How mighty were these white men in their creations! How weak were they in themselves! For, in the lust after power, they had cast aside Nature and her works. They knew nothing of the sacred fire, of the beauty of life. Across the mighty water they came in great vessels to seize upon the territories of the weak Indian. With might they had driven out right, and made the former owners slaves in their own land. But when these conquerors lay beneath the cold shadow of death, whom would they call upon for aid? The Indian, with his deep knowledge of healing medicines. When food was desired for the body, to whom would they turn for assistance? To the Indian, who alone could lead them to the spot where the animals lay concealed. When it was their wish to feast the sight upon things of wonder, whom would they summon? The Indian, with his inscrutable knowledge of Nature's inner secrets. Finally, when they wished to learn the power of love, it were useless to search for it among their own habitations. They must turn to the tents of the despised race, then depart with knowledge gained. Yet, by the law of justice, the white ruled the world. The Indian lay beneath his feet and looked to him for life.
Stranger than all this was the story of the white man's God. If the old mentor had not been advised wrongly, this God had walked the earth for years, to teach His children the lesson of life and death. This God must have taught them that women were of no account. One was to be taken and sported with, then cast aside for another. Their tears and their sorrow were to be laughed at and counted as nothing. This was strange teaching, for why should the woman be held so inferior to the man?
But perchance the white man had many gods, who gave each a different teaching. Yet no, it could not be. From all sides came the same unvarying tale of treachery and desertion. There were many white men in the country, yet they were all the same. All treated the women with cruelty, all were inconstant. Some there were who married, then deserted their wives for other women. The faith of the white God must be a cruel one. She would have none of it.
Yet, in obeying the prompting of her own mind, the will of the Spirit had been disobeyed. She had allied herself to one outside the tribe, and now but suffered the penalty of wrong-doing. A man who could not love joined to a woman with a heart. The result of such union meant misery to one, death to both. The heart continued its musings on the mystery of love.
Man is man, and woman, woman, whatever race or colour. They mingle together and pass daily, until one is strangely stopped by power of attraction for another. The man looks upon the woman, and sees that she is beautiful. She regards him with the growing thought that he is good and strong. Then, as the time passes, he comes to know that here is the life being whom the Great Spirit has brought into creation and led across his track, that he may take her to his home and call her his. For she was brought into life for him, and he for her. So he takes her by the hand in the evening time, and whispers in her ear, 'Let me twine my life with yours. Let us live as one, with soul to soul, having one mind, one wish.' Then she will agree, and the solemn compact is made, with the Great Spirit as witness. He has promised to shelter and clothe her, to care for her in time of sickness, to rejoice with her in happiness, to grieve with her in sorrow. She, also, promises to lighten his burden of daily toil with her soft love touch, to devote herself to him alone, to prepare his comforts, to make his home the centre of heart joy. But what shall be done to that man, who has fallen away from the great oath, by her who has remained true and faithful?
Let him be forgotten and forgiven? It were impossible. The heart, when it stirred into faint life, prompted otherwise. The teaching of the God was different. What justice was there in treating the apostate as though he had remained constant? Nor could it bring satisfaction to the stricken mind to see the God performing the work of vengeance.
Was there strength at the heart? Resolution for the meeting and the work? Doubtless, yet the strain and tension would be well nigh unbearable. There would be the journey, the watching for the opportunity, the anticipating of others, then the dread discovery before the once loved. After that must come the actual bitterness of the struggle. To look upon that face, which had been so indelibly stamped upon the memory; to behold again that well-remembered form; to speak and plead, with a love assumed, while hatred burnt within; to hold that hand, which had so often caressed her in the days of innocence. All such must be endured before commission of the act. The poison would be dissolving and stirring within her mouth, mingling with the breath, lying upon the tongue which had softly spoken to his ear the sounds of love. Another moment of strength, one more wave of feeling, and the work would be accomplished. The hand would be seized within hers, the touch electrifying each subtle sense current in her body. She would raise it to her lips, and she would kiss—yes, she would kiss first, then bite, burying her white teeth in the flesh with the mad intensity of the passion hatred, feeling his blood dripping and surging hotly across her mouth, mingling with the poison, which must then commence a deathly revelry along his veins. If the heart strength lasted for so long, all would be well. She might then crawl away to a place of quietness, cast down the aching body, and suffer the final pangs of ebbing life.
Was the heart of joy entirely dead? Had the single ice-stroke deprived it of all consciousness, blotting out the warm love and flowing vitality in a breath? The limb, frozen by the rigours of Arctic cold, is wax-like, cold, and dead to feeling. Yet it may perhaps be gradually revived and restored again to use and animation by assiduous attention. Was there not then some sensitive fibre of the heart, at present numbed by the intense frost of sorrow, yet which might be re-animated into at least a portion of the old happiness by tender nurture? The heart is so great in its far-reaching sympathies, so diversified in its range of feeling. Was there not a spot, as yet untouched by the mortification, one slight nerve which could yet respond to the anxious voice of friend—more, to the soft sound of lover's voice? Assuredly not. The heart was dead to feeling of human passion, alive only to its ice-cold determination of duty. Nothing could stir its sluggish pulsations as it lay within the flesh tomb. Not the excitement of her mission, nor the taunts of those who should have been men enough to have protected her from insult, not even the contemplation of again facing him she had so wildly and so foolishly loved, could awake that heavy, torturing burden within to a semblance of its past activity, to a shadow of the former brightness. All light and colour had been stripped from life. Even the body was cold, shrunken and debilitated. The mind had no resource to lean upon, the body no satisfaction to hope for. For the latter there remained death; the former looked only for silence.
A faint colour crawled into her thin cheeks and became constant, increasing in intensity of shade. The remainder of her face and the dull eyes became ghastly by contrast. Such a bright colour had once marked the rich stain of health; then it had altered to the pure heart blush; now it was the slow spreading fever of the mind. It seemed, indeed, as though the fire which had long been consuming her heart, after burning away the vitals, had spread to the exterior, there to consummate its work and consume the poor remnants of life.
There was one more thought at the dead heart, one doubting and perplexing query. Well might it trouble her, for none could have given answer to that constant cry—what is the rest that comes to the mind of sorrow after death?