CHAPTER VIII
Father had become the owner, through one of his numerous business deals, of what would be considered to-day a one-horse saw mill. It was situated about ninety miles from Montreal, near a little village of one thousand souls. I had been there for short visits on several occasions, and liked the roughness and freedom of the place. The manager of this mill (one Mason) and I liked each other. I amused him and he interested me. He was a huge man with a face smothered in black whiskers. He looked like a hairy Mephisto, but had the tender nature of a dove.
After my second fiasco at M’Gill, my father said to me:
“Well, Jack, what do you propose to do now?”
He said other things also which it is not necessary to detail, except that they were to the point, more than to my credit or his.
“Send me to the mill,” I replied, “and let me learn the business. I like the place and will do well there if I get a chance. I will marry soon and settle down.”
He was too wise to discuss a thing like my marriage, which seemed so far in the future.
“Humph!” said he, “we will see about it.”
Seeing about it was never a very lengthy process with him. Generally when he said that, his mind was already made up.
Letters passed between him and Mason, and in a few days the matter was arranged. I was to assistMason and learn what I could from him, at the rate of five dollars per week during good behaviour. These things were, of course, made known to Muriel, who loved to mother and advise me.
If Mrs. Joseph had shown the wisdom of my father and taken for granted that the affair between her daughter and one Wesblock was a boy and girl love of no consequence, I might not have been married yet. But she disliked me particularly. She saw no future for her daughter with me. In her anxiety to oppose me she just overshot the mark, as so many over-anxious mothers do. She gave our affair an importance it never would have had unopposed and unobtrusively watched.
My start in life, as my going to the saw-mill was considered to be, was highly satisfactory to every one concerned. To Muriel and me, the prospect of our being able presently to live in a nice little house in the woods, to live there together till we became rich, when we would come back to Montreal and show our relatives and friends what we had become—seemed like a beautiful dream. It turned out almost exactly that way, with several minor differences to be presently set forth. To Mrs. Joseph my taking off to the wilderness, ninety miles from the city, was a distinct relief. The Doctor wished me well with smiles. He had not much faith in me, but liked me well enough to hope. Father and mother were also hopeful, with misgivings.
The parting from Muriel came as partings will. How much she suffered I do not know, but it made me ill—seriously ill—I could neither sleep nor eat, and for days after my arrival at the mill I was in a half-dazed condition. Muriel wrote splendid letters daily, and I lived on these until I came to myself and started whatI considered the simple task of learning the lumber business.
It had been stipulated by my father that I should remain at my post six months, entirely under the hand of Mason, without trips to Montreal oftener than once in thirty days. I was lodged and fed like all the mill hands, and once every two weeks received my pay envelope.
Mason was kind to me and allowed me great liberty, but I had to work, and work hard, at every kind of labour, from keeping tally to loading slabs. I was a joke to the little community; but I did not know it. For weeks I was abed at eight o’clock, sometimes before sundown, I was so tired out.
The first thirty days being completed, I made my first week-end visit to Montreal. An hour’s drive to the railroad station and three hours on a slow mixed train left little of my short holiday, but I was to know worse things than that. Calling at the home of my beloved, I found that my arrival was expected and strangely prepared for. Miss Joseph, I was told, was out of town!
While not entirely taken aback, I was hurt and humiliated, and felt very foolish under the knowing gaze of the maid who opened the door to me. If I was not altogether unprepared for this cold reception, it was because Mrs. Joseph had, on every available occasion, made it unmistakably plain to me that I was not to her taste. Muriel’s letters also had been quite frank relative to her mother’s estimate of me mentally, physically, socially and financially. I had been referred to, by Mrs. Joseph, as “that person Wesblock.” This could hardly be considered very dreadful in itself, but when accompanied by a tilting of the chin, with an expression about the nose suggestiveof an objectionable odour, with Mrs. Joseph’s thin, hard lips closed in a straight determined line, it meant volumes. Muriel was incapable of duplicating this expression of her mother. Her lips were full, red and generous, like those of her dear father.
It must be admitted that Mrs. Joseph was quite right in her attempt to protect her child from a man whom she considered undesirable. I only objected to her high-handed methods.
Muriel had a cousin named Lizette, an orphan, who had been brought up by Doctor Joseph. She was the same age as Muriel, but different to her in every respect, being thin, sharp and vixenish. As this girl honoured me with a dislike, quite as sincere as that of Mrs. Joseph, she was glad to do service in meanly spying and reporting her own version of whatever she could discover. Had Mrs. Joseph taken the pains to argue kindly with me, she could have forced me to admit after ten minutes discussion that there was no great promise in me. For I believe I was a reasonable youth, had no great faith in myself, and no desire to injure Muriel by ill-considered and rash haste. But her very rude and plain opposition to me added just that zest to my love affair which made it great in my eyes, and myself a romantic hero. I have often wondered what element in my make-up gave me success with the one woman who proved worth while to me.
I left the door of the Joseph house dejected and thoughtful. I strongly suspected Lizette of peeping at me from a window above, but I did not look back. Naturally I was angry, and very much disappointed, and as I walked home with hanging, thoughtful head, I matured my schemes to outwit Mrs. Joseph and her lieutenant Lizette.
I thought of Mrs. Joseph as a wicked old girl. She was wicked and old to me, although she was only forty at the time. I think of her to-day as an old girl, but see her with very different eyes and call her Grandma. To outwit her was really not a very difficult proposition. Bribes to servants soon re-established my line of communication, without fear of letters being intercepted, or returned unopened by the watchful mother or the wily Lizette. The coachman, for a modest sum, arranged that Muriel and I might drive together, when I came to Montreal again. Friends of Muriel’s were kind too and connived at our seeing each other. It is a very cold-hearted person who will not assist young lovers to meet. I confided the condition of my love affair to my mother, who smilingly gave me her sympathy, for she did not take me very seriously.
I returned at once to the mill, and from there wrote letters daily to my dear, sending them in a roundabout and mysterious way.
My days there were most simple; hard work from seven in the morning till six in the evening; letter-writing, a little reading, a little music, and bed. I had naturally useful hands, and learned the pleasure and utility of being able to do things with them. I took naturally to woodwork, and spent nearly all my Sundays in the carpenter shop, where I cut and bruised my hands, and butchered wood into clumsy, ill-fitting and rickety benches, stools and boxes, which amused our mechanic greatly. But with perseverance, patience and time my skill improved, so that before I left the mill I had become something of an artist in wood, and could really do a very nice and creditable job in joining and fitting. Thereby I much improved my standing and influence with the mill hands. Inafter days I took much satisfaction out of a well-equipped workshop. Examples of my skill exist in every house into which our family is divided. To make some useful thing for your own house, with your own hands, to fashion some present for friend or relative, or to save ingeniously some decrepit piece of furniture and renew its life of usefulness, is indeed a splendid pleasure, good for body and soul. To turn out a nice, clean, well-fitting joint, which satisfies the eye, while you think and dream and plan, amidst the smell of sawdust, shavings and clean things, is more than mere bodily and mental satisfaction. There is something spiritual in it.
In thirty long days I was again entitled to go to Montreal. This time I did not go to the Joseph house. I was thoroughly posted and so was Muriel. I found her at the home of a kindly aunt, and we saw much of each other during two whole days. Great days they were, as I remember well, when we dreamed dreams of the great and happy future before us, when we would be different from everybody else, more happy, more generous, more broad-minded and forgiving. Then back to the mill again; this time boiling over with energy and enthusiasm, to do, to work and progress in health and knowledge of things in general, and for an immediate end, to forward the lumber business first and foremost.
Before I could go to Montreal again the Josephs had left for their summer residence at Riviere du Loup, where they summered yearly. Starting immediately after the schools closed, the Joseph “army,” as it was called, moved to the seaside. Eleven children, maids, butler, horses, carriages, generally one or two hangers-on, and Mrs. Joseph, constituted the “army.” Murielnever liked this exodus very much. She said it was like travelling with a circus, moving an orphan asylum or a warlike tribe. Circus it certainly was as far as the younger children could make it, for a wilder or more obstreperous lot of imps of mischief never existed, and a more placid demeanour than that of Mrs. Joseph, in the midst of her unruly brood, was never exhibited by woman under similar circumstances. Occasionally she might arouse herself to the exertion of pinching a particularly annoying cherub, but that would be all, and she would proceed to read, peaceful and unruffled. Many a time I was put out of countenance when one of these juvenile fiends escaped from a keeper and invaded my privacy; for their candour was appalling.
“Hello, Blockhead!” one of the big boys would greet me. “Still hanging around Muriel? She makesussick.”
I am naturally fond of children, but they need not have the manners of a playful bear.
I went to Riviere du Loup for a short holiday towards the end of the summer, with Mason’s consent, but without the knowledge of my father. My reception by Muriel was all that I dreamed it would be; but that of Mrs. Joseph was frosty and forbidding. She had, however, to make the best of my presence, and did so with a bad grace. In the freedom of country life, without the backing of the Doctor’s countenance, Muriel and I had her rather at a disadvantage. We were young and selfish, and neither generous nor thoughtful for her feelings. Morning, noon and night we were together, which, of course, caused talk among busybodies. That any one would dare even to whisper about the conduct of her daughter was gall and wormwood to Mrs. Joseph. Lizette wascareful to keep her informed of all the disagreeable and mean remarks made about Wesblock, and was not too particular how she repeated such things. Consequently, a more or less painful scene took place between Muriel and her mother at nearly every meal and with great regularity every night.
“Where have you been, miss, till this hour of night, nearly twelve o’clock?” Mrs. Joseph would ask when Muriel appeared at about half-past ten at night.
“Why, mother, it’s only half-past ten,” Muriel would reply.
“Don’t dare to discuss the matter of time, Muriel. Answer my question. Where have you been? I need hardly ask with whom.”
“I’ve only been in the orchard with Mr. Wesblock.”
“Oh!onlyin the orchard till after midnight with a perfect stranger.”
“Now, don’t be foolish, mother.”
“Foolish! You dare to call your mother a fool. I’ll write to your father and have you sent to the convent at once.”
“Now listen, mother——”
“I’ll not listen; go to bed at once, I am made absolutely miserable by your behaviour.”
As the orchard was about the extent of a pocket handkerchief and comprised four trees; and the bench we sat upon was against the side of the house and immediately under Mrs. Joseph’s window, Muriel and I could not see the dreadfulness of our behaviour, and these scenes annoyed us and made us feel like children who had been treated with injustice.
One day we decided to put an end to the uncomfortable condition of things by running away and getting married.
How we expected to escape, I certainly cannot explain, for we took an express train in broad day at about three o’clock in the afternoon. A score of people must have seen us depart, but we counted somewhat, I think, on the very audacity of the performance and believed all that was necessary was to get away on the train. It was a childish escapade, conceived in ignorance of everything in the world except the infatuation for each other which made it necessary for us to be together at all costs. Our elders drove us to it by ill-advised chatter, badgering and baiting. All we desired was a little trust, some kindness and liberty; failing these, we decided to make our own life.