Part 5 (1/2)
It was a golden morning in July when the doctor stood grasping George Mansion's slender hands, searching into his dusky, anxious eyes, and saying with ringing cheeriness, ”Chief, I congratulate you. You've got the most beautiful son upstairs--the finest boy I ever saw. Hail to the young chief, I say!”
The doctor was white. He did not know of the broken line of lineage--that ”the boy upstairs” could never wear his father's t.i.tle. A swift shadow fought for a second with glorious happiness.
The battlefield was George Mansion's face, his heart. His unfilled duty to his parents a.s.sailed him like a monstrous enemy, then happiness conquered, came forth a triumphant victor, and the young father dashed noiselessly, fleetly up the staircase, and, despite the protesting physician, in another moment his wife and son were in his arms. t.i.tle did not count in that moment; only Love in its tyrannical majesty reigned in that sacred room.
The boy was a being of a new world, a new nation. Before he was two weeks old he began to show the undeniable physique of the two great races from whence he came; all the better qualities of both bloods seemed to blend within his small body. He was his father's son, he was his mother's baby. His grey-blue eyes held a hint of the dreaming forest, but also a touch of old England's skies. His hair, thick and black, was straight as his father's, except just above the temples, where a suggestion of his mother's pretty English curls waved like strands of fine silk. His small mouth was thin-lipped; his nose, which even in babyhood never had the infantile ”snub,”
but grew straight, thin as his Indian ancestors', yet displayed a half-haughty English nostril; his straight little back--all combined likenesses to his parents. But who could say which blood dominated his tiny person? Only the exquisite soft, pale brown of his satiny skin called loudly and insistently that he was of a race older than the composite English could ever boast; it was the hallmark of his ancient heritage--the birthright of his father's son.
But the odd little half-blood was extraordinarily handsome even as an infant. In after years when he grew into glorious manhood he was generally acknowledged to be the handsomest man in the Province of Ontario, but to-day--his first day in these strange, new surroundings--he was but a wee, brown, lovable bundle, whose tiny gossamer hands cuddled into his father's palm, while his little velvet cheek lay rich and russet against the pearly whiteness of his mother's arm.
”I believe he is like you, George,” she murmured, with a wealth of love in her voice and eyes.
”Yes,” smiled the young chief, ”he certainly has Mansion blood; but your eyes, Lydia, your dear eyes.”
”Which eyes must go to sleep and rest,” interrupted the physician, severely. ”Come, Chief, you've seen your son, you've satisfied yourself that Mrs. Mansion is doing splendidly, so away you go, or I shall scold.”
And George slipped down the staircase, and out into the radiant July suns.h.i.+ne, where his beloved trees arose about him, grand and majestic, seeming to understand how full of joy, of exultation, had been this great new day.
The whims of women are proverbial, but the whims of men are things never to be accounted for. This beautiful child was but a few weeks old when Mr. Bestman wrote, announcing to his daughter his intention of visiting her for a few days.
So he came to the Indian Reserve, to the handsome country home his Indian son-in-law had built. He was amazed, surprised, delighted.
His English heart revelled in the trees. ”Like an Old Country gentleman's estate in the Counties,” he declared. He kissed his daughter with affection, wrung his son-in-law's hand with a warmth and cordiality unmistakable in its sincerity, took the baby in his arms and said over and over, ”Oh, you sweet little child! You sweet little child!” Then the darkness of all those harsh years fell away from Lydia. She could afford to be magnanimous, so with a sweet silence, a loving forgetfulness of all the dead miseries and bygone whip-lashes, she accepted her strange parent just as he presented himself, in the guise of a man whom the years had changed from harshness to tenderness, and let herself thoroughly enjoy his visit.
But when he drove away she had but one thing to say; it was, ”George, I wonder when _your_ father will come to us, when your _mother_ will come. Oh, I want her to see the baby, for I think my own mother sees him.”
”Some day, dear,” he answered hopefully. ”They will come some day; and when they do, be sure it will be to take you to their hearts.”
She sighed and shook her head unbelievingly. But the ”some day”
that he prophesied, but which she doubted, came in a manner all too soon--all too unwelcome. The little son had just begun to walk about nicely, when George Mansion was laid low with a lingering fever that he had contracted among the marshes where much of his business as an employee of the Government took him. Evils had begun to creep into his forest world. The black and subtle evil of the white man's firewater had commenced to touch with its poisonous finger the lives and lodges of his beloved people. The curse began to spread, until it grew into a menace to the community. It was the same old story: the white man had come with the Bible in one hand, the bottle in the other. George Mansion had striven side by side with Mr. Evans to overcome the dread scourge. Together they fought the enemy hand to hand, but it gained ground in spite of all their efforts. The entire plan of the white liquor dealer's campaign was simply an effort to exchange a quart of bad whiskey for a cord of first-cla.s.s firewood, or timber, which could be hauled off the Indian Reserve and sold in the nearby town markets for five or six dollars; thus a hundred dollars worth of bad whiskey, if judiciously traded, would net the white dealer a thousand dollars cash. And the traffic went on, to the depletion of the Indian forests and the degradation of the Indian souls.
Then the Canadian Government appointed young Mansion special forest warden, gave him a ”V. R.” hammer, with which he was to stamp each and every stick of timber he could catch being hauled off the Reserve by white men; licensed him to carry firearms for self-protection, and told him to ”go ahead.” He ”went ahead.” Night after night he lay, concealing himself in the marshes, the forests, the trails, the concession lines, the river road, the Queen's highway, seizing all the timber he could, destroying all the whisky, turning the white liquor traders off Indian lands, and fighting as only a young, earnest and inspired man can fight. These hours and conditions began to tell on his physique. The marshes breathed their miasma into his blood--the dreaded fever had him in its claws. Lydia was a born nurse. She knew little of thermometers, of charts, of technical terms, but her ability and instincts in the sick-room were unerring; and, when her husband succ.u.mbed to a raging fever, love lent her hands an inspiration and her brain a clarity that would have shamed many a professional nurse.
For hours, days, weeks, she waited, tended, watched, administered, labored and loved beside the sick man's bed. She neither slept nor ate enough to carry her through the ordeal, but love lent her strength, and she battled and fought for his life as only an adoring woman can. Her wonderful devotion was the common talk of the country. She saw no one save Mr. Evans and the doctors. She never left the sick-room save when her baby needed her. But it all seemed so useless, so in vain, when one dark morning the doctor said, ”We had better send for his father and mother.”
Poor Lydia! Her heart was nearly breaking. She hurriedly told the doctor the cause that had kept them away so long, adding, ”Is it so bad as that? Oh, doctor, _must I send for them_? They don't want to come.” Before the good man could reply, there was a m.u.f.fled knock at the door. Then Milly's old wrinkled face peered in, and Milly's voice said whisperingly, ”His people--they here.”
”Whose people? Who are here?” almost gasped Lydia.
”His father and his mother,” answered the old woman. ”They downstairs.”
For a brief moment there was silence. Lydia could not trust herself to speak, but ill as he was, George's quick Indian ear had caught Milly's words. He murmured, ”Mother! mother! Oh, my mother!”
”Bring her, quickly, _quickly_!” said Lydia to the doctor.
It seemed to the careworn girl that a lifetime followed before the door opened noiselessly, and there entered a slender little old Indian woman, in beaded leggings, moccasins, ”short skirt,” and a blue ”broadcloth” folded about her shoulders. She glanced swiftly at the bed, but with the heroism of her race went first towards Lydia, laid her cheek silently beside the white girl's, then looked directly into her eyes.
”Lydia!” whispered George, ”Lydia!” At the word both women moved swiftly to his side. ”Lydia,” he repeated, ”my mother cannot speak the English, but her cheek to yours means that you are her blood relation.”
The effort of speech almost cost him a swoon, but his mother's cheek was now against his own, and the sweet, dulcet Mohawk language of his boyhood returned to his tongue; he was speaking it to his mother, speaking it lovingly, rapidly. Yet, although Lydia never understood a word, she did not feel an outsider, for the old mother's hand held her own, and she knew that at last the gulf was bridged.