Part 2 (2/2)
”What did the Council do?” gasped Mr. Evans.
”Accepted me as chief and interpreter,” replied the young man, smiling. ”There was nothing else to do.”
”Oh, you royal woman! You loyal, loyal mother!” cried Lydia to herself. ”How I love you for it!”
Then she crept away just as Mr. Evans had sprung forward with both hands extended towards the young chief, his eyes beaming with almost fatherly delight.
Unconsciously to herself, the English girl's interest in the young chief had grown rapidly year after year. She was also unconscious of his aim at constant companions.h.i.+p with herself. His devotion to her sister, whose delicate health alarmed them all, more and more, as time went on, was only another royal road to Lydia's heart.
Elizabeth was becoming frail, shadowy, her appet.i.te was fitful, her eyes larger and more wistful, her fingers smaller and weaker. No one seemed to realize the insidious oncreepings of ”the white man's disease,” consumption, that was paling Elizabeth's fine English skin, heightening her glorious English color, sapping her delicate English veins. Only young George would tell himself over and over: ”Mrs. Evans is going away from us some day, and Lydia will be left with no one in the world but me--no one but me to understand--or to--care.”
So he scoured the forest for dainties, wild fruits, game, flowers, to tempt the appet.i.te and the eye of the fading wife of the man who had taught him all the English and the white man's etiquette that he had ever mastered. Night after night he would return from day-long hunting trips, his game-bag filled with delicate quail, rare woodc.o.c.k, snowy-breasted partridge, and when the illusive appet.i.te of the sick woman could be coaxed to partake of a morsel, he felt repaid for miles of tramping through forest trails, for hours of search and skill.
PART II.
Perhaps it was this grey shadow stealing on the forest mission, the thought of the day when that beautiful mothering sister would leave his little friend Lydia alone with a bereft man and four small children, or perhaps it was a yet more personal note in his life that brought George Mansion to the realization of what this girl had grown to be to him.
Indian-wise, his parents had arranged a suitable marriage for him, selecting a girl of his own tribe, of the correct clan to mate with his own, so that the line of blood heritage would be intact, and the sons of the next generation would be of the ”Blood Royal,”
qualified by rightful lineage to inherit the t.i.tle of chief.
This Mohawk girl was attractive, young, and had a partial English education. Her parents were fairly prosperous, owners of many acres, and much forest and timber country. The arrangement was regarded as an ideal one--the young people as perfectly and diplomatically mated as it was possible to be; but when his parents approached the young chief with the proposition, he met it with instant refusal.
”My father, my mother,” he begged, ”I ask you to forgive me this one disobedience. I ask you to forgive that I have, amid my fight and struggle for English education, forgotten a single custom of my people. I have tried to honor all the ancient rules and usages of my forefathers, but I forgot this one thing, and I cannot, cannot do it! My wife I must choose for myself.”
”You will marry--whom, then?” asked the old chief.
”I have given no thought to it--yet,” he faltered.
”Yes,” said his mother, urged by the knowing heart of a woman, ”yes, George, you have thought of it.”
”Only this hour,” he answered, looking directly into his mother's eyes. ”Only now that I see you want me to give my life to someone else. But my life belongs to the white girl, Mrs. Evans' sister, if she will take it. I shall offer it to her to-morrow--to-day.”
His mother's face took on the shadow of age. ”You would marry a _white_ girl?” she exclaimed, incredulously.
”Yes,” came the reply, briefly, decidedly.
”But your children, your sons and hers--they could never hold the t.i.tle, never be chief,” she said, rising to her feet.
He winced. ”I know it. I had not thought of it before--but I know it. Still, I would marry her.”
”But there would be no more chiefs of the Grand Mansion name,”
cut in his father. ”The t.i.tle would go to your aunt's sons. She is a Grand Mansion no longer; she, being married, is merely a Straight-Shot, her husband's name. The Straight-Shots never had n.o.ble blood, never wore a t.i.tle. Shall our family t.i.tle go to a _Straight-Shot_?” and the elder chief mouthed the name contemptuously.
Again the boy winced. The hurt of it all was sinking in--he hated the Straight-Shots, he loved his own blood and bone. With lightning rapidity he weighed it all mentally, then spoke: ”Perhaps the white girl will not marry me,” he said slowly, and the thought of it drove the dark red from his cheeks, drove his finger-nails into his palms.
”Then, then you will marry Dawendine, our choice?” cried his mother, hopefully.
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