No woman of true sensibility rejects a lover without feeling herself a sympathy in the pang she inflicts. It often happens that in her artless attempts to mitigate the disappointment, her motives are mistaken, and she subjects herself again to a siege so much more pressing than the former, that she yields against her conviction, a captive to a stronger will, but not to love. It was not so with a woman of Beatriz’s mould. She knew that in no way could she be so true to others as in being true to herself. When Kiana turned from her, although she was sadder than before he spoke, she felt that her sincerity had been her safety.
As she prolonged her walk farther from her house to where the trees thickened into a forest, she thought she saw a pair of piercing eyes, not unfamiliar, watching her at times, through the thick vines and ferns that clustered about her path. She was, however, too abstracted by her own reflections to be curious about them, and so she slowly wandered on.
“Holy Mother, has it come to this,” said she to herself, stopping occasionally, and pressing her hands over her heart as if to still its throbs, “do I love this man? Whence this fever here, if it be not love? Why was it that when I found him lying, as I thought, dead on the sand, my pulses ceased to beat, and for the instant I was dead myself? Could he have seen my emotion when he came to? The Chaste Virgin forbid! Yet when our eyes met on that holy evening in which we gazed so long upon the sea, I read my soul in his. But can he know what I do not know myself? I would say I do not love him, yet something within chokes me when I would utter the words. What I, a Catholic maiden, love a priest? ’tis not so! it would be sacrilege. May the Mother of God forgive the thought,” and she paused with eyes uplifted and hands clasped in silent prayer.
For an instant she became quieter, but it was only the gathering of the coming storm. Every instinct of her warm nature cried, “you love him.” Each accepted doctrine of her faith as firmly forbade it. She felt she was on the brink of a gulf. Destruction of soul and body or their martyrdom, seemed the only choice.
“Yet,” thought she, “if it be a crime, why is it that his voice ever soothes me,—that his words ever make me stronger and truer to my better self,—that he upholds me in all that is good? When with him, nature has a more loving aspect; the very stones look kindly on me. It has ever been thus. Before I suspected myself,—yes, now I see it all,—years, years ago, my heart flowed out the same to Olmedo,—his presence was my want. Away from him I was contented, it is true, but I was sad. With him, my sadness became a quiet joy. I was doubly myself. Has the good God given me all this for a torment? To ruin my soul through the source of its virtue and its highest happiness?”
She shuddered. Her whole frame was convulsed with agony. She did not fear that Olmedo did not love her, because she thought that feelings so deep and long tried as hers had been in relation to him, could not exist without the answering sympathy of his.
It was not then the fear that she was not loved that troubled her. It was rather the fear that Olmedo might be tempted even as she was. He, a priest, vowed to chastity: his wife was the Holy Church; if it were sacrilege in her to love, it were blasphemy in him. Again all the terrors of a stricken conscience smote her, and she was overwhelmed at the thought that he might be equally guilty with herself.
Thus it often is. God gives man his instincts and desires. Having made him after his own image, that image must be vital with the eternal principles of God-nature. If the author of all has inseparably connected cause and effect in the physical world, He has carried the law no less positively into the moral world. There can be, therefore, no instinct without its proper function, and no aspiration that may not be realized progressively towards Him. Duty is the password to heaven, which, in the rightly balanced mind begins on earth. Finding all things good according to their kind, it is not afraid to honor God by the right use of his gifts. Man begins his hell here also, by the bars to his progress, which his misunderstood organization, selfish passions, and the foolish learning or spiritual tyranny of his merely human theology fabricate for him. He fears, and seeks to compromise or deceive. If the spirit of God be upon him, then he enjoys all things of God, each in its due degree, with a peace that passeth understanding.
Beatriz, therefore, was right in feeling that the Being who had made the human heart and given it the capacity of loving, intended that it should love; that he had not given affections and the affinities of soul to either sex, to be a torment from want of the very object which He had made that man might not be Alone. And alone must be man or woman into whose heart enter no sympathies, responding to their own. If Adam had his mate, so has each son of his, by the same great law of Nature. God chose for Adam, but he gave to his children a delicate heritage of instincts and emotions of commingled matter and spirit, which were to be their guides towards finding the other being who is to complete their unity. That Olmedo was to her that being and she to him, Beatriz now knew full well. Her past life, with all that she had gained in character through him, and all she had enjoyed in feeling, the repose of perfect trust in his truth, the delicacy of his deportment, which, whether as confessor or friend, had always sought her highest good, all came back to her as a new revelation. Not that a single word of love had ever passed between them, or a single action, which angels might not have witnessed, escaped him. Both had been in too full enjoyment of that calm but unconscious love that springs from a mutual, mental and spiritual adaptation, without the suggestion of a more intimate relation, until to her the pang of his supposed death, and to him the reawakening of his physical life, amid the allurements of a tropical climate, disclosed to both the full extent of their attachment.
From that moment Beatriz was wretched, because however calm her exterior, within love and conscience were in conflict. Her misery was the greater, that she must hide her secret within her own bosom. Hitherto, every doubt or struggle had been disclosed to her confessor, and in his advice or consolation she had found repose. Now, the duties of her religion required her to confess this great sin to her confessor, and seek absolution for her soul’s sake; but that confessor was the man she loved, and the confession itself, besides being forbidden by every principle of womanly feeling, might, if made to him, precipitate both into the gulf their faith told them to avoid.
“Sinning woman that I am, how can I pray to the Holy Virgin with such a stain on my soul! Aid me, thou Chaste Mother, purest and best of women. Must I ever carry this sorrow, known to him and seen to God, yet dare not confess it, for fear of a greater sin? Would that I had drowned at the wreck,” and the tears dropped fast upon her pale cheeks. For a moment her body swayed to and fro with anguish, till faint and worn she sank upon the ground.
Woman! thine hour of trial has come; as the good or evil principle succeeds within thee, so wilt thou be saved or lost!
Every soul is born into the kingdom of Heaven only through spirit throes, such as thou now feelest test thy power! Much has been given thee, and much is required in this hour. Conquer, and eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the joy reserved for thee!
“God knows I love Olmedo. Were I to force my tongue to perjure my soul to man, He sees my heart and its secret sin. Father in heaven, can it be sin to love this man! Thou art all-wise, all-good, all-merciful. Thou hast told us that imperfect mortals cannot look on Thee and live, but through him, thy likeness so shines, that I can dimly see Thee. Do I not then in loving him, love Thee?” And she mused for an instant with a dubious smile, as if hope had began to dawn on her mind.
It was but for a short moment. Again her features darkened, and the cold shudder came back upon her. Life seemed struggling to escape from so bitter a trial. But her vital organization was so exquisite, that as she could enjoy, so must she also suffer.
“Oh! my God! my God!” broke passionately from her lips, “what blasphemy is this! Save me, Holy Mother! intercede for me with thy Son! the Evil One seeks to snare my soul,” and she knelt in prayer.
There in the forest, no leaf stirring, all nature hushed, that lone woman, her soul racked with doubt, fearing equally to violate her own pure impulses and the faith which bade her crucify them, plead piteously to her Father in heaven for strength to calm her soul, and to know the right. Never before, in that land, had a truthful, earnest woman’s heart poured forth its passionate griefs in words of childlike simplicity, seeking sympathy and aid direct from its Maker. Well might we call that spot hallowed through all after time. Long and deeply she prayed, with her sad, sorrow-convulsed face upturned to heaven, into the vault of which her full mild eyes seemed to pierce with a bright light, as if like Stephen, she saw the crucified one amid his angels. Gradually her features softened, a tear stood in either eye, the spirit she sought entered her soul, and she rose from her forest altar, if not a happier, for the time a calmer woman.
CHAPTER XII.
Since the evening by the seaside so eventful to each, Olmedo had not seen Beatriz. Indeed he had avoided it, because with his present feelings he dared not trust himself alone with her. His profession having been chosen for him by his parents, he had been subjected when so young to the discipline of his order, that he had been screened from the usual temptations and experiences of ordinary life. Under any circumstances he would have been an upright man. In his convent he had early acquired an excellent character for strict compliance with the ritual of his faith, benevolence, and study. Some of his brethren, jealous perhaps of his greater influence among their flock, had hinted occasionally to their superior, that his opinions were somewhat liberal, and that he had displayed at times an independence and energy that betokened a more active mind than was consistent with their order. Whatever truth there may have been in these insinuations, such was the general respect in which he was held, that no harm came to him or even notice of them, except now and then a good-natured suggestion to be cautious in his expressions before certain of the brethren.
Olmedo was born for a wider sphere than a monastic life. His passions were active, but pure. There had always existed within him a silent protest to forced celibacy, for he felt that the family was an institution of God, while the convent was only of man. His mind, in all questions that affected the welfare of the human race, naturally took a broad and correct view, but so thoroughly grounded had he been in the faith and practices of his church, that when his opinions really differed, he preferred outwardly to submit to what he considered the highest authority. Whenever, however, his good sense could consistently be active in opposition to the narrow or fanatical views of other members of his order, he had invariably spoken, and in general with effect; and on all occasions which required self-devotion or the exercise of a stricter rule of conduct, he had been the most prompt among them.
He was eminently qualified to be a missionary. His sincerity of faith had not cramped his sympathies of human action. Active and thoughtful, self-denying, yet charitable, firm to his convictions while obedient to lawful discipline, with a winning, quiet manner, that commanded respect and confidence, he was just the man to go forth to the world as an example and preacher of the pure tenets of Christianity. The newly discovered continent of America, with its novel races, greatly interested him. There he could be freer than in Spain. Accordingly he had obtained permission to embark for this new field of religious enterprise.
Although Olmedo had come from Spain with her father, it so happened that it was in Cuba that he had first made the acquaintance of Beatriz. From that moment he found himself strongly drawn towards her by their mutual comprehension of each other’s character, which to each filled their want of sympathy in the deeper aspirations of their natures. To either their friendship was a new and sweet experience. Olmedo’s heart finding refreshment in the ingenuous feelings and impulses of Beatriz, while her mind expanded and strengthened in the intellectual resources of his. Their intercourse, or mental confidence it would be more proper to term it, as it related so exclusively to their minds, was the more complete, that while each was actually governed by the real affinities from which true love must spring, both were unconscious of any alloy of passion. Such an intimacy as existed between them, could not have been between brother and sister, neither between lovers, for while it was undoubtedly warmed by an undercurrent of feeling unknown to the former, it was free from all the embarrassments or dangers growing out of its recognized existence with the latter. Olmedo was her spiritual father, and something more; the magnet of her soul. She was his spiritual daughter, and filled to his then well disciplined nature the void which lack of female communion had ever caused. Hence both were free, unreserved, and affectionate. Theirs was of its kind a perfect love, because it had no fear, but now the time had come when the eyes of both were opened.
The effect on Olmedo of this sudden disclosure of his passion, was no less a source of acute misery to him than the same self-confession of Beatriz had been to her. Perhaps his sufferings were even greater. Hers were impulsive and passive. An intuitive perception disclosed all at once the joys a complete union of hearts like theirs might realize, while faith forbade the banns. With her, therefore, it was simply a struggle, not against reason, for that sided with her, but a conscience educated in opposition to nature. There is no source of mental misery more poignant than this, because it is the actual right struggling against the conventional wrong, which by a false view of the laws of God has been made to appear the right. It is God’s conscience against man’s conscience, claiming to be of God. And although the latter may not be right in itself, yet from having been chosen as a moral guide, circumstances may have woven so strong a web around it, that to suddenly break the woof would be a wrong. Hence, the eternal wrong having become the present right, nothing remains but to obey duty and leave the justification of God’s ways to his own good time.
Olmedo now saw plainly that God had as fully constituted him for marriage as any other man; that even his partial intercourse with woman had been the means of his greater soul-awakening; that it was an error to view God as a being who delighted in asceticism. On the contrary he rejoiced, and all nature showed it, in man’s innocent appropriation of all the sources of enjoyment and knowledge, created expressly for him. The feasting and sociality of Christ, his love for women and children and constant intercourse with them, his generous disregard of the letter of the law, all spoke to him as they never had before. He was satisfied that man was right only, in the degree that he exercised all his faculties in the direction for which they were created; that to deny some to the intent to exalt others, was a fatal mistake. Harmony proceeded solely from the mutual and free action of all, in accordance with general principles which all nature except man instinctively recognized, but which to man were often perverted by the wantonness of Reason. In demanding to be his sole guide, Reason claimed too much. There were lessons to be learned through his affection as well as through his intellect. The more childlike he became, the more direct was his intercourse with God. Nature, children, and, above all, the heart of woman had become to him new sources of inspiration. There was then a Holy Book in all created things. Words of life could be read alike in the phenomena of nature, the sports of innocence, and the warm affections of humanity. Revelation was not confined to the printed page.
Such thoughts as these would have brought him to the stake in Spain. In the dull routine of convent-life, they probably would never have been awakened. Here he was in a new world. The church, as a human institution, was himself. There was no official authority superior to his own; no guide above his own reason or conscience. Naturally free and inquiring, how could it be otherwise than that the lessons of his new life should be felt in his soul. He saw that hierarchies were not indispensable roads to heaven. He even dimly imagined the time when each man should be again his own priest, and the intercourse between God and his children be direct as it once was. But I cannot follow him through all the foreshowings of his newly aroused religious aspirations. The Age and his education still had deep hold upon him. Fain would he now, however, redeem himself a man.
“Why should I not?” thought he. “Am I always to obey a vow taught me by others before able to judge for myself? Is the scope of another’s mind to be the measure for mine? Here Beatriz and myself must pass our days, away from our native lands, with no bars between our loves except such as have been made for other places and circumstances. Must we obey them and deny ourselves all that God appoints for our union, because man has put us asunder?”
His heart rebelled at this thought, and his passions grew clamorous. They were none the less forcible from long restraint. He loved Beatriz truly, but he loved her as a man; his whole nature panted for hers, but with his intensity of feeling there was perfect chastity, for he could as soon have warmed towards a vegetable as towards one he did not love. His passion was begotten of his love. He felt its impulses, but neither analyzed nor thought of them, except in relation to their object. Did this monk sin?
His thoughts now reverted to her. “She is my spiritual child. Her soul is in my keeping. Should I not be false to my charge to permit a union which the Church anathematizes? I may risk my own soul, but not hers. No! No! Be quiet, heart! She is pure and artless, the child of heaven; she must remain so,” and he sighed as if his last breath was parting, as he strove to bring his will to this self-renunciation.
With him, passion, opportunity, reason, and even his new views of religion plead for the union. Greater temptation of circumstance and argument never assailed a man. On the other hand, arose the still, small voice, “You are her spiritual father; love you may and must, but to confess that love, to tempt her, would be a sin against the Holy Ghost; for has she not been confided to thy charge? Was ever such a crime known to one, who has vowed to God for his better service here, and for higher reward hereafter, to renounce the honors and pleasures of this life,—to know no wife, or child; to crucify alike passions and affections for the love of Heaven. Have a care, priest! the devil baits his hook temptingly for thee!”
The full tide of a broken faith swept over his soul with retributory energy. He trembled with horror. Clasping his crucifix tightly to his breast, and frantically kissing it, he rushed from the house, exclaiming, “Save me, Jesus, save me from myself; save her, at least, whatsoever thou wilt do with me.”
CHAPTER XIII.
The southern and most eastern portion of Hawaii was, at the period of this tale, in great part, a sterile, volcanic region, with but scanty vegetation and a scanty supply of water. Mauna Loa occupied the larger part, with its immense dome and volcano. It threw off on its flanks, vast rivers formed by the flow from its summit of torrents of lava, which, in cooling, broke up into a myriad of fantastic forms. In some places they presented large tracks of volcanic rock, in easy slopes, as smooth as if a sluggish stream of oil had been suddenly changed to stone,—in others, the sharp vitrified edges, broken, basaltic masses, and savage look of the whole, suggested the thought of a black ocean petrified at the instant when a typhoon begins to subside, and the waves running steeple high toss and tumble, break and foam, into a thousand wild currents and irregular shapes. No verdure of any kind found root in these wastes. The sole nourishment they offered was an occasional supply of rain-water, left in the hollows of the rocks. It was impossible to traverse them, unless the feet were protected by sandals, impenetrable to the heat which was reflected from the glassy surfaces of the smooth rock, or the knife-like edges of the jagged lava, which formed a path as unpleasant as if it had been freshly macadamized with broken beer bottles. Fresh currents of lava yearly flowed over the old, adding to the blackness of its desolation. The fumes of sulphur and other poisonous gases, the lurid glare of liquid rock, explosions and mutterings, belchings and heavings, the quaking and trembling of the fire-eaten ground and jets of mingled earth and water,—the very elements fuzed into whirlpools and fountains of nature’s gore, redder and more clotted than human blood, while fiery ashes obscured the sky, and heavy rocks shot up as if from hell’s mortars, burst high in the air, or fell far away from their discharging craters with the crash and roar of thunderbolts,—such at times were the scenes and atmosphere of much of this district.
Still the coasts and many of the valleys afforded sufficient arable ground to support quite a numerous population. The climate was as variable as the variety of altitudes it covered. On the seaside, to the leeward of the fire-mountains, it was burning with the heat of Sahara, and all but rainless, while the highest portions were almost continually enveloped in clouds and dense vapors. The natives were familiar with both the tropical palm and the frigid lichens, perpetual heat and perpetual cold, boiling springs and never melting ice, the precocious luxuriance and the utter sterility of nature, all within a circuit of not over one hundred and fifty miles.
I doubt if the earth’s surface affords elsewhere more rapid transitions of zones within a more limited territory than Hawaii. Her phenomena of all kinds, and even her productions, though limited in variety, are on no niggard scale. The active and extinct volcanoes are the largest known,—her mountains, not in chains, but isolated, are the more impressive to the eye, from their solitary grandeur, rising as they do directly from the ocean, which encircling them leads off the view into immensity. Thus the grandeur of this wonderful island becomes complete.
In the middle-ground between the hot country of the coast and the cold of the highest region, there is a neutral spot or belt, where the creative and destructive agencies of nature are in intimate contact. Here we find heavy forests with trees of immense size, growing upon a soil so thin, that earthquakes frequently tilted them to the ground, throwing roots and the clinging earth into the air, and leaving bare the rock beneath. Amid seas of cold lava arise islets of shrubbery; verdant spots, where the strawberry, raspberry, and other fruits grow, planted in ages past by the provident agency of birds, that have here rested in their flights from more prolific soils. Now they yield welcome harvests to the colonies of their first sowers and to man. Although fire so often lays them waste, they speedily recover their fertility, and, indeed, are gradually pushing vegetation into the increasing soil on all sides, thus adding slowly to the area of habitable earth.
The inhabitants of this region partook of its character. They were brave, hardy, fierce, and cruel; as uncertain as their volcanoes, and as savage as their soil. The sybaritic life of their more favored neighbors had no attractions for them, except as a temptation for foray. They loved to seize upon the luxuries they were too ignorant to create for themselves, and indeed which nature almost denied them. But the superior arms and discipline of Kiana’s people in general prevailed, and they were confined within their own borders, although sometimes a successful expedition supplied them with both slaves and victims for sacrifice to the gods of their terrible mythology. For they saw in the mighty agencies of nature around them, only malignant and sanguinary deities, whom they feared and sought to appease by rites as horrible as their own imagination.
The great crater of Mauna Loa was their Olympus. Amid its glowing fires, or high up in the perpetual snows of the mountain, resided their awful goddess Pele, with her sister train and attendants of the other sex, whose names best express their terrific attributes. It will be noticed that like the Grecian, their mythology had its origin in their elementary conceptions of the facts of natural philosophy, which in time, by their darker imaginations, were personified into a family of monsters, instead of the poetical fancies of the sensuous Greek. “Hiaka-wawahi-lani,” the heaven dwelling cloud-holder, and “Makole-inawahi-waa,” the fiery-eyed cave breaker, were the sisters of Pele, and with the brothers “Kamoho-alii,” the king of steam and vapor, “Kapoha-ikahi-ala,” the explosion in the palace of life, “Kenakepo,” the rain of night, “Kanekekili,” thundering god, and “Keoahi-kama-kana,” fire-thrusting child of war; the latter two were like Vulcan deformed,—made up her court. Their favorite sporting place was the volcano of Kilauea, where they were always to be seen, revelling in its flames, or bathing in its red surges, to the chorus of its terrific thunderings or frightful mutterings.
My readers will, I trust, forgive me the insertion of these sentence-long names for the poetry there is in them, and if they will pronounce them with the soft accent of Southern Europe, they will find them as melodious as their definitions are expressive.
But it was not alone to these deities these savages paid homage. They worshipped a mammoth shark, and fed him with human victims, casting them alive within the enclosed water in which they kept their ferocious pet. This was not quite so bad as feeding lampreys on slaves, for their sin was done under a mistaken idea of religion, while the other was to glut revenge, and fatten eels for their owner’s dinner. If we condemn the unintellectual Indian for his sacrifices and his tabus, how much more must we pass under condemnation the Roman for his inhumanity, and the Catholic for his Inquisition; the one sinning in the full light of knowledge, and the other of both knowledge and revelation.
As Kiana had partially succeeded in placing the rites of worship among his sensuous people upon a cheerful and in a material view, an elevated footing, so the priests of these tribes had in every conceivable way augmented the terrors and demoniacal attributes of theirs, and shaped them into the likeness of a devil, called “Kalaipahoa,” which combined all the ugliness their imaginations were capable of conceiving in a wooden idol, sufficiently hideous to have sent a thrill of horror even through Dante’s Inferno. It was the poison god, and was made of a wood, which the priests gave out to be deadly poisonous. Its huge, grinning mouth was filled with rows of sharks’ teeth, human hair in brutish curls covered its head, while its extended arms and spread fingers continually cried, “give, give,” to the poor victims of its fears.
Such, in brief, were the chief objects of worship among these Hawaiians, whose habits in other respects offered a strong contrast to those of Kiana’s people. Cannibalism, though not very common, was not rare among the most ferocious of the clans, but was restricted chiefly to feasts of revenge after contests in which all their cruel propensities had been fully aroused. They were given to the worst forms of sorcery, and their worship embraced such rites as might be supposed to be pleasing to their demon-idols. Always at war, either among themselves, or with their more favored neighbors of the north, their selfish passions were ever active, and their religion, based upon fear and the most abject superstition, but confirmed them in the vices most congenial to their natures. Kiana’s subjects presented the aborigines of Polynesia under their most favorable aspect, but these tribes the other extreme of savage life. With both there were exceptions to the general character. There was, however, sufficient similarity between their traits to prove not only a common parentage, but that a change of circumstances would, in time, produce an alteration in the most prominent qualities of each. This actually occurred, nearly three centuries later, when the first Kamehameha united the islands under one sovereign. But even now the traveller perceives in the sparse inhabitants of these regions a less genial disposition than in those on the sea-coast, while it is among them that still linger most pertinaciously the traces of their former fearful worship.
Among their chiefs was one named Pohaku, who had acquired by his superior courage and fierceness an ascendency over all the others. He was dark even for a native; his hair short and crispy; his eyes blood-shot; nostrils thick and wide spread, and his lips heavy and full, showing, when open, a mouth in which great milky white teeth appeared like scattered tomb-stones in a graveyard; many having been knocked out in the various fights in which he had been engaged. His frame and muscles were those of a bull, and his strength prodigious. Brute force was his tenure of power, for with all the respect of the Hawaiians for inherited rank, he was so bad a tyrant, that nothing but a convenient opportunity had been wanting for them long before to have rid themselves of him. So malicious was his vanity, that he had been known to cut off the leg of a man more richly tattooed than his own. To mangle faces, whose beauty inspired him with jealousy, was a common pastime. Thankful were the possessors if their entire heads were spared. Even a handsome head of hair was sufficient provocation to cause the owner to be beheaded. To this malevolence he joined a mania for building. What with his wars, cruelties and constant consumption of time in his rude works, his immediate tenants had a hard service, so that it was not surprising that they took every occasion to desert to the territories of Kiana, who kindly received all who claimed his protection. Others retreated farther into the savage wilderness, and there became petty robbers, a further pest to the little industry that could exist under such a ruler, and on so precarious a soil. The whole population, therefore, bred to hardihood and tyranny, were ever ripe for every opportunity which would unite them in any enterprise that savored of danger and plunder.
CHAPTER XIV.
“He that studieth revenge, keepeth his own wounds green.”—Bacon.
Tolta had not been idle since the shipwreck. The restraint which the presence of the Spaniards had hitherto imposed upon him, was now removed. He was rarely seen with them, and indeed often disappeared for weeks at a time.
Kiana had never liked him. Tolta felt it at heart and resented it. At the bottom of this feeling was no doubt the attachment both had for Beatriz. We have seen the nature of Kiana’s; generous and profound, more from deep respect than from positive love, because in reality, while her character compelled, it at the same time repelled his passion. He had striven to win her, for he could not help it. In one sense, he was not disappointed at the result, because his reason told him it could not be otherwise. Having therefore obeyed both his own and her will, he now, in continuing his kindness, left her as free to act as himself.
It was different with Tolta. The Aztec saw even deeper into the impassable gulf between their two natures, but he was drawn to her with the tenacity of the bloodhound to his scent. In her presence he was gentle and serviceable. The passions which excited him when apart from her, became with her like those of a little child. He would gaze upon her for hours with eyes intense with his fiery emotions, but the moment she spoke to him the fire left them, and the good in him illumined his countenance.
Beatriz read his character, and while from sympathy in his misfortunes she exerted herself to soothe, she never could so overcome her repugnance as to trust in him as she did in Kiana. With the latter she felt safe; with Tolta never. The very fierceness which he was ever ready to display in her defence, might at any moment be turned upon her. It was well that her instincts prompted her to distrust him as much as she did, for often the only barrier between them was her own moral superiority. Tolta felt this to be indeed a far stronger obstacle than would have been the jealous precautions of lock or duenna. The possibility of Beatriz loving him as he did her never deluded him. He knew that was hopeless. Still his passion rather grew than abated, especially in the freedom of his new life, which brought back the pride and ambition of his race. So long, however, as he saw that Beatriz did not love another, he was reconciled. She had so wisely avoided the subject whenever he sought to suggest his feelings, that he had all but persuaded himself that she was of a different mould from other women. She might be worshipped, but not sought in love.
He hated Juan and the seamen with all the intensity of an Aztec’s revenge, for their share in the conquest of his country. Olmedo he had ever respected for his virtues, and would have exempted from the fate he cherished at heart for the others. In his excursions about Hawaii, he had come in contact with some of Pohaku’s warriors. Gradually their intercourse had ripened into an intimacy with their chief, with whom he now conspired to overthrow Kiana and get possession of the Spaniards. So adroitly had he concealed his designs, that he had retained the friendship and confidence of all except a few individuals about him, for his manner was the same it had ever been. Their own consciousness of the opportunities he now had, and the provocation they had often given him, were more the causes of their secret distrust than anything they saw. His frequent absences were a relief rather than a cause of suspicion, for he was then forgotten.
He had no difficulty in obtaining a willing auditory to his plans in Pohaku, and the chiefs leagued with him. His inmost desire was to sacrifice the Spaniards to the war-god of Mexico, under any name his allies might choose from their mythology, and to gloat over their dying agonies, while taunting them with their fate as due their crimes against his countrymen. Besides this, seeing the brutal nature of Pohaku and the easy confidence of Kiana, he conceived the design of eventually disposing of both, by turning their arms against each other, while he gradually united all Hawaii under his own sway and forced Beatriz to become his wife. As hopeless as seemed such a plot, it was within the range of probability could the wily Aztec dispose of the chief actors. To this end he now bent all the resources of his cunning.
Pohaku listened eagerly to his seductive eloquence as he promised him the wealth of Kiana’s people, if he would unite his warriors under his direction. He excited his fears also, as he narrated the career of the white man in Mexico, insinuating that they were spies, to be followed by numbers sufficient for the conquest of Hawaii, as soon as their report should reach their countrymen in the ports whence they came.
At the suggestion of Tolta, some days before the declaration of Kiana to Beatriz, Pohaku had sent his heralds to summon the friendly chiefs to a grand council, at which the plot was to be finally discussed. They assembled at one of his principal fortresses on the southwestern bank of the crater of Kilauea, and there in silence and secrecy prepared their plans. Tolta knew too well the valor of the Spaniards, not to impress upon the chiefs the importance of securing them before marching in force upon Kiana. So artfully did he mingle his own revenge with their superstition, that they with one accord decided to seize upon them by a secret expedition entrusted to Tolta, who agreed to put them into their hands for a solemn sacrifice to Pele, on condition only that the white woman was to be his own prize. Accordingly, some of the most active and trusty warriors were placed at his command. By slow marches and secret paths he led them without discovery to the borders of the valley where the Spaniards dwelt, dividing them into different ambushes, with orders to seize each one and bear him off at once to Pohaku’s fortress, without taking his life, while he was to decoy the white men to them, and on each occasion make his own escape as if equally endangered. So successful was he, that the three seamen were abducted as arranged, without any alarm being given. Tolta then, with a select party lay in wait in the vicinity of Juan’s dwelling, watching his opportunity to seize the main prize. Alvirez, he soon ascertained, was for the present out of his reach, being in a distant part of the valley.
While watching for Olmedo and Beatriz, he had been witness to the scene between Kiana and the latter. Without overhearing their discourse, he saw in their parting, as simple as it was, food for his jealousy, for he well knew that her hand and tear had never been given him. His tiger blood was stirred, and he ground his teeth in rage. “What,” said he, “does she frown upon the Aztec noble, that she may smile upon this hind of Hawaii. Once in my power, and she shall be taught to love me or none.”
He watched her after movements more in amazement than anger, for they were to him contradictory and unintelligible. Besides, until she was sufficiently far from her people, he dared not give the signal to seize her for fear of a general alarm; but not for one minute did he let her get out of his sight, following her movements under cover of the thick undergrowth of the forest, with the silence and subtlety of a serpent. While thus engaged, a scene occurred which so astonished and fascinated him, that until he had seen it out, he seemed to have forgotten the object of his expedition.
CHAPTER XV.
When Olmedo left his house under such excited feelings, he unconsciously followed the path which led to the grove where Beatriz was, and which he knew to be her favorite retreat. In his present condition of mind, she was the last person his reason would have counselled him to meet, but led by an inward attraction, without seeking the meeting, his steps took him towards where she had just risen from prayer. So distracted, however, was he with his conflicting emotions, that she saw him the first. It was too late to avoid him, which she would not have done had she been able. Conscious of the rectitude of her own desires, and pacified by her late appeal to heaven, she obeyed her impulse and advanced towards him. As he suddenly looked up and saw her within a few steps, a faintness came over him, and he was well nigh falling, but with a great effort recovering himself, he took her hand as frankly as it was offered.
Both were silent. Each felt the crisis of their fate had arrived. Nature, when her mightiest agencies are about to go forth in the hurricane, the earthquake, or the volcanic eruption, is for the moment breathless. So the human soul anticipates its most direful trials by utter stillness.
They walked on side by side, going deeper into the wood, as if to screen themselves from all the world. Yet neither knew why they did so, only it was a relief to be together and to be apart from every one else. Though not a word had been spoken, each felt the confession had been made, and they began to tremble, as did the guilty pair in Paradise when they first heard the voice of the Creator. Why should they tremble?
To love surely was no crime. That hearts like theirs should in meeting mingle, God had ordained when he first created man and woman. Whence, then, the thrill too deep for utterance that paralyzed their tongues? Beatriz was not a woman to shrink from the display of her own feelings. She was one rather to avow them, and meet the consequences fearless in her honesty. Olmedo had never before shrunk from speaking directly from his heart words of truth or admonition. Why, then, did these innocent ones act as if guilt was upon them? Because the Church had said to him, “thou shalt not love her whom God gave thee for a companion, and to her, thou shalt not be a companion to him.” Thus man’s forgery of God’s will, making Him to say, “it is good for man to be alone,” had given to each of these sufferers, who by his laws were mated in love and sympathy in body and soul, for time and eternity, a false conscience which perverted their good into their evil. Much of theology is indeed a cunningly contrived system of man’s to make himself miserable, despite the broad ordinances of the Creator, to be read in all his works, “to go forth and enjoy the world, to be fruitful and multiply, to love Him with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and “thy neighbor as thyself.” Man will not be in his proper relation to his Maker, until he escapes from the dogmas and creeds of a conventional Christianity and walks with Him, as did Enoch, in the faith of that perfect love which casteth out all fear.
But man in his soul-progress can keep pace only with his age and opportunity. The duties he voluntarily assumes are still duties, though more light may have widened his own prospect. He is but a link in the vast chain of humanity, no one of which can be ruptured without affecting it through its entire extent. He is, therefore, to consider well before he acts whether in seeking his own personal gratification, or even in obeying the right instincts of his heart, he may not offend others, or do a general injury for a particular good. In all doubtful moral emergencies, duty says obey the higher law, or that which shows that thou lovest thy neighbor as thyself.
There is a blessing in the principle of obedience, springing from self-sacrificing motives, which, whatever may be the result in this life, is sure of its final reward. Duties, whether artificial or not, are the moral diamond dust, by which our souls are polished. As we free ourselves from all selfish considerations in our relations with others, so shall our hope be converted into joy in the next life. It is well, therefore, to bear our burdens meekly and with courage here, that we may travel the lighter hereafter.
Olmedo was distracted between his vows and his desire. How could he to the simple natives recall his teachings and example as a monk, upon the one point of celibacy, which in him was now in such peril! Could they comprehend his recantation? Would not the little truth that had already begun to be understood among them, based as it was more upon their respect for one who showed himself superior to their ordinary passions, than to an intellectual appreciation of his doctrines, would not this seed even be lost, and the priest, tabued to women, be hereafter esteemed only as one of themselves? Besides, the doctrine of self-abnegation, or the crucifying of his natural instincts, which although his now more enlightened reason showed him could not be an acceptable sacrifice to their author, except in refraining from their abuse, still had a deep hold upon him, particularly as it was his own love that had just stimulated his mind to the full exercise of its freedom. He who had already sacrificed so much to an erroneous idea, could he not now complete the sacrifice for the sake of the good to others? Would not such a sacrifice to the principle of love to his neighbor, and of duty to his vows, be bread upon the waters, to be returned to him at the end of time? Each heart had its schooling for eternity. The struggle to decide his future—his salvation had come. What was once right for him as a free man, was now wrong as pledged to a religion whose tenets had ever been his love and admiration.
Such had been his reflections. They had flashed through his mind and ten-fold more, with piercing throbs of conscience, as in silence he walked by the side of Beatriz with his eyes fixed on the ground, while his blood was beating time to passion’s marches, and his affections yearned, nay, clamored to take Beatriz to wife. They had come to him with all the quickness and vividness with which the entire previous life crowds itself into the brief struggle of the drowning man. Speak he could not. His tongue was rooted to his mouth.
With Beatriz the struggle was different. She made no pretence to conceal what was longer impossible, but waited with quickened pulse and tremulous feeling, to hear him break the silence. His mental agony was perfectly intelligible to her. Without analyzing as he did the circumstances of their position, they flooded her heart like a spring freshet. It might break, but she would give no sigh that should tempt him from his holy allegiance. Once his decision made, her heart was wholly his, either to sustain him in duty, or to share his lot. With Ruth she would have said, “Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.” How long they wandered thus, or how far, neither could realize, for every step was as if a millstone were tied to their heels. In their doubt and conflict the landscape, so joyous in itself, seemed overspread with gloom. The very sun, as it stole through the thick verdure overhead, shot upon them cold and mocking rays—light without warmth. Heaven was darkened, and the earth gave them no rest.
At last they sat down; Beatriz on a log, and Olmedo at her feet. Around and over them rose a rural bower, carpeted with soft mosses and canopied with vines, fragrant in blossoms and flowers. The birds warbled melodiously even at noon-day in this shady retreat. Near by, flowed a little brook with gentle murmurings, a vein of life coursing through the green sward, on its way to a torrent stream that thundered far below. Through an opening in the trees, mountain-ward in the far distance could be seen the glassy curve of the cataract which fed both. Rising from its mist, enclosing in its hollow the entire gorge from which it issued, was a perfect rainbow, forming a frame of wondrous beauty to nature’s painting. On the opposite side, glimmering through the forests like a silver horizon, was the ocean, its waves sparkling and dancing in the bright sun as the fresh trade-wind swept over it, and, cooled by its breath, came stealing with soft notes and reviving breeze through every leafy cranny of the dense jungle. The quick darting, bright eyed lizards, crept out of their holes and played about their human friends, sure that they had nothing to fear from them. Adam and Eve when they slept in Paradise, were not more alone with the communings of nature than were apparently this pair. A scene more soothing, since its gates were closed upon our race, the earth had never offered to mankind. Yet for a while it was unheeded, for the eyes of both were turned within; gradually, however, its beauties dawned upon them. They looked around. Beatriz first spoke. “Olmedo,” she said, “does not God reign here? How beautiful is this landscape? how filled with repose; all nature is hushed in harmony. Why is it we alone are unhappy?”
As she said this her face lighted up with its wonted smile for him. She wished to chase away the gloom that darkened his brow. The appeal was irresistible. There was before him the rainbow, God’s sign of hope and protection for man; there was her smile which for so many years, and through so many trials, had been the rainbow to his heart. Why should it be less now? Could he not learn to accept its spirit, without coveting her possession?
His heart melted. He laid his head upon her knees, and for an instant wept aloud. Their hands soon met, and were entwined; then their eyes—long and earnestly they searched each other’s souls. All the tenderness and truth of natures, warm like theirs with humanity’s deepest sympathies, poured forth responsive in that gaze. From her face, lighted with love’s softest smile, bending over him with an angel look, as if it would pour into his torn heart all the peace, purity, and sacrifice hers contained, there shone a celestial glow, which savored more of heaven than earth. Bright spirits were communing with them; spirits of love and joy. Alas! their lips meet, and in one lingering kiss, the first of love’s passion either had known, was concentrated all the long pent-up affection of their two lives.