Giles took a new place in Plymouth after his embassy to the Narragansetts. No longer a boy among his fellow pilgrims, he fulfilled well and busily the offices that were his as one of the younger, yet mature men.
He was given the discipline of the squadron, that, pursuant to Captain Standish's plan for guarding the settlement, was the largest and controlled the most important gate of the stockade which was rapidly put up around the boundary of Plymouth after the defiance of the Narragansetts. Though that had come to naught, it had warned the colonists that danger might arise at an unforeseen moment.
There was scarcity of provisions for the winter, the thirty-five destitute persons left the colony by theFortunebeing a heavy additional drain upon its supplies. Everyone was put upon half rations, and it devolved upon Giles and John Alden to apportion each family's share. It was hard to subsist through the bitter weather upon half of what would, at best, have been a slender nourishment, yet the Plymouth people faced the outlook patiently, uncomplainingly, and Giles, naturally hot-headed, impatient, got more benefit than he gave when he handed out the rations and saw the quiet heroism of their acceptance.
He grew to be a silent Giles, falling into the habit of thoughtfulness, with scant talk, that was the prevailing manner of the Plymouth men. Between his father and himself there was friendliness, the former opposition between them, mutual annoyance, and irritation, were gone. Yet there they halted, not resuming the intimacy of Giles's childhood days. It was as if there were a reserve, rather of embarrassment than of lack of love; as if something were needed to jostle them into closer intercourse.
Constance saw this, and waited, convinced that it would come, glad in the perfect confidence that she felt existed between them.
She was a busy Constance in these days. The warmth of September held through that November, brooding, slumberous, quiet in the sunshine that warmed like wine.
Constance and her stepmother cut and strung the few vegetables which they had, and hung them in the sunny corner of the empty attic room.
They spread out corn and pumpkins upon the floor, instructing the willing Lady Fair to see to it that mice did not steal them.
Dame Eliza, also, had grown comparatively silent. Her long tirades were wanting; she showed no softening toward Constance, yet she let her alone. Constance thought that something was on her stepmother's mind, but she did not try to discover what—glad of the new sparing of her sharp tongue, having no expectation of anything better than this from her.
Damaris had been sent with the other children to be instructed in the morning by Mrs. Brewster in sampler working and knitting; by her husband in the Westminster catechism, and the hornbook.
In the afternoon Damaris was allowed to play quietly at keeping house, with Love Brewster, who was a quiet child and liked better to play at being a pilgrim, and making a house with Damaris, than to share in the boys' games.
"Where do you go, lambkin?" Constance asked her. "For we must know where to find you, nor must it be far from the house."
"It is just down by that little patch, Connie; it's as nice as it can be, and it is the safest place in Plymouth, I'm sure," Damaris assured her earnestly. "You see there is a woods, and a hollow, and a big, big, great tree, and its roots go all out, every way, and we live in them, because they are rooms already; don't you see? And it's nice and damp—but you don't get your feet wet!" Damaris anticipated the objection which she saw in Constance's eye. "It's only—only—soft, gentle damp; not wetness, and moss grows there, as green as green can be, and feathery! And on the tree are nice little yellow plates, with brown edges! Growing on it! And we play they are our best plates that we don't use every day, because they are soft-like, and we didn't care to touch them when we did it. But they make the prettiest best plates in the cupboard, for they grow, in rows, with their edges over the next one, just the way you set up our plates in the corner cupboard. So please don't think it isn't a nice place, Constance, because it is, and I'd feel terribly afflicted, and cast down, and as nothing, if I couldn't go there with Love."
Constance smiled at the child's quoting of the phrases which she had heard in the long sermons that Elder Brewster read, or delivered to them twice on Sunday, there being no minister yet come to Plymouth.
"You little echo!" Constance cried. "It surely would be a matter to move one's pity if you suffered so deeply as that in the loss of your playground! Well, dear, till the warmth breaks up I suppose you may keep your house with Love, but promise to leave it if you feel chilly there. We must trust you so far. Art going there now?"
"Yes, dear Constance. You have a heart of compassion and I love you with all of mine," said Damaris, expressing herself again like a little Puritan, but hugging her sister with the natural heartiness of a loving child.
Then she ran away, and Constance, taking her capacious darning bag on her arm, went to bear Priscilla Alden company at her mending, as she often did when no work about the house detained her.
Giles came running down the road when the afternoon had half gone, his face white. "Con, come home!" he cried, bursting open the door. "Hasten! Damaris is strangely ill."
Constance sprang up, throwing her work in all directions, and Priscilla sprang up with her. Without stopping to pick up a thread, the two girls went with Giles.
"I don't know what it is," Giles said, in reply to Constance's questions. "Love Brewster came running to Dame Hopkins, crying that Damaris was sick and strange. She followed him to the children's playground, and carried the child home. She is like to die; convulsions and every sign of poison she has, but what it is, what to do, no one knows. The women are there, but Doctor Fuller, as you know, is gone to a squaw who is suffering sore, and we could not bring him, even if we knew where he was, till it was too late. They have done all that they can recall for such seizures, but the child grows worse."
"Oh, Giles!" groaned Constance. "She hath eaten poison. What has Doctor Fuller told me of these things? If only I can remember! All I can think of is that he hath said different poisons require different treatment. Oh, Giles, Giles!"
"Steady, Sister; it may be that you can help," said Giles. "It had not occurred to any one how much the doctor had told you of his methods. Perhaps Love will know what Damaris touched."
"There is Love, sitting crouched in the corner of the garden plot, his head on his knees, poor little Love!"
Constance broke into a run and knelt beside the little boy, who did not look up as she put her arms around him.
"Love, Love, dear child, if you can tell me what Damaris ate perhaps God will help me cure her," she said. "Look up, and be brave and help me. Did you see Damaris eat anything that you did not eat with her?"
"Little things that grow around the big tree where it is wetter, we picked for our furniture," Love said at once. "Damaris said you cooked them and they were good. So then she said we would play some of them was furniture, and some of them was our dinner. And I didn't eat them, for they were like thin leather, only soft, and I felt of them, and couldn't eat them. But Damaris did eat them."
"Toadstools!" cried Constance with a gasp. "Toadstools, Love! Did they look like little tables? And did Damaris call them mushrooms?"
"Yes, like little tables," Love nodded his head hard. "All full underneath with soft crimped——"
But Constance waited for no more. With a cry she was on her feet and running like the wind, calling back over her shoulder to Giles:
"I'll come quick! I know! I know! Tell Father I know!"
"She hath gone to Doctor Fuller's house," said Priscilla, watching Constance's flying figure, her hair unbound and streaming like a burnished banner behind her as she ran to get her weapon to fight with Death. "No girl ever ran as she can. Come, Giles; obey her. Tell your father and Mistress Hopkins that mayhap Constance can save the child."
They turned toward the house, and Constance sped on.
"Nightshade! The belladonna!" she was saying to herself as she ran. "I know the phial; I know its place. O, God, give me time, and give me wit, and do Thou the rest!" Past power to explain, she swept aside with a vehement arm the woman who found needed shelter for herself in Doctor Fuller's house, and kept it for him till his wife should come to Plymouth.
Into the crude laboratory and pharmacy—in which the doctor had allowed her to work with him, of the contents of which he had taught her so much for an emergency that she had little dreamed would so closely affect herself when it came—Constance flew, and turned to the shelf where stood, in their dark phials, the few poisons which the doctor kept ready to do beneficent work for him.
"Belladonna, belladonna, the beautiful lady," Constance murmured, in the curious way that minds have of seizing words and dwelling on them with surface insistence, while the actual mind is intensely working on a vital matter.
She took down the wrong phial first, and set it back impatiently.
"There should be none other like belladonna," she said aloud, and took down the phial she sought. To be sure that she was right, though it was labelled in the doctor's almost illegible small writing, she withdrew the cork. She knew the sickening odour of the nightshade which she had helped distil, an odour that dimly recalled a tobacco that had come to her father in England in her childhood from some Spanish colony, as she had been told, and also a wine that her stepmother made from wild berries.
Constance shuddered as she replaced the cork.
"It sickens me, but if only it will restore little Damaris!" she thought.
Holding the phial tight Constance hastened away, and, her breath still coming painfully, she broke into her swift race homeward, diminishing nothing of her speed in coming, her great purpose conquering the pain that oppressed her labouring breast.
When she reached her home her father was watching for her in the doorway. He took her hands in both of his without a word, covering the phial which she clasped, and looking at her questioningly.
"I hope so; oh, I hope so, Father!" she said. "The doctor told me."
Stephen Hopkins led her into the house; Dame Eliza met her within.
"Constance? Connie?" Thus Mistress Hopkins implored her to do her best, and to allow her to hope.
"Yes, yes, Mother," Constance replied to the prayer, and neither noted that they spoke to each other by names that they had never used before.
The first glimpse that Constance had of Damaris on the bed sent all the blood back against her heart with a pang that made her feel faint. It did not seem possible that she was in time, even should her knowledge be correct.
The child lay rigid as Constance's eyes fell on her; her lips and cheeks were ghastly, her long hair heightening the awful effect of her deathly colour. Frequent convulsions shook her body, her struggling breathing alone broke the stillness of the room.
"She is quieter, but it is not that she is better," whispered Dame Eliza.
Priscilla Alden stood ready with a spoon and glass in one hand, water in a small ewer in the other, always the efficient, sensible girl when needed.
Constance accepted the glass, took from it the spoon, gave the glass back to Priscilla and poured from the dark phial into the spoon the dose of belladonna that Doctor Fuller had explained to her would be proper to use in an extreme case of danger.
"How wonderful that he should have told me particularly about toadstool poisoning, yet it is because of the children," Constance's dual mind was saying to her, even while she poured the remedy and prayed with all her might for its efficacy.
"Open her mouth," she said to her father, and he obeyed her. Constance poured the belladonna down Damaris's throat.
Even after the first dose the child's rigor relaxed before a long time had passed. The dose was repeated; the early dusk of the grayest month closed down upon the watchers in that room. The neighbours slipped away to their own homes and duties; night fell, and Stephen Hopkins, his wife, Giles, and Constance stood around that bed, feeling no want of food, watching, watching the gradual cessation of the wracking convulsions, the relaxation of the stiffened little limbs, the fall of the strained eyelids, the quieter breathing, the changing tint of the skin as the poison loosed its grip upon the poor little heart and the blood began to course languidly, but duly, through the congested veins.
"Constance, she is safe!" Stephen Hopkins ventured at last to say as Damaris turned on her side with a long, refreshing breath.
Giles went quickly from the room, and Constance turned to her father with sudden weakness that made her faint.
Constance swayed as she stood and her father caught her in his arms, tenderly drawing her head down on his shoulder, as great rending sobs shook her from relief and the accumulated exhaustion of hunger, physical weariness, anxiety, and grief.
"Brave little lass!" Stephen Hopkins whispered, kissing her again and again. "Brave, quick-witted, loving, wise little lass o' mine!"
Dame Eliza spoke never a word, but on her knees, with her head buried in the bright patch bedspread, one of Damaris's cold little hands laid across her lips, she wept as Constance had never dreamed that her stepmother could weep.
"Better look after her, Father," Constance whispered, alarmed. "She will do herself a mischief, poor soul! Mother, oh—she loves me not! Father, comfort her; I will rest, and then I shall be my old self."
"You did not notice that Priscilla had come back," her father said. "She is in the kitchen, and the kettle is singing on the hob. Go, dear one, and Priscilla will give you food and warm drink. Let me help you there. My Constance, Damaris would be far beyond our love by now had you not saved her. You have saved her life, Constance! What do we not all owe to you?"
"It was Doctor Fuller. He taught me. He is wise, and knew that children might take harm from toadstools, playing in the woods as ours do. It was not due to me that Damaris was saved," Constance said.
She was not conscious of how heavily she leaned on her father's arm, which lovingly enfolded her, leading her to the big chair in the inglenook. The fire leaped and crackled; the steam from the singing kettle on the crane showed rosy red in the firelight; Hecate, Puck, and Lady Fair basked in the warmth, and Priscilla Alden knelt on the hearth stirring something savoury in the saucepan that sat among the raked-off ashes, while John Alden, who had brought Priscilla back to be useful to the worn-out household, sat on the settle, leaning forward, elbows on knees, the bellows between his hands, ready to pump up wind under a flame that might show a sign of flagging.
"Dear me, how cosy it looks!" exclaimed Constance, involuntarily, her drooping muscles tautening to welcome the brightness waiting for her. "It does not seem as though there ever could come a sorrow to threaten a hearthstone so shut in, so well tended as this one!"
"It did not come, my dear; it only looked in at the window, and when it saw the tended hearth, and how well-armed you were to grapple with it, off it went!" cried Priscilla, drawing Constance into the high-backed chair. "Feet on this stool, my pretty, and this napery over your knees! That's right! Now this bowl and spoon, and then your Pris will pour her hot posset into your bowl, and you must shift it into your sweet mouth, and we'll be as right as a trivet, instanter!"
Priscilla acted as she chattered, and Constance gladly submitted to being taken care of, lying back smiling in weary, happy acquiescence.
Priscilla's posset was a heartening thing, and Constance after it, munched blissfully on a biscuit and sipped the wine that had been made of elder too brief a time before, yet which was friendly to her, nevertheless.
Constance's lids drooped in the warmth, her head nodded, her fingers relaxed. Priscilla caught her glass just in time as it was falling, and Constance slept beside the fire while John and Priscilla crept away, and Giles came to take their place, to keep up the blaze in case a kettle of hot water might be needed when Damaris wakened from her first restoring sleep.
At dawn Doctor Fuller came in and Constance aroused to welcome him.
"Child, what an experience you have borne!" the good man said, bending with a moved face to greet Constance. "To think that I should have been absent! Your practice was more successful than mine; the squaw is dead. And you remembered my teaching, and saved the child with the nightshade we gathered and distilled that fair day, more than two months ago! 'Twas a lesson well conned!"
"'Twas a lesson well taught," Constance amended. "Sit here, Doctor Fuller, and let me call my father. You will see Damaris? And her mother is in need of a quieting draught, I think. The poor soul was utterly spent when last I saw her, though I've selfishly slept, nor known aught of what any one else might be bearing."
Constance slipped softly through the door as she spoke, into the bedroom where Damaris lay. The little girl was sleeping, but her mother lay across her feet, her gloomy eyes staring at the wall, her face white and mournful.
"Doctor Fuller is come, Stepmother," whispered Constance. "Shall he not see Damaris? And you, have you not slept?"
"Not a wink," said Dame Eliza, rising heavily. "To me it is as if Damaris had died, and that that child there was another. I bore the agony of parting from her, and now must abide by it, meseems, for I cannot believe that she is here and safe. Constance, it is to you——." She stopped and began again. "I was ever fond of calling you your father's daughter, making plain that I had no part in you. It was true; none have I, nor ever can have. But in my child you have the right of sister, and the restorer of her life. Damaris's mother, and Damaris is your father's other daughter, is heavily in your debt. I do not know——." She paused. She had spoken slowly, with difficulty, as if she could not find the words, nor use them as she wished to when she had found them. Young as she was, Constance saw that her stepmother was labouring under the stress of profound emotion, that tore her almost like a physical agony.
"Now, now, prithee, Mistress Hopkins!" cried Constance, purposely using her customary title for her stepmother, to avoid the effect of there being anything out of the ordinary between them. "Bethink thee that I have loved Damaris dearly all her short life, and that her loss would have wounded me hardly less than it would have you. What debt can there be where there is love? Would I not have sacrificed anything to keep the child, even for myself? And what have I done but remember what the doctor taught me, and give her drops? Do not, I pray thee, make of my selfishness and natural affection a matter of merit! And now the doctor is waiting. Will you not go to him and let him treat you, too?—for indeed you need it. And he will tell you how best to bring Damaris back to her strength. I am going out into the morning air, for my long sleep by the hot fire hath made me heavy. I will be back in a short time to help with breakfast, Stepmother!"
Constance snatched her cloak and ran out by the other door to escape seeing the doctor again and hearing her stepmother dilate to him upon the night's events.
The sun was rising, resplendent, but the air was cold.
"And no wonder!" Constance thought, startled by her discovery. "Winter is upon us; to-day is December! Our warmth must leave us, and then will danger of poisoning be past, even in sheltered spots, such as that in which our little lass near found her death!"
She spread her arms out to the sun rays, and let the crisp, sea wind cool her face.
"What a world! What a world! How fair, how glad, how sweet! Oh, thank God that it is so to us all this morning! Never will I repine at hardships in kind Plymouth colony, nor at the cost of coming on this pilgrimage, for of all the world in Merry England there is none to-day happier or more grateful than is this pilgrim maid!"
Little Damaris, who had so nearly made the last great pilgrimage upon which we must all go, having turned her face once more toward the world she had been quitting, resumed her place in it but languidly. Never a robust child, her slender strength was impaired by the poison which she had absorbed. Added to this was the sudden coming of winter upon Plymouth, not well prepared to resist it, and it set in with violence, as if to atone for dallying on its way, for allowing summer to overlap its domain. Without a word to each other both Dame Eliza and Constance entered into an alliance of self-denial, doing without part of the more nourishing food out of their scanty allowance to give it to Damaris, and to plot in other ways to bring her back to health.
Constance scarcely knew her stepmother. Silent, where she had been prone to talk; patient, where she had been easily vexed; with something almost deprecatory in her manner where she always had been self-assertive, Dame Eliza went about her round of work like a person whom her husband's daughter had never known.
Toward Constance most of all was she changed. Never by the most remote implication did she blame her, whereas heretofore everything that the girl did was wrong, and the subject of wearisome, scolding comment. She avoided unnecessary speech to Constance, seemed even to try not to look at her, but this without the effect of her old-time dislike; it was rather as if she felt humiliated before her, and could not bring herself to meet the girl's eyes.
Constance, as she realized this, began to make little overtures toward her stepmother. Her sweetness of nature made her suffer discomfort when another was ill-at-ease, but so far her cautious attempts had met with failure.
"We have been in Plymouth a year, lacking but a sen' Night, Stepmother," Constance said one December day when the snow lay white on Plymouth and still thickened the air and veiled the sky. "And we have been in the New World past a year."
"It is ordered that we remember it in special prayer and psalmody to the Lord, with thanksgiving on the anniversary of our landing; you heard that, Constantia?" her stepmother responded.
"No, but that would be seemly, a natural course to follow," said Constance.
"There is not one of us who is not reliving the voyage hither and the hard winter of a year ago, I'll warrant. And Christmas is nearing."
"That is a word that may not be uttered here," said Dame Eliza with a gleam of humour in her eyes, though she did not lift them, and a flitting smile across her somewhat grimly set lips.
"Oh, can it be harmful to keep the day on which, veiled in an infant's form, man first saw his redemption?" cried Constance. "There were sweetness and holiness in Christmas-keeping, meseems. If only we could cut out less violently! Stepmother, will you let me have my way?"
"Your way is not in my guidance, Constantia," said Dame Eliza. "It is for your father to grant you, or refuse you; not me."
"This is beyond my father's province," laughed Constance. "Will you let me make a doll—I have my box of paints, and you know that a gift for using paints and for painting human faces is mine. I will make a doll of white rags and dress her in our prettiest coloured ones, with fastenings upon her clothes, so that they may be taken off and changed, else would she be a trial to her little mother! And then I will paint her face with my best skill, big blue eyes, curling golden hair, rose-red cheeks and lips, and a fine, straight little nose. Oh, she shall be a lovely creature, upon my honour! And will you let me give her to Damaris on Christmas morning, saying naught of it to any one outside this house, so no one shall rebuke us, or fine my father again for letting his child have a Christmas baby, as they fined him for letting Ted and Ned play at a harmless game? Then I shall know that there is one happy child on the birthday of Him who was born that all children, of all ages, should be happy, and that it will be, of all the possible little ones, our dear little lass who is thus full of joy!"
Mistress Hopkins did not reply for a moment. Then she raised the corner of her apron and wiped her eyes, muttering something about "strong mustard."
"How fond you are of my little Damaris," she then said. "You know, Constantia, that I have no right to consent to your keeping Christmas, since our elders have set their faces dead against all practices of the Old Church. Yet are your reasons for wishing to do this, or so it seems to me in my ignorance, such as Heaven would approve, and it sorely is borne upon me that many worser sins may be wrought in Plymouth than making a delicate child happy on the birthday of the Lord. Go, then, and make your puppet, but do not tell any one that you first consulted me. If trouble comes of it they will blame you less, who are young and not so long removed from the age of dolls, than me, who am one of the Mothers in Israel."
"Oh, thank you, thank you, Stepmother!" cried Constance jumping up and clapping her hands with greater delight than if she had herself received a Christmas gift.
"I'll never betray you, never! None shall know that any but my wicked, light-minded self had a hand in this profanation of——. What does it profane, Stepmother?"
"Plymouth and Plymouth pilgrimage," said Dame Eliza, and this time the smile that she had checked before had its way.
Constance ran upstairs to look for the pieces which were to be transformed by fairy magic, through her means, from shapeless rags to a fair and rosy daughter for pale Damaris. She remembered, wondering, as she knelt before her chest, that she had clapped her hands and pranced, and that Dame Eliza had not reproved her.
Constance was busy with her doll till Christmas morning, the more so that she must hide it from Damaris and there was not warmth anywhere to sit and sew except in the great living room where Damaris amused Oceanus most of the darksome days. But Damaris's mother connived with Constance to divert the child, and there were long evenings, for, to give Constance more time, Dame Eliza put Damaris early to bed, and Constance sat late at her sewing.
Thus when Christmas day came there sat on the hearth, propped up against the back of Stephen Hopkins's big volume of Shakespeare, a doll with a painted face that had real claim to prettiness. She wore a gown of sprigged muslin that hung so full around the pointed stomacher of her waist that it was a scandal to sober Plymouth, and a dangerous example to Damaris, had she been inclined to vain light-mindedness. And—though this was a surprise also to Dame Eliza—there was a horse of brown woollen stuff, with a tail of fine-cut rags and a mane of ravelled rags, and legs which, though considerably curved as to shape and unreliable as to action, were undeniably legs, and four in number. There were bright, black buttons on the steed's head suggestive of eyes, and the red paint in two spots below them were all the fiery nostrils the animal required. This was Giles's contribution to the joy of his ailing baby brother. Oceanus was a frail child whose grasp on life had been taken at a time too severe for him to hold it long, nor indeed did he.
"Come out and wander down the street, Con," Giles whispered to Constance under the cover of the shouts of the two children who had come downstairs to find the marvellous treasures, the doll and horse, awaiting them, and who went half mad with joy, just like modern children in old Plymouth, as if they had not been little pilgrims.
"There will be amusement for thee; come out, but never say I bade you come. You can make an errand."
"Oh, Giles, you are not plotting mischief?" Constance implored, seeing the fun in her brother's eyes and fearing an attempt at Christmas fooling.
"No harm afoot, but we hope a little laughter," said Giles, nodding mysteriously as he left the house.
Constance could not resist her curiosity. She wrapped herself in her cloak against the cold and tied a scarf over her hair, before drawing its hood over her head.
"You look like a witch, like a sweet, lovely witch," cried Damaris, getting up from her knees on which she had seemed, and not unjustly, to be worshipping her doll, whom she had at once christened Connie, and running over to hug her sister, breathless. "Are you a witch, Constance, and made my Connie by magic? No, a fairy! A fairy you are! My fairy, darling, lovely sister!"
"Be grateful to Constantia, as you should be, Damaris, but prate not of fairies. I will not let go undone all my duty as a Puritan and pilgrim mother. Constantia is a kind sister to you, which is better, than a fairy falsehood," said Dame Eliza, rallying something of her old spirit.
Constance kissed Damaris and whispered something to her so softly that all the child caught was "Merry." Yet the lost word was not hard to guess.
Then Constance went out and down the street, wondering what Giles had meant. She saw a small group of men before her, near the general storehouse for supplies, and easily made out that they were the younger men of the plantation, including those that had come on theFortune, and that Giles and Francis Billington were to the fore.
Up the street in his decorous raiment, but without additional marking of the day by his better cloak as on Sunday, came Governor Bradford with his unhastening pace not quickened, walking with his English thorn stick that seemed to give him extra, gubernatorial dignity, toward the group. The younger lads nudged one another, laughing, half afraid, but not Giles. He stood awaiting the governor as if he faced him for a serious cause, yet Constance saw that his eyes danced.
"Good morning, my friends," said William Bradford. "Not at work? You are apportioned to the building of the stockade. It is late to begin your day, especially that the sun sets early at this season."
"It is because of the season, though not of the sun's setting, that we are not at work," said Giles, chosen spokesman for this prank by his fellows, and now getting many nudges lest he neglect his office. "Hast forgotten, Mr. Bradford, what day this is? It offends our conscience to work on a day of such high reverence. This be a holy day, and we may not work without sin, as the inward voice tells us. We waited to explain to you what looked like idleness, but is rather prompted by high and lofty principles."
The governor raised his eyebrows and bowed deeply, not without a slight twitching of his lips, as he heard this unexpected and solemn protest.
"Indeed, Giles Hopkins! And is it so? You have in common with these, your fellow labourers, a case of scruples to which the balm of the opinions of your elders and betters, at least in experience and authority, does not apply? Far be it from me to interfere with your consciences! We have come to the New World, and braved no slight adversity for just this cause, that conscience unbridled, undriven, might guide us in virtue. Disperse, therefore, to your homes, and for the day let the work of protection wait. I bid you good morning, gentlemen, and pray you be always such faithful harkeners to the voice of conscience."
The governor went on, having spoken, and the actors in the farce looked crestfallen at one another, the point of the jest somewhat blunted by the governor's complete approval. Indeed there were some among them who followed the governor. He turned back, hoping for this, and said:
"This is not done to approve of Christmas-keeping but rather to spare you till you are better informed."
"What will you do, Giles?" asked Constance, as her brother joined her, Francis also, not in the least one with those who relinquished the idea of a holiday.
"Do? Why follow our consciences, as we were commended for doing!" shouted Francis tossing his hat in the air and catching it neatly on his head in the approved fashion of a mountebank at a fair in England.
"Our consciences bid us play at games on Christmas," supplemented Giles. "Would you call the girls and watch us? Or we'll play some games that you can join in, such as catch-catch, or pussy-wants-a-corner."
Constance shook her head. "Giles, be prudent," she warned. "You have won your first point, but if I know the governor's face there was something in it that betokened more to come. You know there'll be no putting up with games on any day here, least of all on this day, which would be taken as a return to abandoned ways. Yet it is comical!" Constance added, finding her rôle of mentor irksome when all her youth cried out for fun.
"Good Con! You are no more ready for unbroken dulness than we are!" Francis approved her. "Come along, Giles; get the bar for throwing, and the ball, and who said pitch-and-toss? I have a set of rings I made, I and—someone else." Francis's face clouded. Pranks had lost much of their flavour since he lacked Jack.
Seeing this, Giles raced Francis off, and the other conscientious youths who refused work, streamed after them.
Constance continued her way to the Alden home. She thought that a timely visit to Priscilla would bring her home at such an hour as to let her see the end of the morning escapade.
Elizabeth Tilley drifted into Priscilla's kitchen in an aimless way, not like her usual busy self, although she made the reason for her coming a recipe which she needed. Soon Desire Minter followed her, asking Priscilla if she would show her how to cut an apron from a worn-out skirt, but, like Elizabeth, Desire seemed listless and uncertain.
"There's something wrong!" cried Desire at last, without connection. "There is a sense of there being Christmas in the world somewhere to-day, and not here! I am glad that I go back to England as soon as opportunity offers."
"There is Christmas here, most conscientiously kept!" laughed Constance. "Hark to the tale of it!" And she told the girls what had happened that morning.
"Come with me, bear me company home, and we shall, most probably, see the end of it, for I am sure that the governor is not done with those lads," she added.
Desire and Elizabeth welcomed the suggestion, for they were, also, about to go home.
"See yonder!" cried Constance, pointing.
Down the street there was what, in Plymouth, constituted a crowd, gathered into two bands. With great shouting and noise one band was throwing a ball, which the other band did its utmost to prevent from entering a goal toward which the throwers directed it. Alone, one young man was throwing a heavy bar, taking pride in his muscles which balanced the bar and threw it a long distance with ease and grace.
"To think that this is Plymouth, with merrymaking in its street on Christmas day!" exclaimed Desire, her eyes kindling with pleasure.
"Ah, but see the governor is coming, leading back those men who went to work; he has himself helped to build the stockade. Now we shall see how he receives this queer idea of a holiday, which is foreign to us, though it comes from England," said Constance.
Governor Bradford came toward the shouting and mirth-making with his dignified gait unvaried. The game slackened as he drew nearer, though some of the players did their best to keep it up at the same pace, not to seem to dread the governor's disapproval.
Having gained the centre of the players, the governor halted, and looked from one to another.
"Hand me that ball, and yonder bar, and all other implements of play which you have here," he said, sternly. "My friends," he added to the men who had been at work, "take from our idlers their toys."
There was no resistance on the part of the players; they yielded up bats, ball, and bar, the stool-ball, goal sticks, and all else, without demur, curious to see what was in the wind.
"Now, young men of Plymouth colony," said Governor Bradford, "this morning you told me that your consciences forbade you to work on Christmas day. Although I could not understand properly trained Puritan consciences going so astray, yet did I admit your plea, not being willing to force you to do that which there was a slender chance of your being honest in objecting to, for conscience sake. You have not worked with your neighbours for half of this day. Now doth my conscience arouse, nor will it allow me, as governor, to see so many lusty men at play, while others labour for our mutual benefit. Therefore I forbid the slightest attempt at game-playing on this day. If your consciences will not allow you to labour then will mine, though exempting you from work because of your sense of right, yet not allow you to play while others work. For the rest of this day, which is called Christmas, but which we consider but as the twenty-fifth day of this last month of the year, you will either go to work, or you will remain close within your various houses, on no account to appear beyond your thresholds. For either this is a work-a-day afternoon, or else is it holy, which we by no means admit. In either case play is forbidden you. See to it that you obey me, or I will deal with you as I am empowered to deal."
The young men looked at one another, some inclined to resent this, others with a ready sense of humour, burst out laughing; among these latter was Giles, who cried:
"Fairly caught, Governor Bradford! You have played a Christmas game this day yourself and have won out at it! For me, as a choice between staying close within the house and working, I will take to the stockade. By your leave, then, Governor, I will join you at the work, dinner being over."
"You have my leave, Giles Hopkins," said William Bradford, and there was a twinkle in his eyes as he turned them, with no smile on his lips, upon Giles.
Giles went home with Constance in perfect good humour, taking the end of his mischief in good part.
"For look you," he said, summing up comments upon it to his sister. "I don't mind encountering defeat by clever outwitting of me. We tried a scheme and the governor had a better one. What I mind is unfairness; that was fair, and I like the governor better than I ever did before."
Stephen Hopkins stood in the doorway of the house as the brother and sister came toward it. He was gazing at the skyline with eyes that saw nothing near to him, preoccupied, wistful, in a mood that was rare to him, and never betrayed to others. His eyes came back to earth slowly, and he looked at Giles and Constance as one looks who has difficulty in seeing realities, so occupied was he with his thoughts. He put out a hand and took one of Constance's hands, drawing it up close to his breast, and he laid his left hand heavily on Giles's shoulder.
"Across that ocean it is Christmas day," he said, slowly. "In England people are sitting around their hearths mulling ale, roasting apples, singing old songs and carols. When I was young your mother and I rode miles across a dim forest, she on her pillion, I guiding a mettlesome beauty. But she had no fear with my hand on his bridle; we had been married but since Michaelmas. We went to visit your grandmother, her mother, Lady Constantia, who was a famous toast in her youth. You are very like your mother, Constance; I have often told you this. Strange, that one can inhabit the same body in such different places in a lifetime; stranger that, still in the same body, he can be such an altered man! Giles, my son, I have been thinking long thoughts to-day. There is something that I must say to you as your due; nay something, rather, that I want to say to you. I have been wrong, my son. I have loved you so well that a defect in you annoyed me, and I have been hard, impatient, offending against the charity in judgment that we owe all men, surely most those who are our nearest and dearest. I accused you unjustly, and gave you no opportunity to explain. Giles, as man to man, and as a father who failed you, I beg your pardon."
"Oh, sir! Oh, dear, dear Father!" cried Giles in distress. "It needed not this! All I ask is your confidence. I have been an arrogant young upstart, denying you your right to deal with me. It is I who am wrong, wrongest in that I have never confessed the wrong, and asked your forgiveness. Surely it is for me to beg your pardon; not you mine!"
"At least a good example is your due from me," said Stephen Hopkins, with a smile of wistful tenderness. "We are all upstarts, Giles lad, denying that we should receive correction, and this from a Greater than I. The least that we can do is to be willing to acknowledge our errors. With all my heart I forgive you, lad, and I ask you to try to love me, and let there be the perfect loving comradeship between us that, it hath seemed, we had left behind us on the other shore, just when it was most needed to sustain us in our venture on this one. You loved me well, Giles, as a child; love me as well as you can as a man."
Giles caught his father's hand in both of his, and was not ashamed that tears were streaming down his cheeks.
"Father, I never loved you till to-day!" he cried. "You have taught me true greatness, and—and—Oh, indeed I love and honour you, dear sir!"
"The day of good will, and of peace to it! And of love that triumphs over wrongs," said Stephen Hopkins, turning toward the house, and whimsically touching with his finger-tips the happy tears that quivered on Constance's lashes.
"We cannot keep it out of Plymouth colony, however we strive to erect barriers against the feast; Christmas wins, though outlawed!"
"God rest ye merry, gentlemen;Let nothing you dismay,"
Constance carolled as she hung up her cloak, her heart leaping in rapture of gratitude. Nor did Dame Eliza reprove her carol, but half smiled as Oceanus crowed and beat a pan wildly with his Christmas horse.
As the winter wore away, that second winter in Plymouth colony that proved so hard to endure, the new state of things in the Hopkins household continued. Constance could not understand her stepmother. Though the long habit of a lifetime could not be at once entirely abandoned, yet Dame Eliza scolded far less, and toward Constance herself maintained an attitude that was far from fault-finding. Indeed she managed to combine something like regretful deference that was not unlike liking, with a rigid keeping of her distance from the girl. Constance wondered what had come over Mistress Hopkins, but she was too thankful for the peace she enjoyed to disturb it by the least attempt to bridge the distance that Dame Eliza had established between them.
Her father and Giles were a daily delight to Constance. The comradeship that they had been so happy in when Giles was a child was theirs again, increased and deepened by the understanding that years had enabled Giles and his father to share as one man with another. And added to that was wistful affection, as if the older man and the younger one longed to make up by strength of love for the wasted days when all had not been right between them.
Constance watched them together with gladness shining upon her face. Dame Eliza also watched them, but with an expression that Constance could not construe. Certain it was that her stepmother was not happy, not sure of herself, as she had always been.
Oceanus was not well; he did not grow strong and rosy as did the otherMayflowerbaby, Peregrine White, though Oceanus was by this time walking and talking—a tall, thin, reed-like little baby, fashioned not unlike the long grasses that grew on Plymouth harbour shore. But Damaris had come back to health. She was Constance's charge; her mother yielded her to Constance and devoted herself to the baby, as if she had a presentiment of how brief a time she was to keep him.
It was a cruelly hard winter; except that there was not a second epidemic of mortal disease it was harder to the exiles than the first winter in Plymouth.
Hunger was upon them, not for a day, a week, or a month, but hourly and on all the days that rose and set upon the lonely little village, encompassed by nothing kinder than reaches of marsh, sand, and barrens that ended in forest; the monotonous sea that moaned against their coast and separated them from food and kin; and the winter sky that often smiled on them sunnily, it is true, but oftener was coldly gray, or hurling upon them bleak winds and driving snows.
From England had come on theFortunemore settlers to feed, but no food for them. Plymouth people were hungry, but they faithfully divided their scarcity with the new-comers and hoped that in the spring Mr. Weston, the agent in England who had promised them the greatest help and assured them of the liveliest interest in this heroic venture, would send them at least a fraction of the much he had pledged to its assistance.
So when the spring, that second spring, came in and brought a small ship there was the greatest excitement of hope in her coming. But all she brought was letters, and seven more passengers to consume the food already so shortened, but not an ounce of addition to the supplies. One letter was from Mr. Weston, filled with fair words, but so discouraging in its smooth avoidance of actual help that Governor Bradford dared not make its contents known, lest it should discourage the people, already sufficiently downhearted, and with more than enough reason to be so. There was a letter on this ship for Constance from Humility, and Governor Bradford beckoned to John Howland, standing near and said to him:
"Take this letter up to Mistress Constantia Hopkins, and ask her father to come to me, if it please him. Say to him that I wish to consult him."
"I will willingly do your bidding, Mr. Bradford," said John Howland, accepting the letter which the governor held out to him and turning it to see in all lights its yellowed folder and the seal thrice impressed along its edge to insure that none other than she whose name appeared written in a fine, running hand on the obverse side, should first read the letter. "In fact I have long contemplated a visit to Mistress Constantia. It hath seemed to me that Stephen Hopkins's daughter was growing a woman and a comely woman. She is not so grave as I would want her to be, but allowance must be made for her youth, and her father is not so completely, nor profoundly set free from worldliness as are our truer saints; witness the affair of the shovelboard. But Constantia Hopkins, under the control and obedience of a righteous man, may be worthy of his hand."
"Say you so!" exclaimed William Bradford, half amused, half annoyed, and wondering what his quick-tempered but honoured friend Stephen would say to this from John Howland—he who had a justifiable pride in his honourable descent and who held no mere man equal to his Constance, the apple of his eye. "I had not a suspicion that you were turning over in your mind thoughts of this nature. I would advise you to consult Mr. Hopkins before you let them take too strong hold upon your desire. But in as far as my errand runneth with your purpose to further your acquaintance with the maiden, in so far I will help you, good John, for I am anxious that Mr. Hopkins shall know as soon as possible what news the ship hath brought. Stay; here is another letter; for Mistress Eliza Hopkins this time. Take that, also, if you will and bid Mr. Hopkins hither."
John Howland, missing entirely the hint of warning in the governor's voice and manner, took the two letters and went his way.
He found Stephen Hopkins at his house, planning the planting of a garden with his son.
"I will go at once; come thou with me, Giles. It sounds like ill news, I fear me, that hint of wishing to consult me. Somehow it seems that as 'good wine needs no bush,' for which we have Shakespeare's authority, so good news needs little advice, or rarely seeks it, for its dealing."
So saying Stephen Hopkins, straightening himself with a hand on his stiffened side went into the house, and, taking his hat, went immediately out of it again, with Giles. John Howland followed them into the house, but not out of it. Instead, he seated himself, unbidden, upon the fireside settle, and awaited their departure.
Then he produced his two letters, and offered one to Constance.
"I have brought you this, Mistress Constantia," he said, ponderously, "at the request of the governor, but no less have I brought it because it pleaseth me to do you a service, as I hope to do you many, even to the greatest, in time to come."
"Thank you, John," said innocent Constance, having no idea of the weighty meaning underlying this statement, indeed scarce hearing it, being eager to get the letter which he held. "Oh, from Humility! It is from Humility! Look, little Damaris, a letter from England, writ by Humility Cooper! TheFortuneis safely in port, then! Come, my cosset, and I will read you what Humility hath to tell us of her voyage, of home, and all else! First of all shall you and I hear this: then we will hasten to Priscilla Alden and read it to her new little daughter, for she hath been so short a time in Plymouth that she must long for news from across the sea, do you not say so?"
Damaris giggled in enjoyment of Constance's nonsense, which the serious little thing never failed to enter into and to enjoy, as unplayful people always enjoy those who can frolic. The big sister ran away, with the smaller one clinging to her skirt, and with never a backward glance nor thought for John Howland, meditating a great opportunity for Constance, as he sat on the fireside settle.
"Mistress Hopkins, this is your letter," said John, completing his errand when Constance was out of sight.
He offered Dame Eliza her letter. She looked at it and thrust it into her pocket with such a heightened colour and distressed look that even John Howland's preoccupation took note of it.
"This present hour seems to be an opportunity that is a leading, and I will follow this leading, Mistress Hopkins, by your leave," John said. "It cannot be by chance that all obstacles to plain speaking to you are removed. I had thought first to speak to Stephen Hopkins, or perhaps to Constantia herself, but I see that it is better to engage a woman's good offices."
Dame Eliza frowned at him, darkly; she was in no mood for dallying, and this preamble had a sound that she did not like.
"Good offices for what? My good offices? Why?" she snapped. "Why should you speak to Mr. Hopkins, with whose Christian name better men than you in this colony make less free? And still more I would know why you should speak either first or last to Mistress Constantia? That hath a sound that I do not like, John Howland!"
John Howland stared at her, aghast, a moment, then he said:
"It is my intent, Mistress Eliza Hopkins, to offer to wed Mistress Constantia, and that cannot mislike you. Young though she be, and somewhat frivolous, yet do I hope much for her from marriage with a godly man, and I find her comely to look upon. Therefore——"
"Therefore!" cried Dame Eliza who seemed to have lost her breath for a moment in sheer angry amazement. "Therefore you would make a fool of yourself, had not it been done for you at your birth! Art completely a numbskull, John Howland, that you speak as though it was a favour, and a matter for you to weigh heavily before coming to it, that you might make Stephen Hopkins's daughter your wife? Put the uneasiness that it gives you as to her light-mindedness out of your thoughts, nor dwell over-much upon her comeliness, for your own good! Comely is she, and a rare beauty, to give her partly her due. And what is more, is she a sweet and noble lass, graced with wit and goodness that far exceed your knowledge; not even her father can know as I do, with half my sore reason, her patience, her charity, her unfailing generosity to give, or to forgive. Marry Constance, forsooth! Why, man, there is not a man in this Plymouth settlement worthy of her latchets, nor in all England is there one too good for her, if half good enough! Your eyes will be awry and for ever weak from looking so high for your mate. But that you are the veriest ninny afoot I would deal with you, John Howland, for your impudence! Learn your place, man, and never let your conceit so run away with you that you dare to speak as if you were hesitant as to Mr. Hopkins's daughter to be your wife! Zounds! John, get out of my sight lest I be tempted to take my broom and clout ye! Constance Hopkins and you, forsooth! Oh, be gone, I tell ye! She's the pick and flower of maidens, in Plymouth or England, or where you will!"
John Howland rose, slowly, stiffly, angry, but also ashamed, for he had not spirit, and he felt that he had stepped beyond bounds in aspiring to Constance since Dame Eliza with such vehemence set it before him. Then, too, it were a strong man who could emerge unscathed from an inundation of Dame Eliza's wrath.
"I meant no harm, Mistress," he said, awkwardly. "No harm is done, for the maid herself knows naught of it, nor any one save the governor, and he but a hint. Let be no ill will between us for this. I suppose, since Mistress Constantia is not for me, I must e'en marry whom I can, and I think I must marry Elizabeth Tilley."
"What does it matter to me who you marry?" said Dame Eliza, turning away with sudden weariness. "It's no concern of mine, beyond the point I've settled for good and all."
John Howland went away. After he had gone Constance came around the house and entered by the rear door. Her eyes were full of moisture from suppressed laughter, yet her lips were tremulous and her eyes, dewy though they were, shone with happiness.
"Hast heard?" demanded Dame Eliza.
"I could not help it," said Constance. "I left Damaris at Priscilla's and ran back to ask you, for Priscilla, to lend her the pattern of the long wrapping cloak that you made for our baby when he was tiny. Pris's baby seems cold, she thinks. And as I entered I heard John. I near died of laughing! I had thought a lover always felt his beloved to be so fair and fine that he scarce dared look at her! Not so John! But after all, it is less that I am John's beloved than his careful—and doubtful choice. But for the rest, Mistress Hopkins—Stepmother—might I call you Mother?—what shall I say? I am ashamed, grateful but ashamed, that you praise me so! Yet how glad I am, never can I find words to tell you. I thought that you hated me, and it hath grieved me, for love is the air I breathe, and without it I shrivel up from chill and suffocation! I would that I could thank you, tell you——." Constance stopped.
The expression on Dame Eliza's face, wholly beyond her understanding, silenced her.
"You have thanked me," Dame Eliza said. "Damaris is alive only through you. However you love her, yet her life is her mother's debt to you. Much, much more do I owe you, Constantia Hopkins, and none knows it better than myself. Let be. Words are poor. There is something yet to be done. After it you may thank me, or deny me as you will, but between us there will be a new beginning, its shaping shall be as you will. Till that is done which I must do, let there be no more talk between us."
Puzzled, but impressed by her stepmother's manner and manifest distress, Constance acquiesced. It was not many days before she understood.
The people of Plymouth were summoned to a meeting at Elder William Brewster's house. It was generally understood that something of the nature of a court of justice, and at the same time of a religious character was to take place. Everyone came, drawn by curiosity and the dearth of interesting public events.
Stephen Hopkins, Giles, and Constance came, the two little children with them, because there was no one at home to look after them. Not the least suspicion of what they were to hear entered the mind of these three, or it might never have been heard.
Elder Brewster, William Bradford, Edward Winslow sat in utmost gravity at the end of the room. It crossed Stephen Hopkins's mind to wonder a little at his exclusion from this tribunal, for it had the effect of a tribunal, but it was only a passing thought, and instantly it was answered.
Dame Eliza Hopkins entered the room, with Mistress Brewster, and seated herself before the three heads of the colony.
"My brethren," said William Brewster, rising, "it hath been said on Authority which one may not dispute that a broken and contrite heart will not be despised. You have been called together this night for what purpose none but my colleagues and myself knew. It is to harken to the public acknowledgment of a grave fault, and by your hearing of a public confession to lend your part to the wiping out of this sin, which is surely forgiven, being repented of, yet which is thus atoned for. We have vainly endeavoured to persuade the person thus coming before you that this course was not necessary; since her fault affected no one but her family, to them alone need confession be made. As she insisted upon this course, needs must we consent to it. Dame Eliza Hopkins, we are ready to harken to you."
He sat down, and Dame Eliza, rising, came forward. Stephen Hopkins's face was a study, and Giles and Constance, crimson with distress, looked appealingly at their father, but the situation was beyond his control.
"Friends, neighbours, fellow pilgrims," began Dame Eliza, manifestly in real agony of shamed distress, yet half enjoying herself, through her love for drama and excitement, "I am a sinner. I cannot continue in your membership unless you know the truth, and admit me thereto. My anger, my wicked jealousy hath persecuted the innocent children of my husband, they whose mother died and whose place I should have tried in some measure to make good. But at all times, and in all ways have I used them ill, not with blows upon the body, but upon their hearts. Jealousy was my temptation, and I yielded to it. But, not content with sharp and cruel words, I did plot against them to turn their father from them, especially from his son, because I wanted for my son the inheritance in England which Stephen Hopkins hath power to distribute. I succeeded in sowing discord between the father and Giles, but not between my husband and his daughter. At last I used a signature which fell into my hands, and by forwarding it to England, set in train actions before the law which would defraud Giles Hopkins and benefit my own son. By the ship that lately came into our harbour I received a letter, sent to me by the governor, by the hand of John Howland, promising me success in my wicked endeavour. My brethren, my heart is sick unto death within me. Thankfully I say that all estrangement is past between Giles Hopkins and his father. In that my wicked success at the beginning was foiled. While I was doing these things against the children, Constantia Hopkins, by her sweetness, her goodness, her devotion, without a tinge of grudging, to her little half-sister and brother, and at last her saving of my child's life when no help but hers was near and the child was dying before me, hath broken my hard heart; and in slaying me—for I have died to my old self under it—hath made me to live. Therefore I publicly acknowledge my sin, and bid you, my fellow pilgrims, deal with me as you see fit, neither asking for mercy, nor in any wise claiming it as my desert."
Stephen Hopkins had bent forward, his elbows on his knees, hiding his face in his hands. Giles stared straight before him, his brow dark red, frowning till his face was drawn out of likeness to itself, his nether lip held tight in his teeth.
Poor Constance hid her misery in Oceanus's breast, holding the baby close up against her so that no one could see her face. Little Damaris, pale and quiet, too frightened to move or fully to breathe, clutched Constance's arm, not understanding what was going forward, but knowing that whatever it was it distressed everyone that constituted her little world, and suffering under this knowledge.
"My friends," Elder Brewster resumed his office, "you have heard what Mistress Hopkins hath spoken. It is not for us to deny pardon to her. She hath done all, and more than was required of her, in publicly confessing her wrong. Let us take her by the hand, and let us pray that she may live long to shed peace and joy upon the young people whom she hath wronged, and might have wronged further, had not repentance found her."
One by one these severely stern people of Plymouth arose and, passing before Mistress Hopkins, took her hand, and said:
"Sister, we rejoice with you." Or some said: "Be of good consolation, and Heaven's blessing be upon you." A few merely shook her hand and passed on.
Before many had thus filed past, Myles Standish leaped to his feet and cried: "Stephen, Stephen Hopkins, come! There's a wild cat somewhere!"
Stephen Hopkins went out after him, thankful to escape.
"Poor old comrade," said Captain Standish, putting his hand on the other's shoulder. "If only good and sincere people would consider what these scenes, which relieve their nerves, cost others! There is a wild cat somewhere; I did not lie for thee, Stephen, but in good sooth I've no mortal idea where it may be!"
He laughed, and Stephen Hopkins smiled. "You are a good comrade, Myles, and we are as like as two peas in a pod. Certes, we find this Plymouth pod tight quarters, do we not, at least at times? I've no liking for airing private grievances in public: to my mind they belong between us and the Lord!—but plainly my wife sees this as the right way. What think you, Myles? Is it going to be better henceforward?" he said.
"No doubt of that, no doubt whatever," asserted Myles, positively. "And my pet Con is the chief instrument of Dame Eliza's change of heart! Well, to speak openly, Stephen, I did not give thy wife credit for so much sense! Constance is sweet, and fair, and winsome enough to bring any one to her—his!—senses. Or drive him out of them! Better times are in store for thee, Stephen, old friend, and I am heartily thankful for it. So, now; take your family home, and do not mind the talk of Plymouth. For a few days they will discuss thee, thy wife, thy son, and thy daughter, but it will not be without praise for thee, and it will be a strange thing if Giles and I cannot stir up another event that will turn their attention from thee before thy patience quite gives out."
Myles Standish laughed, and clapped his hand on his friend's shoulder by way of encouragement to him to face what any man, and especially a man of his sort, must dread to face—the comments and talk of his small world.
The Hopkins family went home in silence, Stephen Hopkins gently leading his wife by her arm, for she was exhausted by the strain of her emotions.
Giles and Constance, walking behind them with the children, were thinking hard, going back in their minds to their early childhood, to the beautiful old mansion which both remembered dimly, to the Warwickshire cousins, to their embittered days since their stepmother had reigned over them, and now this marvellous change in her, this strange acknowledgment from her before everyone—theirevery-one—of wrong done, and greater wrong attempted and abandoned. They both shrank from the days to come, feeling that they could not treat their stepmother as they had done, yet still less could they come nearer to her, as would be their duty after this, without embarrassment. Giles went at once to his room to postpone the evil hour, but Constance could not escape it.
She unfastened Damaris's cloak, trying to chatter to the child in her old way, and she glanced up at her stepmother, as she knelt before Damaris, to invite her to share their smiles. Dame Eliza was watching her with longing that was almost fear. "Constance," she said in a low voice. "Constance——?" She paused, extending her hands.
Constance sprang up, forgetful of embarrassment, forgetful of old wrongs, remembering only to pity and to forgive, like the sweet girl that she was.
"Ah, Mother, never mind! Love me now, and never mind that once you did not!" she cried.
Dame Eliza leaned to her and kissed her cheek.
"Dear lass," she murmured, "how could I grudge thee thy father's love, since needs must one love thee who knows thee?"