ADELA'S LEGEND.
Jessie was not much inclined to give heed to her lover's curiosity about
Adela, and his desire to consult her respecting the enigma which had so
piqued him. But he continued so persistent, that she was obliged to
humor him; and before a week passed he persuaded her to ride with him to
Hunting Quarters and search out the mysterious maiden.
Both Adela and her father were at home, the latter being engaged, when
the visitors entered, with some jugs and bottles, in which were stored
his marvellous decoctions. Promptly desisting from his work, he invited
the young pair to seat themselves; and Adela, who was just then
stitching at some of her semi-savage contrivances, also rose to offer
welcome.
The interior of the house at Hunting Quarters was rude enough. The room
in which these four people met was badly lighted from two small windows
facing toward Core Sound, one of which was open, so that the dull
booming of the sea continually entered, supplying an uncouth refrain to
their conversation. On one side was a large hearth; on the other, a door
leading to the remaining part of the house--what there was of it. The
furniture was scanty: a table, a bench, a couple of stools, some shelves
holding bottles, boxes, a few books and various cooking utensils as well
as dishes. The lack of sufficient seats for guests was supplied by
several blocks of wood sawed off from the stumps of trees; and to these
primitive perches old Reefe and his daughter resorted, in order to make
room for their callers.
Jessie presented an excuse for coming, to the effect that Aunt Sally was
desirous of having a bottle of Doctor Reefe's famous specific; but, when
this business was over, she turned the conversation to Adela's work.
"Mr. Lance is ever so much pleased with those things you let us have,"
she said. "And I can assure you he takes the greatest interest in some
of them. I think he wants to ask you how you sew the beads, and how you
make those moss-boxes."
Adela laughed. "I don't know," she said. "I've done it so long--ever
since I was a tiny girl. Ain't it so, dad?"
Old Reefe, thus referred to, gave a nod, without saying anything. But
Lance took advantage of the cue Jessie had given him to go into
particulars with Adela as to her mode of manufacture and the several
beauties of the articles she produced. Finally he came around to the
subject of the belt and the pattern woven upon it. "Have you got any
more of those?" he asked.
"No," said Adela; "it was the last--the one you took. I can make
another, if you want. I've got it all in my head."
"And the rhyme, too?" Lance inquired, eagerly.
"What? What's that?" Adela appeared a little dazed.
"I mean the words," he explained. "Didn't you know there were words in
it?"
"Oh, that part along the middle," said the girl. Her gray eyes took on a
far-off, dreamy expression. "Yes; they are words."
Lance controlled his excitement, which still seemed to him causeless and
rather annoying. "I wonder if I read them right?" he hazarded. "Would
you like to see how they looked to me?"
He drew out a bit of paper on which he had written them, and showed it
to her. The action seemed to rouse her taciturn father slightly. But
Adela gazed at the paper, and said, with an incredulous laugh: "Oh, no,
they don't look like that!"
"Can you read?" Lance demanded.
"Yes, a little; but they don't look like that."
"Well, at any rate, they mean something," he retorted; "and this is what
they mean."
He read the rhyme aloud, and their eyes met.
"Yes," she admitted; "I suppose that's how it goes;" and she crooned the
distich over, as if singing to herself.
"But what I want to know," he continued, "is how you got it. How did you
come to know it?"
Adela remained silent; but her father spoke, after a pause, in a
serious, hollow voice. "It is very old," he said. "It is a great charm.
We have always known it."
"How do you mean--'you'?"
"Our people," replied the old man, gravely.
"But not all the people around here," Lance interposed. "Miss Jessie
doesn't know it."
Reefe made a gesture of dissent that approached the disdainful. "No," he
exclaimed, with a sort of gutteral grunt after the word; "_she_ don't
know--of course."
"But _I_ have known it well," Lance said. "I saw it years ago in
England."
"You?" cried Reefe, with the first indication of marked feeling that he
had betrayed during the interview. "Who are you, then?"
"Oh, I'm a humble citizen named Lance!" said the young man, quietly.
"But I know that motto; it has been in our family for a long time."
The old man seemed to withdraw suddenly into himself. "It is a great
charm," he repeated, slowly. "Wonderful! It keeps off harm and trouble.
My father gave it to me."
"Where did he find it?" Lance inquired.
"He found it far, far back," Reefe responded. But his tone was so vague,
and his expression grew so introspective, that Lance half imagined that
the old face was growing still older--immeasurably more ancient--as he
gazed upon it, and that the speaker was removing himself, by some occult
spell, into a distant past.
"You spoke of our people," he said, at length. "Did you mean your
family?"
"Where we came from. Our people--over there," the herb doctor answered,
pointing uncertainly to his right, in a direction, Lance noticed, which
signified farther to the North, up the Sound.
"Yes, they always had that charm," Adela now said. "I don't know why.
Who can tell? It all comes from the old story of the Indians and the
white folks."
Her father appeared to have lapsed into a semi-trance, or to be dozing;
but Adela looked aroused; her interest was kindled, and she was
evidently prepared to be communicative.
"Oh, is there a story?" Jessie cried. "Why, I never heard it. Do tell
us, Deely!"
Some judicious urging was required before the girl would speak; but, in
the end, the inquisitive lovers succeeded in persuading her, and at last
she narrated to them the legend of her "people," the substance of which
shall here be given, though not precisely in her language.
* * * * *
A great many years ago--as many as there are buds on a tree--an old man
dwelt in a wigwam beside the sweet waters, with his only child, a
beautiful girl. They had come out of the sea together, no man could
remember when; but, while the other people in the wigwams were dark and
red, these were almost white. They had been so long in the sea that the
foam of the waves, touching their faces, had made them so white. And the
old man loved his daughter very much. They spoke a strange language
together, but when others talked to them, they replied in the words that
all understood.
The old man had no name; but his daughter was called Ewayea, which meant
Lullaby or Rest-Song. She, too, loved her father. They lived for each
other; and the old man seemed always waiting for something, uneasy and
troubled, but Ewayea made him rest and sang him to sleep; and he slept
much, and was happy. But when he was resting, Ewayea would go to the top
of a little hill near the wigwam and look far away, seeming also to
expect that some one would come.
By and by he came. His name was Sharp Arrow; and he came suddenly, as if
some hand had bent a bow and sent him there swiftly. He loved Ewayea,
but at first she did not love him, because she had not waited for him,
and he was a red color; and she told him he must go and stay in the sea
and let the foam dash over him, to wash his face and make him white.
Then he went away, but when he came back his face was still red; and the
Old-man-without-a-name told him that he could not have his daughter. But
Sharp Arrow stayed there, and he flew in and out of the forest, always
returning to the maiden with love and with some presents, or bringing
food to her father. So at last he struck her heart. It bled for him, and
she longed to go with him, to comfort him, and be happy herself. But she
said: "Not yet, not yet! The Old-man-without-a-name would die if I left
him now. I must sing him to sleep many times before we go."
Her father saw that she loved Sharp Arrow, and he was very jealous. He
looked at the young man with enmity, while his face every day grew
harder, more angry, and stern, like iron. Often, too, he spoke to Ewayea
in the strange language, and pointed to the East, as if he would have
her go there. But she only shook her head and sighed; and sometimes she
wept.
The summer flew away, and the birds flew away to find it. But those two
lovers did not know it had gone, for their hearts were warm, and
thoughts of love grew in them, like the leaves of June. The days parted,
one from another, and the seasons separated; but for Ewayea and her
lover there was no separation. They were man and wife. Their two
children played in the shade of the forest, and Ewayea sang lullabies to
them. She taught Sharp Arrow charms and spells. She gave him words out
of a book. Her children learned the strange language; and she looked at
the trees, the water and the sky, and made them talk as they had not
talked till then. And Sharp Arrow promised that her spells should never
be forgotten among his people if she should die.
But she never died.
The old man slept a long while; then at last he woke. And when he woke
his face was wrinkled with anger--it was hard like ice in the sweet
waters--and when he looked at Sharp Arrow the look seemed to freeze the
young man's face, so that hatred stiffened it into a hardness like that
of the old man's. Then, one night in winter, the old man came to the
door of his wigwam and stood there like a spirit. He beckoned to Sharp
Arrow, with one finger upraised; the moonlight gleamed white on his
bitter white face, and behind him there was much white snow. "I am
dead," he said to Sharp Arrow, "and you must come with me!"
The look of hate was still in all his features; and as Sharp Arrow rose
to obey the command, his own face reflected that hatred. The moonlight
fell on him, too--his face grew white in it--and no one could have told
which face was most like the other, then. But he went forward, and
followed the old man.
Just at that moment Ewayea awoke from her sleep beside the children. She
stretched out her arms, tried to catch her husband and hold him, and saw
him pass away out of her reach; saw her father, also, standing beyond,
and beckoning.
"Father! father!" she cried, "why do you leave me? Where are you going?"
And to her husband she cried: "Oh my heart, my heart, come back to me!"
But they gave no heed to her. The old man moved away, noiseless, on feet
of air--always turning backward that icy, malignant gaze--and the young
man followed, staring fixedly, helplessly upon him, with the same dumb
and frozen wrath upon his own countenance.
And so, as if they had been spirits, they passed noiselessly on and on,
disappearing in the pale night and the snow, until all that Ewayea could
see in the quarter where they had vanished was the crescent of the
sinking moon, like an uplifted, crooked finger, beckoning some one to
follow.
Ewayea hoped that they would come back. At first she wanted to go after
them, but when she tried to move she could not: her limbs were as weak
and cold as snow, and invisible arms were thrown around her, holding her
back. There was nothing for her to do but to wait. When the spring came
again she was always waiting and watching. She stayed every day in the
same place, looking out and expecting her father and her lover to
return; but still they came not. At last she ceased to speak: she sat
there motionless and voiceless on the ground, ever longing for them, but
afraid to stir, for fear that they would come back and not find her. The
years passed, and her children grew up and departed, carrying with them
the spells and charms they had learned. Yes; they went away and forgot
their mother, who sat there so patiently. But she never once called to
them, and only waited--waited--waited. They say she is still waiting in
that spot. Summer after summer has blossomed above her, and the new
leaves have started and rustled with surprise as they caught sight of
her, and have whispered one another all day long about the strangeness
of her silent presence. The slow autumns, one after another, have
wreathed her brow with weird, unnatural flame; and the snows of many,
many winters have crept around her feet and drifted higher until they
almost buried her. But she cares nothing for all these changes; does not
even turn her head one way or the other, but simply gazes straight
forward, expectantly, just as she used to when she went to the top of
the little hill looking eastward. In summer, again, come the butterflies
and softly touch her cheek with sympathetic wings, as they hover around;
the humming-birds flash and tremble near her lips, as if expecting to
find honey there; and other birds look curiously with their bright eyes
into hers that make no answer, while the squirrels that chatter on the
boughs near by, and nibble nuts, seem to wonder that she does not ask to
share their food. Still, she gives heed to nothing. She crouches low,
and her weary head has drooped; and the leaves and dust have fallen
thick upon her from the underbrush that has sprung up so rankly about
her; so that sometimes you might think she was not a woman at all, but
only a mound of earth. Yet she is not dead. No! The rains and winds, of
course, have worn away the expression from her face, until it looks dull
and sad and lifeless; but, for all that, she is not dead. Her arms and
knees must have grown very tired in the long vigil she has been keeping,
and one would suppose they would have crumbled into earth before now.
But, you see, the wild vines have reached out from the surrounding trees
to support her; and they have encircled her lovingly, lending their
strength, that she may not fail of her purpose.
No; she is not dead. If you could only discover the exact place, you
would find her still alive. But we do not know where it is.
* * * * *
All four remained silent for a few moments, after Adela had finished her
legend. Lance had listened with profound attention; and the shadowy,
fantastic outlines of the narrative were so extraordinary, that he was
at first too much astonished and perplexed to know what to think or say
about it. Clearly enough, that which the girl had told might be
interpreted as a sequel to the history of Gertrude Wylde, after his
ancestor, Guy Wharton, had lost trace of her. It was impossible to say
just what the tradition, now so vague and impossible, had originally
come from. But the blending of the white and Indian races at which it
hinted, the looking eastward, and the idea of endless waiting and
expectancy that ran all through it--did not these things point plainly
toward the old romance with which his family was connected?
He did not believe that his imagination alone was responsible for these
suggestions, because Adela could not possibly know what he knew--her
story was an inheritance so carefully guarded, that even Jessie had not
heard it until now--and yet here were these salient details that fitted
on so naturally to his own tradition, and supplemented it. Then, too,
there was the old, transmitted rhyme. Ah, that was the clew! It clinched
all the parts of his guess-work together.
"Was Ewayea one of your people, then?" he asked, at length.
Adela looked at him with surprise, as if he were asking about something
which had already been explained.
"Why, I thought I said so," she answered. "We _came_ from her."
Old Reefe, roused perhaps by Lance's voice, opened his eyes, and,
hearing his daughter's statement, nodded a silent corroboration.
"And that charm," Lance continued--"the one that you put on the
belt--came from her, too? Did she teach it to her children?"
"Yes; that came from her, too," said Adela.
Lance turned toward Jessie in a bewildered way, gazing at her as if he
expected her to say or do something which would dispel the phantasm that
was growing so like a reality. But Jessie only reflected his amazement
in the glance which she gave him in return.
"Isn't this very remarkable?" he said.
"Very," said Jessie. "It's a perfect puzzle. I don't see what to make of
it. But, Adela," she went on, addressing the girl, "why have you never
told me this before?"
Adela responded only with a reticent smile, and her luminous gray eyes
roved from Jessie to Lance and back again without betraying what she
thought.
"We don't tell it," muttered her father. "It was our story--only for
us."
"But you _have_ told it now," Jessie argued. "You've told Mr. Lance, and
he is a stranger." Here Jessie blushed, and corrected herself: "Any way,
he _was_ a stranger to you."
The old man raised his hand to point at Lance; and--by an odd
coincidence--his forefinger, separated from the others, was curved with
a beckoning emphasis, as if he were himself the Old-man-without-a-name
of the legend. "_He_ is one of us," he declared.
"I'm not so sure of that!" Lance exclaimed, feeling that the mystery was
going almost too far. "I don't see it at all."
"You knew the charm," old Reefe retorted; and his eyes twinkled
obscurely, as he fixed them upon his visitor.
"That doesn't prove that I'm one of you," said Lance, rising, for the
situation vexed him; he was becoming indignant. "It only shows that my
people in England knew the rhyme long before yours were heard of."
Jessie rose as well. "I don't see what your father is thinking of," she
observed, frigidly, to Adela. "Mr. Lance belongs to a very old family."
Something like a sarcastic chuckle seemed to escape from Reefe's bearded
lips; but he remained quite impassive. It was impossible to tell whether
or not he had made any sound.
"Before I go," Lance began, desperately, "I wish you'd tell me what this
legend means. Did you have Indian ancestors, as well as English?"
He fixed his gaze intently and strenuously upon Adela as he spoke.
"I told you all I could," Adela answered, evasively; and began to resume
her work upon one of the moss-boxes.
Reefe looked at him, with a trace of defiance now. "We have as good
blood as any," he averred. "But we ask you no questions, and I don't see
that we've got a call to answer any more. If ye want any yarb
medicine--" And there he paused, indicating that he was ready for
business.
There could not have been a completer collapse of the climax which Lance
had thought to force. He turned away in disgust. "Come, Jessie," he
said, "let us go." And Jessie was more than ready to accede.
But before they went he thanked Adela for her story, and bade good-by to
her and her father. As he faced them in doing this, he noticed once more
the baffling resemblance between Adela and Jessie, which their
unlikeness in stature and general bearing rendered all the more
peculiar; and the gray eyes of the Reefes troubled him by their
enigmatic expression. The conviction was strong in his mind, that the
cause of their silence was that they really had nothing more definite to
tell him about their ancestry than what they had imparted. Yet he wished
that they had not stopped at this point. Why did they have gray eyes?
And yet, why should they not have them? Save for a slight bronze or
coppery hue in their complexions, they were of the same European race
that Lance and Jessie belonged to.
Nevertheless, their eyes and their strange legend pursued and haunted
him long after he and Jessie had cantered away from the herb-doctor's
door.