"Blossom, and berry, and herb of grace;Purple and blue and gold lighting each place;Herbs for our body and bloom for our heart—Beauty and healing, for each hath its part.Under the sunshine and in the starlight,Warp and woof weareth the pattern aright.Shineth the fabric when summer's at end:The garment scarce hiding the Heart of our Friend,"
Constance sang, nor did the doctor interrupt her simple Te Deum by a word.
At the doctor's house dinner awaited them, kept hot, for they were tardy. After it, and when Constance had helped to put away all signs of its having been, the doctor said to her:
"Now for my laboratory, such as it is, and for our task, my apprentice in medicine!" He conducted Constance into a small room, at the rear of the house where he had set up tables of various sizes of his own manufacture, and where were ranged on the shelves running around three sides of the room at different heights, bowls, glasses of odd shapes—the uses of which were not known to Constance—and small, delicate tools, knives, weights, and piles of strips of linen, neatly rolled and placed in assorted widths in an accessible corner.
"Mount this stool, Constance, and watch," the doctor bade her. "Pay strict attention to what I shall do and tell you. Take this paper and quill and note names, or special instructions. I am serious in wishing you to know something of my work. I need assistance; there is no man to be spared from man's work in the plantation, and, to speak the truth, your brain is quicker to apprehend me, as your hand is more skilful to execute for me in the matters upon which I engage than are those of any of the lads who are with us. So mount this high stool, my lass, and learn your lesson."
Constance obeyed him. Breathlessly she watched the beginnings of the distillation of the belladonna which she had seen gathered.
As the small drops fell slowly into the glass which the doctor had set for them, he began to teach Constance other things, while the distillation went on.
"These are my phials, Constance," he said. "Commit to memory the names of their contents, and note their positions. See, on these shelves are my drugs. Do you see this dark phial? That is for my belladonna. Now note where it is to stand. In that line are poisons. Their phials are dark, to prevent mistaking them for less harmful drugs, which are on this other shelf, in white containers."
The doctor taught, and Constance obediently repeated her lesson, till the sound of the horn that summoned the settlers to their homes for supper, and the level rays of the sun across the floor, warned the doctor and his pupil that their pleasant day was over.
"But you must return, till you are letter perfect in your knowledge, Constance," the doctor said. "I have decided that there must be one person among us whom I could dispatch to bring me what I needed in case I were detained, and could not come myself."
"I will gladly learn, Doctor Fuller," said Constance, her face confirming her assurance. "I have no words to tell you how happy it makes me to hope that I may one day be useful in such great matters."
"As you will be," the doctor said. "But remember, my child, the lesson of the fields: It does not concern us whether great or small affairs are given us to do; the one thing is to do well what comes our way; to be content to fill the background of the picture, or to be a figure in the foreground, as we may be required. Aster, goldenrod, herb, all are doing their portion."
"Indeed you have helped me to see that, dear Doctor Fuller," said Constance, gently. "It is not ambition, but the remembrance of last winter's hardships, when there was so little aid, that makes me wish I could one day help."
"Yes, Constance; I know. Good-night, my child, and thank you for your patient attention, for your help; most of all for your sweet companionship," said the doctor.
"Oh, as to that, I am grateful enough to you! You made to-day a happy girl out of a doleful one!" cried Constance. "Good-night, Doctor Fuller!"
She ran down the street, singing softly:
"Flower, and berry, and herb of grace;"
till she reached her home and silenced her song with a kiss on eager Damaris's cheek.
Constance Hopkins sat at the side of the cave-like fireplace; opposite to where her father, engrossed in a heavy, much-rubbed, leather-bound book, toasted his feet beside the fire, as was his nightly wont.
He was too deeply buried in his reading to heed her presence, but the girl felt keenly that her father was there and that she had him quite to herself. The consciousness of this made her heart sing softly in her breast, with a contentment that she voiced in the softest humming, not unlike the contented song of the kettle on the crane, and the purring of the cat, who sat with infolded paws between her human friends.
Puck, the small spaniel, and Hecate, the powerful mastiff, who had come with the Hopkins family on theMayflower, shared the hearth with Lady Fair, the cat, a right that their master insisted upon for them, but which Dame Eliza never ceased to inveigh against.
However, Dame Eliza had gone to attend upon a sick neighbour that night, a fact which Hecate had approvingly noted, with her deep-grooved eyelids half-open, and in which Constance, no less than Puck and Hecate, rejoiced.
There was the quintessence of domestic joy in thus sitting alone opposite her father, free from the sense of an unsympathetic element dividing them, in watching the charring of the tremendous back log, and the lovely colours in the salt-soaked small sticks under and over it which had been cast up by the sea and gathered on the beach for this consumption.
Damaris and baby Oceanus were tucked away asleep for the night. It was as if once more Constance were a child in England with her widowed father, and no second marriage had ever clouded their perfect oneness.
So Constance hummed softly, not to disturb the reader, the content that she felt not lessened by anxiety for Giles; there were hours in which she was assured of Giles's safe return, and this was one of them.
Stephen Hopkins had been conscious of his girl's loving companionship, though not aware that he felt it, till, at last, the small tune that she hummed crept through his brain into his thought, and he laid down his book to look at her.
She sat straight and prim by necessity. Her chair was narrow and erect—a carved, dark oaken chair, with a small round seat; it had been Constance's mother's, and had come out of her grandfather's Tudor mansion, wherein he had once entertained Queen Bess.
Constance's dress was of dark homespun stuff, coming up close under her soft chin, falling straight around her feet, ornamented but with narrow bands of linen at her neck and around her wrists. Yet by its extreme severity the Puritan gown said: "See how lovely this young creature is! Only her fleckless skin, her gracious outlines, could triumph over my barrenness!"
Obedient to her elders' demands upon her to curb its riotousness, Constance had brushed smooth and capped her lustrous hair, yet its tendrils escaped upon her brow; it glinted below the cap around her ears, and in the back of her neck, and shone in the firelight like precious metal.
Stephen Hopkins's eyes brightened with delight in her charm, but, though he was not one of the strictest of Plymouth colonists, yet was he too imbued with their customs to express his pleasure in Constance's beauty.
Instead he said, but his voice thrilled with what he left unsaid:
"It's a great thing, my girl, to draw such a woman as Portia, here in this leathern book. She shines through it, and you see her clever eyes, her splendid presence, best of all her great power to love, to humble herself, to forget herself for the man she hath chosen! I would have you conversant with the women here met, Constance; they are worthy friends for you, in the wilderness where such noble ladies are rare."
"Yet we have fine women and devoted ones here, Father," objected Constance, putting down the fine linen that she was hemstitching for her father's wearing. He noted the slender, supple hands, long-fingered, graceful, yet a womanly hand, made for loyalty.
"Far be it from me to belittle them who recognized their hard and repulsive duty in the plague last winter, and performed it with utter self-renunciation," said Stephen Hopkins. "But, Constance, there is a something that, while it cannot transcend goodness, enhances it and places its possessor on a sort of dais all her life. Your mother had it, child. She was beautiful, charming, winsome, gracious, yet had she a lordly way with her; you see it in a fine-bred steed; I know not how to describe it. She was mettlesome, spirited. It was as if she did the right with a sort of inborn scorn for aught low; had made her choice at birth for true nobility and could but abide by it for aye, having made that choice. You have much of her, my lass, and I am daily thankful for it. A fine lady, was your exquisite young mother, and that says it, though the term is lowered by common usage. I would that you could have known her, my poor child! It was a loss hard to accept that you were deprived of her too soon, and never could have her direct impress upon you. And yet, thank Heaven, she hath left it upon you in mothering you, though the memory of her doth not bless you. And you sit here, upon a Plymouth hearthstone, far from the civilization that produced her, and to this I brought you!"
"Oh, Father, Father, my darling!" cried Constance, flinging aside her work and dropping upon her knees beside him, for his voice quivered with an emotion that he never before had allowed to escape him, as he uttered a self-reproach that no one knew he harboured. "Oh, my father, dearest, don't you know that I am happy here? And are you not here with me? However fine a lady my sweet mother was—and for your sake I am glad indeed if you see anything of her in me!—yet was she no truer lady than you are a fine gentleman. And with you I need no better exemplar. As time goes on we shall receive from England much of the good we have left behind; our colony will grow and prosper; we shall not be crude, unlettered. And how truly noble are many of our company, not only you, but Governor Bradford, Mr. Brewster, Mr. Winslow; their wives; our Arm, Captain Myles; and—dearest of all, save you—Doctor Fuller! No maiden need lack of models who has these! But indeed, I want to be all that you would have me to be! I cannot say how glad I am if you see in me anything of my mother! Not for my sake; for yours, for yours!"
"Portia after all!" Stephen Hopkins cried, stroking Constance's cheek. "That proves how well he knew, great Will of Warwickshire—which is our county also, my lass! Not for their own sake do true women value their charm, but for him they love. 'But only to stand high in your account I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, exceed!' So spake Portia; so, in effect, spake you just now. That was your mother's way; she, too, longed to have, but to give, her possessions, herself——"
There came a knocking at the door and Constance sprang back to her chair, catching up her sewing, thrusting in her needle with shortened breath, not to be caught by her severe Plymouth neighbours in so unseemly a thing as betraying love for her father, leaning on his knee.
Mr. Hopkins answered the summons, and there entered Francis Eaton, Mr. Allerton, and John Howland, who having come to Plymouth as the servant of Governor Carver, was now living in the colony with his articles of bondage annulled, and was inclined to exceed in severity the other Puritans, as one who had not long had authority even over himself.
"Peace be to you, Mr. Hopkins," said John Howland, gravely. "Mistress Constantia, I wish you a good evening. Sir, we are come to consult you as to certain provisions to be made for the winter to come, as to care of the sick, should there be many——. Will that great beast bite? She seems not to like me, and I may say the feeling is mutual; I never could bear a beast."
"She will not bite you, John; she is but deciding on your credentials as set forth in the odour of your clothing," said Mr. Hopkins, smiling. "Down, Hecate, good lass! While I am here you may leave it to me to see to your dwelling and fireside, old trusty!"
Hecate wagged her whip like tail and instantly lay down, her nose on her extended paws, frowning at the callers.
"But what is this, Stephen Hopkins?" demanded Francis Eaton, picking up the marred, leather-covered great volume which Stephen Hopkins had laid down when he had risen. "Shakespeare! Plays! Fie, fie upon you; sir! I wot you know this is godless matter, and that you are sinning to set the example of such reading to your child."
Stephen Hopkins's quick temper blazed; he took a step in the speaker's direction, and Hecate was justified in growling at her master's lead.
"Zounds! Eaton," he cried. "I know that an Englishman's house is his castle, on whichever side of the ocean he builds it, and that I will not brook your coming into it to tell me—youto tellme, forsooth!—that I am sinning! Look to your own affairs, sir, but keep your hands off mine. If you are too ignorant to know more of Shakespeare than to think him harmful, well, then, sir, you confess to an ignorance that is in itself a sin against the Providence that gave us poets."
"As to that, Francis Eaton," said Mr. Allerton, "Mr. Hopkins hath the best of it. We who strive after the highest virtue do not indulge in worldly reading, but there be those among us who would not condemn Shakespeare. But what is the noise I hear? Permit us to go yonder into your outer room, Mr. Hopkins, to satisfy ourselves that worse than play-reading is not carried on within this house."
"Noise? I heard no noise till now, being too much occupied to note it, but it is easy to decide upon its cause from here, though if you desire to go yonder, or to share the play, I'll not prevent you," said Mr. Hopkins, his anger mounting.
"Say, rather, as I seriously fear, that you are too accustomed to the sound to note it. I will pass over, as unworthy of you and of my profession, the insult you proffered me in suggesting that I would bear part in a wicked game," said Mr. Allerton, going toward the door.
He threw it open with a magnificent gesture and stalked through it, followed close by the other two, and by Hecate's growl and Puck's sharp barking.
Constance had dropped her work and sat rigidly regarding her father with amazed and frightened eyes.
Stephen Hopkins went after them, purple with rage. What they saw was a table marked off at its farther end by lines drawn in chalk. At the nearer end sat Edward Doty and Edward Lister, the men whom Stephen Hopkins had brought over with him on theMayflowerto serve him. Beside them sat tankards of home-made beer, and a small pile of coins lay, one at each man's right hand.
Just as Francis Eaton threw open the door, Edward Lister leaned forward, balanced a coin carefully between his thumb and finger, and shot it forward over one of the lines at the other end.
"Aimed, by St. George! Well shot, Ted!" cried Edward Doty.
"See that thou beatest me not, Ned; thou art a better man than me at it," said Lister, and they both took a draught of beer, wiping their lips on their sleeve in high satisfaction with the flavour, the game, and each other.
"Shovelboard!" "Shuffleboard!" cried Francis Eaton and John Howland together, differing on the pronunciation of the obnoxious sport, but one in the boundless horror in their voices.
"Stephen Hopkins, I am profoundly shocked," said Mr. Allerton, turning with lowering brows upon their host. "A man of your standing among us! A man of your experience of the world! Well wot you that playing of games is forbid among us. That you should tolerate it is frightful to consider——"
"See here, Isaac Allerton," said Stephen Hopkins, stepping so close to his neighbour that Mr. Allerton fell back uneasily, "it is a principle among us that every man is to follow his conscience. If we have thrown off the authority of our old days, an authority mind you, that had much to be said for it, and set up our own conscience as the sole guide of our actions, then how dare you come into my house to reproach me for what I consider no wrong-doing? Ted and Ned are good fellows, on whose hands leisure hangs heavily, since they do not read Shakespeare, as does their master, whom equally you condemn. To my mind shovelboard is innocent; I have permitted my men to play it. Go, if you will, and report to our governor this heinous crime of allowing innocent play. But on your peril read me no sermon, nor set up your opinion in mine own house, for, by my honour, I'll not abide it."
"By no will of mine will I report you, my brother," said Isaac Allerton, but the gleam in his eye belied him; there was jealousy in this little community, as in all human communities. "You know that my duty will compel me to lay before Governor Bradford what I have seen. Since we have with our own eyes seen it, there needs no further witnesses."
"Imply that I would deny the truth, were there never a witness, and Heaven help you, Plymouth or no Plymouth, brother or no brother! I'm not a liar," cried Stephen Hopkins, so fiercely that Mr. Allerton and his companions went swiftly out the side door, Mr. Allerton protesting:
"Nay, then Brother and friend; thou art a choleric man, and lax as to this business, but no one would doubt your honour."
After they had gone Mr. Hopkins went back to his chair by the fireside, leaving Ted and Ned staring open-mouthed at each other, stunned by the tempest aroused by their game.
"Well, rather would I have held the psalm book the whole evening than got the master into trouble," said Ted.
"Easy done, since thou couldst no more than hold it, reading being beyond thee," grinned Ned. "Yet am I one with thy meaning, which is clearer to me than is print."
Constance dared not speak to her father when he returned to her. She glanced up at his angry face and went on with her stitchery in silence.
At length he stretched himself out, his feet well toward the fire, and let his right hand fall on Hecate's insinuating head, his left on Puck's thrusting nose.
"Good friends!" he said to the happy dogs. "I am ashamed, my Constance, so to have afflicted thee. Smile, child; thou dost look as though destruction awaited me."
"I am so sorry, Father! In good sooth, is there not trouble coming to you from this night's business?" asked Constance, folding up her work.
"Nothing serious, child; likely a fine. But indeed it will be worth it to have the chance it will buy me to speak my mind clearly to my fellow colonists on these matters. Ah, my girl, my girl, what sad fools we mortals be, as Shakespeare, whom also these grave and reverend seigniors condemn, hath said! We have come here to sail by the free wind of conscience, but look you, it must be the conscience of the few, greater thraldom than it was in the Old World! Ah, Constance, Constance, we came here to escape the thraldom of men, but to do that it needs that no men came! If authority we are to have, then let it be authoritative, say I; not the mere opinion of men. My child, have you ever noted how much human nature there is in a man?"
But the next day, during which Stephen Hopkins was absent from his home, when he returned at night his philosophy had been sadly jostled.
He had been called before the governor, reprimanded and fined, and his pride, his sense of justice, were both outraged when he actually had to meet the situation. Dame Eliza was in a state of mind that made matters worse. She had heard from one of those persons through whom ill news filters as naturally as water through a spring, that her husband had been, as she termed it, "disgraced before the world."
"They can't disgrace him, Stepmother," protested Constance, though she knew that it was useless to try to stem the tide of Dame Eliza's grievance. "My father is in the right; they have the power to fine, but not to disgrace him who hath done no wrong."
"Of course he hath done no wrong," snapped Dame Eliza. "Shovelboard was played in my father's kitchen when I was no age. Are these prating men better than my father? Answer me that! But your father has no right to risk getting into trouble for two ne'er-do-wells, like his two precious Edwards. They eat more than any four men I ever knew, and that will I maintain against all comers, and as to work they cannot so much as see it. Worthless! And for them will he risk our good name. For mark me, Constantia, shovelboard is a game, and gaming an abomination, and not to be mentioned in a virtuous household, yet would your father permit it played——"
"But you just said it was harmless, and that your father had a table!" cried Constance.
"My father was a good man, but not a Puritan," said Dame Eliza, somewhat confused to be called upon to harmonize her own statements. "In England shovelboard is one thing; in Plymouth a second thing, and two things are not the same as one thing. I am disgusted with your father, but what good does it do me to speak? Never am I heeded but rather am I flouted by the Hopkins brood, young and old, which is why I never speak, but eat my heart out in silence and patience, knowing that had I married as I might have married—aye, and that many times, I'd have you know—I'd not be here among sands and marshes and Indians and barrens, slaving for ungrateful people who think to show their better blood by treating me as they best know how! But it is a long lane that hath no turning, and justice must one day be my reward."
When Stephen Hopkins came in Dame Eliza dared not air her grievances; his angry face compelled silence. Even Constance did not intrude upon his annoyance, but contented herself with conveying her sympathy by waiting upon him and talking blithely to Damaris, succeeding at last in winning a smile from her father by her amusing stories to the child.
"There is a moon, Constance; is it too cold for you to walk with me? The sea is fair and silvery beneath the moon rays," said Mr. Hopkins after supper.
"Not a whit too chill, Father, and I shall like to be out of doors," cried Constance, disregarding her stepmother's frown, who disapproved of pleasure strolls.
Constance drew her cloak about her, its deep hood over her head, and went out with her father. Stephen Hopkins placed her hand in his arm, and led her toward the beach. It was a deep, clear autumn night, the moon was brilliant; the sea, still as a mirror, gave its surface for the path that led from the earth to the moon, made by the moon rays.
At last her father spoke to Constance.
"Wise little woman," he said, patting the hand in his arm, "to keep silent till a man has conquered his humours. Your mother had that rare feminine wisdom. What a comrade was she, my dear! Seeing your profile thus half-concealed by your hood I have been letting myself feel that she had returned to me. And so she has, for you are part of her, her gift to me! Trouble no more over my annoyance, Constance; I have conquered it. I do not say that there is no soreness left in me, that I should be thus dealt with, but I am philosopher enough to see that Myles Standish was right when he once said to me that I was a fool for my pains; that living in Plymouth I must bear myself Plymouth-wise."
"Father, have you had enough of impertinence in the day's doings, that your neighbours should dare to judge you, or will you tolerate a little more impertinence, and from your own daughter?" asked Constance.
"Now what's in the wind?" demanded Stephen Hopkins, stopping short.
"Nay, Father, let me speak freely!" Constance implored. "Indeed there is nothing in my heart that you would disapprove, could I bare it to your eyes. Does not this day's experience throw a light upon Giles?"
"Giles! How? Why?" exclaimed her father.
"Giles is as like you as are two peas in a pod, dear Father. He does not count himself a boy any longer. He hath felt that he was dealt with for offences that he had not done. He has been wounded, angry, sore, sad—and most of all because he half worships you. The governor, Mr. Winslow, no one is to you, nor can hurt you, as you can hurt Giles. Don't you feel to-day, Father, how hard it is for a young lad to bear injustice? When Giles comes home will you not show him that you trust him, love him, as I so well know you do, but as he cannot now be made to believe you do? And won't you construe him by what you have suffered this day, and comfort him? Forgive me, Father, my dearest, dearest! I do not mean wrong, and after all, it is only your Constance speaking her heart out to you," she pleaded.
For upwards of ten minutes Stephen Hopkins was silent while Constance hung trembling on his arm.
Then her father turned to her, and took her face in both his hands, tears in his eyes.
"It is only my Constance speaking; only my dearest earthly treasure," he said. "And by all the gods, she hath spoken sweetly and truly, and I will heed her! Yes, my Constance, I will read my own bitterness in Giles's heart, and I will heal it, if but the lad comes back safe to us."
With which promise, that sounded in Constance's ears like the carol of angels, her father kissed her thrice on brow, and lips, a most unusual caress from him. It was a thankful Constance that lay down beside Damaris that night, beneath the lean-to roof.
"Now I know that Giles will come back, for this is what has been meant in all that hath lately come to us," was her last thought as she drifted into sleep.
"There's a ship, there's a sail standing toward us!"
It was Francis Billington's shrill boyish voice that aroused the Hopkins household with this tidings, early in the morning on one of those mid-November days when at that hour the air was chill and at noon the warmth of summer brooded over land and sea.
Stephen Hopkins called from within: "Wait, wait, Francis, till I can come to thee."
In a moment or two he came out of his door and looked in the direction in which the boy pointed, although a hillock on the Hopkins land, which lay between Leyden and Middle streets, cut off the sight of the sail.
"She's coming up from the south'ard," cried Francis, excitedly. "Most like from the Cape, but she must have come from England first, say you not so, Mr. Hopkins?"
"Surely," agreed Stephen Hopkins. "The savages build no vessels like ours, as you well know. Thank you, my boy, for warning me of her approach. Go on and spread your news broadcast; let our entire community be out to welcome whatever good the ship brings, or to resist harm—though that I fear not. I will myself be at the wharf when she gets in."
"Oh, as to that, Mr. Hopkins, you have time to eat as big a breakfast as you can get and still be too early for the arrival," said Francis, grinning. "She's got a long way to cover and a deal to do to reach Plymouth wharf in this still air. She's not close in, by much. I hurried and yelled to get you up quick because—well, because you've got to hurry folks and yell when a ship comes in, haven't you?"
Mr. Hopkins smiled sympathetically at the boy whose actions rarely got sympathy.
"Till ships become a more common sight in our harbour, Francis, I would advise letting your excitement on the coming of one have vent a-plenty," he said, turning to reënter the house as Francis Billington, acting on advice more promptly than was his wont, ran down Leyden Street, throwing up his cap and shouting: "A ship! A sail! A ship! A sail!" at the top of his vigorous lungs, not only unreproved for his disturbance of the peaceful morning, but hailed with answering excitement by the men, women, and children whom he aroused as he ran.
The ship took as long to reach haven as Francis Billington had prophesied she would require. She proved to be a small ship with a figure-head of a woman, meant to represent Fortune, for she was blindfolded, but her battered paint indicated that she had in her own person encountered ill-fortune in her course.
A number of people were gathered on her forward deck, looking eagerly for indications of the sort of place that they were approaching.
"Mr. Weston, knowing that we depend upon him and his brother merchants, our friends across seas, for supplies, hath at last dispatched us the long-waited ship," said Mr. Winslow to Mr. Hopkins.
"With someone, let us hope, authorized to carry back report of us here, and thus to get us, later on, what we sore need. Many new colonists, as well as nearly all things that human beings require for existence," said Stephen Hopkins, with something of the strain upon his endurance that he had suffered getting into his voice.
The ship was theFortune—her figure-head had announced as much. When she made anchor, and her small boat came to the wharf, the first person to step ashore was Mr. Robert Cushman, the English agent who had played so large a part in the embarkation of the pilgrims in theMayflower.
"Welcome, in all truth!" said Governor Bradford stepping forward to seize the hand of this man, from whose coming and subsequent reports at home so much might be hoped. "Now, at last, have we what we have so long needed, a representative who can speak of us as one who hath seen!"
"I am glad to be here in a twofold sense, Mr. Bradford," returned Mr. Cushman.
"Glad to meet with you, whom I knew under the distant sky of home, glad to be at the end of my voyage. I have brought you thirty-five additional members of your community. We came first to Cape Cod, and a more discouraged band of adventurers would be hard to find than were these men when they saw how barren of everything was the Cape. I assured them that they would find you in better condition here, at Plymouth, and we set sail hither. They have been scanning waves and sky for the first symptom of something like comfort at Plymouth, beginning their anxious outlook long before it was possible to satisfy it. I assure you that never was a wharf hailed so gladly as was this one that you have built, for these men argued that before you would build a wharf you must have made sure of greater essentials."
"We are truly thankful for new strength added to us; we need it sore," said William Bradford. "We make out to live, nor have we wanted seriously, thus far."
"The men I have gathered together and brought to you are not provided; they will be a charge upon you for a while in food and raiment, but after a time their strength should more than recompense you in labour," said Mr. Cushman. "Where is the governor? I have a letter here from Mr. Weston to Governor Carver; will you take me to him?"
"That we may not do, Mr. Cushman," said Governor Bradford, sadly. "Governor Carver is at rest since last April, a half year agone. It was a day of summer heat and he was labouring in the field, from which he came out very sick, complaining greatly of his head. He lay down and in a few hours his senses failed, which never returned to him till his death, some days later. Bitterly have we mourned that just man. And but a month and somewhat more, passed when Mistress Carver, who was a weak woman, and sore beset by the sufferings of her coming here, and so ill-fitted to bear grief, followed her spouse to their reward, as none who knew them could doubt. I am chosen, unworthily, to succeed John Carver as governor of this colony."
"Then is the letter thine, William Bradford, and the Plymouth men have wisely picked out thee to hold chief office over them," said Robert Cushman. "Yet your news is heavy hearing, and I hope there is not much of such tidings to be given me."
"Half of us lie yonder on the hillside," said Governor Bradford. "But they died in the first months of our landing, when we lacked shelter and all else. It was a mortality that assailed us, a swift plague, but since it hath passed there is little sickness among us. Gather your men and let us go on to the village which we have built us, a habitation in the wilderness, like Israel of old. Like old Plymouth at home it is in name, but in naught else, yet it is not wholly without its pleasant comfort, and we are learning to hold it dear, as Providence hath wisely made man to cherish his home."
Mr. Cushman marshalled his sorry-looking followers; they were destitute of bedding, household utensils, even scantily provided with clothes, so that they came off theFortunein the lightest marching order, and filled with dismay the Plymouth people who saw that their deficiencies would fall upon the first settlers to supply.
"Well, Constantia, and so hath it ever been, and ever will be, world without end, that they who till and sow do not reap, but rather some idle blackbird that sits upon a stump whistling for the corn that grows for him, and not for his betters," scolded Dame Eliza who, like others of the women who were hard-working and economical, felt especially aggrieved by this invoice of destitution. "It is we, and such as we who may feed them, even to Damaris. Get a pan of dried beans, child, and shell 'em, for it is against our profession to see them starve, but why the agents sent, or Robert Cushman brought, beggars to us it would puzzle Solomon to say. Where will your warm cloak come from that you hoped for, think you, Constantia, with these people requiring our stores? Do they take Plymouth for Beggars' Bush?"
"I came hither walking beside my father, who was talking with Mr. Winslow, Stepmother," said Constance, noting with amusement that her stepmother commiserated her probable sacrifice, swayed by her indignation to make common cause with Constance, whose desires she rarely noted. "They said that it would put a burden upon us to provide for these new-comers at first, but that they looked like able and hopeful subjects to requite us abundantly, and that soon. So never mind my cloak; I will darn and patch my old one, and at least there be none here who will not know why I go shabby, and be in similar stress."
The door opened and Humility Cooper entered. She kissed Constance on the cheek, a manner of greeting not common among these Puritan maidens, especially when they met often, and slowly took the stool that Constance placed for her in the chimney corner, loosening her cape as she did so.
"I have news, dear Constance," Humility said.
"How strangely you look at me, Humility!" cried Constance. "Is your news good or ill? Your face would tell me it was both; your eyes shine, yet are ready to tears, and your lips droop, yet are smiling!"
"My news is that same mixture, Constance," cried Humility. "I am sent for from England. The letter is come by theFortune. She is to lie in our harbour barely two sen' nights, and then weigh anchor for home. And I——"
"You go on her!" cried Constance. "Oh Humility!"
"And so I do," said Humility. "I am glad to go home. It is a sad and heavy-hearted thing to be here alone, with only Elizabeth Tilley, my cousin, left me. To be sure her father and mother, and Edward Tilley and his wife, who brought me hither, were but my cousins, though one degree nearer than John Tilley's Betsy; yet was it kindred, and they were those who had me in charge. Since they died I have felt lone, kind though everyone hath been; you and Priscilla Mullins Alden and Elizabeth are like my sisters. But my heart yearns back to England. Yet when I think of seeing you for the last time, till we meet beyond all parting, since you will never go to the old land, nor I return to the new one, then it seems that it will break my heart to say farewell, and that I cannot go."
"Why, Humility, dear lass, we cannot let you go!" cried Constance, putting her arms around the younger girl toward whom she felt as a protector, as well as comrade.
"Tut, tut!" said Dame Eliza, yet not unkindly. "It is best for Humility to go. I have long been glad to know, what we did know, that her kindred at home would send for her."
Humility stooped and gathered up Lady Fair, the cat, on her knee.
"I am like her," she said. "The warmth I have holds me, and I like not to venture out into the chillsome wet of the dark and storm."
"Lady Fair would scamper home fast enough if she were among strangers, in a new place, Humility," cried Constance, with one of her mercurial changes setting herself to cheer Humility on her unavoidable road. "It will be hard setting out, but you will be glad enough when you see the green line of shore that will be England awaiting you!"
"I thought you would be sorry, Constance!" cried Humility, tears springing to her eyes and rolling down her smooth, pink cheeks.
"And am I not, dear heart, just because I want to make it easier for you?" Constance reproached her. "How I shall miss you, dear little trusting Humility, I cannot tell you. But I am glad to know that we who remain are worse off than you who go, and that when you see home again there will be more than enough there to make up to you for Pris, Elizabeth, and me. There will be ships coming after this, so my father and Mr. Winslow were saying, and you will write us, and we will write you. And some day, when Oceanus, or Peregrine White, or one of the other small children here, is grown up to be a great portrait painter, like Mr. Holbein, whose portraits I was taken to see at Windsor when I was small, I will dispatch to you a great canvas of an old lady in flowing skirts, with white hair puffed and coifed and it will be painted across the bottom in readable letters: 'Portrait of Constantia Hopkins, aetat. 86,' else will you never know it for me, the silly girl you left behind."
"'Silly girl,' indeed! You will be the wife of some great gentleman who is now in England, but who will cross to the colony, and you will be the mother of those who will help in its growth," cried Humility the prophetess.
"Cease your foolish babble, both of you!" Dame Eliza ordered them, impatiently. "It is poor business talking of serious matters lightly, but Humility is well-off, and needs not pity, to be returning to the land that we cast off, nor am I as Lot's wife saying it, for it is true, nor am I repining."
Humility had made a correct announcement in saying that theFortunewould stay on the western shore but two weeks.
For that time she lay in the waters of Plymouth harbour taking on a cargo of goods to the value of 500 pounds, or thereabout, which the Plymouth people rightly felt would put their enterprise in a new light when the ship arrived in England, especially that she had come hither unprepared for trade, expecting no such store here.
Lumber they stowed upon theFortuneto her utmost capacity to carry, and two hogsheads full of beaver and otter skins, taken in exchange for the little that the Englishmen had to offer for them, the idea of trading for furs being new to them, till Squanto showed them the value in a beaver skin.
On the night of the thirteenth day of theFortune'slying at anchor Humility went aboard to be ready in case that the ship's master should suddenly resolve to take advantage of a favourable wind and sail unexpectedly.
Stephen Hopkins offered to take the young girls, who had been Humility's companions on theMayflower, out to theFortuneearly the next morning for the final parting. It was decided that theFortunewas to set sail at the turn of the tide on the fourteenth day, and drop down to sea on the first of its ebb.
Priscilla, Elizabeth Tilley, Desire Minter, who was also to return to England when summoned, and Constance, were rowed out to the ship when the reddening east threw a glory upon theFortuneand covered her battered, blindfolded figure-head with the robes of an aurora.
Humility was dressed, awaiting them. She threw herself into the arms of each of the girls in succession, and for once five young girls were silent, their chatter hushed by the solemn thought that never would their eyes rest again upon Humility's pleasant little face; that never again would Humility see the faces which had smiled her through her days of bereavement, see Constance who had nursed her back to life when she herself seemed likely to follow her protectors to the hillside, to their corn-hidden graves.
"We cannot forget, so we will not ask each other to remember, Humility dear," whispered Constance, her lips against Humility's soft, brown hair.
Humility shook her head, unable otherwise to reply.
"I love you more than any one on earth, Con," she managed to say at last.
"I am sorry to shorten your stay, daughters, sorry to compel you to leave Mistress Humility," said Mr. Cushman, coming down the deck to the plaintive group, "but we are sailing now, and there will be no time when the last good-bye is easy. You must go ashore."
Not a word was spoken as Priscilla, Desire—though for her the parting was not final—Elizabeth and Constance kissed, clung to Humility, and for ever let her go. Stephen Hopkins, not a little moved himself—for he was fond of Humility, over whom he had kept ward since Edward Tilley had died—guided the tear-blinded girls down the ship's ladder, into his boat, and rowed them ashore.
TheFortune'ssails creaked and her gear rattled as her men hauled up her canvas for her homeward voyage.
She weighed anchor and slowly moved on her first tack, bright in the golden sunshine of a perfect Indian summer morning.
"Be brave, and wave a gay farewell to the little lass," said Stephen Hopkins. "And may God fend her from harm on her way, and lead her over still waters all her days."
"Oh, amen, amen, Father!" sobbed Constance. "She can't see we are crying while we wave to her so blithely. But it is the harder part to stay behind."
"With me, my lass?" asked Stephen Hopkins, smiling tenderly down on his usually courageous little pioneer.
"Oh, no; no indeed! Forgive me, Father! The one hard thing would be to stay anywhere without thee," cried Constance, smiling as brightly as she had just wept bitterly. TheFortuneleaned over slightly, and sailed at a good speed down the harbour, Humility's white signal of farewell hanging out over the boat's stern, discernable long after the girl's plump little figure and pink round face, all washed white with tears, had been blotted out by intervening space.
Before theFortunehad gone wholly out of sight Francis Billington came over the marsh grass that edged the sand, sometimes running for a few steps, sometimes lagging; his whole figure and air eloquent of catastrophe.
"What can ail Francis Billington?" exclaimed Stephen Hopkins.
"He looks ghastly," cried Constance. "Father, it can't be—Giles?" she whispered.
"Bad news of him!" cried her father quickly, turning pale. "Nonsense, no; of course not."
Nevertheless he strode toward the boy hastily and caught him by the arm.
"What aileth thee; speak!" he ordered him.
"Jack. Jack is—Jack——" Francis stammered.
"Oh, is it Jack?" cried Stephen Hopkins, relieved, though he could have struck himself a moment later for the seeming heartlessness of his excusable mistake.
"What has Jack done now? He is always getting into mischief, but I am sure you need have no fear for him. But now that I look at you——. Why, my poor lad, what is it? No harm hath befallen your brother?"
"Jack is dead," said Francis.
Constance uttered a cry, and her father fell back a step or two, shocked and sorry.
"Forgive me, Francis; I had no notion of this. I never thought John Billington, the younger, could come to actual harm—so daring, so reckless, but so strong and able to take care of himself! Dead! Francis, it can't be. You are mistaken. Where is Doctor Fuller?"
"With my father," said Francis, and they saw that he shook from head to foot.
"He was with Jack; he did what he could. He couldn't do more," said Francis.
"Poor lad," said Stephen Hopkins, laying his hand gently on the boy's shoulder.
"Do you want to tell us? Was it an accident?"
Francis nodded. "Bouncing Bully," he muttered.
Stephen Hopkins glanced questioningly at Constance; he thought perhaps Francis was wandering in his mind.
"That was poor Jack's great pistol that he took such pride in," cried Constance.
"Oh, Francis, did that kill him?"
"Burst," cried Francis, and said no more.
"Come home with us, Francis," said Mr. Hopkins. "Indeed, my boy, I am heartily sorry for thee, and wish I could comfort thee. Be brave, and bear it in the way that thou hast been taught."
"I liked Jack," said poor Francis, turning away. "I thank you, Mr. Hopkins, but I'd not care to go home with you. If Giles was back——. Not that I don't love you, Con, but Jack and Giles——. I'm going—somewhere. I guess I'll find Nimrod, my dog. Thank you, Mr. Hopkins, but I couldn't come. I forgot why I came here. Doctor Fuller told me to say he wanted you. It's about Jack—Jack's——. They'll bury him."
The boy turned away, staggering, but in a moment Constance and her father, watching him, saw him break into a run and disappear.
"Don't look so worried, my dear," said Stephen Hopkins. "It is a boy's instinct to hide his grief, and the dog will be a good comrade for Francis for awhile. Later we will get hold of him. Best leave him to himself awhile. That wild, unruly Jack! And he is dead! I'd rather a hundred pounds were lost than that I had spoken as I did to Francis at first, but how should I have dreamed it was more than another of the Billington scrapes? I tell thee, Connie, it will be a rare mercy if the father does not end badly one day. He is insubordinate, lawless, dangerous. Perhaps young John is saved a worse fate."
"Nevertheless I am sad enough over the fate that has befallen him," said Constance. "He was a kindly boy, and loyal enough to me to make it right that I should mourn him. And I did like him. Poor Jack. Poor, young, heedless Jack! And how proud he was of that clumsy weapon that hath turned on him!"
"And so did I like him, Connie, though he and Francis have been, from our first embarkation on theMayflower, the torment and black sheep of our company. But I liked the boy. I like his father less, and fear he will one day force us to deal with him extremely." In which prophecy Stephen Hopkins was only too right.
"To think that in one day we should bid a last farewell to two of our young fellow-exiles, Humility and Jack, both gone home, and for ever from us! Giles liked Jack; Jack stood by him when he needed help. Oh, Father, Father, if it were Giles!" cried Constance.
"I know, I know, child," said her father, huskily. "I've been thinking that. I've been thinking that, and more. My son has been headstrong, but never wicked. He is stiffnecked, but hath no evil in his will, except that he resists me. But I have been thinking hard, my Constance. You were right; I would have done well to listen to your pleadings, to your wiser understanding of my boy. I have been hard on him, unjust to him; I should have admitted him to my confidence, given mine to him. I am wrong and humbly I confess it to you, Giles's advocate. When he comes back my boy shall find a better father awaiting him. I wounded him through his very love for me, and well I know how once he loved me."
"Oh, Father; dear, good, great Father!" cried Constance, forgetful of all grief. "Only a great man can thus acknowledge a mistake. My dear, dear, beloved Father!" And in her heart she thought perhaps poor Jack had not died in vain if his death helped to show their father how dear Giles was to him, still, and after all.
There was a gray sky the day after young madcap John Billington was laid to rest in the grave that had been hard to think of as meant for him, dug by the younger colonists. Long rifted clouds lay piled upon one another from the line of one horizon to the other, and the wind blew steadily, keeping close to the ground and whistling around chimneys and rafters in a way that portended a storm driven in from the sea.
"I think it's lost-and-lone to-day, Constance," said Damaris, coining her own term for the melancholy that seemed to envelop earth and sky. "I think it's a good day for a story, and I'd like much to sit in your lap in the chimney corner and hear your nicest ones."
"Would you, my Cosset? But you said a story at first, and now you say my nicestones! Do you mean one story, or several stories, Damaris?" Constance asked.
"I mean one first, and many ones after that, if you could tell them, Constance," said the child. "Mother says we have no time to idle in story-telling, but to-day is so empty and lonesome! I'd like to have a story."
"And so you shall, my little sis!" cried Constance gathering Damaris into her arms and dropping into the high-backed chair which Dame Eliza preëmpted for herself, when she was there; but now she was not at home. "Come, at least the fire is gay! Hark how it snaps and sings! And how gaily red and golden are the flames, and how the great log glows! Shall we play it is a red-coated soldier, fighting the chill for us?"
"No, oh, no," shuddered Damaris. "Don't play about fighting and guns!"
Constance cuddled her closer, drawing her head into the hollow of her shoulder. Sensitive, grave little Damaris had been greatly unnerved by the death of Jack, and especially that his own pistol had taken his life.
"We'll play that the red glow is loving kindness, and that we have had our eyes touched with magic that makes us able to see love," cried Constance. "Fire is the emblem of love, warming our hearts toward all things, so our fancy will be at once make-believe and truth. Remember, my cosset lamb, that love is around us, whether we see it or not, and that there can be no dismal gray days if we have our eyes touched to see the glow of love warming us! Now what shall the story be? Here in the hearth corner, shall it be Cinderella? Or shall it be the story of the lucky bear, that found a house empty and a fire burning when he wanted a home, and wherein he set up housekeeping for himself, like the quality?"
"All of them, Constance! But first tell me what we shall do when Giles comes home. I like that story best. I wish he would come soon!" sighed Damaris.
"Ah, so do I! And so he will;" Constance corrected instantly the pain that she knew had escaped into her voice. "Captain Standish will not risk the coming of cold weather; he will bring them home soon. Well, what shall we do then, you want to hear? First of all, someone will come running, calling to us that the shallop hath appeared below in the harbour. Then we shall all make ourselves fine, and——"
"Someone is coming now, Con, but not running," cried Damaris, sitting up and holding up a warning finger.
"It is a man's step," began Constance, but, as the door opened she sprang to her feet with a cry, and stood for an instant of stunned joy holding Damaris clasped to her breast. Then she set the child on her feet and leaped into Giles's arms, with a great sob, repeating his name and clinging to him.
"Steady, Constance! Steady, dear lass," cried Giles, himself in not much better state, while Damaris clung around his waist and frantically kissed the tops of his muddy boots.
"Oh, how did you get here? When did you come? Are they all safely here?" cried Constance.
"Every man of them; we had a fine expedition, not a misfortune, perfect weather, and we saw wonders of noble country: streams and hills and plains," said Giles, and instantly Constance felt a new manhood and self-confidence in him, steadier, less assertive than his boyish pride, the self-reliance that is won through encountering realities, in conquering self and hence things outside of self.
"I cannot wait to hear the tale! Let me help you off with your heavy coat, your matchlock, and then sit you down in this warmest corner, and tell me everything," cried Constance, beginning to recover herself, the rich colour of her delight flooding her face as, the first shock of surprise over, she realized that it was indeed Giles come back to her and that her secret anxiety for him was past. "Art hungry, my own?" she added, fluttering around her brother, like a true woman, wanting first of all to feed him.
"Well, Con, to be truthful I am always hungry," said Giles, smiling down on her.
"But not in such strait now that I cannot wait till the next meal."
"Here are our father and Mistress Hopkins, hastening hither," said Constance, looking out the door, hoping for this coming of her father. "You have not seen Father yet?"
"No, Con; I came straight home, but the captain has met with him, I am sure. And, Con, I want to tell you before he comes in, that I have seen how wrong I was toward our good father, and that I hope to carry myself dutifully toward him henceforth."
Constance clasped her hands, rapturously, but had not time to reply before the door was thrown wide open and Stephen Hopkins strode in, his face radiant.
He went up to his tall son and clasped his shoulders in a grip that made Giles wince, and said through his closed teeth, trying to steady his voice:
"My lad, my fine son, thank God I have you back! And by His mercy never again shall we be parted, nor sundered by the least sundering."
Giles looked up, and Giles looked down. He hoped, yet hardly dared to think, that his father meant more than mere bodily separation.
"I am glad enough to be here, yet we had glorious days, and have seen a country so worthy that we wish that we might go thither, leaving this less profitable country," said Giles. "We have seen land that by a little effort would be turned into gracious meadows. We have seen great bays and rivers, full of fish, capable of navigation and industry. We have seen a beautiful river, which we have named the Charles, for we think it to be that river which Captain John Smith thus named in his map. The Charles flows down to the sea, past three hills which top a noble harbour, and where we would dearly like to build a town. I will tell you of these things in order. Captain Myles will have a meeting of the Plymouth people to hear our tale; I would wait for that, else will it be stale hearing to you."
"Nay, Giles, we shall never tire of it!" cried Constance. "A good story is the better for oft hearing, as you know well, do you not, little Damaris?"
"Well, it hath made a man of thee, Giles Hopkins," said Dame Eliza who had silently watched the lad closely as he talked. "It was a lucky thing for thee that the Arm of the Colony, Captain Myles, took thee for one of his tools."
"A lucky thing for him, too," interposed Giles's father proudly. "I have seen Myles; he hath told me how, when you and he were fallen behind your companions, investigating a deep ravine, he had slipped and would have been killed by his own matchlock as it struck against the rock, but that you, risking your life, threw yourself forward on a narrow ledge and struck up the muzzle of the gun. The colony is in your debt, my son, that your arm warded death from the man it calls, justly, its Arm."
"Prithee, father!" expostulated Giles, turning crimson. "Who could do less for a lesser man? And who would not do far more for Myles Standish? I would be a fool to hesitate over risk to a life no more valuable than mine, if such as he were in danger. Besides which the captain exaggerates my danger. I don't want that prated here. Please help me silence Myles Standish."
Stephen Hopkins nodded in satisfaction.
"Right, Giles. A blast on one's own horn produces much the sound of the bray of an ass. Yet am I glad that I know of this," he said.
Little Love Brewster, who was often a messenger from one Plymouth house to another, came running in at that moment.
"My father sends me," he panted. "The men of Plymouth are to sit this afternoon at our house to hear the tale of the adventurers to the Massachusetts. You will come? Giles, did you bring us new kinds of arrows from the strange savages? My father saith that Squanto was the best guide and helper on this expedition that white men ever had."
"So he was, Love. I brought no new arrows, but I have in my sack something for each little lad in the colony. And for the girls I have wondrous beads," added Giles, seeing Damaris's crestfallen face.
"I will risk a reprimand; it can be no worse than disapproval from Elder Brewster, and belike they will spare me because of the occasion," thought Constance in her own room, making ready to go to the assembly that was to gather to welcome the explorers, but which to her mind was gathered chiefly to honour Giles.
Thus deliberately she violated the rule of the colony; let her beautiful hair curl around her flushed face; put on a collar of her mother's finest lace, tied in such wise by a knot of rose-coloured ribbon that it looked like a cluster of buds under her decided little chin. And, surveying herself in the glass, which was over small and hazy for her merits, that chin raised itself in a hitch of defiance.
"Why should I not be young, and fair and happy?" Constance demanded of her unjust reflection. "At the worst, and if I am forced to remove it, I shall have been gay and bonny—a wee bit so!—for a little while."
With which this unworthy pilgrim maid danced down the stairs, seized by the hand Damaris, who looked beside her like a small brown grub, and set out for Elder Brewster's house.
Although the older women raised disapproving brows at Constance, and shook their heads over her rose-tinted knots of ribbon, no one openly reproved her, and she slid into her place less pleased with her ornamentation than she had been while anticipating a rebuke.
Captain Myles Standish rose up in his place and gave the history of his explorations in a clear-cut, terse way, that omitted nothing, yet dwelt on nothing beyond the narration of necessary facts.
It was a long story, however condensed, yet no one wearied of it, but listened enthralled to his account of the Squaw-Sachem of the tribe of the Massachusetts, who ruled in the place of her dead spouse, the chief Nanepashemet, and was feared by other Indians as a relentless foe, and of the great rock that ended a promontory far in on the bay, at the foot of the three hills which were so good a site for a settlement, a rock that was fashioned by Nature into the profile of an Indian's face, and which they called Squaw Rock, or Squantum Head. As the captain went on telling of their inland marches from these three hills and their bay, and of the fertile country of great beauty which they everywhere came upon, there arose outside a commotion of children crying, and the larger children who were in charge of the small ones, calling frantically.
Squanto, admitted to the assembly as one who had borne an important part in the story that Myles Standish was relating, sprang to his feet and ran out of the house. He came back in a few moments, followed by another Indian—a tall, lithe, lean youth, with an unfriendly manner.
"What is this?" demanded Governor Bradford, rising.
"Narragansett, come tell you not friends to you," said Squanto.
The Narragansett warrior, with a great air of contempt, threw upon the floor, in the middle of the assembly, a small bundle of arrows, tied around with a spotted snake skin. This done, he straightened himself, folded his arms, and looked disdainfully upon the white men.
"Well, what has gone amiss withhisdigestion!" exclaimed Giles, aloud.
His father shook his head at him. "How do you construe this act and manner, Squanto? Surely it portendeth trouble."
"It is war," said Squanto. "Arrows tied by snake skin means no friend; war."
"Perhaps we would do well to let it lie; picking it up may mean acceptance of the challenge, as if it were a glove in a tourney. The customs of men run amazingly together, though race and education separate them," suggested Myles Standish.
"Squanto, take this defiant youngster out of here, and treat him politely; see that he is fed and given a place to sleep. Tell him that we will answer him——By your approval, Governor and gentlemen?"
"You have anticipated my own suggestion, Captain Standish," said William Bradford bowing, and Squanto, who understood more than he could put into words, spoke rapidly to the Narragansett messenger and led him away.
"Shall we deliberate upon this, being conveniently assembled?" suggested Governor Bradford.
"It needs small consideration, meseems," said Myles Standish, impatiently. "Dismiss this messenger at once; do not let him remain here over night. The less your foe knows of you, the more your mystery will increase his dread of you. In the morning send a messenger of our own to the Narragansetts, and tell them that if they want war, war be it. If they prefer war to peace, let them begin upon the war at once; that we no more fear them than we have wronged them, and as they choose, so would we deal with them, as friends worth keeping, or foes to fear."
"Admirable advice," Stephen Hopkins applauded the captain, and the other Plymouth men echoed his applause.
Then, with boyish impetuosity and with laughter lighting up his handsome face, Giles leaped to his feet.
"Now do I know the answer!" he cried. "Let the words be as our captain hath spoken; no one could utter better! But there is a further answer! Empty their snakeskin of arrows and fill it round with bullets, and throw it down among them, as they threw their pretty toy down to us! And our stuffing of it will have a bad flavour to their palates, mark me. It will be like filling a Christmas goose with red peppers, and if it doesn't send the Narragansetts away from the table they were setting for us, then is not my name Giles Hopkins! And one more word, my elders and masters! Let me be your messenger to the Narragansetts, I beseech you! They sent a youth to us; send you this youth back to them. If it be hauteur against hauteur, pride for pride, I'll bear me like the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown, both together, in one person. See whether or not I can strike the true defiant attitude!"
With which, eyes sparkling with fun and excitement, head thrown back, Giles struck an attitude, folding his arms and spreading his feet, looking at once so boyish and so handsome that with difficulty Constance held her clasped hands from clapping him.
"Truth, friend Stephen, your lad hath an idea!" said Myles Standish, delightedly.
"It could not be better. Conceived in true harmony with the savages' message to us, and carrying conviction of our sincerity to them at the first glimpse of it! By all means let us do as Giles suggests."
There was not a dissentient voice in the entire assembly; indeed everyone was highly delighted with the humour of it.
There was some objection to allowing Giles to be the messenger, but here Captain Standish stood his friend, though Constance looked at him reproachfully for helping Giles into this risky business.
"Let the lad go, good gentlemen," he said. "Giles hath been with me on these recent explorations, and hath borne himself with fortitude, courage, and prudence. He longs to play a man's part among us; let him have the office of messenger to the Narragansetts, and go thither in the early morning, at dawn. We will dismiss their youth at once, and follow him with our better message without loss of time."
So it was decided, and in high feather Giles returned to his home, Damaris on his shoulder, Constance walking soberly at his side, half sharing his triumph in his mission, half frightened lest her brother had but returned from unknown dangers to encounter worse ones.
"Oh, they'll not harm me, timorous Con!" Giles assured her. "They know that it is prudent to let lie the sleeping English bulldogs, of whom, trust me, they know by repute! Now, Sis, can you deck me out in some wise impressive to these savages, who will not see the dignity of our sober dress as we do?"
"Feathers?" suggested Constance, abandoning her anxiety to enter into this phase of the mission. "I think feathers in your hat, Giles, and some sort of a bright sash across your breast, all stuck through with knives? I will get knives from Pris and some of the others. And—oh, I know, Giles! That crimson velvet cloak that was our mother's, hung backward from your shoulder! Splendid, Giles; splendid enough for Sir Walter Raleigh himself to wear at Elizabeth's court, or to spread for her to walk upon."
"It promises well, Sis, in sound, at least," said Giles. "But by all that's wise, help me to carry this paraphernalia ready to don at a safe distance from Plymouth, and by no means betray to our solemn rulers how I shall be decked out!"
The sun was still two hours below his rising when Giles started, the crimson velvet cloak in a bag, his matchlock, or rather Myles Standish's matchlock lent Giles for the expedition, slung across his shoulder, a sword at his side, and the plumes fastened into his hat by Constance's needle and thread, but covered with another hat which surmounted his own.
Constance had arisen, also, and went with Giles a little way upon his journey. Stephen Hopkins had blessed him and bidden him farewell on the preceding night, not to make too much of his setting forth.
At the boundary which they had agreed upon, Constance kissed her brother good-bye, removing his second hat, and dressing the plumes crushed below it.
"Good-bye, my dear one," she said. "And hasten back to me, for I cannot endure delay of your return. And you look splendid, my Knight of the Wilderness, even without the crimson cloak. But see to it that you make it swing back gloriously, and wave it in the dazzled eyes of the Narragansetts!"
You look splendid, my knight of the wilderness
"'You look splendid, my knight of the wilderness'"
Thus with another kiss, Constance turned back singing, to show to Giles how little she feared for him, and half laughing to herself, for she was still very young, and they had managed between them to give this important errand much of the effect of a boy-and-girl, masquerading frolic.
Yet, always subject to sudden variations of spirits, Constance had not gone far before she sat down upon a rock and cried heartily. Then, having sung and wept over Giles, she went sedately homeward to await his return in a mood that savoured of both extremes with which she had parted from him.
The waiting was tedious, but it was not long. Sooner than she had dared to hope for him, Giles came marching back to her, and as he sang as he came, at the top of a lusty voice, Plymouth knew before he could tell it that his errand had been successful.
Giles went straight to Governor Bradford's house, whither those who had seen and heard him coming followed him.
"There is our gift of war rejected," said Giles, throwing down the spotted snakeskin, still bulging with its bullets. "They would have naught of it, but picked it up and gave it back to me with much air of solicitude, and with many words, which I could not understand, but which I doubt not were full of the warmest love for us English. And I was glad to get back the stuffed snakeskin and our good bullets, for here, so far from supplies, bullets are bullets, and if any of our red neighbours did attack us we could not afford to have lessened our stock in object lessons. All's well that ends well—where have I heard that phrase? Father, isn't it in a book of yours?" Giles concluded, innocently unconscious that he was walking on thin ice in alluding to a play of Shakespeare's, and his father's possession of it.
"You have done well, Giles Hopkins," said Governor Bradford, heartily, "both in your conception of this message, and in your bearing it to the Narragansetts. And so from them we have no more to fear?"
"No more whatever," said Giles.
"Nevertheless, from this day let us build a stockade around the town, and close our gates at night, appointing sentinels to take shifts of guarding us," said Myles Standish. "This incident hath shown me that the outlying savages are not securely to be trusted. I have long thought that we should organize into military form. I want four squadrons of our men, each squadron given a quarter of the town to guard; I want pickets planted around us, and at any alarm, as of danger from fire or foe, I want these Plymouth companies to be ready to fly to rescue."
"It shall be as you suggest, Captain," said Governor Bradford. "These things are for you to order, and the wisdom of this is obvious."
Constance and Giles walked home together, Constance hiding beneath her gown the plumes which she had first fastened into, then ripped out of Giles's hat.
"It is a delight to see you thus bearing your part in the affairs of Plymouth, Giles, dearest," she said. "And what fun this errand must have been!"
Giles turned on her a pain-drawn face.
"So it was, Constance, and I did like it," he said. "But how I wish Jack Billington had been with me! He was a brave lad, Constance, and a true friend. He was unruly, but he was not wicked, and the strict ways here irked him. Oh, I wish he had been here to do this service instead of me! I miss him, miss him."
Giles stopped abruptly, and Constance gently touched his arm. Giles had not spoken before of Jack's death, and she had not dared allude to it.
"I am sorry, too, dear Giles," she whispered, and Giles acknowledged her sympathy by a touch upon her hand, while his other hand furtively wiped away the tears that manhood forbade the boy to let fall.