St. Jean Bateese, Nahnya, and Ralph sat by the fire. The flames threw
strong, changeable lights up into the three unlike faces; the first
ashy brown, the second ruddy brown, and the third ruddy white. The
fire held each pair of eyes steadily; it was too disconcerting to look
at each other. Nahnya, in the middle, sat on her heels, with her head
a little lowered, and her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Ralph was
reminded with a little pain at his heart of a picture of Mary Magdalen
that he had seen. Throughout the telling of her long story she
scarcely ever changed her position.
There was a long silence before anybody spoke. When it became
oppressive, St. Jean started to tell the story of the making of the
world, but Nahnya silenced him.
"St. Jean," she said, "I have been thinking much what to do. Now I
know. Often the doctor was angry against me because I did not tell him
all about us. Now I will tell him. I think he is a good man. I think
he is not so greedy for gold as other white men. I think when I tell
him all he will go away and forget what he has seen."
It sounded like a death warrant to Ralph. "Nahnya----!" he began.
"Wait till I have told you," she said.
She was silent for a space, looking down at her hands, and searching it
would seem for the right words to begin. She told her story in a
low-pitched, toneless voice that, concealing all, suggested all. When
in certain parts of the story her voice threatened to shake, she paused
until she could control it. Nahnya had no fine English phrases;
therein lay the power of her tale; its bare crudeness went deeper than
pathos.
"When I was a little girl," she began, "I go to the mission school at
Caribou Lake. The nuns' school. I am there four winters. They teach
me to speak English and French; to read and write and number; to sew
and cook and keep house like white people. I am the smartest girl in
the school, they say. I like to learn in books; the other children
hate books. When visitors come the nuns send me to say my lessons in
the parlour. I not like the other girls. They stupid and foolish, I
think. They not like me either. I different from them.
"At Caribou Lake are plenty white people. I like them. I like how
white people live with nice things and nice ways. I like to sit in a
chair to my meals, and have a white cloth on the table, and china
dishes. All the time I think of the white people and their own country
outside. I am crazy to go there and see all that is to be seen.
"There was a boy at that school two years more older than me. He is
half-white like me. He does not like books, but I look at him and I
know he feels the same like me inside. I would like to be friends with
him. But the nuns do not let the boys and the girls speak together.
But I look at him and he look at me, and at night when all are asleep I
go out of the dormitory as soft as a lynx and he is wait for me in the
vegetable garden. We talk together. He is like my brother. He tell
me he is going to run away from that school and go outside. I feel
bad. I want to go, too.
"When I come back in the house, a nun wake up and catch me. They make
awful trouble. They say I bad girl. They lock me up and give me only
bread and water. I am mad because they call me bad and look sour at
me. Because I think before that they did love me. I know I am not
bad, but I will not say anything. They say I am hardened. I am not
hard; I am soft. All the time when I am alone I cry. But I will not
let them see me cry.
"Long time I am locked up. It is near spring when I am let out. The
boy is gone from the school. I am changed. I hate that school now. I
want to run away. I act very good now, so I get a chance to run away.
The nuns say I am reformed, and they smile again. They not know what
is inside me. By and by they begin to let me go out by myself; because
I am one of the biggest girls they send me to the store for tea and
sugar.
"There is a white man in the French outfit store and he is kind to me.
He give me things for myself out of the store, and I think he is a good
man. I tell him I want to go outside so bad, and he say he will take
me when he goes in the summer. I am so glad I near crazy. I not think
any bad, because he is an old man with gray hair, and he say he will
take me to see his daughters that he got outside. Me, I am not yet
sixteen years old.
"So when the ice go out of the lake and they say the first York boat
will leave Grier's Point soon as it is light next morning, he tell me,
and in the night I get out of my bed. There is a nun sleeping beside
the door, but I crawl under all the beds like a weasel, and I get out.
All the way I run to Grier's Point. It is five miles. Soon it is day,
and they push off the boat. I am so excite', I am _weh-ti-go_, crazy.
But I am still.
"Soon I find I make a mistake. That white man is no good. He begin to
act bad to me, and I am scare. There are many people going on the York
boat, and with so many I am safe. I stay close by the English
schoolmaster's wife, and mind her baby, and he cannot get me. He is
mad. We are on the York boat five days. When we get to the Landing,
when he is drinking in the hotel, I run away and hide in the woods.
"I walk to Prince George by myself. It is a hundred miles, they say.
I beg a little food from the stopping-houses. I sleep in the deep
woods, because I am afraid of men. When I come to the town I am wood
with all I see. So much noise and moving; so many people I don't know
what to do. I feel bad because there is not any place for me. And all
the men look at me the same as that old white man on the York boat.
Always I am hiding from them. I think there is something the matter
with me. Maybe I am bad like the nuns say, and I not know it.
"I walk and walk in the streets. I am much hungry. By and by I get a
job in a laundry. There are other red girls working there, and I think
I am safe. They will tell me what to do. But they act bad to me
because the boss talk and laugh to me, and only curse them. The boss
is like the other men, and soon I have to go without my pay.
"I get another job soon because I am strong. I get many jobs. I
cannot count them. Always some white man he will not let me be, and I
have to go. It is near three years that I am working in Prince George.
There is no use telling it, because it is always the same. By and by I
am really hard inside like the nuns say. I do not care any more. I
say to myself what is the use of a life like this. It makes a girl no
friends. I am only a hunted beast. And I say I will not run any more,
but take what comes. It cannot be worse. But always I have to run
when the time comes. It is something inside me that makes me run.
"At last there was a man who was worse than any of the others. He
followed me from place to place, and spoke bad against me, so that
always I lost my job. He thought if he could starve me out I would go
to him. I would sooner have jumped in the river. By and by I couldn't
get any jobs in Prince George, and I go away.
"I am much sick of white men and white man's country. I think there is
a curse on me that turns them into devils when they look at me. Often
I see they do not act so bad to their own women as to me. So I think I
go back to my mot'er's people. Maybe there is a place for me there.
Maybe I am most red myself.
"So I make a long, long journey. I come to my mot'er's people at last.
It is not good. There is nobody glad to see me. They are poor and
sick and bad. They not like me because I am scold them because they
are so dirty and lazy and foolish. They live beside a company post on
the big river. When I was a little girl it was far off, and we never
see a white man but the trader, but now the steamboat run on the river,
and many white men are coming. There are surveyors measuring the land,
and farmers ploughing it and growing wheat.
"It is moch bad for the red people. The young white men come around
the tepees and flirt with the girls, and give whiskey to the boys. Our
girls and our boys want to go with white men, and dress fine and not
work at all. The boys learn to steal, and the girls are bad. The
people live in houses with stoves to be warm, and they get the lung
sickness. They try to be like white men, and they are nothing.
"My mot'er's husband is a bad man. He beat my mot'er and take a new
wife. He hate me moch because he cannot look in my face. He speak bad
of me to all the people. He is a chief man among those people, and all
believe him and hate me.
"So they do not want me there. I feel bad. I think I doubly cursed
because I cannot stay in any place nowhere. Only St. Jean Bateese, he
is my friend. He remember the good time when the red men were free
hunters. He feel bad like me to see the people dirty and lazy and
sick. He feel much bad to see his children growing up and only badness
waiting for them. When all are sleeping in the tepees we talk much
together.
"By and by we make a plan. We say we take his children and my mot'er
and my mot'er's children, and we travel far from the white men, and we
teach the children how to live like our fathers lived without the white
man and the white man's goods. My mot'er's husband, he not care if we
go. He got a young wife now.
"All winter we are making ready, and when the ice go out in the spring
we start up the river in three canoes. We travel many days on the big
river. The weather is fine, and the children are happy to be
travelling.
"One day Charley and I are hunting a bear on shore. He is wounded, and
we follow him a long, long way up a mountain. He goes into a cave. We
are much afraid to go after him, but we have followed far and there is
no fresh meat, so we go in. We follow him under the mountain, and that
is how we find this place. I am much glad when I see it. It is what
we want. No white man will ever find us here, I say. Here is
everything we need to live. We will live here and die here, and forget
the white man. And me, I think then, I have found happiness."
Nahnya came to a conclusion, and there was a silence by the fire.
"So that is why you wanted to keep me out?" said Ralph, very low.
"You are a white man," murmured Nahnya. "St. Jean and I have sworn to
keep the children from the white men."
Ralph was moved to the bottom of his soul. "Nahnya," he said in a low,
shaken voice, "in all my life before I never made an oath. Hear me
now. I swear to you by all I hold dear, by my honour, by my hope of
heaven, that I will never do anything to bring unhappiness into this
valley!"
"You mean good," she said. "I do not doubt you. But who can tell what
will follow? I have a feeling of evil to come. Once I heard a wise
man say: 'The white men are like a prairie fire and the red men are the
grass. Who shall stop the fire from consuming the grass?'"
At a certain point in the telling of this tale Ralph's intuition had
warned him that something was left out; this feeling pursued him to the
end. "Nahnya," he said presently, "you told me you had been in
Winnipeg."
Her eyes darted a startled, pained glance at him, and her head fell a
little lower.
"Never mind if it's too painful," Ralph said quickly.
"Yes," she said, in the same dead, quiet voice, "I will tell you that,
too. That part I have never told. Not to St. Jean Bateese."
After a while she went on: "When I couldn't get a job in Prince George
any more it is not true that I come back to my mot'er's people right
away. First I go see my father. When things get so bad I think maybe
my father help me. My mother have tell me his name. I ask one and
another and by and by I find out he live in Winnipeg. I have save a
little money, and I go to Winnipeg on the railway. It is a big city.
"I have not been there at all before I learn my father is now a rich,
great man, and the King has put a Sir before his name. Then I am scare
to see him. I do nothing to see him. I get a job. I get many jobs.
I can take care of myself better in such a big city.
"One day in the street I hear a man say my father's name. 'That is
he,' he said, and I look and I see my father. He is riding in a fine
motor-car with his white wife and his white children. My heart beat
fast to see him. He is a handsome, proud man, not very old yet. He
was just a boy when he was in our country; my mot'er tell me so. A boy
with yellow hair who laugh all the time and play jokes, she say. Still
he likes to laugh I see by the lines in his face.
"After I see him in his fine motor-car I am more scare. What does he
want with a poor girl like me, I think, and I do nothing to see him.
But all the time I read the newspapers to find out what he does. Then
I see there is going to be a big, what you call, political meeting, and
my father is going to speak. So I go to the skating-rink on that
night, and all the people look at me because there is no other red girl
go to that political meeting. But I not care. I am crazy to hear my
father's voice. When he stand up to speak my heart knock in my breast
like the stick-kettle when the people dance.
"He speaks. It is beautiful. I do not understand it all, but I am
happy because my father is a good, kind man who wishes good to all the
poor people. Always he is working for the people, he says. His voice
was as sweet and strong as an organ in church. When I hear him speak I
know for sure he is my father, because I feel the same inside as him,
but I cannot speak it.
"After that I think much I go to see him. I am afraid and I am not
afraid. I think why should I be afraid, he is kind, he feels for poor
people. I think maybe I go as a poor girl, and not tell him I am his
daughter. At last I go.
"When I see his house I am scare again. It is as big as a hill. It
has a hundred windows. Long time I walk outside the yard. 'You are a
fool,' I say to me. 'You have done nothing against him; he will not be
angry.' At last I go to the door. A man comes. He say my father is
out and close the door to me. As I am going down the steps my father
comes in his motor-car. He asks me what I want. I say I want to see
him. He laugh and take me inside with him, into a room. It is like a
dream. My legs are shaking.
"It is a beautiful room with high windows. All around the walls there
are books with different coloured covers. There is a big desk, and he
sit behind it, and lean back and pull off his gloves. He smile. He
has beautiful white teeth, like my mot'er tell me, and he ask me again
what I want. I am so scare I say the first thing I think. I ask him
for a job.
"He is very kind. He say: 'Certainly we will find you work. What can
you do?'
"I say I am a good laundress, or a cook, or a nurse. We talk some
more. He is still kind. He ask me how long I been in Winnipeg, and
where I work and all. Always I am too scare to say in that fine room:
'I am your daughter.'
"At last he say: 'Well, come back to-morrow, and I'll see what I can
do.' Then I start to go, and he say: 'Wait a minute.' He get up and
come around the desk, his eyes go bad----"
She paused. Ralph's heart beat thickly with a horrible premonition.
"I run out of the house," Nahnya faltered. "I never tell him. I never
see him again!"
X