The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
where the hills are all so blue, or off across the wide bay. The white
houses are very small and they crowd along the road, and the farms are
narrow, and there is not much money in the homespun clothes or in the
old clock, but the good world is wide about them and the people are not
sad like those who sit yonder.”
She pointed across the canal to rows of wooden tenement-houses many
stories in height; on narrow porches, nicked one above another, and on
fire-escapes which were slowly cooling after hours on the forge of the
sun, men, women, and children were packed, seeking a breath of fresh
air.
“They stand at loom and spinner and slasher all day,” she said. “They
are too tired to walk afar to the parks. They wait there for good air to
come and it does not come.”
“I don't understand why they flock down here from Canada--why they
stay,” he declared, bluntly.
“Ah, you look at me when you say that!” she cried, arching her brows.
“You hear me talk about the sunset over the meadows and the hills, and
you wonder why I am not there? Well, listen! There are fourteen sons
and daughters of Onesime Dionne--that's my father--for all the habitant
folks marry young, and the priest smiles and blesses the household when
there are many children. And girls are not of much account in the house.
The sons claim and receive their shares of the arpents of land when
those boys are grown and married. The girl may marry--yes! But what if
the right one does not ask? What if the right one has a father who says
to him that he must obey and marry one the father has chosen? All kinds
of things can happen in the habitant country, m'sieu'. So, then, the
girl is less account in the house. And the letters come back from the
girls who have gone down into the mills in the States. The pictures come
back showing the new gown and the smart hat--and so!” She shrugged her
shoulders and tossed her free hand. “One more girl for the big mill!”
He stared at her with some curiosity.
“You ask yourself which one of those things happened to me, do you not?”
“Perhaps,” he confessed.
“I talk little about myself. I talk about the habitant girls. I am
fortunate. I do not breathe the air where the looms clack. I inspect in
the cloth-hall because I have sharp eyes and nimble fingers.”
“But you came here alone--it is strange. I mean, do not the father and
mother and all the family move here, usually?”
She lifted her chin and gazed at him with pride in her mien.
“If you go to Tadousac you shall find that my father owns a large farm
and that one of his grandfathers was a captain with General Montcalm,
and many Dionnes have lived on the land that was given to a brave man. I
came to the States because I wanted to come. My people did not come.”
She clipped the last sentence in a manner that suggested to Farr that
there was no more to be said on that topic. But she went on after a time
in softened tones.
“It is not strange that so many came to the States, sir. The farms of
Beauce, of l'Islet, of the Chaudiere, were so crowded. Years ago, the
old folks used to tell me, the boys began to drive the little white
horses hitched to buckboards across the border in the early summer, and
the boys were strong and willing, and the farmers who laughed at them
and called them Canucks hired them for the hay-fields just the same.
And they slept in the haymows and under the trees and worked hard and
brought back all their money. Then the big mills needed men and women
and children, and the Yankee girls would not work in the mills any
more. You must understand how it was: Ouillette, who had worked in the
hay-field, would hear of the work in the mill, and the Ouillettes would
sell and go to the city. And as soon as they had seen the lights and
the theater and the car which ran with a stick on a wire, and had earned
their first pay and had bought Yankee clothes they wrote home to their
cousins the Pelletiers and the Pelletiers sat nights till late talking
excitedly--and then they sold and came, and so it has gone on and
on--the endless chain, one family pulling on its neighbor, down the long
way from Canada to the States. But it may be all for the best. I am not
wise in such things. But when the sun bakes and the fever comes and the
children die in the tenements, then I wish the fathers and mothers were
back on the little farms and that workers of some other race than the
habitants were chained to the looms in the big mills. That may be a
selfish thought, but my own people are dear to me.”
Farr was not in the mood to argue the economic side of that question
with this girl who had so tersely told the story of two generations
of mill-toilers. With that little waif between them, victim of the
industrial Moloch which must roll on even if its wheels crushed the
innocent here and there, he permitted sentiment to sway him. In fact,
for a day and a night he had surrendered to sentiment and had found a
strange sort of intoxication in the experience. His heart was with the
humble folk and pity was in him--pity which was uncalculating and in
which his cynicism was dissolving.
And when the stars were mirrored in the still canal and the grass was
damp with the dew, they walked back to the house of Mother Maillet and
little Rosemarie murmured her bit of a prayer and was tucked in bed.
“I hope that some day I may go to Tadousac,” said Farr to the girl,
before he passed out of the good woman's house. “I would like to see the
sunset, for you have praised it.”
“Ask for the house of Onesime Dionne, second beyond the big parish
cross. It will be easy to find, and the sunset is very grand from the
porch under the eaves.”
Farr went along with the old man and they walked slowly. Their way took
them down narrow streets between the high tenements.
“Yes, you shall find it very grand at Tadousac--and M'sieu' Dionne is an
honest man,” declared Etienne. “Now and then in the thirty year I have
been visit up there in Tadousac, and I sit those day and whittle for
the children and then little Zelie trot on my knee with the others. So I
know the story of those place. And all the people up there don't care if
I know, because I listen and am glad to know, and sometimes I can give
advice, for I have live long on the States where great matters are
happening. But Farmer Leroux would not listen to me when I advise about
his good son Jean and Zelie Dionne. Farmer Leroux is a good man, but he
is a hard man when his ugly mad get stir. And the children up there do
what the father tell--because that is what the cure preach and it is the
way of the habitants.”
“The old, old story--the Montagues and the Capulets on the banks of the
river of the North.”
“I think I know something what you mean, m'sieu', though I don't know
your friend you speak about. But if he say to his son, 'Ba gar, you
don't marry no girl what I don't like her fadder because we have
hosswhip one anodder t'ree or two time when we have fuss over line
fence--or crowd our wagon when we go to market'--why, then that's your
friend. And it start from there and grow into big thing, so that all
the cure can say it don't make no friend of them. So they wait--Jean and
Zelie! Ah yes, they wait!” He put his finger beside his nose and winked.
“They love. They get marry some nice day. But now!” He flirted his gaunt
fingers. “They say nottings. I maself say nottings. But I see some very
queer look in Jean Leroux's eye when he say to me as I meet him at the
gate of his fadder's farm, 'And how carries Zelie Dionne herself these
days?' And though he look high over the tree and chew the straw and look
very careless, ah, I see the big tear in his eye and hear him choke in
his throat.”
“It's played out and old-fashioned, this letting old folks manage young
folks that way just to satisfy old grudges,” scoffed Farr. “If they are
in love they ought to get married and tell the old folks to go hang!”
Etienne stopped and gazed quizzically at the young man who thus
expounded the law for lovers.
“I think you have in you none of the understanding of the French
habitants who have live the three generation on one farm so that a young
man, no matter if he love a mam'selle so very much that all the bread
he eat taste ashes in his mouth--ah, he cannot say 'I will leave--I
will go!' For then that young man must turn himself to be anodder young
man--and the habitant does not so change.”
“I may be a poor judge,” acknowledged Farr. “I have never yet taken root
in the soil of any one place.”
“And I think, mebbe, the girl you do not understand! Is it to stay in
the home and hear every day about you love the pig of a Leroux, bah? No,
no, m'sieu'! That's too proud, is Zelie Dionne. And so is Zelie Dionne
too proud to take a son from a home that do not want her. So they wait.”
“It's a tough old world, Uncle Etienne,” said Farr. “Why, even I, lord
of my own affairs as I am, don't know where I'm going to sleep to-night.
Do you have a boarding-place?”
“I have my little room on the block up there--my room and my place at
the big table. It is not grand. But there is place for you--and anodder
little room. If you like you shall come and I will speak good for you.”
“All right, Etienne! Take me along and speak good for me.”
It was another such place as Block Ten. It was a crowded and stuffy
warren, and the basement kitchen advertised itself with stale odors in
all the corridors. But Farr was glad to stretch himself upon the narrow
bed. He owned up to himself that he was a very weary bird of passage and
confessed to his own heart, just as frankly, that he was a captive in
the frail grasp of a little girl--and he did not try to understand.
X
POISON FOR THE POOR
It proved to be an amicable and satisfactory partnership between Etienne
Provancher and Walker Farr and dark-eyed Zelie Dionne.
When the days were pleasant the old man kept the little girl with him
out of doors on the canal bank. She did not trouble him by running
about. Her long days of confinement in the attic room had accustomed
her to remain quietly in one place. She sat contentedly in the shade and
watched the bugs in the grass and the birds in the tree above her. In
the cool of the evening she trudged along the canal bank with Farr
and the play-mamma until eyes grew heavy and little feet stumbled with
weariness and it was time for bed. Rainy evenings they studied the
alphabet or he read to her from picture-books in blazing colors, and
after a time she remembered all the stories and made believe read them
to him.
He worked in the trench and looked forward impatiently to Saturday
nights when the clerk came along with the pay-envelopes; there were so
many things in the stores that would delight the heart of a little girl
who had never had any toys except a rag doll and a broken flower-basket.
Then there were pretty dresses to buy. The taste of Zelie Dionne took
charge of that shopping. When he bought the first one--one that was
white and fluffy--and Rosemarie walked out with him she displayed
such feminine pride in fine feathers that he looked forward to future
Saturdays nights and new dresses with anticipatory gusto. If one had
questioned him he could have told weeks ahead just what his plans
of purchases were, for he canvassed all the possibilities with the
play-mamma who knew so well how to get value for a dollar--who knew the
places to buy and whose needle helped to much.
It was a wicked summer for those who were doomed to the mills and
the tenement-houses. The heat puffed and throbbed over the lashing
machinery. The slashers seemed to spit caloric. The spinning-frames
tossed it off their spindles. The looms fairly wove it into the warp.
The thick, sweet, greasy air seemed to distil cotton-oil upon the faces