John Bonyton and his band of warriors had ascended nearly to the foot
of the Pejipscot Falls, where they waited till the first streak of
light should send them on their deadly path. The moon had set, and
the stars were dimmed by dark clouds, which flitted across the sky,
and now and then disburdened themselves in heavy drops. Gusts of wind
swayed the old woods to and fro, and sent the autumnal leaves whirling
and eddying on the wings of the fitful blast.
The sagamore had not slept, but his chiefs were couched under the
overhanging trees, amid the dense underbrush, and all were buried in
profound slumber, while he had whiled away the hours in thought of
her who had been to him the one star in the sky of his destiny. He
knew that Acashee would never reveal the secret of the fate of Hope;
therefore he had counseled to liberate her, and note in what direction
her steps should lead, and he well divined that there Hope would be
found.
While thus the solitary man gnawed his heart in vain regrets, and
sorrowful fancies, he became aware of a movement further up the stream.
Now and then a spark shot upward, and was lost amid the white spray of
the falls; then another, and another struggled amid smoke and vapor,
and was lost; till at last one fierce volume of flame towered upward,
revealing not only his own encampment, but the vast old woods, and the
river pouring itself, an ocean of water, from its mountain-hight into
the abysm below.
The warriors sprung to their feet, and gazed in wonder, not unmingled
with dismay, but the sagamore motioned them back to their covert, while
he should learn the secret of this unexpected beacon-fire. Emerging
from the covert of the woods, he was aware of a white form that flitted
before him. Hurrying onward, he leaped from rock to rock, vainly
striving to reach the object, which still eluded his grasp. At length,
having reached an angle of the stream, the figure turned.
“Hope! Hope!” exclaimed John Bonyton, stretching out his arms.
The figure pointed upward, but even while she made the gesture, she
fell prostrate to the earth.
“Oh, my God! be merciful!” cried the sagamore, lifting her in his arms,
and even while he spoke the strength of the strong man departed, and he
sunk down trembling, for to him it seemed as if the spirit of the girl
had fled.
The years of agony--the lapse of thirty years--were concentrated in
that moment. All the dull, dreary, lingering aches of rolling months
and lengthening years were combined, and plunged into one vast pang.
At length Hope lifted up her head, wringing her hands, with a face
white as snow.
“Oh! John Bonyton, did I not tell you so years ago? Did I not see Hope
always alone--always desolate?”
“My poor bird!”
Their heads were bowed down, their breathing faint and labored, and low
moans escaped them. What was the world to them! Stricken and changed,
living and breathing, they only knew that they lived and breathed by
the pangs that revealed the beating pulse.
Oh! life, life! thou art a fearful boon, and thy love not the least
fearful of thy gifts!
At length Hope remembered the beacon-fire; and she started wildly to
her feet, for if the flame decayed her work would be lost; but there
was no fear; the flames had kindled a tall hemlock, heavy with the moss
of ages, and this poured forth volumes of fiery tongues, lighting the
scene with midday radiance. She pointed to the beacon, and would have
spoken, but the sagamore held her firmly in his arms, and smoothing
back her white hair, he murmured:
“Thou shalt never leave me again, my tender, my beautiful bird! It has
fared ill with thee.”
It was a melancholy contrast--he in the full flush of his noble
manhood, gathering the diminutive creature, like a lost lamb, in his
arms--he, tall and commanding, she bleached by solitude and grief.
Something of this he felt, for a paternal tenderness caused the tears
to gush to his eyes, and he kissed her brow reverently, saying:
“How I have searched for thee, my birdie! my fair child! I have been
haunted by the fairies, and goaded well-nigh to madness; but thou art
here--yet not thou. Oh, Hope! Hope!”
She listened intent and breathless; she forgot all else, all but the
tones of the dear voice, the music of her life; but, hearing these last
words, she cried:
“Why did you go over the vast waters, John Bonyton? I knew it would
be so. I knew, if we parted, we could never be the same again. The
same cloud returns not to the sky; the same blossom blooms not twice;
human faces wear not twice the same look; and, alas! alas! the heart of
to-day is not that of to-morrow.”
Her eyes had been fixed on the face of her lover, but as she went on,
they were raised upward from his loving eyes--upward from his noble
brow, and gazed away into the far-off and unknown, with a weird,
wistful earnestness, as we have seen a child’s eyes fixed as the spirit
found its way to the crystal gates of Paradise.
The sagamore seemed to listen when her voice had ceased; but at length
he said softly:
“Say on, Hope; do not stop. Years are annihilated, and we are children
once more, gathering pebbles on the beach and blossoms in the woods!”
“Let me go, John Bonyton!” cried Hope, convulsively, at these words.
“No, never again! We will live the old life--the life of which we
dreamed years ago, Hope.”
A faint smile played over the lips of the girl, but she whispered:
“When the torch is consumed to ashes, no power can rekindle the flame.”
“Do not speak despairingly, Hope. We will not rejoin those cold, hard
hypocrites whom we both abhor. No, no; look up, my child; take heart,
dear heart. We will build us up a bower in some lovely dell, where
the birds shall sing all day, and innocent creatures resort for love
of thee, and we will worship God with true hearts, and live as the
beautiful Miranda of Shakespeare lived, only instead of Prospero it
shall be Miranda and Ferdinand. Dost understand, love?”
While the sagamore thus poured out his poetic rhapsody with beaming
eyes, and looks unutterably tender, Hope’s dreamy eyes were fixed on
the vapors circling the falls, which were ever and anon swept aside by
the gusty wind which stirred in the bare branches of the trees. It was
evident that much in the mind of her lover was to her a sealed book.
Perhaps John Bonyton felt something of the kind. Who has not, at some
time, poured out the unfathomed wealth of a soul upon an arid desert!
Perhaps he felt that _his_ thought was not _her_ thought--his _love_
was not her _love_, for he replied to the dreamy eyes:
“Yes, dear Hope, we will be content to think, not talk. Thou shalt call
me brother, as in the olden time, and I thee, sister.”
“John Bonyton, Hope is no more than the old Hope. Thou art--right
royal.”
And as if this expressed more to her than its words would seem to
convey, she for the first time threw her arms about his neck. Then she
pressed her lips to his in one wild, passionate burst, and withdrew
herself from his arms.
“For the first and the last time,” she had exclaimed, “thus--thus do
I steep my soul in thine. Now go--go; I can not live to see thee look
with a weary heart--a _half-heart_, upon the Hope who is all thine.”
While the solitary child, pure as the unnamed crystal that hung from
the cave in which she had been so long immured, gave expression to that
untutored tenderness which she felt was to be a dream of the past, the
sagamore suddenly started forward, and pointed to a high rock by the
margin of the falls, upon which appeared the tall figure of Acashee.
Hope saw her with a faint smile, which was not lost upon her lover.
A moment more, and a group of amazed and horror-stricken warriors
occupied the shore by her side. They lifted up their hands aghast at
the fearful spectacle--they leaped from rock to rock in fierce efforts
to extinguish the fatal blaze, but in vain. The burning hemlock towered
in fearful splendor, sending forth jets of flame, an object of beauty
no less than of terror. And now the Saco warriors, rushing from their
ambush, dealt sure destruction upon all but Acashee, who stood unmoved
and unharmed. In vain did she invite the blow, by chanting in a voice
which rose above the roar of the falls and the roar of the beacon-fire,
her fiery death-song--she stood unharmed.