himself again to my cousin. "In the Latin and the Greek they trained
him. History books he read, and stories in song. Ay, and the manners
of Godfrey! Well might the whole pride of my father and mother be on
their one white son. A grand young gentleman was Godfrey,--Great
Godfrey we called him, when he was eighteen.
"The fine, rich people that would come up in bateaux from Montreal to
visit my father had the smile and the kind word for Godfrey; but they
looked upon us with the eyes of the white man for the Indian. And that
look we were more and more sure was growing harder in Godfrey's eyes.
So we looked back at him with the eyes of the wolf that stares at the
bull moose, and is fierce to pull him down, but dares not try, for the
moose is too great and lordly.
"Mind you, Aleck McTavish, for all we hated Godfrey when we thought he
would be looking at us like strange Indians--for all that, yet we were
proud of him that he was our own brother. Well, we minded how he was
all like one with us when he was little; and in the calm looks of him,
and the white skin, and the yellow hair, and the grandeur of him, we had
pride, do you understand? Ay, and in the strength of him we were glad.
Would we not sit still and pleased when it was the talk how he could run
quicker than the best, and jump higher than his head--ay, would we!
Man, there was none could compare in strength with Great Godfrey, the
youngest of us all!
"He and my father and mother more and more lived by themselves in this
room. Yonder room across the hall was left to us six Indians. No
manners, no learning had we; we were no fit company for Godfrey. My
mother was like she was wilder with love of Godfrey the more he grew and
the grander, and never a word for days and weeks together did she give
to us. It was Godfrey this, and Godfrey that, and all her thought was
Godfrey!
"Most of all we hated him when she was lying dead here on this table.
We six in the other room could hear Godfrey and my father groan and
sigh. We would step softly to the door and listen to them kissing her
that was dead,--them white, and she Indian like ourselves,--and us not
daring to go in for the fear of the eyes of our father. So the soreness
was in our hearts so cruel hard that we would not go in till the last,
for all their asking. My God, my God, Aleck McTavish, if you saw her!
she seemed smiling like at Godfrey, and she looked like him then, for
all she was brown as November oak-leaves, and he white that day as the
froth on the rapid.
"That put us farther from Godfrey than before. And farther yet we were
from him after, when he and my father would be walking up and down, up
and down, arm in arm, up and down the lawn in the evenings. They would
be talking about books, and the great McNeils in Scotland. The six of
us knew we were McNeils, for all we were Indians, and we would listen to
the talk of the great pride and the great deeds of the McNeils that was
our own kin. We would be drinking the whiskey if we had it, and saying:
'Godfrey to be the only McNeil! Godfrey to take all the pride of the
name of us!' Oh, man, man! but we hated Godfrey sore."
Big Angus paused long, and I seemed to see clearly the two fair-haired,
tall men walking arm in arm on the lawn in the twilight, as if
unconscious or careless of being watched and overheard by six
sore-hearted kinsmen.
"You'll mind when my father was thrown from his horse and carried into
this room, Aleck McTavish? Ay, well you do. But you nor no other
living man but me knows what came about the night that he died.
"Godfrey was alone with him. The six of us were in yon room. Drink we
had, but cautious we were with it, for there was a deed to be done that
would need all our senses. We sat in a row on the floor--we were
Indians--it was our wigwam--we sat on the floor to be against the ways
of them two. Godfrey was in here across the hall from us; alone he was
with our white father. He would be chief over us by the will, no
doubt,--and if Godfrey lived through that night it would be strange.
"We were cautious with the whiskey, I told you before. Not a sound
could we hear of Godfrey or of my father. Only the rapid, calling and
calling,--I mind it well that night. Ay, and well I mind the striking of
the great clock,--tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,--I listened and I
dreamed on it till I doubted but it was the beating of my father's
heart.
"Ten o'clock was gone by, and eleven was near. How many of us sat
sleeping I know not; but I woke up with a start, and there was Great
Godfrey, with a candle in his hand, looking down strange at us, and us
looking up strange at him.
"'He is dead,' Godfrey said.
"We said nothing.
"'Father died two hours ago,' Godfrey said.
"We said nothing.
"'Our father is white,--he is very white,' Godfrey said, and he
trembled. 'Our mother was brown when she was dead.'
"Godfrey's voice was wild.
"'Come, brothers, and see how white is our father,' Godfrey said.
"No one of us moved.
"'Won't you come? In God's name, come,' said Godfrey. 'Oich--but it is
very strange! I have looked in his face so long that now I do not know
him for my father. He is like no kin to me, lying there. I am alone,
alone.'
"Godfrey wailed in a manner. It made me ashamed to hear his voice like
that--him that looked like my father that was always silent as a
sword--him that was the true McNeil.
"'You look at me, and your eyes are the eyes of my mother,' says
Godfrey, staring wilder. 'What are you doing here, all so still?
Drinking the whiskey? I am the same as you. I am your brother. I will
sit with you, and if you drink the whiskey, I will drink the whiskey,
too.'
"Aleck McTavish! with that he sat down on the floor in the dirt and
litter beside Donald, that was oldest of us all.
"'Give me the bottle,' he said. 'I am as much Indian as you, brothers.
What you do I will do, as I did when I was little, long ago.'
"To see him sit down in his best,--all his learning and his grand
manners as if forgotten,--man, it was like as if our father himself was
turned Indian, and was low in the dirt!
"What was in the heart of Donald I don't know, but he lifted the bottle
and smashed it down on the floor.
"'God in heaven! what's to become of the McNeils! You that was the
credit of the family, Godfrey!' says Donald with a groan.
"At that Great Godfrey jumped to his feet like he was come awake.
"'You're fitter to be the head of the McNeils than I am, Donald,' says
he; and with that the tears broke out of his eyes, and he cast himself
into Donald's arms. Well, with that we all began to cry as if our
hearts would break. I threw myself down on the floor at Godfrey's feet,
and put my arms round his knees the same as I'd lift him up when he was
little. There I cried, and we all cried around him, and after a bit I
said:--
"'Brothers, this was what was in the mind of Godfrey. He was all alone
in yonder. We are his brothers, and his heart warmed to us, and he said
to himself, it was better to be like us than to be alone, and he thought
if he came and sat down and drank the whiskey with us, he would be our
brother again, and not be any more alone.'
"'Ay, Angus, Angus, but how did you know that?' says Godfrey, crying;
and he put his arms round my neck, and lifted me up till we were breast
to breast. With that we all put our arms some way round one another and
Godfrey, and there we stood sighing and swaying and sobbing a long time,
and no man saying a word.
"'Oh, man, Godfrey dear, but our father is gone, and who can talk with
you now about the Latin, and the history books, and the great
McNeils--and our mother that's gone?' says Donald; and the thought of it
was such pity that our hearts seemed like to break.
"But Godfrey said: 'We will talk together like brothers. If it shames
you for me to be like you, then I will teach you all they taught me, and
we will all be like our white father.'
"So we all agreed to have it so, if he would tell us what to do. After
that we came in here with Godfrey, and we stood looking at my father's
white face. Godfrey all alone had straked him out on this table, with
the silver-pieces on the eyes that we had feared. But the silver we did
not fear. Maybe you will not understand it, Aleck McTavish, but our
father never seemed such close kin to us as when we would look at him
dead, and at Godfrey, that was the picture of him, living and kind.
[Illustration: WE STOOD LOOKING AT MY FATHER'S WHITE FACE]
"After that you know what happened yourself."
"Well I do, Mr. McNeil. It was Great Godfrey that was the father to you
all," said my cousin.
"Just that, Aleck McTavish. All that he had was ours to use as we
would,--his land, money, horses, this room, his learning. Some of us
could learn one thing and some of us could learn another, and some could
learn nothing, not even how to behave. What I could learn was the
playing of the fiddle. Many's the hour Godfrey would play with me while
the rest were all happy around.
"In great content we lived like brothers, and proud to see Godfrey as
white and fine and grand as the best gentleman that ever came up to
visit him out of Montreal. Ay, in great content we lived all together
till the consumption came on Donald, and he was gone. Then it came and
came back, and came back again, till Hector was gone, and Ranald was
gone, and in ten years' time only Godfrey and I were left. Then both of
us married, as you know. But our children died as fast as they were
born, almost,--for the curse seemed on us. Then his wife died, and
Godfrey sighed and sighed ever after that.
"One night I was sleeping with the door of my room open, so I could hear
if Godfrey needed my help. The cough was on him then. Out of a dream of
him looking at my father's white face I woke and went to his bed. He
was not there at all.
"My heart went cold with fear, for I heard the rapid very clear, like
the nights they all died. Then I heard the music begin down stairs,
here in this chamber where they were all laid out dead,--right here on
this table where I will soon lie like the rest. I leave it to you to
see it done, Aleck McTavish, for you are a Highlandman by blood. It was
that I wanted to say to you when I called you in. I have seen himself
in my coffin three nights. Nay, say nothing; you will see.
"Hearing the music that night, down I came softly. Here sat Godfrey,
and the kindest look was on his face that ever I saw. He had his fiddle
in his hand, and he played about all our lives.
"He played about how we all came down from the North in the big canoe
with my father and mother, when we were little children and him a baby.
He played of the rapids we passed over, and of the rustling of the
poplar-trees and the purr of the pines. He played till the river you
hear now was in the fiddle, with the sound of our paddles, and the fish
jumping for flies. He played about the long winters when we were young,
so that the snow of those winters seemed falling again. The ringing of
our skates on the ice I could hear in the fiddle. He played through all
our lives when we were young and going in the woods yonder together and
then it was the sore lament began!
"It was like as if he played how they kept him away from his brothers,
and him at his books thinking of them in the woods, and him hearing the
partridges' drumming, and the squirrels' chatter, and all the little
birds singing and singing. Oich, man, but there's no words for the
sadness of it!"
Old Angus ceased to speak as he took his violin from the table and
struck into the middle of "Great Godfrey's Lament." As he played, his
wide eyes looked past us, and the tears streamed down his brown cheeks.
When the woful strain ended, he said, staring past us: "Ay, Godfrey, you
were always our brother."
Then he put his face down in his big brown hands, and we left him
without another word.
*McGRATH'S BAD NIGHT*
"Come, then, childer," said Mrs. McGrath, and took the big iron pot off.
They crowded around her, nine of them, the eldest not more than
thirteen, the youngest just big enough to hold out his yellow crockery
bowl.
"The youngest first," remarked Mrs. McGrath, and ladled out a portion of
the boiled cornmeal to each of the deplorable boys and girls. Before
they reached the stools from which they had sprung up, or squatted again
on the rough floor, they all burned their mouths in tasting the mush too
eagerly. Then there they sat, blowing into their bowls, glaring into
them, lifting their loaded iron spoons occasionally to taste cautiously,
till the mush had somewhat cooled.
Then, _gobble-de-gobble-de-gobble_, it was all gone! Though they had
neither sugar, nor milk, nor butter to it, they found it a remarkably
excellent sample of mush, and wished only that, in quantity, it had been
something more.
Peter McGrath sat close beside the cooking-stove, holding Number Ten, a
girl-baby, who was asleep, and rocking Number Eleven, who was trying to
wake up, in the low, unpainted cradle. He never took his eyes off
Number Eleven; he could not bear to look around and see the nine
devouring the corn-meal so hungrily. Perhaps McGrath could not, and
certainly he would not,--he was so obstinate,--have told why he felt so
reproached by the scene. He had felt very guilty for many weeks.
Twenty, yes, a hundred times a day he looked in a dazed way at his big
hands, and they reproached him, too, that they had no work.
"Where is our smooth, broad-axe handle?" asked the fingers, "and why do
not the wide chips fly?"
He was ashamed, too, every time he rose up, so tall and strong, with
nothing to do, and eleven children and his wife next door to starvation;
but if he had been asked to describe his feelings, he would merely have
growled out angrily something against old John Pontiac.
"You'll take your sup now, Peter?" asked Mrs. McGrath, offering him the
biggest of the yellow bowls. He looked up then, first at her forlorn
face, then at the pot. Number Nine was diligently scraping off some
streaks of mush that had run down the outside; Numbers Eight, Seven,
Six, and Five were looking respectfully into the pot; Numbers Four,
Three, Two, and One were watching the pot, the steaming bowl, and their
father at the same time. Peter McGrath was very hungry.
"Yourself had better eat, Mary Ann," he said. "I'll be having mine
after it's cooler."
Mrs. McGrath dipped more than a third of the bowlful back into the pot,
and ate the rest with much satisfaction. The numerals watched her
anxiously but resignedly.
"Sure it'll be cold entirely, Peter, dear," she said, "and the warmth is
so comforting. Give me little Norah now, the darlint! and be after
eating your supper."
She had ladled out the last spoonful of mush, and the pot was being
scraped inside earnestly by Nine, Eight, Seven, and Six. Peter took the
bowl, and looked at his children.
The earlier numbers were observing him with peculiar sympathy, putting
themselves in his place, as it were, possessing the bowl in imagination;
the others now moved their spoons absent-mindedly around in the pot,
brought them empty to their mouths, mechanically, now and again, sucked
them more or less, and still stared steadily at their father.
His inner walls felt glued together, yet indescribably hollow; the smell
of the mush went up into his nostrils, and pungently provoked his palate
and throat. He was famishing.
"Troth, then, Mary Ann," he said, "there's no hunger in me to-night.
Sure, I wish the childer wouldn't leave me the trouble of eating it.
Come, then, all of ye!"
The nine came promptly to his call. There were just twenty-two large
spoonfuls in the bowl; each child received two; the remaining four went
to the four youngest. Then the bowl was skilfully scraped by Number
Nine, after which Number Seven took it, whirled a cup of water artfully
round its interior, and with this put a fine finish on his meal.
Peter McGrath then searched thoughtfully in his trousers pockets,
turning their corners up, getting pinches of tobacco dust out of their
remotest recesses; he put his blouse pocket through a similar process.
He found no pockets in his well-patched overcoat when he took it down,
but he pursued the dust into its lining, and separated it carefully from
little dabs of wool. Then he put the collection into an extremely old
black clay pipe, lifted a coal in with his fingers, and took his supper.
It would be absurd to assert that, on this continent, a strong man could
be so poor as Peter, unless he had done something very wrong or very
foolish. Peter McGrath was, in truth, out of work because he had
committed an outrage on economics. He had been guilty of the enormous
error of misunderstanding, and trying to set at naught in his own
person, the immutable law of supply and demand.
Fancying that a first-class hewer in a timber shanty had an inalienable
right to receive at least thirty dollars a month, when the demand was
only strong enough to yield him twenty-two dollars a month, Peter had
refused to engage at the beginning of the winter.
"Now, Mr. McGrath, you're making a mistake," said his usual employer,
old John Pontiac. "I'm offering you the best wages going, mind that.
There's mighty little squared timber coming out this winter."
"I'm ready and willing to work, boss, but I'm fit to arn thirty dollars,
surely."
"So you are, so you are, in good times, neighbor, and I'd be glad if
men's wages were forty. That could only be with trade active, and a fine
season for all of us; but I couldn't take out a raft this winter, and
pay what you ask."
"I'd work extra hard. I'm not afeard of work."
"Not you, Peter. There never was a lazy bone in your body. Don't I
know that well? But look, now: if I was to pay you thirty, I should have
to pay all the other hewers thirty; and that's not all. Scorers and
teamsters and road-cutters are used to getting wages in proportion to
hewers. Why, it would cost me a thousand dollars a month to give you
thirty! Go along, now, that's a good fellow, and tell your wife that
you've hired with me."
But Peter did not go back. "I'm bound to have my rights, so I am," he
said sulkily to Mary Ann when he reached the cabin. "The old boss is
getting too hard like, and set on money. Twenty-two dollars! No! I'll
go in to Stambrook and hire."
Mary Ann knew that she might as well try to convince a saw-log that its
proper course was up-stream, as to protest against Peter's obstinacy.
Moreover, she did think the offered wages very low, and had some hope he
might better himself; but when he came back from Stambrook, she saw
trouble ahead. He did not tell her that there, where his merits were
not known, he had been offered only twenty dollars, but she surmised his
disappointment.
"You'd better be after seeing the boss again, maybe, Peter dear," she
said timidly.
"Not a step," he answered. "The boss'll be after me in a few days,
you'll see." But there he was mistaken, for all the gangs were full.
After that Peter McGrath tramped far and wide, to many a backwoods
hamlet, looking vainly for a job at any wages. The season was the worst
ever known on the river, and before January the shanties were
discharging men, so threatening was the outlook for lumbermen, and so
glutted with timber the markets of the world.
Peter's conscience accused him every hour, but he was too stubborn to go
back to John Pontiac. Indeed, he soon got it into his stupid head that
the old boss was responsible for his misfortunes, and he consequently
came to hate Mr. Pontiac very bitterly.
After supping on his pipeful of tobacco-dust, Peter sat,
straight-backed, leaning elbows on knees and chin on hands, wondering
what on earth was to become of them all next day. For a man out of work
there was not a dollar of credit at the little village store; and work!
why, there was only one kind of work at which money could be earned in
that district in the winter.
When his wife took Number Eleven's cradle into the other room, she heard
him, through the thin partition of upright boards, pasted over with
newspapers, moving round in the dim red flickering fire-light from the
stove-grating.
The children were all asleep, or pretending it; Number Ten in the big
straw bed, where she lay always between her parents; Number Eleven in
her cradle beside; Nine crosswise at the foot; Eight, Seven, Six, Five,
and Four in the other bed; One, Two, and Three curled up, without taking
off their miserable garments, on the "locks" of straw beside the kitchen
stove.
Mary Ann knew very well what Peter was moving round for. She heard him
groan, so low that he did not know he groaned, when he lifted off the
cover of the meal barrel, and could feel nothing whatever therein. She
had actually beaten the meal out of the cracks to make that last pot of
mush. He knew that all the fish he had salted down in the summer were
gone, that the flour was all out, that the last morsel of the pig had
been eaten up long ago; but he went to each of the barrels as though he
could not realize that there was really nothing left. There were four
of those low groans.
"O God, help him! do help him! please do!" she kept saying to herself.
Somehow, all her sufferings and the children's were light to her, in
comparison, as she listened to that big, taciturn man groan, and him
sore with the hunger.
When at last she came out, Peter was not there. He had gone out
silently, so silently that she wondered, and was scared. She opened the
door very softly, and there he was, leaning on the rail fence between
their little rocky plot and the great river. She closed the door
softly, and sat down.
There was a wide steaming space in the river, where the current ran too
swiftly for any ice to form. Peter gazed on it for a long while. The
mist had a friendly look; he was soon reminded of the steam from an
immense bowl of mush! It vexed him. He looked up at the moon. The
moon was certainly mocking him; dashing through light clouds, then
jumping into a wide, clear space, where it soon became motionless, and
mocked him steadily.
He had never known old John Pontiac to jeer any one, but there was his
face in that moon,--Peter made it out quite clearly. He looked up the
road to where he could see, on the hill half a mile distant, the shimmer
of John Pontiac's big tin-roofed house. He thought he could make out
the outlines of all the buildings,--he knew them so well,--the big barn,
the stable, the smoke-house, the store-house for shanty supplies.
Pork barrels, flour barrels, herring kegs, syrup kegs, sides of frozen
beef, hams and flitches of bacon in the smoke-house, bags of beans,
chests of tea,--he had a vision of them all! Teamsters going off to the
woods daily with provisions, the supply apparently inexhaustible.
And John Pontiac had refused to pay him fair wages!
Peter in exasperation shook his big fist at the moon; it mocked him
worse than ever. Then out went his gaze to the space of mist; it was
still more painfully like mush steam. His pigsty was empty, except of
snow; it made him think again of the empty barrels in the cabin.
The children empty too, or would be to-morrow,--as empty as he felt that
minute. How dumbly the elder ones would reproach him! and what would
comfort the younger ones crying with hunger?
Peter looked again up the hill, through the walls of the store-house.
He was dreadfully hungry.
"John! John!" Mrs. Pontiac jogged her husband. "John, wake up! there's
somebody trying to get into the smoke-house."
"Eh--ugh--ah! I'm 'sleep--ugh." He relapsed again.
"John! John! wake up! There _is_ somebody!"
"What--ugh--eh--what you say?"
"There's somebody getting into the smoke-house."
"Well, there's not much there."
"There's ever so much bacon and ham. Then there's the store-house
open."
"Oh, I guess there's nobody."
"But there is, I'm sure. You must get up!"
They both got up and looked out of the window. The snow-drifts, the
paths through them, the storehouse, the smoke-house, and the other
white-washed out-buildings could be seen as clearly as in broad day.
The smoke-house door was open!
Old John Pontiac was one of the kindest souls that ever inhabited a
body, but this was a little too much. Still he was sorry for the man,
no matter who, in that smoke-house,--some Indian probably. He must be
caught and dealt with firmly; but he did not want the man to be too much
hurt.
He put on his clothes and sallied forth. He reached the smoke-house;
there was no one in it; there was a gap, though, where two long flitches
of bacon _had_ been!
John Pontiac's wife saw him go over to the store-house, the door of
which was open too. He looked in, then stopped, and started back as if
in horror. Two flitches tied together with a rope were on the floor,
and inside was a man filling a bag with flour from a barrel.
"Well, well! this is a terrible thing," said old John Pontiac to
himself, shrinking around a corner. "Peter McGrath! Oh, my! oh, my!"