A PILGRIMAGE FOR A FRIEND
Donald opened his eyes before dawn one morning in his second winter
at Whitefish Lake. For a moment he was conscious only of a great
lassitude, of a head numb from pain.
A lamp, turned low, was on a stand near his bed. With difficulty he
twisted about and looked at it. Beside the stand, huddled in a chair,
her head nodding drowsily, sat Nee-tah-wee-gan.
He stared at her in bewilderment. She had never entered his room
before, had never been in the dwelling house. As he looked her head
snapped up and to his astonishment he read joy, a fierce exultation, in
her face.
"You will live!" she whispered jubilantly in Ojibwa.
"Live?" he repeated feebly.
"Yes, live! I was afraid! For days you knew nothing. You did not speak
or move."
"I have been ill?"
"Yes, but do not speak. Sleep again. Be quiet."
She became savagely insistent in her solicitude and crossed to the bed
to tuck the blankets closer. Donald, wondering, continued to stare at
her as she leaned over him.
"You must be quiet!" she commanded, and then with a sudden, frantic
wail she added, "You must not die!"
As he marveled at this passionate, despairful cry she laid a
weather-roughed hand on his brow. Instantly her eyes glowed with
satisfaction.
"The fever is gone," she whispered triumphantly. "You will be better
soon."
Donald closed his eyes and as he lay there flashes of memory developed
vaguely. He recalled talking with Philip Collinge, complaining of
a cold, coming home and going to bed early. He retraced a night of
delirium, of thirst and chills, a dawn with a sleepy cook bringing hot
tea and soggy bannock.
Later there had been an explosion of energy, shrill, angry voices
in the hall, a protesting cook hurled bodily from the room and
Nee-tah-wee-gan's cruel, deeply-lined face, grotesque now with
solicitude and terror, swaying hazily above him.
This last vision persisted. He knew now that she had nursed him with a
savage zeal and amazing sacrifice, that she had remained at his bedside
day and night, that she had fought desperately to save a life which in
the past she had sought only to make a torment.
Nee-tah-wee-gan had mystified Donald since his childhood. Countless
times he saw Ojibwa mothers exhibit affection for their children,
indulging them, petting them, crooning over back cradles. Nothing
of this sort, no tenderness, no embraces, had come to him. Yet there
had always been this fiercely protective spirit. No privation was too
great for Nee-tah-wee-gan in starving times. He had never forgotten
Pe-tah-bo's return from two days of fruitless search for game in bitter
weather, the man's haggard face scarred by frost, his legs barely able
to drag his snowshoes.
Donald was sitting beside the fire when the hunter entered. He had just
taken the hind leg of a rabbit from the kettle, the last bit of food
in the camp, his first that day, and was tearing at it ravenously.
Pe-tah-bo sank down beside him, weak and hopeless.
Then his nostrils swelled as the odor of food touched them. His eyes,
wide with privation, suddenly narrowed and flared with a savage hunger.
He reached out and wrenched the meat from the boy's hands.
Instantly Nee-tah-wee-gan, though weak from hunger, flung herself
across the wigwam. She struck Pe-tah-bo across the eyes with a stick of
firewood, beat him savagely over the head and tore the rabbit leg from
him and returned it to Donald. The next morning she herself went out to
hunt and she did not return until she could bring food.
Yet, with one exception, this strange maternal instinct was confined
strictly to his physical well-being. Throughout his boyhood she had
diligently crammed his mind with the legends of her people. Patiently
and endlessly she had recounted the myths and legends which swayed
their superstitious minds. The ways of the wilderness, all the lore and
all the art of savage existence, these were taught painstakingly.
"You will be a great hunter among your people," was a phrase he heard
almost daily.
But after she had nursed him through his illness at Whitefish Lake,
spending day and night at his bedside, careless of her own strength and
comfort, she resumed, as soon as he had recovered, her taunting and
reviling. Apparently she had helped him back to health only that she
might hiss her spiteful declaration.
"You are an Indian," was her form of greeting. She seemed to have no
object in life except to remind him of his parentage. Her body became
bent and flat and thin. Her face was seamed and twisted and horribly
expressive of the venom that seethed within her. Only the bitter,
savage spirit seemed alive.
It was revealing of the place Philip Collinge filled in his life that
Donald should speak to him of this strange hatred that had dogged his
footsteps so long. Even Evelyn Layard had never been able to break down
the barrier by which he had walled off the sense of ignominy and shame
Nee-tah-wee-gan's actions had caused. The Englishman came upon him just
as one of the old woman's tirades had left him trembling.
Humiliated, Donald turned away, for he saw his friend had heard, and
then he whirled back.
"But you've known it!" he cried. "Everyone has. I understand the north
well enough to see how a thing like that gets whispered from one post
to another."
"Not as you think, though," Philip said gently. "Everyone likes you too
well, old chap. I've heard it talked about and the wonder is always
expressed that you let her stay here."
"I can't drive her away. I'm her son. But has any human the right to do
that to another? She bore me but she has never been a mother to me," he
ended bitterly. "She's never shown anything except hate."
Philip placed an arm across his friend's shoulder and led him away.
"Just remember that she can't do anything to you unless you let her,"
he said. "Don't you understand? It's your strength, not your weakness,
that drives her to this."
"How can that be?"
"You've left her so little, so very little, and the ways of an Indian
woman are so infernally warped by jealousy. I know. Perhaps none knows
better."
Donald glanced at him in surprise. He had often wondered at Philip's
acceptance of his wife's sway over their boys.
"Don't you see?" the Englishman continued. "A white man may take an
Indian woman and she may bear him children, but there is always the
racial struggle. The result is that the children are cursed by the
folly of the father and again by the mother's unwillingness to give
them up to a world she may not enter. Very rarely they are lucky, as
you are. They may have the _feel_ of the white blood but it is beaten
back by the environment in which the mother keeps them. I wish I might
have given my boys what your father gave you."
"But mine stepped out," Donald said bitterly.
"Don't hold that against him. Man's a frail sort of thing, especially
up here where there's nothing to hold him, where all the little props
are absent."
"You stuck. You didn't run."
"I can't claim the credit for that. Perhaps I was too lazy to run. But
we're getting moody. Strip off your shirt and we'll have a go with the
gloves."
It was the Englishman's racial diffidence that kept them from going too
deeply into some things and it was his wisdom that provided a diversity
of interests for the two. He mixed boxing lessons with philosophical
discussions, shooting expeditions with the reading of plays, and as
Donald grew and expanded Philip began to take the pride in his friend
he had once hoped to have in his sons.
The effect of Donald's association with Philip was soon noted at Fort
Bruce. Mactavish would have been gratified by the growing success of
the Whitefish Lake post alone--by the rehabilitation of the Hudson's
Bay fortunes there--but the old Scotchman was something more than a fur
trader. His own private library was the largest within a thousand miles
and he soon unearthed Donald's new interests.
"Do you know, Merton," he said to Layard, when Donald had been at
Whitefish Lake five years, "I wish you would convey my respects to Mrs.
Layard and tell her I regard her as being clairvoyant."
"How's that?" Merton laughed.
"She saw something in Donald Norton that has never been in a half-breed
before. She saw it and brought it out while you and I chuckled at her
sentiment. And I want to tell you something. I once said he came fifty
years too late--that the company would think first of his parentage and
refuse him the place he deserves. I was wrong. That lad can go to the
top, and he's going."
But Philip Collinge recognized Donald's advance better than any other
and because he did he was troubled. He knew something was needed to
round out the character upon which he had labored so long and at last
he hit upon an idea.
"See here," he said one night. "I know you intend to stick to the
fur trade, live in the bush all your life, but that's no reason you
shouldn't know other things as well. What you want right now is a
glimpse of the outside world."
"You mean I ought to ride on a railroad train and a steamship and
perhaps in one of those motor carriages they're beginning to talk
about?" Donald asked.
"I'm in earnest, old chap. It would be a rounding out, you know. Make
your life fuller in every way. There'd be a stimulation in it. You'd be
a better fur trader for a month in London."
"You mean I should go to London?" Donald demanded. "Why, I don't know a
soul, wouldn't----"
"It's the only city in the world." Philip could not keep down the
longing in his voice and strove to cover it with sudden enthusiasm.
"Why, you'd have a marvelous time. I'd give you letters to the governor
and to Sis. She's Lady Hawarth now and a ripping sort. And I have a
brother in the Home Office--something in the undersecretary line. And
then my mother! Don, she'd treat you like a son! Stiff and cold and
prim as Victoria but when she'd get you off alone she'd melt. She'd
love you to death just because you had----"
He broke off suddenly and wheeled toward a window. Donald,
understanding the yearning that tore at his friend's heart, raged
inwardly that Philip should be tied to a dreary post in the wilderness.
"I'll go," he said suddenly. "This summer. I'll write Mactavish by the
winter packet and tell him. I've a leave of absence coming after eight
years straight. And I'll see them all, Phil, your father and mother and
brother and sister."
He knew what it meant, a vicarious homecoming, a stop-gap for
loneliness, and joy, on his return, in the stories he would have to
tell.
* * * * *
Donald left the wilderness by way of Winnipeg and that summer Janet
Layard returned from six years of English school life, coming in
through Hudson Bay and York Factory.
When Donald returned after three months of London, Janet had gone to
join her parents at Kenogami. He was sorry to have missed her. The
little girl with whom he had romped and read and studied and who had
been so strong a champion in the first stumbling days had left a vivid
memory, but even his disappointment was forgotten when he saw Duncan
Mactavish.
"I've already sent Dale Millington out to Whitefish Lake," the district
manager said. "You've put the Keewatin Company on the run there and now
I want the same thing done at Fort James."
"Fort James?" Donald made no attempt to hide his surprise and pleasure.
It was the largest and best post in the district and it seemed only
yesterday that he had stood in the same office and listened to the hard
decision that he must return to Wabinosh for another year.
"Yes, Fort James," Mactavish repeated. "You're young and there's a big
job there but I hope I'm not such an old fogy I can't recognize a man
by his record."
As Donald looked down into the kindly old eyes which made such a
pretense of glaring from under the shaggy brows he suddenly realized
how much this man had done for him. Grudging in his praise, stern in
his demands, and yet gentle and just in his decisions, he seemed for
the moment to personify the spirit of the great company, a spirit which
had reached out to that dirty, unkempt child of the wigwams.
Whitefish Lake was off the direct route to Fort James but Donald went
out of his way to spend a few days there. He not only wanted to pack
his books but nothing could have induced him to miss seeing Philip and
delivering in person the messages he bore.
All the Englishman's repression and control were necessary when they
met. There was the first warm greeting, a silent handclasp, broken
phrases, and then Donald plunged into an account of his stay in London.
Never had he had a task so bitter sweet. He saw his friend grasp
longingly for the smallest crumbs of the story and felt him wince
at each fresh detail. Yet Donald drove himself to what he knew was
torture. He gave his glowing impressions of Philip's father and mother
and brother and sister. He told of their kindness to him, of all the
things they had done to make his visit enjoyable. He described the
places he had seen, laying special stress on those he knew to have been
his friend's favorite haunts, painting London in all the charm in which
he had seen it.
Then he returned to the family, taking up each member. He made them
live there in that lonely trading post--the courtly father whose ease
and worldliness of bearing failed to hide completely the real man
beneath, the proud, formal mother whose Victorian manner had sustained
her until that morning in the garden, the clear-eyed, startlingly
straight-speaking sister, the brother who could shed completely the
stiff, ceremonious official manner and become so delightful and
understanding.
"And the questions, Phil!" Donald exclaimed. "All four asked them. And
so differently. There really weren't enough facts to go around. There
wasn't a thing about your life here they didn't want to know, that they
didn't ask about again and again.
"They knew a lot, too. They must have learned your letters by heart.
They wanted this explained, and that, without end. But most of all it
was you, how you were and not what you did, how you felt and not how
you lived. Your mother--of course I wasn't surprised after you'd warned
me. But your father! I never saw such a change come over a man as when
he----"
"Good God! Stop!" Collinge cried as he hurled himself from his chair
and plunged across the room.
The agony of that cry halted Donald but though he saw his friend's
shoulders shaking, heard the muffled, sobbing groans, he watched and
listened eagerly.
"Phil," he began at last, his own voice trembling, "don't you see----"
"See! I saw from the beginning. I understood what you were doing. But I
can't! I can't!"
"You're a fool!" Donald cried passionately. "They want you. Every one
of them. It's killing your mother."
"Stop it!" Philip commanded. "I can't, I tell you."
"Others run. No one expects them to stick. You can't do your boys any
good. They're going to be exactly what they are, what Ellen has made
them--just two half-breeds hanging around a trading post."
"Don!"
The younger man ignored the desolation of that cry.
"But your family expects you. They think you will come. They've made
all the plans. They've forgotten everything. Your father blames himself
for it all and it's killing him, Phil."
The Englishman turned back from the window. Anguish had twisted his
face but his eyes were steady.
"I'm tied, Donald," he said firmly. "I've tied myself. So far as
Ellen is concerned, I wouldn't hesitate. It means nothing to her. I
couldn't harm her by going. But the boys! They've been doomed from the
beginning, I know, but I alone am responsible and I've got to stick.
I've got to see them through as best I can. Some day, in some way, I
may be able to help them a little. When that time comes I want be on
hand."
"Rot! What could you do for them?"
"Perhaps not much; probably nothing. But I'd be there. Just that would
help them--knowing their father was ready to back them up."
"They wouldn't care what you----" Donald began, and then all the fight
went out of him.
In that moment, in the agony of Philip's sacrifice, Donald was brought
face to face with the reason for a vague discontent, an obscure
longing, which had possessed him from the beginning.
It was not that he had failed to make his fasting dream come true. He
had climbed high since he had left Pe-tah-bo's wigwam and he could
climb still higher. He knew the Layards, Philip and Mactavish were
loyal, that the great company itself approved and trusted him. The
men in the service, fine, big-hearted fellows, had accepted him. All,
he believed, would stick through anything--had long ago forgotten the
smear of red.
Yet despite the place he had won with these people, despite his
success and his growing confidence in himself and his future, there
was the misty yearning for something else, a constant sense of
incompleteness.
Now he suddenly knew it for what it was, understood the longing which
tormented him, the thing of which he believed the cowardice of one
man had robbed him. He knew that no matter where he went or what he
might achieve, he would never feel the touch of a father's hand on
his shoulder, never have the joy of realizing that the man who was
responsible for his being stood beside him.