CHAPTER XITHE MARRIAGE CONTRACT
Toward sunset, on the same day that witnessed Catharine Montour’s interview with the missionary, Mary Derwent wandered alone into the forest, for her spirit more than ever felt the need of solitude. With a strong religious principle, which had gradually strengthened in her young heart during her daily communion with the high things in nature, she had striven to conquer the sweet impulses of love that are the heritage of womanhood, and to lend all her soul toward that heaven to which the missionary had so tenderly pointed her.
She wandered through the forest, indulging in a tranquil happiness which had never visited her before. The flowers seemed smiling with a new beauty as she turned aside, that they might not be trodden into the moss by her footsteps; the birds seemed vocal with a sweeter music, and the air came balmy to her lips; yet the day, in reality, was no finer than a hundred others had been.
Mary lingered awhile on the shelf of rocks, which we have described in a former chapter, as overhanging the Susquehanna, nearly opposite Monockonok Island, before she went down to the canoe which she had moored at its base. It seemed as if this spot was henceforth to be a scene of adventure to her, for scarcely had she been there a moment, when the copsewood above her head was agitated, as it had been on the previous day, and a young man, of two or three and twenty, stepped cautiously out upon the platform which shot above the shelf on which she stood, and where the Indian girl had previously appeared.
Mary sank back to the birch, where she could command a full view of his person without being herself seen. He was scarcely above the middle height, and of slight person, but muscular, and giving, in every firmly knitted limb, indications of strength greater than his size would have warranted. The face was one which might have been pronounced intellectual and striking. His forehead, low and broad, was shaded by hair of the deepest brown; the nose, a little too prominent for beauty, was thin and finely cut, and the large black eyes full of brilliancy, which was a part of themselves rather than a light from the soul, gave a masculine spirit to his head, which redeemed the more earthly and coarser mould of the mouth and chin.
He was expensively dressed for the period and condition of our country, but his neckcloth was loosened at the throat, as if to refresh himself with air after some severe physical exertion, and his richly laced hand-ruffles hung dripping with water over a pair of wrists which were by far too slender and white ever to have submitted to much labor. His garments throughout were dashed with waterdrops, and he had evidently been rowing hard upon the river. He wiped away the perspiration which stood in large drops on his forehead, and looked cautiously about, till his eyes settled in a long, anxious gaze up the stream.
In its side position Mary obtained a more perfect view of his face, and her heart throbbed with a painful feeling of surprise, for she recognized the matured lineaments of Walter Butler, a Tory officer, who had visited the valley some months before and was the intimate friend of young Wintermoot, the young man who had so cruelly insulted her deformity when both were school-children. In his previous visit Butler had by many a rude outrage and insolent speech shocked the moral sense of the inhabitants, and it was an evil sign when he and the Wintermoots were sheltered under the sameroof. The poor girl shrunk timidly behind the birch, for she was terrified and afraid of being discovered, but she did not withdraw so far as to prevent herself watching his movements.
After waiting a few moments, he went down, so as to preclude all possibility of being observed from the island, and uttered the same sharp whistle that had answered the Indian girl’s summons on the previous day. Mary almost started from her concealment with surprise, when the brushwood was again torn back, and a strange woman, singularly attired, stepped down on the platform, and stood directly before the young man as he arose from his stooping position.
Butler started back almost to the verge of the precipice, when he found himself thus unexpectedly confronted. His face became crimson to the temples, and he looked with an air of extreme embarrassment, now on the strange woman, then on the path which led from the precipice, as if meditating an escape. The strange woman kept her eyes fixed keenly upon his movements; when he stepped a pace forward, as if about to leave her presence, she made a detaining motion with her hand.
“You were expecting Tahmeroo, the Shawnee maiden. I am Catharine Montour, her mother.”
The blood suddenly left the young man’s face. He bit his lips impatiently, for a half-checked oath trembled upon them; but his confusion was too overwhelming for any attempt at an answer. After a moment’s pause, Catharine, who kept her piercing gaze steadily fixed on his face, drew forth the string of red coral which had been given to her daughter, and said:
“Last night my daughter told me all that you bade her conceal; from your first meeting on the shores of Seneca Lake, down to the crafty falsehood of this pledge, I know everything.”
The crimson flush again spread over the young man’sface, his eyes sunk beneath the scrutiny fixed upon him, and he turned his head aside, muttering:
“The beautiful witch has exposed me at last,” then he looked Catharine Montour in the face with an affectation of cool effrontery, and said:
“Well, madam, if Tahmeroo has chosen to confide in her mother, I do not see anything remarkable in it, except that I should be sought out as a party in the affair.”
“Young man,” exclaimed the unhappy mother, in a voice of stern and bitter anguish, which made even his heart recoil, “you know not what you have done—you cannot dream of the wretchedness which you have heaped on a being who never injured you. I can find no words to tell how dear that child was to me, how completely every thought and wish was centred in her pure existence. I had guarded her as the strings of my own heart—every thought of her young mind was pure—every impulse an affectionate one—I will not reproach you, man! I will try not to hate you, though, Heaven is my judge, I have just cause for hate. Listen to me—I did not come here to heap invectives on you——”
“May I be permitted to ask what you did come for?” interrupted Butler, with a cool effrontery, which was now real, for his awe of Catharine Montour abated when he saw her sternness giving way to the grief and indignation of a wronged mother. “I really am at a loss to know why you should address me in this strange manner. I have not stolen the girl from your wigwam, nor have I the least intention of doing so foolish a thing. You have your daughter, what more do you require?”
Catharine Montour drew her lips hard together, and her frame shook with a stern effort to preserve her composure.
“I would have justice done my child,” said she, in a voice so low and calm, yet with such iron determination in its tone, that the young man grew pale as it fell uponhis ear; and though his words continued bold, the voice in which they were uttered was that of a man determined to keep his position, though he begins to feel the ground giving way beneath his feet.
“This demand, in the parlance of our nation, would mean that I should submit to a marriage with the girl,” he said; “but even her mother can hardly suppose that I, a descendant of one of England’s proudest families, should marry with a Shawnee half-breed, though she were beautiful as an angel, and amiable as her respected mamma. You have evidently seen something of life, madam, and must see how impossible it is that I should marry your daughter, yet in what other form this strange demand is to be shaped, I cannot imagine.”
Catharine Montour forced herself to hear him out, though a scornful cloud gathered on her forehead. Her lips writhed, her eyes flashed with the angry contempt which filled her soul against the arrogance and selfishness betrayed in the being before her.
“It is a legal marriage, nevertheless, which I require of you,” she said. “Listen before you reply—I have that to offer which may reconcile you even to an union with the daughter of a Shawnee chief. You but now boasted of English birth and of noble lineage. You are young, and one’s native land is very dear; you should wish to dwell in it. Make my daughter your wife—go with her to your own country, where her Indian blood will be unsuspected, or, if known, will be no reproach, and I pledge myself, within one week after your marriage, to put you in possession of fifty thousand pounds as her dowry—to relinquish her forever,” here Catharine’s voice trembled in spite of her effort to speak firmly, “and to hold communion with her only on such terms as you may yourself direct. Nay, do not speak, but hear me out before you answer. I make this offer because the happiness of my child is dearer to me than my own life. I cannot crush her young life by separatingher from you forever; better far that I should become childless and desolate again. Take her to your own land; be a kind, generous protector to her, and there is wealth in England that will make the amount I offer of little moment. For her sake I will once more enter the world, and claim my own. But deal harshly with her—let her feel a shadow of unkindness after you take her from the shelter of my love, and my vengeance shall follow you to the uttermost ends of the earth. Give me no answer yet, but reflect on the alternative should you refuse one who has but to speak her will, and a thousand fierce savages are on your track by day and by night, till your heart is haunted to death by its own fears, or is crushed beneath the blow which sooner or later some dark hand will deal in the requital of the disgrace which you have put upon the daughter of a Shawnee.”
Before Butler could recover from his astonishment at her extraordinary proposal, Catharine had disappeared among the brushwood. He stood as if lost in deep thought for several minutes after her departure, then walked the platform to and fro with an air of indecision and excitement, which was more than once denoted by a low laugh, evidently at the singular position in which he found himself placed. Once he muttered a few indistinct words, and looked towards the island with a smile which Mary was at a loss to understand. There was something of the plotting demon in it, which made her tremble as if some harm had been intended to herself.
When Catharine Montour returned, Butler was the first to speak. “Should I be inclined to accept your proposal,” he said, “and to speak candidly, your daughter is beautiful enough to tempt a man to commit much greater folly; how can I be certain of your power to endow her as you promise?”
Catharine drew up her heavy sleeve and displayed the jewelled serpent coiled around her arm.
“This is some proof of my power to command wealth; at the encampment you shall be convinced beyond the possibility of a doubt.”
“But how am I to be secure of personal safety, should the proof be insufficient to satisfy me, or should I see other reason to decline this strange contract. Once in the power of your savage tribe, I shall have but little chance of independent choice.”
Catharine made no reply, but a smile of peculiar meaning passed over her face. She took a small whistle from her bosom, blew a shrill call and stood quietly enjoying the surprise of her companion, as some fifty or sixty red warriors started up from behind the shattered rocks and stunted trees that towered back from the precipice on which they stood, each armed with a rifle and with a tomahawk gleaming at his girdle.
“Were compulsion intended, you see I am not without power; were I but to lift this hand, you would be in eternity before it dropped to my side again; but fear nothing; go with me to the encampment, and on the honor of an Englishwoman, you shall be free should I fail to return and make good my promise.”
“You give me excellent proofs of freedom,” said the young man, glancing at the dusky faces lowering on him from, the shrubbery on every side.
Catharine stepped forward, and spoke a few words in the Indian tongue. Directly each swarthy form left its station, and the whole force departed in a body over the back of the precipice. Directly a fleet of canoes was unmoored from the sheltering underbrush that fringed the shore, and shot away up stream towards the Lackawanna gap. When the tramp of their receding feet died away in the forest, Catharine returned to the young man.
“You must be convinced, now, that no treachery is intended; that you are free to decide.”
“I do not exactly fancy the idea of being forced totake a wife, whether I will or not; and at best, all this looks marvellously like it. But without farther words, I accept your proposal, on condition, however, that Tahmeroo is suffered to remain with her people till I may wish to retreat to England.
“There is an aristocratic old gentleman in the valley of the Mohawk, who calls himself my father; he might not fancy the arrangement, were I to introduce my Indian bride to the companionship of his wife and daughters. Arrange it that she remains with the tribe for the present, and settle the rest as you will.”
Catharine gave a joyful start, which she strove in vain to suppress. The happiness of keeping her child a little longer made every nerve in her body thrill; but she grew calm in an instant, and coldly consented to that which she would have given worlds to obtain, but dared not propose.
Butler spoke again.
“Now, madam, I entreat you to return to the camp. I give my honor that I will follow in a half-hour’s time, but in mercy grant me a few minutes’ breathing-space. The thought of this sudden marriage affects me like a shower-bath; it is like forcing a man to be happy at the point of the bayonet. Think of having a half a dozen of those savage-looking rascals for groomsmen—rifles, scalping-knives, and all. I wish my dear, stern old father were here to give the bride away; the thought of his fury half reconciles me to the thing, independent of the thousands. Who, under heavens, would have thought of seeking an heiress among a nest of Shawnee squaws?”
The latter part of his speech was spoken in soliloquy, for Catharine had departed at his first request, without any apparent suspicion of his good faith. The concealed girl was both surprised and touched to observe that tears were streaming down the face which had appeared so stern and calm but a moment before.
“She is left to me a little longer—I could have blessed him when he said it.”
Mary heard these words as the extraordinary woman passed, and her pure heart ached for the unhappy mother.
Butler remained on the rock till Catharine Montour had entirely disappeared; then he darted down the hill, and before Mary dared to venture forth from her concealment, his canoe was cutting across the river toward Monockonok Island.
Mary stood almost petrified with astonishment when she saw the direction he was taking. “What had Walter Butler to do in the vicinity of her home?” Her heart throbbed painfully as she connected this question with the conversation which she had overheard between her sister and Edward Clark, on the previous day. She stood motionless till his canoe shot into the little cove where her own was always moored, and when a sharp whistle sounded from that direction, she bent breathlessly forward with her eyes fixed intently on the door of her own dwelling. It opened, and her sister, Jane, came out with her sun-bonnet in her hand, and walked swiftly toward the cove.
But the poor deformed girl pressed her hands hard upon her heart, and groaned aloud, when her suspicions were thus painfully confirmed. She sank upon the ground, and burying her face in her hands, prayed fervently and with an earnestness of purpose that brought something of relief to her fears. For half an hour she sat upon the rock with her pale face looking toward the island, watching the cove through the tears which almost blinded. Her silent, anxious sorrow was more like that of an angel grieving over the apostasy of a sister spirit, than that of a mortal suffering under the conviction of moral wrong in a beloved object. She saw her sister slowly return to the house, and remarked that she stopped more than once to look after Walter Butler, as he urged his canoe toward the precipice again. Mary buried her face in her hands, and held her breath, as his footsteps smote along the neighboring path, and were lost in the forest.
Campbell’s Ledge and Scoville’s Island
Campbell’s Ledge and Scoville’s Island
Campbell’s Ledge and Scoville’s Island
Catharine Montour sat in the door of her lodge at the foot of Campbell’s Ledge. The encampment was almost deserted. Few women ever followed the warriors when they were called to a distant council-fire, and the men had gone into the forests on the opposite shore of the river, to meet their brethren from the Wind gap. The Tories from about Fort Wintermoot were to join the council, and from her high lodge Catharine could see a hundred council-fires gleaming out from the dense foliage which clothed the opposite hill.
The night was overcast, the moon and stars floated in soft gray vapors overhead, or were covered with black clouds sometimes sending pale ghastly gleams upon the mountains, and again whelming everything in darkness. Catharine was accustomed to the gloom of the forest, and her spirit always rose to meet the storms that swept over it; but now there was really no tempest, nothing but sombre stillness all around. The winds muttered and moaned along the mountain side. The waters rushed heavily down the valley, and those council-fires were suggestive of scenes more gloomy still. Like the black clouds overhead, they were full of brooding destruction.
But more sombre than all was the heart of Catharine Montour. On the morrow she was to resign all right over her only child to a man against whom her whole soul revolted. A bad, cruel man, whose name had even now become a terror wherever his foot had trod. She knew well that his influence among the Indians had always been pernicious; that as the war of the Revolution gathered strength, he had instigated the various savage tribes to participate in the contest and urged on cruelties that even savage warfare had not yet invented. Athousand times would that woman have died rather than given her daughter up to his wicked power, but here her supremacy was at fault. Tahmeroo loved the man, and the mother had suffered so bitterly in her own life from thwarted affection, that she dared not interpose a stern authority over the wishes of her child, otherwise the heathenish bond that already united those two persons would have been rent asunder, though she had died in the effort.
But now she had tenderness for her child, and the savage ambition of the Shawnee chief to contend against. It had long been his policy to unite his daughter with some white leader of power, for he was sufficiently educated himself to feel how unfit she would become for the savage life in which she was born; besides he wished to strengthen his political alliance with the whites and Col. John Butler, the father of this young man, was well known to the Indians as an officer of high authority among the Tories. His Tioga Rangers carried terror wherever they went, and the Shawnees had fought side by side with them in the Revolution too often for any doubt of their leader or his son. In acts of bravery, stern revenge and subtle diplomacy, such as the savages respected most, Walter Butler surpassed his father; and when Catharine looked toward the council-fires, she knew well that this young man was there, pouring his poisonous counsel into the listening ears of her people. How terribly that poison might work against herself, she did not yet know. In fact many events had transpired in the tribe during her absence from the settlement on Seneca Lake, of which she was not fully informed. Her grim mother-in-law, Queen Esther, had been busy during her late sojourn in the Mohawk Valley, and the effects of her crafty statesmanship were felt among the struggling revolutionists during the entire war. In this bold bad youth the cruel woman had found an ally, wicked and relentless as herself; in the war-councils ofthe Shawnees, and at the council-table of the whites he was her firm supporter.
Queen Esther had never forgiven Catharine’s first refusal of her son; the indignity galled her savage pride. To this was added jealousy of the influence and power which the younger woman had soon obtained over the chief and his tribe. In the intelligence, beauty, and stern will of Catharine, Queen Esther found a rival whom she could neither overpower, despise, or intimidate. Both as a white woman and an Indian princess, she soon learned to regard her daughter-in-law with intense hate.
Like her son, Queen Esther had resolved to strengthen herself by an alliance with Tahmeroo and some partisan of her own. The chief loved his daughter with all the strength of his rude and poetic nature, and readily listened to anything that promised to give her happiness, and which should also forward these purposes.
When he learned from the crafty old queen that Tahmeroo had met the young white chief, Walter Butler, on the lake shore, while out in her canoe, and that an attachment had sprung up between them, both his ambition and his affections were aroused. Notwithstanding the great influence that Catharine had obtained over him, the pride of manhood was strong within him, and his own right of action he yielded to no one. In this Indian blood and breeding spoke out. Over his wife, his child, and his tribe, he kept dominion. Against his will even Catharine was powerless.
When he questioned Tahmeroo, and learned how completely the young white man had wound himself around her heart; when Butler himself, knowing well how lightly such ties were regarded by his own people, came and asked his daughter in marriage, according to the usages of the tribe, Gi-en-gwa-tah, regardless of the mother’s absence, gave his child away, and adopted the young man as a Shawnee brave. With the Indiansthese ceremonies were solemn rites—with Walter Butler only one of the wild adventures he delighted in.
Directly after this heathen marriage, that section of the tribe which inhabited the head of Seneca Lake went to meet their brother Shawnees, who still remained on the Susquehanna. A swift runner was sent to inform Catharine Montour of the movement, and when she rejoined the warriors of her tribe, they were encamped in the Lackawanna gap, where a lodge had already been erected for her.
On the day of her arrival, and before she knew anything of these events, Tahmeroo had stealthily left the camp and made her way down the river in search of Butler. She knew well that some special ceremony was necessary to a marriage among the whites, and shrunk with terror from the very thought of confiding what had passed to her mother, till these forms were added to the Indian customs that already united them.
Butler had pacified her entreaties by the gift of coral, which Catharine took from under her pillow, and which led to that midnight explanation, and afterward to her interview with the missionary.
And now the unhappy woman sat waiting for the time of her sacrifice to arrive. As the shadows gathered darker and darker around her, Tahmeroo stole softly to the door and sat down on the turf at her feet; an hour back Catharine had spent some time in arraying her child for the ceremony that was to follow the breaking up of the council. With but silent indignation at the wrong that had been done her by the chief and his mother, she had performed her task. Of all her unhappy life this hour was filled with the heaviest and deepest trouble to that unhappy woman. Tahmeroo nestled close to her mother, took one hand in hers very tenderly, and laid her cheek in the palms.
“Mother, why are you so sad? Tahmeroo is veryhappy, but when she begins to smile this mournful look turns her joy into sighs.”
Catharine turned her heavy eyes on that beautiful face. How strange it looked! The costly raiment which had displaced her savage costume seemed unnatural alike to mother and child.
“And you are truly happy, my child? say it again.”
“Very happy!” answered the maiden, smiling.
“And you love this man very—very much?”
“Oh,somuch, dear mother!”
“I am glad of this my child. I have no hope for you except in this love.”
“No hope save in this love! Then your whole life may be full of hope. Without this love, Tahmeroo would die; for it fills all the world to her. Oh, mother, I did not know how beautiful the earth was till he came; the water down which his canoe passes grows pure as I look; if his hand touches a flower, it brightens to a star under my eye; the winter-berries turn to gold as he gathers them for me; I could kneel down and kiss the moss which his foot has walked over; the sound of his moccasins, away off in the forest, makes my heart leap for joy. Is not this love, mother?”
Catharine sobbed aloud; every sweet word that fell from her child brought its memory to stab her.
“Speak to me, mother; are you offended that I love him so much?”
Catharine writhed in her chair; it seemed as if she must die. Had she fled to the wilderness only to crucify her heart over again in the person of her child? Were the consequences of one error to follow her forever and ever? She lifted her clasped hands to heaven, and wildly asked these questions as if the lurid stars could answer her from the blackness that covered them. “Are you sorry that I love him so?” said Tahmeroo, weeping softly.
Catharine buried her face in both hands, while a struggle for composure shook her whole frame.
“See, see,” whispered Tahmeroo, pointing toward the opposite mountains, “the council-fires have gone out. There, now that the moon gleams, I can see their canoes on the water. In a few moments he will be here.”
Catharine looked suddenly up.
“Come,” she said, taking Tahmeroo by the hand, “we must be ready.”
As she spoke, a noise in the brushwood made her pause and listen; directly a man came forward, walking quietly toward the lodge.
Even in the darkness Tahmeroo could see that her mother turned pale.
It was the missionary who, punctual to his appointment, had found his way to the encampment. He sat down in the dim lights of the lodge. No one spoke; for he, too, seemed impressed by the solemn sadness of the hour. The next ten minutes were spent in dead silence—you could almost have heard the wild bound of Tahmeroo’s heart, when sound of coming footsteps came up from the forest. Still no word was spoken. The pine knots heaped on the hearth gleamed up suddenly, and sent a ruddy glow over the lodge, revealing a strange, strange picture.
Catharine Montour sat on the couch of scarlet cloth and soft furs, robed in the same dress which she wore in the morning. Her arms were folded over her bosom, and her eyes dwelt sadly on the ground, though at every noise from without they were directed with a sharp, anxious look towards the door, that changed to a dull troubled glow, as if the approaching footsteps had something terrible in them.
Tahmeroo nestled to her mother’s side, and looked wonderingly around the lodge; now upon the missionary, who sat in a rude chair opposite, with his face shaded by his hand, then on her own strange dress, with a sort ofshy curiosity; she did not quite recognize herself in that rich satin and those yellow old laces. Indeed her dress would have been remarkable to any one, either savage or civilized. Her Indian costume had been replaced by a robe of gold-colored satin, of an obsolete but graceful fashion, which had prevailed twenty years before in England. A chain of massive gold was interwoven among the braids of long hair, for the first time enwreathed about her beautiful head, after the fashion of the whites; and a pair of long filagree earrings broke the exquisite outline of her throat on the other side.
There was something a little stiff and awkward in the solemn stillness of those around her, and in the strangeness of her dress, which kept her bright eyes on the ground, and sent the smile quivering from her lips as the tramp of feet came nearer and nearer to the lodge.
While the inmates of the lodge remained waiting in silent anxiety, a shadow fell across the opening, and Butler appeared before them with his clothes in much disorder, and evidently fatigued from his long walk through the forest.
Tahmeroo sprang impulsively to meet him; the wild joy of her Indian blood revelled in her cheek, and sparkled in her dark eyes, till they met her mother’s reproving look, and felt the pitying gaze which the missionary fixed upon her. Then she shrunk back to her seat, blushing and trembling as if her natural joy at seeing the man she loved were something to be reproached for.
“Ha, my jewel of a red skin, have they made you afraid of me already?” said Butler, approaching her with a reckless kind of gaiety in his demeanor, and without appearing to observe the presence of any one except herself—“but why the deuce did you allow them to trick you out in this manner? You were a thousand times more piquant in the old dress. Come, don’t look frightened, you are beautiful enough in anything. Pray, what are these good people waiting for?”
Then turning to Catharine Montour, who had risen at his bold approach, he said, with insolent familiarity:
“Thank you, my stately madam, for sending away your nest of Shawnee friends, though you have made me expend a great deal of fierce courage for nothing. I had prepared myself to run the gantlet bravely among the red devils. Thank you again—but I hope my solemn father-in-law is to be present, I left him camped around a burning circle of pitch and hemlock, settling all creation over his calumet.”
Catharine listened with a frowning brow to his flippant speech, without deigning to answer.
“Upon my soul, this is pleasant,” said the young man, turning to the missionary. “I am invited to my own wedding, but find only faces that would make tears unnecessary at a funeral. Faith, if this is considered a cordial reception into the wigwam of one’s father-in-law, I’ll retire.”
The missionary looked gravely in his face, but did not speak; while Catharine arose with a frowning brow, and thrusting her hand under the pillows of the couch, drew forth a crimson-velvet casket, encrusted with gold, and set with three or four exquisitely painted medallions, each in itself a gem. She then drew an ebony box from under the couch, and unlocked it with some difficulty, for the spring turned heavily from disuse. This box she proceeded to open, though her hands looked cold as death, and her face was like marble as she lifted the lid.
Butler kept his eyes fixed on her movements, while he continued his unbecoming freedom of speech.
“Upon my honor,” he whispered, glancing at the happy face of Tahmeroo, and drawing her towards him, “that smile is refreshing after the gloomy brow of your august mother. Pray, my dear——”
He broke off suddenly, for that instant the Shawnee chief swept aside the bear-skin from the door of his lodge and stood in the opening, with his council-robegathered in cumbrous drapery about his imposing person, and his high, dusky brow crowned with a coronet of scarlet feathers, whence a plume shot up from the left side of his head. He was entirely unarmed, and held his calumet loosely in his right hand.
With a single stride he confronted the young man so abruptly that he drew back, catching his breath.
“Young brave,” he said, in pure, stern English, “when the chief of the Shawnees bows his head to a woman, all other men speak low and look on the ground, listening for her voice. You speak fast. Your words come like the mountain brook that is shallow and breaks into foam, which is not good to drink. It is not well.”
The stern grandeur of this rebuke brought the blood into Butler’s face. He muttered something about a cold reception, but threw aside the flippant air which had been so offensive. It was not for his interest, or safety either, to brave the haughty Shawnee in his own encampment.
Catharine Montour came forward. She had several old documents in her hands, title deeds and letters patent, written on vellum, with broad seals, and the yellow tinge of age bespeaking their antiquity. These documents she placed in Butler’s hands.
A keen, hungry greed broke into the young man’s eyes as he read. Once or twice he turned his look from the parchment to Catharine’s face, with increasing wonder and respect.
“And all this you consent to resign in behalf of Tahmeroo,” he said, “or rather, in behalf of her husband.”
“So far as the law permits, I resign it to my daughter,” answered Catharine.
A flush stole over the young man’s forehead; he knew by her voice that she comprehended all his meanness. But he was now more anxious than Catharine herselffor the ceremony that gave so much wealth to his control; and this eager wish increased when he saw the casket open in her hand. She raised a necklace and a bracelet of magnificent diamonds from among the gems which it contained, and held them out for his inspection.
“Make yourself certain of their value,” she said, in a dry, business tone, that had something of sarcasm in it, “for they are the security which I am about to offer, that my draft on Sir William Johnson shall be honorably met in a week from this date.”
“I see that you intend to make a business transaction of the affair,” replied Butler, carelessly receiving the jewels, which, however, he scrutinized with a closeness which betrayed a rapacious interest in their worth.
Catharine placed the casket in his hands with a smile of keen contempt.
“After you are fully satisfied of their value, this reverend man will receive them in trust. He has my sanction to deliver them to you three weeks from this day, should the draft which you hold in your hand remain at the time unpaid. Are you content with this arrangement?”
“I know little of the value of jewels,” replied Butler, slowly closing the casket, “but should suppose that these might be sufficient security for the money.”
“Perhaps this gentleman’s opinion will satisfy your doubts,” and taking the casket from Butler’s hand, Catharine again touched the spring and held it before the missionary.
“No, no; I am not a judge,” exclaimed the missionary, drawing back in his chair and pushing the casket away; but after a moment he looked up more composedly and said: “Excuse me, lady, I need not examine the jewels; from what I saw of them in the young gentleman’s hand, I am certain that they are worth more than the sum named.”
“Are you convinced?” said Catharine, again turning to Butler.
“Perfectly—let the ceremony proceed.”
With a kingly gesture, the chief lifted the bear-skin again, and taking Tahmeroo by the hand, led her out upon the turf in front of her mother’s lodge. Here a scene of wild grandeur presented itself. The whole encampment was surrounded by warriors in full costume, and glittering with arms. The Shawnees had risen from their council-fires, and moved in single file through the woods to the foot of Campbell’s Ledge. Here they wound themselves, rank after rank, round the encampment, till the chief and his family were hedged in by a living wall. Those in the front rank held torches of pitch pine knots kindled at the dying council-brands, which flamed up in one vast girdle of fire, lighting up the savages in their gorgeous dresses, the dense forest trees in the background, and throwing smoky gleams on the bold face of the ledge itself.
The eyes of the Shawnee chief flamed up with natural triumph as he stood upon the forest sward, which those broad lights were turning to gold under his feet, and, with a wave of his hand, motioned Butler to his side.
“White brave,” he said, “two moons ago I led my daughter to your wigwam, and, in the face of our tribe, she became your wife. It was well. But Catharine Montour is not content; she mourns that her child was given away, and she not there to rejoice. She says that your people have other laws, and that a wife given by the Shawnees is not a wife with our white fathers. Catharine is wise, and speaks well. The white brave shall make Tahmeroo his wife before his white brother here, who takes his law from the Great Spirit himself. Warriors, draw near and listen, while the young white brave makes his vow.”
The chief placed Tahmeroo’s hand in Butler’s, andgrasped them both in his own, while he waved one arm on high, thus commanding the warriors to draw near.
There was a stir among the savages; rank glided into rank, circle closed upon circle, till a triple ring of torches encircled the young pair, and a sea of waving plumes, wild faces, and sharp, glittering eyes, surged back into the forest. All this concourse of men stood motionless, obedient to the lifted hand of their chief.
Catharine Montour came forth from the lodge, pale and rigid, as if she were going to execution; after her walked the missionary, with a movement so still that it seemed a shadow gliding over the grass. He took his place before the young couple, opened his prayer-book, and commenced the ceremony. There was a slight delay, for Butler was unprovided with a ring. Catharine drew one from her finger, and gave it to the missionary. He touched her hand in receiving this ring. It was cold as ice.
It was a wonderful sound in the heart of that dense forest, the voice of a devout Christian giving that solemn marriage benediction, girded round by savages who had scarcely ever heard of the true God in their lives. But a strange sight it was when the haughty chief, the proud English lady, the minister, and that newly married couple sank gently to their knees, and all that tribe of savages fell to the earth also, with their swarthy foreheads in the dust, while the voice of that good man rose clear and loud, piercing the heavens with its solemn eloquence. Even the savages looked at each other with awe, and trod stealthily as they broke up in bands, and moved back toward the woods.
It was, indeed, a holy hour; for, though blood, flame, and rapine marked the course of that tribe for years after that august ceremony, the Indians sometimes grew less relentless when a cry for mercy reminded them of the marriage of their chief’s daughter. When all was over, the missionary departed noiselessly as he came.The chief was disappointed when he looked round and saw that he was gone. He had munificently prepared a present of furs and wampum, which he desired to present, after the fashion of the whites. Catharine Montour saw nothing; she was still prostrate on the earth.
Butler went away soon after the missionary, scarcely deigning to make an excuse for his absence or name the time of his return. Tahmeroo gazed after him till great tears gathered in her eyes. Then a sudden thought—a quick pain; and, while her father gave orders to his warriors, and her mother bowed herself in the dust, she darted into the woods. Still dressed in those singular wedding garments, she forced her path through the forest along the mountain stream, and down the steep ramparts of Falling Spring, till she came out upon the river. Fragments of golden satin and rich lace were torn from her dress, and left clinging to brushwood and thorns in her passage, but she took no heed; the Indian blood in her veins was all on fire with jealousy. As she reached the foot of Falling Spring, a canoe shot out from the ravine through which its waters plunged to the river. She saw the waves glitter in its track, sprang downward, unmoored her own little craft, and flew along the windings of the Susquehanna like a sparrow hawk.