What mournful hours she spent thus! Unable to wrestle with her anguish, it lay like a weight upon her heart—every beautiful hope that had brightened her other life was dead, eternally dead, now. It was well that she could look upon her early years almost as another existence, and the broad ocean which rolled between her and that distant home as the tideless sea that separates time from eternity. When her fever would return and fill her mind with strange fancies, she believed that it was indeed eternity in which she groped; that the darkness must be everlasting. At such times she would call aloud upon Mary, her angel child, and, as that face seemed to rise before her in its loveliness, she would grow calm again, and fall asleep, taking those features into her dreams to brighten their dreariness. A fortnight elapsed before they reached the settlement at Seneca Lake. Catharine was borne to her house, accompanied by Tahmeroo; but Queen Esther went directly up to her gloomy palace, and the chief joined the general encampment of his tribe.
The summer months waned and deepened into the gorgeous brightness of autumn before Catharine Montour was able to leave her house. After that, accompanied by Tahmeroo, she would take short rambles in the forest, or the Indian girl would pile a bed of skins in her canoe, and row her about the lake for hours, seeming by instinct to understand her mood, talking to her in that pleasant young voice, or bending over her oars in silence, and allowing Catharine to recline in thought upon her couch whenever she saw her disinclined for conversation.
The girl became dearer than ever to the chastened woman, but Catharine would not think of her as her daughter—with that name rose the image of the pale girl far away, and her heart yearned towards her with all its remaining life. Tahmeroo was henceforth her friend, her young sister, but never again her child. To her, the thought was sacrilege.
Catharine’s strength came slowly back, but her hard, proud nature was gone forever. She had grown meek and humble as a child; grateful for affection, almost timid in her new womanliness. Gi-en-gwa-tah was absent, and Queen Esther kept aloof. This was a great relief, for in the silence of her home she could sometimes forget the reality around her. She suffered continually, but it was no longer the stern, bitter conflict of former days—her heart bowed beneath the rod of the chastener and found solace in new and holier aspirations.
Keen self-reproach she was also forced to endure, though her marriage with the chief had been an innocent one, for she had solemnly believed her husband dead, it pressed upon her soul like a premeditated sin. Besides, Murray’s terrible death tortured her continually. In the stillness of that awful night he had told her of his regrets, his broken life and loveless age. His wife and child were dead, and with the curse of unrest upon him, he had come a second time to America, accepting a commission from the ministry, but with no belief that she was yet alive.
Since the day of his marriage he had never seen her, and when the fact of her existence, and of the terrible sacrifice she had made for his sake, was so coarsely revealed to him at the table of Sir John Johnson, he had started at once to find her and crave the forgiveness without which he could never hope for rest.
He had reached Seneca Lake two days after the tribe set forth for Wyoming, and following rapidly as possible met her there; but only to die.
With mournful distinctness Catharine remembered every word those dying lips had uttered. She knew that her husband had appeared with the first dawn, and that they three were together again, sitting silently in the valley of the shadow of death. These terrible memories kept back her strength. Queen Esther’s poniard seemed still in her bosom, rusting closer to her heart each day. She had but one wish on earth, an unquenchable thirst for the company of her child. To accomplish this, she would go on her knees to Varnham, and then die.
Late in the fall, while Catharine was yet very feeble, she was startled by the sudden presence of Butler in the settlement. He had come with a troop of soldiers to convey his wife into Canada, where she was to be left under the care of Sir John Johnson and his lady, while his father’s troop lay on the frontier.
Butler did not deign to soften this cruel blow to the woman whose child, and sole companion, he was tearing away; but sent for Tahmeroo to meet him at her grandmother’s mansion. The young wife, selfish in her joy, ran eagerly to Catharine’s chamber.