He laughed lightly. “Yes, Mrs. Stuart, there are not two of Christie; she is the same at home and abroad, and as for Joe, he doesn’t mind us a bit; he’s no end fond of her.” “I’m very glad he is. I always fancied he did not care for her, d’you know.”
If ever a blunt woman existed it was Mrs. Stuart. She really meant nothing, but her remark bothered Charlie. He was fond of his brother, and jealous for Christie’s popularity. So that night when he and Joe were having a pipe he said: “I’ve never asked you yet what you thought of her, Joe.” A brief pause, then Joe spoke. “I’m glad she loves you.”
“Why?”
“Because that girl has but two possibilities regarding humanity—love or hate.”
“Humph! Does she love or hate you?”
“Ask her.”
“You talk bosh. If she hated you, you’d get out. If she loved you I’d make you get out.”
Joe McDonald whistled a little, then laughed. “Now that we are on the subject, I might as well ask—honestly, old man, wouldn’t you and Christie prefer keeping house alone to having me always around?”
“Nonsense, sheer nonsense. Why, thunder, man, Christie’s no end fond of you, and as for me—you surely don’t want assurances from me?” “No, but I often think a young couple—” “Young couple be blowed! After a while when they want you and your old surveying chains, and spindle-legged tripod telescope kickshaws, farther west, I venture to say the little woman will cry her eyes out—won’t you, Christie?” This last in a higher tone, as through clouds of tobacco smoke he caught sight of his wife passing the doorway.
She entered. “Oh no, I would not cry; I never do cry, but I would be heart-sore to lose you, Joe, and apart from that”—a little wickedly—“you may come in handy for an exchange some day, as Charlie does always say when he hoards up duplicate relics.”
“Are Charlie and I duplicates?”
“Well—not exactly”—her head a little to one side, and eyeing them both merrily, while she slipped softly on to the arm of her husband’s chair—“but, in the event of Charlie’s failing me”—everyone laughed then. The “some day” that she spoke of was nearer than they thought. It came about in this wise.
There was a dance at the Lieutenant-Governor’s, and the world and his wife were there. The nobs were in great feather that night, particularly the women, who flaunted about in new gowns and much splendor. Christie McDonald had a new gown also, but wore it with the utmost unconcern, and if she heard any of the flattering remarks made about her she at least appeared to disregard them.
“I never dreamed you could wear blue so splendidly,” said Captain Logan, as they sat out a dance together.
“Indeed she can, though,” interposed Mrs. Stuart, halting in one of her gracious sweeps down the room with her husband’s private secretary.
“Don’t shout so, captain. I can hear every sentence you uttah—of course Mrs. McDonald can wear blue—she has a morning gown of cadet blue that she is a picture in.”
“You are both very kind,” said Christie. “I like blue; it is the color of all the Hudson’s Bay posts, and the factor’s residence is always decorated in blue.”
“Is it really? How interesting—do tell us some more of your old home, Mrs. McDonald; you so seldom speak of your life at the post, and we fellows so often wish to hear of it all,” said Logan eagerly.
“Why do you not ask me of it, then?”
“Well—er, I’m sure I don’t know; I’m fully interested in the Ind—in your people—your mother’s people, I mean, but it always seems so personal, I suppose; and—a—a—”
“Perhaps you are, like all other white people, afraid to mention my nationality to me.”
The captain winced, and Mrs. Stuart laughed uneasily. Joe McDonald was not far off, and he was listening, and chuckling, and saying to himself, “That’s you, Christie, lay ’em out; it won’t hurt ’em to know how they appear once in a while.”
“Well, Captain Logan,” she was saying, “what is it you would like to hear—of my people, or my parents, or myself ?”
“All, all, my dear,” cried Mrs. Stuart clamorously. “I’ll speak for him—tell us of yourself and your mother—your father is delightful, I am sure—but then he is only an ordinary Englishman, not half as interesting as a foreigner, or—or, perhaps I should say, a native.”
Christie laughed. “Yes,” she said, “my father often teases my mother now about how very native she was when he married her; then, how could she have been otherwise? She did not know a word of English, and there was not another English-speaking person besides my father and his two companions within sixty miles.”
“Two companions, eh? one a Catholic priest and the other a wine merchant, I suppose, and with your father in the Hudson Bay, they were good representatives of the pioneers in the New World,” remarked Logan, waggishly.
“Oh, no, they were all Hudson Bay men. There were no rum-sellers and no missionaries in that part of the country then.”
Mrs. Stuart looked puzzled. “No missionaries?” she repeated with an odd intonation.
Christie’s insight was quick. There was a peculiar expression of interrogation in the eyes of her listeners, and the girl’s blood leapt angrily up into her temples as she said hurriedly, “I know what you mean; I know what you are thinking. You are wondering how my parents were married—”
“Well—er, my dear, it seems peculiar—if there was no priest, and no magistrate, why—a—” Mrs. Stuart paused awkwardly.
“The marriage was performed by Indian rites,” said Christie.
“Oh, do tell me about it; is the ceremony very interesting and quaint—are your chieftains anything like Buddhist priests?” It was Logan who spoke.
“Why, no,” said the girl in amazement at that gentleman’s ignorance. “There is no ceremony at all, save a feast. The two people just agree to live only with and for each other, and the man takes his wife to his home, just as you do. There is no ritual to bind them; they need none; an Indian’s word was his law in those days, you know.”
Mrs. Stuart stepped backwards. “Ah!” was all she said. Logan removed his eye-glass and stared blankly at Christie. “And did McDonald marry you in this singular fashion?” he questioned.
“Oh, no, we were married by Father O’Leary. Why do you ask?”
“Because if he had, I’d have blown his brains out tomorrow.”
Mrs. Stuart’s partner, who had hitherto been silent, coughed and began to twirl his cuff stud nervously, but nobody took any notice of him. Christie had risen, slowly, ominously—risen, with the dignity and pride of an empress.
“Captain Logan,” she said, “what do you dare to say to me? What do you dare to mean? Do you presume to think it would not have been lawful for Charlie to marry me according to my people’s rites? Do you for one instant dare to question that my parents were not as legally—”
“Don’t, dear, don’t,” interrupted Mrs. Stuart hurriedly; “it is bad enough now, goodness knows; don’t make—” Then she broke off blindly. Christie’s eyes glared at the mumbling woman, at her uneasy partner, at the horrified captain. Then they rested on the McDonald brothers, who stood within earshot, Joe’s face scarlet, her husband’s white as ashes, with something in his eyes she had never seen before. It was Joe who saved the situation. Stepping quickly across towards his sister-in-law, he offered her his arm, saying, “The next dance is ours, I think, Christie.”
Then Logan pulled himself together, and attempted to carry Mrs. Stuart off for the waltz, but for once in her life that lady had lost her head. “It is shocking!” she said, “outrageously shocking! I wonder if they told Mr. McDonald before he married her!” Then looking hurriedly round, she too saw the young husband’s face—and knew that they had not.
“Humph! deuced nice kettle of fish—and poor old Charlie has always thought so much of honorable birth.”
Logan thought he spoke in an undertone, but “poor old Charlie” heard him. He followed his wife and brother acr
oss the room. “Joe,” he said, “will you see that a trap is called?” Then to Christie, “Joe will see that you get home all right.” He wheeled on his heel then and left the ball-room.
Joe did see.
He tucked a poor, shivering, pallid little woman into a cab, and wound her bare throat up in the scarlet velvet cloak that was hanging uselessly over her arm. She crouched down beside him, saying, “I am so cold, Joe; I am so cold,” but she did not seem to know enough to wrap herself up. Joe felt all through this long drive that nothing this side of Heaven would be so good as to die, and he was glad when the poor little voice at his elbow said, “What is he so angry at, Joe?”
“I don’t know exactly, dear,” he said gently, “but I think it was what you said about this Indian marriage.”
“But why should I not have said it? Is there anything wrong about it?” she asked pitifully.
“Nothing, that I can see—there was no other way; but Charlie is very angry, and you must be brave and forgiving with him, Christie, dear.”
“But I did never see him like that before, did you?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“Oh, at college, one day, a boy tore his prayerbook in half, and threw it into the grate, just to be mean, you know. Our mother had given it to him at his confirmation.”
“And did he look so?”
“About, but it all blew over in a day—Charlie’s tempers are short and brisk. Just don’t take any notice of him; run off to bed, and he’ll have forgotten it by the morning.”
They reached home at last. Christie said good-night quietly, going directly to her room. Joe went to his room also, filled a pipe and smoked for an hour. Across the passage he could hear her slippered feet pacing up and down, up and down the length of her apartment. There was something panther-like in those restless footfalls, a meaning velvetyness that made him shiver, and again he wished he were dead—or elsewhere.
After a time the hall door opened, and someone came upstairs, along the passage, and to the little woman’s room. As he entered, she turned and faced him.
“Christie,” he said harshly, “do you know what you have done?”
“Yes,” taking a step nearer him, her whole soul springing up into her eyes, “I have angered you, Charlie, and—”
“Angered me? You have disgraced me; and, moreover, you have disgraced yourself and both your parents.”
“Disgraced?”
“Yes, disgraced; you have literally declared to the whole city that your father and mother were never married, and that you are the child of—what shall we call it—love? certainly not legality.”
Across the hallway sat Joe McDonald, his blood freezing; but it leapt into every vein like fire at the awful anguish in the little voice that cried simply, “Oh! Charlie!”
“How could you do it, how could you do it, Christie, without shame either for yourself or for me, let alone your parents?”
The voice was like an angry demon’s—not a trace was there in it of the yellow-haired, blue-eyed, laughing-lipped boy who had driven away so gaily to the dance five hours before.
“Shame? Why should I be ashamed of the rites of my people any more than you should be ashamed of the customs of yours—of a marriage more sacred and holy than half of your white man’s mockeries.”
It was the voice of another nature in the girl—the love and the pleading were dead in it.
“Do you mean to tell me, Charlie—you who have studied my race and their laws for years—do you mean to tell me that, because there was no priest and no magistrate, my mother was not married? Do you mean to say that all my forefathers, for hundreds of years back, have been illegally born? If so, you blacken my ancestry beyond—beyond—beyond all reason.”
“No, Christie, I would not be so brutal as that; but your father and mother live in more civilized times. Father O’Leary has been at the post for nearly twenty years. Why was not your father straight enough to have the ceremony performed when he did get the chance?”
The girl turned upon him with the face of a fury. “Do you suppose,” she almost hissed, “that my mother would be married according to your white rites after she had been five years a wife, and I had been born in the meantime? No, a thousand times I say, no. When the priest came with his notions of Christianizing, and talked to them of re-marriage by the Church, my mother arose and said, ‘Never—never—I have never had but this one husband; he has had none but me for wife, and to have you re-marry us would be to say as much to the whole world as that we had never been married before. You go away; I do not ask that your people be re-married; talk not so to me. I am married, and you or the Church cannot do or undo it.’ ”
“Your father was a fool not to insist upon the law, and so was the priest.”
“Law? My people have no priest, and my nation cringes not to law. Our priest is purity, and our law is honor. Priest? Was there a priest at the most holy marriage known to humanity—that stainless marriage whose offspring is the God you white men told my pagan mother of ?”
“Christie—you are worse than blasphemous; such a profane remark shows how little you understand the sanctity of the Christian faith—”
“I know what I do understand; it is that you are hating me because I told some of the beautiful customs of my people to Mrs. Stuart and those men.”
“Pooh! who cares for them? It is not them; the trouble is they won’t keep their mouths shut. Logan’s a cad and will toss the whole tale about at the club before tomorrow night; and as for the Stuart woman, I’d like to know how I’m going to take you to Ottawa for presentation and the opening, while she is blabbing the whole miserable scandal in every drawing-room, and I’ll be pointed out as a romantic fool, and you—as worse; I can’t understand why your father didn’t tell me before we were married; I at least might have warned you to never mention it.” Something of recklessness rang up through his voice, just as the panther-likeness crept up from her footsteps and couched herself in hers. She spoke in tones quiet, soft, deadly.
“Before we were married! Oh! Charlie, would it have—made— any—difference?”
“God knows,” he said, throwing himself into a chair, his blonde hair rumpled and wet. It was the only boyish thing about him now.
She walked towards him, then halted in the center of the room. “Charlie McDonald,” she said, and it was as if a stone had spoken, “look up.” He raised his head, startled by her tone. There was a threat in her eyes that, had his rage been less courageous, his pride less bitterly wounded, would have cowed him.
“There was no such time as that before our marriage, for we are not married now. Stop,” she said, outstretching her palms against him as he sprang to his feet, “I tell you we are not married. Why should I recognize the rites of your nation when you do not acknowledge the rites of mine? According to your own words, my parents should have gone through your church ceremony as well as through an Indian contract; according to my words, we should go through an Indian contract as well as through a church marriage. If their union is illegal, so is ours. If you think my father is living in dishonor with my mother, my people will think I am living in dishonor with you. How do I know when another nation will come and conquer you as you white men conquered us? And they will have another marriage rite to perform, and they will tell us another truth, that you are not my husband, that you are but disgracing and dishonoring me, that you are keeping me here, not as your wife, but as your—your—squaw.”
The terrible word had never passed her lips before, and the blood stained her face to her very temples. She snatched off her wedding ring and tossed it across the room, saying scornfully, “That thing is as empty to me as the Indian rites to you.”
He caught her by the wrists; his small white teeth were locked tightly, his blue eyes blazed into hers.
“Christine, do you dare to doubt my honor towards you? you, whom I should have died for; do you dare to think I have kept you here, not as my wife, but—”
“Oh, God!
You are hurting me; you are breaking my arm,” she gasped.
The door was flung open, and Joe McDonald’s sinewy hands clinched like vices on his brother’s shoulders.
“Charlie, you’re mad, mad as the devil. Let go of her this minute.”
The girl staggered backwards as the iron fingers loosed her wrists. “Oh! Joe,” she cried, “I am not his wife, and he says I am born—nameless.”
“Here,” said Joe, shoving his brother towards the door. “Go downstairs till you can collect your senses. If ever a being acted like an infernal fool, you’re the man.”
The young husband looked from one to the other, dazed by his wife’s insult, abandoned to a fit of ridiculously childish temper. Blind as he was with passion, he remembered long afterwards seeing them standing there, his brother’s face darkened with a scowl of anger—his wife, clad in the mockery of her ball dress, her scarlet velvet cloak half covering her bare brown neck and arms, her eyes like flames of fire, her face like a piece of sculptured graystone.
Without a word he flung himself furiously from the room, and immediately afterwards they heard the heavy hall door bang behind him.
“Can I do anything for you, Christie?” asked her brother-in-law calmly.
“No, thank you—unless—I think I would like a drink of water, please.”
He brought her up a goblet filled with wine; her hand did not even tremble as she took it. As for Joe, a demon arose in his soul as he noticed she kept her wrists covered.
“Do you think he will come back?” she said.
“Oh, yes, of course; he’ll be all right in the morning. Now go to bed like a good little girl and—and, I say, Christie, you can call me if you want anything; I’ll be right here, you know.”
Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers Page 2
