“A third time the clock beat. I bent forward and pressed my lips to his forehead for the first time in my life. Oh! how my heart swelled to my lips with that one soft kiss. It seemed breaking with solemn tenderness—such tenderness as we give to the dead before the beloved clay is taken from us forever. My lips were cold and tremulous, but he did not awake beneath the pressure, and I did not repeat it, nor look on him again. I knew we were parting forever, but had no power to look back.
“I passed from the house slowly, and with a solemn feeling of desolation, as one might tread through a graveyard alone, and at midnight.
“In the disguise which had served me so well I sailed for America. I had no wish to mingle with my race, but took my way from New York to the valley of the Mohawk and sought the presence of Sir William Johnson. To him I revealed myself and as much of my history as was necessary to ensure his co-operation in my plan for the future. Under a solemn promise of secrecy, which has never been broken, I entrusted my wealth to his agency and procured his promise of an escort to the tribe of Indians then located in his neighborhood. Among these savages I hoped to find perfect isolation from my race; to begin a new life and cast the old one away forever; this was more like rising from the grave into another life than anything human existence had to offer. I remained some months in the Mohawk Valley, waiting for news from England. I was anxious to hear that my efforts at concealment had been effectual and that my friends really believed me dead. News came at last that shook my soul to its centre once more. Varnham, my husband, was dead. He would not believe in my destruction, and after strict search traced me to London, and on shipboard, spite of my disguise.
“He put my property in trust, and taking the next ship that sailed followed me to America, with what purpose I never knew. The ship was lost, and every soul on board perished.”
CHAPTER X
QUEEN ESTHER
“The Shawnee Indians had long been governed by a woman, whose name was both feared and respected through all the Six Nations. I need not dwell either upon her cruelty or her greatness. Had Elizabeth, of blessed memory, as sarcastic history names her, been thrown among savages, she would have been scarcely a rival to this remarkable chieftainess. The same indomitable love of power—the same ferocious affections, caressing the neck one day, which she gave to the axe on the next—the same haughty assumption of authority marked Queen Esther, the forest sovereign, and Elizabeth, the monarch of England. Both were arrogant, crafty, selfish and ruthless, proving their power to govern, only as they became harsh and unwomanly.
“Queen Esther was the widow of a great chief, whose authority she had taken up at his grave, and never laid down during twenty-five years, when Gi-engwa-tah, her eldest son, had earned a right to wear the eagle plume and fill his father’s place on the warpath and at the council table. The great secret of this woman’s power over her tribe lay in her superior intelligence and the remnants of an early education; for she was a white woman, brought in the bloom of girlhood from Canada, where she had been taken prisoner in the wars between the French and the Six Nations. Her father was a governor of Canada, and she had been destined to fill a high station in civilized life, but she soon learned to prefer savage rule to all the remembrances of a delicately nurtured childhood, and, wedded to a native chief, flung off the refinements of life, save where they added to her influence among the savages.
“Her name, like her history, was thrown back upon the past—the very blood in her veins seemed to have received a ferocious tint. She was, doubtless, from the first, a savage at heart. Because this woman was, like myself, cast out by her own free will from civilized life, I sought her in her wild home, and, under an escort from Sir William Johnson, claimed a place in her tribe. The lands around Seneca Lake were then in possession of the Shawnees. Queen Esther occupied a spacious lodge at the head of this lake and had put large tracts of land under cultivation around it.
“Around this dwelling she had gathered all the refinements of her previous life that could be wrested from rude nature or animal strength. Her lodge possessed many comforts that the frontier settlers might have envied. The lands were rich with corn and fruit. Her apple orchards blossomed and cast their fruit on the edge of the wilderness. The huts of her people were embowered with peach-trees, and purple plums dropped upon the forest sward at their doors. In times of peace Queen Esther was a provident and wise sovereign. In war—but I need not say how terrible she was in war. Beautiful as I have described it, was the country of the Shawnees when my escort drew up in front of Queen Esther’s lodge. She came forth to meet me, arrayed in her wild, queenly garb and treading the green turf like an empress. She was then more than sixty years of age, but her stately form bore no marks of time; there was not a thread of silver in her black hair, and her eyes were like those of an eagle—clear and piercing.
“She read Sir William’s letter, casting glances from that to my face, as if perusing the two with one thought; then, advancing to my horse, she lifted me to the ground and gave me her hand to kiss, as if I had been a child and she an emperor who had vouchsafed an act of gallantry. ‘It is well,’ she said. ‘You shall have a mat in my lodge. Gi-en-gwa-tah shall spread it with his own hands, for we of the white blood bring wise thoughts and sweet words to the tribe, and must not work like squaws. When women sit in council the braves spread their mats and spear salmon for them. This is my law.’