Cecil remained in the almost deserted camp. He tried in vain to talk with the few chiefs who had not gone out to join in the hunt. Missionary work was utterly impossible that day. Wallulah and the problem of his love filled his thoughts. His mind, aroused and burning, searched and analyzed the question upon every side.
Should he tell Multnomah of Snoqualmie’s cruelty, representing his unfitness to be the husband of the gentle Wallulah?
To the stern war-chief that very cruelty would be an argument in Snoqualmie’s favor. Should he himself become a suitor for her hand? He knew full well that Multnomah would reject him with disdain; or, were he to consent, it would involve the Willamettes in a war with the haughty and vindictive Cayuse. Finally, should he attempt to fly with her to some other land? Impossible. All the tribes of the northwest were held in the iron grip of Multnomah. They could never escape; and even if they could, the good he had done among the Indians, the good he hoped would grow from generation to generation, would be all destroyed if it were told among them that he who claimed to come to them with a message from God had ended by stealing the chief’s daughter. And had he a right to love any one?—had he a right to love at all? God had sent him to do a work among the Indians; was it not wicked for him to so much as look either to the right or to the left till that work was done?
Amid this maze of perplexities, his tense, agonized soul sought in vain for some solution, some conclusion. At times he sat in his lodge and brooded over these things till he seemed wrought up almost to madness, till his form trembled with excitement, and the old pain at his heart grew sharp and deadly.
Then again, trying to shake it off, he went out among the few Indians who were left in the camp and attempted to do missionary work; but enthusiasm was lacking, the glow and tenderness was gone from 193 his words, the grand devotion that had inspired him so long failed him at last. He was no longer a saintly apostle to the Indians; he was only a human lover, torn by stormy human doubts and fears.
Even the Indians felt that some intangible change had come over him, and as they listened their hearts no longer responded to his eloquence; they felt somehow that the life was gone from his words. He saw it too, and it gave him a keen pang.
He realized that the energy and concentration of his character was gone, that a girl’s beauty had drawn him aside from the mission on which God had sent him.
“I will go and see her. I will, without letting her know that I love her, give her to understand my position and her own. She shall see how impossible it is for us ever to be aught to each other. And I shall urge her to cling to God and walk in the path he has appointed for her, while I go on in mine.”
So thinking, he left his lodge that evening and took the path to Wallulah’s home.