Dr. Grenfell's Parish Part 1

Dr. Grenfell's Parish.

by Norman Duncan.

I

_THE DOCTOR_

Doctor Wilfred T. Grenfell is the young Englishman who, for the love of G.o.d, practices medicine on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Other men have been moved to heroic deeds by the same high motive, but the professional round, I fancy, is quite out of the common; indeed, it may be that in all the world there is not another of the sort. It extends from Cape John of Newfoundland around Cape Norman and into the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Ungava Bay and Cape Chidley of the Labrador southward far into the Gulf of St. Lawrence--two thousand miles of bitterly inhospitable sh.o.r.e: which a man in haste must sail with his life in his hands. The folk are for the most part isolated and desperately wretched--the sh.o.r.e fishermen of the remoter Newfoundland coasts, the Labrador "liveyeres," the Indians of the forbidding interior, the Esquimaux of the far north. It is to such as these that the man gives devoted and heroic service--not for gain; there is no gain to be got in those impoverished places: merely for the love of G.o.d.

I once went ash.o.r.e in a little harbour of the northeast coast of Newfoundland. It was a place most unimportant--and it was just beyond the doctor's round. The sea sullenly confronted it, hills overhung it, and a scrawny wilderness flanked the hills; the ten white cottages of the place gripped the dripping rocks as for dear life. And down the path there came an old fisherman to meet the stranger.

"Good-even, zur," said he.

"Good-evening."

He waited for a long time. Then, "Be you a doctor, zur?" he asked.

"No, sir."

"Noa? Isn't you? Now, I was thinkin' maybe you might be. But you isn't, you says?"

"Sorry--but, no; really, I'm not."

"Well, zur," he persisted, "I was thinkin' you might be, when I seed you comin' ash.o.r.e. They _is_ a doctor on this coast," he added, "but he's sixty mile along sh.o.r.e. 'Tis a wonderful expense t' have un up.

This here harbour isn't able. An' you isn't a doctor, you says? Is you sure, zur?"

There was unhappily no doubt about it.

"I was thinkin' you might be," he went on, wistfully, "when I seed you comin' ash.o.r.e. But perhaps you might know something about doctorin'?

Noa?"

"Nothing."

"I was thinkin', now, that you might. 'Tis my little girl that's sick.

Sure, none of us knows what's the matter with she. Woan't you come up an' see she, zur? Perhaps you might do something--though you isn't--a doctor."

The little girl was lying on the floor--on a ragged quilt, in a corner. She was a fair child--a little maid of seven. Her eyes were deep blue, wide, and fringed with long, heavy lashes. Her hair was flaxen, abundant, all tangled and curly. Indeed, she was a winsome little thing!

"I'm thinkin' she'll be dyin' soon," said the mother. "Sure, she's wonderful swelled in the legs. We been waitin' for a doctor t' come, an' we kind o' thought you was one."

"How long have you waited?"

"'Twas in April she was took. She've been lyin' there ever since. 'Tis near August, now, I'm thinkin'."

"They was a doctor here two year ago," said the man. "He come by chance," he added, "like you."

"Think they'll be one comin' soon?" the woman asked.

I took the little girl's hand. It was dry and hot. She did not smile--nor was she afraid. Her fingers closed upon the hand she held.

She was a blue-eyed, winsome little maid; but pain had driven all the sweet roguery out of her face.

"Does you think she'll die, zur?" asked the woman, anxiously.

I did not know.

"Sure, zur," said the man, trying to smile, "'tis wonderful queer, but I _sure_ thought you was a doctor, when I seed you comin' ash.o.r.e."

"But you isn't?" the woman pursued, still hopefully. "Is you sure you couldn't do nothin'? Is you noa kind of a doctor, at all? We doan't--we doan't--want she t' die!"

In the silence--so long and deep a silence--melancholy shadows crept in from the desolation without.

"I wisht you _was_ a doctor," said the man. "I--_wisht--you--was_!"

He was crying.

"They need," thought I, "a mission-doctor in these parts."

And the next day--in the harbour beyond--I first heard of Grenfell. In that place they said they would send _him_ to the little maid who lay dying; they a.s.sured me, indeed, that he would make haste, when he came that way: which would be, perhaps, they thought, in "'long about a month." Whether or not the doctor succoured the child I do not know; but I have never forgotten this first impression of his work--the conviction that it was a good work for a man to be about.

Subsequently I learned that Dr. Grenfell was the superintendent of the Newfoundland and Labrador activities of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, an English organization, with a religious and medical work already well-established on the North Sea, and a medical mission then in process of development on the North Atlantic coast.

Two years later he discovered himself to be a robust, hearty Saxon, strong, indefatigable, devoted, jolly; a doctor, a parson by times, something of a sportsman when occasion permitted, a master-mariner, a magistrate, the director of certain commercial enterprises designed to "help the folk help themselves"--the prophet and champion, indeed, of a people: and a man very much in love with life.

II

_A ROUND of BLEAK COASTS_

The coast of Labrador, which, in number of miles, forms the larger half of the doctor's round, is forbidding, indeed--naked, rugged, desolate, lying sombre in a mist. It is of weather-worn gray rock, broken at intervals by long ribs of black. In part it is low and ragged, slowly rising, by way of bare slopes and starved forest, to broken mountain ranges, which lie blue and bold in the inland waste.

Elsewhere it rears from the edge of the sea in stupendous cliffs and lofty, rugged hills. There is no inviting stretch of sh.o.r.e the length of it--no sandy beach, no line of s.h.i.+ngle, no gra.s.sy bank; the sea washes a thousand miles of jagged rock. Were it not for the harbours--innumerable and snugly sheltered from the winds and ground swell of the open--there would be no navigating the waters of that region. The Strait Sh.o.r.e is buoyed, lighted, minutely charted. The reefs and currents and tickles[1] and harbours are all known. A northeast gale, to be sure, raises a commotion, and fog and drift-ice add something to the chance of disaster; but, as they say, from one peril there are two ways of escape to three sheltered places. To the north, however, where the doctor makes his way, the coast is best sailed on the plan of the skipper of the old _Twelve Brothers_.

"You don't cotch _me_ meddlin' with no land!" said he.

Past the Dead Islands, Snug Harbour, Domino Run, Devil's Lookout and the Quaker's Hat--beyond Johnny Paul's Rock and the Wolves, Sandwich Bay, Tumbledown d.i.c.k, Indian Harbour, and the White c.o.c.kade--past Cape Harrigan, the Farmyard Islands and the Hen and Chickens--far north to the great, craggy hills and strange peoples of Kikkertadsoak, Scoralik, Tunnulusoak, Nain, Okak, and, at last, to Cape Chidley itself--northward, every crooked mile of the way, bold headlands, low outlying islands, sunken reefs, tides, fogs, great winds and snow make hard sailing of it. It is an evil coast, ill-charted where charted at all; some part of the present-day map is based upon the guess-work of the eighteenth century navigators. The doctor, like the skippers of the fis.h.i.+ng-craft, must sometimes sail by guess and hearsay, by recollection, and old rhymes.

The gusts and great waves of open water--of the free, wide sea, I mean, over which a s.h.i.+p may safely drive while the weather exhausts its evil mood--are menace enough for the stoutest heart. But the Labrador voyage is insh.o.r.e--a winding course among the islands, or a straight one from headland to headland, of a coast off which reefs lie thick: low-lying, jagged ledges, washed by the sea in heavy weather; barren hills, rising abruptly--and all isolated--from safe water; sunken rocks, disclosed, upon approach, only by the green swirl above them. They are countless--scattered everywhere, hidden and disclosed.

They lie in the mouths of harbours, they lie close to the coast, they lie offsh.o.r.e; they run twenty miles out to sea. Here is no plain sailing; the skipper must be sure of the way--or choose it gingerly: else the hidden rock will inevitably "pick him up."