“Oh,” he thought, “had I not become a missionary, I might have met and loved some one like her! I might have filled my life with much that is now gone from it forever!”
For eight years he had seen only the faces of savage women and still more savage men; for eight years his life had been steeped in bitterness, and all that was tender or romantic in his nature had been cramped, as in iron fetters, by the coarseness and stolidity around him. Now, after all that dreary time, he met one who had the beauty and the refinement of his own race. Was it any wonder that her glance, the touch of her dress or hair, the soft tones of her voice, had for him an indescribable charm? Was it any wonder that his heart went out to her in a yearning tenderness that although not love was dangerously akin to it?
He was startled at the sweet and burning tumult of emotion she was kindling within him. What was he thinking of? He must shake these feelings off, or leave her. Leave her! The gloom of the savagery that awaited him at the camp grew tenfold blacker than ever. All the light earth held for him seemed gathered into the presence of this dark-eyed girl who sat talking so musically, so happily, by his side.
“I must go,” he forced himself to say at length, “The sun is almost down.”
“Must you go so soon?”
“I will come again if you wish.”
“But you must not go yet; wait till the sun reaches the mountain-tops yonder. I want you to tell me more about your own land.”
So he lingered and talked while the sun sank lower and lower in the west. It seemed to him that it had never gone down so fast before.
“I must go now,” he said, rising as the sun’s red disk sank behind the mountains.
“It is not late; see, the sun is shining yet on the brow of the snow mountains.”
Both looked at the peaks that towered grandly in the light of the sunken sun while all the world below lay in shadow. Together they watched the mighty miracle of the afterglow on Mount Tacoma, the soft rose-flush that transfigured the mountain till it grew transparent, delicate, wonderful.
“That is what my life is now,—since you have brought the light to the ‘watcher for the morning;’” and she looked up at him with a bright, trustful smile.
“Alas?” thought Cecil, “it is not the light of morning but of sunset.”
Slowly the radiance faded, the rose tint passed; the mountain grew white and cold under their gaze, like the face of death. Wallulah shuddered as if it were a prophecy.
“You will come back to-morrow?” she said, looking at him with her large, appealing eyes.
“I will come,” he said.
“It will seem long till your return, yet I have lived so many years waiting for that which has come at last that I have learned to be patient.”
“Ask God to help you in your hours of loneliness and they will not seem so long and dark,” said Cecil, whose soul was one tumultuous self-reproach that he had let the time go by without telling her more of God.
“Ah!” she said in a strange, wistful way, “I have prayed to him so much, but he could not fill all my heart. I wanted so to touch a hand and look on a face like my mother’s. But God has sent you, and so I know he must be good.”
They parted, and he went back to the camp.
“Is my mission a failure?” he thought, as he walked along, clinching his hands in furious anger with himself. “Why do I let a girl’s beauty move me thus, and she the promised wife of another? How dare I think of aught beside the work God has sent me here to do? Oh, the shame and guilt of such weakness! I will be faithful. I will never look upon her face again!”
He emerged from the wood into the camp; its multitudinous sounds were all around him, and never had the coarseness and savagery of Indian life seemed so repellent as now, when he came back to it with his mind full of Wallulah’s grace and loveliness. It was harsh discord after music.
Stripped and painted barbarians were hallooing, feasting, dancing; the whole camp was alive with boisterous hilarity, the result of a day of good fellowship. Mothers were calling their children in the dusk and young men were sportively answering, “Here I am, mother.” Here and there, Indians who had been feasting all day lay like gorged anacondas beside the remnant of their meal; others, who had been gambling, were talking loudly of the results of the game.
Through it all the white man walked with swift footsteps, looking neither to the right nor the left, till he gained his lodge. He flung himself on his bed and lay there, his fingers strained together convulsively, his nerves throbbing with pain; vainly struggling with regret, vainly repeating to himself that he cared nothing for love and home, that he had put all those things from him, that he was engrossed now only in his work.
“Never, never! It can never be.”
And the English exploring-ship in Yaquina Bay was to weigh anchor on the morrow, and sail up nearer along the unknown coast. The Indians had all deserted the sea-board for the council. Would Cecil hear? Would any one see the sail and bring the news?
Chapter 3 CECIL AND THE WAR-CHIEF.
Children of the sun, with whom revenge is virtue.
Young.
On the next day came the races, the great diversion of the Indians. Each tribe ran only one horse,—the best it had. There were thirty tribes or bands, each with its choicest racer on the track. The Puget Sound and lower Columbia Indians, being destitute of horses, were not represented. There had been races every day on a small scale, but they were only private trials of speed, while to-day was the great day of racing for all the tribes, the day when the head chiefs ran their horses.
The competition was close, but Snoqualmie the Cayuse won the day. He rode the fine black horse he had taken from the Bannock he had tortured to death. Multnomah and the chiefs were present, and the victory was won under the eyes of all the tribes. The haughty, insolent Cayuse felt that he had gained a splendid success. Only, as in the elation of victory his glance swept over the crowd, he met the sad, unapplauding gaze of Cecil, and it made his ever burning resentment grow hotter still.
“I hate that man,” he thought. “I tried to thrust him down into slavery, and Multnomah made him a chief. My heart tells me that he is an enemy. I hate him. I will kill him.”
“Poor Wallulah!” Cecil was thinking. “What a terrible future is before her as the wife of that inhuman torturer of men!”
And his sympathies went out to the lonely girl, the golden thread of whose life was to be interwoven with the bloodstained warp and woof of Snoqualmie’s. But he tried hard not to think of her; he strove resolutely that day to absorb himself in his work, and the effort was not unsuccessful.
After the races were over, a solemn council was held in the grove and some important questions discussed and decided. Cecil took part, endeavoring in a quiet way to set before the chiefs a higher ideal of justice and mercy than their own. He was heard with grave attention, and saw that more than one chief seemed impressed by his words. Only Snoqualmie was sullen and inattentive, and Mishlah the Cougar was watchful and suspicious.
After the council was over Cecil went to his lodge. On the way he found the young Willamette runner sitting on a log by the path, looking even more woebegone than he had the day before. Cecil stopped to inquire how he was.
“Cultus [bad],” was grunted in response.
“Did you see the races?”
“Races bad. What do I care?”
“I hope you will be better soon.”
“Yes, better or worse by and by. What do I care?”