It was on the twenty-fifth of November last year that, hearing a faint whistle skyward, I looked aloft to see a graceful group of seven white swans winging their way across the city, and making for the southeast. I remember the date distinctly, as it was that of the provincial elections, and at the time I made some laughing remark about the politicians, and wondered what this band of migrating birds portended. Then I forgot the wrangle of public affairs, for the beauty of those white-feathered swans sailing into the lands of sun and warmth held my thoughts and attention to the exclusion of all lesser lovely things. I could picture them idling away the winter in some far southern lagoon, while the lazy tropic weeks drifted by as they waited for the call of the North that would come with the early April days. The call of the North that would mean mating time, and a long, sweet summer in the far reaches of the upper Pacific coast. I watched them for many moments, their long slender throats were outstretched with the same keen eagerness to reach the southern suns, as a finely bred horse displays near the finish of a race. Their glorious pinions were like sails of white silk swelling to the breeze on a racing canoe, and lofty as was their flight. I could yet distinguish a hint of orange from the web of their trailing feet. Their indifference to the city beneath them, their direct though deliberate course, their unblemished whiteness, were like a glimpse of some far, perfect thing, that with all our longing and outreaching hands, we may not hope to touch. Farther and farther they winged their way, fainter and fainter drifted back their clear whistling until a scarf of pearl grey cloud enveloped them—they had gone.
The following day the chief came, and almost the first thing I told him was of the swans flying southward. His face was illuminated with a half teasing, half affectionate smile as he said:
“You see seven swans fly? Oh! That is very good luck.”
“What will it bring me?” I asked, reflecting his smile.
“It shows your—What is it white people call it?—Sweetheart? Yes, your sweetheart very true to you, he not got two faces; not got one face for you when he with you, and another face when he away. Oh! sure, he very true.”
I laughed outright.
“A woman's sweetheart is never true to her, but a man's always is,” I remarked with a cynosure born of much observation and some little experience.
His expression changed. “You know big world too well,” he said, “so I not tell you legend of swans.”
Instantly I discarded my sneer and banished my unbelief. “Oh! Chief, I promise not to know the big world or anything about it if you will tell me about them,” I urged.
“Well! you have seen them; it's great thing to see them; maybe I tell you,” he deliberated, but I am quite convinced that unless I had really seen those migrating beauties sailing above the city that I could never have extracted from him the quaint Squamish traditions.
The chief rarely used tobacco, but today he accepted a cigarette—the fragrance of an “Egyptian” always brings back that day, and I never watch the faint violet smoke upcurling but the film seems to wind itself into a hazy group of southward going birds, and my old Tillicum is once again telling me
“Did you ever know a mother who did not love her crippled baby more than all her other children?” It is always so, white mothers, Indian mothers, they are the same. This little girl baby was crippled, and as she learned to walk one foot trailed slightly behind the other; there was no ugliness, nothing crooked in her form, just the one weak foot; but her mother loved her with that great protecting love a woman gives a weak child. She called her “Be-be,” the Chinook word one uses to pet a little one, and the baby grew into girlhood, into womanhood, wrapped about by her mother's heart.
Be-be's face was beautiful, her soul more beautiful still, and only the trailing foot stood between her and the perfection of young maidenhood. But many a brave wanted her for his wife, for she was laughter-loving, kind, good; her fingers were swift and deft to weave blankets and baskets, and she loved little children as her mother had done before her. And one day came a strong young hunter—fleet of foot, keen of eye, sure of aim. His arrows never missed their mark, and his lodge was filled with the soft warm furs of wild creatures, which lay silent witnesses to his prowess. “I will be strong for both of us,” he said, when she promised to be his wife, and the shadows crossed her face as she looked at her trailing foot.
“But I can never run to meet you when you return from the forest with the deer across your shoulder, or the beaver over your arm,” she regretted. “I can never dance for you at the great potlatches as my friends the other maidens do. I must sit with the old women—alone. With the old and the ugly—alone.”
“You will never be old, never be ugly,” he assured her. “Your face, and your soul, and your laughing heart—they will never be anything but young. I shall dance for both of us. Come, will you come with me?” and womanlike, she believed, and went with him, and her father's lodge knew her no more.
Often would come her mother, still calling her “Be-be,” “Be-be,” as though she were yet a baby—that is the way with mothers and a crippled child.
The years drifted on, and Be-be bore her hunter husband six beautiful children, but none of them had the trailing foot, nor yet the lovely face of their laughter-loving mother. She had not yet grown old to look upon as the Squamish women are apt to be while even yet young, and her face was like a flower as she sat amongst the old and ugly at the great potlatches, while the maidens and the young men danced and chanted, and danced again. How often she wished to join them, none may know, but no ache entered her ever-young heart until her husband's cousin came, a maiden tall, lithe, strong as the hunter himself, and who danced like the sunlight on the blue waters of the Pacific. A strange gleam awoke in the hunter's eyes as he watched her, watched her sway like the branches of the Douglas fir when storm-beaten; watched her agile feet, her swift light steps, her glorious strength. For hours and hours this cousin could dance without tiring, and for hours and hours he watched her, and when she ceased the young braves and Be-be's hunter-husband gathered about her with gifts of shell necklaces and words of fire.
Be-be looked at her trailing foot—and the laughter died out of her eyes.
In the lodge, with her six little children about her she waited for him many days, many weeks, but the hunter-husband had gone with one who had no trailing foot to keep her sitting amongst the old and the ugly.
Many young braves came to Be-be. “Marry me,” each would say. “He will not come back to you.” But she would only smile and shake her head, and turn to her children with outstretched arms.
And the friends of her youth grew old and wrinkled, her tribespeople grew infirm and weakened with years, but Be-be's face was still as young and as beautiful as when she first met and loved the strong hunter who had gone out of her life many scores of moons ago.
And far away in his distant lodge the hunter himself grew old and feeble, his aim was no longer sure, his eye no longer keen, and at his side sat his cousin, she who was once so light of foot, so joyous in the dance, so strong and straight and agile, but the years had weighted her once swift feet, had aged her face, had stooped her shoulders, had stiffened her hands. Old and ugly, she crouched in her blanket for her blood ran slowly in her veins—she danced no more. And all this time Be-be sat at the great potlatches, her face like a flower amongst the bleak bare branches of leafless trees in winter.
And one day he returned—returned to look upon her beauty, to hear her laughter and to learn that a true woman's love will keep her young and flowerlike for ever. With a great cry he bowed before her—and though he was old and bent and ugly she stretched out her arms to him.
But the Saghalie Tyee spoke from out of the sky, and His word is law to all races, all people.
“You may not have her again, oh! Hunter,” spoke the voice. “Untruth can not mate with truth. I shall place her and her children where their youth, their beauty, their laughter shall for ever taunt your crooked misshapen heart. They shall never grow old or ugly, and she with her trailing foot shall become the most graceful thing that I the Saghalie Tyee have created. Watch the morning skies, oh! Hunter of the double face, the double heart, and in the first light of the rising sun you will see the beauty, the grace, the laughter, the youth, the fidelity, the love, the truth—you have forfeited these seven glorious things that you have cast aside.”
In the morning, against the gold of the rising sun, there arose a group of seven pearl-white swans. For a brief moment they poised above the aged hunter, then winged their way south. He watched in an agony of loneliness their graceful flight; he sought Be-be's lodge—it was empty. Once more his aged eyes sought the upper airs, where he could yet discern the seven beautiful birds whose wings were as silken sails, and whose feet trailed a blur of orange against the blue of the say. He bowed his head, for he knew those trailing graceful feet were his Be-be's one defect—glorified.
The chief's cigarette was out. Above his noble old head the purple smoke yet curled like the clouds that had enveloped my group of white beauties the evening before.
“Do the swans usually travel in flocks of seven?” I asked.
“Not always,” he replied, “but very often so. That's the reason I say you have good luck, and true sweetheart when you see seven.”
“I suppose you mean, Tillicum, that like begets like, that truth and fidelity bears truth and fidelity—is that it?” I questioned.
“Yes, did not the Saghalie Tyee say that Truth could not mate with Untruth?” he said very gently.