Mary Derwent

by Ann S. Stephens

While a comparatively young man, he had come among the Six Nations nameless and unarmed, with his life in his hand, ready to live or die at his post. His home was in the wilderness; sometimes he passed through the white settlements, preached in their schoolhouses and slept in their cabins; but it was always as a guest; his mission lay with the forest children, and in the wilds where they dwelt was his home.

Almost the entire portion of years which had elapsed since his encounter with Mary Derwent in the hills, he had spent among the savages that kept possession of broad hunting grounds beyond the Wind Gap. But a movement of the tribes toward Wyoming, where a detachment of their own people from about Seneca Lake had been appointed to meet them in council, filled him with anxiety for his friends in the valley, and he came back also to watch over their safety. He knew what the settlers were ignorant of as yet—that the Shawnees were about to unite with the Tories, whose leader lay at Wintermoot Fort, and that great peril threatened the inhabitants of Wyoming in this union.

This man was alone in a log-cabin which Zinzendorf had once occupied on a curving bank of the Susquehanna, between Wilkesbarre and Monockonok Island. His face, always sad and merciful, now bore an anxious expression. The patient sweetness of his mouth was a little disturbed. He was pondering over the hostile attitude threatened by the Indians against the whites, and that subject could not be otherwise than a painful one.

The hut was small, and but for recent repairs would have been in ruins. It consisted only of one room. A deal-box stood in one corner, filled with books and rolls of manuscript. Two stools and a rude table, with a few cooking utensils, were the only remaining furniture. The missionary sat by the table, implements for writing were before him, and the pages of a worn Bible lay open, which, after a little while, he began to read.

It was a picture of holy thought and quiet study; but the crackling of branches and the sound of approaching footsteps interrupted its beautiful tranquillity.

The silvery flow of water from a spring close by was broken by the sound; the birds fluttered away from their green nestling places in the leaves, and a half-tamed fawn, which had been sleeping in a tuft of fern-leaves, started up, gazed a moment on the intruder with his dark, intelligent eye, and dashed up the river’s bank as she crossed the threshold of the lowly dwelling.

The missionary looked up as the stranger entered, and a feeling of astonishment mingled with the graciousness which long habit had made a portion of his nature. He arose, and with a slight inclination of the head placed the stool, on which he had been sitting, for her accommodation.

The intruder bent her head in acknowledgment of the courtesy, but remained standing. She was a woman majestic in her bearing, of well-developed form, and somewhat above the middle height; her air was courtly and graceful, but dashed with haughtiness approaching to arrogance. She had probably numbered forty years; her face, though slightly sunbrowned, bore traces of great beauty, in spite of its haughty expression. The mouth had been accustomed to smiles in its youth, and though an anxious frown clouded the broad forehead, it was still beautifully fair. The missionary had spent his life amid the aristocracy of European courts, and had passed from thence to the lowly settlement, and to the still more remote Indian encampment; but there was something in the appearance of this strange woman that filled him with vague uneasiness, and he looked upon her with a sort of terror. Her air and dress were not strictly those of any class with which he had as yet become familiar. There was wildness mingled with the majesty of her presence, and her rich and picturesque attire partook at once of the court and the wigwam.

Her long, golden, and still abundant hair was wreathed in braids around her head, and surmounted by a small coronet of gorgeous feathers. A serpent of fine, scaly gold, the neck and back striped and variegated with minute gems, was wreathed about the mass of braids on one side of her head, and formed a knot of slender coils where it clasped the coronet. There was something startlingly like vitality in these writhing folds when the light struck them, and the jewelled head shot out from the feathers and quivered over the pale temple with startling abruptness. There was an asp-like glitter in the sharp, emerald eye, and the tiny jaw seemed full of subtle venom. It was a magnificent and rare ornament to be found in the solitude of an American forest; yet scarcely less remarkable than the remainder of the strange woman’s apparel.

A robe of scarlet cloth, bordered with the blackest lynx fur, was girded at the waist by a cord of twisted silk, and fell back at the shoulders in lapels of rich black velvet. Above the fur border ran a wreath of embroidery, partly silk, partly wampum, but most exquisitely wrought in garlands of mountain flowers, with tiny golden serpents knotting them together and creeping downward, as it were, to hide themselves in the fur. It had loose, hanging sleeves, likewise lined with velvet, beneath which the white and still rounded arm gleamed out in strong contrast.