The Landloper Part 16

"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. .h.i.tched 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 ca.n.a.l and the gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sage 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 ca.n.a.l 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 gra.s.s and the birds in the tree above her. In the cool of the evening she trudged along the ca.n.a.l 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.days nights and new dresses with antic.i.p.atory gusto. If one had questioned him he could have told weeks ahead just what his plans of purchases were, for he canva.s.sed 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 of the workers. The nights proved to be no better than the days. The stuffy tenements gulped in the hot air of midday and held it as a person holds his breath. All the folks came out upon the little platforms that were ranged, story after story, above each other. They gasped for air in the narrow s.p.a.ces between the high buildings. The stars above those narrow s.p.a.ces did not sparkle and suggest coolness; they seemed to float above the hot earth like red cinders.

Every day the undertakers' wagons came "boombling" down the narrow canyons of streets between the "Blocks," for the people were dying. The little white hea.r.s.e was a more frequent visitor than the rusty black one; the ranks of the children were paying the greatest toll to death.

"But we shall not worry about our Rosemarie," old Etienne told Farr.

"Under the shade on the green gra.s.s she shall stay where outdoors can paint her cheeks the very fine color."

But when the old man called for her at the good woman's house one morning something else than the sun had painted the little girl's cheeks--they were flushed with fever. He told the good woman to send straight for the doctor, and went to his work much disturbed.

Later in the day the yard overseer, pa.s.sing the rack, saw that the man was working with furious energy. He was even reaching out his rake to capture floating stuff before it touched the bars.

"This seems to be your busy day, Pickaroon," suggested the overseer.

"I make believe this old rack to be a good friend of mine and that the float stuff be sickness come at him--so I work hard to keep it away."

The overseer went along about his business, commenting mentally on a Frenchman's imagination.

When the big mill bells clanged the noon hour Etienne hurried to the good woman's house. The city physician had been there and had left medicine--two tumblers of it. He had hurried in and had hurried away and had been curt and brusk and had not told her what was the trouble, so the woman reported. But the child had been sleeping.

She was drowsy all that evening while Farr held her in his arms and Etienne sat near by with Zelie Dionne, ministering solicitously.

"Her cheeks are not so hot," said the young man many times. He talked hopefully to rea.s.sure himself as well as the others, for he had been dreadfully frightened when he had come from his work. Fright had trodden close on the heels of much joy--for the superintendent of the Consolidated had taken him out of the hot trench that day and had appointed him boss of twoscore Italian diggers, doubling his pay.

"I have been watching you," the superintendent told him. "You're built to boss men. What kind of a b.u.mp was it that ever slammed you down like this?"

The answer the superintendent got was a smile which put further questions out of his mind.

"No, her cheeks are not so hot," affirmed Farr when he laid her in her bed that night. "She will come along all right."

But at the end of a week languor still weighed on the child. There were circles under her eyes and her cheeks were wan, and she did not clap her hands with the old-time glee when he brought her new toys; the playthings lay beside her on the bed and invited her touch--staring eyes of dolls, beady eyes of toy dogs--without avail.

"It is the queer way of being sick," lamented the old man. "The doctor mebbe not know, because he very gruff and do not say. I think I know what may cure her--it has been done many time.

"Away up in the Canada country there is the shrine of the good Sainte Anne de Beaupre. There she stand in the middle of the big church and she hold her little grandson in her arm--the little boy Jesus. So she feel very tender toward poor, sick childs. Ah, I have seen her many time--I have seen childs healed there and made so very smart--all cure. She loves little childs. _Oui_. All about her feet are short, small crutch where she has cure childs. The piece of her wrist-bone is there in the sacristy--it look like a wee sc.r.a.p of some gray moss under the gla.s.s.

And it cure when the good priest say the word for her. I know the way to the shrine of La Bonne Sainte Anne--I will go with the little Rosemarie and she shall sing and dance after that."

For a moment the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the corners of Farr's mouth--the flash of the nature the young man had hidden during recent weeks.