Wesblock, the autobiography of an automaton

by Harry McDonald Walters

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 suggestive of 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. In after 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.” Muriel never 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.