181CHAPTER V.A DEAD QUEEN’S JEWELS.
For round about the walls yclothed wereWith goodly arras of great maiesty,Woven with golde and silke so close and nereThat the rich metall lurked privily.
The Faërie Queene.
He found the sentinels by the pathway half reluctant to let him pass, but they did not forbid him. Evidently it was only their awe of him as the “Great White Prophet,” to whom Multnomah had added the dignity of an Indian sachem, that overcame their scruples. It was with a sense of doing wrong that he went on. “If Multnomah knew,” he thought, “what would he do?” And brave as Cecil was, he shuddered, thinking how deadly the wrath of the war-chief would be, if he knew of these secret visits to his daughter.
“It is an abuse of hospitality; it is clandestine, wrong,” he thought bitterly. “And yet she is lonely, she needs me, and I must go to her; but I will never go again.”
Where he had met her before, he found her waiting for him now, a small, graceful figure, standing in the shadow of the wood. She heard his footsteps before he saw her, and the melancholy features were transfigured with joy. She stood hesitating a moment like182some shy creature of the forest, then sprang eagerly forward to meet him.
“I knew you were coming!” she cried rapturously. “I felt your approach long before I heard your footsteps.”
“How is that?” said Cecil, holding her hands and looking down into her radiant eyes. Something of the wild Indian mysticism flashed in them as she replied:
“I cannot tell; I knew it! my spirit heard your steps long before my ears could catch the sound. But oh!” she cried in sudden transition, her face darkening, her eyes growing large and pathetic, “why did you not come yesterday? I so longed for you and you did not come. It seemed as if the day would never end. I thought that perhaps the Indians had killed you; I thought it might be that I should never see you again; and all the world grew dark as night, I felt so terribly alone. Promise me you will never stay away so long again!”
“Never!” exclaimed Cecil, on the impulse of the moment. An instant later he would have given the world to have recalled the word.
“I am so glad!” she cried, clapping her hands in girlish delight; and he could not pain her by an explanation.
“After a while I will tell her how impossible it is for me to come again,” he thought. “I cannot tell her now.” And he seized upon every word and look of the lovely unconscious girl, with a hunger of heart born of eight years’ starvation.
“Now you must come with me to my lodge; you are my guest, and I shall entertain you. I want you to look at my treasures.”
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Cecil went with her, wondering if they would meet Multnomah at her lodge, and if so, what he would say. He felt that he was doing wrong, yet so sweet was it to be in her presence, so much did her beauty fill the mighty craving of his nature, that it was not possible for him to tear himself away.
Some fifteen minutes’ walk brought them to Wallulah’s lodge. It was a large building, made of bark set upright against a frame-work of poles, and roofed with cedar boards,—in its external appearance like all Willamette lodges. Several Indian girls, neatly dressed and of more than ordinary intelligence, were busied in various employments about the yard. They looked in surprise at the white man and their mistress, but said nothing. The two entered the lodge. Cecil muttered an exclamation of amazement as he crossed the threshold.
The interior was a glow of color, a bower of richness. Silken tapestries draped and concealed the bark walls; the floor of trodden earth was covered with a superbly figured carpet. It was like the hall of some Asiatic palace. Cecil looked at Wallulah, and her eyes sparkled with merriment at his bewildered expression. “I knew you would be astonished,” she cried. “Is not this as fair as anything in your own land? No, wait till I show you another room!”
She led the way to an inner apartment, drew back the tapestry that hung over the doorway, and bade him enter.
Never, not even at St. James or at Versailles, had he seen such magnificence. The rich many-hued products of Oriental looms covered the rough walls; the carpet was like a cushion; mirrors sparkling with184gems reflected his figure; luxurious divans invited to repose. Everywhere his eye met graceful draperies and artistically blended colors. Silk and gold combined to make up a scene that was like a dream of fable. Cecil’s dazzled eyes wandered over all this splendor, then came back to Wallulah’s face again.
“I have seen nothing like this in my own land, not even in the King’s palace. How came such beautiful things here among the Indians?”
“They were saved from the vessel that was wrecked. They were my mother’s, and she had them arranged thus. This was her lodge. It is mine now. I have never entered any other. I have never been inside an Indian wigwam. My mother forbade it, for fear that I might grow like the savage occupants.”
Cecil knew now how she had preserved her grace and refinement amid her fierce and squalid surroundings. Again her face changed and the wistful look came back. Her wild delicate nature seemed to change every moment, to break out in a hundred varying impulses.
“I love beautiful things,” she said, drawing a fold of tapestry against her cheek. “They seem half human. I love to be among them and feel their influence. These were my mother’s, and it seems as if part of her life was in them. Sometimes, after she died, I used to shut my eyes and put my cheek against the soft hangings and try to think it was the touch of her hand; or I would read from her favorite poets and try to think that I heard her repeating them to me again!”
“Read!” exclaimed Cecil; “then you have books?”
“Oh, yes, I will show you all my treasures.”
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She went into another apartment and returned with a velvet case and a richly enchased casket. She opened the case and took out several rolls of parchment.
“Here they are, my dear old friends, that have told me so many beautiful things.”
Cecil unrolled them with a scholar’s tenderness. Their touch thrilled him; it was touching again some familiar hand parted from years ago. The parchments were covered with strange characters, in a language entirely unknown to him. The initial letters were splendidly illuminated, the margins ornamented with elaborate designs. Cecil gazed on the scrolls, as one who loves music but who is ignorant of its technicalities might look at a sonata of Beethoven or an opera of Wagner, and be moved by its suggested melodies.
“I cannot read it,” he said a little sadly.
“Sometime I will teach you,” she replied; “and you shall teach me your own language, and we will talk in it instead of this wretched Indian tongue.”
“Tell me something about it now,” asked Cecil, still gazing at the unknown lines.
“Not now, there is so much else to talk about; but I will to-morrow.”
To-morrow! The word pierced him like a knife. For him, a missionary among barbarians, for her, the betrothed of a savage chief, the morrow could bring only parting and woe; the sweet, fleeting present was all they could hope for. For them there could be no to-morrow. Wallulah, however, did not observe his dejection. She had opened the casket, and now placed it between them as they sat together on186the divan. One by one, she took out the contents and displayed them. A magnificent necklace of diamonds, another of pearls; rings, brooches, jewelled bracelets, flashed their splendor on him. Totally ignorant of their great value, she showed them only with a true woman’s love of beautiful things, showed them as artlessly as if they were but pretty shells or flowers.
“Are they not bright?” she would say, holding them up to catch the light. “How they sparkle!”
One she took up a little reluctantly. It was an opal, a very fine one. She held it out, turning it in the light, so that he might see the splendid jewel glow and pale.
“Is it not lovely?” she said; “like sun-tints on the snow. But my mother said that in her land it is called the stone of misfortune. It is beautiful, but it brings trouble with it.”
He saw her fingers tremble nervously as they held it, and she dropped it from them hurriedly into the casket, as if it were some bright poisonous thing she dreaded to touch.
After a while, when Cecil had sufficiently admired the stones, she put them back into the casket and took it and the parchments away. She came back with her flute, and seating herself, looked at him closely.
“You are sad; there are heavy thoughts on your mind. How is that? He who brings me sunshine must not carry a shadow on his own brow. Why are you troubled?”
The trouble was that he realized now, and was compelled to acknowledge to himself, that he loved187this gentle, clinging girl, with a passionate love; that he yearned to take her in his arms and shelter her from the terrible savagery before her; and that he felt it could not, must not be.
“It is but little,” he replied. “Every heart has its burden, and perhaps I have mine. It is the lot of man.”
She looked at him with a vague uneasiness; her susceptible nature responded dimly to the tumultuous emotions that he was trying by force of will to shut up in his own heart.
“Trouble? Oh, do I not know how bitter it is! Tell me, what do your people do when they have trouble? Do they cut off their hair and blacken their faces, as the Indians do, when they lose one they love?”
“No, they would scorn to do anything so degrading. He is counted bravest who makes the least display of grief and yet always cherishes a tender remembrance of the dead.”
“So would I. My mother forbade me to cut off my hair or blacken my face when she died, and so I did not, though some of the Indians thought me bad for not doing so. And your people are not afraid to talk of the dead?”
“Most certainly not. Why should we be? We know that they are in a better world, and their memories are dear to us. It is very sweet sometimes to talk of them.”
“But the Willamettes never talk of their dead, for fear they may hear their names spoken and come back. Why should they dread their coming back? Ah, if my mother onlywouldcome back! How I used to long and pray for it!”
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Cecil began to talk to her about the love and goodness of God. If he could only see her sheltered in the Divine compassion, he could trust her to slip from him into the unknown darkness of her future. She listened earnestly.
“Your words are good,” she said in her quaint phraseology; “and if trouble comes to me again I shall remember them. But I am very happy now.”
The warmth and thankfulness of her glance sent through him a great thrill of blended joy and pain.
“You forget,” he said, forcing himself to be calm, “that you are soon to leave your home and become the wife of Snoqualmie.”
Wallulah raised her hand as if to ward off a blow, her features quivering with pain. She tried to reply, but for an instant the words faltered on her lips. He saw it, and a fierce delight leaped up in his heart. “She does not love him, it is I whom she cares for,” he thought; and then he thrust the thought down in indignant self-reproach.
“I do not care for Snoqualmie; I once thought I did, but—”
She hesitated, the quick color flushed her face; for the first time she seemed in part, though not altogether, aware of why she had changed.
For an instant Cecil felt as if he must speak; but the consequences rose before him while the words were almost on his lips. If he spoke and won her love, Multnomah would force her into a marriage with Snoqualmie just the same; and if the iron despot were to consent and give her to Cecil, the result would be a bloody war with Snoqualmie.
“I cannot, I must not,” thought Cecil. He rose189to his feet; his one impulse was to get away, to fight out the battle with himself. Wallulah grew pale.
“You are going?” she said, rising also. “Something in your face tells me you are not coming back,” and she looked at him with strained, sad, wistful eyes.
He stood hesitating, torn by conflicting emotions, not knowing what to do.
“If you do not come back, I shall die,” she said simply.
As they stood thus, her flute slipped from her relaxed fingers and fell upon the floor. He picked it up and gave it to her, partly through the born instinct of the gentleman, which no familiarity with barbarism can entirely crush out, partly through the tendency in time of intense mental strain to relieve the mind by doing any little thing.
She took it, lifted it to her lips, and, still looking at him, began to play. The melody, strange, untaught, artless as the song of a wood-bird, was infinitely sorrowful and full of longing. Her very life seemed to breathe through the music in fathomless yearning. Cecil understood the plea, and the tears rushed unbidden into his eyes. All his heart went out to her in pitying tenderness and love; and yet he dared not trust himself to speak.
“Promise to come back,” said the music, while her dark eyes met his; “promise to come back. You are my one friend, my light, my all; do not leave me to perish in the dark. I shall die without you, I shall die, I shall die!”
Could any man resist the appeal? Could Cecil, of all men, thrilling through all his sensitive and ardent190nature to the music, thrilling still more to a mighty and resistless love?
“I will come back,” he said, and parted from her; he dared not trust himself to say another word. But the parting was not so abrupt as to prevent his seeing the swift breaking-forth of light upon the melancholy face that was becoming so beautiful to him and so dear.
191CHAPTER VI.THE TWILIGHT TALE.
That eve I spoke those words again,And then she hearkened what I said.
Dante Rossetti.
The next day the Indians had a great hunt. A circle of men on foot and on horseback was drawn around a large tract of forest on the western side of the Willamette River. Gradually, with much shouting, hallooing, and beating of bushes, the circle closed upon the game within it, like the folds of a mighty serpent.
There was a prodigious slaughter, a mad scene of butchery, in which the Indians exulted like fiends. Late in the afternoon they returned to camp, stained with blood and loaded with the spoils of the chase. Snoqualmie distinguished himself by killing a large bear, and its claws, newly severed and bleeding, were added to his already ample necklace of similar trophies.
Cecil remained in the almost deserted camp. He tried in vain to talk with the few chiefs who had not gone out to join in the hunt. Missionary work was utterly impossible that day. Wallulah and the problem of his love filled his thoughts. His mind, aroused and burning, searched and analyzed the question upon every side.
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Should he tell Multnomah of Snoqualmie’s cruelty, representing his unfitness to be the husband of the gentle Wallulah?
To the stern war-chief that very cruelty would be an argument in Snoqualmie’s favor. Should he himself become a suitor for her hand? He knew full well that Multnomah would reject him with disdain; or, were he to consent, it would involve the Willamettes in a war with the haughty and vindictive Cayuse. Finally, should he attempt to fly with her to some other land? Impossible. All the tribes of the northwest were held in the iron grip of Multnomah. They could never escape; and even if they could, the good he had done among the Indians, the good he hoped would grow from generation to generation, would be all destroyed if it were told among them that he who claimed to come to them with a message from God had ended by stealing the chief’s daughter. And had he a right to love any one?—had he a right to love at all? God had sent him to do a work among the Indians; was it not wicked for him to so much as look either to the right or to the left till that work was done?
Amid this maze of perplexities, his tense, agonized soul sought in vain for some solution, some conclusion. At times he sat in his lodge and brooded over these things till he seemed wrought up almost to madness, till his form trembled with excitement, and the old pain at his heart grew sharp and deadly.
Then again, trying to shake it off, he went out among the few Indians who were left in the camp and attempted to do missionary work; but enthusiasm was lacking, the glow and tenderness was gone from193his words, the grand devotion that had inspired him so long failed him at last. He was no longer a saintly apostle to the Indians; he was only a human lover, torn by stormy human doubts and fears.
Even the Indians felt that some intangible change had come over him, and as they listened their hearts no longer responded to his eloquence; they felt somehow that the life was gone from his words. He saw it too, and it gave him a keen pang.
He realized that the energy and concentration of his character was gone, that a girl’s beauty had drawn him aside from the mission on which God had sent him.
“I will go and see her. I will, without letting her know that I love her, give her to understand my position and her own. She shall see how impossible it is for us ever to be aught to each other. And I shall urge her to cling to God and walk in the path he has appointed for her, while I go on in mine.”
So thinking, he left his lodge that evening and took the path to Wallulah’s home.
Some distance from the encampment he met an Indian funeral procession. The young Willamette runner had died that morning, and now they were bearing him to the river, down which a canoe was to waft the body and the mourners to the nearestmimaluseisland. The corpse was swathed in skins and tied around with thongs; the father bore it on his shoulder, for the dead had been but a slender lad. Behind them came the mother and a few Indian women. As they passed, the father chanted a rude lament.
“Oh, Mox-mox, my son, why did you go away and194leave our wigwam empty? You were not weak nor sickly, and your life was young. Why did you go? Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
Then the women took up the doleful refrain,—
“Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
Then the old man again,—
“Oh, Mox-mox, the sun was warm and food was plenty, yet you went away; and when we reach out for you, you are not there. Oh Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
Then the women again,—
“Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!”
And so it went on, till they were embarked and the canoe bore them from sight and hearing. Down on somemimaluseisland or rocky point, they would stretch the corpse out in a canoe, with the bow and arrows and fishing spear used in life beside it; then turn over it another canoe like a cover, and so leave the dead to his long sleep.
The sight gave an added bitterness to Cecil’s meditations.
“After all,” he thought, “life is so short,—a shadow fleeting onward to the night,—and love is so sweet! Why not open my heart to the bliss it brings? The black ending comes so soon! Why not fling all thought of consequences to the winds, and gather into my arms the love that is offered me? why not know its warmth and thrill for one golden moment, even though that moment ends in death?”
The blood rushed wildly through his veins, but he resolutely put down the temptation. No, he would be faithful, he would not allow himself even to think of such a thing.
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Reluctantly, as before, the sentinels made way for him and he went on through the wood to the trysting-place, for such it had come to be. She was waiting. But there was no longer the glad illumination of face, the glad springing forward to meet him. She advanced shyly, a delicate color in her cheek, a tremulous grace in her manner, that he had not observed before; the consciousness of love had come to her and made her a woman. Never had she seemed so fair to Cecil; yet his resolution did not falter.
“I have come, you see,—come to tell you that I can come no more, and to talk with you about your future.”
Her face grew very pale.
“Are you going away?” she asked sorrowfully, “and shall I never see you again?”
“I cannot come back,” he replied gently. The sight of her suffering cut him to the heart.
“It has been much to see you,” he continued, while she stood before him, looking downward, without reply. “It has been like meeting one of my own people. I shall never forget you.”
She raised her head and strove to answer, but the words died on her lips. How he loathed himself, talking so smoothly to her while he hungered to take her in his arms and tell her how he loved her!
Again he spoke.
“I hope you will be happy with Snoqualmie, and—”
She lifted her eyes with a sudden light flashing in their black depths.
“Do you want me to hate him? Never speak his name to me again!”
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“He is to be your husband; nay, it is the wish of your father, and the great sachems approve it.”
“Can the sachems put love in my heart? Can the sachems make my heart receive him as its lord? Ah, this bitter custom of the father giving his daughter to whomsoever he will, as if she were a dog! And your lips sanction it!”
Her eyes were full of tears. Scarcely realizing what he did, he tried to take her hand. The slender fingers shrank from his and were drawn away.
“I do not sanction it, it is a bitter custom; but it is to be, and I only wished to smooth your pathway. I want to say or do something that will help you when I am gone.”
“Do you know what it would be for me to be an Indian’s wife? To cut the wood, and carry the water, and prepare the food,—that would be sweet to do for one I loved. But to toil amid dirt and filth for a savage whom I could only abhor, to feel myself growing coarse and squalid with my surroundings,—I could not live!”
She shuddered as she spoke, as if the very thought was horrible.
“You hate this degraded Indian life as much as I do, and yet it is the life you would push me into,” she continued, in a tone of mournful heart-broken reproach. It stung him keenly.
“It is not the life I would push you into. God knows I would give my life to take one thorn from yours,” The mad longing within him rushed into his voice in spite of himself, making it thrill with a passionate tenderness that brought the color back into her pallid cheek. “But I cannot remain,” he197went on, “I dare not; all that I can do is to say something that may help you in the future.”
She looked at him with dilated eyes full of pain and bewilderment.
“I have no future if you go away. Why must you go? What will be left me after you are gone? Think how long I was here alone after my mother died, with no one to understand me, no one to talk to. Then you came, and I was happy. It was like light shining in the darkness; now it goes out and I can never hope again. Why must you go away and leave Wallulah in the dark?”
There was a childlike plaintiveness and simplicity in her tone; and she came close to him, looking up in his face with wistful, pleading eyes, the beautiful face wan and drawn with bewilderment and pain, yet never so beautiful as now.
Cecil felt the unspeakable cruelty of his attitude toward her, and his face grew white as death in an awful struggle between love and duty. But he felt that he must leave her or be disloyal to his God.
“I do not wish to go away. But God has called me to a great work, and I must do it. I dare not turn aside. You cannot know how dear your presence is to me, or how bitter it is for me to part from you. But our parting must be, else the work I have done among the tribes will be scattered to the winds and the curse of God will be on me as a false and fallen prophet.”
He spoke with a kind of fierceness, striving blindly to battle down the mad longing within, and his tones had a harshness that he was too agitated to notice. She drew back involuntarily. There came into her198face a dignity he had never seen before. She was but a recluse and a girl, but she was of royal lineage by right of both her parents, and his words had roused a spirit worthy the daughter of Multnomah.
“Am I a weight on you? Are you afraid I will bring a curse upon you? Do not fear, I shall no longer ask you to stay. Wallulah shall take herself out of your life.”
She gave him a look full of despair, as if seeing all hope go from her forever; then she said simply, “Farewell,” and turned away.
But in spite of her dignity there was an anguish written on her sweet pale face that he could not resist. All his strength of resolve, all his conviction of duty, crumbled into dust as she turned away; and he was conscious only that he loved her, that he could not let her go.
How it happened he never knew, but she was clasped in his arms, his kisses were falling on brow and cheek in a passionate outburst that could be kept back no longer. At first, she trembled in his arms and shrank away from him; then she nestled close, as if sheltering herself in the love that was hers at last. After awhile she lifted a face over which a shadow of pain yet lingered.
“But you said I would bring you a curse; you feared—”
He stopped her with a caress.
“Even curses would be sweet if they came through you. Forget what I said, remember only that I love you!”
And she was content.
Around them the twilight darkened into night; the199hours came and went unheeded by these two, wrapped in that golden love-dream which for a moment brings Eden back again to this gray old earth, all desolate as it is with centuries of woe and tears.
But while they talked there was on him a vague dread, an indefinable misgiving, a feeling that he was disloyal to his mission, disloyal to her; that their love could have but one ending, and that a dark one.
Still he strove hard to forget everything, to shut out all the world,—drinking to the full the bliss of the present, blinding his eyes to the pain of the future.
But after they parted, when her presence was withdrawn and he was alone, he felt like a man faithless and dishonored; like a prophet who had bartered the salvation of the people to whom he had been sent, in exchange for a woman’s kisses, which could bring him only disgrace and death.
As he went back to the camp in the stillness of midnight, he was startled by a distant roar, and saw through the tree-tops flames bursting from the far-off crater of Mount Hood. The volcano was beginning one of its periodical outbursts. But to Cecil’s mind, imbued with the gloomy supernaturalism of early New England, and unconsciously to himself, tinged in later years with the superstition of the Indians among whom he had lived so long, that ominous roar, those flames leaping up into the black skies of night, seemed a sign of the wrath of God.
200CHAPTER VII.ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR.
The gravity, fixed attention, and decorum of these sons of the forest was calculated to make for them a most favorable impression.—Gray:History of Oregon.
The next day all the Indians were gathered around the council grove. Multnomah presided, and every sachem was in his place.
There was to be a trial of eloquence,—a tourney of orators, to see which tribe had the best. Only one, the most eloquent of each tribe, was to speak; and Multnomah was to decide who was victor. The mother of Wallulah had introduced the custom, and it had become popular among the Indians.
Cecil was in his place among the chiefs, with worn face and abstracted air; Snoqualmie was present, with hawk-like glance and imperious mien; there was Mishlah, with his sullen and brutal features; there, too, wrapped closely in his robe of fur, sat Tohomish, brooding, gloomy,—the wild empire’s mightiest master of eloquence, and yet the most repulsive figure of them all.
The Indians were strangely quiet that morning; the hush of a superstitious awe was upon them. The smoking mountains, Hood and Adams as the white man calls them, Au-poo-tah and Au-ka-ken in the Indian tongue, were becoming active of late. The201previous night flame had been seen bursting from the top of Mount Hood and thick black smoke still puffed upward from it, and on Mount Adams rested a heavy cloud of volcanic vapors. Were the mountains angry? Aged men told how in the old time there had been a terrible outburst of flame and ashes from Mount Hood; a rain of fire and stones had fallen over all the Willamette valley; the very earth had trembled at the great mountain’s wrath.
As the lower animals feel in the air the signs of a coming storm, so these savages felt, by some kindred intuition, that a mysterious convulsion of Nature was at hand. They talked in low tones, they were subdued in manner; any one coming suddenly upon them would have been impressed by the air of uneasiness and apprehension that everywhere prevailed. But the chiefs were stoical, and Multnomah impassive as ever.
Could it have been that the stormy influences at work in Nature lent energy to the orators that day? They were unusually animated, at least for Indians, though a white man would have found them intolerably bombastic. Each speech was a boastful eulogy of the speaker’s tribe, and an exaggerated account of the wonderful exploits of its warriors.
This was rather dangerous ground; for all the tribes had been at enmity in days gone by, and some of their most renowned victories had been won over each other. Every one took it in good part, however, except Mishlah. When We-math, chief of the Klamaths, recounting the exploits of his race, told how in ancient times they had lorded it over the Mollalies, Mishlah glared at him as if tempted to leap upon him and strike him down. Fortunately the orator passed202on to other things, and the wrath of the Mollalie chief gradually cooled.
Then came Cecil. It was a grand opening. He could speak of his own people, of their ancient savagery and present splendor, and show how the gospel of love and justice had been the cause of their elevation. Then would come the appeal to the Indians to accept this faith as their own and share in its uplifting power. It was a magnificent opportunity, the opportunity of a life-time.
But the mental conflict he had just passed through had rent his mind like a volcanic upheaval. It possessed no longer the intense concentration which had been the source of its strength. Tenderness, benevolence, missionary zeal, were still there, but no longer sovereign. Other passions divided his heart; a hopeless and burning love consumed his being.
He spoke, but the fire was gone from his delivery and the vividness from his imagination. His eloquence was not what it had been; his heart was no longer in his work, and his oration was a failure.
Even the Indians noticed that something was lacking in his oratory, and it no longer moved them as it had done. Cecil realized it, and strove to speak with more energy, but in vain; he could not arouse himself; and it was with a consciousness of failure that he brought his speech to a close and resumed his seat.
To a man of his morbid conscientiousness only one conclusion was possible.
“God sent me to proclaim salvation to these children of darkness,” he thought, “and I have turned aside to fill my heart with a woman’s love. His wrath is on me. He has taken his spirit from me. I am203a thing rejected and accursed, and this people will go down to death because I have failed in my mission.”
While he sat absorbed in these bitter, self-accusing thoughts, the speaking went on. Wau-ca-cus the Klickitat made a strong “talk,” picturesque in Indian metaphor, full of energy. But the chief that followed surpassed him. Orator caught fire from orator; thoughts not unworthy a civilized audience were struck out by the intensity of the emulation; speakers rose to heights which they had never reached before, which they were destined never to reach again. In listening to and admiring their champions, the tribes forgot the smoking mountains and the feeling of apprehension that had oppressed them. At length Snoqualmie made a speech breathing his own daring spirit in every word. It went immeasurably beyond the others; it was the climax of all the darkly splendid eloquence of the day.
No, not of all. From his place among the chiefs rose a small and emaciated figure; the blanket that had muffled his face was thrown aside, and the tribes looked on the mis-shapen and degraded features of Tohomish the Pine Voice. He stood silent at first, his eyes bent on the ground, like a man in a trance. For a moment the spectators forgot the wonderful eloquence of the man in his ignoble appearance. What could he do against Wau-ca-cus the Klickitat and Snoqualmie the Cayuse, whose sonorous utterances still rang in their ears, whose majestic presence still filled their minds!
“The Willamettes are beaten at last,—the Willamette speakers can no more be called the best,” was the one exultant thought of the allies, and the Willamettes204trembled for the fame of their orators. Back in the shadow of the cottonwoods, an old Willamette warrior put an arrow on the string and bent his bow unseen on Tohomish.
“He cannot beat them, and it shall never be said that Tohomish failed,” he muttered. At that moment, even as death hung over him, the orator’s voice was heard beginning his “talk;” and the warrior’s hand fell, the bent bow was relaxed, the arrow dropped from the string. For with the first accents of that soft and lingering voice the tribes were thrilled as with the beginning of music.
The orator’s head was still bent down, his manner abstracted; he spoke of the legends and the glories of the Willamette tribe, but spoke of them as if that tribe belonged to the past, as if it had perished from the earth, and he was telling the tale of a great dead race. His tones were melodious but indescribably mournful. When at length he lifted his face, his eyes shone with a misty light, and his brutal features were illuminated with a weird enthusiasm. A shudder went through the vast and motley assembly. No boastful rant was this, but a majestic story of the past, the story of a nation gone forever. It was the death-song of the Willamettes, solemnly rendered by the last and greatest orator of the race.
At length he spoke of Multnomah and of the power of the confederacy in his time, but spoke of it as of old time, seen dimly through the lapse of years. Then, when as it seemed he was about to go on and tell how this power came to fall, he hesitated; the words faltered on his lips; he suddenly broke off, took his seat, and drew his robe again over his face.
“It was the Death-song of the Willamettes.”
“It was the Death-song of the Willamettes.”
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The effect was indescribable. The portentous nature of the whole speech needed only that last touch of mystery. It sent through every heart a wild and awesome thrill, as at the shadow of approaching destiny.
The multitude were silent; the spell of the prophet’s lofty and mournful eloquence still lingered over them. Multnomah rose. With him rested the decision as to who was the greatest orator. But the proud old war-chief knew that all felt that Tohomish had far surpassed his competitors, and he was resolved that not his lips but the voice of the tribes should proclaim their choice.
“Multnomah was to decide who has spoken best, but he leaves the decision with you. You have heard them all. Declare who is the greatest, and your word shall be Multnomah’s word.”
There was an instant’s silence; then in a murmur like the rush of the sea came back the voice of the multitude.
“Tohomish! Tohomish! he is greatest!”
“He is greatest,” said Multnomah. But Tohomish, sitting there dejectedly, seemed neither to see nor hear.
“To-morrow,” said the war-chief, “while the sun is new, the chiefs will meet in council and the great talk shall be ended. And after it ends, Multnomah’s daughter will be given to Snoqualmie, and Multnomah will bestow a richpotlatch[a giving of gifts] on the people. And then all will be done.”
The gathering broke up. Gradually, as the Indians gazed on the smoking mountains, the excitement produced by the oratory they had just heard wore off.206Only Tohomish’s sombre eloquence, so darkly in unison with the menacing aspect of Nature, yet lingered in every mind. They were frightened and startled, apprehensive of something to come. Legends, superstitious lore of by-gone time connected with the “smoking mountains,” were repeated that afternoon wherever little groups of Indians had met together. Through all these gathered tribes ran a dread yet indefinable whisper of apprehension, like the first low rustle of the leaves that foreruns the coming storm.
Over the valley Mount Adams towered, wrapped in dusky cloud; and from Mount Hood streamed intermittent bursts of smoke and gleams of fire that grew plainer as the twilight fell. Louder, as the hush of evening deepened, came the sullen roar from the crater of Mount Hood. Below the crater, the ice-fields that had glistened in unbroken whiteness the previous day were now furrowed with wide black streaks, from which the vapor of melting snow and burning lava ascended in dense wreaths. Men wiser than these ignorant savages would have said that some terrible convulsion was at hand.
Multnomah’s announcement in the council was a dreadful blow to Cecil, though he had expected it. His first thought was of a personal appeal to the chief, but one glance at the iron features of the autocrat told him that it would be a hopeless undertaking. No appeal could turn Multnomah from his purpose. For Cecil, such an undertaking might be death; it certainly would be contemptuous refusal, and would call down on Wallulah the terrible wrath before which the bravest sachem quailed.
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Cecil left the grove with the other chiefs and found his way to his lodge. There he flung himself down on his face upon his couch of furs. The Indian woman, his old nurse, who still clung to him, was absent, and for some time he was alone. After a while the flap that hung over the entrance was lifted, and some one came in with the noiseless tread of the Indian. Cecil, lying in a maze of bitter thought, became aware of the presence of another, and raised his head. The Shoshone renegade stood beside him. His gaze rested compassionately on Cecil’s sad, worn face.
“What is it?” he asked. “Your words were slow and heavy to-day. There was a weight on your spirit; what is it? You said that we were friends, so I came to ask if I could help.”
“You are good, and like a brother,” replied Cecil, gently, “but I cannot tell you my trouble. Yet this much I can tell,”—and he sat upon the couch, his whole frame trembling with excitement. “I have sinned a grievous sin, therefore the Great Spirit took away the words from my lips to-day. My heart has become evil, and God has punished me.”
It was a relief to his over-burdened conscience to say those harsh things of himself, yet the relief was bitter. Over the bronzed face of the Indian came an expression of deep pity.
“The white man tears himself with his own claws like a wounded beast, but it does not give him peace. Has he done evil? Then let him remember what he has so often told the Indians: ‘Forsake evil, turn from sin, and the Great Spirit will forgive.’ Let my white brother do this, and it will be well with him.”
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He gazed at Cecil an instant longer; then, with a forbearance that more civilized men do not always show, he left the lodge without another word.
But what he said had its effect. Through Cecil’s veins leaped the impulse of a sudden resolve,—a resolve that was both triumph and agony. He fell on his knees beside the couch.
“Thou hast shown me my duty by the lips of the Indian, and I will perform it. I will tear this forbidden love from my heart. Father, help me. Once before I resolved to do this and failed. Help me that I fail not now. Give me strength. Give me the mastery over the flesh, O God! Help me to put this temptation from me. Help me to fulfil my mission.”
The struggle was long and doubtful, but the victory was won at last. When Cecil arose from his knees, there was the same set and resolute look upon his face that was there the morning he entered the wilderness, leaving friends and home behind him forever,—the look that some martyr of old might have worn, putting from him the clinging arms of wife or child, going forth to the dungeon and the stake.
“It is done,” murmured the white lips. “I have put her from me. My mission to the Indians alone fills my heart. But God help her! God help her!”
For the hardest part of it all was that he sacrificed her as well as himself.
“It must be,” he thought; “I must give her up. I will go now and tell her; then I will never look upon her face again. But oh! what will become of her?”
And his long fingers were clinched as in acutest pain. But his sensitive nerves, his intense susceptibilities209were held in abeyance by a will that, once roused, was strong even unto death.
He went out. It was dark. Away to the east Mount Hood lifted its blazing crater into the heavens like a gigantic torch, and the roar of the eruption came deep and hoarse through the stillness of night. Once, twice it seemed to Cecil that the ground trembled slightly under his feet. The Indians were huddled in groups watching the burning crest of the volcano. As the far-off flickering light fell on their faces, it showed them to be full of abject fear.
“It is like the end of the world,” thought Cecil. “Would that it were; then she and I might die together.”
He left the camp and took the trail through the wood to the trysting-place; for, late as it was, he knew that she awaited him.