THE CHIEF AND THE LADY.
Scarcely had the two cousins left the woods, when, upon the very path
they had trod, appeared Barbara Stafford, the woman who had inquired for
the minister at his house that morning. Immediately after breakfast she
had wandered into the open air, and, after lingering around the
meeting-house a while, went into the forest. The hum of insects, and the
rustle of leaves, fell soothingly upon her, and with a dreamy
listlessness she moved on, sitting down at times when she came to some
flower or shrub which seemed strange or curious; but frequently leaving
it half examined, and moving on again restlessly searching for something
else.
At last she came out on the ledge, which the cousins had just left, and
sighing softly as she crossed the carpet of gray moss, sat down upon the
rock sofa and fell into thought. The place seemed to have some peculiar
fascination for her, for she grew paler and paler in that dim religious
light, giving way to feelings that could only rise unchecked in the
profoundest solitude. At last, her agitation became so great, that she
fell forward upon the cushions and began to moan faintly, as those who
have lost the power to weep express pain, when it becomes insupportable.
As she remained thus, the young hunter, who had twice appeared before
the cousins, came out upon the lower shelf of the rock, and, without
seeing her, threw himself on the edge, and lay still, as if waiting for
some one.
The sound of Barbara Stafford's voice arrested his attention. He arose,
clambered softly to the higher shelf of rock, and stood a moment,
leaning on his gun, regarding her with vague thrills of agitation.
Though he could not see her face, the mysterious atmosphere that
surrounds a familiar person made its impression upon him, and he
recognized her at once.
At last, oppressed by a human presence, which, even unseen and unheard,
will make itself felt to a delicately organized person, Barbara lifted
her head. She did not speak, but her lips parted, her eyes grew large,
and a flash of wild astonishment rushed over her face.
"In the name of Heaven what is this?" she cried at last, reaching forth
her hand, as if she doubted that the presence was real.
A convulsion of feeling swept over the young man's face; the gun dropped
from his hold, and, forced to his knees, as it were against his will, he
seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips wildly, madly, then cast it
away, with a gesture of rage at himself, for a weakness of which his
manhood was ashamed.
Barbara Stafford had no power to repulse this frantic homage. She had
but just begun to realize that he was alive and before her--that it was
his hot lips that touched her, and his flashing eyes that poured their
fire into hers. The hand he had dropped fell listlessly by her side. She
sat up, regarding him haughtily.
"Philip!"
The voice was stern with rebuke. The whiteness of anger settled on her
features.
"Yes," said the young man. "It is Philip, the slave to whom you opened
the avenues of knowledge, and whose soul you tempted from its strength
by the dainty refinements of civilization. It is the Bermuda serf, whom
you made free and enslaved again. But still the son of a king, and the
chief of a brave people. Woman, you dashed the shackles from these limbs
only to gird them around my soul; and then left me to writhe myself to
death, a double serf, and a double slave!"
"Philip, you are mad--nay, worse--you are ungrateful. Am I to suffer
forever for those impulses of compassion that took you from under the
lash of a slave-driver, and helped you to the key of all
greatness--knowledge? Am I blamable if that too fiery nature would not
be content with gratitude, but, having gained liberty, and all the
privileges of free manhood, asked that which his benefactress could not
give--which it was presumption to seek?"
"I was the son of a king," said the hunter, proudly, "the only son of a
brave man, and a woman beautiful as yourself, a woman who had blood in
her veins as white and pure as that which my presence has just
frightened from your own cheek. Look around: from the ocean to the
mountains every thing was my father's till the people of your race came,
like a pestilence, across the sea, and, more by cunning and hypocrisy
than power, wrested his dominion away, and drove his people to death or
slavery. Lady, there was no presumption in the thought, when the wronged
heir of Philip of Mount Hope offered the love of a free, brave man, who
had learned both how to think, and how to act, to the daughter of--"
"Hush! I charge you, hush!" cried Barbara, starting to her feet, "not
even here must you pronounce that name--I thought myself utterly
unknown. If I have ever been good to you--if it was a kindness when I
won you from slavery, by tears and entreaties, that would not be
refused--if the friendship of years, sacrifices, efforts, and that pure
affection which a childless mother may bestow on the young man whom she
would gladly have regarded as a son, gives me any claim on your
forbearance, let my secrecy be respected! I am weary, wretched,
broken-hearted enough already: do not add to the misery of my condition
by a reckless word, or an unguarded look!"
Barbara clasped her hands, and was about to sink to her knees in pure
agitation as she made this appeal.
The young hunter prevented the action by a prompt movement, and fell at
her feet with an impulse of generous humility.
"Lady, command me! Do not entreat! What have I done that you should
rebuke me by a request?"
Barbara smiled, and touched his forehead lightly with her hand.
Instantly, a soft mist dulled the fire of those splendid eyes, and the
young man bowed his head, thrilled to the heart by the proud magnetism
of her look.
"Tell me, Philip," she said, very gently, "tell me how it is that I find
you here, in a place so full of danger. Why come again to the lands that
have passed from the possession of your people forever--lands that are
swept away, and held securely in the grasp of civilization? What can you
hope--what can you expect, by this mad return?"
"What can I hope, lady? That the soil upon which I stand will still be
mine. What do I expect? That my father's people may be gathered together
from the swamps of the lowlands, and the caves of the mountains, and,
united in the midst of their old hunting-grounds, meet their enemies
face to face, and fight them as my father did--conquer them, as he would
have done, but for the traitors in his bosom; or failing, perish like
him!"
"My poor, brave Philip!" said Barbara, regarding the youth with
unutterable compassion, "what men could do your father and his chiefs
essayed, and in vain. It is not fighting man to man here. There is no
fair combat of human strength or manly intellect; but you combat with
destiny--that grand, cruel thing, which comes in the form of
civilization. Ah, Philip, there is no contending against that."
"Then let me die with the people who call me king; but die avenging the
wrongs that have driven our chiefs into slavery, and left our tribes
nothing but basket-makers and hunters of musk rats!" cried the youth,
desperately.
"Lady, do not counsel or thwart me here; the blood of two races, fiery
and hot with a sense of wrong, urges me on. My brain aches with thought,
my heart beats loudly in its hope for vengeance on the men who slew my
father, and sought to starve my soul down to contented servitude.
Neither heart nor brain will be argued or persuaded into submission.
Beyond this, and inspiring it all, I wait for the sad scornfulness of
that smile to disappear. When his people are once more a nation, you
cannot say that the son of Philip of Mount Hope was presumptuous in
loving you."
"And is this wild feeling at the bottom of it all?" said Barbara, in a
voice full of regret.
"It has brought me across the ocean, lurking like a hound in the hold of
the same vessel with yourself--it has filled me with ambition to rebuild
the fortunes of a down-trodden people. When these brave men they call
savages are linked in one common band and common cause--like the
chieftains of Scotland, each a sovereign lord in himself--we shall meet
these wily white men, and conquer back the forests they have wrested
from us. Hitherto their brain-craft has more than overmatched our strong
arms; but I have learned something of their coward wisdom in the lands
to which you have sent me. If I studied law and military science in
England, it was that I might learn the art by which men rule their
fellow-men. I have used the means you gave me to learn that power of
mind which sways multitudes more surely than the stout arm or certain
eye. Lady, I have, in my search for the great secret by which your
people stole away the Indian birthright, learned to despise our
conquerors. But not you! not you! My gratitude lifted you out from among
them all. It was because my soul thanked you so tenderly that it lost
itself in love."
"Ah, Philip," said the lady, "but for this madness how great you might
become!"
"Say not so. All the thirst for greatness that I have springs out of the
mighty love that you will not listen to," answered the young man.
"Because it is madness--insanity. I say nothing of the barriers which
rank and civilization build up like a wall between us two; but nature
herself should chill such feelings in their birth. Why, young man, I had
learned to hope and suffer, as woman can alone hope and suffer, before
you were born."
"Be it so--I care not. Souls made for eternity are neither brightened
nor dulled by a few years of time. I see only what is grand and
beautiful in the only woman of her race that this heart ever deemed
worthy of a warrior's love."
The young man towered proudly upward as he spoke. The gorgeous robe
which he had assumed with his savage state, shook and rattled as he
gathered it over his chest. The lady gazed upon him with irresistible
admiration. She might rebuke his love, and shrink with womanly delicacy
from any fulfilment of his hopes, which, in truth, seemed to outrage the
august dignity of her years. But there was a grandeur in the young man
that forced her to respect him--a truthfulness which enlisted all her
sympathies.
"Philip," she said, extending her hand, which he kissed reverently, as
if she had been an empress, and that moss couch her throne, "I will not
bid you God-speed in the grand, but I think hopeless, task you have
undertaken, much as I deem you wronged; because my judgment, calmer than
yours, tells me how surely civilization must sweep the darkness of
barbarism before it. The virgin soil of this new world is required for
the growth of food for the surplus population which is now sweeping
across the Atlantic in a slow but steady tide from the old world. That
which civilization demands it will attain. Hope not to match the bravery
of your warriors against the keen energy of the Anglo-Saxon. Where he
treads, opposition, nay, justice itself, sways backward. Cool, resolute,
sometimes unscrupulous, he never recedes, but swiftly as time advances
so does he. Look along the coast already has he hewn down the mighty
forest, and let the sunshine in to ripen the grain planted within sight
of your very wigwams. Already are cities and towns sending up their
spires to heaven. Every courthouse, and every place of worship thus
marked in the landscape, is a barrier stronger than any military
fortress, against the idea of Indian sovereignty that now heaves that
chest, and kindles those eyes."
The young man's lip curved, and his eyes shone as he answered:
"Lady, forgive me; but you speak like a woman, whose destiny is to
think, not to act. But in my heart the barbarism out of which true
heroes spring, and the Anglo-Saxon blood of which you boast, meet and
swell together into one mighty resolve. We will first conquer our foes;
then wrest from them the secrets that make the soil teem with food and
beauty for their use. While the earth rolls, and the sun shines, brave
men of all nations will seek the war-path; the church spires and halls
of justice will never prevent that. But, like the white man, we will
plant corn where the earth has been made richest with human blood, and
let wild flowers start into bloom above the graves we have filled to
loathing with dead foes."
"But if you are ready to follow the lead of our people so far," said
Barbara, "why not join them in amity now?"
"Because the Indian would be master of the soil he plants, and the game
he shoots. King Philip of Mount Hope acknowledged no peer. They slew
him, but he filled a monarch's grave. Has the blood of a white woman,
martyred for her faith, made his son so weak that he needs Anglo-Saxon
adventurers and dissatisfied clergymen to share authority with him?"
Barbara arose, and reached forth her hand.
"Farewell!" she said, with sweet mournfulness. "That I meet you here and
thus, is a new pang and a new sorrow. I had hoped to find you content
and happy, on my return to Europe; but alas, these awful forests seem to
swallow up every thing upon which my poor heart leaned. God help me, for
now I feel more alone than ever. Ah, Philip, if you would only be
persuaded to recross the Atlantic--there alone you are safe."
"Lady, when I am indeed a chief, and my brave warriors have turned the
churches you boast of into wigwams, I will cross the sea, and ask again
if great deeds and undying love may claim at least a patient hearing."
Barbara shook her head.
"Not with that hope--not with such intent," she answered, gravely; "for
it can never be. Now, farewell."
"Adieu, but not forever," answered the young man, bending low over the
hand she offered. "These are unsafe times, and with all your pride there
will come a season when you will have need of me. The spirit which
hunted Anna Hutchinson into the forest, and drove my mother out to
starve, is not yet appeased. New victims will be wanted. The great
Anglo-Saxon mind that you speak of is, after all, but slavish and half
developed--the outgrowth of that very tyranny of opinion it fled to
avoid. Those who brave martyrdom ever are foremost in persecution. Lady,
beware of these new people. Nay, I had better say, take no heed; for I
who, hating slavery, glory in being your slave, will guard you well."
With these words the youth snatched up his rifle, pointed out a
footpath, which Barbara turned into, and both disappeared in opposite
directions.