The Gaspards of Pine Croft: A Romance of the Windermere

by Ralph Connor

“Will she never see?” demanded the boy. Again the woman shook her head.

“How did she—who did this to her?” again demanded the boy.

“She was born—this way,” said the woman in a toneless voice.

“Born—blind!” The boy kneeled down, looked into the blue eyes, touched with his fingers the uplifted face now turned toward him, then, with a low cry, put his face in the little one’s lap. “Oh, God, why did you let her? Why did you let her?” he sobbed again and again. “She’s so little—so little.”

At the sight of him the woman’s stony face broke in tender pity, the silent tears flowed down her cheeks, while the baby’s fingers, like little living things, played lightly over the boy’s head seeking his face.

In that hour of solemn sacrament the boy in an unspoken covenant dedicated himself to the care and protection of this babe upon whose blue eyes God for some mysterious reason had let this unspeakable horror of darkness fall. Thenceforth no love, no lure could draw away the boy’s heart whensoever the babe had need of him. In that hour too the Indian mother of the blind child gave to the boy the deep adoring love of her heart, veil it as she might, second only to that she had given to the man for whose sake she had abandoned home and race and all else that she held dear.

The weeks following the arrangement as to Paul’s headquarters were somewhat difficult for the boy. For one thing, Peg was never satisfied that the whole afternoon should be given to Pine Croft, and was continually impressing into her service the Colonel in planning expeditions of one kind and another in which Paul should join. Then, more and more Paul came to see that the days were dragging wearily for his father. Few of the old neighbours visited at Pine Croft, in spite of the vigorous propaganda carried on in the little community by the Colonel and his lady in favour of a generous and liberal judgment of Gaspard and his social misadventures. The only response came from the Macdonalds who, in spite of the stern and rigid ethical standards inherited from their sturdy Nova Scotian forebears, frankly accepted the guarantee of the Colonel and his wife and often dropped in of an evening or on a Sunday afternoon. But it was hard going for them all. The old friends found it difficult to unbend in the old free and easy manners of the old days, without finding themselves involved in reminiscences painful and embarrassing to all concerned. And none of them, with the very best of intentions, could break through the shy, proud reserve of the Indian woman. She had her own life, and between that life and the life of the valley there existed but one vital point of contact, the man whose life she had twice saved and for whom she would gladly any day lay down her life.

Sleeman alone, their nearest neighbour, appeared to be able to establish free and friendly relations with Pine Croft and its mixed household. In and out of the house he was with a familiarity which in the old days Gaspard would have made short work of, but which in these days of ostracism and loneliness he tolerated, even welcomed. Long hours they sat together with, too often, the bottle on the table. Often too a poker game beguiled the hours. Paul hated these afternoons and evenings and hated the man whose visits made them possible. From Sleeman his very soul turned in revulsion. There was in him the same quality which Paul discovered in the big milk snakes which here and there he used to come upon, sliding without changing shape out of sight into the underbrush. His son, Asa, affected Paul in a similar manner. Never with any degree of comfort had he been able to touch Asa’s hand. With Adelina it was different. There was nothing snaky about her. A biting tongue she had when it was needed, and a hard-hitting fist when occasion demanded, but she never showed any snake-like movements. She stood up straight, ready to fight for her rights and ready to accept a beating when it came her way. But both father and son Paul kept at long range, and it is fair to say that the repulsion was mutual. And this repulsion it was that wrought upon Paul’s life a potent reaction.

Often in their morning expeditions the children from the “big white house” and the Sleemans would foregather and explore some of the many bits of wonderland in the midst of which they had their homes. Were it not for Adelina, who was devoted to him, Paul would have avoided these meetings. And then too, for Asa the dainty, bright, vivacious little girl from the big white house had a strong fascination, of which, true to her sex, the child was pleasantly conscious but the reaction from which in a continual bullying and teasing she hated. But she admired Asa for his strength and his ability to do things men could do with horses and cattle and machinery, and in her heart she coveted for Paul, whose slave she was, these gifts and powers. Of course, Paul had compensating qualities which lifted him to a plane far beyond Asa’s poor reach. And she made Asa conscious of this, to Paul’s undoing. For Asa was ever on the watch for opportunities to humiliate him in the presence of the others. Yet there was that about Paul that imposed limits upon Asa’s bullying tendencies. Behind the smaller boy’s reserve there lurked a spiritual quality of mastery that somehow held Asa’s coarser nature in check and made the boy the dominating spirit in the little group. In moments of crisis it was to Paul they instinctively turned.

Notwithstanding this, however, Paul had often sore conflict with himself and was hard put to it to endure the humiliations which Asa put upon him. For in the matter of retaliations Paul was severely handicapped by his religious convictions. The majestic simplicity of the Sermon on the Mount, in such matters as anger and retaliations, hampered him. The impossibility of the lex talionis had been instilled into his soul by his mother’s doctrine in these matters which, by the way, was quite undiluted by the ingenious refinements of a school of interpretation which sought a place in that sublime ethical code for wrath, hatred, revenge and such like exercises of the human soul. His mother, simple soul, had only one method of interpretation, that of the childlike spirit. Consequently Paul’s limitation in the way of the ordinary human reactions to such tyrannies and wrongs as are the lot of the weak at the hands of the strong were serious enough. After much long and painful meditation Paul had achieved a working theory of ethics in regard to rights of freemen under the yoke of a tyrant. He was quite clear about that. He had cunningly extracted from the gallant Colonel his opinion as to legitimate causes for war and he had come to the fixed conviction that, given a worthy cause, war was praiseworthy and right, care being taken to exclude all purely selfish motives. In the early days of Asa’s tyrannous conduct, nearly two years ago, Paul made the painful discovery that he was afraid of his enemy. It was then that he had approached the Colonel with the request that he be taught to fight. He hated to feel afraid. It lowered his self-respect immeasurably. More than that, it deprived him of that fine glow of heroic virtue arising from his voluntary endurance without retaliation of many acts of persecution. It was this resolve to overcome the weakening and abasing sense of fear by learning how to fight that spurred him to endure the somewhat strenuous instructions of the little fighting Colonel in the manly art.