"Do you know aught of your brother, Constance?" asked Stephen Hopkins when he appeared in the great kitchen and common room of his home early the following morning.
"He hath been away from home all night," Dame Eliza answered for Constance, her lips pulled down grimly.
"Which I know quite well, wife," said her husband. "Constance, did Giles speak to you of whither he was going?"
Constance looked up, meeting her father's troubled eyes, her own cloudless.
"No, Father, but he must be with the other lads. Perhaps they are serving up some merry trick for the wedding. Nothing can have befallen him. Giles was the happiest lad yesterday, Father dear! I must hasten through the breakfast-getting!"
Constance fluttered away in a visible state of pleasant excitement. Her father watched her without speaking, his eyes still gloomy; he knew that Constance lacked knowledge of his reason for being anxious over Giles's absence.
"And why should you hasten the getting of breakfast, Constantia Hopkins?" demanded Dame Eliza. "It is to be no earlier than common. If you are thinking to see Priscilla Mullins made the wife of John Alden, it will not be till nine of the clock, and that is nearly three hours distant."
"Ah, but I am going to dress the bride!" triumphed Constance. "I'm going to dress her from top to toe, and coil her wealth of glossy hair, to show best its masses! And to crown her dear pretty face with it brought around her brow, as only I can bend it, so Pris declares! My dear, winsome Pris!"
"Will you let be such vanity and catering to sinful worldliness, Stephen Hopkins?" demanded that unfortunate man's wife, with asperity. "Why will you allow your daughter to divert Priscilla Mullins from the awfulness of the vows she will utter, filling her mind with thoughts that ill become a Puritan bride, and one to be a Puritan wife? I will say for your wife, sir, that she did not come to vow herself to you in such wise. And when Constantia herself becomes a matron of this plantation she will not deport herself becomingly if she spend her maidenhood fostering vanity in others. But there is no folly in which you will not uphold her! I pray that I may live to keep Damaris to the narrow path."
"Aye, and my sweet Con hath lost Her mother!" burst out Stephen Hopkins, already too disturbed in mind to bear his wife's nagging.
His allusion to Constance's mother, of whose memory his wife was vindictively jealous, would have brought forth a storm, but that Constance flew to her father, caught him by the arm, and drew him swiftly out of the door, saying:
"Nay, nay, my dear one; what is the use? Let us be happy on Pris's wedding day. I feel as though if we were happy it would somehow bring good to her. Don't mind Mistress Eliza; let her rail. If it were not about this, it would be something else. Come down the grass a way, my father, and see how the sunshine sparkles on the sea. The day is smiling on Pris, at least, and is decked for her by God, so why should my stepmother mind that I shall make the girl herself as fair as I know how?"
"You are a dear lass, Con, child, and I swear I don't know how I should bear my days without you," said Stephen Hopkins, something suspiciously like a quaver in his voice.
He did not return to the house till Con had prepared the breakfast. Hastily she cleared it away, her stepmother purposely delaying the meal as long as possible. But Dame Eliza's utmost contrariness could not hold back Constance's swift work long enough to make the hour very late when it was done, the room set in order, and Constance herself, unadorned, in her plain Sunday garb, hastening over the young grass to where Priscilla awaited her.
No one else had been allowed to help Constance in her loving labour. Beginning with Priscilla's sturdy shoes—there were no bridal slippers in Plymouth!—Constance, on her knees, laced Pris into the gear in which she would walk to meet John Alden, and followed this up, garment by garment, which she and Priscilla had sewn in their brief spare moments, until she reached the masses of shining brown hair, which was Priscilla's glory and Constance's affectionate pride.
Brushing, and braiding, and coiling skilfully, Constance wound the fine, yet heavy locks around Priscilla's head.
Then with deft fingers she pulled, and patted and fastened into curves above her brow sundry strands which she had left free for that purpose, and fell back to admire her results.
"Well, my Prissy!" Constance cried, rapturously clapping her hands. "Wait till you are dressed, and I let you see this in the glass yonder. No, not now! Only when the bridal gown is donned! My word, Priscilla Mullins, but John Alden will think that he never saw, nor loved you until this day! Which is as we would wish him to feel. They may forbid us curling and waving our locks in this plantation, but no one ever yet, as I truly believe, could make laws to keep girls from increasing their charms! Your hair brought down and shaken loose thus around your face, my Pris, is far, far more lovely, and adorns you better than any curling tongs could do it. Because, after all, nature fits faces and hair together, and my waving hair would not be half so becoming to you as your own straight hair, thus crowning your brow. Constance Hopkins, my girl, I am proud of your skill as lady's maid!" And Constance kissed her own hand by way of her reward, as she went to the corner and gingerly lifted the white gown that waited there for her handling.
It was a soft, fragile thing, made of white stuff from the East, embroidered all over with sprigs of small flowers. It had been Constance's mother's, and had come from England at the bottom of her own chest, safe hidden, together with other beautiful fabrics that had been Constance's mother's, from the condemnatory eyes of Stephen Hopkins's second wife.
"It troubles me to wear this flimsy loveliness, Constance," said Priscilla, as the gown drifted down over her shoulders. "And to think it was thy mother's."
"It will not harm it to lie over your true heart to-day, dearest Pris, when you vow to love John forever. It seems to me as though lifeless things drew something of value to themselves from contact with goodness and love. Pris, it is really most exquisite! And that deep ruffle that I sewed around it at the bottom makes it exactly long enough for you, yet it leaves it still right for me to wear, should I ever want to, only by ripping it off again! Oh, Priscilla, dear, you are lovely enough, and this embroidery is fine enough, for you to be a London bride!"
Once more Constance fell back to admire at the same time Priscilla and her achievements.
"I think, perhaps, it may be wrong, as they tell us it is, to care too much for outward adornment, Con dear. Not but that I like it, and love you for being so unselfish, so generous to me," said Priscilla, with her sweet gravity of manner.
"Constance, if only my mother and father, and Joseph—but of course my parents I mourn more than my brother—were here to bless me to-day!"
"Try to feel that they are here, Prissy," said Constance. "There be Christians in plenty who would tell you that they pray for you still."
"Oh, but that is superstition!" protested Priscilla, shocked.
Constance set her face into a sort of laughing and sweet contrariness.
"There be Christians in plenty who believe it," she repeated. "And it seems a comforting and innocent enough thing to me. Art ready now, Priscilla? But before you go, kiss me here the kind of good-bye that we cannot take in public; my good-bye to dear Priscilla Mullins; your good-bye to Con, with whom, though dear friends we remain for aye, please God, you never again will be just the same close gossip that we have been as maids together, on ship-board and land, through sore grief and hardships, yet with abounding laughter when we had half a chance to smile."
"Why, Con, don't make me cry!" begged Priscilla, holding Constance tight, her eyes filling with tears. "You speak sadly, and like one years older than yourself, who had learned the changes of our mortal life. I'll not love you less that I am married."
"Yes, you will, Pris! Or, if not less, at least differently. For maids are one in simple interests, quick to share tears and laughter, while the young matron is occupied with graver matters, and there is not oneness between them. It is right so, but——Well, then, kiss me good-bye, Pris, my comrade, and bid Mistress John Alden, when you know her, love me well for your sweet sake," insisted Constance, not far from tears herself.
Quietly the two girls stole out of the bedroom, into the common room of the new house which Doctor Fuller had built for the reception of his wife, whose coming from England he eagerly awaited. The widow White and Priscilla had been lodged there, helping the doctor to get it in order.
"You look well, Priscilla," said Mrs. White. "Say what they will, there is something in the notion of a young maiden going in white to her marriage. Your friends are waiting you outside. I wish you well, my daughter, and may you be blessed in all your undertakings."
Priscilla went to the door and Constance opened it for her, stepping back to let the bride precede her. Beyond it were waiting the young girls of the settlement; Humility Cooper and her cousin, Elizabeth Tilley, caught Priscilla by the hands.
"How fair you are, dear!" cried Humility. "The children begged to be allowed to come to your wedding, and they are all waiting at Mr. Winslow's, for you were always their great friend, and there is scarce a limit to their love for John Alden."
"Surely let the children come!" said Priscilla. "They are first of all of us, and will win blessings for John Alden and me."
The girls fell into line ahead of her, and Priscilla walked down Leyden Street, the short distance that lay between the doctor's house and Edward Winslow's, her head bent, her eyes upon the ground, the colour faded from her fresh-tinted face. At the magistrate's house the elders of the little community were gathered, waiting. John Alden came out and met his bride on the narrow, sanded walk, and led her soberly into the house and up to Edward Winslow, who awaited them in his plain, close-buttoned coat, with its broad collar and cuffs of white linen newly and stiffly starched and ironed.
It was a brief ceremony, divested of all but the necessary questions and replies, yet to all present it was not lacking in impressiveness, for the memory of recent suffering was vivid in every mind; the longing for the many who were dead was poignant, and the consciousness of the uncertainty of the future of the young people, who were thus beginning their life together, was acute, though no one would have allowed its expression, lest it imply a lack of faith.
When Mr. Winslow had pronounced John and Priscilla man and wife, Elder William Brewster arose and, with extended hands, called down upon their heads the blessing of the God of Israel, and prayed for their welfare in this world, their reward in the world to come.
Without any of the merriment which accompanied congratulations and salutations at a marriage in England, these serious men and women came up in turn and gravely kissed the bride upon her cheek, and shook John Alden's hand. Yet each one was fond of Priscilla and had grieved with her on her father's, mother's, and brother's deaths, and each one honoured and truly was attached to John Alden.
But even in Plymouth colony youth had to be more or less youthful.
"Come, now; we're taking you home!" cried Francis Billington. "Fall in, girls and boys, big and little, grown folks as well, if only you will, and let us see our bride and her man started in their new home! And who remembers a rousing chorus?"
John Alden had been building his house with the help of the older boys; to it now he was taking Priscilla on her wedding journey, made on her own feet, a distance of a few hundred yards.
"No rousing choruses here, sir," said Edward Winslow, sternly. "If you will escort our friends to their home—and to that there can be no objection—let it be to the sound of godly psalms, not to profane songs."
"You offer us youngsters little inducement to marry when our time comes," muttered Francis, but he took good care that Mr. Winslow should not hear him, having no desire to run counter at that moment to Mr. Winslow's will, knowing that he and Jack were already in danger of being dealt with by the authorities. And where was Jack? He had not seen his brother since the previous day.
Boys and young men in advance, girls and the younger women following, the bridal pair bringing up the rear, the little procession went up Leyden Street and drew up at the door of the exceedingly small house which John Alden had made for his wife. Francis, who had constituted himself master of ceremonies, made the escort divide into two lines and, between them, John and Priscilla walked into their house. And with that the wedding was over.
For an instant the young people held their places, staring across the space that separated them, with the blank feeling that always follows after the end of an event long anticipated.
Then Constance turned with a sigh, looking about her, wondering if she really were to resume her work-a-day tasks, first of all get dinner.
She met her father's intent gaze and his look startled her. He beckoned her, and she stepped back out of the line and joined him.
"Giles, Constance; where is he?" demanded Stephen Hopkins.
"Father, I don't know! Isn't he here?" she cried.
"He is not here, nor is John Billington," said her father. "No one has seen either of them since last night. Is it likely that they would absent themselves willingly from this wedding; Giles, who is so fond of John Alden; John Billington, who is so fond of anything whatever that breaks the monotony of the days?"
Constance shook her head. "No, Father," she whispered.
"No. And you have no clue to this disappearance, Constance?" her father insisted.
"Father, Father, no; no, indeed!" protested Constance. "I did not so much as miss the boys from among us. But what could have befallen them? It can't be that they have come to harm?"
"Constance," said her father with a visible effort, "Giles was deeply angry with me yesterday——"
"Father, dear Father, you are quite wrong!" Constance interrupted him. "There was no mistaking how delighted Giles was with your making the treaty. Indeed I saw in him all the old-time love and pride in you that we used to make a jest—but how we liked it!—in the dear days across the water, when we were children."
Stephen Hopkins let her have her say. Then he shook his head.
"It may all be as you say, Constance," he said, sadly. "I also felt in Giles, saw in his face, the affection I have missed of late. But when the Billingtons came making that disturbance I went out—angry, Con; I admit it—and accused Giles of abetting them in what might have caused us serious trouble. And he, in turn, was furiously angry with me. He did not reply to my accusation, but spoke impertinently to me, and went away. I have not seen him since."
"Oh, Father, Father!" gasped Constance, her lips trembling, her face pale.
"I know, my daughter," said Stephen Hopkins, almost humbly. "But it was an outrageous thing to risk offending our new allies, and inviting the death of us all. And Giles did not deny having a hand in it, remember. But I confess that I should have first asked him whether he had, or not."
"Poor Father," said Constance, gently. "It is hard enough to be anxious about your boy without being afraid that you wronged him. How I wish that Giles would not always stand upon his dignity, and scorn speech! How I wish, how I pray, that you may come to understand each other, to trust each other, and be as we were when you trotted Giles and me upon your knees, and I sometimes feared that you liked me less than you did your handsome boy, who was so like you."
"Whoisso like me," her father corrected her. "You were right, Con, when you said that Giles and I were too alike to get on well together; the same quick temper, rash action, swift conclusions."
"The same warm heart, high honour, complete loyalty," Constance amended, swiftly.
"Father, if you could but once and for ever grasp that! Giles is you again in your best traits. He can be the reliance that you are, but if he turns wrong——"
She paused and her father groaned.
"Ah, Constance, you are partial to me, yet you stab me. If I have turned him wrong, is what you would say! How womanly you are grown, my daughter, and how like your dead mother! But, Con, this is no time to stand discussing traits, not even to adjust the blame of this wretched business. How shall I find the boy?"
"Why, for that, Father, you know far better than I," said Constance, gently, taking her father's arm. "Let us go home, dear man. I should think a party to scour the woods beyond us? And Squanto would be our best help, he and Captain Standish, wouldn't they? But I am sure the boys will be in for supper. You know they are sharp young wolves, with a scent like the whole pack in one for supper! Giles is safe! And as to Jack Billington, tell me truly, Father, can you imagine anything able to harm him?" She laughed with an excellent reproduction of her own mirth when she possessed it, but it was far from hers now.
Constance shared to the uttermost her father's apprehension. If her poor, hasty father had again accused Giles of that which he had not done, and this when he was aglow with a renewal of the old confidence between them, then it well might be that Giles, equally hot-headed, had done some desperate thing in his first sore rage. The fact that he had been absent from the wedding of John Alden, whom he cared for deeply; that he had missed his supper and breakfast; and that John Billington, reckless, adventurous Jack, was missing at the same time, left Constance little ground for hope that nothing was wrong.
But nothing of this did she allow to escape in her manner of speech.
She gaily told her father all about her morning: how cleverly she had lengthened Priscilla's gown, her own mother's gown, lent Pris; how becomingly she had arranged Pris's pretty hair; all the small feminine details which a man, especially a brave, manly man of Stephen Hopkins's kind, is supposed to scorn, but which Constance was instinctively sympathetic enough to know rested and amused her father; soothed him with its pretty femininity; relaxed him as proving that in a world of such pretty trifles tragedy could not exist.
"My stepmother is not come back yet," Constance said, with a swift glance around, as she entered. "Father, when she comes in with the baby you must test his newly discovered powers; Oceanus is beginning to stand alone! Now I must go doff my Sunday best—Father, I never can learn to call it the Sabbath; please forgive me!—and put on my busy-maid clothes! What a brief time a marriage takes! I mean in the making!" She laughed and ran lightly away, up the steep stairs that wound in threatening semi-spiral, up under the steep lean-to roof.
"Bless my sunshine!" said Stephen Hopkins, fervently, as he watched her skirt whisk around the door at the stairway foot.
But upstairs, in the small room that she and Damaris shared, his "sunshine" was blurred by a swift rain of tears.
A gray evening of mist drifting in from the sea settled down upon Plymouth. It emphasized the silence and seemed to widen and deepen the vacuum created by the absence of Giles and John. For the supper hour, at which they were enthusiastically prompt to return to give their hearty appetites their due, came and passed without bringing back the boys.
Stephen Hopkins pushed away his plate with its generous burden untouched, threw on his wide-brimmed hat, and strode out of the house without a word. Constance knew that he had gone to ask help from Myles Standish, to organize a search, and go out to find the lost.
Damaris crept into her sister's lap and sat with her thin little hands in Constance's, mutely looking up into the white, sorrowing face above her.
Even Dame Eliza was reluctantly moved to something like pity for the girl's silent misery, and expressed it in her way.
"At least," she said, suddenly, out of the deep silence enveloping them, "here is one thing gone wrong without my sending. No one can say that I had a finger raised to push your brother out of the right course this time!"
Constance tried to reply, but failed. Not directly had her stepmother had a share in this misfortune, but how great a share had she in the estrangement between father and son that was at the bottom of the present misunderstanding? Constance would not remind her stepmother of this, and no other reply was possible to her in her intense anxiety.
The night wore away, the dawn came, lifting the fog as the sun shot up out of the sea. Stephen Hopkins came out of the principal bedroom on the ground floor of the house showing in his haggard face that he had not slept. Constance came slowly down the winding stairs, pale, with dark circles under her eyes which looked as though they had withdrawn from her face, retreated into the mind which dwelt on Giles since they could no longer see him, and the brain alone could fulfil their office.
"There's no sort of use in getting out mourning till you're sure of having a corpse, so I say," said Mistress Eliza, impatiently. "Giles is certain to take care of himself. I've no manner of patience with people who borrow what they can't return, and how would you return trouble, borrowed from nothing and nobody?"
Nevertheless she helped both Constance and her father to a generous bowlful of porridge, and set it before them with a snapped-out: "Eat that!" which Constance was grateful to feel concealed uneasiness on her stepmother's own part.
Another day, and still another, wore themselves away. Constance fought to keep her mind occupied with all manner of tasks, hoping to tire herself till she must sleep at night, but nevertheless slept only brokenly, lying staring at the three stars which she could see through the tiny oblong window under the eaves, or into the blackness of the slanting roof, listening to Damaris's quiet breathing, and thinking that childhood was not more blessed in being happy than in its ability to forget.
Stephen Hopkins had gone with Captain Standish, Francis Billington, and Squanto to scour the woods for miles, although labouring hands could ill be spared at that season. They returned at the close of their fourth day of absence, and no one ventured to question them; that they had not so much as a clue to the lost lads was clearly written on their faces.
Constance drew her stool close to her father after supper was over, and wound her arms about him and laid her head on his breast, unrebuked by her stepmother.
"Read the fifty-first psalm, my daughter; it was the penitential psalm in England in my beginnings," Stephen Hopkins said, and Constance read it in a low voice, which she dared not raise, lest it break.
An hour later, an hour which had been passed in silence, broken only by Dame Eliza's taking Damaris up to bed, the sound of voices was heard coming down the quiet street. Stephen Hopkins's body tautened as he sat erect, and Constance sprang to her feet. No one ever went outside his house in the Plymouth plantation after the hour for family prayers, which was identical in every house. But someone was abroad now; it was not possible——?
"It is Squanto," said Stephen Hopkins, catching the Indian's syllables of broken English.
"And Francis Billington, and another Indian, talking in his own tongue!" added Constance, shaking with excitement.
The door opened; Stephen Hopkins did not move to open it. There entered the three whom those within the house had recognized; Francis's face was crimson, his eyes flashing.
"You come to tell me that my son is dead?" said Stephen Hopkins, raising his hand as if to ward off a blow.
"No, we don't! Don't look like that, Mr. Hopkins, Con!" cried Francis. "Jack and Giles are all right——"
"Massasoit send him," said Squanto, interrupting the boy, as if he wanted to save Stephen Hopkins from betraying the feeling that an Indian would scorn to betray, for Mr. Hopkins had closed his eyes and swayed slightly as he heard Francis's high boyish voice utter the words he had so hungered to hear.
Squanto pointed to the Indian beside him as he spoke. "Massasoit sent him. Massasoit know where boys go. Nawsett. It not far; Massasoit more far. Nawsett Indians fight you when you come, not yet got Plymouth found. Nawsett. Both boys, both two." Squanto touched two fingers of his left hand. "Not dead, not sick, not hurt. You send, Massasoit say. Get boys you send Nawsett. Squanto go show Nawsett." Squanto looked proudly at his hearers, rejoicing in his good news.
"Praise God from Whom all blessings flow," said Stephen Hopkins, bowing his head, and Constance burst into tears and seized him around the neck, while Francis drew his sleeves across his eyes, muttering something about: "Rather old Jack was all right."
Dame Eliza came down the stairs, having heard voices, and recognized them as Indian, but had been unable to catch what was said. She stopped as she saw the scene before her, and her face crimsoned. She at once knew the purport, though not the details, of the message delivered through Squanto by Massasoit's messenger, and that the lost lads were safe. With a quick revulsion from the anxiety that she had felt, she instantly lost her temper.
"Stephen Hopkins, what is this unseemingly exhibition? Will you allow your daughter to behave in this manner before a youth, and two savage men? Shame on you! Stand up, Constantia, and let your father alone. So Giles is safe, I suppose? Well, did I not tell you so? Bad sixpences are hard to lose; your son will give you plenty of the scant comfort you've already had from him. No fear of him not coming back to plague me, and to disgrace you," she scolded.
"Oh, Stepmother, when we are so glad and thankful!" sighed Constance, lifting her tired, tear-worn face, over which the light of her gladness and gratitude was beginning to shine.
There was nothing to be done that night but to try to adjust to the relief that had come, and to wait impatiently for morning to arrange to bring home the wanderers.
Stephen Hopkins was ahead of the sun in beginning the next day, and as soon as he could decently do so, he set out to see Governor Bradford to ask his help.
"I rejoice with you, my friend and brother," said dignified William Bradford, when he had heard Mr. Hopkins's story. "Like the woman in the Gospel you call in your neighbours to rejoice with you that the lost is found. I will at once send the shallop to sail down the coast and bring off our thorn-in-the-flesh, young John Billington, and your somewhat unruly lad with him. As your brother in our great enterprise and your true well-wisher, let me advise that you deal sternly with Giles when he is returned to us. He hath done exceeding wrong thus to afflict you, and with you, all of our community to a lesser extent, by anxiety over his safety. Furthermore, it is a time in which we need all our workers; he hath not only deprived us of his own services, but hath demanded the valuable hours of others in striving to rescue him. I doubt not that you will do your duty as a father, but let me remind you that your duty is not leniency, but sternness to the lad who is too nearly man to fail us all as he hath done."
"It is true, William Bradford, and I will do my best though it hath afflicted me that I may have driven the lad from me by blaming him when it was not his desert, and that because of this he went away," said Mr. Hopkins.
"If this were true, Stephen, yet would it not excuse Giles," said William Bradford, whose one child, a boy, had been left behind in England to follow his father to the New World later, and who was not versed in ways of fatherhood to highstrung youths of Giles's age. "It becometh not a son to resent his father's chastisements, which, properly borne, may result in benefit, whether or not their immediate occasion was a matter of justice or error. So deal with your son sternly, I warn you, nor let your natural pleasure in receiving him safe back again relax you toward him."
The shallop was launched with sufficient men to navigate her, Squanto accompanying them to guide them southward to the tribe that held Giles and John, in a sense, their captives.
On the third day after her departure the shallop came again in sight, nosing her way slowly up the harbour against a wind dead ahead and blowing strong. There was time, and to spare for any amount of preparation, and yet to get down on the sands to see the shallop come to anchor, and be ready to welcome those whom she bore. Nevertheless, Constance hurried her simple toilet till she was breathless, snarling the comb in her hair; tying her shoe laces into knots which her nervousness could hardly disentangle; chafing her delicate skin with the vigorous strokes she gave her face; stooping frequently to peer out of her bedroom window to see if, by an impossible mischance, the shallop had come up before she was dressed, although the one glimpse that she had managed to get of the small craft had shown that the shallop was an hour away down the harbour.
At last her flustered mishaps were over, and Constance was neat and trim, ready to go down to the beach.
"Damaris, little sister, come up and let me see that none of the dinner treacle is on the outside of your small mouth," Constance called gaily down the stairs.
Damaris appeared, came half way, and stopped forlornly.
"Mother says she will take me, Constance," the child said, mournfully. "She says that you will greet Giles with warm welcome, and that I must not help in it, for that Giles is wicked, and must be frowned upon. Is Giles wicked, Constance? He is good to me; I love him, not so much as you, but I do love Giles. Must I not be glad when he comes, Sister?"
"Oh, Damaris, darling, your kind little heart tells you that you would want a welcome yourself if you were returning after an absence! And we know that the father of that bad son in the Gospel went out to meet him, and fell on his neck! But I must not teach you against your mother's teaching! You know, little lass, whether or not I think our big brother bad!" said poor Constance. "Where is your mother?"
"She hath gone to fetch Oceanus back; he crawled out of the open door and went as fast as a spider down the street, crawling, Constance! He looked so funny!" and Damaris laughed.
Constance laughed too, and cried gaily, with one of her sudden changes from sober to gay: "And so Oceanus is beginning to run off, too! What a time we shall have, Damaris, with our big brother marching away, and our baby brother crawling away, both of them caring not a button whether we are frightened about them, or not!"
She flitted down the stairs with her lightness of movement that gave her the effect of a half-flight, caught Damaris to her and kissed her soundly, and set her down just in time to escape rebuke for her demonstrativeness from Dame Eliza, who returned with her face reddened, and Oceanus kicking under one arm, hung like a sack below it, and screaming with baffled rage and the desire of adventure. On the beach nearly everyone of the small community was gathered to see the arrival.
Constance stole up behind Priscilla Alden, and touched her shoulder.
"You are not the only happy girl here to-day, my bonny bride," she said.
Priscilla turned and caught Constance by both hands.
"Nor the only one glad for this cause, Constance," she retorted. "Indeed I rejoice beyond my powers of telling, that Giles is come to thee, and that thou art spared the bitter sorrow that we feared had fallen upon thee!"
"Well do I know that, dear Pris," said Constance. "Where is my father?"
"Yonder with William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Elder Brewster; do you not see?" Priscilla replied nodding toward the group that stood somewhat apart from the others. Constance crossed over to them, and curtseyed respectfully to the heads of this small portion of the king's subjects.
"Will you not come with me, my father?" she said, hoping that Stephen Hopkins would stand with her on the edge of the sands to be the first whom Giles would see on arriving, identifying himself with her who, Giles would know, was watching for him with a heart leaping out toward him.
"No, Daughter, I will remain here. I am to-day less Giles Hopkins's father than one of the representatives of this community, which he and John Billington have offended," replied Stephen Hopkins, but whether with his mind in complete accord with his decision, or stifling a longing to run to meet his son, like that other father of whom Constance had spoken to Damaris, the girl could not tell.
She turned away, recognizing the futility of pleading when her father was flanked as he then was.
The shallop was beached and the lost lads leaped out, John with a broad grin on his face, unmixed enjoyment of the situation visible in his every look; Giles with his eyes troubled, joy in getting back struggling with his misgivings as to what he might find awaiting him.
The first thing that he found was Constance, and there was no admixture in the delight with which he seized his sister's hands—warmer greeting being impossible before a concourse which would rebuke it sternly—and replied fervently to her: "Oh, Giles, how glad I am to see you again!"
"And I to see you, sweet sis! Ah, there is Pris! I missed her wedding. And there is John Alden!" said Giles, shading his eyes with his hand, but Constance saw the eyes searching for his father, and merely glancing at Priscilla and John.
"Our father is with the other weighty men of our plantation, waiting for you, Giles. You and John must go to them," suggested Constance.
Giles shrugged his shoulders. "Otherwise they will not know we are back?" he asked. "Very well; come, then, Jack. The sooner the better; then the gods are propitiated."
The two wilful lads walked over to the grave men awaiting them.
"We thank you, Governor Bradford, for sending the shallop after us," said Giles.
"Is this all that you have to say?" demanded William Bradford!
"No, sir; we have had adventures. We wandered five days, subsisting on berries and roots; came upon an Indian village, called Manamet, which we reckon to be some twenty miles to the southward of Plymouth here. These Indians conveyed us on to Nawsett still further along, and there we rested until the shallop appeared to take us off. This is, in brief, the history of our trip, although I assure you, it was longer in the living than in the telling. Permit me to add, Governor, that those Indians among whom we tarried are coming to make a peace with us and seek satisfaction from those of our community who took their corn what time we were dallying at Cape Cod, when we arrived in theMayflower. This is, perhaps, in a measure due to our visit to them, though we would not claim the full merit of it, since it may also be partly wrought by Massasoit's example."
Giles spoke with an easy nonchalance that held no suggestion of contrition, and William Bradford, as well as Elder Brewster, and Mr. Winslow, frowned upon him, while his father flushed darkly under the bronze tint of his skin, and his eyes flashed. At every encounter this father and son mutually angered each other.
"Inasmuch as you have done well, Giles Hopkins and John Billington, we applaud you," said Governor Bradford, slowly. "In sooth we are rejoiced that you are not dead, not harmed by your adventure. We rejoice, also, in the tidings of peace with yet another savage neighbour. But we demand of you recognition of your evil ways, repentance for the anxiety that you have caused those to whom you are dear, to all Christians, who, as is their profession, wish you well; for the injury you have done us in taking yourselves off, to the neglect of your seasonable labours, and the time which hath been wasted by able-bodied men searching for you. You have not asked your father to pardon you."
Giles looked straight into his father's eyes. Unfortunately there was in them nothing of the look they had worn a few nights earlier when Constance had read to him the psalm of the stricken heart.
"I am truly grieved for the suffering that I know my sister bore while my fate was uncertain, for I know well her love for me. And I regret being a charge upon this struggling plantation. As far as lies in my power I will repay that debt to it. But as to my father, his last words to me expressed his dislike for me, and his certainty that I was a wrong-doer. I cannot think that he has grieved for me," said poor Giles, speaking like a man to men until, at the last words, his voice quavered.
"I have grieved for thee often and bitterly, Giles, and over thee, which is harder for a father than sorrow for a son. Show me that I am wrong in my judgment of thee, by humbling thyself to my just authority, and conducting thyself as I would have thee act, and with a great joy in my heart I will confess myself mistaken in thee, and thank Heaven for my error," said Stephen Hopkins.
Giles's eyes wavered, he dropped his lids, and bit his lip. The simple manhood in his father's words moved him, yet he reflected that he had been justified in resenting an unfounded suspicion on this father's part, and he steeled himself against him. More than this, how could he reply to him when he was surrounded by the stern men who condemned youthful folly, and whom Giles resisted in thought and deed?
Giles turned away without raising his eyes; he did not see a half movement that his father made to hold out his hand to detain him.
"Time will right, or end everything," the boy muttered, and walked away.
Constance, who had been watching the meeting between her two well-beloveds, crossed over to Myles Standish.
"Captain Standish," she begged him, "come with me; I need you."
"Faith, little Con, I need you always, but never have you! You show scant pity to a lonely man, that misses his little friend," retorted Captain Standish, turning on his heel, obedient to a gesture from Constance to walk with her.
"It is about Giles, dear Captain," Constance began. "He is back, I am thankful for it, but this breach between him and my father is a wide one, and over such a foolish thing! And it came about just when everything was going well!"
"Foolish trifles make the deepest breaches, Constance, hardest to bridge over," said Captain Myles. "I grant you that the case is serious, chiefly because the man and the boy love each other so greatly; that, and their likeness, is what balk them. What would you have me do?"
"I don't know, but something!" cried Constance wringing-her hands. "I hoped you would have a plan by which you could bring them together."
"Well, truth to tell, Con, I have a plan by which to separate them," said the captain, adding, laughing—as Constance cried out: "Oh, not for all time!"—"But I think a time spent apart would bring them together in the end. Here is my plan: I am going exploring. There is that vast tract of country north of us which we have not seen, and tribes of savages, of which Squanto tries to tell us, but which he lacks of English to describe. I am going to take a company of men from here and explore to the nor'ard. I would take Giles among them. He will learn self-discipline, obedience to me—I am too much a soldier to be lax in exacting obedience from all who serve under me—and he will return here licked into shape by the tongue of experience, as an unruly cub is licked into his proper form by his dam. In the meantime your father will see Giles more calmly than at short range, and will not be irritated by his manly airs. When they come together again it will be on a new plane, as men, not as man and boy, and I foresee between them the sane enjoyment of their profound mutual affection. I had it in mind to ask Stephen Hopkins to lend me his boy; what say you, my Constance?"
"I say: Bless you, and thrice over bless you, Captain Myles Standish!" cried Constance. "It is the very solution! Oh, I am thankful! I shall be anxious every hour till you return, but with all my heart I say: Take Giles with you and teach him sense. What should we ever do here without you, Captain, dear 'Arm-of-the-Colony'?"
"I doubt you ever have a chance to try that dire lack, my Con," said Captain Myles, with a humorous look at her. "I think I'm chained here by the interest that has grown in me day by day, and that I shall die among you. Though, by my sword, it's a curious thing to think of Myles Standish dying among strict Puritans!"
Stephen Hopkins and his son drew no nearer together as the days went by.
Hurt and angry, Giles would not bend his stiff young neck to humble himself, checking any impulse to do so by reminding himself that his father had been unjust to him.
Yet Doctor Fuller, good, kind, and wise, had the right of it when he said to the lad one day, laying his arm across Giles's shoulders, caressingly:
"Remember, lad, that who is right, or who is wrong in a quarrel, or an estrangement, matters little, since we are all insects of a day and our dignity at best a poor thing, measured by Infinite standards. But he is always right who ends a quarrel; ten thousand times right if he does it at the sacrifice of his own sense of injury, laying down his pride to lift a far greater possession. There may be a difference of opinion as to which is right when two have fallen out, but however that be, the situation is in itself wrong beyond dispute, and all the honour is his who ends it."
Giles heard him with lowered head, and knit brows, but he did not resent the brief sermon. Doctor Fuller was a gentle spirit; all his days were given over to healing and helping; he was free from the condemnatory sternness of most of the colonists, and Giles, as all others did, loved him.
Giles kicked at the pebbles in the way, the slow colour mounting in his face. Then he threw back his head and looked the good doctor squarely in the eyes.
"Ah, well, Doctor Fuller," he said. "I'd welcome peace, but what would you? My father condemns me, sees no good in me, nor would he welcome back the old days when we were close friends. There will be a ship come here from home some time on which I can sail back to England. It will be better to rid my father of my hateful presence; yet should I hate to leave Sis—Constance."
"May the ship never leave the runway that shall take you from us, Giles, lad," said the doctor. "You are blind not to see that it is too-great love for thee that ails thy father! It often works to cross purposes, our unreasonable human affection. But the case is by no means past curing when love awry is the disease. Do your part, Giles, and all will be well."
But Giles did not alter his course, and when Captain Myles Standish said to Stephen Hopkins: "We set forth on the eighteenth of September to explore the Massachusetts. I shall take ten men of our colour, and three red men, two besides Squanto. Let me have your lad for one of my band, old friend. I think it will be his remedy." Stephen Hopkins welcomed the suggestion, as Giles himself did, and it was settled. The Plymouth company sailed away in their shallop on a beautiful, sunshiny morning when the sun had scarcely come up out of the sea.
Giles and his father had shaken hands on parting, and Stephen Hopkins had given the boy his blessing; both were conscious that it might be a final parting, since no one could be sure what would befall the small band among untried savages.
Yet there was no further reconciliation than this, no apology on the one side, nor proffered pardon on the other.
Constance clung long around her brother's neck in the dusk in which she had risen to prepare his breakfast; she did not go down to see the start, being heavy hearted at Giles's going, and going without lifting the cloud completely between him and his father. She bade him good-bye in the long low room under the rear of the lean-to, where wood was piled and water buckets were set and storage made of supplies.
"Oh, Giles, Giles, my dearest, may God keep you and bring you back!" Constance whispered, and then let her brother go.
She went about her household tasks that morning with lagging step and unsmiling lips. Damaris followed her, wistfully, much depressed by the unusual dejection of Constance, who, in spite of her stepmother's disapproval of anything like merriment, ordinarily contrived to entertain Damaris to the top of her bent when the household tasks were getting done.
"Will Giles never come home again, Connie?" the child asked at last, and Constance cried with a catch in her voice:
"Yes, oh yes, little sister! We know he will, because we so want him!"
"There must be a better ground for hope than our poor desires, Damaris," Dame Eliza was beginning, speaking over the child at Constance; when opportunely a shadow fell across the floor through the open door and Constance turned to see Doctor Fuller smiling at her.
"Good morning, Mistress Hopkins; good morning little Damaris; and good morning to you, Constance lass!" he said. "Is this a day of especial business? Are you too busy for charity to your neighbours, beginning with me, and indirectly reaching out to our entire community?"
Constance smiled at him with that swift brightening of her face that was one of her chief attractions; her expression was always playing between grave and gay.
"It is not a day of especial business, Doctor Fuller," she said, "or at least all our days are especial ones where there is everything yet to be done. But I could give it over to charity better than some other days, and if it were charity to you—though I fear there is nothing for such as I to do for such as you—then how gladly would I do it, if only to pay a tittle of the debt we all owe to you."
"Good child!" said the doctor. "I need help and comradeship in my herb gathering; it is to be done to-day, if you will be that helper. There is no wind, and there is that benignity of sun and sky that hath always seemed to me to impart special virtue to herbs gathered under it. So will you come with me? We will gather the morning long, and this afternoon I purpose distilling, in which necessary work your deft fingers will be of the greatest assistance to me."
"Gladly will I go," cried Constance, flushing with pleasure. "I will fetch my basket and shears, put on my bonnet, and be ready in a trice. Shall I prepare a lunch, or shall I be at home again for dinner?"
"Neither, Constance; there is yet another alternative." Doctor Fuller looked with great satisfaction at Constance's happier face as he spoke; she had been so melancholy when he had come. "I have arranged that you shall be my guest at dinner in my house, and after it we will to work in my substitute for a laboratory. Mistress Hopkins, Constance will be quite safe, be assured; and you, I trust, will not mind a quiet day with Damaris and Oceanus to bear you company?"
"And if I did mind it, would that prevent it?" demanded Dame Eliza with a toss of her head. "Not even with a 'by your leave' does Constantia Hopkins arrange her goings and comings."
"Which was wholly my fault in not first putting my question to you, instead of to Constance directly," said Doctor Fuller. "And surely there is no excuse for my blundering, I who am trained to feel pulses and look at tongues! But since it is thus happily concluded, and your stepmother is glad to let you have a sort of holiday, come then; hasten, Constance girl!"
Constance ran upstairs to hide her laughing face. She came down almost at once with that face shaded by a deep bonnet, a basket hung on her arm, shears sticking up out of it, pulling on long-armed half-gloves as she came.
As they walked down the narrow street Constance glanced up at Doctor Fuller, interrogatively.
"And——?" the doctor hinted.
"And I was wondering whether you were not treating me to-day as your patient?" Constance said. "A patient with a trouble of the mind, and also a heart complaint?"
"Which means——?" The doctor again waited for Constance to fill out his question.
"Which means that you knew I was sorely troubled about Giles; that he had gone without better drawing to his father; that I was anxious about him, even while wishing him to go; and that you gave me this day in the woods with you for my healing," Constance answered.
"At least not for your harm, little maid," said the doctor. "It hath been my experience that the gatherer of herbs gets a healing of spirit that is not set down in our books among the beneficial qualities of the plants, but which may, under conditions, be their best attribute. Although the singing of brooks and birds, the sweetness of the winds, the solemn nobility of the trees, the vastness of the sky, the over-brooding presence of God in His creation are compounded with the herbs, and impart their powers to us with that of the plants."
"That is true," said Constance. "I feel my vexations go from me as if my soul were bathed in a miraculous elixir, when I go troubled to the woods and sit in them awhile."
"Of a certainty," agreed the doctor, bending his tall, thin figure to pick a small leaf which he held up to Constance. "See this, with its likeness to the halberd at its base? This is vervain, which is called 'Simpler's Joy,' because of the good it yields to those who, like us to-day, are simplers, gatherers of simple herbs for mankind's benefit. Now let us hope that this single plant is a forerunner of many of its kind, for it hath been a sacred herb among the ancients, as among Christians, and it should be an augury of good to us to find it. Look you, Constance, I do not mind confessing it to you, for you are not only young, but of that happy sort who yield to imagination something of its due. I like my omens to be favourable, not in superstition, though our brethren would condemn me thus, but from a sense of harmony and the satisfaction of it."
"How pleasant a hearing is that, Doctor Fuller!" laughed Constance. "I love to have the new moon aright, though well I know the moon and I have naught in common! And though I do not believe in fairies, yet do I like to make due allowance for them!"
"It is the poetry of these things, and children like you and me, my dear, are not to be deprived of poetry by mere facts and common sense," said the doctor, sticking in the band of his hat the sprig of blue vervain which his sharp eyes had discovered.
"Yonder on the side of that sandy hill shall we find mints, pennyroyal, and the close cousin of it, which is blue curls. There is the prunelle, and welcome to it! Gather all you can of it, Constance. That is self-heal, and a sovereign remedy for quinsy. So is it a balm for wounds of iron and steel tools, and for both these sorts of afflictions, what with our winter climate as to quinsy and our hard labour as to wounds, I am like to need abundant self-heal."
Thus pleasantly chatting Doctor Fuller led the way, first up the sandy hill where grew the pennyroyal, all along the border of the woods where self-heal abounded. They found many plants unexpectedly, which the doctor always hailed with the joy of one who loved them, rather more than of the medical man who required them, and Constance busily snipped the stems, listening to the doctor's wise and kindly talk, loving him for his goodness and kindness to her in making her heart light and giving her on this day, which had promised to be sad, of his own abundant peace.
"Now, Constance, I shall lead you to a secret of my own," announced the doctor as the sun mounted high above them, and noon drew near. "Come with me. But do not forget to rejoice in this wealth of bloom, purple and blue, these asters along the wayside. They are the glory of our new country, and for them let us praise God who sets beauty so lavishly around us, having no use but to praise Him, for not to any other purpose are these asters here, and yet, though I cannot use them, am I humbly thankful for them. And for these plumes of golden and silver flowers beside them, which we did not know across the seas. Now, Constance, what say you to that?"
He pointed triumphantly to a small group of plants with heart-shaped leaves, having small leaves at their base, and which twisted as they grew around their neighbouring plants, or climbed a short distance on small shrubs. Groups of drooping berries of brilliant, translucent scarlet lighted up the little plant settlement, hanging as gracefully as jewels set by a skilful goldsmith for a fair lady's adornment.
"I think they are wonderfully beautiful. They are like ornaments for a beautiful lady! What are they?" cried Constance.
"They are themselves the beautiful lady," Doctor Fuller said, with a pleased laugh. "That is their name—belladonna, which means 'beautiful lady.' They areAtropa Belladonna, to give them their full title. But their beauty is only in appearance. If they are a belle dame, then she is thebelle dame sans merci, a cruel beauty if you cross her. You must never taste these berries, Constance. I myself planted these vines. I brought them with me, carefully set in soil. The beautiful lady can be cruel if you take liberties with her, but she is capable of kindness. I shall gather the belladonna now and distil it. In case any one among us ate of poisonous toadstools, and were seized with severe spasms of the nature of the effect of toadstools, belladonna alone would save them. Nightshade, we also call this plant. See, I will myself gather this, by your leave, my assistant, and place it in my own herb wallet."
The doctor suited the action to the word, arose from his knees and carefully brushed them. "When Mistress Fuller comes, which is a weary day awaiting, I hope she may not find me fallen into untidiness," he said, whimsically. "Constance, the ship is due that will bring my wife and child, if my longing be a calendar!"
"Indeed, dear Doctor Fuller, I often think of it," said Constance. "You who are so good to us all are lonely and heavy of heart, but none is made to feel it. The comfort is that Mistress Fuller and your little one are safe and you will yet see them, while so many of the women who came hither in our ship are not here now, and those who loved them will never see them in this world again."
"Surely, my child. I am not repining, for, though I am opposed to the extreme strict views of some of our community, and they look askance upon me for it at times, yet do I not oppose the will of God," said the doctor, simply.
"Who of them fulfils it as you do?" cried Constance. "You who go out to minister to the sick savages, not content to heal your own brethren?"
"And are not the savages also our brothers?" asked the doctor, taking up his wallet. "Come then, child; we will go home, and this afternoon shall you learn something of distilling, as you have, I hope, this morning learned something of selecting herbs for remedies."
Constance went along at the doctor's side, swinging her bonnet, not afraid of the hot September sun upon her face. It lighted up her disordered hair, and turned it into the semblance of burnished metal, upon which the doctor's eyes rested with the same satisfaction that had warmed them as he looked on the generous beauty of aster and goldenrod, and he saw with pleasure that Constance's face was also shining, its brightness returned, and he was well content with the effect of his prescription for this patient.
Constance had a gift of forgetting herself in an ecstasy that seized her when the weight of her new surroundings was lifted. With Doctor Fuller she felt perfect sympathy, and her utter delight in this lovely day bubbled up and found expression.
Doctor Fuller heard her singing one of her little improvised songs, softly, under her breath, to a crooning air that was less an air than a succession of sweet sounds. It was the sort of little song with which Constance often amused the children of the settlement, and Doctor Fuller, that childlike soul, listened to her with much of their pleasure in it.