PAGE 6
My Mother
by
“I almost lost my new title to-day, after you and the ladies had left the Council.”
“Why, George boy!” exclaimed Mr. Evans. “What have you done?”
“Nothing, it seems, except to be successful. The Council objected to my holding the title of chief and having a chief’s vote in the affairs of the people, and at the same time being Government interpreter. They said it would give me too much power to retain both positions. I must give up one–my title or my Government position.”
“What did you do?” demanded Mr. Evans, eagerly.
“Nothing, again,” smiled the young chief. “But my mother did something. She took the floor of the Council, and spoke for forty minutes. She said I must hold the positions of chief which she had made for me, as well as of interpreter which I had made for myself; that if the Council objected, she would forever annul the chief’s title in her own family; she would never appoint one in my place, and that we proud, arrogant Mohawks would then have only eight representatives in Council–only be on a level with, as she expressed it, ‘those dogs of Senecas.’ Then she clutched her broadcloth about her, turned her back on us all, and left the Council.”
“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 companionship 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 appetite 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 appetite 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 woodcock, snowy-breasted partridge, and when the illusive appetite 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 title 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.