Cape Breton Tales

by Harry James Smith

"So while André Gilet—the father of that dear Léonie who was taken in the chest—while he is getting the boat ready to cross the harbor, Tommy tells her how he has been up there in Boston all these years—at a place called Shee-cahgo, a big city—and has been making money; and how he changed his name to W'ite, which means the same as Leblanc and is more in the mode; and how he married this lovely Américaine, whose name was Finnegan, and had all these sweet little children; but always, he said, he had desired to make a little visit at home, only it was so far to come; and he was afraid that his father would still be angry at him.

"'Ah,' says Madame Paon, with emotion, 'you will not know your father. He is so different: just as mild as a sheep. Everyone has come to love him.' ...

"Now for the rest of the story, all I know is what that André told us, for he put all this family across to the other side in his boat. So when they reached the shore, M'sieu Tommy, he says: 'You will all wait here until I open the door and beckon: and then you, Maggie, will come up; and then, a little later, we will have the children in, all together.'

"And with that he leaves them, and goes up to the old house, and knocks, and opens the door, and walks in—and who can say the joy and the comfort of the meeting that happened then? And quite a long while passed, André said; and that lovely lady sat there on the side of the boat, all as white as milk, and never saying a word; and those six lambs, whispering softly among themselves—and one of them said, just a little above its breath:

"'It will be nice to have a grandpa all for ourselves, don't you think?'—and was not that a dear sweet little thing for it to say?...

"And finally the door opens again, and see! and his hand makes a sign; and that lady, swift as one of these sea-gulls, leaps ashore. And up the hill; and through the gate; and into the house! And the door shuts again.

"And another wait, while those six look at each other, and say their little things. And at last they are called too, and away they go, all together, just like one of these flocks of curlew that fly over the Cape, making those soft little sounds; and then into the house; and André said he had to wipe two tears out of his eyes to see a thing like that.

"Well, this was the end of old Siméon's grief, as you may well believe. Those W'ites stay at the Couronne d'Or for as much as nine or ten days, and every morning they will be going across to see their dear dear grandfather; and finally when they went away, they had hired that widow Bergère to keep his house comfortable for him; and M'sieu Tommy left money for all needs.

"And every Christmas after that, so long as old Siméon existed, there would come boxes of presents from that place in Boston. Oh, I assure you, he did not lack that good care. And always he must be talking about that Tommy of his, who was so rich, and was some great personage in the city—what they called an alderman—and yet he had not forgotten his poor old father, who had waited all those years to see him.

"So this story shows that sometimes things turn out just as well in this life down here as they do in those silly stories they tell you about princesses and all those things that are not so; and that is a comfort sometimes, when you see so much that is sad and heartbreaking in this world...."