The Last Crossing (17 page)

Any sane man would have been aghast, but not Dr. Acland. Oronhyatekha was just the “lost cause” a true Oxford man so dearly loves. The doctor paraded him around the university, had him sign the visitors’ book in the reading room of the Bodleian, feted and lionized him. Many were deeply touched by this Indian’s arduous pilgrimage to drink from the well of the university’s wisdom and wished to make his acquaintance. Without my hearing of it, Simon wangled an invitation to a soiree where Oronhyatekha was the principal attraction. One of the guests provided me with a full report, gleefully relating how Simon and Oronhyatekha passed much of the evening in a corner of the drawing room, engrossed in a heartfelt tête-à-tête.

I was wrong to think this encounter insignificant, of a piece with Simon’s penchant for handing out shillings to able-bodied beggars and pence to street-urchin pests. It came as a great shock to me a few weeks later when Simon told me he had contributed twenty pounds to a subscription to enable Oronhyatekha to enter St. Edmund Hall as a student.

Doing my best to check my exasperation, I pointed out to him that this sum was half his quarterly allowance. He told me not to worry, he would economize. Economize how? I demanded. On wine and clothes, he said. I told him his clothes did not do now, he cut a very poor figure. He smiled and remarked I did not know Oronhyatekha, had no inkling of how desperately he wished to pursue an education.

“Fools are very often sincere. I have not seen his signature in the Bodleian, but I can imagine it,” I said, laboriously forming letters in the air. “How is he possibly to benefit from an Oxford education?”

“When one feels a lack, one must take steps to remedy it,” Simon replied.

“A lack of what? Homer in the Greek?”

“That is unkind, Charles. Who among us does not feel he is wanting something to make himself complete?”

“I am aware of no such deficit.”

“Then you are a fortunate fellow. I cannot say the same.”

We left it at that. I was finding that as Simon grew older, he also grew more enigmatic and cryptic. How often since that day have I berated myself for not questioning him further.

Was it friendship Simon felt he lacked? At Oxford, he was indeed a solitary figure. But was not I, who had always been his inseparable companion, close at hand? If Simon had turned to me for advice, allowed me to offer suggestions about his dress and manner, he need not have been lonely. I could have made him acceptable.

But no, Simon preferred time spent with his new protégé. They strolled arm in arm through the quadrangles. He gave the Indian private lessons in his rooms, fed him biscuits and tea. He taught Oronhyatekha to ride a velocipede, a comedy fully appreciated by all who witnessed it.

My childhood protector was now the one in need of protection. I was capable of navigating my way through our new life, but Simon remained as innocent as he was at ten, as oblivious to other’s opinions as he had been to Father’s distaste for his button collection. Where once he had been tolerated as Charles Gaunt’s amusingly high-minded brother, his friendship with the red man prompted those who counted in Oxford to ridicule him. My heart bled to know my brother was dismissed as a buffoon. One day, I overheard Dearborne refer to him as “the Mad Gaunt.” But in spite of all my attempts to persuade him to cut his ties with the stranger, he stubbornly refused.

One night, entering a local establishment, I spotted Simon and Oronhyatekha occupying a table that put them on full display in the very centre of the public bar. Dreading my brother would insist on introducing me to his new bosom friend, I took a seat behind a pillar from which I could observe them undetected. They were deep in conversation, Simon’s face exalted and vivid. Perhaps he was enlightening the Indian on the Athanasian Creed.

Something very peculiar and disturbing ensued. I saw Oronhyatekha reach out and gently touch a lock of Simon’s yellow hair. There was a look of inquiry on the Indian’s face. Just as a scientist might be swept up in curiosity by an unusual specimen, it seemed he was unable to stop himself from examining the phenomena of Simon’s fine, curly blond hair. I could forgive a savage’s manners, but Simon’s willingness to allow such familiarity with his person, to meet such presumption with a willing smile was another matter. The exchange was so fleeting that no one else appeared to have noted what had occurred. But I had. After that incident, my course was decided.

The end of term was near, so I did nothing until my brother and I returned to Sythe Grange. Upon arriving, I went directly to Father and reported my brother’s unfortunate association with Oronhyatekha, as well as the extravagant contribution Simon had made for his support.

Father summoned Simon to the library. I circled back to listen with bated breath at the door. Only father’s voice was audible, booming a King Lear-like soliloquy on the ingratitude of children. I could not hear Simon’s quiet responses, but with Father growing louder as each
minute passed, I knew my brother was not proving amenable to reason. Seconds before the interview finally concluded, Father shouted like a madman, “No, sir, I shall not have it! Make an end of it! That is my final word! Make an end of it!”

I skipped down the corridor to a window. The door of the library swung open and Simon emerged looking very pale but calm. He came up to me where I stood feigning interest in the deer below. Quietly, he said, “I will not be going up to Oxford with you next term, Charles. Father has forbidden it.”

He walked on, leaving me rooted to the floor. This was not the outcome I had hoped for. Giving myself a shake, I hurried after Simon and found him in his room, seated on his bed, Bible already opened on his lap. “Why?” I asked him. “Why has Father forbidden it?”

He looked up and subjected me to a searching look. “You know very well, Charles.” He waited for me to deny my culpability. I could not. He shook his head sadly. “Because I have not conducted myself as a gentleman should. Because I have become a laughingstock, and in doing so made the Gaunt name a laughingstock. Last of all, because I would not give my word of honour never to see Oronhyatekha again.”

Instantly, I regretted what I had done. With the force of a blow, it struck me how insupportable life in Oxford would be without him. How dreadful it would be to be separated for the first time in my life from my twin, the best part of myself. “I shall speak to Father,” I said.

“He will not be moved,” said Simon. “But please understand, you have no need to feel jealousy. Surely you know how dear you are to me and ever will be.”

It was the way Simon spoke to me, so naturally and so kindly, which heaped coals upon my head. The tender, guilty spot that he had touched caused me to wince.

“You accuse me of jealousy? You think that I could be jealous of your savage? How very unchristian of you to make such an accusation.”

Simon got to his feet. His rumpled suit suddenly seemed to me to signal the disorder which he had allowed to creep into his life. “I am very far from walking in Christ’s footsteps. But I wish to add
to the sum of love in the world. Do you not desire to love and be loved, Charles?”

The question was so direct, so genuine, I could not evade it. “I hope to be loved, but if I am not, I shall settle for affection. I cannot be a saint, so I shall endeavour to be a gentleman. I cannot comprehend metaphysics and theology, so I shall place my faith in reason and logic. I do not aim as high as you, but I shall be content.”

“I think you will never be a great painter until you surrender to love,” was all my brother said, and that was enough.

Nothing more of Oronhyatekha was ever mentioned, but I refused to return to Oxford without Simon. Two years at university was sufficient buffing and polishing for me, and twenty years would never have been long enough to put a shine on Simon.

Today, riding back to Fort Benton with Mr. Straw and Addington from the half-breed’s squalid camp, I pondered on a remarkable coincidence. Jerry Potts and the drunken savage that I saw howling and beating the road with a barrel stave are one and the same man. However, I am beyond second thoughts, eagerness to be underway suppresses them.

I said nothing of this to Addington, who was too intent on impressing Mr. Straw with how soundly he had planned our pending operations to look kindly on any interruption from me. My brother was explaining to Mr. Straw how his military experience had taught him that ample stores and suitable transport are of paramount importance. “I set that Potts fellow straight, Mr. Straw, about the necessity of wagons, didn’t I? What did the half-breed say? ‘I don’t like wagons. Wagons are not good when the time comes to run away from enemies.’ ”

Running away. What my dear twin has done. Run from Father. Fled me.

Forgive me, Simon.

T
wo horsemen lead the line of march. Captain Addington Gaunt, proud as a Cossack, towers on a sorrel blood-horse while Jerry Potts slouches on a piebald, hammer-headed mustang. Two wagons following, each carrying a passenger and hired teamster, Charles Gaunt beside Grunewald, Mr. Ayto next to Barker, spare horses tethered to the tailgates of the Conestogas. The little town of Fort Benton grows smaller below as the procession makes a long, clamorous climb out of the river valley of the Missouri, wagons juddering along the pot-holed freight trail. Axles shrieking, the chirp and squeal of wagon boards sawing against one another, the tintinnabulation of enamel-ware clanking in the back, drivers shouting, “Hyup! Hyup!” slapping reins to teams surging in their collars up the arid, canvas-coloured hill, the blue sky lurching above them, flapping like a matador’s cape, teasing them to charge forward.

Finally, they roll over the crest, pause to give the tired horses a blow. Ahead, the plain topples north, breakers of grass pitching in the wind, buffalo wallows filled by last night’s rain glinting like new dimes in the sun, little smudges of whorled cloud, fingerprints on a windowpane. Far off, tiny antelope – scurrying ants. Above, hawks sailing the updrafts – flakes of ash.

Addington Gaunt twists around in the saddle to see the last member of the expedition clear the ridge. Lucy Stoveall, trudging with her head down, a gunny sack slung over her shoulder holding all
her gear, two linsey woolsey dresses, a bone comb, her sister’s daguerrotype, a bar of lye soap, and the Navy Colt.

They move off.

ALOYSIUS
Just my good fortune: heading down to the levee to make sure them roustabouts didn’t pilfer one of my kegs of beer off the steamboat, I saw Lucy Stoveall pleading with the English. It falls to me to break the bad tidings to Straw.

Rode back with my shipment on the freight wagon, unlocked the saloon so the men could unload, and I discover Straw already in his spot by the window, a glass in hand. Whisky at eleven in the morning on a empty stomach, couldn’t wait for me to open up, served himself.

I eased into what I had to say. “I seen the English setting out this morning,” I told him.

“They aren’t going to find anything,” Custis remarked. “I didn’t have the heart to tell Charles Gaunt that. And I didn’t bother to waste an opinion on the Captain. I had two hours of his company visiting Potts. Addington Gaunt taught me that after a stint in the British army, a man knows everything there is to know.”

“The whole troop of them was gathered in Front Street, extra horses, wagons bulging with provisions. They looked to go to China and back.”

“Well,” said Custis, “the Captain seems to be a man who likes to do things in a superior style.”

“Mrs. Stoveall was there.” He didn’t catch what I was leading up to.

“Maybe she likes hoopla as much as you do, Aloysius.”

I said, “I seen her asking them to let her work her way, cook and scrub for them. Said she could make a firebread light as angel food. Just give her a chance, take her along.”

That got his attention. “What?” he snarled.

“Lord, I could scarce believe my eyes, but she dropped down on her knees in the dust and horseshit and begged them. Held up her
hands like this” – I stretched out my arms and crooked my fingers pitiful so he could see how Lucy Stoveall had acted – “said she’d lost her sister recent, was bereaved without a soul in the world to lean on. Said her husband was up north and she was desperate to find him. Please to lend her a helping hand.”