Shadows on the Rock Read Online Free PDF

eager to be
gone as a young man setting off on his first campaign.
    Auclair was terrified. Indeed, he fell ill of fright, and neither ate nor slept. He could not imagine facing any kind of
life but the one he had always lived. His wife was much the braver of the two. She pointed out that their business barely
made them a livelihood, and that after the Count went away it would certainly decline. Moreover, the Count was their
landlord, and he had now decided to sell his town property. Who knew but that the purchaser might prove a hard master, — or
that he might not pull down the apothecary shop altogether to enlarge the stables?
    V
    It was the day after La Bonne Espérance had set sail for France. Auclair and his daughter were on their way to the Hôtel
Dieu to attend the Reverend Mother, who had sprained her ankle. Quebec is never lovelier than on an afternoon of late
October; ledges of brown and lavender clouds lay above the river and the Île d’Orléans, and the red-gold autumn sunlight
poured over the rock like a heavy southern wine. Beyond the Cathedral square the two lingered under the allée of naked trees
beside the Jesuits’ college. These trees were cut flat to form an arbour, the branches interweaving and interlacing like
basket-work, and beneath them ran a promenade paved with flat flagstones along which the dry yellow leaves were blowing,
giving off a bitter perfume when one trampled them. Cécile loved that allée, because when she was little the Fathers used to
let her play there with her skipping-rope, — few spots in Kebec were level enough to jump rope on. Behind the avenue of
trees the long stone walls of the monastery — seven feet thick, those walls — made a shelter from the wind; they held the
sun’s heat so well that it was possible to grow wall grapes there, and purple clusters were cut in September.
    Behind the Jesuits’ a narrow, twisted, cobbled street dropped down abruptly to the Hôtel Dieu, on the banks of the little
river St. Charles. Auclair and his daughter went through the garden into the refectory, where Mother Juschereau de
Saint–Ignace was seated, her sprained foot on a stool, directing the work of her novices. She was a little over forty, a
woman of strong frame, tall, upright, with a presence that bespoke force rather than reserve; a handsome face, — the large,
open features mobile and alert, perhaps a trifle masculine. She was the first Reverend Mother of the foundation who was
Canadian-born, and she had been elected to that office when she was but thirty-four years of age. She was a religious of the
practical type, sunny and very outright by nature, — enthusiastic, without being given to visions or ecstasies.
    As the visitors entered, the Superior made as if to rise, but Auclair put out a detaining hand.
    “I am two days late, Reverend Mother. In your mind you have been chiding me for neglect. But it is a busy time for us
when the last ships sail. We have many family letters to write; and I examine my stock and make out my order for the drugs I
shall need by the first boats next summer.”
    “If you had not come today, Monsieur Euclide, you would surely have found me on my feet tomorrow. When the Indians have a
sprain, in the woods, they bind their leg tightly with deer thongs and keep on the march with their party. And they
recover.”
    “Dear Mother Juschereau, the idea of such treatment is repugnant to me. We are not barbarians, after all.”
    “But they are flesh and blood; how is it they recover?”
    As he pushed back her snow-white skirt a little and began gently to unwind the bandage from her foot, Auclair explained
his reasons for believing that the savages were much less sensitive to pain than Europeans. Cécile fell to admiring the work
Mother Juschereau had in hand. Her lap and the table beside her were full of scraps of bright silk and velvet and sheets of
coloured paper. While she overlooked the young Sisters at their tasks, her fingers were moving