Following in a Mother's Footsteps

Continued..

Yesterday, I left Margaret Lynn wondering about the fate of her young daughter, Alice, affectionately named White Dove by her Indian admirer. Margaret, lamenting the fact that youth is often taken by romance, was reminded of her own youthful love quest when she wrote:

"...Then I set me thinking.  The child is fourteen in May and that's just two years younger than I was when I became a married woman. The reflection gave me pain, but I will think of it no more. There is nothing gained by shunning the fixed truth, whatever it may be... It's like going up to a white object in the haunting dark, taking hold of it and proving it to be no ghost..."

Isn't she marvelous?!  I think she is. I like her approach to an uncomfortable situation. She looked at her early marriage at age sixteen and dismissed the possible reflection or implication of the past bearing an impression on her daughter's fate. Certainly seeing Alice's innocence at fourteen made the thought unbearable, but the added stress of any romantic entanglement with the new strange neighbors gave rise to Margaret's degree of "pain".

Unfortunately, the matter did not pass. Omayah's father paid a visit to the Lewis home to speak to John Lewis about the love abloom within his son's heart. Margaret wrote this:

"...The father of Omayah has sought the father of White Dove, as he calls our sweet Alice, for his son's wife. He says that the Tiger King's oldest son pines to hear her voice cooing among the wild pines about his cabin. It made me tremble to hear him speak, almost as though I thought John Lewis could be persuaded thereto and give away my tenderly reared lamb. He wished to treat it as a joke though, and seated Alice at the spinnette whereon I had taught her to play with some skill. "'That"'said he, '"is all white women are good for!...You don't want them!"'...
'"Fingers jump quick'", said Tiger King. '"gut fish"'...My husband still joked with him, which was perhaps the better policy, but Oroonah retired discomfited I could see..."

Apparently the joking ploy didn't bode well with Margaret although she saw her husband's wit as a reasonable attempt at dissuading the alliance of his daughter with Tiger King's son. But the father of the love-smitten young Indian was not set back a bit by the jovial nature of their visit. Unfortunately, the relatively lighthearted situation turned rapidly into one with serious consequences.

More tomorrow.