The Riches began the winter cozily, in blissful lack of chemical
consciousness. It would not greatly have interested Dr. Rich to be told
that his teeth contained fluorine, or that the steel of his ax had been
smelted by fluorspar, or even that fluorspar had revealed a world beyond
the violet rays.
He had a chemistry which answered all his purposes. He got it from a
person named Democritus, who, four centuries before Christ, had been so
heretical as to believe that all things are made of atoms. Dr. Rich
secretly regarded himself as pretty liberal not to wish that the books
of Democritus had been burned up. He courageously admitted the general
atomicity of things, though of course all atoms were massy, hard, and
round. Only one thing did the old doctor reserve from granularity, and
that was souls.
At Thanksgiving the Riches were grateful that Horatio, now in the
trenches, was alive and had received his box. With them dined their
Indian friends, the Red Leaf and the Black Hawk, sister and brother.
Their name for Dr. Rich was Mainutung, the Far Hearer, and the
friendship dated back half a century. They never questioned him, and he
never questioned them. Nevertheless Mainutung often wondered if the Red
Leaf had lost a lover in her youth, and she in turn wondered why he had
waited till forty-six before marrying Winifred.
Christmas came, and all reflected with satisfaction that Horatio must
have received his second box. Horatio bore a charmed life, and a letter
from one of his comrades made out that he bore a charming life as well.
The letter told a tale on Horatio. The writer had been with him in a
charge, at a time when respirators were still few. Horatio had handed
his own mask to his buddie and dashed ahead to a point where the gas was
thin and Germans were thick.
In January, 1916, Jean went often on snowshoes to see Ojeeg, the nominal
head of the Crane totem, whose little girl was struggling with
tuberculosis. In vain she pleaded that he build a separate lodge for
Penaycee and give her some air. Ojeeg always shook his head and piled
more wood into the stove.
February, and Penaycee was so much worse that Ojeeg reverted to the
medical methods of his ancestors. Though he refused to build her a lodge
because she would certainly catch a new cold, he secretly brought an old
medicine man from Potoganissing, and for him he did build a lodge. It
was a temporary thing, but the physician sat inside it and called on the
thunder to help the child. Ojeeg and his wife and mother saw the lodge
shake violently in answer to prayer. Jean and the Bluebird and the
Little Pine could not see the vibration. At all events, Penaycee died
the next day.
The aged Father La Hogue had got wind of the performance, and came a
long distance to protest. He was in time to help bury Penaycee on the
ancestral island called Keego, and before he left the spot he gave Ojeeg
a severe lecture. He should have heeded Miss Rich’s advice, which was
sound, though it would have been better had she also advised a little
tartar emetic. But Ojeeg stood silent. He was through with medicine and
priests. He went home from the funeral and got drunk.
Nothing daunted, Jean and the Bluebird built a birch-bark lodge for the
Little Pine, who was eleven years old and determined to be a doctor. The
first night that the boy slept in it, the Bluebird stood before it with
a rifle.
March, and mother was not so well. Two or three times she had spells of
faintness, and again the doctor came down from Sault Sainte Marie. This
time he found a mitral lesion, and told her husband. Dr. Rich in turn
told his daughter. Jean then wanted to do all the work, but was not
permitted. It was good for her mother to be mildly occupied.
But Jean did a world of thinking about that mitral lesion. Her favorite
place for thought was the Tarpeian Rock, a piece of silica ten feet high
that stood on the shore near by, exposed to the light of two thousand
million stars.
It had a gracious projection where one could sit with one’s foot on the
ground, but it also had a gracious ascent, and the long top was smooth
except for ripple marks left in the sand some millions of years ago.
Though snow on the St. Mary’s is never quite gone till May arrives, Jean
kept the top of the Tarpeian swept smooth, and on a March evening she
would spread the skin of a blade bear on that immemorial seashore. Then
she and the dog would cuddle down and philosophize. Agricola’s
philosophy was one of relaxation, but Jean’s was the fruit of her
valedictory. Her star still hung in the midst of heaven. No matter what
happened, God would take care of mother.