The forest holds a mystery, a problem strange and new. The breeze at sunset tells the story to the blushing waters of the lakes, and spreads the gossip through the swamps and glades. The moonbeams steal abroad and verify the tale that the twilight breeze had voiced. A youth and maiden, young and beautiful, so runs the chatter of the woods and streams, wander in sadness along a zigzag trail, and, while he sighs, the maiden weeps and moans. There is no precedent, in all the forest lore, for this strange, futile quest of misery, this daily search for some new cause for tears where all the world is singing hymns of joy and praise.
And all the questions which the forest asked had found an echo in Cabanacte’s soul. Why should Katonah gaze into his loving eyes with a glance which spoke of sorrow at her heart? What was there in all this wondrous paradise of earth which he, a youth of mighty prowess, could not lay at her dear feet? He would take her to the City of the Sun and teach her how to smile in gladness, how to make his home a joy. Did she fear the slavish drudgery of the women of her race and his? Oh, Sun in Heaven, could he but make her understand the broken Spanish of his clumsy tongue, he’d swear an oath to toil for her from year to year, to keep her slender hands at rest and hold her higher than the wives whose fate she feared!
Often would Cabanacte take Katonah’s hand in his, and, smiling up at her as she leaned against a tree, strive to make his scraps of Spanish aid the noble purpose of his heart. Now and then the knowledge which the girl had gained of French would serve Cabanacte’s turn, and she would smile in comprehension of some word which he had voiced. After a time she found herself amused and interested by his earnest efforts to put her into touch with the ardent, uncomplicated longings of his simple soul. One day she had attempted to make answer to his question—clarified by the eloquence of primitive gestures—whether she would return with him to the City of the Sun. They had laughed aloud at the strange linguistic jumble which had ensued, and the spying gossips of the forest had sent forth the stirring rumor that the coy maiden had dried her tears and was at last worthy of the blessings of the spring. But hardly had the forest learned the story of Katonah’s laughter, when the tears gleamed in her eyes and her whispered negative drove the smile from Cabanacte’s face.
From this beginning, however, the youth and maiden had developed, through the long, aimless hours of their sylvan wanderings, a curious, amorphous patois, made up of a few words culled from the French and Spanish tongues and forced by Cabanacte to tell an ancient tale in a language new to man. It brought renewed hope to the youth’s sinking heart to find words which could drive, if only for a moment, the mournful gleam from Katonah’s sad eyes, or, when fate was very kind, tempt a fleeting smile to her trembling lips.
But even after they had garnered a few useful words from Latin roots, there remained a heavy shadow upon the hearts of Katonah and her swain. Between them stood an elusive, intangible, but persistent and domineering, something, which restrained Cabanacte with its cruel grip, and often turned Katonah deaf to her lover’s passionate words and blind to the adoring splendor which shone in his burning eyes. A savage maiden’s foolish dream, a cherished memory which haunted her by day and crept into her sleep at night decreed that Cabanacte should woo her heart in vain and in a forest musical with love should grow sick with longing for the word that she would not speak. With gentle wiles and all the art his simple nature knew he laid before Katonah the treasures of devotion, and, ’though she smiled, and gazed into his eyes with tender gratitude, she waved them all aside and sat in silence in the moonlit night, recalling a pale, clear-cut face upon which she never hoped to look again.
“A WHITE-FACED MAN PRESSING TO HIS BREAST A
DARK-HAIRED MAIDEN”
It was long past midnight, and Cabanacte, weary of his vigil, and worn with the melancholy thoughts which oppressed him, leaned against a tree and dozed for a time while the maiden, reclining at his side, listened in her dreams to a mocking voice which had aforetime been music to her heart. The murmurs of the night had died away to silence as the moon fell toward the west, and the forest had settled itself for a nap before the dawn should hail the noisy day, when Katonah and Cabanacte were hurled to their feet by a crackling crash, which echoed through the protesting woods with a threatening insistence that stopped for an instant the beating of their hearts. Seizing the girl’s cold hand, Cabanacte, glancing around him upon all sides with affrighted eyes, rushed wildly away from the oak-tree beneath which they had found rest, and strove, with a giant’s strength, to win his way to the great river as a refuge from a wilderness in which evil spirits menaced them with ugly cries. Suddenly the stalwart youth paused in his mad career and drew the panting maiden close to his side. Far away between the trees a ghastly creature, a spectral man or monkey, crept and ran and bounded toward the shadow-haunted depths of the forest from which they fled. Knowing all the secrets of the woods, Cabanacte turned cold at the fleeting vision which had checked his wild flight, for never had he seen beneath the moon so weird a sight. Almost before he could regain his breath it had come and gone, and the night was once again his lonely, silent friend.
Trembling from the cumulative horrors which had so suddenly beset their ears and eyes, Cabanacte and Katonah stole through the forest toward the river, which glimmered now and then between the trees. The giant’s arm was thrown around Katonah’s slender waist, and Cabanacte could feel the hurried beating of her aching heart as he pressed her to his side, as if to defend her from some new peril lurking in these treacherous wilds.
Suddenly, as they crept apprehensively toward the outskirts of the trees, the broad expanse of the Mississippi broke upon their sight, and, between their coigne of vantage and the river, they saw a tableau which emphasized their growing conviction that some strange enchantment was working wonders on the earth at night, to bind them together by ties woven in the land of ghosts.