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WESBLOCK
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN
AUTOMATON
_All rights reserved_
WESBLOCK
The Autobiography
of an
Automaton
By
Harry McDonald
Walters
[Illustration: Decoration]
LONDON AND TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED
1914
DEDICATED
TO
MY SONS
BY BIRTH, BY ADOPTION, AND
BY RIGHTS OF AFFECTION
PREFACE
This work is in the form of a book. Outwardly a book, it is not a
book in the ordinary sense. It is only an artless yarn. Wesblock is a
common type, and he writes himself down as he knows himself or thinks
he knows himself. His tale is not thrilling, except in so far as the
understanding reader can see that he escaped being one of the great
army of the unfit by a very narrow margin. Wesblock has in fact written
as much for himself as for you. His story is an attempt to take stock
of himself, and to discover whether life as he has experienced it
is really worth while. If the book helps one poor soul to find what
Wesblock found—that it is really worth while—it will have fulfilled its
mission.
What he has said of persons and things only expresses his own opinions.
They may not appear true to you; but they were true to him according to
his light. He preaches sometimes; but not at you—at himself.
You may know more about Wesblock and his kind than he does, if so you
can make a great book from this yarn by adding what you think necessary
and rejecting what you know to be incorrect. Whatever impression the
story of Wesblock makes upon you is the impression intended to be made.
The great failure of Wesblock’s life was brought about by many causes,
the first of them far back in the beginning of things. He learned to
think and know too late to be of much use to himself or his immediate
family, and this he tells you in his own way. You may know some of the
people to whom he refers, and you may think he is not fair in some of
his characterisations. He is, however, just as fair to others as he is
to himself. Finally it may be as well to warn the Preface-reader that
this is a story without a plot and without a hero.
WESBLOCK
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AUTOMATON
CHAPTER I
In a little mean street, which ends at a steep hill running down to
the river through the Quebec suburbs of Montreal, stood about fifty
years ago a tiny old-fashioned church built entirely of wood after
the dog-house style of architecture. So lacking in imagination were
the builders of this place of prayer that they went no further than
the name of the street for the name of the church. The church was
gloomy and cheerless within and looked as if it were partitioned off
for cattle. The pews were all very high, plain and closed with doors.
A narrow little winding stair led to the pulpit, a high and massive
affair overhung by a huge sounding board. A large cushion of faded
red rep trimmed with coarse woollen fringe and tassels decorated the
reading-desk, which was flanked by two pretentious lamps of hideous
design in wrought iron. The place had the odour of a damp cellar, and
the air of a religion, stern and unforgiving to the sinner, and not
very promising to the saved.
The little street is not to be found now, while the little church is
a wreck, and its remains are smothered by places of business. But in
the early sixties it was a power among the plain, severe, hard-mouthed
people who worshipped there an unforgiving God of wrath.
Nearly a year before I arrived on earth a marriage took place in this
church between a boy and a girl. The boy was a lean, hatchet-faced
youth with sharp eager blue eyes, set in a face marked already with
experience of the world. He was dressed in decidedly foppish style,
with a resplendent waistcoat and a collar of the old-fashioned “choker”
type. His dress coat had brass buttons and very long tails, and his
tight lavender trousers, matching in shade his kid gloves, were
strapped down to the verge of splitting.
The little girl who was marrying the boy was a beautiful sad-eyed thing
with rosy cheeks, a sensitive mouth and freckles on her nose. Her hands
and feet were small and shapely. Her monstrously ugly clothes and
extravagant hoops did not mar her appearance.
It was a very solemn function, this marriage; no music, no flowers,
no guests; just a handful of the immediate relatives of the bride and
groom. The father of the boy would almost have passed for the elder
Weller; being a large, horsey-looking man, who might be otherwise
characterised as an old buffer. The old buffer’s wife was a little prim
woman dressed in grey.
The father of the bride was a military-looking man, tall and slim, with
curly black hair; his wife a hook-nosed woman with a face like one of
the old Spanish inquisitors.
The marriage being over, the small solemn crowd of wedding-guests drove
away to a small sombre house in a highly respectable street, and made
merry without the least appearance of joy.
If it is true that we human creatures are much affected by things that
happen in the critical months before we come into the world, then the
doings of the small house in that small Montreal street ought to be of
some account in this chronicle. But since this is a true record, and I
have no facts to go upon, I pass on now to the ordinary beginning of a
boy’s life.