CHAPTER XXVIIITHE ISLAND GRAVE
The morning broke, with a quiet, holy light, through the thicket of crab-apple and wild-cherry trees which overlaced the spring in the centre of the island; and there, upon the blooming turf beneath, lay the form of Catharine Montour. Her eyes were closed, and the violet tint of exhaustion lay about them. The feathers which composed her coronet were crushed in a gorgeous mass beneath her pale temple, and her forehead was contracted with a slight frown, as if the serpent coiled around it were girding her brow too tightly. Ever and anon her pale hands clutched themselves deep into the moss, and her limbs writhed in the agony of her wounds. The pale, haggard face of Grenville Murray lay upon the moss where he had fallen when she dropped away from his arms, as it had done the whole night; and Varnham, the missionary, sat a little way off, looking mournfully on them both. There was a solemn and awful sorrow in his silence; yet something of cold sternness. He could not look on that pale, haughty man so near his wife, without some thought of the evil that had been done him.
On the swell of the bank, a short distance from the spring, crouched another miserable being. Tahmeroo sat upon the ground, looking upon her mother, in dreary desolation.
The expression of pain gradually cleared from Catharine Montour’s face, and at last her eyes unclosed and turned upon Murray. She saw the death-drops on hisforehead, and, struggling to her elbow, took his cold hand.
“Lady Granby, speak to me! In the name of God, I pray you, speak before it is too late. Say that I am forgiven!” he murmured.
There was a depth of agony in that voice which might have won forgiveness from the dead. Catharine Montour strove to speak, her lips moved, and her eyes filled with solemn light. Murray fell back and gave up her hand. Must he go into eternity with a doubt upon his soul!
“Caroline,” said a low, broken voice, and a face full of anguish bent over her, “forgive this man, as I do, before he dies.”
The hand which Varnham took was cold, but it moved with a faint clasp, and her eyes, which had opened again, turned with a confident and gentle expression upon the missionary’s. A soft and almost holy smile, like that which slumbers about the sweet mouth of an infant, fell upon the lips of Catharine Montour, and a pleasant murmur, which was more than forgiveness, reached the dying man’s ear.
“Great God, I thank thee that thou hast vouchsafed me the grace to forgive this man!” burst from the missionary; his face fell forward upon his bosom, and he wept aloud, as one who had found the great wish of a lifetime.
Murray turned his eyes, now freezing with death, upon Catharine’s face; he saw that smile, and over his own features came a light that for one moment threw back the ashen shadows gathering there.
Varnham moved gently to his side, took the cold hand, and held it till it stiffened into the marble of death. Catharine watched his face as it saddened, shade by shade with the ebbing pulses that quivered under his touch. When she saw that all was over, a cold chill crept through her frame, the lids closed heavily overher eyes, and she was almost as lifeless as the man who had been her destiny.
Varnham laid the hands of the dead reverently down, and, lifting Catharine Montour in his arms, rested her head upon his bosom, while he called on Tahmeroo for water. She ran down to the spring, formed a cup with her two hands, and sprinkled the deathly face. But there came no signs of consciousness. She seemed utterly gone. Varnham knew that her heart was beating, for he felt it against his own, and for the moment a faintness crept over him; he forgot where he was, and that death lay close by; all the years and events that had separated those two souls floated away like mist; he bent down and whispered: “Caroline, my Caroline!” as he had done a thousand times when she was insane and unconscious as then of the love which had not died, which never could die.
“Caroline, my Caroline.”
His head was bent, and his trembling lips almost touched her forehead; he heard nothing, saw nothing; an exclamation of surprise and alarm broke from Tahmeroo, but he was all unconscious of it till the form of Catharine Montour was torn from his arms by the chief, Gi-en-gwa-tah, who folded her to his broad chest, casting a look of sovereign disdain over his shoulder as he bore her away. A company of fifty Indians had followed him to the island, and when Varnham rose, dizzy with the sudden attack, they swarmed around him, offering no violence, but cutting off his retreat. When they left him at liberty again, he was alone with the body of his forgiven enemy.
In a little out-house that had escaped the flames Varnham found a spade and pickaxe. He left the body with Tahmeroo, and, going down to the old cedars, dug a grave with his own hands. Then, with the assistance of the Indian girl, he bore the body away, and laid it in the cold earth with unuttered prayers and awfulreverence. The sods with which they heaped the earth that covered him were green, and the night dew was still upon them. But a drop fell upon that grave more pure than all the dew that trembled there. It was the tear of a man who had learned to forgive, as he hoped to be forgiven.
There was no hope for the people of Forty Fort, the stockade at Pittston had surrendered, Fort Jenkins was already taken, and from Wilkesbarre the inhabitants were fleeing to the hills. Thus, helpless and hopeless, the fugitives who had succeeded in reaching the fort with the women and children already there, had no choice between the terms of capitulation offered by Colonel John Butler and another massacre.
While the plain was strewn with the dead bodies of men who had marched forth from those gates so valiantly the day before, they were thrown open that the triumphant enemy might pass in. At the command of their colonel, the patriots came slowly forward and stacked their arms in the centre of the stockade. The women and children clustered in miserable groups, and stood in dead silence, waiting for the murderers of their sons and husbands.
The victors approached with beating drums and flying colors, divided in two columns. The Tories were headed by the Butlers, while in at the south gate marched the savages, with Queen Esther and Gi-en-gwa-tah at their head.
The faces of the Whigs were marked by the Indians with black paint, in order to insure their safety. The children retreated from this savage kindness with loud outcries; the pallid women passed before their captors, shrinking with horror from their touch.
“Ain’t you ashamed, wimmen of Wyoming?” cried Aunt Polly Carter, marching boldly up to the tall savage who distributed the war-paint. “What are yeskeered at? I never expected to have the mark of Cain sat on my forehead by a wild Injun; but if I must, I must! Here, Mr. Copperhead, make it good and black. I don’t want no mistake, if any of your chiefs should take a notion for more scalps; and I say, Mr. Injun, hold your head down here, while I whisper something. If you could just put an extra dab on, to let your men folks know I’m engaged, if they should want to marry any of our wimmen, I’d be much obleeged to you.”
The Indian, who did not comprehend a word of all this, crossed his blackened stick on her cheek, gave her a push, and was ready for the next trembling creature that presented herself. As Aunt Polly took her place among the marked women, a little boy pulled her by the dress, and whispered that he had just seen Gineral Washington with an Injun on his back.
“Gineral Washington—my hoss—you don’t say so?”
“Yes, Aunt Polly, his own self, with a big Injun a-riding him.”
“He shan’t ride him out of the fort, anyhow,” exclaimed Polly. “Captain—Captain Walter Butler—I call on you to help me get my hoss back. One of them ’ere red fellers has stole Gineral Washington right afore my two eyes.”
“I am afraid you will have to buy him back,” replied Butler, laughing. “What can you give?”
“Give! I shan’t give nothing for what’s my own now I tell you.”
“Then, I am afraid, you and the General will have to part.”
The savages began to march out of the fort, and Aunt Polly followed in hot haste.
“Captain! captain!” she shrieked, “make the bargain for me—do; that’s a good soul!”
Butler addressed a savage near him in his own tongue, and turned again to the old maid.
“Give him some money, Miss Carter, and you can have the horse.”
“Money! pay money for a hoss that I’ve owned these twen—this long time!— Wal, that is a purty how-de-do, I must say.”
But Butler’s remonstrances and the sullen look of the Indian proved that she could not obtain the faithful animal on any other terms. That moment, the General looked towards his mistress, and, recognizing her with a low neigh of delight, Aunt Polly could not withstand that appeal. She put her hand in her bosom and drew forth an old shot-bag, as ruefully as if it had been her own heart, untied it, and took out the two guineas, her chief treasures. She eyed them ruefully, and was about to thrust them into the bag again, when the General, sagacious animal, whinnied. Aunt Polly grasped one of the pieces, and thrust the rest into her bosom.
“Perhaps you could persuade him to take a string of beads, or some gew-gaw instead,” whispered Butler, rather pitying her distress.
“Lawful sakes,” cried the old maid, joyfully. “I’ve got just the purtiest string; stand in front of me, captain, and turn your back, while I loosen my dress, so as to get ’em off.”
Butler obeyed, laughing heartily, and Aunt Polly hurriedly untied a string of bright blue glass beads, and held them up before the Indian, who gave a humph of delight, and snatched them from her hand, at the same moment. Aunt Polly darted towards the General, slipped the bridle over her arm, and rushed back into the fort with the old horse trotting behind her; she reached a safe corner, and sat down on the ground, fairly hysterical with tears and laughter.
“Oh, Gin’ral, Gin’ral Washington, I should have died if I’d lost you—I know I should! He! he! only to think how I cheated the feller—poor old Gin’ral, you’rethin as a shad! A string of old blue beads, that wasn’t worth ten coppers—try agin, when you want to cheat a born Connecticut woman, you red varmint you.”
When the Tories and savages had fairly disappeared Aunt Polly was among the first to leave the fort.
“Wal,” she said to the bystanders, as she mounted on the General, with the aid of a broken bench, “I’ve lost my saddle; but, thank goodness, I can ride bare-back. But where’s Captain Slocum? he hain’t said a word about that ’ere rum.”
The unhappy inmates of the fort were too much occupied with their own griefs to heed these pathetic lamentations, and Aunt Polly rode briskly away, muttering confusedly of her losses, and her delight at rescuing the General at so little cost.
Her heart sank when she drew near her own house, for she had passed nothing but smoking cabins all the way; but a sudden rise of ground revealed it, standing and unharmed. As she galloped up to the door, Sim White, looking really glad, came out to meet her, while Mother Derwent and Jane appeared in the doorway.
“All safe!” cried Aunt Polly, springing to the ground. “Where’s Mary, and the minister?”
“Mary is on the bed, worn out with last night’s work,” began the old lady, but Aunt Polly did not pause to hear her out.
“Sim, take the Gin’ral, feed him well—and, Sim—you may kiss me. I don’t care if Grandmother Derwent and Jane do see you.”
Sim gave her a hearty embrace, and they all entered the house, where Aunt Polly related all that had happened, and, bringing out a blacking-brush, insisted on marking all their faces like her own.
But this quiet lasted only a few hours. The Indians, in total disregard of the terms of the capitulation, began plundering and setting on fire all the houses in the district.