CHAPTER LII
EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF NORMAN WESTFALL
Reluctantly, Diane opened the letters of long ago and read them:
Grant and I have had wild sport killing alligators with the Seminoles.A wild, dark, unexplored country, Ann, these Florida Everglades! How Iwish you were with us! Tyson had an Indian guide, evoked somewherefrom the wild by smoke signals, waiting for us. We traversed miles andmiles of savage, uninhabitable marsh before at last we came to theisolated Indian camp. Small wonder the Seminole is still unconquered.It is a world here for wild men. I'll write as I feel inclined andbunch the letters when there is an Indian going out to the fringe ofcivilization.
We hunt the 'gators by night in cypress canoes. Grant sat in the bowof our boat to-night with a bull's-eye lantern in his cap. The fan ofit over the silent, black water, the eyes of the 'gators blazing in thedark, these cool, bronze, turbaned devils with axes to sever the spinalcord and rifles to shatter the skull--it's a wild and thrilling scene.
I'm sorry Carl was not so well. Now that Dad is kinder to the littlechap, we could have left him at St. Augustine if he'd been well enoughto make the trip. It bothers me that you're not along. It's my firsttime without you, and you're a better shot than Grant and moredependable in mood. I can't make out what's come over him of late.He's so moody and reckless that the Indians think he's a devil. He'smore prone to wild whims than ever. We've shot wild turkey and bearbut I like the 'gator sport the best.
There's a curious white man here who's lived a good part of his lifewith the tribe. He's a Spaniard, a dark-skinned, bitter, morose sortof chap--really a Minorcan--whose Indian wife is dead. He has adaughter, a girl of twenty or so whom the Seminoles call Nan-ces-o-wee.He calls her simply Nanca. She speaks Spanish fluently. The moroseold Spaniard has taught her a fund of curious things. Her heavy hair,black as a storm-cloud, falls to her knees. Grant says her wonderfuleyes remind him somehow of midnight water. Her eyebrows have theexpressive arch of the Seminole. Her color is dark and very rich, butit's more the coloring of the Spanish father than the Seminole mother.Altogether, she's more Spanish than Indian, I take it, though she's atantalizing combination of each in instinct. Her grace is wild andIndian--and she walks lightly and softly like a doe. Ann, her facehaunts me.
Young as she is, this Nanca of whom I have written so much to you, has,they tell me, had a most romantic history. With her beauty it was ofcourse, inevitable. Men are fools. At eighteen, urged into proudrevolt against her Seminole suitors by her father, who for all hissingular way of life can not forget his white heritage, she married ayoung foreigner who came into the Glades hunting. He seems to havebeen utterly without ties and decided to live with the Indians in themanner of the Spaniard. A year or so later, a young artist imitator ofCatlin's made his way to the Seminole village with a guide. He hadbeen traveling about among the Indians of the reservations paintingIndian types, and had heard of this old turbaned tribe buried in theEverglades. Nanca's beauty must have driven him quite mad, I think.At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner todivorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient whenthe marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild,reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simpleSeminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, atiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he triedto run away, and the Indians killed him.
Red-winged Blackbird! Keela then was the child of the artist!
The old Spaniard in his gruff and haughty way has been kind to Grantand me. He's not well--some obscure cardiac trouble from which hesuffers at times most horribly. He has confided to me a singularsecret. The young foreigner who divorced Nanca is the crown prince ofsome obscure little mountain kingdom called Houdania. His name isTheodomir. He had wild revolutionary notions, hated royalty and fledat the death of his father. But America and its boasted liberty hadcankers and inequalities too, and heartsick, Theodomir roamed aboutuntil at length on a hunting trip he came into the village of theSeminoles. Here was the communistic organization of which thisaristocratic young socialist had dreamed--tribal ownership of lands,cooeperative equality of men and women--no jails, no poor-houses, nobolts or bars or locks--honorable old age and perfect moral orderwithout law. What wonder that he lingered? Now that he is divorcedfrom Nanca he wanders about from tribe to tribe. I'd like to see him.
* * * * * *
Ann, I must write the truth. The face of this Spanish girl haunts meday and night. There is a madness in my blood. I wish you were here!I am tormented by terrible doubts and misgivings. If Dad were not sointolerant!
* * * * * *
Nanca has fled from the Indian village with Grant and me. Oh, Ann, ithad to come! I lost my head. The old Spaniard died three days ago.That was the cause of it. Nanca's grief was wild and terrible. Herwailing dirge was all Indian, yet immediately she cried out that theIndian way of life for her was impossible without her father. Shebegged me to take her away. And yet--Oh, Ann, Ann! How could I takethat other man's child? We left her outside the old chief's wigwam.
Much as I have scoffed at marriage, I have married Nanca. Grantinsisted. He was a little bitter. I do not know what makes him so.
I have seen Dad. We quarreled bitterly. Agatha was there with him. Ican hardly write what followed. By some God-forsaken twist of Fate, ajealous, sullen-eyed young Indian who had loved Nanca and had beenspurned by her father, followed us relentlessly from the Glades to St.Augustine. He told Dad that Nanca had not been married to theartist--that she was a mother and not a wife--and Dad believed it. Itold him patiently enough that there is no ceremony among theSeminoles--that the man goes forth to the home of the girl at thesetting of the sun, and that he is then as legally her husband as ifall the courts in Christendom had tied the knot. Dad can not see it.I shall be in New York in two weeks. Nanca and I are going to Spain.I can not forget Dad's white, horror-struck face nor what he said. Heis bigoted and unjust. God help me, I hope that I may never set eyesupon him again!
* * * * * *
We have been very happy here in Spain. I have run across a wonderfulold room in a Spanish castle. Ceiling, doors, fireplace, paintings,table, chairs and lanterns, I am transplanting. What a setting forNanca!
We are sailing for home. Nanca is not so well as I could hope. Shegrieves, I think, for the little girl in Florida. There are times whenI am bitterly jealous of those two other men.
There was a lapse of weeks in the letters. Then came a long one fromNew York.
Grant came that night just after you had gone. He has been with me aweek. His notions are more erratic than ever. For instance, lastnight, while we were smoking, I told him the story of Prince Theodomir.He was greatly interested.
"What a chance!" said he softly. "What a chance, Norman, for wildcommotion in your ridiculous little court. I've been there. It's akingdom of crazy patriots who grant freedom of marital choice to theirprinces to freshen and strengthen the royal blood; and they boast anancient line of queens wiser than Catherine of Russia. A hidden paperpurporting to be a deathbed statement of Prince Theodomir's--thislittle daughter of Nanca and the artist--and, Lord! what complicationswe could have immediately. How easily she might have been the child ofTheodomir and a princess!"
And sitting there by the table, Ann, he drew up an ingenious documentcouched in the stilted English of a foreigner. Like most of Grant'snotions, it was infernally clever. It suggested that my marriage toNanca had been childless and that we had brought a child--the daughterof Theodomir and Nanca--away from the Indian village and had reared herwith my name. Then he showed me with a laugh where three conflictingmeanings might be read from the stilted phrasing and eccentricpunctuation.
"Drop that, old man," said he, "into your chauvinistic little Punch andJudy court along with the name of the missing Theodomir and watch theblaze!"
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After all, I do not think we will stay here in New York. Nanca is notat all well. She longs for trees and the open country. We are comingup to the lodge.
* * * * * *
I'm glad Dad sent for you. I think he is growing fonder of Carl,though of course his prejudices will probably always flash out now andthen. . . . He's fond of us both, Ann, for all he raves so. No wordof Grant since that night of which you told me. . . . I am sorry.
* * * * * *
You tell me Grant has written to you. Tell him when you write--towrite to me. I miss him.
* * * * * *
Grant has sent me a giant pair of candlesticks from Spain. They aresix feet tall, of age-old wood and Spanish carving. He begs that theymay stand in the Spanish room and makes some incoherent reference toyou in connection with them, out of which I can't for the life of meextract a grain of sense. If you could have cared for him a little,Ann!
* * * * * *
I will not take this thing that fate has whipped into my face with ascornful jeer. Nanca is dead! Her life went out with the life shegave my daughter. Oh, Ann, Ann, why are you not with me now when Ineed you most. After all what is this mortal tegument but a shellwhich a man sloughs off in eternal evolution. Outside, the moon isvery bright upon the lake. The "Mulberry Moon," Nanca called it, andloved its light. It shines in at her window now, but she can not seeit. Ann, because the moon is so bright to-night--because the name ofthe moon goddess bears within it your name--let the name of my poor,motherless little girl be Diane. Nanca called her "Little Red-wingedBlackbird!" I believe at the end she was thinking of the little girlwe left in the Indian village. They are very much alike. Poor Nanca!
The writing broke off with a wild scrawl. With agonized eyes Dianepushed the letters away and stared at the quiet firelit room, buildingagain within its log walls the tragedy of her father's death. He hadlain there by the fire, his life snuffed out like a candle by his ownhand. The broken-hearted old man down South had carried the child ofhis son away, fiercely denied the Indian blood, and pledged Aunt Agathato the keeping of the secret. And this was the net that had drivenCarl to the verge of insanity and sent Themar to his death in a Floridaswamp!
There was no princess--no child of the exiled Theodomir. The paperstuffed in the candle-stick in a reckless moment had been but theingenious figment of a man's brain for the entertainment of an hour.The old chief and Sho-caw with their broken tale to Philip had buttangled the net the more. As the blood of the Indian mother had drivenDiane forth to the forest, so had the blood of the artist father drivenKeela forth from the Indian village, a wanderer apart from her people,and Fate had relentlessly knotted the threads of their lives in aSouthern pine wood.