make merry at the birth of a son, to pray beside the dead.

Not for the ordinary caller does the best room open its door. Relatives and friends are accounted of the family, almost of the household. They know the occupants well enough to unharness the horse and put him in the stable, to walk boldly in and establish themselves; feeling almost beneath their own roof-tree. The best room is not for such as these.

Receiving a visitor is quite another affair. Maybe a lady of one’s acquaintance arrives from town, or a priest, a friend of the family—someone beyond the common. He is expected, all is ready to give him welcome, and the door that stays shut for others opens to him.

But the visit of most consequence, on which they set the greatest store, and honoured with Sunday raiment, is that of Monsieur le Curé.

All morning the children have been on the watch, and now they catch sight of his equipage at the turning of the road.

The churchwarden in charge is driving him in a light sleigh behind a frisky horse, and the harness is new, with rosettes at the bridle and silver mountings on the saddle. From house to house they go, in accordance with notice given from the pulpit, stopping everywhere. Back in the concessions the houses are scattered, and the distance from one to another is covered at a rattling pace. The snow sings beneath the runners, the sleigh-bells chime. Warm under the robes notwithstanding the pinching cold, Monsieur le Curé is off through the brilliant winter sunshine sparkling on the white fields to visit his parishioners. Now he is leaving the neighbour’s house. Come! churchwarden, crack your whip, swing in to the rise before our house without slackening speed and draw up handsomely before the stone steps. Everything is prepared; the best room stands open.

‘Pray enter, Monsieur le Curé, and bestow on us your blessing.’

Forthwith they kneel; and the curé utters his protecting words over the bowed heads.

They all stream after him into the best room where he reckons up his flock, enquires as to the needs of each one, receives their confidences and quiets their fears, gives the needed counsel, sympathy, cheer and consolation. He recalls, too, the absent faces, revives old memories of those who are gone, fortifies hopes....

Before departing, the churchwarden does not fail to mention that, as the custom is, a sleigh follows the curé’s carriole. The hint is not needed, for well they remember that the collection named for the Infant Jesus is made at the same time as the parochial visit, and they are in readiness.

‘Here is a pumpkin and a string of onions, church warden, and, if you can find a corner for them, take this brace of hares.’

And the best room is closed.

For baptisms, as well, the best room opens.

A son is born! The first maybe, or the tenth, or the eighteenth.... And the more the merrier. They will add a plank to the table; and next year, beyond shadow of doubt, the land will better its yield.

A son is born! What a to-do all in a moment: the godmother is to seek and the godfather; the new baby has to be bundled up and the whole party drives off to the village. Heads are thrust out of the windows as they pass: ‘If that is not Benjamin baptising again! Soon he will be having a whole parish in his house!’

A son is born! And now the holy water has touched his forehead. Ring out, ye bells! For a Christian he returns. The godfather was open-handed, wherefore ring loud and fast! Tune your notes in happy accord! Let the news be known far and wide: a Christian is born!

And do you every one—godfather, godmother, kinsmen, friends and friends’ kin, neighbours and passers-by come in and see the mother and the child! The table is spread; the door of the best room stands wide.

All brightness and joy, the best room opens for the feast of the new-born.

Grave and sad, it opens too for the mourning of the dead. Full of years, how many have lain there in a last repose. On the day of baptism they first crossed the portal in the fulness of new life; still and cold, they return for the last time on the evening of their death. And from the best room each one at length makes his final departure. You may see their portraits upon the wall, but no longer are they of our time.

When their descendant, the ploughman of to-day, has bound all his sheaves and housed his last load of hay he will make settlement with earth and heaven as did his fathers, and, like them, his hour will come. Clad as for Sunday, they will lay him beneath the Christ in the best room, a candle on either hand.

Kindred and friends will come to bid him farewell and to pray for his soul. The neighbours will gather at close of day to repeat their evening prayer in company with the dead. For three days and three nights they will watch beside him, till comes the moment of the lifting and the last journey. ...

And again the best room will shut, fuller yet of memories.