Young Paul Gaspard was eager to be gone for a run up the mountain at the
back of the bungalow. Had he known how very nearly the eager light in
his grey eyes and the eager emotion quivering in his angel-like face—for
so his foolish mother saw it—was to breaking down the resolution that
was hardening his mother’s voice, he would have turned the full
batteries of eyes and face upon her and won.
“No, dear, duty first; pleasure afterwards. Remember Nelson, you know.”
“Yes, I know, but Nelson was on a jolly big ship and going into a big
fight, Mother. I hate practising—at least,” catching the look of
surprise and pain which his mother just managed to substitute in time
for that of tender pride—“at least, sometimes—and ’specially this
morning. It’s a perfeckly ’dorable morning.”
“The harder the duty, the better the discipline, you know. That’s what
makes good soldiers, my boy. Come along, get it over. Quick! March!
Besides, you know you would just love to get that little _rondo_
right—tum te-ta-te-tum di. Let me hear you,” said his mother guilefully.
“No, that’s wrong, Mother. It’s tum-te-ta te tum-di.” He ran to the
piano and played the phrase.
“Well, what did I say? Oh, yes, I see, the phrasing was wrong. How does
it go?”
In a minute the boy was absorbed in his _rondo_. His mother sat in the
sunlit window listening to the practising. Her face was worn and lined
with pain. But as she listened, watching the long clever fingers
flitting so surely and smoothly over the keys, the lines of pain and
weariness seemed to be filled in with warm waves of light. She lay back
in her easy chair, knowing herself to be unobserved, and gave herself
over to a luxurious hour of loving pride in her son. He had a true
feeling for what was fine and sound in music and a gift of
interpretation extraordinary for one of his age. It was his heritage
from his father who in his youth had discovered to his instructors a
musical ability amounting almost to genius. Had he possessed that
element in genius which is a capacity for taking pains he undoubtedly
would have made a great artist on the piano.
“If your father had been made to practise he would have been a great
player,” his mother would say to Paul, on occasions when, thrilled to
the heart, they sat drinking the weird and mystic beauty of the
“Moonlight” flowing from his fingers.
“Yes, boy,” the father would reply, “if I only had had a stern and
relentless taskmistress for a mother, such as you have, eh?” And then
the boy and his mother would look at each other and smile.
Now the mother was listening and watching while her son did one of
Mozart’s Sonatinas with fine touch and expression.
“You do that quite well, dear,” she said when the Sonatina was over.
“That will do now. You will run to the top of the hill, to the big pine
root and then we shall do our lessons——”
“Let me do this Minuet first, Mother. I just feel like it now.”
“No, dear, you’ve had enough—indeed more than enough. A little fresh
air, and then your lessons for an hour, then out.”
“Just this Minuet, Mother, dear.”
“Duty first, boy, you know.”
“Why, Mother, that’s what you said when you sent me to the piano; now
it’s the same thing when you want me to quit!”
“Yes, dear, duty first always—the thing to be done at the time it ought
to be done and in the way it ought to be done.”
“My, it’s awful hard, Mother. Can’t I ever do just as I like?”
“Why, yes, dear.”
“When? When I grow big like you?”
“Oh, before that, I hope. When you want to do the things you ought to
do. But now, out you go for your run, up to the pine root and back
again. I’ll time you.” She pulled out her watch. The little lad, every
muscle taut, set himself.
“All set!” she cried. “Ready! Go!”
As if released from a spring the lithe little body shot forward and
disappeared through the underbrush. She waited for him, watch in hand,
waited, thinking, then forgot him. The minutes went on unheeded, so too
her mind. Down the years it went, following that lithe figure, that
eager shining face gallantly fronting the unknown, unafraid and alone.
She could not see herself with him. She knew, she had faced the
knowledge steadily till she could face it calmly, she knew her vision of
that gallant and lonely figure would soon, too soon, be realised. His
father—somehow she could not see them together. They were not made for
the same path. Hugh, her dear, splendid, happy hearted, easy-going man,
was made for the smooth ways through the low lands, but her boy she
always saw with face lifted up to the heights. He would never be content
with the levels. The hills, yes, and the mountains were for him. And
hence he must go alone. As for her, she was tired, unfit, nearly done.
No heights for her, but rest, deep, still and comforting. Well, she knew
she would find it; of that she had no fear. And the deep heart-break of
leaving all this light and warmth and love, that had made life to her,
she had surmounted. She had allowed her eyes to follow her son’s and
through the clouds next the blue she had seen a face that seemed kind
and she had grown content. An infinite comfort had stolen over her
aching heart that Sunday not so long ago as she thought over her little
boy’s quaint words, “And I like Him, Mother, and I think He likes me.”
Alone she might be, and alone her little boy might be, but never quite
alone after all would either be, no matter where the path might lead.
With a start she came back to the present hour. She looked at her watch.
The boy had been gone thirty minutes, instead of ten at the most. She
was not alarmed. The woods were safe, and she knew her boy. Young as he
was, she knew he was without fear and could be depended upon to do the
wise thing. But where was he? She set off slowly toward the big pine
root. The April sun was kindly in its warmth, the pine needles dry under
foot, and the air was rich with the aroma of the pines. She moved
quietly through the brush, saving her strength, as she had need, with
her ear alert for a sound of her little lad. In a few minutes she heard
his joyous shout. He had caught sight of her through an opening in the
bush, and came tearing through toward her.
“Mother! Mother,” he shouted, “the baby is choking, Mother! dying! Come!
oh, come quick! Mother.”
“What are you talking about, Paul? Don’t shout, speak quietly.” She held
him firmly, speaking calmly. “What baby, and where is it?”
“Oh, Mother, it’s——”
“Stop, Paul! Now, quietly——”
The boy took hold of himself and began in a quiet voice. “Yes, Mother.
The baby is up in the woods by the big root. It is an Indian baby, and
it is choking.”
“Show me the way.”
With all the speed she could make she followed the boy, and in a few
minutes came upon a pathetic little group, a young Indian woman,
exquisitely beautiful in face and form, a mere girl she seemed, kneeling
before a child of four, lying on a blanket, with face deeply cyanosed
and distorted, looking like death.
“What is the matter?” she cried, kneeling beside the girl. “Has the
child swallowed anything?”
“No, no,” said the mother, speaking perfect English in the soft, low
musical Indian voice. “It is croup, I think. He has had a bad cold, he
has been bad all night. He will die.” Her words came with the
passionless calm of despair.
“No, he must not die,” said Mrs. Gaspard. “Paul, now listen carefully. I
depend on you.”
“Yes, Mother,” said her son, standing looking at her, quiet, alert,
tense.
“Run to Jinny, tell her to fill the bath half full with hot water.”
Like a bird in flight he was off through the woods.
“Come! Bring your baby!” she said to the Indian girl.
Swiftly, without a word, the mother caught up the child and followed
Mrs. Gaspard to the house. For an hour they fought with death, and won.
Exhausted by the struggle, Mrs. Gaspard retired to her own room to rest.
Paul she sent off on his pony for a scamper. Beside her child, now
quietly sleeping, the Indian woman sat, staring out of the window,
motionless, passionless, as if she were a carved image, heedless to all
about her.
Thus the morning hours passed, till at the approach of noon the voices
of Paul and his father were heard from the paddock near the house. At
the first sound of the man’s voice the Indian girl leaped to the window,
flung one swift glance at the man’s face, stood one moment, trembling,
uncertain, then with quick resolve gathered up her sleeping boy in his
blanket and with the fleet and silent movements of the wild things of
the forest she slipped from the room out of the house and disappeared
into the brushwood at the rear.
Full of excited chatter, Paul conducted his father into the house, and,
subduing his voice, led him into the kitchen where he had left the
Indian woman and her child.
“Where is she?” he exclaimed. He ran out into the summer kitchen where
Jinny was at work over the wash tub. “Where are they gone—the Indian
woman?”
“Are they no there?” said Jinny, coming into the kitchen, wiping her
dripping arms. “They’ll be ben the hoose. Hush, now, y’re mither is
resting,” she added, passing into the living room, followed by Paul.
“They’re gone,” said Paul aghast, “and with that sick baby.”
“Aye,” said Jinny grimly, “and I hope there was no need for hurry.”
“What do you mean, Jinny?” asked Mr. Gaspard. “Oh, I see. Well, you need
not fear. Indians do not steal.”
“Steal?” said Paul, his face aflame with indignation. “I think it is
just mean to appose she would steal. She is a good woman, and she just
kissed and kissed Mother’s hands for curing her baby.”
“Aw, weel, I’d lippen till nane o’ them.”
“Steady, Paul,” interposed his father. “Jinny doesn’t know them as we
do. We will investigate a bit. Where did you find her?”
“I’ll show you, Daddy,” said Paul, hurling a blighting look upon Jinny,
who returned undisturbed to her tub.
Together they hurried up the path toward the big pine root. Arrived
there, the cry of a child lured them farther up the hill. Paul was off
like a hound on the trail. In a very few moments his voice came back
through the bushes in remonstrance.
“Why are you going away? Your baby will be sick again. Mother wants you
to stay. Daddy’s here. Wait! Wait! Here, Daddy! Here she is!”
Dashing back through the bushes, he seized his father and dragged him
hurriedly to where the Indian woman stood. She had flung her bundle of
camp impedimenta to the ground and, with her child rolled up in the
blanket, she stood like a wild animal fiercely at bay.
“Onawata!” gasped the man, and stood gazing at her, speechless, for some
seconds. Then with a quick glance at the boy he spoke rapidly in Indian.
Fiercely she replied. Again the man spoke, pointing to the child. For
reply she flung toward him an accusing finger. As if she had struck him
in the face, the man stood, white, aghast, rooted in his tracks.
“Paul,” he said in a voice harsh and shaken, “go back to the house and
tell Mother——”
“Is the baby dead?” said the boy in an awed voice.
“Dead? Dead?” said his father. “Would to God——No! Nonsense! Dead? No
fear!” he added with a harsh laugh.
“Let me see,” said the boy, springing forward and pulling the blanket
from the face of the child. “No, he’s all right. See, Daddy! Isn’t he
lovely?”
The man glanced at the child, shuddered, then with an obvious effort
pulled himself together.
“He’s quite all right, Paul. Run back now and tell Mother I am—I have
gone to see them safe to their camp.” He spoke a few words to the woman.
“Yes, about a mile down the valley. All right, old chap! I’ll be right
back,” he added kindly. “Off you go now. Cut away!”
“Come,” he said to the woman, picking up her bundle, as Paul reluctantly
turned away homeward. For some minutes Gaspard strode in silence along
the trail, followed by the woman, then flinging down the bundle he faced
her.
“Why have you come here?” he said sternly in Indian.
“Why did you not tell me you had a woman, a wife?” replied the woman,
her voice low, soft, but firm as his own.
“You speak good English,” he answered, astonished. “Where did you
learn?”
“I spent two years at the mission school. I worked hard, very hard. I
wanted to——” She hesitated, and then added in a bitter tone. “I made a
mistake. I thought you were a good man. I did not know you.”
For a few minutes the man stood voiceless before her. He was not a bad
man, much less a heartless man. Five years ago, on a hunting trip in the
far north land, as the result of an accident he had made a long stay
with a band of Chippewayan Indians, the lords of the Athabasca country.
Cared for and nursed back to strength in the wigwam of the chief, he had
played the villain as many another white man had, without thought of
consequence. Today he stood convicted, appalled in the presence, not of
a squaw who could be easily appeased with gifts and who would think
herself very well off were the gifts sufficiently generous, but of a
woman, beautiful, proud, speaking his own tongue with ease and, in her
soft Indian intonation, even with charm. In her arms was his child, a
fact stubborn, insistent of recognition, with possibility of
overwhelming disaster.
For in his mind the one thought obliterating all others was that of his
wife. Should this terrible and shameful fact come to her knowledge, what
would be the result? He pictured the reaction in her, of horror,
loathing, repulsion. For well he knew her lofty sense of right, her
Puritan holiness of spirit. She would despise him beyond hope of
restoring. She could never bear to look upon him, much less allow him to
touch her. She would pity him, but never more could she regard him with
that adoring love which had been to him the supreme joy and satisfaction
of his life. Without her love, life for him would be over. His mind,
with one swift, comprehending glance, scanned the future years, and from
the desolation his soul shrank back in fear. No! If she came to know,
there was only one way out for him—the coward’s way, but he would take
it. He could meet hell, but life without her love and with her pity and
loathing would be worse than any hell he could imagine.
There was one thing to do and that quickly. He must get this woman away
out of this country, back to her own. Once buried there, he could draw
the breath of freedom again. Of her fate and the fate of the child he
took no heed. In his horror and terror of the impending calamity of
discovery he could have killed them both where they stood and buried
them in that remote valley. Swiftly his mind played with that
possibility. It could be done. His eye fell upon the handle of the
hatchet sticking out of her bundle. One blow, two, and all cause of fear
would be forever gone from his life. He took a step toward the hatchet.
Aghast, he came to himself. “My God, what has come to me?” he cried
aloud, stepping back as if from the very mouth of the bottomless pit.
“Not that! The other perhaps, but not that!” He cast his eyes about him.
This was still his world, with all its familiar sights. The sun was
shining, far down there swept the valley of the Windermere, the hills,
the pines. In what strange, God-cursed country had his soul been
wandering? To him it seemed that years had passed. He had been
companying with devils. What had come upon him? What sort of man had he
become? And what might he not yet be driven to? He had read of such
transformations in good, well-meaning, decent, kindly men. Would he
become so demonised? Demonised! Now he understood, now he instantly
believed in the possibility of demon possession. The man with the legion
of devils was no myth, but a terrible reality. Trembling throughout his
powerful frame, he stood fighting for self-recovery.
A wailing cry struck upon his senses like the crash of a thunder peal.
He sprang forward, caught the child from the mother’s arms, rolled it in
its blanket, seized the bundle, and with the single word “Come!” set off
through the woods at a terrific pace, the Indian woman following. For an
hour without a word from either he smashed his way through the
underbrush, down valleys, over rocky ledges, one thought only driving
him as the furies Orestes—to get away from his wife. He had a vague,
blind notion that he would make the Athabasca before he halted. He would
have gone on thus, blindly, madly, had not a cry again arrested him. The
child in his arms began to squirm, struggle, fight for liberty,
screaming lustily the while. The mother caught his arm.
“Give me my boy,” she said breathlessly.
Whirling upon her he gave the child into her arms, flung down the bundle
and stood facing her.
“Where is your camp?” he asked abruptly.
“Down on the river, at the big rapid,” she said quietly, busying herself
with the child.
“Who are there?”
“My father and two of his men.”
He continued gazing at her as if she were a stranger to him. He was wet
to the skin. His hair was plastered in curls about his forehead.
“You must go home,” he said, his voice grating harshly. “Why did you
come here?”
She continued her task of caring for the child. She too was trembling,
but not with her mad chase after him. The hour’s strenuous exertion had
hardly quickened her breathing. All day marches, carrying her bundle and
her child, were to her nothing unusual. It was the passion in her that
shook her like a palsy.
“Why did you come?” repeated the man. “What do you want?”
She set down the child. Her trembling hands suddenly grew steady. Her
face settled into stern lines of calm. Her voice came in the quiet
strength of a deep flowing river. She was past all fear, past desire,
past hope. She was in full command of herself, of the situation, of him
too.
“Two months ago I left my country because I had here,” she laid her hand
on her breast, “a great pain to see your face again, to hear you speak,
to touch your hand. That is gone, all gone, gone like the snow of last
year from the mountains. Today my heart is dead. I have seen your woman.
I have seen your face. You have no thought, no love for the Indian girl.
To you she is like the dead leaves—nothing! nothing! You would kill her
and her child. I saw death in your eyes just now. I go away, back to the
Athabasca. You will never see my face again. But before I go I ask you
one thing. This boy, this little boy”—for an instant the even calm of
her voice was shaken—“he is my son, but first he is your son. What will
he be, Indian or white man? The Indian is like the buffalo and the deer.
The white man is hunting him from the plains and the woods. Soon he will
be like the mountain sheep, only in the lonely valleys or the far
mountain tops. What will your boy be? Where will he go? I wait for your
voice.”
The man stood listening, held as by a spell. The anger passed from his
face. In its place came in swift succession relief, surprise,
perplexity, shame, humiliation. Before her superb self-abnegation he
stood self-condemned, mean, contemptible. He could find no words. This
girl who had in those careless days so long ago worshipped him as a god
and given herself to him with never a care or question had changed into
a woman, his equal in truth of feeling, in sense of right. Here she was
asking his solution of a problem that was his before it was hers, and
his more than hers. The boy? The little chap standing up straight on
sturdy legs, gazing at him with piercing, solemn, appraising eyes—his
boy? His heart gave a queer little quiver. Indian or white man?
Condemned to be hunted back beyond the horizon of civilisation? Or
trained, fitted for a chance for life among men? Never in his life had
his thoughts raced through his mind as today in the presence of this
girl, this grave, controlled woman by whose very calmness he stood
accused and condemned as by a judge upon the bench. For his very life,
with those clear, calm eyes reading his soul, he could make no answer.
There was no answer in his mind. His first thought had been that the
Indian woman should simply disappear from his world and find a home with
her own people. But as he listened to her quiet and reasoned appeal in
her quaintly picturesque speech, the product of the mission school, and
as he looked upon her face, alight with clear-seeing intelligence, aglow
with the divine light of motherhood and distinguished with a beauty
beyond any he had ever known, the solution which first suggested itself
to his mind somehow failed to satisfy. Then, too, the boy, the little
boy—his little son—for whom he was responsible before God—yes, and, if
it were known to them, before all honourable men, and that meant in his
own sight. Was man ever so cornered by fate, nay, by his own doings?
“I will see you tomorrow, Onawata,” he said more gently. “I will come to
your camp tomorrow.” He laid his hand upon her shoulder. At his touch
and at the change in his voice, the woman was transformed, as if in a
single moment the world should pass from the cold beauty of winter to
the warm living glory of a midsummer day. Under the brown skin the red
blood surged, rich and full, lending warmth and color to the cold beauty
of her face. The rigid lines in her slim straight body suddenly seemed
to melt into soft curves of winsome grace. The dark steadfast eyes grew
soft as with a yearning tenderness. With a little shuddering sigh she
sank upon the pine needles, her hands fluttering up toward him.
“Ah, ah, Wa-ka-no-ka” (Hunter with the Golden Hair), she said, with a
long sobbing cry. “Do not speak so to me, do not touch me, or I cannot
go back. Ah, how can I leave you unless you hate me?”
She swayed forward toward him, flung her arms about his ankles and held
him fast, sobs deep drawn shaking her body.
Gaspard was not a hard man. Rather was he strongly, keenly susceptible
of appeal to the æsthetic and emotional elements in his artistic
nature. The sight of this woman, young—she was not more than
twenty-two—beautiful and pitifully, hopelessly, his slave as well as
his victim, moved him deeply. He leaned down over her, lifted her to
her feet and, with his arms thrown about her, sought to stay her
sobbing.
“Don’t, child,” he said. “Don’t cry like that. We will find some way out
of the mess, or, by God,” he added with sudden passion, “we’ll make
one.”
Still sobbing, she leaned against him. The absence of any suggestion of
passion in him revealed to her woman’s instinct that the dream that had
drawn her from her far north home was madness. She knew she was nothing
to him and could be nothing to him. Her very despair quieted her, and
she stood, limp and drooping, her eyes on the ground, her hands folded
before her.
“Come, I will take you to your camp, and tomorrow I will talk with you,”
said Gaspard, with a gentle kindness in his voice and manner.
The girl roused herself, glanced about to discover her child who was
busying himself among the bushes, then turning back to him said with a
simple and quiet dignity, “No, you must not come. I do not need you. I
must do without you. It is all past. Now you go back to your woman.
Tomorrow you will tell me about your boy.” She rolled the child up in
his blanket, slung him Indian fashion over her shoulder, picked up her
bundle and with never another look at the man and with never a word she
took her way.
“Tomorrow,” said Gaspard, “I shall see you. Good-bye.”
Unheeding, she passed on down the trail, and the underbrush hid her from
his sight.