Marius sat on a log outside the sugar cabin and smoked his pipe in the dark. The air was warm, and the night throbbed with sound like the inside of a sea-shell. The hoarse noise of the falls underlay all other sounds, but he could hear crickets in the fields, and even the ringing of frogs floating up in slow waves from the marsh near the river. Somewhere in the village a dog’s barks came in quick, broken volleys softened by distance as the animal barked at the moon. Marius looked down through the boles of the trees and saw the fields pale in the light of a first-quarter moon, the glimmer reflected from the church roof, and the wide path of light on the river beyond. The maple grove was a huge net of shadows suspended from the treetops with the open patches of ground whitened by the moon. As he looked down the ridge he saw the whole parish spread below him like a map. A little spit of land jutting out into the river was black with shadow on one side and white with moon-colour on the other. A thin spire of smoke rose from a single chimney in the Tallard house. He checked the chimneys off one by one and estimated that the fire was in the kitchen.
He did not move. His mind was tired from three months of worrying and scheming and dreaming of the things he would have to do if he were ever to appease the soreness within him. But tonight the peace and familiarity of the scene almost made him feel well again. He told himself that he was home. He would never go away from here if he could possibly stay. He had never wished to have this hatred in his life, this battle he was doomed to wage. He repeated that all he and his people had ever wished was to be let alone. And thinking this, he asked himself in sudden incredulity why he must wage a battle at all, why he had always been so wretched that a life’s work would be too little to make up for it?
His right hand was in his pocket, and his moving fingers were crumpling the note his father had left in the cabin that morning. Words entered his mind: “I will arise and go unto my father…” God knew he wanted to go home. His father had written in the note: “This attitude you have, blaming everything you don’t like on the English, is senseless. No one is harming you but yourself. If an Englishman heard you talking he’d think you were crazy. Come home and talk to me. You are only twenty-one and many things seem more important at that age than…”
In the darkness Marius’ lips tightened. It was easy to say he was young; as easy as to say that the English had done him no harm. They had hounded him like a criminal for the past three months because he wished no part of their imperialism, that was all.
Normally, Marius would have let it go at that. But tonight he was not normal. The summer night and the sounds in the throbbing air had made him quiet. He asked himself if he really did hate the English, and why. By nature suspicious, he was suddenly suspicious even of himself. The face of Kathleen rose before his mind. But his hatred was caused by more than one woman alone. He had always hated them.
He got up and began slowly to walk among the maple trunks in the moonlight, his hands in his pockets and his head down. He felt he would become as empty as a broken bottle if he did not get an answer; that the sense would run out of everything unless he knew. His father’s words returned: “You are only twenty-one…” But perhaps that was just why he did see the truth, because he was too young to have sold out any part of himself? The English lessened him…that was it. Merely by their existence, they lessened a man. You could become great and powerful only if your own people were also great and powerful. But what could his people do when the English constantly choked them? What could the French do, alone against an entire continent, except breed children and hope?
He came back and sat on the log again, tapped out his pipe and refilled it. His father was fond of saying that the average Quebec farmer was not a nationalist; that he was the plainest, most decent land-worker in the world. But he, Marius, he was no average man. He could see the truth even if ignorant people couldn’t. And the truth was that under the English a French-Canadian could not become great. You had to imitate the English or they refused to look at you. You had to do things their way. If you were different, they automatically regarded you as second-rate. If you wanted different ends they called you backward. The Americans were just as bad. And all the time the English took what they wanted. They had the big business. They had the army, the railroads, the banks, they had everything. What was left to a man like himself but the Church, medicine, or the law? Father Arnaud at the seminary had said he was too personally ambitious to make a good priest. He set his teeth. Some day Father Arnaud…But now nothing was left but the law, for he knew he could never have the patience necessary to become a doctor. And in Quebec you could pick up lawyers at a dime a dozen.
He knocked out his pipe and rose, took a long look down the ridge and went back to the cabin. His nostrils caught the smell of dried-out lumber and the remaining reek of stale wood smoke. Inside the cabin the moonlight lay in a rectangle on the floor, preserving the cross made by the joints in the single window. He lit the candle, took off his boots and jacket and crawled into the sleeping bag with a sigh. He puffed out his cheeks and blew. The candle flickered; he blew again and it went out.
Marius was asleep when the English sergeant and the French plainclothes man flashed their electric torches on him. He tried to jump clear of the light. One light winked out, but the other followed him like a staring eye and his feet were caught in the sleeping bag and he knew he was helpless. He pulled himself half out of the bag and leaned back on his elbows.
A voice said in English, “It’s him, all right.”
Marius took a deep gulp of air and tried again to get his head free of the light; it was all he could see. The light followed him and he put his hand over his eyes.
The hidden voice spoke again, “Get up!”
There was nothing else to do. He crawled out of the bag and rose without a word, sat on the bench and put on his shoes. A hand holding his jacket stretched out into the beam of the torch. “You’ll need this too. You’re going places.”
He took the jacket. Then the light partially swung away from him, his pupils dilated in the semi-darkness and he was able to see the shadows of the men’s forms. The one in uniform looked big and tough. He was the one with the light. He was leaning with his back to the closed door and the light revolved slowly as he played it from his wrist.
Marius straightened and put on his hat. “What time is it?” he said.
He got no answer. He looked around and saw Labelle standing in the patch of moonlight thrown through the window.
“Don’t make trouble and you won’t be hurt,” Labelle said in French.
Marius stared at him. This was the last humiliation; one of his captors was French. When he reached the door the sergeant made a grab at his wrist, and before Marius knew what was happening, a handcuff was locked on it.
“Goddamn bastard!” Marius said.
He jerked his hand up to hit the sergeant, and the man’s arm lifted with it. Then slowly, easily, the sergeant pressed his arm down again. Labelle came up on the other side and took his other arm and with his free hand pulled the door open. They jerked him outside, and the moonlight flowed over the three of them. They stood there in a clear patch in the maple grove, Marius panting softly as he strained with both arms locked by the men on either side of him, his chest expanded with air. Then, as the men jerked him forward, he stumbled and nearly fell.
“Come on,” Labelle said. “You show some sense, eh?”
His eyes bright and angry in the moon, Marius scrambled to his feet. They walked through the shadows of the grove to the brink of the ridge, then down the path along the edge of the field. They were three tiny black smudges moving down the wide, moon-washed cloth of the hillside.