Читать книгу The Stream Runs Fast - Nellie Letitia McClung - Страница 10

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These are magic words which often changed the monotony of our lives into the lilting rhythm of waltz-time. Manitou had the name of being a good show town, which means we all rallied to the call when the word went forth that some concert party, dance, or magician was coming. Our population being then, as now, about nine hundred, we, the footloose and show-minded, could fill the hall, so I think we got every attraction that, in the early nineties, ever took to the road.

And how we enjoyed them! Harold Nelson, and his Shakespearean players, the Cosgroves, with Marietta LaDell, Jessie McLaughlin, Edith Miller, Edith Sutherland, Nanny Strachan and Gavin Spence, the Swiss Bell Ringers—the beautiful Palmatier sisters, the Jubilee Singers, the Webling sisters, and our own George Rutherford and Minnie Ruttan.

I can recapture the feeling of rapture as we walked to the hall, carrying our coats on a fine spring or summer evening. The fine weather did not mean the end of the concert season for us. Far from it. No doubt the entertainers preferred warm weather and we were never too busy to come.

The hall may have been a drab little place, with nothing but a raised platform and coal oil footlights, but when the blinds were drawn and all the lamps lighted and the audience assembled, no opera house that I have ever been in gave out a greater feeling of high expectancy. We dressed in our best for these great occasions. We wore no hats. Brides wore their wedding dresses. Mrs. Gordon Bradley, our best local singer, always wore a red flower in her black hair. There were opera wraps which closely resembled piano drapes but no remarks were made. We were too happy to be catty. The opening hour was eight o'clock, and if the artists "obliged" with encores, the performance lasted well into the night. Then there were refreshments for the performers, and the committee, and bouquets of garden flowers. Manitou was a good show town, and we were proud of our good name.

Let no one think that our entertainment was all made for us. We had concerts of our own; school concerts and flag drills and Indian club swinging; plays and cantatas by young peoples' societies; Christmas concerts with Santa Claus coming down from the loft on a rope, to the loud acclaim and gasping surprise of the believers. I still have a pang when I think of the night Bert Crane forgot to take his gloves up with him, and the rope burned his hands, but he distributed the presents and made pleasant remarks to the "Sixes and Under," who never knew their kind benefactor had suffered an injury.

One of the real events was the visit of the poetess, E. Pauline Johnson, who for two nights filled the Methodist Church with an admiring audience. Pauline was at the zenith of her power and beauty at that time having recently returned from her triumphal tour of England. The night was bitterly cold, but the Church was overflowing. Pauline's advertising had shown only the Indian girl in her beaded chamois costume and feather headdress, so when a beautiful young woman in white satin evening dress came out of the vestry door and walked to the platform, there was a gasp of surprise from the audience. Pauline smiled at us reassuringly, knowing what was in our minds.

"I am going to be a white woman first," she said in her deep voice, "the Indian part will follow." Then she told us about her home, "Chiefswood," at Brantford on the Grand River, built by her father, of black walnut from his own land—land given by the British Crown to the Brotherhood of the Six Nations, founded over four hundred years ago by Hiawatha.

She told us about her recent visit to England, and her encounters with some of the well-intentioned but clumsy efforts to smooth over the fact of her Indian blood.

"My dear," said one short-sighted countess, raising her lorgnette, "your skin is really very clear and white, and yet you say your father is an Indian." Pauline acknowledged the fact, and the countess blundered on: "Really," she said, "I would not have known it." But before the interview was over, the Mohawk Princess scored. She blandly asked her interrogator if it was true that she was of pure white blood, at which the countess snorted in indignation. "Of course I am," she said—to which Pauline murmured politely:

"I would never have known it!"

I remember the rhythm and charm of her voice as she recited a poem about the Grand River,

. . . . . . "Here, impossible romances Indefinable sweet fancies Cluster round . . . . . . And the perfume of some burning Far-off brushwood ever turning To exhale All its smoky fragrance dying In the arms of evening lying Where I sail."

Languorous, picture-making poetry, not much meaning in it, but it was surely pure music on her lips.

In the second part of the program the grand lady was gone and a lithe Indian girl took her place, telling us stories of her people, and their battle for existence. I remember especially the story of Onesimo, who made love to a white man, and then stabbed him to free her Indian lover. I think Pauline must have been an actress of great power, for I can still recall the great moment in this story. So real was the cold duplicity of the heroine, that the mother of the young man who had agreed to drive Pauline to her next engagement, frantically appealed to him to have nothing to do with this treacherous woman, and Pauline, like the good trouper she was, added that story to her repertoire.

On the day following her recital, my sister-in-law and I called on her at the hotel, but that calm, simple sentence tells nothing of our state of mind. She was the first great personage we had met, and we knew it was a time for white gloves and polished shoes. However, at her first word, we felt at home with her and for an hour we sat entranced in the best parlor of the Cassin house, with its old-gold plush chairs under us, and the enlarged photographs and deer heads looking down on us, oblivious of everything but this charming, friendly woman. She told us of her first efforts to sell her poems, and how proud she was when she first saw her verse in print.

We tried to remember our manners; we knew a call must not drag on into a visit. Then we asked her if she would come for dinner with us the next day, which was Sunday. She would and did, and no one ever had a more gracious guest. She told us about the old Mohawk church, where she worshipped when she was at home. It was the first church in Ontario and in it was the Bible which Queen Anne had given to the congregation in 1701.

The afternoon went by on silken wings. Cold winds blew down Front Street in Manitou; we were still living in the four rooms above the drug store, and the shutters creaked in the blast, but we were living in another world, touching the hem of our own romantic past.

Unfortunately for me, I never saw Pauline again, though in her last illness, which lasted for two years, it was my great privilege to write to her and receive letters from her in reply. She died in Vancouver on March 7th, 1913, and was buried on her birthday, March 10th, from Christ church.

From her friend, Jean Stevenson, I heard about her funeral, and the honors paid her. Representatives were present from every organization in the City. Lady Tupper led the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, and on the casket, in purple drape, showing the royal blood of the deceased, was a pall worked by the Pauline Johnson Chapter of the I.O.D.E. The Capilano tribe, whose legends Pauline has immortalized, was officially represented by Chief Matthias, in full regalia, who followed directly behind the bier, while drawn up along Georgia Street a long line of silent Red men "stood immobile all through the service and until the funeral cortege had passed on the way to the cemetery." Flags on all public buildings hung at halfmast, and the following telegram was received by Mayor Baxter from H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, then Governor-General of Canada: "Kindly express to the friends of the late Pauline Johnson my very deep regret at the news of her death."

Fortunately, Mrs. Stevenson has preserved many of her letters, which reveal her strength and sweetness of character and her profound wisdom. Never once did Pauline falter in her loyalty and devotion to her own people, even when she stood on London Bridge, and looked at the glories of the greatest city in the world, she saw it through the eyes of her people.

"It is a far cry from a wigwam to Westminster," she wrote. "And London seems a strange place to the Red Indian whose eyes still see the forest trees, even as they gaze across the Strand, and whose feet still feel the clinging moccasin even among the scores of clicking heels that hurry along the thoroughfares of the pale faces."

She compares what she sees and hears in St. Paul's with the rites and ceremonies of her own people. Instead of the altar lights, flared the camp fires on the Onondega "long house," and the resinous scent of the burning pine drifted across the fetid London air. "I saw the tall, copper-skinned firekeeper of the Iroquois council enter, the circle of light flung fitfully against the black surrounding wood. None so regal, so august, as he. His garb of fringed buckskin and ermine was no more grotesque than the vestments worn by the white preachers in high places."

I wonder what will be the place assigned to her in Canadian literature in the future. Will her melodious verse survive? She left only three slim volumes of poems, but I do not believe we have any poem that sings more sweetly than her "Paddle Song." I still remember the spell it put upon me when first I read it:

. . . . . "After the cataract comes the calm, We've raced the rapid; we're far ahead The river slips through its silent bed, Sway, sway, As the bubbles spray And fall in tinkling tunes away."

This poem, I am glad to note, is still in one of the School Readers, which augurs well for its immortality.

Now for a happy coincidence.

As I was writing these words, I interrupted the writing to listen to a school broadcast, and was delighted to hear a soft-voiced teacher telling her class the legend of the young chief, who went forth into the woods to expiate the sin of having begotten twin sons. She gave Pauline the credit of having received the legend from old Chief Capilano, and preserving it in beautiful words. The children loved the story and the teacher promised to tell them another legend the next day. I could easily believe that in some bright meadow in the Elysian fields, gay with Indian paint-brush and shooting star, Pauline and her people were happily listening, glad to know that their wisdom and their love of truth was still revered and cherished upon earth.

I must take one other memory of the old Town Hall out of "Time's careless keeping".

Its timbers will always be sacred to me for it was there that my daughter Florence and I joined the Dickens' Fellowship. And it was not a simple initiation of paying a fee and signing a card and receiving the right hand of fellowship. We were initiated as the Indians conduct their ceremonials, by a test of hardihood, but I must begin at the beginning.

Across the road from our house stood a little weather-beaten dwelling whose occupants came and went frequently. It seemed to harbour a strange contagion of impermanency, though it was an honest enough little house with its L-shaped walls and lean-to kitchen. At the time of which I write its tenants were a Mr. and Mrs. Vander and their three children. The father was a meek little man with a Byronic face, who spoke beautiful English and read from the classics. The mother went out working by the day, a tired draggled woman, who accepted her lot in life without complaint. The family consisted of three handsome children, the eldest girl had a gift for music and art, which won for her an honorable place in the local school. She had her father's gift for language and one day defined her family in these words:

"Father gives us amusement and instruction but mother feeds and clothes us. I like them equally well, according to my mood and my needs. We couldn't very well get on without them. I think I like father a little bit better than mother, for I'm often sorry for mother and being sorry for people does not make for loving."

There was a scarcity of teachers in the Manitou District at this time, and when I discovered that Mr. Vander had once taught in a boys' school, I thought we might be able to get a temporary certificate for him and get him installed in one of the country schools. I knew he could teach well if he wanted to. His wife was more enthusiastic than he when I went over and made the suggestion. When I mentioned the usual salary of fifty dollars a month, I could see that he was not impressed.

"We're doing very well as we are now," Mr. Vander began. "My time is quite well taken up teaching the children, supplementing the rather sketchy teaching they are receiving in your Canadian schools. Frankly I believe in leaving well enough alone."

Mrs. Vander interrupted in her quiet way.

"I could employ my time, too, looking after their needs, but where is the money to come from if I stopped working, Frederick? I do not really enjoy working in other people's houses."

"It's all a bit of a bore," said Frederick, "but if you can get permission for me to teach and persuade the school to take me, I will sacrifice my own desires and take it." His brown eyes beamed on me then, fortified by his own high resolve.

We got the school and permission came from the Department and Mr. Vander was duly called for by one of the trustees and was taken out, the ten miles to his school. Mr. Vander's term of employment was exactly two weeks. The youngest girl came over to tell me. Her tone was one of complete detachment; she was the perfect reporter who gave the facts, uncolored by her own opinions.

"My father has returned. He will not go back."

I went over to interview the unwelcome prodigal.

"I left your school," he said in his most melodious voice, "not without regret. My reasons were entirely psychological, and you, being a Canadian, may find them difficult to understand. The people in that district are too utterly ignorant. I could never hope to reach them."

"You went there to teach the children," I said. "And if their parents are ignorant, that is all the more reason that their children should be taught. I know the people out there, and they are good decent, hard-working people. I'm sure they were kind to you and willing to give you the best they had."

He settled himself more comfortably in his chair and bowed his head.

"Mr. Vander," I went on, "you should try to grow up and assume some responsibility. You left that school because you wanted to come back to that easy chair where food and lodging are provided by your wife's efforts. Have you no pride?"

"Pride!" He caught at the word eagerly. "Yes, madam, I have pride. I have pride of ancestry, nationality and tradition. I am proud of my heritage of English literature and if you and my wife will refrain from interrupting me I will take you into my confidence. I have a plan to help my fellow men, an infinitely better plan than this teaching scheme, one into which I can put my whole heart."

He was off on his magic carpet, leaving the cares of the world behind him, and strangely enough he was able to make us listen.

His plan was, in brief, to give readings from Dickens' "Christmas Carol" two days before Christmas. He would make his own tickets and send the children out to sell them: