Constance had a tender conscience, quick to self-blame. She was unhappy if she could impute to herself a fault, ill at ease till she had done all that she could to repair wrong. Although her stepmother's dislike for her, still more her open expression of it, was cruelly unjust and prevented all possibility of love for her, still Constance deeply regretted having spoken to her with lack of respect.
But when she made humble apology for the fault and begged Mrs. Hopkins's pardon with sweet sincerity, she was received in a manner that turned contrition into bitterness.
Dame Eliza looked at her with a cold light in her steely blue eyes, and a scornful smile. Plainly she was too petty herself to understand generosity in others, and construed Constance's apology into a confession of fear of her.
"Poor work spreading bad butter over a burnt crust," she commented. "There's no love lost between us, Constantia Hopkins; maybe none ever found, nor ever will be. I don't want your fair words, nor need you hope your father will not one day see you, and that sullen brother of yours, as do I. So waste no breath trying to get around me. Damaris is fretting; look after her."
Poor Constance! She had been so honestly sorry for having been angry and having given vent to it, had gone to her stepmother with such sincerity, hoping against hope, for the unnumbered time, that she could make their relation pleasanter! It was not possible to help feeling a violent reaction from this reception, to keep her scorned sweetness from turning to bitterness in her heart.
She told the story to Giles, and it made him furiously angry.
"You young ninny to humble yourself to her," he cried, with flashing eyes. "Will you never learn to expect nothing but injustice from her? It isn't what we do, or say; it is jealousy. She will not let our father love us, she hates the children of our mother, and hates our mother's memory, that she was in every way Mistress Eliza's superior, as she guesses, knowing that she was better born, better bred, and surely better in character. I remember our mother, Con, if not clearly. I'm sorry you have not even so much recollection of her. You are like her, and may be thankful for it. I could trounce you for crawling to Mistress Hopkins! Learn your lesson for all time, and no more apologies! Con, I shall not stand it! No matter how it goes with this colony, I shall go back to England. I will not stay to be put upon, to see my father turned from me."
"Oh, Giles, that could never be!" cried Constance. "Father will never turn from us."
"I did not say fromus; I said fromme," retorted Giles. "You are different, a girl, and—and like Mother, and—several other reasons. But I often see that Father is not sure whether he shall approve me or not. It will not be so long till I am twenty-one, then I shall get out of reach of these things."
Constance's troubled face brightened. To her natural hopefulness Giles's twenty-first birthday was far enough away to allow a great deal of good to come before it.
"Oh, twenty-one, Giles! You'll be prospering and happy here before that," she cried.
"But I must tell no more of troubles with my stepmother to Giles," she added mentally. "It will never do to pile fuel on his smouldering fires!"
The next day when Constance was helping Mistress Hopkins with her mending, she noticed the oilskin-wrapped packet that her father had left with his wife for safe keeping, tossed carelessly upon the hammock which swung from the side of the berth which she and her stepmother shared, the bed devised by ingenuity for little Damaris.
"Is not that packet in Damaris's hammock Father's packet of valuable papers?" Constance asked. "Is there not a risk in letting them lie about, so highly as he prizes them?"
She made the suggestion timidly, for Dame Eliza did not take kindly to hints of this nature. To her surprise her stepmother received her remark not merely pleasantly, but almost eagerly, quick with self-reproach.
"Indeed thou art right, Constantia, and I am wrong to leave it for an instant outside the strong chest, where I shall put it under lock and key," she said, nevertheless not moving to rescue it. "I have carried it tied around my neck by a silken cord and hidden in my bosom till this hour past. I dropped it there when I was trying to mend Damaris's hammock. Thanks to you for reminding me of it. What can ail that hammock defies me! I have tried in all ways to strengthen it, but it sags. Some night the child will take a bad fall from it. Try you what you can make of it, Constantia."
"I am not skilful, Stepmother," smiled Constance. "Giles is just outside studying the chart of our voyage hither. Let me call him to repair the hammock. We would not have you fall at night and crack the pretty golden pate, would we, Damaris?" The child shook her "golden pate" hard.
"That you would not, Connie, for you are good, good to me!" she cried.
Mistress Hopkins looked on the little girl with somewhat of softening of her stern lips, yet she felt called upon to reprimand this lightness of speech.
"Not 'Connie,' Damaris, as thou hast been often enough told. We do not hold with the ungodly manner of nicknames. Thy sister is Constantia, and so must thou call her. And you must not put into the child's head notions of its being pretty, Constantia. Beauty is a snare of the devil, and vanity is his weapon to ensnare the soul. Do not let me hear you again speak to a child of mine of her pretty golden pate. As to the hammock if you choose to call your brother to repair it for his half-sister I have nothing against the plan."
Constance jumped up and ran out of the cabin.
"Giles, Giles, will you come to try what you can do with Damaris's sleeping hammock?" she called.
"What's wrong with it?" demanded Giles, rising reluctantly, but following Constance, nevertheless.
"I don't know, but Mistress Hopkins says she cannot repair it and that the child is like to fall with its breaking some night," said Constance, entering again the small, close cabin of the women. "Here is Giles, Mistress Hopkins; he will try what he can do," she added.
Giles examined the hammock in silence, bade Constance bring him cord, and at last let it swing back into place, and straightened himself. He had been bent over the canvas with it drawn forward against his breast.
"I see nothing the matter with the hammock except a looseness of its cords, and perhaps weakness of one where I put in the new one. You could have mended it, Con," he said, ungraciously, and sensitive Constance flushed at the implication that her stepmother had not required his help, for she never could endure anything like a disagreeable atmosphere around her.
"Giles says 'Con,'" observed Damaris, justifying herself for the use of nicknames.
"Giles does many things that we do not approve; let us hope he will not lead his young sister and brother into evil ways," returned her mother, sourly. "But thou shouldst thank him when he does thee a service, not to be deficient on thy side in virtue."
"You know Giles doesn't need thanks for what he does for small people, don't you, Hop-o-my-Thumb?" Giles said and departed, successful in both his aims, in pleasing the child by his name for her, and displeasing her mother.
Two hours later Constance was sitting rolled up in heavy woollens like a cocoon well forward of the main mast, in a sheltered nook, reading to Rose Standish, who was also wrapped to her chin, and who when she was in the open, seemed to find relief from the oppression that made breathing so hard a matter to her.
Mistress Hopkins came toward them in furious haste, her mouth open as if she were panting, one hand pressed against her breast.
"Constantia, confess, confess, and do not try to shield thy wicked brother!" she cried.
Constantia, confess—confess and do not try to shield thy wicked brother
"'Constantia, confess—confess and do not try to shield thy wicked brother'"
"Confess! My wicked brother? Do you mean the baby, for you cannot mean Giles?" Constance said, springing to her feet.
"That lamb of seven weeks! Indeed, you impudent girl, I mean no such thing, as well you know, but that dreadful, sin-enslaved, criminal, Gile——"
"Hush!" cried Constance, "I will not hear you!"
There was a fire in her eyes that made even Mistress Eliza halt in her speech.
"Giles Hopkins has stolen your father's packet, the packet of papers which you saw in the hammock and reminded me to put away," she said, more quietly. "I shall leave him to be dealt with by your father who must soon return. But you, you! Can you clear yourself? Did you help him steal it? Nay, did you call him in for this purpose, warning him that he should find the packet there, and to take it? Is this a plan between you? For ever have I said that there was that in you two that curdled my blood with fear for you of what you should become. Not like your godly father are you two. From elsewhere have you drawn the blood that poisons you. Confess and I will ask your father to spare you."
Constance stood with her thick wrappings falling from her as she threw up her hands in dumb appeal against this unbearable thing. She was white as the dead, but her blue eyes burned black in the whiteness, full of intense life.
"Mistress Hopkins, oh, Mistress Hopkins, consider!" begged Rose Standish, also rising in great distress. "Think what it is that you are saying, and to whom! You cannot knowingly accuse this dear girl of connivance in a theft! You cannot accuse Giles of committing it! Why, Captain Myles is fonder of the lad than of any other in our company! Giles is upright and true, he says, and fearless. Pray, pray, take back these fearful words! You do not mean them, and when you will long to disown them they will cling to you and not forsake you, as does our mad injustice, to our lasting sorrow. What can be more foreign to our calling than harsh judgments, and angry accusations?"
"I am not speaking rashly, Mistress Standish," insisted Dame Eliza.
"Not yet three hours gone Constantia saw lying in Damaris's hammock a valuable packet of papers, left me in trust by her father. I asked her to mend the hammock, which was in disorder, but she called her brother to do the simple task. No one else hath entered the cabin at my end of it since. The packet is gone. Would you have more proof? Could there be more proof, unless you saw the theft committed, which is manifestly impossible?"
"But why, good mistress, should the boy and girl steal these papers? What reason would there be for them to disturb their father's property?" asked Rose Standish.
"I have heard my uncle say, who is a barrister at home, that one must search for the motive of a crime if it is to be established." She glanced with a slight smile at Constance's stony face, who neither looked at her, nor smiled, but stood gazing in wide-eyed horror at her stepmother.
"Precisely!" triumphed Dame Eliza. "Two motives are clear, Mistress Standish, to those who are not too blinded by prejudice to see. Those Hopkins girl and boy hate me, fear and grudge my influence with their father. Would they not like to weaken it by the loss of papers entrusted to me, a loss that he would resent on his return? There is one motive. As to the other: you do not know, but I do, and so did they, that part of these papers related to an inheritance in England, from which they would want their half-brother and sister excluded. Needs it more?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Rose Standish, as Constance groaned. "To any one knowing Giles and Constance this is no more than if you said Fee, fi, fo, fum! They plotting to weaken you with their father! They stealing to keep the children from a share in their inheritance, so generous as they are, so good to the little ones! Fie, Mistress Hopkins! It is a grievous sin, you who are so strict in small matters, a grievous sin thus to judge another, still more those to whom you owe the obligation of one who has taken their dead mother's place."
Constance began to tremble, and to struggle to speak. What she would have said, or what would have come of it, cannot be known, for at that moment the Billington boys, John and Francis, came hurtling down upon them, shouting:
"The shallop, the shallop is back! It is almost upon us on the other side. Come see, come see! Dad is back, and all the rest, unless the savages have killed some of them," Francis added the final words in solo.
The present trouble must be laid aside for the great business in hand of welcome.
Poor Constance turned in a frozen way to follow Rose and her stepmother to the other side of the ship.
Her father—her dear, dear, longed-for father—was come back. He might be bringing them news of a favoured site where they would go to begin their new home.
At last they were to step upon land again, to live in some degree the life they knew of household task and tilling, walking the woods, drawing water, building fires—the life so long postponed, for which they all thirsted.
But if she and Giles were to meet their father accused of theft! If they should see in those grave, kind, wise eyes a shadow of a doubt of his eldest children! Constance felt that she dared not see him come if such a thing were so much as possible.
But when the shallop was made fast beside theMayflowerand Constance saw her father boarding the ship among the others of the returning expedition, and she met the glad light in his eyes resting upon her, all fear was swallowed up in immense relief and joy.
With a low cry she sprang to meet him and fell sobbing on his shoulder, forgetful of the stern on-lookers who would condemn such display of feeling.
"Oh, father, father, if you had never come back!" she murmured.
"But I have come, daughter!" Stephen Hopkins reminded her. "Surely you are not weeping that I have come! We have great things to tell you, attacks by savages, some hardships, but we have brought grain which we found hidden by the Indians, and we have found the right place to establish our dwelling."
Constance raised her head and dried her eyes, still shaken by sobs. Her father looked keenly at the pale, drawn face, and knew that something more than ordinary lay behind the overwhelming emotion with which she had received him.
"Poor child, poor motherless child!" he thought, and the pity of that moment went far in influencing his subsequent treatment of Constance when he learned what had ailed her on his arrival.
Now he patted her shoulder and turned toward the middle of the ship's forward deck where his comrades of the expedition were relating their experiences, and displaying their trophies.
Golden corn lay on the deck, spread upon a cloth, and the pilgrims who had remained with the ship were handling it as they listened to John Alden, who was made the narrator of this first report, having a ready tongue.
"We found a pond of fresh water," he was saying, "and not far from it cleared ground with the stubble of a gathered harvest upon it. Judge whether or not the sight was pleasant to us, as promising of fertile lands when the forests were hewn. And we came upon planks of wood that had lately been a house, and a kettle, and heaps of sand, with handmarks upon it, not long since made, where the sand had been piled and pressed down, into which, digging rapidly, we penetrated and found the corn you see here. The part of it we took, but the rest we once more covered and left it. And see ye, brethren, there have we the seed for our own next season's harvest, the which we were in such doubt of obtaining from home in time. It is a story for night, when we have leisure, to tell you of how we saw a few men and a dog, who ran from us, and we pursuing, hoping to speak to them, but they escaped us. And how later on, we saw savages cutting up great fish of tremendous size along the coast, and how we were attacked by another savage band one night. But all this we reserve for another telling. We came at last into a harbour and found it deep enough for theMayfloweron our sounding it. And landing we marched into the land and found fields, and brooks, and on the whole that it was a fit country for our beginning. For the rest it is as you shall decide in consultation, but of our party we are all in accord to urge you to accept this spot and hasten to take possession of it as the winter cometh on apace."
"Let us thank God for that He hath led us into a land of corn, and guided us for so many weary days, over so many dreary miles," said William Brewster, the elder of the pilgrims.
John Carver, who was chosen on theMayfloweras their governor, arose and out of a full heart thanked God for His mercies, as Elder Brewster had recommended.
TheMayflowerweighed anchor in the morning to carry her brave freight to their new home. The wind set hard against her, and it was the second day before she entered Plymouth harbour, as they resolved to name their new habitation, a name already bestowed by Captain Smith, and the name of their final port of embarkation in England.
No sign of life met them as the pilgrims disembarked. Silently, with full realization of what lay before them, and how fraught with significance this beginning was, the pilgrims passed from the ship that had so long been their home, and set foot—men, women, and children—upon the soil of America.
A deep murmur arose when the last person was landed, and it happened that Constance Hopkins was the last to step from the boat to the rock on which the landing was made, and to jump light-heartedly to the sand, amid the tall, dried weeds that waved on the shore.
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow," said Elder Brewster, solemnly. The pilgrim band of colonists sang the doxology with bowed heads.
Three days later the shores of the harbour echoed to the ring of axes, the sound of hammers, as the first house was begun, the community house, destined to shelter many families and to store their goods.
"Merry Christmas, Father!" said Constance, coming up to her father in the cold of the early bleak December morning.
"S-s-sh!" warned her father, finger upon lip. "Do you not know, my daughter, that the keeping of Christmas is abjured by us as savouring of popery, and that to wish one merry at yuletide would be reckoned as unrighteousness among us?"
"Ah, but Father, you do not think so! You do not go with all these opinions, and can it be wrong to be merry on the day that gladdened the world?" Constance pleaded.
"Not wrong, but praiseworthy, to be merry under our present condition, to my way of thinking," said Stephen Hopkins, glancing around at the drab emptiness of land and sky and harbour beyond. "Nay, child, I do not think it wrong to rejoice at Christmas, nor do I hold with the severity of most of our people, but because I believe that it will be good to begin anew in a land that is not oppressed, nor torn by king-made wars and sins, I have cast my lot, as has Myles Standish, who is of one mind with me, among this Plymouth band, and we must conform to custom. So wish me Merry Christmas, if you will, but let none hear you, and we will keep our heresies to ourselves."
"Yet the first house in the New World is begun to-day!" laughed Constance. "We are getting a Christmas gift."
"A happy portent to begin our common home on the day when the Prince of Peace came to dwell on earth! Let us hope it will bring us peace," said her father.
"Peace!" cried Constance, with a swift and terrified remembrance of the accusation which her stepmother had threatened bringing against herself and Giles.
The new year came in bringing with it a driving storm from the Atlantic. The hoary pines threw up their rugged branches as if appealing to the heavens for mercy on the women and little children without shelter on the desolate coast. But the gray heavens did not relent; they poured snow and sleet down upon the infant colony, coating the creaking pines with ice that bent them low, and checked their intercession.
As fast as willing hands could work, taking it in continuous shifts by night as well as day, the community house went up. But the storm was upon the colonists before the shelter was ready for them, and even when the roof covered them, the cold laughed it to scorn, entering to wreak its will upon them.
Sickness seized one after another of the pilgrim band, men and women alike, and the little children fought croup and pneumonia, nursed by women hardly more fit for the task than were the little victims.
Rose Standish, already weakened by the suffering of the voyage, was among the first to be prostrated. She coughed ceaselessly though each violent breath wracked her frail body with pain. A bright colour burned in her cheeks, her beautiful eyes were clear and dilated, she smiled hopefully when her companions in exile and suffering spoke to her, and assured them that she was "much, much better," speaking pantingly, by an effort.
The discouragement with which she had looked upon the coast when theMayflowerarrived, gave place to hope in her. She spoke confidently of "next spring," of the "house Captain Myles would build her," of all that she should do "when warm weather came."
Constance, to whom she most confided her plans, often turned away to hide her tears. She knew that Doctor Fuller and the more experienced women thought that for this English rose there would be no springtime upon earth.
Constance had other troubles to bear as well as the hardships and sorrows common to the sorely beset community. She seemed, to herself, hardly to be a young girl, so heavily weighted was she with the burden that she carried. She wondered to remember that if she had stayed in England she should have been laughing and singing like other girls of her age, skating now on the Sherbourne, if it were frozen over, as it well might be. Perhaps she might be dancing, if she were visiting her cousins in Warwickshire, her own birthplace, for the cousins were merry girls, and like all of Constance's mother's family, quite free from puritanical ideas, brought up in the English Church, so not debarred from the dance.
Constance had no heart to regret her loss of youthful happiness; she was so far aloof from it, so sad, that she could not rise to the level of feeling its charm. Dame Eliza Hopkins had carried out her threat, had accused Giles of the theft of his father's papers, and Constance of being party to his wrong-doing, if not actually its instigator.
It had only happened that morning; Constance heavily awaited developments. She jumped guiltily when she heard her father's voice speaking her name, and felt his hand upon her shoulder.
She faced him, white and shaken, to meet his troubled eyes intently fastened upon her.
"The storm is bad, Constance, but it is not warm within. Put on your coat and come with me. I must speak with you," he said.
In silence Constance obeyed him. Pulling over her head a hood that, like a deep cowl, was attached to her coat, she followed her father into the storm, and walked beside him toward the marshy shore whither, without speaking to her, he strode.
Arrived at the sedgy ocean line he halted, and turned upon her.
"Constance," he began, sternly, "my wife tells me that valuable papers which I entrusted to her keeping have disappeared. She tells me further that she had dropped them—carelessly, as I have told her—into the hammock in which your little sister slept and that you saw them there, commenting upon it; that you soon called Giles to set right some slight matter in the hammock; and that shortly after you and he had left her, she discovered her loss. What do you know of this? Tell me all that you know, and tell me the truth."
Constance's fear left her at this word. Throwing up her head she looked her father in the eyes, nearly on a level with her own as she stood upon a sandy hummock. "It needs not telling me to speak the truth, Father. I am your daughter and my mother's daughter; it runs not in my blood to lie," she said.
Stephen Hopkins touched her arm lightly, a look of relief upon his face.
"Thank you for that reminder, my girl," he said. "It is true, and Giles is of the same strain. Know you aught of this misfortune?"
"Nothing, Father," said Constance. "And because I know nothing whatever about it, in answering you I have told you all that I have to tell."
"And Giles——" began her father, but stopped.
"Nor Giles," Constance repeated, amending his beginning. "Giles is headstrong, Father, and I fear for him often, but you know that he is honourable, truth-telling. Would your sonstealfrom you?"
"But your stepmother says no one entered the cabin after you had left it before she discovered her loss," insisted Stephen Hopkins. "What am I to think? What do you think, Constance?"
"I think that there is an explanation we do not know. I think that my stepmother hates Giles and me, especially him, as he has the first claim to the inheritance that she would have for her own children. I think that she has seized this opportunity to poison you against us," said Constance, with spirited daring. "Oh, Father, dear, dear Father, do not let her do this thing!"
"Nay, child, you are unjust," said her father, gently. "I confess to Mistress Eliza's jealousy of you, and that there is not great love for you in her. But, Constance, do you love her, you or Giles? And that she is not so base as you suspect is shown by the fact that she has delayed until to-day to tell me of this loss, dreading, as she hath told me, to put you wrong in my eyes. Fie for shame, Constance, to suspect her of such outrageous wickedness, she who is, after all, a good woman, as she sees goodness."
"Father, if the packet were lost through her carelessness, would you not blame her? Is it not likely that she would shield herself at our cost, even if she would not be glad to lower us, as I am sure she would be?" persisted Constance.
"Well, well, this is idle talk!" Stephen Hopkins said, impatiently. "The truth must be sifted out, and suspicions are wrong, as well as useless. One word before I go to Giles. Upon your sacred honour, Constantia Hopkins, and by your mother's memory, can you assure me that you know absolutely nothing of the loss of this packet of papers?"
"Upon my honour and by my mother's memory, I swear that I do not know so much as that the packet is lost, except as Mistress Hopkins says that it is," said Constance. Then with a swift change of tone she begged:
"Oh, Father, Father, when you go to Giles, be careful, be kind, I pray you! Giles is unhappy. He is ill content under the injustice we both bear, but I with a girl's greater submission. He is ready to break all bounds and he will do so if he feels that you do not trust him, listen to his enemy's tales against him. Please, please, dear Father, be gentle with Giles. He loves you as well as I do, but where your distrust of me would kill me, because I love you, Giles's love for you will turn to bitterness, if you let him feel that you are half lost to him."
"Nonsense, Constance," said her father, though kindly, "Giles is a boy and must be dealt with firmly. It will never do to coddle him, to give him his head. You are a girl, sensitive and easily wounded. A boy is another matter. I will not have him setting up his will against mine, nor opposing discipline for his good. It is for him to clear himself of what looks ill, not resent our seeing the looks of it."
Constance almost wrung her hands.
"Oh, Father, Father, do not go to Giles in that way! Sorrow will come of it. Think how you would feel to be thus suspected! A boy is not less sensitive than a girl; I fear he is more sensitive in his honour than are we. Oh, I am but a girl, but I know that I am right about Giles. I think we are given to understand as no man can how to deal with a proud, sullen boy like Giles, because God means us to be the mothers of boys some day! Be kind to Giles, dear Father; let him see that you trust him, as indeed, indeed you may!"
"Let us go back out of the storm to such shelter as we have, Constance," said Stephen Hopkins, smiling with masculine toleration for a foolish girl. "I have accepted your solemn assurance that you are ignorant of this theft, if theft it be. Be satisfied that I have done this, and leave me to deal with my son as I see fit. I will not be unjust to him, but he must meet me respectfully, submissively, and answer to the evidence against him. I have not been pleased of late with Giles's ill-concealed resistance."
This time Constance did wring her hands, as she followed her father, close behind him. She attempted no further remonstrance, knowing that to do so would be not only to harm Giles's cause, but to arouse her father's quick anger against herself. But as she walked with bent head through the cutting, beating storm, she wondered why Giles should not be resistant to his life, and her heart ached with pitying apprehension for her brother.
All that long day of darkening storm and anxiety Constance did not see Giles. That signified nothing, however, for Giles was at work with the men making winter preparations which could not be deferred, albeit the winter was already upon them, while Constance was occupied with the nursing for which the daily increase of sickness made more hands required than were able to perform it.
Humility Cooper was dangerously ill, burning with fever, struggling for breath. Constance was fond of the little maid who seemed so childish beside her, and gladly volunteered to go again into the storm to fetch her the fresh water for which she implored.
At the well which had been dug, and over which a pump from the ship had been placed and made effective, Constance came upon Giles, marching up and down impatiently, and with him was John Billington, his chosen comrade, the most unruly of all the younger pilgrims.
"Well, at last, Con!" exclaimed Giles. "I've been here above an hour. I thought to meet you here. What has kept you so long?"
"Why, Giles, I could not know that you were awaiting me," said Constance, reasonably. "Oh, they are so ill, our poor friends yonder! I am sure many of them will go on a longer pilgrimage and never see this colony established."
"Lucky they!" said Giles, bitterly. "Why should they want to? Nobody wants to die, and of course I am sorry for them, but better be dead than alive here—if it is to be called alive!"
"Oh, dear Giles, do you hate it so?" sighed Constance. "Nothing is wrong?" she added, glancing at John Billington, longing to ask her question more directly, but not wishing to betray to him the trouble upon her mind.
"Never mind talking before John," said Giles, catching the glance. "He knows all about it; I have told him. Have you cleared yourself, Sis, or are you also under suspicion?"
"Oh, dear Giles," said Constance again. "You are not—Didn't Father believe?—Isn't it all right?" She groped for the least offensive form for her question.
"I don't know whether or not Father believed that I am a thief," burst out Giles, furiously. "Nor a whit do I care. I told him the word of a man of honour was enough, and I gave him mine that I knew nothing about his wife's lies. I told him it seemed to me clear enough that she had made away with the papers herself, to defraud us. And I told him I had no proof of my innocence to give him, but it was not necessary. I told him I wouldn't go into it further; that it had to end right there, that I was not called upon to accept, nor would I submit to such a rank insult from any man, and that his being my father made it worse, not better."
"Oh, Giles, what did he say? Oh, Giles, what a misfortune!" cried Constance, clasping her hands.
"What did he say?" echoed Giles. "What do you think would be said when two such tempers as my father's and mine clash? For, mark you, Con, Stephen Hopkins would not stoop to vindicate himself from the charge of stealing.Stealing, remember, not a crime worthy of a gentleman."
"Oh, Giles, what crime is worthy of a gentleman?" Constance grieved. "Is there any dignity in sin, and any justice in varnishing some sins with the gloss of custom? But indeed, indeed, it is cruelly hard on you, Giles dear. Tell me what happened."
"The only thing that could happen. My father forgets that I am not a child. He flew into that madness of anger that we know him capable of, railed at me for my impertinence, insisted on my proving myself innocent of this charge, and declared that until I did, with full apology for the way I had received him, I was no son of his. So—Good day, Mistress Constantia Hopkins, I hope that you are well? I once had a sister that was like you, but sister have I none now, since I am not the son of my reputed father," said Giles, with a sneer and a deep bow.
Constance was in despair. The bitter mockery in Giles's young face, the bleak unhappiness in his eyes stabbed her heart. She knew him too well to doubt that this mood was dangerous.
"My own dear brother!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. "Oh, don't steel yourself so bitterly! Father loves you so much that he is stern with you, but it will all come right; it must, once this hot anger that you both share is past. You are too alike, that is all! Beg his pardon, Giles, but repeat that your word is enough to prove you innocent of the accusation. Father will see that, and yield you that, when you have met him halfway by an apology for hard words."
"See here, Con, why should I do that?" demanded Giles. "Is there anything in this desolation that I should want to stay here? I've had enough of Puritans; and Eliza is one of the strongest of them. Except for your sake, little Sis, why should I stay? And I will one day return for you. No, no, Con; I will sail for England when the ship returns, and make my own fortune, somewhere, somehow."
"Dame Eliza is not what she is because she is a Puritan. She is what she is because she is Dame Eliza. Think of the others whom we all love and would fain be like," Constance reminded him. "We must all be true to the enterprise we have undertaken, and——"
"Look here, sweet Con," John Billington interrupted her. "There is nothing to hold Giles to this dreary enterprise, nor to hold me, either. I am not in like plight to him. If any one accused me, suspected me as your father has him, and still more my father did it, I'd let these east winds blow over the space I'd have filled in this settlement. I'm for adventure as it is, though my father cares little what Francis and I do, being a reckless, daring man who surely belongs not in this psalm-singing company. Giles and I will strike out into the wilderness and try our fortunes. We will try the savages. They can be no worse than white men, nor half as outrageous as your stepmother. Why, Con, how can you want your brother tamely to sit down under such an insult? No man should be called upon to prove himself honest! Giles must be off. Let your father find out for himself who is to blame for the loss of the papers, and repent too late for lending ear to his wife's story."
Constance stared for a moment at John, realizing how every word he said found a ready echo in Giles's burning heart, how potent would be this unruly boy's influence to draw her brother after him, now, when Giles was wounded in his two strongest feelings—his pride of honour, his love for his father—and she prayed in her heart for inspiration to deal wisely with this difficult situation.
Suddenly the inspiration came to her. She found it in John's last words.
"Nay, but Jack!" she cried, using Francis's name for his brother, disapproved by the elders who would have none of nicknames. "If needs be that Giles must leave this settlement, if he cannot be happy here, let him at least bide till he has cleared his name of a foul stain, for his honour's sake, for the sake of his dead mother, for my sake, who must abide here and cannot escape, being but a girl, young and helpless. Is it right that I should be pointed out till I am old as the sister of him who was accused of a great wrong and, cowardlike, ran away because he could not clear himself, nor meet the shame, and so admitted his guilt? No! Rather do you, John Billington, instead of urging him to run away, bend all your wit—of which you do not lack plenty!—to the ferreting out of this mystery. That would be the manly course, the kind course to me, and you have always called yourself my friend. Then prove it! Help my brother to clear himself and never say one more word to urge him away till he can go with a stainless name. Our father does not doubt Giles, of that I am certain. He is sore beset, and is a choleric man. What can any man do when his children are on the one hand, and his wife on the other? Be patient with our father, Giles, but in any case do not go away till this is cleared."
"She talks like a lawyer!" cried John Billington with his boisterous laugh "Like——what was that play I once saw before I got, or Father got into this serious business of being a Puritan? Wrote by a fellow called Shakespeare? Ah, I have it! Merchant of Venison! In that the girl turns lawyer and cozzens the Jew. Connie is another pleader like that one. Well, what say you, Giles, my friend? Strikes me she is right."
"It is not badly thought of, Constance," admitted Giles. "But can it be done? For if Mistress Hopkins has had a hand in spiriting away those papers for her own advantage and my undoing, then would it be hard to prove. What say you?"
"Oh, no, no, no!" cried Constance. "Truth is mighty, good is stronger than evil! Patience, Giles, patience for a while, and let us three bind ourselves to clear our good name. Will you, will you promise, my brother? And John?"
"Well, then, yes," said Giles, reluctantly; and Constance clasped her hands with a cry of joy. "For a time I will stay and see what can be done, but not for long. Mark you, Con, I do not promise long to abide in this unbearable life of mine."
"Sure will I promise, Connie," assented John. "Why should I go? I would not go without Giles, and it was not for my sake first we were going."
"Giles, dear Giles, thank you, thank you!" cried Constance. "I could not have borne it had you not yielded. Think of me thus left and be glad that you are willing to stand by your one own sister, Giles. And let us hope that in staying we shall come upon better days. Now I must take this ewer of water to poor Humility who is burned and miserable with thirst and pain. She will think I am never coming to relieve her! Oh, boys, it seems almost wicked to think of our good names, of any of our little trials, when half our company is so stricken!"
"You are a good girl, Connie," said John Billington, awkwardly helping Constance to assume her pitcher, his sympathy betrayed by his awkwardness. "I hope you are not chilled standing here so long with us."
"No, not I!" said Constance, bravely. "The New Year, and the New World are teaching me not to mind cold which must be long borne before the year grows old. They are teaching me much else, dear lads. So good-bye, and bless you!"
"'Twould have been downright contemptible to have deserted her," said Giles and John in the same breath, and they laughed as they watched her depart.
Constance turned away from the boys feeling that, till the trouble hanging over Giles was settled, waking or sleeping she could think of nothing else. When she reached the community house she forgot it, nor did it come to her as more than a deeper shadow on the universal darkness for weeks.
She found that during her brief absence Edward Tilley's wife had died; she had known that she was desperately ill, but the end had come suddenly. Edward Tilley himself was almost through with his struggle, and this would leave Humility, herself a very sick child, quite alone, for she had come in her cousins' care. Constance bent over her to give her the cooling water which she had fetched her.
"Elizabeth and I are alike now," whispered Humility, looking up at Constance with eyes dry of tears, but full of misery. "Cousin John Tilley was her father, and Cousin Edward and his wife but my guardians, yet they were all I had." Elizabeth Tilley had been orphaned two weeks before, and now John Tilley's brother, following him, would leave Humility Cooper, as she said, bereft as was Elizabeth.
"Not all you had, dear Humility," Constance whispered in her ear, afraid to speak aloud for there were in the room many sick whom they might disturb.
"My father will protect you, unless there is someone whom you would liefer have, and we will be sisters and meet the spring with hope and love for each other, together."
"They will send for me to come home to England, my other cousins, of that I am sure. Elizabeth has no one on her side to claim her. But England is far, far away, and I am more like to join my cousins, John and Edward Tilley and their kind, dear wives where they are now than to live to make that fearful voyage again," moaned Humility, turning away her head despairingly.
"Follow John and Edward Tilley! Yes, but not for many a day!" Constance reassured her, shaking up the girl's pillow, one deft arm beneath her head to raise it.
"Sleep, Humility dear, and do not think. Or rather think of how sweetly the wind will blow through the pines when the spring sunshine calls you out into it, and we go, you and I, to seek what new flowers we may find in the New World."
"No, no," Humility moved her head on the pillow in negation. "I will be good, Constance; I will not murmur. I will remember that I lie here in God's hand; but, oh Constance, I cannot think of pleasant things, I cannot hope. I will be patient, but I cannot hope. Dear, dear, sweet Constance, you are like my mother, and yet we are almost one age. What should we all do without you, Constance?"
Constance turned away to meet Doctor Fuller's grave gaze looking down upon her. "I echo Humility's question, Constance Hopkins: What should we all do without you? What a blessed thing has come to you thus to comfort and help these pilgrims, who are sore stricken! Come with me a moment; I have something to say to you."
Constance followed this beloved physician into the kitchen where her stepmother was busy preparing broth, herMayflowerbaby, Oceanus, tied in a chair on a pillow, Damaris sitting on the floor beside him in unnatural quiet.
Dame Eliza looked up as the doctor and Constance entered, but instantly dropped her eyes, a dull red mounting in her face.
She knew that the girl was ministering to the dying with skill and sympathy far beyond her years, and she remembered the patient sweetness with which Constance, during the voyage over, forgiving her injustice, had ministered to her when she was suffering—had tenderly cared for little Damaris.
Dame Eliza had the grace to feel a passing shame, though not enough to move her to repentance, to reparation.
"Constance," Doctor Fuller said, "I am going to lay upon you a charge too heavy for your youth, but unescapable. You know how many of us have been laid to rest out yonder, pilgrims indeed, their pilgrimage over. Many more are to follow them. Mistress Standish among the first, but there are many whose end I see at hand. I fear the spring will find us a small colony, but those who remain must make up in courage for those who have left them. I want you to undertake to be my right hand. Priscilla Mullins hath already lost her mother, and her father and her brother will not see the spring. Yet she keeps her steady heart. She will prepare me such remedies as I can command here. Truth to tell, the supply I brought with me is running low; I did not allow for the need of so many of one kind. Priscilla is reliable; steady in purpose, memory, and hand. She will see to the remedies. But you, brave Constance, will you be my medical student, visiting my patients, lingering to see that my orders are carried out, nursing, sustaining? In a word do what you have already done since we landed, but on a greater scale, as an established duty?"
"If I can," said Constance, simply.
"You can; there is no one else that I can count upon. The older men among us are dying, leaving the affairs of the colony to be carried on by the young ones. In like manner I must call upon so young a girl as you to be my assistant. The older women are doing, and must do, still more important work in preparing the nourishment on which these lives depend and which the young ones are not proficient to prepare."
Doctor Fuller looked smilingly toward Dame Eliza as he said this, as if he feared her taking offence at Constance's promotion, and sought to placate her.
Mistress Hopkins gave no sign of knowing that he had turned to her, but she said to Damaris, as if by chance: "This broth may do more than herb brews toward curing, though your mother is not a physician's aid," and Doctor Fuller knew that he had been right.
A week later, though Humility Cooper was recovering, many more had fallen ill, and several had died.
It was late in January; the winter was set in full of wrath against those who had dared array themselves to defy its power in the wilderness, but the sun shone brightly, though without warmth-giving mercy, upon Plymouth.
There was an armed truce between Giles and his father. The boy would not beg his father's pardon for having defied him. His love for his father had been of the nature of hero-worship, and now, turned to bitterness, it increased the strength of his pride, smarting under false accusation, to resist his father.
On the other hand Stephen Hopkins, high-tempered, strong of will, was angry and hurt that his son refused to justify himself, or to plead with him. So the elder and the younger, as Constance had said, too much alike, were at a deadlock of suffering and anger toward each other.
Stephen Hopkins was beginning his house on what he had named Leyden Street, in memory of the pilgrims' refuge in Holland, though only by the eyes of faith could a street be discerned to bear the name. Like all else in Plymouth colony, Leyden Street was rather a matter of prophecy than actuality.
Giles was helping to build the house. All day he worked in silence, bearing the cold without complaint, but in no wise evincing the slightest interest in what he did. At night, in spite of the stringent laws of the Puritan colony, Giles contrived often to slip away with John Billington into the woods. John Billington's father, who was as unruly as his boys, connived at these escapades. He was perpetually quarrelling with Myles Standish, whose duty it was to enforce the law, and who did that duty without relenting, although by all the colonists, except the Billingtons, he was loved as well as respected.
Early one morning Constance hurried out of the community house, tears running down her cheeks, to meet Captain Myles coming toward it.
"Why, pretty Constance, don't grieve, child!" said the Plymouth captain, heartily.
"Giles hath come to no harm, I warrant you, though he has spent the night again with that harum-scarum Jack Billington, and this time Francis Billington, too."
"Oh, Captain Standish, it is not Giles! I forgot Giles," gasped Constance.
"Rose?" exclaimed the captain, sharply.
Constance bent her head. "She is passing. I came to seek you," she said, and together she and the captain went to Rose's side.
They found Doctor Fuller there holding Rose's hand as she lay with closed eyes, breathing lightly. In his other hand he held his watch measuring the brief moments left, in which Rose Standish should be a part of time. Mary Brewster, the elder's wife, held up a warning finger not to disturb Rose, but Doctor Fuller looked quietly toward Captain Standish.
"It matters not now, Myles," he said. "You cannot harm her. There are but few moments left."
Myles Standish sprang forward, fell upon his knees, and raised Rose in his arms.
"Rose of the world, my English blossom, what have I done to bring thee here?" he sobbed, with a strong man's utter abandonment of grief, and with none of the Puritan habit of self-restraint.
"Wherever thou hadst gone, I would have chosen, my husband! I loved thee, Myles, I loved thee Myles!" she said, so clearly that everyone heard her sweet voice echo to the farthest corner of the room, and for the last time.
For with that supreme effort to comfort her husband, disarming his regret, Rose Standish died.
They bore Rose's body, so light that it was scarce a burden to the two men who carried it as in a litter, forth to the spot upon the hillside whither they had already made so many similar processions, which was fast becoming as thickly populated as was that portion of the colony occupied by the living.
But as the sun mounted higher, although the March winds cut on some days, then as now they do in March, yet, then as now, there were soft and dreamy days under the ascending sun's rays, made more effective by the moderating sea and flat sands.
The devastating diseases of winter began to abate; the pale, weak remnants of theMayflower'spassengers crept out to walk with a sort of wonder upon the earth which was new to them, and which they had so nearly quitted that nothing, even of those aspects of things that most recalled the home land, seemed to them familiar.
The men began to break the soil for farming, and to bring forth and discuss the grain which they had found hidden by the savages—most fortunately, for without it there would have been starvation to look forward to after all that they had endured, since no supplies from England had yet come after them.
There was talk of theMayflower'sreturn; she had lain all winter in Plymouth harbour because the Pilgrims had required her shelter and assistance. Soon she was to depart, a severance those ashore dreaded, albeit there was well-grounded lack of confidence in the honesty of her captain, Jones, whom the more outspoken among the colonists denounced openly as a rascal.
Little Damaris was fretful, as she so often was, one afternoon early in March; the child was not strong and consequently was peevish. Constance was trying to amuse her, sitting with the child, warmly wrapped from the keen wind, in the warmth of the sunshine behind the southern wall of the community house.
"Tell me a story, Constance," begged Damaris, though it was not "a story," but several that Constance had already told her. "Make a fairy story. I won't tell Mother you did. Fairy stories are not lies, no matter what they say, are they, Connie? I know they are not true and you tell me they are not true, so why are they lies? Why does Mother say they are lies? Are they bad, are they, Connie? Tell me one, anyway; I won't tell her."
"Ah, little Sister, I would rather not do things that we cannot tell your mother about," said Constance. "I do not think a fairy story is wrong, because we both know it is make-believe, that there are no fairies, but your mother thinks them wrong, and I do not want you to do what you will not tell her you do. Suppose you tell me a story, instead? That would be fairer; only think how many, many stories I have told you, and how long it is since you have told me the least little word of one!"
"Well," agreed Damaris, but without enthusiasm. "What shall I tell you about? Not a Bible one."
"No, perhaps not," Constance answered, looking lazily off to sea. Then, because she was looking seaward, she added:
"Shall it be one about a sailor? That ought to be an interesting story."
"A true sailor, or a made-up one?" asked Damaris, getting aroused to her task.
"Do you know one about a real sailor?" Constance somewhat sleepily inquired.
"Here is a true one," announced Damaris.
"Once upon a time there was a sailor, and he sailed on a ship named theMayflower. And he came in. And he said: How are you, little girl? And I said: I am pretty well, but my name is Damaris Hopkins. And he said: What a nice name. And I said: Yes, it is. And he said: Where is your folks? and I said: I don't know where my mother went out of the cabin just this minute. But my sister was around, and my brother Giles was here, fixing my hammock, 'cause it hung funny and let me roll over on myself and folded me hurt. And my other brother couldn't go nowheres 'tall, because he was born when we was sailing here, and he can't walk. And the sailor man said: Yes, there were two babies on the ship when we came that we didn't have when we started, and show me your hammock. And I did, and he said it was a nice ham——Constance, what's the matter? I felt you jump, and you look scared. Is it Indians? Connie, Connie, don't let 'em get me!"
"No, no, child, there aren't any Indians about," Constance tried to laugh. "Did I jump? Sometimes people do jump when they almost fall asleep, and I was just as sleepy as a fireside cat when you began to tell me the story. Now I am not one bit sleepy! That is the most interesting story I have heard almost—yes, I think quite—in all my life! And it is a true one?"
"Yes, every bit true," said Damaris, proudly.
"And the sailor went into the cabin, and saw your hammock, and said it was a nice one, did he? Well, so it is a nice one! Did your mother see the man?" asked Constance, trying to hide her impatience.
"No," Damaris shook her head, decidedly. "Mother was coming, but the man just put his hand in and set my hammock swinging. Then he went out, and Mother was stopping and she didn't see him. And neither did I, not any more, ever again."
"Did you tell your mother about this sailor?" Constance inquired.
"Oh, no," sighed Damaris. "I didn't tell her. She doesn't like stories so much as we do. I tell you all my stories, and you tell me all yours, don't we, Constance? I didn't tell Mother. She says: 'That's Hopkins to like stories, and music, and art.' What's art, Connie? And she says: 'You don't get those idle ways from my side, so don't let me hear any foolish talk, for you will be punished for idle talk.' What's that, Connie?"
"Oh, idle talk is—idle talk is hard to explain to you, little Damaris! It is talk that has nothing to it, unless it may have something harmful to it. You'll understand when you are old enough to make what you do really matter. But this has not been idle talk to-day! Far, far from idle talk was that fine story you told me! Suppose we keep that story all to ourselves, not tell it to anyone at all, will you please, my darling little sister? Then, perhaps, some day, I will ask you to tell it to Father! Would not that be a great day for Damaris? But only if you don't tell it to any one till then, not to your mother, not to any one!" Constance insisted, hoping to impress the child to the point of secrecy, yet not to let her feel how much Constance herself set upon this request.
"I won't! I won't tell it to any one; not to Mother, not to any one," Damaris repeated the form of her vow. Then she looked up into Constance's face with a puzzled frown.
"But you wouldn't tell a fairy story, because you said you didn't want things I couldn't tell mother! And now you say I mustn't tell her about my story!" she said.
Constance burst out laughing, and hugged Damaris to her, hiding in the child's hood a merrier face than she had worn for many, many a day.
"You have caught me, little Damaris!" she cried. "Caught me fairly! But that was afairystory, don't you see? This isn't, this is true. So this is not to be told, not now, do you see?"
Damaris said "yes," slowly, with the frown in her smooth little brow deepening. It was puzzling; she did not really see, but since Constance expected her to see she said "yes," and felt curiously bewildered. However, what Constance said was to her small half-sister not merely law, but gospel. Constance was always right, always the most lovable, the most delightful person whom Damaris knew.
"All right, Connie. I won't tell anyone my sailor-man story," she said at last, clearing up.
"Just now," Constance supplemented her. "Some day you shall tell it, Damaris! Some day I shall want you to tell it! And now, little Sister, will you go into the house and tell Oceanus to hurry up and grow big enough to run about, because the world, our new world, is getting to be a lovely place in the spring sunshine, and he must grow big enough to enjoy it as fast as he can? I must find Giles; I have something beautiful, beautiful to tell him!"
She kissed Damaris before setting her on her feet, and the child kissed her in return, clinging to her.
"You are so funny, Constance!" she said, in great satisfaction with her sister's drollery in a world that had been filled with gloom and illness for what seemed to so young a child, almost all her life.
"Ah, I want to be, Damaris! I want to be funny, and happy, and glad! Oh, I want to be!" cried Constance, and ran away at top speed with a rare relapse into her proper age and condition.
John Billington had been forced reluctantly to work on the houses erecting in the Plymouth plantation.
He was not lazy, but he was adventuresome, and steady employment held for him no attraction. Since Captain Standish and the others in authority would deal with him if he tried to shirk his share of daily work, John made it as bearable as possible by joining himself to Giles in the building of the Hopkins house. Constance knew that she should find the two boys building her future home, and thither she ran at her best speed, and Constance could run like a nymph.
"Oh, Giles!" she panted, coming up to the two amateur carpenters, and rejoicing that they were alone.
"Oh, Con!" Giles echoed, turning on his ladder to face her, half sitting on a rung. "What's forward? Hath the king sent messengers calling me home to be prime minister? Sorry to disappoint His Royal Highness, but I can't go. I'd liefer be a trapper!"
"And that's what your appointment is!" triumphed Constance. "You're to trap big game, no less than a human rascal! Oh, Giles and Jack, do hear what I've got to tell you!"
"But for us to hear, you must tell, Con!" John Billington reminded her. "I'll bet a golden doubloon you've got wind of the missing papers!"
"We don't bet, Jack, but if we did you'd win your wager," Constance laughed. "Damaris told me 'a true story,' and now I'm going to tell it to you. Fancy that little person having this story tucked away in her brain all these weary days!"
And Constance related Damaris's entertainment of her, to which John Billington listened with many running comments of tongue and whistled exclamations, but Giles in perfect silence, betraying no excitement.
"Here's a merry chance, Giles!" John cried as soon as Constance ended. "What with savages likely to visit us and robbers for us to hunt, why life in the New World may be bearable after all!"
Giles ignored his jubilant comment.
"I shall go out to theMayflowerand get the packet," he said. "It is too late to-day, but in the morning early I shall make it. I suppose you will go with me, Jack?"
"Safe to suppose it," said John. "I'd swim after you if you started without me."
"Won't you take Captain Standish? I mean won't you ask him to help you?" asked Constance, anxiously. "It is sufficient matter to engage him, and he is our protector in all dangers."
"We need no protection, little Sis," said Giles, loftily. "It hath been my experience that a just cause is sufficient. We have suspected the master of theMayflowerof trickery all along."
Constance could not forbear a smile at her brother's worldly-wise air of deep knowledge of mankind, but nevertheless she wished that "the right arm of the colony" might be with the boys to strike for them if need were.
It was with no misgiving as to their own ability, but with the highest glee, that Giles and John made their preparations to set forth just before dawn.
They kept their own counsel strictly and warned Constance not to talk.
There was not much to be done to make ready, merely to see that the small boat, built by the boys for their own use, was tight, and to tuck out of sight under her bow seat a heavy coat in case the east wind—which the pilgrims had soon learned was likely to come in upon them sharply on the warmest day—blew up chillingly.
John Billington owned, by his father's reckless indulgence, a pistol that was his chief treasure; a heavy, clumsy thing, difficult to hold true, liable to do the unexpected, the awkward progenitor of the pretty modern revolver, but a pistol for all its defects, and the apple of John's eye. This he had named Bouncing Bully, invariably spoke of it as "he", and felt toward it and treated it not merely as his arms, but as his companion in arms.
Bouncing Bully was to make the third member of the party; he accompanied John, hidden with difficulty because of his bulk, in the breast of his coat, when he crept out without disturbing his father and Francis, to join Giles at the spot on the shore where their flat-bottomed row boat was pulled up.
He found Giles awaiting him, watching the sands in a crude hour glass which he had himself constructed.
"I've been waiting an hour," Giles said as John came up. "I know you are not late, but all the same here I have stood while this glass ran out, with ten minutes more since I turned it again."
"Well, I'm here now; take hold and run her out," said John, seizing the boat's bow and bracing to shove her.
"Row out. I'll row back," commanded Giles as he and John swung over the side of the boat out of the waves into which they had waded.
They did not talk as they advanced upon theMayflowerwhich lay at anchor in the harbour. They had agreed upon boarding her with as little to announce their coming as possible. As it chanced, there being no need of guarding against surprise, there was no one on deck when the boys made their boat fast to the ship's cable, and clambered on deck—save one round-faced man who was swabbing the deck to the accompaniment of his droning a song, tuneless outside his own conception of it.
"Lord bless and save us but you dafted me, young masters!" this man exclaimed when Giles and John appeared; he leaned against the rail with the air of a fine lady, funny to see in one so stoutly stalwart.
"I didna know ye at sight; now I see 'tis Master Giles and Master John Billington, whose pranks was hard on us crossing."
"You are not the man we want," said Giles, haughtily, trusting to assurance to win his end. "Fetch me that man who goes in and about the cabin at times, the one that stands well with Jones, the ship's master."
This last was a gamble on chance, but Giles felt sure of his conclusions, that the captain was at the bottom of the loss of the papers, the actual thief his tool.
"Aye, I know un," said the man, nodding sagely, proud of his quickness. "'Tis George Heaton, I make no doubt. The captain gives him what is another, better man's due. Master Jones gives him his ear and his favour. 'Tis George, slick George, you want, of that I'm certain." He nodded many times as he ended.
"Likely thing," agreed Giles. "Fetch him."
The deck cleaner departed in a heavy fashion, and returned shortly in company with a wiry, slender young man, having a handsome face, a quick roving eye, crafty, but clever.
"Ah, George, do you remember me?" asked Giles. "Don't dare to offer me your hand, my man, for I'd not touch it."
"I may be serving as a sailor, but I'm as good a gentleman born as you," retorted Heaton, flushing angrily.
"Decently born you may be; of that I know nothing. Pity is it that you have gone so far from your birthday," said Giles. "But as good a gentleman as I am you are not, nor as anyone, as this honest fellow here. For blood or no blood, a thief is far from a gentleman."
George Heaton made a step forward with upraised fist, but Giles looked at him contemptuously, and did not fall back.
"No play acting here. Give me the papers you stole out of my stepmother's care, out of my little sister's sleeping hammock, weeks agone," said Giles, coolly. "Your game is up. For some reason the child did not tell us of your act till now; now she hath spoken. Fortunately the ship hath lingered for you to be dealt with before she took you back to England. Hand over the papers, Heaton, if you ever hope to be nearer England than the arm of the tree from which you shall hang on the New England coast, unless you restore your booty."
Heaton looked into Giles's angry eyes and quailed. The boy had grown up during the hard winter, and Heaton recognized his master; more than that, he had the cowardice that had made him the ready tool of Captain Jones—the cowardice of the man who lives by tricks, trusting them to carry him to success—who will not stand by his colours because he has no standard of loyalty.
"I haven't got your father's papers, Giles Hopkins," he growled, dropping his eyes.
"You could have said much that I would not have believed, but that I believe," said Giles. "Do you know what Master Jones did with them when you gave them over to him, you miserable cat's paw?"
"How about giving the cat to the cat's paw, Giles?" suggested John, grinning in huge enjoyment of George Heaton's instant, sailor's appreciation of his joke and the offices of "the cat" with which sailors were lashed in punishment.
"I hope it will not be necessary. If Captain Standish comes with a picked number of our men to get these papers, there will be worse beasts than the cat let loose on theMayflower. Lead me to the captain, Heaton, and remember it will go hard with you if you let him lead you into denial of the crime you committed for him," said Giles, with such a dignity as filled rollicking John, who wanted to turn the adventure into a frolic, with admiration for his comrade.
"Stand by you and Jones will deal with me. Stand by him and you threaten me with your men, led by that fighting Standish of yours. Between you where does George Heaton stand?" asked Heaton sullenly, turning, nevertheless, to do Giles's bidding.
"You should have thought of this before," said Giles, coolly. "There never yet was wisdom and safety in rascality."
Captain Jones, whose connection with the pilgrims was no more than that he had been hired by them to bring them to the New World, was a man whose honesty many of his passengers mistrusted, but against whom, as against the captain of theSpeedwellthat had turned back, there was no proof.
He was coming out of his cabin to his breakfast when Heaton brought the boys to him; he started visibly at the sight of Giles, but recovered himself instantly and greeted the lads affably.
"Good morning, my erstwhile passengers and new colonists," he said. "I have wondered that at least the younger members of your community did not visit the ship. Welcome!" He held out his hand, but neither Giles nor John seemed to see it.
"Master Jones," said Giles, "there is no use wasting time and phrases. This man, at your orders, stole out of the women's cabin on this ship the papers left by my father in his wife's care. He has given them up to you. The story has only now—yesterday—come to our knowledge. Give me those papers."
"What right have you to accuse me,me, the master of this ship?" demanded Captain Jones, blustering. "Have a care that I don't throw you overboard. Take your boat and be gone before harm comes to you!"
"You would throw more than us overboard if you dared to touch us," returned Giles. "Nor is it either of us to whom harm threatens. Come, Master Jones, those papers! My father, none of the colony, knows of your crime. What do you think will befall you when they do know it? Hand us the papers, not one lacking, and we will let you go back to England free and safe. Refuse——Well, it's for you to choose, but I'd not hesitate in your place." Giles shrugged his shoulders, half turning away, as if after all the result of his mission did not concern him.
John saw a telepathic message exchanged between the captain and his tool. The question wordlessly asked Heaton whether the theft of the papers, their possession by the captain, actually was known, and Heaton's eyes answering: "Yes!"
Captain Jones swallowed hard, as if he were swallowing a great dose, as he surely was. After a moment's thought he spoke:
"See here, Giles Hopkins, I always liked you, and now I father admire you for your courage in thus boarding my ship and bearding me. I admit that I hold the papers. But, as of course you can easily see, I am neither a thief nor a receiver of stolen goods. My reason for wanting those papers was no common one. I am willing to restore to you those which relate to your family inheritance, your father's personal papers, but those which relate to Plymouth colony I want. I can use them to my advantage in England. Take this division of the documents and go back with my congratulations on your conduct."
"I would liefer your blame than your praise, sir," said Giles, haughtily, in profound disgust with the man. "It needs no saying that my father would part with any private advantage sooner than with what had been entrusted to him. First and most I demand the Plymouth colony documents. Get the papers, not one lacking, and let me go ashore. The wide harbour's winds are not strong enough for me to breathe on your ship. It sickens me."
Captain Jones gave the boy a malevolent look.
"A virtue of necessity," he muttered, turning to go.