Crowded Out! and Other Sketches Part 8

My heart leapt up. Here, if ever, must be the man I was in search of.

"You are a French-Canadian, I suppose?"

"Yes, Sir, I am dat."

"And where do you live?" said I.

"I work in de mill; de largess mill in the Chaudiere. You know dat great water, the fall under the bridge, dat we call the Chaudiere."

"I know it well," said I, "but I have never gone properly over any of the mills. I should like to go some day very much. Should I see you anywhere if I went down?"

He stared, but gave me the name of his mill. It belonged to one of the wealthiest lumber kings of the district. I resolved to go down the next day.

"What is your name," I asked. The man hesitated a minute before he replied,

"Netty."

"Netty!" I repeated "What a curious name! You have another name, I expect. That must only be a nickname."

"_Mais oui Monsieur_. My name is much longaire than dat. My whole name is Etienne Guy Chezy D'Alencourt, but no man call me dat, specially in de mill. 'Netty'--dey all know 'Netty.'"

It was a long name, truly, and a high-sounding one,--but I preferred thinking of him by it than by the meaningless soubriquet of "Netty." At the next corner he got out, touching his cap to me quite politely as he pa.s.sed.

I was in high spirits that evening, for I believed I had found my _habitant_. I went down to the Chaudiere the following day, and got permission to go over Mr. ----'s mill I found it very interesting, but my mind was not sufficiently centered on planks and logs and booms to adequately appreciate them. I wanted "Netty." After I had made the complete round of the mill I came upon him hard at work in his place turning off planks in unfailing order as they whizzed along. The noise was deafening, of bolts and bars, and saws and chains, with the roar of the great cascade outside. He saw me and recognized me on my approach, but he could not speak for some time. It was most monotonous work, I thought. No conversation allowed, not even possible; the truly demoniacal noise, yet just outside on the other side of a small window, the open country, the mighty waters of the ever-boiling "Kettle," or Chauldron, and the steep spray-washed cliff. Standing on my toes I could, looking out of Netty's small window, discover all this. The ice was still in the river, half the fall itself was frozen stiff, and reared in gabled arches to the sky. I watched the two scenes alternately until at 6 o'clock the wheels ran down, the belts slackened and the men knocked off.

Netty walked out with me at my request, and learning that he had to return in an hour I proposed we should have a meal together somewhere and a talk at the same time. He must have been greatly astonished at a complete stranger in another walk of life fastening upon him in this manner, but he gave no hint of either surprise or fear, and maintained the same mild demeanour I had noticed in him the day before.

It was darkening rapidly and I did not know where to go for a meal.

Netty told me he ought to go to St. Patrick St. I knew the locality and did not think it necessary to go all that way, "unless anybody will be waiting for you, expecting you."

"Oh! not dat I live in a boarding house, my mother--she in the countree, far from here."

"Then, 'I said,' you can go where you like. Do you know any place near here where we can get a cup of tea and some eggs? What will do for you, I daresay, and I hardly want as much."

But he knew of no reliable place and after walking about for a quarter of an hour we finally went to the refreshment room at the station and ordered beer and tea and sandwiches.

"I daresay you wonder at my bringing you out here with me. You'd get a better meal perhaps at your boarding-house. But do you know I've taken a fancy to you and, I want to see a little more of you and learn how you live, if you will kindly tell me. I am interested in your people, the French-Canadians."

This sounds very clumsily put and so it did then, but I was obliged to explain my actions in some way and what is better than the truth? Lies, I have no doubt to some people, but I was compelled to be truthful to this man who carried a gentle and open countenance with him. No gentleman could have answered me more politely than he did now.

"Sir I am astonish--_oui un peu_, but if there is anyting I can tell you, anyting I can show you I shall be ver glad. The mill--how do you find dat, Sir?

"I like to watch you work very much, but the noise"--

Netty laughed, showing his radiant white teeth.

"_Mais oui_, de noise is bad, but one soon custom to dat. I am in de mill for four year. I come from up in de north--from the Grand Calumet--do you know there, Sir?"

"That is an island is it not? Yes, I know where it is, near Allumette, but I have never been so far up on the Ottawa. And the Gatineau, that is a river, is it not? What pretty names these French ones are! Gatineau!"

I repeated thinking. "That comes, I fancy having heard somewhere, from Demoiselle Marie Josephe Gatineau Duplessis, wife of one of the first French settlers. By the way your name is a curious one. Say it again."

Netty very gravely repeated, "Etienne Guy Chezy D'Alencourt."

"Was your father a native Canadian?"

"_Oui Monsieur_."

"The name seems familiar to me," I remarked. "I daresay if you cared to look the matter up, you might find that your great grandfather was something or other under the Intendant Bigot or Vaudreuil, or earlier still under Maisonneuve the gallant founder of Montreal. Ah! how everybody seems to have forgotten those old days. Even in Canada, you see, there is something to look back upon."

My companion seemed rather puzzled as I talked in this strain. Very probably it was over his head. I found he could neither read nor write, had been reared in the pine-clad and icy fastnesses of Grand Calumet Island all alone by his mother--an old dame now about seventy. He himself was about thirty he judged, though he was far from sure. He was a good Catholic in intention, though very ignorant of all ritual. From his youth he had been employed on the rafts and lumber-slides of the Ottawa river until his four years' session at the mill, where he had picked up the English he knew. He had made no friends he told me. The more I conversed with him the more I was impressed with his simple and polite manners, his innate good breeding, and his faith and confidence in the importance of daily toil and all honest labour. He smoked a little, drank a little, but never lost his head became obtrusively familiar, noisy or inquisitive. I felt ashamed to think how deliberately I had sought him out, to pry into the secrets and facts of his daily life, but solaced myself into the a.s.surance that it could not at least bode him harm and it might possibly do him some service.

When we returned to the mill, I was astonished at the weirdness of the scene. The entire premises were flooded with the electric light and the men were working away, and the saws, belts and bars all in motion as if it were the middle of the day. What a pandemonium of sound and colour and motion it was! The strong resinous odor of the pine-wood mingled with the fresh air blown in from the river, and I inhaled both eagerly.

It was almost powerful enough to affect the head, and I fancied I caught myself reeling a little as I walked out on to the bridge, swaying just the least bit as the torrent of angry water swept under it I had said "_Bonsoir_" to my friend the Frenchman and was free to go home. But I lingered long on the heaving bridge, though it was cold and starless, and I got quite wet with the dashed-up spray.

Up the river gleamed the icy ma.s.ses of the frozen fall, beyond that the northern country of the northern waters stretched away up to the North Pole with little, if any, human interruption.

Down the river on the three superb cliffs, rising high out of the water, sparkled the many lights in the Gothic windows of the buildings. On either side were the illuminated mills with their rushing logs and their myriad busy hands piling, smoothing and sawing the monsters of the forest helpless under the fetters of leather and steel.

CHAPTER II.

For the events which followed, I hold myself alone and altogether responsible. Nearly every evening I spent at the Chaudiere, either watching my new friend at his work or lounging on the bridge, and always finishing the day by walking home with him to his boarding house. Thus I got to know him very well, and I soon discovered one thing that he was far from strong. Even a life-long residence among the purifying and strengthening airs of the keen fresh North had not protected him from the insidious ravages of that dread complaint--consumption. I fancied the hereditary taint must be on his father's side, for he always alluded to his mother as being exceptionally healthy. On Sundays I accompanied him to Church in the morning at the Basilica; in the afternoons we used to walk all over the town in various directions. Of course, on all these excursions, I did most of the talking. He was a good listener, and readily improved in understanding and appreciation. Noticing that he was particularly fond of any story connected with the life of the early French in Canada, I read up all the works I could find on the subject, going often to the Parliamentary Library for that purpose, and retailing the more interesting and intelligible facts to him afterwards. Crusoe did not watch over and educate Friday any more carefully than I my mild and gentlemanly "Shantyman" in his blue shirt and canvas trowsers.

I grew at last, after three months' intimacy with him, quite to love him, and I am sure my affection was reciprocated for he ever welcomed me with a strong, clinging pressure of my hand and a smile which was a brighter one than that which his face had worn when I met him first. A strange friendship, but one which I felt to be so absorbing that I could not have endured other friends. April pa.s.sed, and May, and with the hot weather Etienne, whose health gave way all at once, would have to return for a short visit to the old mother all by herself on the island of Grand Calumet.

I feared to let him go, he looked more delicate in my eyes every day, but I knew it would be good for him in many ways. So a day came that saw my friend D'Alencourt go back to his northern home. He would not ask me to go and visit him, he had too much natural pride for that, but I made up my mind to find him out, for all that. As may be supposed I was like the traditional fish out of the traditional water for some time after his departure.

I read and amused myself in any way that offered, but cared not to experiment on any more French-Canadians.

In my reading I read for two, and made notes of anything I thought would interest Etienne. One day I came across the same name as his own, borne by a certain young soldier, a sprig of the French _n.o.blesse_ who had followed in the train of Bigot, the dissolute and rapacious Governor of New France. I meditated long over this. The name was identical--Guy Chezy D'Alencourt. In the case of my friend the mill-hand there was simply the addition of Etienne, the first Christian name. Could he possibly be the descendant of this daring and gallant officer, of whose marriage and subsequent settling in Canada I could find no mention?

The thing seemed unlikely, yet perfectly possible. I had predicted it myself. As if to fasten my thoughts even more securely on the absent Etienne that very day arrived a letter from Grand Calumet. It was addressed to me in a laboured but most distinct hand. I thought that Etienne had commissioned the priest doubtless to write for him or some other friend, but when I opened it I found to my great surprise that it was from Etienne himself and in his own handwriting, the result he told me of work at home in his Lower Town boarding-house.

I dropped the letter. He had taught himself to, write! This was the first fruit of my intimacy with him, and I hardly knew whether I was pleased or not. But I clearly saw that this night-work added to the arduous toil and late hours imposed upon him by his place in the mill had probably been the cause of undermining his bodily strength. The letter itself ran:

"Dear Sir,--The frend of Etienne D'Alenconrt, he can write you--he can send you a _lettre_ from the Grand Calumet, his island that is green, Monsieur, and full of sweet berries. If you would come, Mossier, you would find Etienne and his mother reddy to do all they can. Still, Monsieur shall in this please alway himself, the friend and benefactor of Etienne Chezy D'Alencourt."

GRAND CALUMET ISLAND.

"It was at night, when Monsieur had gone home, that I learnt myself to write and thank him for all teaching from the books beside."

"E."

Of course, I would accept the invitation. I decided to go in a week's time and wrote to that effect. I wished to reprimand him for having overtaxed his strength as I was sure he had done in sitting up teaching himself how to write, but respect for the dear fellow's perseverance and ability restrained me.