Mary Derwent

For a full half-hour Queen Esther sat motionless in the chill of that appalling silence, her eyes fixed upon the weapons of death at her feet with a dull glare, more terrible than the fiercest rage of passion.

She rose slowly, at length, laid the rifle and scalping-knife carefully aside, and clutching the tomahawk of her dead son in her hand, passed noiselessly out of the tent. At the entrance she met the chief, Gi-en-gwa-tah, motioned him to follow with a stern gesture of command, and moved on towards the roused encampment, issuing her brief orders in a voice hard as iron.

From the seclusion of her own tent, Catharine Montour watched the hasty preparations for departure, and her heart sank at the sight of those rigid faces, as the old queen and her son went out, for she understood only too well what their calmness portended.

She dared utter no word of remonstrance; the bravest heart would have shrunk from offering consolation to that grim woman. It was still dark as midnight, and the smouldering fires cast a lurid glare around, lighting up the stern visages flitting like shadows among the tents, while the waning moon trembled like a crescent of blood on the verge of the western horizon, a sign of approaching carnage and warfare.

At length a detachment of warriors, armed with rifles and tomahawks, and hideous with war-paint, broke out from the great mass, and mounting their horses, remained stationary on the outskirts of the camp. Queen Esther’s horse was led out, flowing with gems torn from the persons of former victims; her tomahawk glittered at the saddle-bow, and the head of her steed was decorated with raven’s plumes, that waved slowly to and fro with every motion of his proud neck. Catharine saw the old Queen come forth again from her tent, grasping in her hand the weapon which her son had wielded in his last battle. Passing with stern composure through the group of Indians, she planted one hand upon the saddle, and with a single effort of her sinewy arm lifted herself to the seat. With no sound but the muffled tread of their horses on the short turf, the band swept on, with that silent woman leading them on, and were lost in the darkness beyond.

The great body of Indians and the army of whites encamped at a little distance still kept their position, though preparations for departure were evident among them—carried on by the Indians in sullen quiet, far more terrible than the shouts and oaths which came up from the Tory tents.

Catharine Montour watched all, heard all, but still she did not move. The chief did not at once approach her tent, and though a sickness like that of death was on her, she knew that the slightest remonstrance would only increase the Shawnee’s thirst for vengeance. She did not stir from the spot until everything was ready for their departure and her horse was led up to the entrance of her tent.

Swiftly the detachment, with Queen Esther for their leader, swept down the rocky path which led towards the Susquehanna. After a ride of about twenty miles, they came out upon the river, opposite the foot of Campbell’s Ledge, and, crossing the stream there, continued their course into the valley, only pausing while Esther dispatched a scout in advance, to see that their way to the fort would be unobstructed.

She had halted just where the Falling Spring came leaping down the steep precipice, white and spectral in the gathering day. Beyond loomed up the giant masses of the Ledge, and at her feet the river flowed in its pleasant quietness, bearing no warning of ill to the doomed inhabitants of the valley.

During the absence of their scout the silence was unbroken; the warriors were banded together in portentous impassibility; and Queen Esther, with her horse drawn a little distance apart, the reins falling loosely upon his neck, sat with her eyes fixed upon the tomahawk still grasped in her hand. The Indian returned, and at his signal the party swept down the war-trail, which ran in nearly the same course that the roadway of the present day takes, following the river in its sinuous windings.

Just above Pittston the Susquehanna and Lackawanna meet, and at their point of union a little island, picturesque even now, rests on the bosom of the waters. The band paused on the shore of the Susquehanna, in sight of this island. A scow, used by the inhabitants of the region as a common means of transportation across the stream, was unmoored, and the whole band were rowed over to the opposite shore. Again they paused, and waited until the main force of Tories and savages came up, with Gi-en-gwa-tah at their head, and Catharine Montour in their midst.

At the chief’s command, the body of Indians swam their horses over to the little island, their leader guiding the steed on which Catharine rode, and commenced immediate preparations for the rearing of her tent.

On swept the Tories, headed by Queen Esther and her band, over the smooth plains, then green with rustling forests, and keeping within sight of the river. When the dawn broke, grey and chill, Wintermoot’s Fort, the stronghold of the Tories, loomed before them, surrounded by bristling stockades and fortified outworks.

At their approach the gates were thrown open, and the whole army swept into the inclosure. Those within the fort crowded around, in eager curiosity, to gaze upon the old queen, but she seemed unconscious of their glances, dismounting at once from her horse, and following the commander of the fort into the room where the body of her son had been carried.

Tahmeroo was sitting on the floor by the corpse, but she did not raise her head when the door opened, and Queen Esther moved towards the bench where the body lay, without paying any heed to the presence of her grandchild. She stood over the dead chief without any sign of emotion; her frame never once relaxed—not a muscle moved, not an eyelash quivered; her motionless right hand fell at her side, with the gleaming tomahawk still clutched between her clasped fingers.

The Indians entered the room, took up the body and bore it forth, with a low death-wail that sounded ominously drear in the solemn stillness which came over all within the fort.

Among that group of awe-struck gazers stood Grenville Murray. He had come into the fort a few hours before, and had vainly attempted to instill some idea of mercy into the ferocity of the Indians and Tories, but the pacific measures which he pleaded were as much unheeded as if they had been made to wolves in the forest.

The train bearing the dead chief passed through the inclosure, and Queen Esther followed, erect and still, looking neither to the right nor the left, while Tahmeroo crouched behind—horror-stricken and pale.

“Will she take him away?” Murray whispered to the commander.

“Yes; for burial.”

“But she is partly a white woman; surely she will not allow him to be buried in this heathenish fashion.”

“Do you think Queen Esther a saint?” sneered the leader; “the scalping-knife is her religion!”

Murray stepped forward and stood before the queen. She looked up, neither in anger nor surprise, when he ventured thus to confront her:

“Madam,” he said, in a low tone, “I am informed that there is a clergyman in the neighborhood—will you not wait here until he can be summoned? At least, let your son be buried with the rites of your country’s faith.”

“The wilderness is my country,” she replied, in a voice the more startling from its iciness; “my son was an Indian brave; no mummeries of the pale faces shall desecrate his grave.”

She passed on without giving him an opportunity to reply, and the procession moved out of the fort, down to the bank of the river, where several canoes had been procured for the removal of the corpse.

Into the bark with the dead man stepped Tahmeroo and the old queen. The rowers bent to their task, and the canoe swept up the current. The Indian girl sat down by the body of her relative, but the old queen stood upright in the stern of the boat, the rising sun gilding the faded dun of her robes, and gleaming balefully over the murderous weapon in her hand.

A tent had been erected on the lower part of the beautiful island, and in the doorway stood Catharine Montour, watching the approach of the three canoes. The Indians, with their chief, were grouped about the shore, and as the canoes came in sight they struck up a death-song, in answer to the chant from the boats, prolonged by the women into a mournful wail which, accustomed as she was to such scenes, made Catharine’s blood run cold.

The boats came up, the old queen remained standing on the shore, while Tahmeroo sprang forward and was silently clasped to her mother’s bosom. It was the first time they had met since the girl’s flight in search of her husband, but there was no time given for joy, and, without a word, they stood side by side while the mournful ceremonies proceeded.

At the lower extremity of the island may be seen, to this day, a group of four willow trees, with their trunks distorted and bent, and when the wind is low the long branches sway to the ground with a sorrowful music, which sounds like a requiem prolonged from that funeral wail.

Under the shadow of those trees they dug the young chief’s grave and laid him therein, his face covered with war-paint and his most precious possessions by his side. Rifle and scalping-knife were placed reverently down, but when they searched for the tomahawk Queen Esther took her own decorated weapon from an Indian near by and flung it beside the body, standing erect as ever while the earth was thrown in and the grave filled quickly up.

When all was over, obeying her imperious motion, the tribe withdrew to a little distance, and she stood alone by the head of the grave, with her right hand stretched over it—once her lips moved faintly, then shut and locked themselves closer than before; but in that moment of fearful self-communion Queen Esther had registered a terrible vow.

As the groups broke up, Butler landed in his canoe and came towards them. Passing Catharine and Tahmeroo with a hasty nod, he approached Queen Esther and whispered in her ear:

“The man I told you of is at the fort; they tell me he spoke with you—the missionary also is near. Queen Esther need not go beyond her own camp-fires to discover the instigator of this deed.”

The queen returned no answer, but a slight shiver of the tomahawk proved that his fiendish whisper had produced its effect, and Butler moved away. Though their conference lasted scarce a second, and their glances never once wandered towards the place where she stood, Catharine Montour felt that the first threads of some plot against her safety and life had been formed above the grave of the young warrior.

She laid her hand on Tahmaroo’s arm and entered the lodge, trembling so violently from weakness and nervous agitation that she was unable to stand. The girl sat down, chilled by her husband’s coldness, and awaiting his entrance with impatience, the more harassing from a mournful consciousness that she occupied no place in that reckless man’s heart.

After a little, Queen Esther collected her own band of warriors and left the island, retracing the path towards Wintermoot’s Fort. Butler and the chief, Gi-en-gwa-tah, held a conversation together upon the shore, during which the gloomy brow of the Indian grew constantly darker, and the fire in his eyes kindled into new ferocity. At length he turned away from the young man, and entering his wife’s tent sat down in sullen quiet.

Catharine Montour sat apart, with her eyes fixed in painful apprehension on the wrathful face of the chief. There was nothing of the fierce courage in her demeanor that had formerly characterized it; a most astonishing change had been gradually wrought in her mind and person since the day which witnessed her interview with the missionary, and more visibly after Butler’s return from Johnson Hall, with intelligence of Murray’s presence in America. The healthful roundness of her person had fallen away, and her features had sharpened and grown of a cold paleness, till they seemed as if chiselled from marble. Her cheeks were hollow, her high forehead was changed in its lofty and daring expression, a calm sadness had settled upon it, and her eyes, formerly fierce and keen almost as a wild eagle’s, were full of gentle endurance, at that moment disturbed by apprehension and fear, but by no sterner emotion.

Never in the days of her loftiest pride had Catharine Montour appeared so touchingly lovely, so gentle and so woman-like, as on that evening. She had been pleading for her people with the fierce chief—pleading that vengeance should not fall on the inhabitants of the neighboring valley in retribution for the death of a single brave. But the Shawnee had taken other counsellors to his bosom within the year. Since the fierce pride of Catharine’s character had passed away, her influence over him had decreased; while that of Butler was more thoroughly established, and Queen Esther had regained all the supremacy which for a season had yielded to the influence of his wife.

When almost as stern and unyielding as himself, Catharine might command—now she could but supplicate. The higher and better portion of her nature was, like her history, a sealed book to him; he could understand and respect strong physical courage, but the hidden springs which form the fearful machinery of a highly cultivated woman, making weakness in some things a virtue, and even fear itself lovely, he could not comprehend. A terrible suspicion had been instilled in his proud nature, and he mistook her utterly; his nobility of character, which was lifted above either savage or civilized cunning, had made him the dupe of a bad man. When moral goodness began to predominate in Catharine’s character, he mistook its meek and gentle manifestations for cowardice, and she became to him almost an object of contempt. There was no longer any power in her patient perseverance and persuasive voice to win his nature to mercy; the daring spirit which had formerly awed and controlled his had departed forever beneath the gradual deepening of repentance in her heart.

Tahmeroo joined earnestly with her mother’s pleading; but he answered only with abrupt monosyllables, and even with their voices in his ear his sinewy fingers worked eagerly about the haft of his knife, conveying an answer more appalling than the fiercest words could have given. There had been silence for some time. Catharine Montour sat with one hand shading her troubled brow, pondering on some means of preventing the bloodshed which she had so much cause to apprehend, and sorely repenting that she had ever instigated the Indians to take up arms in the dispute waged between England and her colonies. Tahmeroo stole away to a corner of the tent, and resting her cheek on the palm of her hand, listened for the footstep of her husband, hoping with all the faith of affection that he would second her mother’s plea for mercy; and nestling closer and closer down, as she thought of the mother and infants whom her father’s warriors had already murdered, and whose scalps hung with their long and sunny hair streaming over the door of the lodge.

“Oh, if Butler would but come in!” she murmured, while tears started to her eyes, brought there by her mother’s sorrow and the pain which his absence during the whole night had produced, increased by the lonely vigil which she had kept over the body of her relative—“He can do anything with the tribe.”

As she spoke, the mat was flung aside, and her husband stood before her. Tahmeroo sprang joyfully to his bosom, and kissed his cheek, and lips, and brow, in all the abandonment of a happy and most affectionate heart; nor did she mark the stern and malignant expression of the face she had been covering with kisses, till he hastily released himself from her arms, and without returning her greeting, advanced to the chief, to whom he whispered again.

A fiendish light broke to the Shawnee’s eye; he arose, thrust a tomahawk into his belt, and taking up his rifle, went out. Butler was about to follow, but Tahmeroo again stood before him, extending her arms with an imploring gesture.

“You will not go away yet,” she said. “You have scarcely spoken to me since we reached Wyoming—don’t go yet!”

“Stand out of the way, foolish child!” he exclaimed, rudely pushing her aside. “I have other matters to think of!”

The Indian blood flashed up to Tahmeroo’s cheek, her eye kindled, her form was drawn to its proudest height as she stood aside and allowed her husband to pass out.

Catharine had started to her feet when the Shawnee went out, and now stood pale as death; so much agitated by her apprehensions that the rudeness offered to her daughter escaped her notice. But as Butler was hurrying through the doorway she stepped forward and grasped his arm with an energy that caused him to turn with something like an oath at what he supposed the importunity of his wife. Catharine took no heed of his impatience.

“Butler,” she said, “I fear there will be more bloodshed; for sweet mercy’s sake, appease the chief. You have the power; oh, do not lose the opportunity. I think it would kill us all were another scalp to be brought in——”

She broke off suddenly, and shrunk back with a sick shudder, for a gust of wind swept the long hair which streamed from a female scalp over the entrance, directly across her face. Butler took advantage of her emotion to make his escape.

“Have no fear, madam,” he said, freeing his arm from her grasp, and brushing the scalp carelessly back with his hand, as he went out; “you shall have no cause. I must hasten to the council at the fort.”

Catharine Montour comprehended him; but, too sick for reply, drew back to her daughter’s couch, and sat down, faint and quite overcome. There had been something horrible in the feeling of that long, fair hair as it swept over her face; her nerves still quivered with the thought of it.

“Mother,” said Tahmeroo, rising from the ground, where she had cast herself, and winding her arms around Catharine, “oh, mother, comfort me—do comfort me, or my heart will break!”

Catharine pressed her lips upon the forehead of the young wife, and murmured:

“What troubles you, my child?”

She looked fondly and affectionately on the grieved face which lay upon her bosom as she spoke, and her heart ached when she saw how disappointments, regrets, and checked tenderness had worn upon its former rich beauty. The wrung heart had spread a sadness over those features, as the worm in the bosom of a flower withers all its surrounding leaves.

Tahmeroo burst into a passion of tears at her mother’s question.

“Did you not see him, mother?—how he pushed his own wife aside, as if she had been a wild animal—did you not see him thrust her away without a kiss, or one kind word? Oh, mother, my heart is growing hard. I shall hate him, mother.”

Catharine laid her hand on the throbbing forehead of her daughter, and remained in a solemn and serious thought. At length she spoke in a deep and impressive voice.

“No, my child, I did not see this rudeness, for my thoughts were on other things—but listen to me, Tahmeroo. Since the day that you were first laid in my bosom, like a young bird in the nest of its mother, my heart has hovered over yours, as that mother-bird guards its youngling. I have watched every new faculty as it has sprung up and blossomed in your mind. I have striven to guide each strong passion as it dawned in your heart; your nature has been to me as a garden, which I could enter and cultivate and beautify, when disgusted with the weedy and poisonous growth of human nature as I have found it in the world; as I have found it in my own heart; but there is one thing which I have not done. I have laid no foundation of religion and principle in this young soul; I had become an unbeliever in the faith of my fathers. I acknowledged no God, and resolutely turned my thoughts from a future. My spirit had erected to itself one idol—an idol which it was sin to love, and double sin to worship as I worshipped.

“I will not show to you, my child, the progress of a life—a wretched destiny which was regulated by one sin; a foible most men would call it, for human judgment fixes on acts, not on that more subtle sin, a train of unlawful thoughts; I will not show to you the working of that sin; it is the curse of evil that its consequences never cease; that thought is interlinked with thought, event with event, and that the effects of one wrong creep like serpents through the whole chain of a human life, following the perpetrator even in the grave.

“My own destiny would be a painful illustration of this truth—might be the salvation of many in its moral, but when did example save? When did the fall of one human being prevent the fall of another? Why should I expose my own errors, in hopes to preserve you, my child, from similar wrong? What you have just said startles and pains me; I know your nature, and know that you will never cease to love the man whom you have married; indifferent you will never be—a sense of wrong indignation, if indulged in, may make the love of your heart a pain—may sap away the good within you, engender all those regrets that poison the joy of affection.

“Tahmeroo, struggle against this feeling; you little dream of the terrible misery which it will bring to you. Bear everything, abuse, insult, neglect—everything, but cast not yourself loose from your only hope. Your safety lies in the very love which, though it make the bitterness of your life, is its safeguard, too. In your own heart is the strength you must look for, not in his. If he wrongs you, forget it, if you can—excuse it, if you cannot forget it. Think not of your own rights too much; where struggling is sure to bring misery, it is better to forbear. I could say much more, for my heart is full of anxiety and sorrow. I know not why, but my spirit droops, as if your head were on my bosom, and your arms about me for the last time forever.”

Catharine stooped down and kissed the tremulous lips of her child. She was answered back with a gush of gentle tears.

“Weep on, my daughter; I love to see you shed such tears, for there is no passion in them. I cannot tell you how dearly I love and have ever loved you, for deep feeling has no words; but we shall part soon; there is something in my heart which tells me so—the grave will come between us, and you will be left with no stronger guide than your own warm impulses.

“Kiss me once more, and listen. Should we be parted by death, or should Butler claim my promise to send you to England, go first to the missionary, and convey to him the little ebony box at the head of your couch; tell him all that I have said to you, and ask him to become a protector and a friend to Catharine Granby’s child. Tell him that since the night of her daughter’s marriage she has been a changed woman—that the voice of his prayer that night awoke memories which will never sleep again—awoke answering prayer in a bosom which had almost forgotten its faith. He will listen to you, my child, and when I am gone you will find a safe and wise protector in him. He will teach you how to regulate your too enthusiastic feelings. Promise that you will seek this good man when I am taken away—do you promise, Tahmeroo?”

“I will promise anything—everything, mother; but do not talk so sadly—your voice sounds mournful as the night wind among the pines.”

Tahmeroo said no more, for her heart was full; but she laid her cheek against her mother’s, and remained in her embrace silent and sorrowful.