It was a happy, fair face, good to look at, with a certain ripple of dimples somewhere about the mouth, and eyes that laughed out the very sunniness of their owner's soul. There was not a severe nor yet a weak line anywhere. He was a well-meaning young fellow, happily dispositioned, and a great favorite with the tribe at Robinson's Post, whither he had gone in the service of the Department of Agriculture, to assist the local agent through the tedium of a long census-taking.
As a boy he had had the Indian relic-hunting craze, as a youth he had studied Indian archaeology and folk-lore, as a man he consummated his predilections for Indianology, by loving, winning and marrying the quiet little daughter of the English trader, who himself had married a native woman twenty years ago. The country was all backwoods, and the Post miles and miles from even the semblance of civilization, and the lonely young Englishman's heart had gone out to the girl who, apart from speaking a very few words of English, was utterly uncivilized and uncultured, but had withal that marvellously innate refinement so universally possessed by the higher tribes of North American Indians.
Like all her race, observant, intuitive, having a horror of ridicule, consequently quick at acquirement and teachable in mental and social habits, she had developed from absolute pagan indifference into a sweet, elderly Christian woman, whose broken English, quiet manner, and still handsome copper-colored face, were the joy of old Robinson's declining years.
He had given their daughter Christine all the advantages of his own learning—which, if truthfully told, was not universal; but the girl had a fair common education, and the native adaptability to progress.
She belonged to neither and still to both types of the cultured Indian. The solemn, silent, almost heavy manner of the one so commingled with the gesticulating Frenchiness and vivacity of the other, that one unfamiliar with native Canadian life would find it difficult to determine her nationality.
She looked very pretty to Charles McDonald's loving eyes, as she reappeared in the doorway, holding her mother's hand and saying some happy words of farewell. Personally she looked much the same as her sisters, all Canada through, who are the offspring of red and white parentage—olive-complexioned, gray-eyed, black-haired, with figure slight and delicate, and the wistful, unfathomable expression in her whole face that turns one so heart-sick as they glance at the young Indians of to-day—it is the forerunner too frequently of "the white man's disease," consumption—but McDonald was pathetically in love, and thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
There had not been much of a wedding ceremony. The priest had cantered through the service in Latin, pronounced the benediction in English, and congratulated the "happy couple" in Indian, as a compliment to the assembled tribe in the little amateur structure that did service at the post as a sanctuary.
But the knot was tied as firmly and indissolubly as if all Charlie McDonald's swell city friends had crushed themselves up against the chancel to congratulate him, and in his heart he was deeply thankful to escape the flower-pelting, white gloves, rice-throwing, and ponderous stupidity of a breakfast, and indeed all the regulation gimcracks of the usual marriage celebrations, and it was with a hand trembling with absolute happiness that he assisted his little Indian wife into the old muddy buckboard that, hitched to an underbred-looking pony, was to convey them over the first stages of their journey. Then came more adieus, some hand-clasping, old Jimmy Robinson looking very serious just at the last, Mrs. Jimmy, stout, stolid, betraying nothing of visible emotion, and then the pony, rough-shod and shaggy, trudged on, while mutual hand-waves were kept up until the old Hudson Bay Post dropped out of sight, and the buckboard with its lightsome load of hearts deliriously happy, jogged on over the uneven trail.
* * * * *
She was "all the rage" that winter at the provincial capital. The men called her a "deuced fine little woman." The ladies said she was "just the sweetest wildflower." Whereas she was really but an ordinary, pale, dark girl who spoke slowly and with a strong accent, who danced fairly well, sang acceptably, and never stirred outside the door without her husband.
Charlie was proud of her; he was proud that she had "taken" so well among his friend, proud that she bore herself so complacently in the drawing-rooms of the wives of pompous Government officials, but doubly proud of her almost abject devotion to him. If ever human being was worshipped that being was Charlie McDonald; it could scarcely have been otherwise, for the almost godlike strength of his passion for that little wife of his would have mastered and melted a far more invincible citadel than an already affectionate woman's heart.
Favorites socially, McDonald and his wife went everywhere. In fashionable circles she was "new"—a potent charm to acquire popularity, and the little velvet-clad figure was always the centre of interest among all the women in the room. She always dressed in velvet. No woman in Canada, has she but the faintest dash of native blood in her veins, but loves velvets and silks. As beef to the Englishman, wine to the Frenchman, fads to the Yankee, so are velvet and silk to the Indian girl, be she wild as prairie grass, be she on the borders of civilization, or, having stepped within its boundary, mounted the steps of culture even under its superficial heights.
"Such a dolling little appil blossom," said the wife of a local M.P., who brushed up her etiquette and English once a year at Ottawa. "Does she always laugh so sweetly, and gobble you up with those great big gray eyes of her, when you are togetheah at home, Mr. McDonald? If so, I should think youah pooah brothah would feel himself terriblede trop."
He laughed lightly. "Yes, Mrs. Stuart, there are not two of Christie; she is the same at home and abroad, and as for Joe, he doesn't mind us a bit; he's no end fond of her."
"I'm very glad he is. I always fancied he did not care for her, d'you know."
If ever a blunt woman existed it was Mrs. Stuart. She really meant nothing, but her remark bothered Charlie. He was fond of his brother, and jealous for Christie's popularity. So that night when he and Joe were having a pipe, he said:
"I've never asked you yet what you thought of her, Joe." A brief pause, then Joe spoke. "I'm glad she loves you."
"Why?"
"Because that girl has but two possibilities regarding humanity—love or hate."
"Humph! Does she love or hateyou?"
"Ask her."
"You talk bosh. If she hated you, you'd get out. If she loved youI'dmakeyou get out."
Joe McDonald whistled a little, then laughed.
"Now that we are on the subject, I might as well ask—honestly, old man, wouldn't you and Christie prefer keeping house alone to having me always around?"
"Nonsense, sheer nonsense. Why, thunder, man, Christie's no end fond of you, and as for me—you surely don't want assurances from me?"
"No, but I often think a young couple—"
"Young couple be blowed! After a while when they want you and your old surveying chains, and spindle-legged tripod telescope kickshaws, farther west, I venture to say the little woman will cry her eyes out—won't you, Christie?" This last in a higher tone, as through clouds of tobacco smoke he caught sight of his wife passing the doorway.
She entered. "Oh, no, I would not cry; I never do cry, but I would be heart-sore to lose you Joe, and apart from that"—a little wickedly—"you may come in handy for an exchange some day, as Charlie does always say when he hoards up duplicate relics."
"Are Charlie and I duplicates?"
"Well—not exactly"—her head a little to one side, and eyeing them both merrily, while she slipped softly on to the arm of her husband's chair—"but, in the event of Charlie's failing me"—everyone laughed then. The "some day" that she spoke of was nearer than they thought. It came about in this wise.
There was a dance at the Lieutenant-Governor's, and the world and his wife were there. The nobs were in great feather that night, particularly the women, who flaunted about in new gowns and much splendor. Christie McDonald had a new gown also, but wore it with the utmost unconcern, and if she heard any of the flattering remarks made about her she at least appeared to disregard them.
"I never dreamed you could wear blue so splendidly," said CaptainLogan, as they sat out a dance together.
"Indeed she can, though," interposed Mrs. Stuart, halting in one of her gracious sweeps down the room with her husband's private secretary.
"Don't shout so, captain. I can hear every sentence you uttah—of course Mrs. McDonald can wear blue—she has a morning gown of cadet blue that she is a picture in."
"You are both very kind," said Christie. "I like blue; it is the color of all the Hudson's Bay posts, and the factor's residence is always decorated in blue."
"Is it really? How interesting—do tell us some more of your old home, Mrs. McDonald; you so seldom speak of your life at the post, and we fellows so often wish to hear of it all," said Logan eagerly.
"Why do you not ask me of it, then?"
"Well—er, I'm sure I don't know; I'm fully interested in the Ind—in your people—your mother's people, I mean, but it always seems so personal, I suppose; and—a—a—"
"Perhaps you are, like all other white people, afraid to mention my nationality to me."
The captain winced and Mrs. Stuart laughed uneasily. Joe McDonald was not far off, and he was listening, and chuckling, and saying to himself, "That's you, Christie, lay 'em out; it won't hurt 'em to know how they appear once in a while."
"Well, Captain Logan," she was saying, "what is it you would like to hear—of my people, or my parents, or myself?"
"All, all, my dear," cried Mrs. Stuart clamorously. "I'll speak for him—tell us of yourself and your mother—your father is delightful, I am sure—but then he is only an ordinary Englishman, not half as interesting as a foreigner, or—or, perhaps I should say, a native."
Christie laughed. "Yes," she said, "my father often teases my mother now about howverynative she was when he married her; then, how could she have been otherwise? She did not know a word of English, and there was not another English-speaking person besides my father and his two companions within sixty miles."
"Two companions, eh? one a Catholic priest and the other a wine merchant, I suppose, and with your father in the Hudson Bay, they were good representatives of the pioneers in the New World," remarked Logan, waggishly.
"Oh, no, they were all Hudson Bay men. There were no rumsellers and no missionaries in that part of the country then."
Mrs. Stuart looked puzzled. "Nomissionaries?" she repeated with an odd intonation.
Christie's insight was quick. There was a peculiar expression of interrogation in the eyes of her listeners, and the girl's blood leapt angrily up into her temples as she said hurriedly, "I know what you mean; I know what you are thinking. You were wondering how my parents were married—"
"Well—er, my dear, it seems peculiar—if there was no priest, and no magistrate, why—a—" Mrs. Stuart paused awkwardly.
"The marriage was performed by Indian rites," said Christie.
"Oh, do tell me about it; is the ceremony very interesting and quaint—are your chieftains anything like Buddhist priests?" It was Logan who spoke.
"Why, no," said the girl in amazement at that gentleman's ignorance. "There is no ceremony at all, save a feast. The two people just agree to live only with and for each other, and the man takes his wife to his home, just as you do. There is no ritual to bind them; they need none; an Indian's word was his law in those days, you know."
Mrs. Stuart stepped backwards. "Ah!" was all she said. Logan removed his eye-glass and stared blankly at Christie. "And did McDonald marry you in this singular fashion?" He questioned.
"Oh, no, we were married by Father O'Leary. Why do you ask?"
"Because if he had, I'd have blown his brain out to-morrow."
Mrs. Stuart's partner, who had hitherto been silent, coughed and began to twirl his cuff stud nervously, but nobody took any notice of him. Christie had risen, slowly, ominously—risen, with the dignity and pride of an empress.
"Captain Logan," she said, "what do you dare to say to me? What do you dare to mean? Do you presume to think it would not have been lawful for Charlie to marry me according to my people's rites? Do you for one instant dare to question that my parents were not as legally—"
"Don't, dear, don't," interrupted Mrs. Stuart hurriedly; "it is bad enough now, goodness knows; don't make—" Then she broke off blindly. Christie's eyes glared at the mumbling woman, at her uneasy partner, at the horrified captain. Then they rested on the McDonald brothers, who stood within earshot, Joe's face scarlet, her husband's white as ashes, with something in his eyes she had never seen before. It was Joe who saved the situation. Stepping quickly across towards his sister-in-law, he offered her his arm, saying, "The next dance is ours, I think, Christie."
Then Logan pulled himself together, and attempted to carry Mrs. Stuart off for the waltz, but for once in her life that lady had lost her head. "It is shocking!" she said, "outrageously shocking! I wonder if they told Mr. McDonald before he married her!" Then looking hurriedly round, she too saw the young husband's face—and knew that they had not.
"Humph! deuced nice kettle of fish—and poor old Charlie has always thought so much of honorable birth."
Logan thought he spoke in an undertone, but "poor old Charlie" heard him. He followed his wife and brother across the room. "Joe," he said, "will you see that a trap is called?" Then to Christie, "Joe will see that you get home all right." He wheeled on his heel then and left the ball-room.
Joedidsee.
He tucked a poor, shivering, pallid little woman into a cab, and wound her bare throat up in the scarlet velvet cloak that was hanging uselessly over her arm. She crouched down beside him, saying, "I am so cold, Joe; I am so cold," but she did not seem to know enough to wrap herself up. Joe felt all through this long drive that nothing this side of Heaven would be so good as to die, and he was glad when the little voice at his elbow said, "What is he so angry at, Joe?"
"I don't know exactly, dear," he said gently, "but I think it was what you said about this Indian marriage."
"But why should I not have said it? Is there anything wrong about it?" she asked pitifully.
"Nothing, that I can see—there was no other way; but Charlie is very angry, and you must be brave and forgiving with him, Christie, dear."
"But I did never see him like that before, did you?"
"Once."
"When?"
"Oh, at college, one day, a boy tore his prayer book in half, and threw it into the grate, just to be mean, you know. Our mother had given it to him at his confirmation."
"And did he look so?"
"About, but it all blew over in a day—Charlie's tempers are short and brisk. Just don't take any notice of him; run off to bed, and he'll have forgotten it by the morning."
They reached home at last. Christie said goodnight quietly, going directly to her room. Joe went to his room also, filled a pipe and smoked for an hour. Across the passage he could hear her slippered feet pacing up and down, up and down the length of her apartment. There was something panther-like in those restless footfalls, a meaning velvetyness that made him shiver, and again he wished he were dead—or elsewhere.
After a time the hall door opened, and someone came upstairs, along the passage, and to the little woman's room. As he entered, she turned and faced him.
"Christie," he said harshly, "do you know what you have done?"
"Yes," taking a step nearer him, her whole soul springing up into her eyes, "I have angered you, Charlie, and—"
"Angered me? You have disgraced me; and, moreover, you have disgraced yourself and both your parents."
"Disgraced?"
"Yes,disgraced; you have literally declared to the whole city that your father and mother were never married, and that you are the child of—what shall we call it—love? certainly not legality."
Across the hallway sat Joe McDonald, his blood freezing; but it leapt into every vein like fire at the awful anguish in the little voice that cried simply, "Oh! Charlie!"
"How could you do it, how could you do it, Christie, without shame either for yourself or for me, let alone your parents?"
The voice was like an angry demon's—not a trace was there in it of the yellow-haired, blue-eyed, laughing-lipped boy who had driven away so gaily to the dance five hours before.
"Shame? Why should I be ashamed of the rites of my people any more than you should be ashamed of the customs of yours—of a marriage more sacred and holy than half of your white man's mockeries."
It was the voice of another nature in the girl—the love and the pleading were dead in it.
"Do you mean to tell me, Charlie—you who have studied my race and their laws for years—do you mean to tell me that, because there was no priest and no magistrate, my mother was not married? Do you mean to say that all my forefathers, for hundreds of years back, have been illegally born? If so, you blacken my ancestry beyond—beyond—beyond all reason."
"No, Christie, I would not be so brutal as that; but your father and mother live in more civilized times. Father O'Leary has been at the post for nearly twenty years. Why was not your father straight enough to have the ceremony performed when hedidget the chance?"
The girl turned upon him with the face of a fury. "Do you suppose," she almost hissed, "that my mother would be married according to yourwhiterites after she had been five years a wife, and I had been born in the meantime? No, a thousand times I say,no. When the priest came with his notions of Christianizing, and talked to them of re-marriage by the Church, my mother arose and said, 'Never—never—I have never had but this one husband; he has had none but me for wife, and to have you re-marry us would be to say as much to the whole world as that we had never been married before. [Fact.] You go away;Ido not ask thatyourpeople be re-married; talk not so to me. Iammarried, and you or the Church cannot do or undo it.'"
"Your father was a fool not to insist upon the law, and so was the priest."
"Law?Mypeople havenopriest, and my nation cringes not to law. Our priest is purity, and our law is honor. Priest? Was there apriestat the most holy marriage know to humanity—that stainless marriage whose offspring is the God you white men told my pagan mother of?"
"Christie—you areworsethan blasphemous; such a profane remark shows how little you understand the sanctity of the Christian faith—"
"I know what Idounderstand; it is that you are hating me because I told some of the beautiful customs of my people to Mrs. Stuart and those men."
"Pooh! who cares for them? It is not them; the trouble is they won't keep their mouths shut. Logan's a cad and will toss the whole tale about at the club to-morrow night; and as for the Stuart woman, I'd like to know how I'm going to take you to Ottawa for presentation and the opening, while she is blabbing the whole miserable scandal in every drawing-room, and I'll be pointed out as a romantic fool, and you—as worse; Ican'tunderstand why your father didn't tell me before we were married; I at least might have warned you never to mention it." Something of recklessness rang up through his voice, just as the panther-likeness crept up from her footsteps and couched herself in hers. She spoke in tones quiet, soft, deadly.
"Before we were married! Oh! Charlie, would it have—made—any— difference?"
"God knows," he said, throwing himself into a chair, his blonde hair rumpled and wet. It was the only boyish thing about him now.
She walked towards him, then halted in the centre of the room. "Charlie McDonald," she said, and it was as if a stone had spoken, "look up." He raised his head, startled by her tone. There was a threat in her eyes that, had his rage been less courageous, his pride less bitterly wounded, would have cowed him.
"There was no such time as that before our marriage, for weare not married now. Stop," she said, outstretching her palms against him as he sprang to his feet, "I tell you we are not married. Why should I recognize the rites of your nation when you do not acknowledge the rites of mine? According to your own words, my parents should have gone through your church ceremony as well as through an Indian contract; according tomywords,weshould go through an Indian contract as well as through a church marriage. If their union is illegal, so is ours. If you think my father is living in dishonor with my mother, my people will think I am living in dishonor with you. How do I know when another nation will come and conquer you as you white men conquered us? And they will have another marriage rite to perform, and they will tell us another truth, that you are not my husband, that you are but disgracing and dishonoring me, that you are keeping me here, not as your wife, but as your—your—squaw."
The terrible word had never passed her lips before, and the blood stained her face to her very temples. She snatched off her wedding ring and tossed it across the room, saying scornfully, "That thing is as empty to me as the Indian rites to you."
He caught her by the wrists; his small white teeth were locked tightly, his blue eyes blazed into hers.
"Christine, do you dare doubt my honor towards you?you, whom I should have died for; do youdareto think I have kept you here, not as my wife, but—"
"Oh, God! You are hurting me; you are breaking my arm," she gasped.
The door was flung open, and Joe McDonald's sinewy hands clinched like vices on his brother's shoulders.
"Charlie, you're mad, mad as the devil. Let go of her this minute."
The girl staggered backwards as the iron fingers loosed her wrists. "Oh! Joe," she cried, "I am not his wife, and he says I am born—nameless."
"Here," said Joe, shoving his brother towards the door. "Go downstairs till you can collect your senses. If ever a being acted like an infernal fool, you're the man."
The young husband looked from one to the other, dazed by his wife's insult, abandoned to a fit of ridiculously childish temper. Blind as he was with passion, he remembered long afterwards seeing them standing there, his brother's face darkened with a scowl of anger—his wife, clad in the mockery of her ball dress, her scarlet velvet cloak half covering her bare brown neck and arms, her eyes like flames of fire, her face like a piece of sculptured graystone.
Without a word he flung himself furiously from the room, and immediately afterwards they heard the heavy hall door bang behind him.
"Can I do anything for you, Christie?" asked her brother-in-law calmly.
"No, thank you—unless—I think I would like a drink of water, please."
He brought her up a goblet filled with wine; her hand did not even tremble as she took it. As for Joe, a demon arose in his soul as he noticed she kept her wrists covered.
"Do you think he will come back?" she said.
"Oh, yes, of course; he'll be all right in the morning. Now go to bed like a good little girl, and—and, I say, Christie, you can call me if you want anything; I'll be right here, you know."
"Thank you, Joe; you are kind—and good."
He returned then to his apartment. His pipe was out, but he picked up a newspaper instead, threw himself into an armchair, and in a half-hour was in the land of dreams.
When Charlie came home in the morning, after a six-mile walk into the country and back again, his foolish anger was dead and buried. Logan's "Poor old Charlie" did not ring so distinctly in his ears. Mrs. Stuart's horrified expression had faded considerably from his recollection. He thought only of that surprisingly tall, dark girl, whose eyes looked like coals, whose voice pierced him like a flint-tipped arrow. Ah, well, they would never quarrel again like that, he told himself. She loved him so, and would forgive him after he had talked quietly to her, and told her what an ass he was. She was simple-minded and awfully ignorant to pitch those old Indian laws at him in her fury, but he could not blame her; oh, no, he could not for one moment blame her. He had been terribly severe and unreasonable, and the horrid McDonald temper had got the better of him; and he loved her so. Oh! He loved her so! She would surely feel that, and forgive him, and— He went straight to his wife's room. The blue velvet evening dress lay on the chair into which he had thrown himself when he doomed his life's happiness by those two words, "God knows." A bunch of dead daffodils and her slippers were on the floor, everything—but Christie.
He went to his brother's bedroom door.
"Joe," he called, rapping nervously thereon; "Joe, wake up; where'sChristie, d'you know?"
"Good Lord, no," gasped that youth, springing out of his armchair and opening the door. As he did so a note fell from off the handle. Charlie's face blanched to his very hair while Joe read aloud, his voice weakening at every word:—
"DEAR OLD JOE,—I went into your room at daylight to get that picture of the Post on your bookshelves. I hope you do not mind, but I kissed your hair while your slept; it was so curly, and yellow, and soft, just like his. Good-bye, Joe.
And when Joe looked into his brother's face and saw the anguish settle in those laughing blue eyes, the despair that drove the dimples away from that almost girlish mouth; when he realized that this boy was but four-and-twenty years old, and that all his future was perhaps darkened and shadowed for ever, a great, deep sorrow arose in his heart, and he forgot all things, all but the agony that rang up through the voice of the fair, handsome lad as he staggered forward, crying, "Oh! Joe—what shall I do—what shall I do!"
* * * * *
It was months and months before he found her, but during all that time he had never known a hopeless moment; discouraged he often was, but despondent, never. The sunniness of his ever-boyish heart radiated with warmth that would have flooded a much deeper gloom than that which settled within his eager young life. Suffer? ah! yes, he suffered, not with locked teeth and stony stoicism, not with the masterful self-command, the reserve, the conquered bitterness of the still-water sort of nature, that is supposed to run to such depths. He tried to be bright, and his sweet old boyish self. He would laugh sometimes in a pitiful, pathetic fashion. He took to petting dogs, looking into their large, solemn eyes with his wistful, questioning blue ones; he would kiss them, as women sometimes do, and call them "dear old fellow," in tones that had tears; and once in the course of his travels while at a little way-station, he discovered a huge St. Bernard imprisoned by some mischance in an empty freight car; the animal was nearly dead from starvation, and it seemed to salve his own sick heart to rescue back the dog's life. Nobody claimed the big starving creature, the train hands knew nothing of its owner, and gladly handed it over to its deliverer. "Hudson," he called it, and afterwards when Joe McDonald would relate the story of his brother's life he invariably terminated it with, "And I really believe that big lumbering brute saved him." From what, he was never to say.
But all things end, and he heard of her at last. She had never returned to the Post, as he at first thought she would, but had gone to the little town of B——, in Ontario, where she was making her living at embroidery and plain sewing.
The September sun had set redly when at last he reached the outskirts of the town, opened up the wicket gate, and walked up the weedy, unkept path leading to the cottage where she lodged.
Even through the twilight, he could see her there, leaning on the rail of the verandah—oddly enough she had about her shoulders the scarlet velvet cloak she wore when he had flung himself so madly from the room that night.
The moment the lad saw her his heart swelled with a sudden heat, burning moisture leapt into his eyes, and clogged his long, boyish lashes. He bounded up the steps—"Christie," he said, and the word scorched his lips like audible flame.
She turned to him, and for a second stood magnetized by his passionately wistful face; her peculiar grayish eyes seemed to drink the very life of his unquenchable love, though the tears that suddenly sprang into his seemed to absorb every pulse in his body through those hungry, pleading eyes of his that had, oh! so often been blinded by her kisses when once her whole world lay in their blue depths.
"You will come back to me, Christie, my wife? My wife, you will let me love you again?"
She gave a singular little gasp, and shook her head. "Don't, oh! don't," he cried piteously. "You will come to me, dear? it is all such a bitter mistake—I did not understand. Oh! Christie, I did not understand, and you'll forgive me, and love me again, won't you—won't you?"
"No," said the girl with quick, indrawn breath.
He dashed the back of his hand across his wet eyelids. His lips were growing numb, and he bungled over the monosyllable "Why?"
"I do not like you," she answered quietly.
"God! Oh! God, what is there left?"
She did not appear to hear the heart-break in his voice; she stood like one wrapped in sombre thought; no blaze, no tear, nothing in her eyes; no hardness, no tenderness about her mouth. The wind was blowing her cloak aside, and the only visible human life in her whole body was once when he spoke the muscles of her brown arm seemed to contract.
"But, darling, you are mine—mine—we are husband and wife! Oh, heaven, youmustlove me, and youmustcome to me again."
"You cannotmakeme come," said the icy voice, "neither church, nor law, nor even"—and the vice softened—"nor even love can make a slave of a red girl."
"Heaven forbid it," he faltered. "No, Christie, I will never claim you without your love. What reunion would that be? But oh, Christie, you are lying to me, you are lying to yourself, you are lying to heaven."
She did not move. If only he could touch her he felt as sure of her yielding as he felt sure there was a hereafter. The memory of the times when he had but to lay his hand on her hair to call a most passionate response from her filled his heart with a torture that choked all words before they reached his lips; at the thought of those days he forgot she was unapproachable, forgot how forbidding were her eyes, how stony her lips. Flinging himself forward, his knee on the chair at her side, his face pressed hardly in the folds of the cloak on her shoulder, he clasped his arms about her with a boyish petulance, saying, "Christie, Christie, my little girl wife, I love you, I love you, and you are killing me."
She quivered from head to foot as his fair, wavy hair brushed her neck, his despairing face sank lower until his cheek, hot as fire, rested on the cool, olive flesh of her arm. A warm moisture oozed up through her skin, and as he felt its glow he looked up. Her teeth, white and cold, were locked over her under lip, and her eyes were as gray stones.
Not murderers alone know the agony of a death sentence.
"Is it all useless? all useless, dear?" he said, with lips starving for hers.
"All useless," she repeated. "I have no love for you now. You forfeited me and my heart months ago, when you saidthose two words."
His arms fell away from her wearily, he arose mechanically, he placed his little gray checked cap on the back of his yellow curls, the old-time laughter was dead in the blue eyes that now looked scared and haunted, the boyishness and the dimples crept away for ever from the lips that quivered like a child's; he turned from her, but she had looked once into his face as the Law Giver must have looked at the land of Canaan outspread at his feet. She watched him go down the long path and through the picket gate, she watched the big yellowish dog that had waited for him lumber up on to its feet—stretch—then follow him. She was conscious of but two things, the vengeful lie in her soul, and a little space on her arm that his wet lashes had brushed.
* * * * *
It was hours afterwards when he reached his room. He had said nothing, done nothing—what use were words or deeds? Old Jimmy Robinson was right; she had "balked" sure enough.
What a bare, hotelish room it was! He tossed off his coat and sat for ten minutes looking blankly at the sputtering gas jet. Then his whole life, desolate as a desert, loomed up before him with appalling distinctness. Throwing himself on the floor beside his bed, with clasped hands and arms outstretched on the white counterpane, he sobbed. "Oh! God, dear God, I thought you loved me; I thought you'd let me have her again, but you must be tired of me, tired of loving me too. I've nothing left now, nothing! it doesn't seem that I even have you to-night."
He lifted his face then, for his dog, big and clumsy and yellow, was licking at his sleeve.
The Envoy Extraordinary
There had been a great deal of trouble in the Norris family, and for weeks old Bill Norris had gone about scowling as blackly as a thunder-cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daughter, and oftentimes muttering inaudible things that, however, had the tone of invective; and accompanied, as these mutterings were, with a menacing shake of his burley head, old Bill finally grew to be an acquaintance few desired.
Mrs. Norris showed equal, though not similar, signs of mental disturbance; for, womanlike, she clothed her worry in placidity and silence. Her kindly face became drawn and lined; she laughed less frequently. She never went "neighboring" or "buggy-riding" with old Bill now. But the trim farmhouse was just as spotless, just as beautifully kept, the cooking just as wholesome and homelike, the linen as white, the garden as green, the chickens as fat, the geese as noisy, as in the days when her eyes were less grave and her lips unknown to sighs. And what was it all about but the simple matter of a marriage—Sam's marriage? Sam, the big, genial, curly-headed only son of the house of Norris, who saw fit to take unto himself as a life partner tiny, delicate, college-bred Della Kennedy, who taught school over on the Sixth Concession, and knew more about making muslin shirtwaists than cooking for the threshers, could quote from all the mental and moral philosophers, could wrestle with French and Latin verbs, and had memorized half the things Tennyson and Emerson had ever written, but could not milk a cow or churn up a week's supply of butter if the executioner stood ready with his axe to chop off her pretty yellow mop of a head in case she failed. How old Billy stormed when Sam started "keeping company" with her!
"Nice young goslin' fer you to be a-goin' with!" he scowled when Sam would betake himself towards the red gate every evening after chores were done. "Nice gal fer you to bring home to help yer mother; all she'll do is to play May Queen and have the hull lot of us a-trottin' to wait on her. You'll marry a farmer's gal,Isay, one that's brung up like yerself and yer mother and me, or I tell yer yer shan't have one consarned acre of this place. I'll leave the hull farm to yer sister Jane's man.Shemarried somethin' like—decent, stiddy, hard-working man is Sid Simpson, andhe'llgit what land I have to leave."
"I quite know that, dad," Sam blazed forth, irritably; "so does he. That's what he married Janie for—the whole township knows that. He's never given her a kind word, or a holiday, or a new dress, since they were married—eight years. She slaves and toils, and he rich as any man need be; owns three farms already, money in the bank, cattle, horses—everything. But look at Janie; she looks as old as mother. I pityhisson, if he ever has one. Thank heaven, Janie has no children!"
"Come, come, father—Sam!" a patient voice would interrupt, and Mrs. Norris would appear at the door, vainly endeavoring to make peace. "I'll own up to both of you I'd sooner have a farmer's daughter for mine-in-law than Della Kennedy. But, father, he ain't married yet, and—"
"Ain't married, eh?" blurted in old Bill. "But he's a-goin' to marry her. But I'll tell you both right here, she'll never set foot in my house, ner I in her'n. Sam ken keep her, but what on, I don't know. He gits right out of this here farm the day he marries her, and he don't come back, not while I'm a-livin'."
It was all this that made old Billy Norris morose, and Mrs. Norris silent and patient and laughless, for Sam married the despised "gosling" right at harvest time, when hands were so scarce that farmers wrangled and fought, day in and day out, to get one single man to go into the field.
This was Sam's golden opportunity. His father's fields stood yellow with ripening grain to be cut on the morrow, but he deliberately hired himself out to a neighbor, where he would get good wages to start a little home with; for, farmer-like, old Billy Norris never paid his son wages. Sam was supposed to work for nothing but his clothes and board as reward, and a possible slice of the farm when the old man died, while a good harvest hand gets board and high wages, to boot. This then was the hour to strike, and the morning the grain stood ready for the reaper Sam paused at the outside kitchen door at sunrise.
"Mother," he said, "I've got to have her. I'm going to marry her to-day, and to-morrow start working for Mr. Willson, who will pay me enough to keep a wife. I'm sorry, mother, but—well, I've got to have her. Some day you'll know her, and you'll love her, I know you will; and if there's ever any children—"
But Mrs. Norris had clutched him by the arm. "Sammy," she whispered, "your father will be raging mad at your going, and harvest hands so scarce. Iknowhe'll never let me go near you, never. But if there's ever any children, Sammy, you just come for your mother, and I'll go to you and herwithouthis letting."
Then with one of the all too few kisses that are ever given or received in a farmhouse life, she let him go. The storm burst at breakfast time when Sam did not appear, and the poor mother tried to explain his absence, as only a mother will. Old Billy waxed suspicious, then jumped at facts. The marriage was bad enough, but this being left in the lurch at the eleventh hour, his son's valuable help transferred from the home farm to Mr. Willson's, with whom he always quarreled in church, road, and political matters, was too much.
"But, father, you never paid him wages," ventured the mother.
"Wages? Wages to one's own son, that one has raised and fed and shod from the cradle? Wages, when he knowed he'd come in fer part of the farm when I'd done with it? Who in consarnation ever gives their son wages?"
"But, father, you told him if he married her he was never to have the farm—that you'd leave it to Sid, that he was to get right off the day he married her."
"An' Sid'll get it—bet yer life he will—fer I ain't got no son no more. A sneakin' hulk that leaves me with my wheat standin' an' goes over to help that Methodist of a Willson is no son of mine. I ain't never had a son, and you ain't, neither; remember that, Marthy—don't you ever let me ketch you goin' a-near them. We're done with Sam an' his missus. You jes' make a note of that." And old Billy flung out to his fields like a general whose forces had fled.
It was but a tiny, two-room shack, away up in the back lots, that Sam was able to get for Della, but no wayfarer ever passed up the side road but they heard her clear, young voice singing like a thrush; no one ever met Sam but he ceased whistling only to greet them. He proved invaluable to Mr. Willson, for after the harvest was in and the threshing over, there was the root crop and the apple crop, and eventually Mr. Willson hired him for the entire year. Della, to the surprise of the neighborhood, kept on with her school until Christmas.
"She's teachin' instid of keepin' Sam's house, jes' to git money fer finery, you bet!" sneered old Billy. But he never knew that every copper for the extra term was put carefully away, and was paid out for a whole year's rent in advance on a gray little two-room house, and paid by a very proud little yellow-haired bride. She had insisted upon this before her marriage, for she laughingly said, "No wife ever gets her way afterwards."
"I'm not good at butter-making, Sam," she said, "but Icanmake money teaching, and for this first yearIpay the rent." And she did.
And the sweet, brief year swung on through its seasons, until one brown September morning the faint cry of a little human lamb floated through the open window of the small gray house on the back lots. Sam did not go to Willson's to work that day, but stayed home, playing the part of a big, joyful, clumsy nurse, his roughened hands gentle and loving, his big rugged heart bursting with happiness. It was twilight, and the gray shadows were creeping into the bare little room, touching with feathery fingers a tangled mop of yellow curls that aureoled a pillowed head that was not now filled with thoughts of Tennyson and Emerson and frilly muslin shirtwaists. That pretty head held but two realities—Sammy, whistling robin-like as he made tea in the kitchen, and the little human lamb hugged up on her arm.
But suddenly the whistling ceased, and Sammy's voice, thrilling with joy, exclaimed:
"Oh, mother!"
"Mrs. Willson sent word to me. Your father's gone to the village, and I ran away, Sammy boy," whispered Mrs. Norris, eagerly. "I just ran away. Where's Della and—the baby?"
"In here, mother, and—bless you for coming!" said the big fellow, stepping softly towards the bedroom. But his mother was there before him, her arms slipping tenderly about the two small beings on the bed.
"It wasn't my fault, daughter," she said, tremulously.
"I know it," faintly smiled Della. "Just these last few hours I know I'd stand by this baby boy of mine here until the Judgement Day, and so I now know it must have nearly broken your heart not to stand by Sammy."
"Well, grandmother!" laughed Sam, "what do you think of the newNorris?"
"Grandmother?" gasped Mrs. Norris. "Why, Sammy,am I a grandmother? Grandmother to this little sweetheart?" And the proud old arms lifted the wee "new Norris" right up from its mother's arms, and every tiny toe and finger was kissed and crooned over, while Sam shyly winked at Della and managed to whisper, "You'll see, girl, that dad will come around now; but he can just keep out ofour house. There are two of us that can be harsh. I'm not going to come athisfirst whistle."
Della smiled to herself, but said nothing. Much wisdom had come to her within the last year, with the last day—wisdom not acquired within the covers of books, nor yet beneath college roofs, and one truth she had mastered long ago—that
"To help and to heal a sorrowLove and silence are always best."
But late that night, when Martha Norris returned home, another storm broke above her hapless head. Old Billy sat on the kitchen steps waiting for her, frowning, scowling, muttering. "Where have you been?" he demanded, glaring at her, although some inner instinct told him what her answer would be.
"I've been to Sammy's," she said, in a peculiarly still voice, "and I'm going again to-morrow." Then with shoulders more erect and eyes calmer than they had been for many months, she continued: "And I'm going again the next day, and the next. Billy, you and I've got a grandson—a splendid, fair, strong boy, and—"
"What!" snapped old Billy. "A grandson! I got a grandson, an' no person told me afore? Not even that there sneak Sam, cuss him! He always was too consarned mean to live. A grandson? I'm a-goin' over termorrer, sure's I'm alive."
"No use for you to go, Billy," said Mrs. Norris, with marvellous diplomacy for such a simple, unworldly farmer's wife to suddenly acquire. "Sammy wouldn't let you set foot on his place. He wouldn't let you put an eye or a finger on that precious baby—not for the whole earth."
"What! Notme, the little chap'sgrandfather?" blurted old Billy in a rage. "I'm a-goin' to see that baby, that's all there is to it. I tell yer, I'm a-goin'."
"No use, father; you'll only make things worse," sighed Sam's mother, plaintively; but in her heart laughter gurgled like a spring. To the gift of diplomacy Mrs. Norris was fast adding the art of being an actress. "If you go there Sam'll set the dog on you. Iknowhe will, from the way he was talking," she concluded.
"Oh! got adog, have they? Well, I bet they've got nocow," sneered Billy. Then after a meaning pause: "I say Marthy,havethey got a cow?"
"No," replied Mrs. Norris, shortly.
"No cow, an' a sick woman and a baby—mygrandchild—in the house? Now ain't that jes' like that sneak Sam? They'll jes' kill that baby atween them, they're that igner'nt. Hev they got enny milk fer them two babbling kids, Della an' the baby—my grandchild?"
"No!" snapped Mrs. Norris, while through her mind echoed some terrifying lines she had heard as a child:
"All liars dwell with him in hell,And many more who cursed and swore."
"An' there's that young Shorthorn of ours, Marthy. Couldn't we spare her?" he asked with a pathetic eagerness. "We've got eight other cows to milk. Can't we spare her? If you think Sam'll set the dog onme, I'll have her driv over in the mornin'. Jim'll take her."
"I don't think it's any use, Bill; but you can try it," remarkedMrs. Norris, her soul singing within her like a celestial choir.
* * * * *
"Where are you driving that cow to?" yelled Sam from the kitchen door, at sunrise the following morning. "Take her out of there! You're driving her into my yard, right over my cabbages."
But Jim, the Norris' hired man, only grinned, and proceeding with his driving, yelled back:
"Cow's yourn, Sam. Yer old man sent it—a present to yer missus and the babby."
"You take and drive that cow back again!" roared Sam. "And tell my dad I won't have hide nor hair of her on my place."
Back went the cow.
"Didn't I tell you?" mourned Mrs. Norris. "Sam's that stubborn and contrary. It's no use, Billy; he just doesn't care for his poor old father nor mother any more."
"By the jumping Jiminy Christmas! I'llmakehim care!" thundered old Billy. "I'm a-goin' ter see that grandchild of mine." Then followed a long silence.
"I say, Marthy, how are they fixed in the house?" he questioned, after many moments of apparently brown study.
"Pretty poor," answered Sam's mother, truthfully this time.
"Got a decent stove, an' bed, an' the like?" he finally asked.
"Stove seems to cook all right, but the bed looks just like straw tick—not much good, I'd say," responded Mrs. Norris, drearily.
"A straw tick!" fairly yelled old Billy. "A straw tick fer my grandson ter sleep on? Jim, you fetch that there cow here, right ter the side door."
"What are you going to do?" asked Martha, anxiously.
"I'll show yer!" blurted old Billy. And going to his own room, he dragged off all the pretty patchwork quilts above his neatly-made bed, grabbed up the voluminous feather-bed, staggered with it in his arms down the hall, through the side door, and flung it on to the back of the astonished cow.
"Now you, Jim, drive that there cow over to Sam's, and if you dare bring her back agin, I'll hide yer with the flail till yer can't stand up."
"Me drive that lookin' circus over to Sam's?" sneered Jim. "I'll quit yer place first. Yer kin do it yerself;" and the hired man turned on his lordly heel and slouched over to the barn.
"That'll be the best way, Billy," urged Sam's mother. "Do it yourself."
"I'll do it too," old Billy growled. "I ain't afraid of no dog on four legs. Git on there, bossy! Git on, I say!" and the ridiculous cavalcade started forth.
For a moment Martha Norris watched the receding figure through blinding tears. "Oh, Sammy, I'm going to have you back again! I'm going to have my boy once more!" she half sobbed. Then sitting down on the doorsill, she laughed like a schoolgirl until the cow with her extraordinary burden, and old Billy in her wake, disappeared up the road. [This incident actually occurred on an Ontario farm within the circle of the author's acquaintance.]
From the pillow, pretty Della could just see out of the low window, and her wide young eyes grew wider with amazement as the gate swung open and the "circus," as Jim called it, entered.
"Sammy!" she called, "Sammy! For goodness sake, what's that coming into our yard?"
Instantly Sam was at the door.
"Well, if that don't beat anything I ever saw!" he exclaimed. Then "like mother, like son," he, too, sat down on the doorsill and laughed as only youth and health and joy can laugh, for, heading straight for the door was the fat young Shorthorn, saddled with an enormous feather-bed, and plodding at her heels was old Billy Norris, grinning sheepishly.
It took just three seconds for the hands of father and son to meet."How's my gal an' my grandson?" asked the old farmer, excitedly.
"Bully, just bully, both of them!" smiled Sam, proudly. Then more seriously, "Ah, dad, you old tornado, you! Here you fired thunder at us for a whole year, pretty near broke my mother's heart, and made my boy's little mother old before she ought to be. But you've quit storming now, dad. I know it from the look of you."
"Quit forever, Sam," replied old Billy, "fer these mother-wimmen don't never thrive where there's rough weather, somehow. They're all fer peace. They're worse than King Edward an' Teddy Roosevelt fer patchin' up rows, an' if they can't do it no other way, they jes' hike along with a baby, sort o' treaty of peace like. Yes, I guess I thundered some; but, Sam, boy, there ain't a deal of harm in thunder—butlightnin', now that's the worst, but I once heard a feller say that feathers was non-conductive." Then with a sly smile, "An' Sam, you'd better hustle an' git the gal an' the baby on ter this here feather-bed, or they may be in danger of gittin' struck, fer there's no tellin' but I may jes' start an' storm thunder an'lightnin'this time."
A Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral
Iroquois Poetess' Impressions in London's Cathedral
It is a far cry from a wigwam to Westminster, from a prairie trail to the Tower Bridge, and London looks a strange place to the Red Indian whose eyes still see the myriad forest trees, even as they gaze across the Strand, and whose feet still feel the clinging moccasin even among the scores of clicking heels that hurry along the thoroughfares of this camping-ground of the paleface.
So this is the place where dwells the Great White Father, ruler of many lands, lodges, and tribes, in the hollow of whose hands is the peace that rests between the once hostile red man and white. They call him the King of England, but to us, the powerful Iroquois nation of the north, he is always the "Great White Father." For once he came to us in our far-off Canadian reserves, and with his own hand fastened decorations and medals on the buckskin coats of our oldest chiefs, just because they and their fathers used their tomahawks in battle in the cause of England.
So I, one of his loyal allies, have come to see his camp, known to the white man as London, his council which the whites call his Parliament, where his sachems and chiefs make the laws of his tribes, and to see his wigwam, known to the palefaces as Buckingham Palace, but to the red man as the "Tepee of the Great White Father." And this is what I see:—
What the Indian Sees.
Lifting toward the sky are vast buildings of stone, not the same kind of stone from which my forefathers fashioned their carven pipes and corn-pounders, but a grayer, grimier rock that would not take the polish we give by fingers dipped in sturgeon oil, and long days of friction with fine sand and deer-hide.
I stand outside the great palace wigwam, the huge council-house by the river. My seeing eyes may mark them, but my heart's eyes are looking beyond all this wonderment, back to the land I have left behind me. I picture the tepees by the far Saskatchewan; there the tent poles, too, are lifting skyward, and the smoke ascending through them from the smouldering fires within curls softly on the summer air. Against the blurred sweep of horizon other camps etch their outlines, other bands of red men with their herds of wild cattle have sought the river lands. I hear the untamed hoofs thundering up the prairie trail.
But the prairie sounds are slipping away, and my ears catch other voices that rise above the ceaseless throb about me—voices that are clear, high, and calling; they float across the city like the music of a thousand birds of passage beating their wings through the night, crying and murmuring plaintively as they journey northward. They are the voices of St. Paul's calling, calling me—St. Paul's where the paleface worships the Great Spirit, and through whose portals he hopes to reach the happy hunting grounds.
The Great Spirit.
As I entered its doorways it seemed to me to be the everlasting abiding-place of the white man's Great Spirit.
The music brooded everywhere. It beat in my ears like the far-off cadences of the Sault Ste. Marie rapids, that rise and leap and throb—like a storm hurling through the fir forest—like the distant rising of an Indian war-song; it swept up those mighty archways until the gray dome above me faded, and in its place the stars came out to look down, not on these paleface kneeling worshippers, but on a band of stalwart, sinewy, copper-coloured devotees, my own people in my own land, who also assembled to do honour to the Manitou of all nations.
The deep-throated organ and the boy's voices were gone; I heard instead the melancholy incantations of our own pagan religionists. The beautiful dignity of our great sacrificial rites seemed to settle about me, to enwrap me in its garment of solemnity and primitive stateliness.
Beat of the Drum.
The atmosphere pulsed with the beat of the Indian drum, the eerie penetrations of the turtle rattle that set the time of the dancers' feet. Dance? It is not a dance, that marvellously slow, serpentine-like figure with the soft swish, swish of moccasined feet, and the faint jingling of elks'-teeth bracelets, keeping rhythm with every footfall. It is not a dance, but an invocation of motion. Why may we not worship with the graceful movement of our feet? The paleface worships by moving his lips and tongue; the difference is but slight.
The altar-lights of St. Paul's glowed for me no more. In their place flared the camp fires of the Onondaga "long-house," and the resinous scent of the burning pine drifted across the fetid London air. I saw the tall, copper-skinned fire-keeper of the Iroquois council enter, the circle of light flung fitfully against the black surrounding woods. I have seen their white bishops, but none so regal, so august as he. His garb of fringed buckskin and ermine was no more grotesque than the vestments worn by the white preachers in high places; he did not carry a book or a shining golden symbol, but from his splendid shoulders was suspended a pure white lifeless dog.
Into the red flame the strong hands gently lowered it, scores of reverent, blanketed figures stood silent, awed, for it is the highest, holiest festival of the year. Then the wild, strange chant arose—the great pagan ritual was being intoned by the fire-keeper, his weird, monotonous tones voicing this formula:
"The Great Spirit desires no human sacrifice, but we, His children, must give to Him that which is nearest our hearts and nearest our lives. Only the spotless and stainless can enter into His presence, only that which is purified by fire. So—this white dog—a member of our household, a co-habitant of our wigwam, and on the smoke that arises from the purging fires will arise also the thanksgivings of all those who desire that the Great Spirit in His happy hunting grounds will forever smoke His pipe of peace, for peace is between Him and His children for all time."
The mournful voice ceases. Again the hollow pulsing of the Indian drum, the purring, flexible step of cushioned feet. I lift my head, which has been bowed on the chair before me. It is St. Paul's after all—and the clear boy-voices rise above the rich echoes of the organ.
As It Was in the Beginning
They account for it by the fact that I am a Redskin, but I am something else, too—I am a woman.
I remember the first time I saw him. He came up the trail with some Hudson's Bay trappers, and they stopped at the door of my father's tepee. He seemed even then, fourteen years ago, an old man; his hair seemed just as thin and white, his hands just as trembling and fleshless as they were a month since, when I saw him for what I pray his God is the last time.
My father sat in the tepee, polishing buffalo horns and smoking; my mother, wrapped in her blanket, crouched over her quill-work, on the buffalo-skin at his side; I was lounging at the doorway, idling, watching, as I always watched, the thin, distant line of sky and prairie; wondering, as I always wondered, what lay beyond it. Then he came, this gentle old man with his white hair and thin, pale face. He wore a long black coat, which I now know was the sign of his office, and he carried a black leather-covered book, which, in all the years I have known him, I have never seen him without.
The trappers explained to my father who he was, the Great Teacher, the heart's Medicine Man, the "Blackcoat" we had heard of, who brought peace where there was war, and the magic of whose black book brought greater things than all the Happy Hunting Grounds of our ancestors.
He told us many things that day, for he could speak the Cree tongue, and my father listened, and listened, and when at last they left us, my father said for him to come and sit within the tepee again.
He came, all the time he came, and my father welcomed him, but my mother always sat in silence at work with the quills; my mother never liked the Great "Blackcoat."
His stories fascinated me. I used to listen intently to the tale of the strange new place he called "heaven," of the gold crown, of the white dress, of the great music; and then he would tell of that other strange place—hell. My father and I hated it; we feared it, we dreamt of it, we trembled at it. Oh, if the "Blackcoat" would only cease to talk of it! Now I know he saw its effect upon us, and he used it as a whip to lash us into his new religion, but even then my mother must have known, for each time he left the tepee she would watch him going slowly away across the prairie; then when he was disappearing into the far horizon she would laugh scornfully, and say:
"If the white man made this Blackcoat's hell, let him go to it. It is for the man who found it first. No hell for Indians, just Happy Hunting Grounds. Blackcoat can't scare me."
And then, after weeks had passed, one day as he stood at the tepee door he laid his white, old hand on my head and said to my father: "Give me this little girl, chief. Let me take her to the mission school; let me keep her, and teach her of the great God and His eternal heaven. She will grow to be a noble woman, and return perhaps to bring her people to the Christ."
My mother's eyes snapped. "No," she said. It was the first word she ever spoke to the "Blackcoat." My father sat and smoked. At the end of a half-hour he said:
"I am an old man, Blackcoat. I shall not leave the God of my fathers. I like not your strange God's ways—all of them. I like not His two new places for me when I am dead. Take the child, Blackcoat, and save her from hell."
* * * * *
The first grief of my life was when we reached the mission. They took my buckskin dress off, saying I was now a little Christian girl and must dress like all the white people at the mission. Oh, how I hated that stiff new calico dress and those leather shoes. But, little as I was, I said nothing, only thought of the time when I should be grown, and do as my mother did, and wear the buckskins and the blanket.
My next serious grief was when I began to speak the English, that they forbade me to use any Cree words whatever. The rule of the school was that any child heard using its native tongue must get a slight punishment. I never understood it, I cannot understand it now, why the use of my dear Cree tongue could be a matter for correction or an action deserving punishment.
She was strict, the matron of the school, but only justly so, for she had a heart and a face like her brother's, the "Blackcoat." I had long since ceased to call him that. The trappers at the post called him "St. Paul," because, they told me, of his self-sacrificing life, his kindly deeds, his rarely beautiful old face; so I, too, called him "St. Paul," thought oftener "Father Paul," though he never liked the latter title, for he was a Protestant. But as I was his pet, his darling of the whole school, he let me speak of him as I would, knowing it was but my heart speaking in love. His sister was a widow, and mother to a laughing yellow-haired boy of about my own age, who was my constant playmate and who taught me much of English in his own childish way. I used to be fond of this child, just as I was fond of his mother and of his uncle, my "Father Paul," but as my girlhood passed away, as womanhood came upon me, I got strangely wearied of them all; I longed, oh, God, how I longed for the old wild life! It came with my womanhood, with my years.
What mattered it to me now that they had taught me all their ways?—their tricks of dress, their reading, their writing, their books. What mattered it that "Father Paul" loved me, that the traders at the post called me pretty, that I was a pet of all, from the factor to the poorest trapper in the service? I wanted my own people, my own old life, my blood called out for it, but they always said I must not return to my father's tepee. I heard them talk amongst themselves of keeping me away from pagan influences; they told each other that if I returned to the prairies, the tepees, I would degenerate, slip back to paganism, as other girls had done; marry, perhaps, with a pagan—and all their years of labor and teaching would be lost.
I said nothing, but I waited. And then one night the feeling overcame me. I was in the Hudson's Bay store when an Indian came in from the north with a large pack of buckskin. As they unrolled it a dash of its insinuating odor filled the store. I went over and leaned above the skins a second, then buried my face in them, swallowing, drinking the fragrance of them, that went to my head like wine. Oh, the wild wonder of that wood-smoked tan, the subtilty of it, the untamed smell of it! I drank it into my lungs, my innermost being was saturated with it, till my mind reeled and my heart seemed twisted with a physical agony. My childhood recollections rushed upon me, devoured me. I left the store in a strange, calm frenzy, and going rapidly to the mission house I confronted my Father Paul and demanded to be allowed to go "home," if only for a day. He received the request with the same refusal and the same gentle sigh that I had so often been greeted with, but this time the desire, the smoke-tan, the heart-ache, never lessened.
Night after night I would steal away by myself and go to the border of the village to watch the sun set in the foothills, to gaze at the far line of sky and prairie, to long and long for my father's lodge. And Laurence—always Laurence—my fair-haired, laughing, child playmate, would come calling and calling for me: "Esther, where are you? We miss you; come in, Esther, come in with me." And if I did not turn at once to him and follow, he would come and place his strong hands on my shoulders and laugh into my eyes and say, "Truant, truant, Esther; can'twemake you happy?"
My old childhood playmate had vanished years ago. He was a tall, slender young man now, handsome as a young chief, but with laughing blue eyes, and always those yellow curls about his temples. He was my solace in my half-exile, my comrade, my brother, until one night it was, "Esther, Esther, can'tImake you happy?"
I did not answer him; only looked out across the plains and thought of the tepees. He came close, close. He locked his arms about me, and with my face pressed up to his throat he stood silent. I felt the blood from my heart sweep to my very finger-tips. I loved him. O God, how I loved him! In a wild, blind instant it all came, just because he held me so and was whispering brokenly, "Don't leave me, don't leave me, Esther;myEsther, my child-love, my playmate, my girl-comrade, my little Cree sweetheart, will you go away to your people, or stay, stay for me, for my arms, as I have you now?"
No more, no more the tepees; no more the wild stretch of prairie, the intoxicating fragrance of the smoke-tanned buckskin; no more the bed of buffalo hide, the soft, silent moccasin; no more the dark faces of my people, the dulcet cadence of the sweet Cree tongue—only this man, this fair, proud, tender man who held me in his arms, in his heart. My soul prayed his great white God, in that moment, that He would let me have only this. It was twilight when we re-entered the mission gate. We were both excited, feverish. Father Paul was reading evening prayers in the large room beyond the hallway; his soft, saint-like voice stole beyond the doors, like a benediction upon us. I went noiselessly upstairs to my own room and sat there undisturbed for hours.
The clock downstairs struck one, startling me from my dreams of happiness, and at the same moment a flash of light attracted me. My room was in an angle of the building, and my window looked almost directly down into those of Father Paul's study, into which at that instant he was entering, carrying a lamp. "Why, Laurence," I heard him exclaim, "what are you doing here? I thought, my boy, you were in bed hours ago."