CHAPTER XVTHE SERPENT BRACELET
Mary Derwent was restless and dreamy all day after Aunt Polly left the island. Spite of herself, she was sad—no cause existed now—Jane was safe at home, sorry for her indiscretion, at heart, no doubt; Butler, she hoped and believed, had left the valley—certainly there was nothing to apprehend nor much to regret—yet tears lay close to those beautiful eyes all the day long. She pined to hide herself in some quiet place, and cry all her fancied trouble away. The strange woman was before her every moment; she could not, with any force of will, put that picturesque image aside; it came, like the shadow from some wild dream, and took full possession of her.
She went to the spring early, just as the first golden waves of sunset began to ripple up the west. The blossoming crab-apples flung a rosy tint above her, and the soft whispers of the spring, as it ran off among the stones, sounded sad and tearful as the breath in her bosom.
There was no sound, for the Indian moccasin treads lightly as a leaf falls, and Catharine Montour stood close by the young girl before she was aware of any human approach.
Mary lifted her face suddenly, and there, revealed by golden gleams of light that penetrated the boughs, she saw that strange face, surmounted by the serpent whose blood-red eyes glittered on her like a venomous asp about to bite.
Mary was the first to speak.
“You are the lady who wished me to be here?”
Her voice scarcely rose above the whispering waters, but Catherine heard it distinctly. Still she did not speak at once—some unaccountable emotion checked the breath on her lips.
“Yes; I asked a woman who said she was coming here to give my message. You are very kind to answer it so promptly.”
These were not the words Catherine had intended to say; but the gentle, almost holy presence of that young girl changed the whole current of her feelings. She came haughtily, as an inquisitor who had suffered wrong, but remained overpowered by the meek dignity of her reception.
“I had seen you once before, lady, and was glad to come.”
“Seen me, child, and where?”
“At the ledge, on the opposite shore, when you met Walter Butler.”
“And you heard that conversation?”
“Yes. I could not help it. Before it was possible to get away you had said everything.”
“Then you know that he is married to my daughter?”
“I know that he is married to a young Indian girl, who may be your daughter. The missionary told me of the marriage, but nothing more.”
“And your sister—for it is of her I wish to speak, it is her I warn—did she know this?”
“She knows it now.”
“Yet last night Tahmeroo, my daughter, the bride of Walter Butler, found your sister here under these very branches, planning to elope with him.”
“I know it,” answered Mary, shrinking together, and turning pale as if she, not Jane, had been in fault—“I know it; but that is all over now.”
“Do not be so sure of that, my poor child; there is no security against treachery and weakness; but if youare already informed that Walter Butler is married by every law that can bind two persons for life, my errand here is half done. Last night my unhappy child came to the camp wild with the torture that wicked man had inflicted. I will not speak harshly of your sister: if her folly works sharper than wickedness, it is not your fault; but my business here was to warn her of the danger she is braving. I did not wish to see a person whose folly has already irritated a temper not particularly placable, but sent for you, because my child told me of your kindness—your true, generous courage. I wished to thank you—to impress you with the danger that hangs over your family if Tahmeroo receives farther wrong or insult here.”
“I would rather die than think it could happen again,” answered Mary Derwent, with gentle earnestness. “My sister is so young—so very, very beautiful, that she is not content with the love of a single heart, as one who has nothing pleasant about her might be. It is only a fancy—a wild dream with her. I’m sure you would believe it could you see how dearly she is loved by—by one, oh! so much superior to this Captain Butler.”
“Then your sister is beloved—she is engaged, perhaps?”
“Beloved—oh, yes!” answered Mary, in a voice so sweetly mournful that the haughty soul of Catharine Montour thrilled within her. “They are engaged, too, I believe. You know it would be impossible for him to live near Jane and not wish to marry her. As for him, of course she cannot help loving him—who could?”
The last two words were uttered in a sigh so deep and heart-broken that Catharine felt it thrilling through her own frame. Her forest life had never possessed the power to dull or break that one string in her heart; it was sensitive and tremulous as ever. She understoodall that Mary was suffering, and back upon her soul rushed a tide of sympathy so earnest and delicate that for a time those two beings, so opposite in all things else, felt painfully together—the one sad from memory, the other suffering under the weight of a cruel reality eternally present in her own person.
Unconsciously Catharine’s right hand fell upon the beautiful head, which bent under it like a flower on its stalk.
“Poor, poor child!” she murmured, and tears kept resolutely from her eyes, broke forth in her voice: “I know well how to feel for you.”
“No, no,” answered Mary. “One so grand—so like a queen, could not feel as I do; I never expect it. In the wide world there is not another girl like me. I sometimes feel as if the angels would only give me pity-love after I am dead, and then there would be no heaven for me either.”
“And are you so lonely of heart?” inquired Catharine, seating herself on the stone before Mary, and taking both her pale little hands with a kindly clasp. “You and I should feel for each other; for the same rugged path lies before you that I have trod.”
“The same—oh no, lady! You are straight and proud as a poplar. You don’t know what it is to go through life with your face bent to the ground, and the heart in your bosom warm and full of love, like other people’s.”
“Poor soul, and does this thought trouble you so? Are you indeed worse off than I have been, and so patient, too? Has the wilderness no hiding-place for human suffering?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, filled with her own thoughts. “It seems as if I never could hide away; people are sure to find me out and stare at me. I think there is no place but the grave where one would be sure.”
Catharine could not speak; tears overmastered her and fell down her face like rain.
“Poor soul,” she said, “how can I comfort you?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “The minister sometimes tries to comfort me, but I’m afraid he has gone away for a long time; when he tells me that I can be useful, and make others happy just as I am, this trouble goes off a little. Oh! ma’am, I wish you could know the minister; or if you really care about making a poor girl like me feel better, talk as he does.”
“Alas!” said Catharine, “I am not humble and good, like him; but I can pity these feelings, and be your friend—a more powerful friend, perhaps, than he is, for I can protect you and yours from the hatred of the Indians.”
“Oh, but the Indians are my friends now; they love me a little, I am sure, for they smile when I speak to them, and call me pet names, as if I were a bird; perhaps it is because the minister likes me so much.”
“No; it is because—because of your——”
“Of this,” said Mary, interrupting her with a frightened look, and touching her shoulder with one hand. “Is it only pity with them, too?”
Catharine looked upon that pale spiritual face with ineffable compassion. She understood all the sorrow that rendered it so painfully beautiful.
“No, my child, it is not pity with them, but homage, adoration. That which you feel as a deformity, they hold to be a sacred seal of holiness which the Great Spirit sets upon his own. With them you, and such as you, are held only as little lower than the angels. This superstition may yet be your salvation, but a time is coming when even that will not be enough to protect you from harm.”
“What! would the Indians kill me—is that it?”
“They are savages, and hard of restraint; but I thinkthat nothing human could be found to harm a creature so good and so helpless.”
“Then you think they could not be brought to kill me?” said Mary, with a look almost of disappointment.
“Why, you speak sadly, like one who wishes death.” Mary shook her head.
“No, I dare not wish death; but if the Indians wanted any one, and must have a life, they couldn’t find any person so ready to go, I’m sure.”
“This is very mournful,” said Catharine, drawing Mary’s head, with all its loose golden hair, to her bosom. “I wish the missionary, or any one else were here to console you. I am struck mute. Yet Heaven knows, if my own life could remove the cause of your sorrow, I would lay it down this moment. Do you believe me, child?”
“Oh, yes; but is this love or pity?”
“Pity is a gentle feeling, but it would not urge one to a sacrifice like that. Love, compassion, sentiment—I do not know what it is; but I solemnly say to you, Mary Derwent, in twenty years I have not felt my heart swell with feelings like these—not even when my own child was first laid in my bosom.”
“It is love!—this is love!” cried Mary, joyfully winding her arms around Catharine Montour’s neck, and laying her cheek close to the proud woman’s face. “I think—I am sure this is love!”
“God knows it is some holy feeling that has overtaken me unawares.”
“Yes, yes; love is a holy feeling!”
“But this is the first time you and I have ever met.”
“Is it? I don’t remember this moment—my thoughts will not take the thing in; but I am sure we shall never be strangers again—that we never were strangers in all our lives. At first I was afraid of you; now I should like to follow after you like a wild bird, that you would feed sometimes with crumbs from your hands, and callme by pretty pet names. I should like, of all things, to watch over you in the night, and keep everything still, that you might dream sweet dreams. That beautiful girl, your daughter, should not care for you more than I. Is not this love, dear lady?”
“It is something very heavenly,” said Catharine Montour. “I dread to have it pass away, and yet it must!”
“Must! And why?”
“Because all things beautiful do pass away—love with the rest, nothing is immortal here.”
“But yonder,” said Mary, pointing upward, where a young moon rode the sky like a golden shallop laden with pearls.
“I know nothing of that,” answered Catharine, with momentary impatience. “It is at best a land of dreams and conjectures to us all, but we will not talk of that deep mystery—the future—my child. I would not willingly disturb any belief that can make you happier. I can dream no longer, hope no more—mine will be a life of wild action, and then——”
“And then——” repeated Mary, turning her pure eyes upward, “and then, there is a God above, and rest, eternal rest—yet eternal action too, with his angels.”
“Who taught you these things; surely this is not the language of a frontier settlement?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, with sweet thoughtfulness, “such ideas spring up most naturally, I should think, in the woods which God alone has touched; men teach us words, but thought comes to us, I am sure, as flowers spring from the grass; we scarcely know when they shoot, bud, or blossom, till their breath is all around us. I cannot remember, lady, that any one ever taught me to think.”
“Not the missionary?”
“Perhaps it might have been unawares—but no, he told me once, I remember, that God himself sent memany thoughts that other children never have, in order to be company for me when I sit alone in the woods. So, after all, dear lady, the missionary understands what they mean, and tells me; that is all. The thoughts come from God himself.”
Catharine Montour was weeping, for that gentle girl had found the well-spring of her nature; laying her cheek down upon those golden tresses, which remained on her bosom, silent from tender reverence.
“Are these thoughts so strange that you wonder at them?” asked Mary.
“Yes, they are very strange to me now.”
“Don’t let them be strangers after this, dear lady; when you send them away, as I did once, it is like turning angels out of doors.” Catharine sobbed for the first time in years and years.
“When they come swarming around your heart,” continued Mary, “let them in, for they are pleasant company, and, better than all, crowd so much trouble out.”
“Alas!” said Catharine, covering her face with both hands in a burst of sorrow, “it is long since these thoughts have visited me.”
“That is because you keep the door shut against them, I dare say; but it is open now, or you would not cry so; gentle thoughts always follow tears, just as violets start after a brook overflows.”
Catharine stooped forward with one hand to her brow; she could not realize that tears were dropping so fast from her eyes, or that any human voice possessed the power of unlocking such feelings of tenderness in her soul. She who had become iron, scarcely recognized her own identity when the old nature came back. Mary grew anxious at her long silence.
“Have I offended you, lady?” she said, pressing her timid little hand on that which lay in Catharine’s lap.
“Offended me! Oh, no, no.”
“Please look up then; while you stoop, the shadowsfall around you like a mourning cloak, and I grow chilly; hark! what is that?”
Catharine Montour started up, for a low cry like that of some wild animal in pain sounded from the water. “It is my Indians,” she said, hurriedly; “they are restive at this long stay—I must go now or they will come in search of me.”
“But not far—not forever, lady; I have only seen you twice in all my life; but it seems as if a stone had fallen on my heart when I think that you may never come back.”
“I will come back, trust me I will. How and when it is impossible for me to say; but, rest certain, we shall meet again, and that for good to us both.”
“But soon—oh, tell me that it will be soon.”
“I cannot say; these are wild times on the frontier, and worse may be expected; but if danger comes I shall not be far from you; rest sure of that.”
Mary looked—oh, so wistfully—into the lady’s face.
“And will there be danger for you?”
“None, child! but you and the inhabitants of this valley will be forever in peril. Stay, put back the sleeve from your arm, undo this bracelet, a gleam of moonlight strikes the spring just here—so!”
As she spoke, Mary touched the clasp pointed out, and directly one of the serpent bracelets uncoiled from Catharine’s wrist, as if it had been a living thing, and she wound it on Mary’s arm, above the elbow, shutting the spring with a noise that sounded like a hiss.
“It will guard you,” she said, eagerly. “There is not a Shawnee savage who does not hold that sign sacred, nor one among the Six Tribes who will not protect its wearer—keep it on your arm night and day, till we meet again.
“I came here to learn all that relates to your sister’s acquaintance with Walter Butler, to warn her of the peril which will surely follow her reckless daring, ifshe even sees him or speaks with him again; but somehow you have led my thoughts far from the subject, and there is no time for much that I intended to say. But I have no fear that, under your influence, this girl can wrong my daughter.”
Before Mary could speak, a long kiss was pressed on her forehead—a rustling of the branches as they swayed to their places, and she was alone—more alone than she had ever been in her life.