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Updated: May 15, 2025
Why must you go away and leave Wallulah in the dark?" There was a childlike plaintiveness and simplicity in her tone; and she came close to him, looking up in his face with wistful, pleading eyes, the beautiful face wan and drawn with bewilderment and pain, yet never so beautiful as now.
At length, one summer evening a few weeks after the burial of Wallulah, there burst forth from the war-chief's lodge that peculiar wail which was lifted only for the death of one of the royal blood. No need to ask who it was, for only one remained of the ancient line that had so long ruled the Willamettes; and for him, the last of his race, was the wail lifted.
Cecil muttered an exclamation of amazement as he crossed the threshold. The interior was a glow of color, a bower of richness. Silken tapestries draped and concealed the bark walls; the floor of trodden earth was covered with a superbly figured carpet. It was like the hall of some Asiatic palace. Cecil looked at Wallulah, and her eyes sparkled with merriment at his bewildered expression.
He intended to make one last appeal to the Indians this morning to accept the gospel of peace; then he would leave the council before Wallulah was brought to it. So he sat there now, waiting for the "talk" to begin. The bands gathered around the grove were smaller than usual.
"I will seek the young Willamette who is sick," he said to himself. "Then this evening I will go and visit Wallulah." The thought sent the blood coursing warmly through his veins, but he chided himself for it. "It is but duty, I go to her only as a missionary," he repeated to himself over and over again. He went to the lodge of the young Willamette and asked for him.
Now I must go. The longer we delay our parting the harder it will be." "Not yet, not yet!" cried Wallulah. "Think how long I must be alone, always alone until I die." "God help us!" said Cecil, setting his teeth. "I will dash my mission to the winds and fly with you. What if God does forsake us, and our souls are lost! I would rather be in the outer darkness with you than in heaven without you."
One could see now why it was there. "My father," she said sorrowfully, "Wallulah has tried to love those things, but she cannot. She cannot change the heart the Great Spirit has given her. She cannot bring herself to be a woman of battle any more than she can sound a war-cry on her flute," and she lifted it as she spoke. He took it into his own hands.
"That is what my life is now, since you have brought the light to the 'watcher for the morning;" and she looked up at him with a bright, trustful smile. "Alas?" thought Cecil, "it is not the light of morning but of sunset." Slowly the radiance faded, the rose tint passed; the mountain grew white and cold under their gaze, like the face of death. Wallulah shuddered as if it were a prophecy.
"It is hard to smile on Snoqualmie; but the white man whom you met in the wood, it was not so with him. It was easy to smile and look glad at him, but it is hard to do so for Snoqualmie." Wallulah shrunk as if he had struck her a blow; then she looked at him desperately, pleadingly. "Do not say such cruel things. I will be a faithful wife to you. I will never see the white man again."
His cheek was pale, his eye hollow, his step slow and faltering like one whose flame of life is burning very low. The pain at his heart, always worse in times of exhaustion, was sharp and piercing. He looked agitated and restless; he had tried hard to give Wallulah into the hands of God and feel that she was safe, but he could not.
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