Her dark eyes fell until their long black lashes rested against her white face.
“You love me, señor?” she whispered, in a voice which filled his soul with an ecstasy it had never known before.
And once again the waters of the listening river bore a love-tale to the distant gulf—a strange, sweet sequel to gossip which the waves had heard before.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN WHICH SPIRITS, GOOD AND BAD, BESET A
WILDERNESS
Cabanacte’s wooing of Katonah, an idyl of the forest, a love-poem lost in the wilds, a spring song set to halting words, had filled two simple lives with sadness through days of wandering and nights of melancholy dreams. When the stalwart sun-worshipper had first overtaken the girl, fleeing she knew not whither, and inspired by a motive which she could not analyze, Cabanacte had been greeted by a faint, apathetic smile which had aroused in his heart the hope that, as time went by, her eyes might look into his with the light of a great happiness shining in their depths.
As the days and nights came and went and returned again, while a glad world chanted the wedding-song of spring, and the forest whispered the gossip of the mating-time, Cabanacte’s gentleness brought peace without passion, affection without encouragement, into Katonah’s gaze as it rested upon the dark, strong, kindly face of the dusky youth. Reclining at her feet for hours at a time, the bronze giant would attempt to tell the story of his love to the Mohican maiden in broken Spanish, only a few words of which Katonah understood. But what mattered the tongue in which he spoke? The moon of old corn was at the full, and the universe grew eloquent with a language which every living creature comprehended. The birds were singing in the trees from a libretto which the squirrels and chipmunks knew by heart. The wild flowers blushed at a romance buzzed by bees, and from the grass and the waters and the forest glades arose a myriad of voices repeating the ballad of that gayest of all troubadours, the spring-time of the South.
Cabanacte’s wooing assumed many varying forms. As a huntsman he would lay the trophies of his skill at Katonah’s feet. He would lure a fish from a stream, and, making a fire by rubbing wood against a stone, would serve to her a tempting dish upon a platter made of bark. Wild plums, yellow or red, berries luscious with the essence of the sunshine, and ripe, sweet figs served as seductive foils to the burnt-offerings which he placed upon the altar of his love.
Hand in hand they would wander aimlessly through the flower-scented woods by day, silent for hours at a time and soothed into contentment by a barbaric indifference to what the future might have in store for them. At night Katonah would sleep beneath a sheltering tree, while Cabanacte watched by her side until his eyes grew dim and his head would wobble from the fillips of fatigue. Presently he would shake slumber from his stooping shoulders and sit erect, to gaze down lovingly upon the quiet face and the slender, graceful figure of the melancholy maiden, whose beauty was more potent to his eyes than the heavy hand of sleep. Why should Cabanacte give way to dreams while his gaze could rest upon a vision of the night more grateful to his longing soul than the fairest picture that his fancy had ever drawn?
Now and again the dusky giant would gently touch the sleeping maiden’s brow with trembling fingers, or bend down to press with reverent lips a kiss upon her cool, smooth cheek. Half-awakened by his caress, Katonah would stir restlessly in the arms of mother-earth, and Cabanacte, alarmed and repentant, would draw himself erect again to continue his conflict with the promptings of his love and the call to oblivion with which sleep assailed him.
Often in the heat of noonday his guard would be relieved, and he would slumber beneath the trees while Katonah sat as sentry by his side. Then would the flying and the climbing and the crawling creatures of the forest come forth to sing and chatter and squeak in the effort to lure the silent, sad-eyed maiden to tell to them the secret of her heart. Of whom was she thinking as she reclined against a tree-trunk and gazed, not at the stalwart, picturesque youth stretched in sleep upon the greensward at her side, but up at the white-flecked, May-day sky, a patch of dotted blue above the flowering trees? Why did the tears creep into her dark, gentle eyes at such a time as this? Was she not young and strong and beautiful? Was not all nature joyous with the bounding pulse of spring? What craveth this brown-cheeked maiden which the kindly earth has not bestowed? Surely, the sleeping stripling at her feet is worthy of her maiden heart! Not often does the spring-time lure into the forest, to meet the searching, knowing eyes of a thousand living creatures, a nobler youth than he who, for days and nights, has been her worshipper and slave. The forest is young to-day with vernal ecstasy, but, oh, how old it is with the worldly wisdom of long centuries! What means this futile wooing of a sun-burnt demigod and the cold indifference of a stubborn maiden, who sighs and weeps when all the joys of this glad earth are hers?