Old Man Savarin and Other Stories Part 6

The ground-floor is divided by a hall twenty-five feet wide into two long chambers, one intended to serve as a dining-hall for the mult.i.tude of descendants that Hector expected to see round his old age, the other as a withdrawing-room for himself and his wife, or for festive occasions. In this mansion Angus McNeil now dwelt alone.

He sat out that evening on a balcony at the rear of the hall, whence he could overlook the McTavish place and the hamlet that extends a quarter of a mile further down the Ottawa's north sh.o.r.e. His right side was toward the large group of French-Canadian people who had gathered to hear him play. Though he was sitting, I could make out that his was a gigantic figure.

"Ay--it will be just exactly 'Great G.o.dfrey's Lament,'" McTavish whispered. "Weel do I mind him playing yon many's the night after G.o.dfrey was laid in the mools. Then he played it no more till before his ain wife died. What is he seeing now? Man, it's weel kenned he has the second sight at times. Maybe he sees the pit digging for himself.

He's the last of them."

"Who was Great G.o.dfrey?" I asked, rather loudly.

Angus McNeil instantly cut short the "Lament," rose from his chair, and faced us.

"Aleck McTavish, who have you with you?" he called imperiously.

"My young cousin from the city, Mr. McNeil," said McTavish, with deference.

"Bring him in. I wish to spoke with you, Aleck McTavish. The young man that is not acquaint with the name of Great G.o.dfrey McNeil can come with you. I will be at the great door."

"It's strange-like," said McTavish, as we went to the upper gate. "He has not asked me inside for near five years. I'm feared his wits is disordered, by his way of speaking. Mind what you say. Great G.o.dfrey was most like a G.o.d to Angus."

When Angus McNeil met us at the front door I saw he was verily a giant. Indeed, he was a wee bit more than six and a half feet tall when he stood up straight. Now he was stooped a little, not with age, but with consumption,--the disease most fatal to men of mixed white and Indian blood. His face was dark brown, his features of the Indian cast, but his black hair had not the Indian lankness. It curled tightly round his grand head.

Without a word he beckoned us on into the vast withdrawing room.

Without a word he seated himself beside a large oaken centre-table, and motioned us to sit opposite.

Before he broke silence, I saw that the windows of that great chamber were hung with faded red damask; that the heads of many a bull moose, buck, bear, and wolf grinned among guns and swords and claymores from its walls; that charred logs, fully fifteen feet long, remained in the fireplace from the last winter's burning; that there were three dim portraits in oil over the mantel; that the room contained much frayed furniture, once sumptuous of red velvet; and that many skins of wild beasts lay strewn over a hard-wood floor whose edges still retained their polish and faintly gleamed in rays from the red west.

That light was enough to show that two of the oil paintings must be those of Hector McNeil and his Indian wife. Between these hung one of a singularly handsome youth with yellow hair.

"Here my father lay dead," cried Angus McNeil, suddenly striking the table. He stared at us silently for many seconds, then again struck the table with the side of his clenched fist. "He lay here dead on this table--yes! It was G.o.dfrey that straked him out all alone on this table. You mind Great G.o.dfrey, Aleck McTavish."

"Well I do, Mr. McNeil; and your mother yonder,--a grand lady she was." McTavish spoke with curious humility, seeming wishful, I thought, to comfort McNeil's sorrow by exciting his pride.

"Ay--they'll tell hereafter that she was just exactly a squaw," cried the big man, angrily. "But grand she was, and a great lady, and a proud. Oh, man, man! but they were proud, my father and my Indian mother. And G.o.dfrey was the pride of the hearts of them both. No wonder; but it was sore on the rest of us after they took him apart from our ways."

Aleck McTavish spoke not a word, and big Angus, after a long pause, went on as if almost unconscious of our presence:--

"White was G.o.dfrey, and rosy of the cheek like my father; and the blue eyes of him would match the sky when you'll be seeing it up through a blazing maple on a clear day of October. Tall, and straight and grand was G.o.dfrey, my brother. What was the thing G.o.dfrey could not do? The songs of him hushed the singing-birds on the tree, and the fiddle he would play to take the soul out of your body. There was no white one among us till he was born.

"The rest of us all were just Indians--ay, Indians, Aleck McTavish.

Brown we were, and the desire of us was all for the woods and the river. G.o.dfrey had white sense like my father, and often we saw the same look in his eyes. My G.o.d, but we feared our father!"

Angus paused to cough. After the fit he sat silent for some minutes.

The voice of the great rapid seemed to fill the room. When he spoke again, he stared past our seat with fixed, dilated eyes, as if tranced by a vision.

"G.o.dfrey, G.o.dfrey--you hear! G.o.dfrey, the six of us would go over the falls and not think twice of it, if it would please you, when you were little. Oich, the joy we had in the white skin of you, and the fine ways, till my father and mother saw we were just making an Indian of you, like ourselves! So they took you away; ay, and many's the day the six of us went to the woods and the river, missing you sore. It's then you began to look on us with that look that we could not see was different from the look we feared in the blue eyes of our father. Oh, but we feared him, G.o.dfrey! And the time went by, and we feared and we hated you that seemed lifted up above your Indian brothers!"

"Oich, the masters they got to teach him!" said Angus, addressing 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 G.o.dfrey! Well might the whole pride of my father and mother be on their one white son. A grand young gentleman was G.o.dfrey,--Great G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey; 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 G.o.dfrey'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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey, 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 G.o.dfrey. My mother was like she was wilder with love of G.o.dfrey the more he grew and the grander, and never a word for days and weeks together did she give to us. It was G.o.dfrey this, and G.o.dfrey that, and all her thought was G.o.dfrey!

"Most of all we hated him when she was lying dead here on this table.

We six in the other room could hear G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.d, my G.o.d, Aleck McTavish, if you saw her! she seemed smiling like at G.o.dfrey, 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 G.o.dfrey 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: 'G.o.dfrey to be the only McNeil! G.o.dfrey to take all the pride of the name of us!' Oh, man, man! but we hated G.o.dfrey 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.

"G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey, with a candle in his hand, looking down strange at us, and us looking up strange at him.

"'He is dead,' G.o.dfrey said.

"We said nothing.

"'Father died two hours ago,' G.o.dfrey said.

"We said nothing.

"'Our father is white,--he is very white,' G.o.dfrey said, and he trembled. 'Our mother was brown when she was dead.'

"G.o.dfrey's voice was wild.

"'Come, brothers, and see how white is our father,' G.o.dfrey said.

"No one of us moved.

"'Won't you come? In G.o.d's name, come,' said G.o.dfrey. '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.'

"G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey, 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 McTavis.h.!.+ 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!