Part 28

“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.

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 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 spaces between the high buildings. The stars above those narrow spaces 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 hearse 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 grass 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, passing 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 reassure 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 bump was it that ever slammed you down like this?”