Celilo Falls

“ A properly handled stern-wheeler can be drifted down and (by means of line and capstan) hauled up rapids where not even a high-powered launch can live. I had a list of about a score of the principal rapids between the Snake and Celilo Falls, with their distances from the Canadian Boundary by river. This would enable me to know approximately where I was going to find them. That was all. [Pg 324] Information on fall, channel and the best means of running them I would have to pick up as I went along.
I shoved off from Pasco Ferry at nine o’clock in the morning of Sunday, November fourteenth. ”

“ Twice a week Celia ties up parcels for the Fleet. Ordinary people provide the blankets, sea-boots, chocolate, periscopes and so forth; Celia looks after the brown paper and string, which always seems to me the most tricky part. There are a dozen of them, all working together; and you can imagine (or, anyhow, I can) Vera or Kitty or Isobel, her mouth full of knot, gossiping away about her highly-placed relations, while Beryl or Evelyn or Lorna looks up from the parcel she is kneeling on and interrupts, "Well, my brother heard——— I say, where did you put my scissors?" ”

“ Celia's vague terror grew. She had a feeling that a beast was waking in the woman, and with it came a growing premonition of failure. Vainly she cried to herself, "I must not fail to-night." But she felt instinctively that there was a stronger personality than her own in that room, taming her, condemning her to failure, influencing the others.
She was placed in a chair. Adèle passed a cord round her ankles, and the mere touch of it quickened Celia to a spasm of revolt. Her last little remnant of liberty was being taken from her. She raised herself, or rather would have raised herself. ”

“ Fair continued discontentedly.
"The spinet won't mind that; it is used to being alone," Celia answered cheerfully, standing before the mirror, fastening an oak leaf on her dress. It reminded her that even if her heart was heavy and her life full of difficulties, she could still be courageous.
"Things are sure to come right in the Forest," she had said to herself again and again. Not because she believed it, but because she longed to, and sometimes she did believe it,—just for a little while,—as she looked from Patricia's Arbor across to that bit of sunny road. ”

“ Darkness again filled the recess instead of the grey twilight. But in a moment a faint breath of wind played upon Celia's forehead, and she knew that the man had parted the curtains and slipped into the room. Celia let her head fall towards her shoulder. She was sick and faint with terror. Her lover was in this plot—the lover in whom she had felt so much pride, for whose sake she had taken herself so bitterly to task. He was the associate of Adèle Rossignol, of Hélène Vauquier. He had used her, Celia, as an instrument for his crime. ”

“ Certainly it can be correctly said that the stream is turned up on its edge.
The Dalles lie five or six miles above Dalles City; and you pass these rapids in the train which bears you to Celilo early the next morning after you arrive at Dalles City. Celilo is not a town; it is simply a geographical point; it is the spot where, if you were bound to the interior of the continent by water, you would take steamboat. There is here a very long shed to shelter the goods which are sent up into this far-away and, to us Eastern people, unknown interior ”

“ Celia now noticed for the first time that he wore an oak leaf, and she remembered with what delight Rosalind and Belle had told her of his wish to be an Arden Forester. "I believe," she added, laughing a little, "that I have the Kingdom of Heaven and the Forest somewhat mixed."
"You will find when you have lived as long as I have that there are often many names for the same thing," the president answered, smiling.
"And do you believe that things always come right in the Forest?" The wistful note in Celia's voice told something of her struggle. ”

“ Ricardo—Celia's entry into the household of Mme. Dauvray.
Celia's father was a Captain Harland, of a marching regiment, who had little beyond good looks and excellent manners wherewith to support his position. He was extravagant in his tastes, and of an easy mind in the presence of embarrassments. To his other disadvantages he added that of falling in love with a pretty girl no better off than himself. They married, and Celia was born. For nine years they managed, through the wife's constant devotion, to struggle along and to give their daughter an education. ”

“ He noticed how the elder clung to the younger as though for protection, and wondered, for Celia had always appeared to him so self-reliant till now. By-and-by the fury of the storm abated, the thunder became more and more distant, and the lightning flashes less forked and vivid. Then Celia raised her face from her sister shoulder, where she had hidden it, and looked around rather nervously, meeting an encouraging smile from Sir Jasper.
"Cheer up, my dear," he said, "the worst of the storm is over, so I suggest we all adjourn to the dining-room to tea." ”

“ Evelyn had a wretched journey to Eastbourne, and had looked for such a pleasant one. She had half formulated a plan by which Jack was to die of wounds—a splendid hero.
But how was that to be accomplished with Celia present? The more she considered the problem, the more dreadful it appeared. She passed most of the day in distress, and scarcely was aware of the shining sea, and Beachy Head, and the concourse of summer-clad people. She sat out on a seat on the parade in the evening, and pondered her fate. Celia would come and discover there was no Jack. ”

“ Suddenly a solitary figure with a dripping umbrella was almost swept into the shop.
"Why, Miss Celia!" cried Maurice.
"I began to think I would be drowned," she said, laughing breathlessly.
The magician dropped his shears and took her umbrella.
"You are wet; we must have a fire," he said.
Celia protested. A summer shower wouldn't hurt. It was too warm for a fire. Rosalind meanwhile sat in the shadow, Crisscross beside her, the thought of the rose and of Aunt Genevieve's words making her hope Miss Fair would not see her. Her face was gentle; was it possible she could be unkind and disdainful? ”

“ IN Celia's arms while bless'd I lay,
My soul in bliss dissolved away:
'Tell me,' the charmer cried, 'how well
'You love your Celia; Strephon, tell.'
Kissing her glowing, burning cheek,
'I'll tell,' I cried — but could not speak. ”

“ The maid was carrying Celia's white coat. They did not mean to murder her, then. They meant to take her away, and even then a spark of hope lit up in the girl's bosom. For even with her illusions crushed she still clung to life with all the passion of her young soul.
The two women stood and looked at her; and then Adèle Rossignol burst out laughing. Vauquier approached the girl, and Celia had a moment's hope that she meant to free her altogether, but she only loosed the cords which fixed her to the pillar and the high stool. ”

“ Very few of the rivers of Ceylon are navigable, and these only by canoes and flat-bottomed paddy boats, which ascend some of the largest for short distances, till impeded by the rapids, occasioned by rocks in the lowest range of the hills. In this way the Niwalle at Matura can be ascended for about fifteen miles, as far as Wellehara; the Kalu-ganga can be traversed from Caltura to Ratnapoora; the Bentotte river for sixteen miles to Pittagalla; and the Kalany from Colombo to the foot of the mountains near Ambogammoa. ”

“ Celia's shadow rocks and rocks... and mama's eyes stare out of the pillow as though she had gone away and the night had come in her place as it comes in empty rooms... you can't bear it— the night threshing about and lashing its tail on its sides as bold as a wolf that isn't afraid— and you scream at her face, that is white as a stone on a grave and pull it around to the light, till the night draws backward... the night that walks alone and goes away without end. ”

“ Celia dared not cry out. Over against her, persistently watching her, Adèle Rossignol sat with the open flask clenched in her hand, and from the vitriol Celia shrank with an overwhelming terror. The carriage drove out from the town along the western edge of the lake.
"Now listen," said Adèle. "As soon as the landau stops the door of the house opposite to which it stops will open. I shall open the carriage door myself and you will get out. You must stand close by the carriage door until I have got out. ”

“ Sometimes Celia comes from the still, leafy seclusion of Fort Greene Place, to love me, caress me, gently jeer at me for the hint of melancholy in my gaze, shaming me for a love-sick thing that droops and pines in the absence of all that animates her soul and body with the desire to live. ”

“ It is to be doubted if Celia possessed a kindly heart to begin with, added to which there was nothing of the self-conscious bud about Cyclona. She was ignorant of her beauty as a prairie rose. Strange as her life had been, encompassed about by cyclones, the episode of her moving as told by the gray-haired doctor at the corner grocery was stranger. ”

“ And he goes through this continuous martyrdom for the sake of those he loves—your mother, your brothers at school, and you, Celia. Then he is a poor man. He is bothered always with debts and money troubles. He had to pawn his watch to buy your last birthday present. He just manages to keep on the right side of bankruptcy. The wonder is that he has not been driven into raving lunacy. As it is, his temper and language are frequently deplorable—but his whole life speaks more loudly than his language and contradicts it. ”

“ With grave, peculiar tenderness, Celia, before leaving, took up the baby and searched his little face, looked deep into his eyes, which told her of his mysterious little soul no more than before. She knew it was like trying to force open a shut flower. “Whatever happens now, dear,” she said to him, though without audible words, “we two go together. All that happens to you, happens to me. If you are in the future to be bad or afflicted, I am to be unhappy. ”

“ In such matters one is always certain to lose, while there is nothing to be gained." His father spoke to like purpose: "Pray, my son, don't go!'" But the lad, without heeding any one, ran down the stairs. Reaching the Banchi, where the great scrimmage was, and seeing Bertino lifted from the ground, he ran towards home, and met my brother Cecchino on the way, who asked what was the matter. Though some of the bystanders signed to Giovanni not to tell Cecchino, he cried out like a madman how it was that Bertino Aldobrandi had been killed by the guard. ”

“ So said Celio, and turning his back to Finia left her in the greatest grief that a woman could suffer; which is in these accidents to lose his presence under whose protection she lives: especially when it seems to her that she cannot hope for any other remedy or succour. Celio hiding the tears which he shed in going away, and consulting with the fury of his jealousy, and his rage for the injury which he did think he had received, concerning the revenge which he should take, waited for Nisa’s enlargement, that he might kill him. ”

“ When the family moved into this mansion, it was with a consciousness that the only one who really belonged there was Celia. She alone could behave like one perfectly at home. It seemed entirely natural to the others that she should do just what she liked, shut them off from her portion of the house, take her meals there if she felt disposed, and keep such hours as pleased her instant whim. If she awakened them at midnight by her piano, or deferred her breakfast to the late afternoon, they felt that it must be all right, since Celia did it. ”

“ It glinted there for a moment, like a miniature search-light, travelling over the head, showing up every wave and curve. He had the kind of hair which makes a woman’s hand instinctively long to touch it. Celia wondered at the curious thoughts that crowded through her mind, knowing that all the while there was the consciousness that when this man should wake she would think of nothing but his hateful personality as she had known it through the years. And she was his wife! How strange! How terrible! How impossible to live with the thought through interminable weary years! ”

“ Celia, I'm not such an idiot as not to realize that I am coming to you as something more than a penniless adventurer, well-nigh nameless, a man of no account. If I had all the world at my command, the highest title a man could bear, I should only value them because I could lay them at your feet."
The tears welled to her eyes and, of her own accord, she drew his head down to her and laid her sweet lips on his.
"You are too good to me; I am not worth it," she said, brokenly. Then, with something like a start, she whispered, with a dawning fear and horror in her eyes, "And the other—Lord Heyton? ”

“ She took Celia to the fortune-teller's rooms next day, and the girl quickly understood the ruling passion of the woman who had befriended her. It took very little time then for Celia to notice how easily Mme. Dauvray was duped, how perpetually she was robbed. Celia turned the problem over in her mind.
"Madame had been very good to me. She was kind and simple," said Celia, with a very genuine affection in her voice. "The people whom we knew laughed at her, and were ungenerous. But there are many women whom the world respects who are worse than ever was poor Mme. Dauvray. ”

“ On a path where thrushes wake—called Celia’s Way—
Time after time
She led me high among the rills.
And always when I pass again our chosen pine
And feel upon my brow the fine
Soft pressure of an unseen web and brush
It from my face expectantly and climb
Wide-eyed into the mountains’ windy hush,
Among the green and healing hills
I have found Celia.
For the morning fills
With her and afternoon and twilight. She is always there
As sweet within me as the intimate air. ”