She lifted her head from his breast, where it was pillowed.
“Let us get horses or a canoe, and fly to-night to the desert or the sea,—anywhere, anywhere, only to be away from here! Let us take the trail you came on, and find our way to your people.”
“Alas,” replied Cecil, “how could we escape? Every tribe, far and near, is tributary to your father. The runners would rouse them as soon as we were missed. The swiftest riders would be on our trail; ambuscades would lurk for us in every thicket; we could never escape; and even if we should, a whole continent swarming with wild tribes lies between us and my land.”
She looked at him in anguish, with dim eyes, and her arms slipped from around his neck.
“Do you no longer love Wallulah? Something tells me that you would not wish to fly with me, even if we could escape. There is something you have not told me.”
Clasping her closely to him, he told her how he felt it was the will of God that they must part. God had sent him on a sacred mission, and he dared not turn aside. Either her love or the redemption of the tribes of the Wauna must be given up; and for their sake love must be sacrificed.
“To-day God took away the words from my lips and the spirit from my heart. My soul was lead. I felt like one accursed. Then it came to me that it was because I turned aside from my mission to love you. We must part. Our ways diverge. I must walk my own pathway alone wheresoever it leads me. God commands, and I must obey.”
The old rapt look came back, the old set, determined expression which showed that that delicate organization could grow as strong as granite in its power to endure.
Wallulah shrank away from him, and strove to free herself from his embrace.
“Let me go,” she said, in a low, stifled tone. “Oh, if I could only die!”
But he held her close, almost crushing the delicate form against his breast. She felt his heart beat deeply and painfully against her own, and in some way it came to her that every throb was agony, that he was in the extremity of mental and physical suffering.
“God help me!” he said; “how can I give you up?”
She realized by woman’s intuition that his whole soul was wrung with pain, with an agony darker and bitterer than her own; and the exceeding greatness of his suffering gave her strength. A sudden revulsion of feeling affected her. She looked up at him with infinite tenderness.
“I wish I could take all the pain away from you and bear it myself.”
“It is God’s will; we must submit to it.”
“His will!” Her voice was full of rebellion. “Why does he give us such bitter suffering? Doesn’t he care? I thought once that God was good, but it is all dark now.”
“Hush, you must not think so. After all, it will be only a little while till we meet in heaven, and there no one can take you from me.”
“Heaven is so far off. The present is all that I can see, and it is as black as death. Death! it would be sweet to die now with your arms around me; but to live year after year with him! How can I go to him, now that I have known you? How can I bear his presence, his touch?”
She shuddered there in Cecil’s arms. All her being shrunk in repugnance at the thought of Snoqualmie.
“Thank God for death!” said Cecil, brokenly.
“It is so long to wait,” she murmured, “and I am so young and strong.”
His kisses fell on cheek and brow. She drew down his head and put her cheek against his and clung to him as if she would never let him go.
It was a strange scene, the mournful parting of the lovers in the gloom of the forest and the night. To the east, through the black net-work of leaves and branches, a dull red glow marked the crater of Mount Hood, and its intermittent roar came to them through the silence. It was a night of mystery and horror,—a fitting night for their tragedy of love and woe. The gloom and terror of their surroundings seemed to throw a supernatural shadow over their farewell.
“The burning mountain is angry to-night,” said Wallulah, at last. “Would that it might cover us up with its ashes and stones, as the Indians say it once did two lovers back in the old time.”
“Alas, death never comes to those who wish for it. When the grace and sweetness are all fled from our lives, and we would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at rest, then it is that we must go on living. Now I must go. The longer we delay our parting the harder it will be.”
“Not yet, not yet!” cried Wallulah. “Think how long I must be alone,—always alone until I die.”
“God help us!” said Cecil, setting his teeth. “I will dash my mission to the winds and fly with you. What if God does forsake us, and our souls are lost! I would rather be in the outer darkness with you than in heaven without you.”
His resolution had given way at last. But in such cases, is it not always the woman that is strongest?
“No,” she said, “you told me that your God would forsake you if you did. It must not be.”
She withdrew herself from his arms and stood looking at him. He saw in the moonlight that her pale tear-stained face had upon it a sorrowful resignation, a mournful strength, born of very hopelessness.
“God keep you, Wallulah!” murmured Cecil, brokenly. “If I could only feel that he would shelter and shield you!”
“That may be as it will,” replied the sweet, patient lips. “I do not know. I shut my eyes to the future. I only want to take myself away from you, so that your God will not be angry with you. Up there,” she said, pointing, “I will meet you sometime and be with you forever. God will not be angry then. Now farewell.”
He advanced with outstretched arms. She motioned him back.
“It will make it harder,” she said.
For a moment she looked into his eyes, her own dark, dilated, full of love and sadness; for a moment all that was within him thrilled to the passionate, yearning tenderness of her gaze; then she turned and went away without a word.
He could not bear to see her go, and yet he knew it must end thus; he dared not follow her or call her back. But so intense was his desire for her to return, so vehemently did his life cry out after her, that for an instant it seemed to him he had called out, “Come back! come back!” The cry rose to his lips; but he set his teeth and held it back. They must part; was it not God’s will? The old pain at his heart returned, a faintness was on him, and he reeled to the ground.
Could it be that her spirit felt that unuttered cry, and that it brought her back? Be this as it may, while he was recovering from his deadly swoon he dimly felt her presence beside him, and the soft cool touch of her fingers on his brow. Then—or did he imagine it?—her lips, cold as those of the dead, touched his own. But when consciousness entirely returned, he was alone in the forest.
Blind, dizzy, staggering with weakness, he found his way to the camp. Suddenly, as he drew near it he felt the earth sway and move beneath him like a living thing. He caught hold of a tree to escape being thrown to the ground. There came an awful burst of flame from Mount Hood. Burning cinders and scoria lit up the eastern horizon like a fountain of fire. Then down from the great canyon of the Columbia, from the heart of the Cascade Range, broke a mighty thundering sound, as if half a mountain had fallen. Drowning for a moment the roar of the volcano, the deep echo rolled from crag to crag, from hill to hill. A wild chorus of outcries rang from the startled camp,—the fierce, wild cry of many tribes mad with fear yet breathing forth tremulous defiance, the cry of human dread mingling with the last echoes of that mysterious crash.
Chapter