“Gladly and gayly, Governor, and gentlemen all,” cried Oldhame, laying an impulsive clutch upon the bag. “And truth to tell, I was purposing a voyage into England when occasion should serve, so that your proposal jumps with my desires most marvelously, and you shall find that once there I will do you good and manful service in whatsoever you desire. I am not unknown to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the Governor of Old Plymouth,whither the Dolphin is bound, and I will so present this Morton’s offenses that we shall have him hanged over the battlements, a prey for gleeds, before he has well tasted English air.”
“Better to shoot him before he goes,” growled Standish. “’Tis bad venerie when you have trapped a wolf to let him go free on the chance some other man will finish your work.”
“Morton hath committed no offense worthy of death on this side the water,” suggested Allerton in his crafty voice. “If he hath in England, let English law decide.”
Standish cast a look of impatient dislike at the speaker, but Doctor Fuller interposed,—
“Fair and softly is a good rule whereby to walk, and I know not if the right of life and death except in combat is fairly ours. I fear me one hundred men though led by Standish would hardly cope with Old England’s forces if she sent them hither.”
“My brethren,” said Bradford, lightly tapping the table with his finger-tips, “why waste time thus? There is no question of life or death in the present matter; we are to send this dangerous rebel home to England for trial, and John Oldhame is to be surety for his safe arrival, and to receive this money to defray Plymouth’s proportion of the expense. Am I right, sirs?”
“You are right, Governor Bradford,” said the Elder solemnly, and the conclave broke up.
GOVERNOR BRADFORD PAYS A VISIT.
“Now mind you, goodman, you are to put on your ruff, and the goodly wrist-ruffles, and see that your doublet is fresh brushed, and your hosen tight and smooth, and your hair well set up, and your beard newly combed,—I wish I might but put a thought of ambergris and civet upon it”—
“Nay, dame, not while I live, and I think when once you have killed me with kindness you’ll have no heart to send me to the grave smelling like a civet cat”—
“Oh, Will, Will! How can you!”—
“How can I die, or how can I forbear civet upon my beard? Nay, then, my dame! Wilt cry over it—there, then, sweetheart, there, there!”—
“’Twas that you talked of dying, Will, and if thou wert dead”—
“Men who talk of dying never die, Elsie; but take courage, take courage, and for thy sweet sake I’ll don the ruffles, and brush my doublet, and re-garter my hosen, and set up my hair; nay, then, I’ll even clean my shoes and anoint them afresh, which is more than you bade me do.”
“Why certainly, of course you must do that, dear; and, laugh at your poor wife as you will, I’m sure enough you’ll pleasure her by going brave, and showing a good front to these fine new-comers; and if you cometo see Lady Arbella Johnson be sure to mark all the items of her clothes, for she will have the latest modes out of England.”
“Oh, wife, wife! Oh, woman, woman! ’Twas but yesterday we were driven to make coats of deer-skins, and shoe ourselves with the hides of wolves and bears, because we had no other clothing, and to-day you are all agog for the latest modes out of England, and send me to take inventory of a titled lady’s raiment that you may copy her silks in kersey, and her velvets in homespun.”
“Nay, then, sir, I’m none so poor as you would make me out, but have more than one robe of say of mine own, only they have never been aired in this rude wilderness, and are a thought antiquated. But now that we hear of Governor Endicott of Salem, and Governor Winthrop of the Bay, I mind me that I am wife of Governor Bradford of Plymouth, and it is my duty, my bounden duty, Will, to magnify thine office, and show myself abroad as a governor’s lady should.”
“Ay, dame; but methinks the wife of a governor should show herself more governed than other women; more meek, and recollected, and chastened, rather than more arrogant.”
“Nay, Will, do I lack in these matters?” And Alice looked up in her husband’s face, her blue eyes so swimming in tears that she could not see the smile of tender malice upon her husband’s lips as he folded her in his arms and whispered tender reassurances needless to set down.
Yes, our governor was going a-neighboring to his brother potentates at Boston, for a great change had almost suddenly befallen that pleasant region whereWilliam Blackstone had dwelt as a solitary for so long. Let us, as briefly as may be, freshen our memories of these early arrivals, and so understand more clearly the new relations suddenly involving the Pilgrims of Plymouth.
It was in 1628 that Governor Endicott with a large and aristocratic following arrived at Naumkeag, and speedily dispossessed Roger Conant and the other old settlers both of their proprietary rights and their privilege of trading with the natives. The next step was to name the place Salem, and ordain as Independent ministers the men who had left England proclaiming their fealty to her Established Church.
But Salem did not long claim the seat of government, for on the 17th of June, 1630, Governor Winthrop, with near a thousand colonists under his command, sailed into Boston Bay and landed at Charlestown, where a deputation from Salem had already prepared for them. Neither numbers, nor home protection, nor wealth, nor aristocratic pretensions could, however, save this great colony from the very same enemies that had assailed the glorious hundred of Mayflower Pilgrims ten years before, and cut down one half of their number. Ship fever, scurvy, and other diseases incident to the horrors of a sea-voyage in that day seized upon the new-comers, who aggravated their own danger by improper food, treatment, and, so long as they lasted, terrible drugs. In six months Charlestown had become a village of graves and of loathsome insanitation, complicated with the want of pure and sufficient water. Moved at length by the sufferings of his neighbors, Blackstone, who at first had scowled upon their invasion of his solitude, visited Governor Winthrop, and told him of a pure and unfailingspring of water near the southern foot of the hill upon whose western slope lay his own cabin and apple orchard, and suggested that it might be well for the settlement to be removed across the mouth of the Mystic, and reëstablished at Trimountain, as he called the peninsula hitherto his own.
Winthrop gladly accepted the suggestion, came over with Blackstone to view the proposed site, and liked it so well that in October, 1630, he caused the frame of his own house nearly ready for erection in Charlestown to be taken over, and set up close by the spring in question, or, as we might now describe it, on Washington Street, between the Old South Church and the corner of Spring Lane, under whose worn and dusty pavement one still fancies to hear the cool wash and gurgle of those imprisoned waters.
Was Blackstone sorry for his good-nature when, after a little, Winthrop and his council kindly set apart fifty acres of the domain to which he had invited them, as his property, and proceeded to divide the rest among themselves? Cannot one picture the reserved and somewhat cynical hermit smoking his pipe beside his solitary fire in the evening of that day, and smiling to himself as he considered the condescension of the new government? And did haply some herald of coming Liberty suggest certain pithy queries to be more plainly worded on Boston Common a century or so later? Did the lonely man ask himself what right Governor Winthrop or any other man had to come into this wild country and dispossess the pioneer settlers of their holdings? True, the King of England had given him that right. But where did the King of England himself get the authority to do so? He had neither bought theland of the natives, nor had he conquered them in fair fight; he simply had heard of a fair new world beyond the seas, and claimed it for his own by some arbitrary right divine whose source no man could tell. The land was his, he said, and so he had sent these men in his name to take possession, to parcel out, to give, or to withhold, from men as good as themselves who had borne the heat and toil of the earlier days, and who had paid the savages full measure for the lands they held. What was this right divine? Why should kings so control the property of other men—men who only asked to live their own lives, and neither meddle nor make with kingcraft? Why? And as William Blackstone, the forgotten pipe burned out, pondered this “why,” the yellowing leaves of the young Liberty tree a few rods from his cottage door rustled impatiently, as though they felt the breath of 1775 already in their midst.
It did not last very long. Not only were there disputes and heartburnings about proprietorship, but the Puritans who had come to New England professing a stanch adherence to the church, and almost immediately proved false to her, could not forgive the quiet man who made no parade of religion, but never swerved from his adherence to his ordination vows. They tried to persuade him, they tried to coerce him, and at last received the assurance that he who had exiled himself from England to avoid the tyranny of the Lords Bishops was not disposed to submit to that of the lords brethren, but would leave them to dispute with each other.
So selling all that he had, except a plot of land around his old home, Blackstone invested the thirty pounds of purchase money in cattle, packed his books and some other matters upon his cows’ backs, anddriving the herd before him passed over Boston Neck and out into the wilderness; nor did he pause until upon a tributary of Narragansett Bay he found a lonely and lovely spot, so far from white men or their ordinary line of travel as to rival the Isle of Juan Fernandez in solitude. Naming his domain Study Hill, Blackstone built another house, planted some young apple trees carefully brought from the old orchard, set up his bookshelves, filled his pipe, and settled himself for forty years of happiness, dying just in time to escape King Philip’s war.
But in September, 1630, when Governor Bradford went up to pay his first visit to Governor Winthrop, Blackstone still lived on Boston Common, and looked upon the new-comers as his guests. They had not yet presented him with the fifty acres of his own land.
With the Governor of Plymouth came Elder Brewster, and Captain Standish, Thomas Prence, and Doctor Fuller, who was already well and gratefully known by many of the new settlers; for when the pestilence broke out in Salem about a year before, Governor Endicott dispatched Roger Conant to beg, in the name of Christian fellowship, that the doctor of Plymouth, who had already met the grim enemy at home, would come and aid his brethren. Fuller was not slow to respond, and not only cured some of the sufferers in spite of the deadly methods of his day, but so set forth the religious beliefs and practices of the church of the Pilgrims that Endicott, who was still a Puritan Churchman, and soon to be a Puritan Independent, wrote a cordial letter to Bradford, telling how glad he was to find that the Separatists were not so bad as he had supposed them to be.
Again, when in the summer of 1630 the settlers atCharlestown, Boston, Dorchester, and the neighboring country fell into the same disaster, and with the earliest victims lost Doctor Gager their only physician, Plymouth was appealed to for assistance, and Doctor Fuller at once responded. But the scanty stock of drugs brought by the emigrants was already exhausted, and Fuller’s own supply soon went, so that his treatment was principally confined to blood-letting, and after writing a homesick letter to his brother-in-law Bradford, he returned to Plymouth.
At the wooden wharf where the Pilgrims disembarked in Charlestown, they were met by Governor Winthrop, Dudley his Deputy and successor, and the Reverend Master Wilson, who, as he cordially grasped Elder Brewster by the hand, cast a hurried glance over the group of visitors, and felt a sensible relief at not perceiving the face of Ralph Smith among them. For this reverend gentleman, persecuted out of Salem for opinion’s sake, and refused shelter in Boston or Charlestown, had found an asylum among the liberal Pilgrims who presently invited him to the position of their first ordained minister.
Mr. Wilson need not, however, have been alarmed, since Bradford, whose character singularly united the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove, had not thought best to include a person so likely to be unwelcome to his hosts in this visit, at once friendly and official; for the Governor of Plymouth had been invited to assist at the first formal session of the Bay authorities, convened at the Great House built by Thomas Grove, the architect “entertained” by the Massachusetts Company under whose auspices the new colony came out.
To this inauguration feast came also GovernorEndicott from Salem, with Master Isaac Johnson, whose wife, the Lady Arbella, lay sick unto death in her new home, and never more would don the brave attire in which Alice Bradford had expressed such womanly interest. With these were assembled Sir Richard Saltonstall, Master Bradstreet, soon to be Governor of the Bay Colony, and Pynchon, ancestor, perhaps, of Hawthorne’s Hester; all the magistrates in fact of New England, all the representatives of legal or spiritual authority upon this side of the broad seas; for these men were about to test their right to self-government, and to exercise jurisdiction over the liberty, the property, the persons, nay, the very lives of others, and doubtless felt that in case this right were to be called in question from the throne or the Star Chamber, it might be well to secure the strength of numbers and authoritative consensus.
But we, like Bradford and his company, are only guests at Mishawum, as they still called Charlestown, and must hasten back to Plymouth. Enough to briefly note that Morton of Merry Mount, who had audaciously returned to his “old nest” and his old ways, after Allerton had been forced to dismiss him from his house in Plymouth, was brought before the magistrates, somewhat unfairly tried, and sentenced to be “set in the bilboes,” and afterward sent prisoner to England. His entire property was to be confiscated, and his house burned in presence of the Indians whom he had robbed and insulted, and so speedily was the first portion of the sentence carried out that, as the court left the Great House at noon, they passed close beside the criminal already seated in the stocks with a party of Indian squaws staring at him, half in dismay, half in satisfaction.
“This way, Bradford! Don’t look upon him; ’tisno punishment for a gentleman,” muttered Standish, seizing the governor’s arm and dragging him in a sidelong direction, while Parson Wilson, and Increase Newell the Elder of the Charlestown church, stopped to administer a “word in season” to the defenseless prisoner.
The business of the Bay Colony finished, Governor Bradford begged the attention of his fellow magistrates to an affair in his own jurisdiction: one as important as life and death could make it, for it was a question of enforcing the death penalty upon a murderer, fully convicted and offering no plea of extenuating circumstances.
The culprit was John Billington, already notorious as the first person the Pilgrims had felt called upon to punish. Since that early day he had more than once come under discipline of the law, but now his offense exceeded all human bounds of forgiveness, and by the stern code of Old Testament justice merited nothing short of death.
The victim was a young man named John Newcomen, a somewhat rough and lawless companion, who had persisted in trapping and shooting over ground which Billington claimed as his own monopoly, although neither man made any pretense of ownership. The end was a bitter quarrel, after which Billington armed himself, and, lying in wait until Newcomen appeared, deliberately shot and killed him.
A solemn trial by jury ensued, whereat the crime was fully proven and no defense was attempted. A verdict of willful murder was brought in, and no recommendation to mercy was offered by the stern foreman. The trial could not have been more deliberate or more just, but sentence was not immediately pronounced, for asBradford frankly declared to his fellow magistrates, he shrank both before God and man from pronouncing the words that should deprive a fellow mortal of life, and before doing so he desired the counsel and concurrence of the other New England authorities.
“Who killeth man, by man shall his blood be shed,” quoted Endicott in the silence which followed Bradford’s solemn appeal. “It is the law of God.”
“And haply,” added Winthrop, “a sharp example in these early days may hinder the loss of more valuable lives hereafter.”
“With God is no respect of persons,” spoke Elder Brewster in tones of stern reproof; but Parson Wilson, with almost a sneer, retorted,—
“Then let him die as one of the princes, even as Zeb and Salmana.”
A little more discussion followed, but the result was obvious, and the next day Bradford turned his face toward home with a heavy heart, and yet a mind resolved upon the terrible duty soon after fulfilled.
SIR CHRISTOPHER GARDINER.
It was several days after the governor’s return to Plymouth, and Alice had wondered more than once if aught beside the gloom and sorrow of Billington’s execution lay upon her husband’s mind, when, after noon of one of those heavenly days in late September, in which one’s whole life goes out to the joy of living, Bradford after hesitating a moment at the door, turned back and said,—
“Come, Elsie, do on your hood and walk with me a little.”
“Gay and gladly, Will,” replied she, and in a few moments they had passed down by Elder Brewster’s house toward the brook, and then turning to the right crossed on the stepping-stones, and striking into the Namasket Path strolled along until, reaching a lovely intervale, afterward called Prence’s Bottom, and now Hillside, they sat down upon a fallen tree trunk, and Bradford abruptly asked,—
“Was it not one Sir Christopher Gardiner that our Pris spoke of when she first came as some sort of sweetheart of hers?”
“Yes. He gave her that lordly neckerchief she wears betimes. She calls him a Knight of the Golden Melice, and then again Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,—poor maid!”
And Alice laughed as matrons do at the follies of maidenhood. But Bradford shook his head, and plucking a great frond of goldenrod softly smote his own palm with it, while he said,—
“’Tis a bad business, Alice, a bad business, and I fear worse may come of it.”
“Worse! Worse than what, Will? There’s no harm done as yet. The girl’s not wearing the willow, nor needing pity; it’s not likely she’ll see or hear of him again, and after a while she’ll wed William Wright, who woos her honestly and openly.”
“Alice, the man is here.”
“Here! What man?”
“Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight of the Golden Melice and the Holy Sepulchre, and of what you will beside. I’ve seen and spoken with him, wife.”
“You! When and where, for pity’s sake?”
“Softly now, and I’ll tell you. When we left the Bay people the captain would have us stop at Squantum Head to visit Mistress Thompson in her widowhood and see if she lacked aught, or wished us to recommend her to the good offices of her neighbors of the Bay, and so we did”—
“How is her child, Will?”
“Well and hearty, as is she herself, and farming her island, which Standish would have us call Trevor’s Island, but we would liever name Thompson’s Island in his honor who was her husband and father of the boy. Now while we talked with the widow, I remembered me that Winthrop had mentioned some new settlers hard by Squantum, a gentleman, as he said, named Gardiner, who claimed some title, and who, besides several servants, entertained as housekeeper a comely young woman whom he called his cousin.
“Master Winthrop had not seen them, but when I said we would tarry a little with the Widow Thompson, he asked me if it were in my way to take a look at this Gardiner, and let him hear my judgment of him. Truth to tell, I did not at the first mind me of our Prissie’s story of her Knight of the Golden Melice, for such toys get cast into the dark corners of a man’s mind”—
“Unless it be his own case, Will,” interposed Alice with tender jibing in her voice.
Bradford smiled reply, but went on with his story. “So while the rest drank a cup of metheglin, and ate some of Mistress Thompson’s curds and cream, Standish and I clomb the brave headland ever I hope to be known as Squanto’s Point, and presently came upon a new cabin fairly seated above a rising ground some half mile south of the Neponset’s River; a pretty home as one would wish to see, with a posy bed under the window, and vines from the woods trained over the door and casement, this last set with glass and swinging open, for all the world like a cottage of Old England.
“Well, we came to the door, and Standish rapped with his sword hilt after his own masterful fashion, so that there presently run out a—well, I was about to say a maid, for she was young and very comely to look upon, but in sad certainty I know not—she may be the man’s wife, and charity will not have us suspect ill that is not brought home by proof.”
“How was she so very fair, Will?”
“Why, her hair was of yellow gold, and her eyes blue as a June sky, and the white and red of her face so cunningly mixt that it minded me of the may in our hedges at home, or of the mayflower that we find here in Plymouth woods, and her shape was lissome anddelightsome as those young birches, and her little hands were white and soft, and her voice as sweet as— Why, Elsie, woman, what is it?”
“’Tis naught, ’tis naught! Leave go my hand I pray you, sir. I’m for home, but you need not haste!”
“Now, now, now! What, is mine own true-love jealous that I find another woman fair? Why, Elsie, I go well-nigh to blush for you! Come then, to punish you I’ll not say the words that were springing to my lips. I’ll not tell how the frighted, guilty look of those blue eyes minded me of other eyes steadfast and pure and serene as the evening star, nor how the fluttering, broken tones of that sweet voice brought to the ears of my heart a voice as sweet as that, but calm and steady, and full of the assured peace of a clear conscience”—
“Nay, then, Will, tell me naught, but let me creep close to thy knee like a chidden child and hide my face thus, for indeed I’m shamed to show it.”
“Nay, let me look once upon thee in sweet penitence, since ’tis so seldom one may find the chance! Well there, then, hide it an thou wilt, sweetheart, for if I look too closely on’t I forget all else. Well, then, this lady, we will call her, ran to see who knocked, and meeting Myles’s grim face, which he had forgot to deck for lady’s gaze, she uttered a sharp little cry, and fell back to give place to the gay figure of such a cavalier as we used to see strutting up and down Paul’s Walk in London, hand on hips, and mustachios curled up to either eye, and beaver cocked a’ one side, and laces and fine needlework, with velvets and silks, and all scented like a posy bed, or the civet cat you love so well.”
“I mind me of the gallants of Paul’s Walk, Will; butdid this man really have laces and needlework and scent and all those matters?”
“Well, he had the air of having them, sweetheart, and that is still the main point, you know. So out he came, hand on sword hilt, and eyes so terrific that I, poor wight, shrunk back affrighted”—
“You affrighted, indeed!”
“Ay, but you don’t know how terrific a mien this paladin put on, dame! Our captain bristled at sight of it as the wolf hound does at sight of the wolf, and I feared me for the moment that they would fall to before I could cry, ‘A list, a list, good gentles’!”
“Oh, Will, how can you! But go on.”
“Well, seeing the peril, I stirred myself as best I might to avoid it, and elbowing Standish aside, I doffed my hat and said,—
“‘Pardon, good sir, but we have come to change courtesies with our neighbors. We are men of the Plymouth Colony, and have been to visit the new-comers at the Bay, who told us you were here.’
“Upon that our host’s visage relaxed, and he made some sort of civil reply, although none could doubt he would liever our room than our company; but he had us in, and as the young woman lingered near, he spoke of her presently as ‘My cousin, Mistress Mary Grove, who of her kindness keepeth my house.’
“‘And your name, sir, is Gardiner?’ queried I; and he, cock-a-hoop in a moment as one insulted, set his hat on ’s head, and twisting his mustachios to a needle’s point, pouted his lips to say,—
“‘I am Sir Christopher Gardiner, sirs, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and Chevalier of the Golden Melice. And your names and quality, if I may make so bold?’
“But so insolent was the tone and so belligerent the manner of this announcement that before I could find words for reply the captain stepped before me, his own hat set aside, and, Heaven save the mark! twisting his own stubbly russet mustachios as fiercely as the other, the while his hand on Gideon’s hilt, he cried,—
“‘This gentleman is Master William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony; and I am Myles Standish, commandant, for want of a better, of the colony’s military force.’
“Now this bold assumption, which would have made some men laugh, and set others upon opposition, just jumped with the humor of our new friend, and taking off his hat, he held out a hand for ours; saying, handsomely enough, that he had heard marvelous tales of our captain’s prowess, and also of the wisdom, and I know not what, of Plymouth’s governor. Faith, I know not but he said he had crossed the seas to look upon two such marvels! Certes, he gave no other motive, since in religion he seems of that convenient stripe which fits with any pattern, and for hard work he is no better fitted than is his cousin and housekeeper, whose lily-white hands could ill trundle a mop or work a churn-dasher.”
“And what do they honestly seek here in the wilderness?”
“Why, truth to tell, I fear me they seek nothing honestly, but the rather a dishonest refuge from judgment. If ever woman wore a guilty and shamefaced look, it was that poor wench when first she met us; and as for the man, although he vapored much about his desire for a quiet life, far from the setbacks and downfalls of worldly affairs, and his love of sylvan solitudes and thelike, I trust him not,—nay, not so far as just out of reach of a tipstaff’s clutch; he’s false, so false that even as he talked he seemed to sneer at his own professions.”
“But our Prissie, Will! If this is indeed the man she talked of”—
“Ay, that’s where the matter sits close to our hearts, wife. Did ever she talk of him to you, in the way of picturing out his face and mien?”
“Nay, for after that once I never would let her talk of him; but still she gave me the notion of a gay cavalier, such a man as haunts the king’s court, and as you say struts in Paul’s Walk,—a man who well might be the one you and the captain saw.”
“But—Mary Grove?”
The matron’s fair cheek flushed a little, for the purity of that age was of the order that hates sin without having learned to love the sinner, and shrinks back from the sight or touch of evil instead of fearlessly examining the hurt, and applying the oil and wine. The world does grow in good, let the pessimists deny it as they may.
“Pris will never know that the man is on this side the sea, unless we tell her,” said Alice presently.
“No. And I will caution the captain not to mention the matter.”
“Oh, he will have mentioned it to Barbara, and she to Priscilla Alden, before this!” exclaimed Alice. “They are like one household, the Standishes and Aldens, and Priscilla loves to talk.”
“But Barbara is very prudent, and if she has heard so ill a story will think twice before she spreads it. I never knew a woman less given to gossip, except mine own wife. I’ll tell thee, Alice, I’ll ask Myles if he hastold the tale; and if he has, I’ll ask him to speak to Barbara and find how far it has gone.”
“But do not tell even the captain of our poor maid’s folly,” interposed Alice.
“Nay, child, I’m as jealous for Prissie’s good name as if she were mine own sister. Come, you are shivering, and the night dews begin to fall. Let us go home.”
ONE! TWO! THREE! FIRE!
Alice Bradford’s instinct had correctly foreseen that Myles would narrate his adventures to his wife just as Bradford had to his; but the governor’s reason was also correct in arguing that Barbara would be likely to keep such a story to herself, and the rather that Pris Carpenter had once spoken the name of Sir Christopher Gardiner in her presence with so much of maidenly flutter that Barbara felt there was a story underneath.
So when Bradford took occasion, over a pipe in the captain’s den, to suggest that it was as well for the present to keep the story of the knight of the Golden Melice from the public, Myles replied with a laugh,—
“So says Mistress Standish. I told her, as indeed I tell her most matters; but when she had listened, her first word was, ‘I hope neither you nor the governor will noise this story abroad, for it might do much harm, and could do no good.’ A prudent woman is”—
“From the Lord,” said Bradford. “And you and I have cause to thank Him for the gift.”
The talk drifted to other matters; and as the weeks and months went on, the subject was not resumed until March came in with all the chilly rigor of a New England seashore spring, and yet with certain fitful gleams and promises of better things in store. It was in the midst of one of those tempestuous storms incident toMarch, and always reminding one of a fascinating naughty child’s passionate burst of temper, that Hobomok appeared at the Fort, escorting a stranger Indian.
“Weetonawah wants head chief,” announced he succinctly.
The captain looked up from his Cæsar, and laid down his pipe.
“Weetonawah is welcome,” said he in the Pokanoket dialect, which he had acquired in perfection. “But Hobomok should not bring him here. The head chief’s wigwam is below the hill.”
“Pokanokets like The-Sword-of-the-White-Men best,” replied the stranger in a final sort of manner, and Hobomok’s suppressed “Hugh!” seemed to indorse the sentiment. Standish smiled,—for who does not love to be trusted above his fellows?—and, rising, he threw his cloak about his shoulders, saying,—
“Well, we will seek the head chief together, and take counsel upon thy matters, Weetonawah.”
So, unmindful of the rain, as men who live close to Nature will still become, the three went down the hill, and found Bradford in his study reading the Georgics, until such time as the weather would permit him to plough his own fields; for now that “oxen strong to labor” had immigrated, their fellow-colonists were able to improve upon the earlier methods of agriculture, and the plough had superseded the hoe whose rude labors had slain John Carver. Laying aside the book, but with its pleasant influence upon his face, Bradford received his guests, gave a cup of metheglin to each of the Indians, who would rather it had been Nantz, and asked Standish what he would take, but the captain shook his head.
“I’ve had my noon meat, and care for nothing untilnight. Now, Weetonawah, tell out your tidings to the head chief.”
So Weetonawah, who spoke no English, told in his own tongue—Standish now and again translating for the benefit of Bradford, who never became as apt an Indian scholar as the captain—how he and a Massachusetts brave, while hunting, had come across a white man seated beside a camp-fire, and leaning his head upon his hand as though sick or sorry, they knew not which. Approaching with due precautions, they found him friendly, and willing to change tobacco for some birds to make a broth, for he was so fevered as not to crave solid food. But when they had parted from him a little way, the Massachusetts man halted, and choosing a war-arrow from his quiver, gave Weetonawah to understand that this was a criminal fleeing from justice, and that the white men at the Bay had bade the Indians search the woods between Shawmut and Piscataqua for him, promising a reward to whoever should bring him in.
Still, during the brief interview beside the camp-fire, both red men had silently marked how thoroughly armed, and how alert in spite of his illness, the fugitive remained, and the Massachusetts man felt that at close quarters he might fare even as Wituwamat or Pecksuot in combat with The-Sword-of-the-White-Men; so, even in their friendly parting, he had laid his plan to turn back and shoot the sick man as he crouched over his fire; and lest his comrade should claim any part of the reward, he would go upon the war-path alone, and rejoin him at the wigwams of the Namasket village.
But Weetonawah was brother to one of the men killed at Wessagussett, and he had imbibed such a terror of The-Sword-of-the-White-Men and his vengeance uponthose who molested the palefaces that he would rather have killed his Massachusetts friend, and taken the chances of punishment from Massasoit, than to be named as companion of an Indian who had killed a white man. So, half by argument and half by threat, he led away the assassin, and forced from him a promise to suspend his purpose until orders should be obtained from Plymouth; consenting that if the head chief and The Sword gave permission, he should alone slay the fugitive and claim the reward.
So far, Weetonawah spoke and Bradford listened, but at this point he started up and exclaimed,—
“An Indian promise! Who knows but that even now the wretch has stolen back to slay yonder poor fugitive? Horrible! What warrant have you, Indian, for believing this murderer will refrain?”
Sternly repeating the query, and receiving the reply, Standish grimly smiled.
“He says that the Massachusetts swore upon his totem, but to make the matter sure he brought him along hither, promising him a good noggin of strong waters, and he is even now in the kitchen, waiting.”
“Have him in! Hobomok, fetch him in!” cried Bradford, still in dismay. “Kill a white man in cold blood! Shoot a sick man shivering over a camp-fire! Standish, they are savages and heathen to the end, and we may as well preach Christ to the wolves and bears as to them.”
“Your best Indian preacher is still a snaphance,” replied the captain grimly, as his mind glanced back to Pastor Robinson’s strictures upon the Wessagussett chastisement.
“Here they come! Now speak to this man in hisown tongue, and make him understand that if he kills this white man we will require it at his hand, and that, after no stinted measure. Terrify him, Myles, as you well know how! They fear you more than all the power of the Bay Colony put together.”
Now the fact remains that so long as Myles Standish lived his was a name to conjure with among the red men; and although, except at Wessagussett, he seldom, if ever, was engaged in actual conflict, or was guilty of their blood, the rumor of his coming was enough to disperse many an angry party, and to restrain many incendiary counsels. Nor was it fear alone, for the savages admired and emulated, yes, and loved the man; he went freely among them, slept in their wigwams, ate beside their fires, smoked the pipe of peace with their warriors, and showed human and friendly interest in their concerns. Never at any crisis did he forget to exempt women and children from the fortunes of war, and it was under neither his leadership nor his counsels that the Pequot atrocities were committed by the soldiers of the Puritan Bay Colony.
So now, as he sternly addressed the Shawmut Indian in his own tongue, the latter visibly quailed, and, not daring to reply directly, slunk behind Hobomok, and in a torrent of muttered gutturals besought him to assure The Sword that his voice was as the voice of the Great Spirit, and he would obey it as implicitly, for if he did not his own totem would turn upon him and destroy him, as indeed he should well deserve, and— But here Standish held up a hand and impatiently interrupted with,—
“There, there, that’s enough! You understand me, Shawmut, and you know that what I promise I perform. Now then, Bradford, what is to be done?”
“Why, the man must be taken and brought in as gently as may be. Doubtless he is in some sort a lawbreaker hiding from the justice of Governor Winthrop, and it may be our duty to return him to the Bay; but the first thing is to discover who he is and of what accused. Explain, if it please you, to both these Indians that they are to find this man, and take him by force of numbers or strategy, but without violence, and bring him safely to this house. What reward have the authorities of the Bay offered for his capture?”
“A kilderkin of biscuit, a horseman’s cloak, and five ells of scarlet cloth,” reported Standish after a good deal of discussion with the two Indians.
“The Bay is rich,” replied Bradford dryly. “Tell them if they bring in this man unharmed we will give twenty pound weight of sugar, and that is a large reward, be the man who he may.”
The Massachusetts Indian listened as this proffer was repeated, and then in his guttural and sullen voice muttered something at which Standish frowned and answered angrily, while Hobomok gave way to a derisive chuckle. As the two turned and glided stealthily out of the room, the captain also laughed and said,—
“The red rascal wanted a piece and some powder and shot, or at least a pottle or two of firewater, as he calls it.”
“Ay! there’s the outcome of Thomas Morton’s work,” replied Bradford. “The Bay people dealt hardly with him, yet none too hardly when we see the despite he has done to all of us by arming the savages.”
“Hardly, do you call it?” echoed Standish. “Well, I know not. Had I been the judge the sentence should have been shorter and less spiteful. To my mind it istoo much like the savages themselves to crop a man’s ears, and set him in the stocks, and pelt him with garbage, and burn his house in his own sight, and mulct him of his money, and ship him out of the country, and after all leave him at liberty to pull the wool over the eyes of the big-wigs and come back again to plague us as he did before. ’Tis womanish to invent so many ways of tormenting an offender, and yet not put further offense out of his power.”
“And if you had been judge?” asked Bradford with a shrewd smile.
For answer the captain raised an imaginary piece to his shoulder and gave the word of command,—
“One! Two! Three! FIRE!”
And with the last word he brought down his right foot with full force upon his own pipe, which had fallen unheeded from his pocket. The governor laughed, and Standish ruefully picked up the amber mouthpiece, exclaiming,—
“Now, by my faith! there goes the meerschaum that Jans Wiederhausen carved on purpose for a parting gift to me when we left Leyden ten year ago. And serves me right for wasting time on such boys’ tricks as yon brag of what I might have done had all been other than it was. Well, well! Sorry and sad I am to lose that pipe! Now I must turn to the one Hobomok has carved out of what I take to be a jasper stone, but ’t is heavy, and cannot drink up the poison of the tobacco as my meerschaum did. There’s naught for a pipe like meerschaum, Will.”
“Clay is well enough for me,” replied the governor with a smile, as he brought a new clay pipe from the cupboard and presented it to Myles.
Nor shall we be surprised to hear that when, a year later, Captain William Pierce came over in the Lyon to Boston Bay, he brought a fine meerschaum pipe as a present from Governor Bradford to his friend Captain Standish.
SIR CHRISTOPHER ENJOYS THE CHASE.
Five days later, Priscilla Alden sat in the gloaming of the wild March day before a fire so cheerful as to be truly perilous to the chimney of sticks laid up with mud attached like an elongated hornet’s nest to the outside of the house. Upon her knees lay little Sally, future wife of Alexander Standish, but just now a child of two years old, with a bad cold upon her lungs and a tendency to croup, or, as her mother called it, quinsy; and it was by way of an ounce of prevention that Priscilla was roasting the little thing before this huge fire, and at the same time diligently rubbing her chest and throat with goose grease. The child, hardly knowing whether to be amused or annoyed at the process, kicked and struggled, uttering little cries varying from crowing laughter to indignant squeals, while the mother made all the play she could of the affair, now tickling the small creature in her fat neck, now answering her cries with counter-cries and merry Boo! Boo! Boo! and anon,—
“See, Sally! See the pretty fire! Shall mother throw Sally in and burn her all up?” rubbing away meantime, until the child’s white skin glowed like a rose and glistened like a mirror.
“She looks like the suckling pig you roasted last Thanksgiving, mother,” remarked John junior, whostood drying his feet before the unusual fire, preparatory to rushing out and wetting them again.
“Why so she is, mother’s darling little piggie-wiggie, mother’s little suckling piggie-wiggie, and she shall be all nicely basted and set down to roast for daddy’s supper, so she shall! Now, now, now! One more little rub to drive the basting well in! Now, now, now, mammy’s little Sally! Phew! who’s at the door, Johnny? Run and shut it before the air reaches little sister!”
“It’s only Betty,” remarked John with brotherly indifference, but still running to help his sister close the door against the playful south wind which insisted upon coming in along with his playmate, who laughed aloud as she closed the door in his face, set her back against it, and pulled off her hood to rearrange the soft red hair blown all over her face. Glancing toward her, the mother smiled with involuntary delight in her child’s beauty; and truly Betty was very pretty, very pretty indeed, having selected her features and coloring from her father’s pure Saxon type and her mother’s Latin traits, with rare eclecticism; for her deep and rich red hair was far more beautiful than John’s blond locks or Priscilla’s dusky tresses, and her eyes, halting between his blue orbs and her dark ones, had resulted in that sparkling brown we all love to watch in the woodland brook stealing out from the roots of trees. Her complexion, neither pale nor dark, was at once glowing and delicate, the white values bordering upon cream rather than snow, and the reds suggesting carnations rather than roses. As for the mouth, it was too young yet to have got its expression, but the lines were noble and clear, sweet and pure, promising much for their maturity. A winsome little lassie, and so her mother knew,but was far too wise to show it. In fact, her tone was almost reproving as she said,—
“Why, Betty! How you are blown about! You are growing too big a girl to play the hoiden.”
“Goody Billington calls me a tear-coat,” replied the child, laughing in a blithe, fearless voice very pleasant to hear.
“Goody Billington”—began the mother, flushing a little, but checking herself as she sat Sally up and pulled her little red flannel nightgown over her head, while she asked in quite another tone, “Did you see father, Betty?”
“Yes’m, and he sent me to tell you he’d not be home for a little while. Oh, mother, what do you think! I was running out north to find father, as you bade me, and just as he stepped out of the woods with his axe and Rover, we saw two Indians coming down the trail, and they were driving a man, a white man, in front of them; and he looked so tired and so sick, and all bent over as if he would fall down, and no hat or cloak, and his doublet tattered and torn like the scarecrow we dressed for the cornfield, and his poor hands all cut and bleeding and tied behind him with a strip of deer-hide, and one of the Indians holding the end of it, and every once in a while jerking it to make the poor man go on; for indeed he looked fit to fall every minute, and, cold as it was, the sweat dropped off the dark points of his hair and rolled down his poor dirty face. Oh, mother, I was like to cry at such a sight, and father”—
“Ay, what did your father do?” asked Priscilla eagerly, as, lapping the child close to her breast, she turned half round toward Betty, who with fixed eyes seemed witnessing again the piteous sight she described.
“Oh, father! He talked with them a little, but you know he is none so quick at the Indian, not like the captain”—
“Never mind,” interrupted Priscilla impatiently. “’Tis not for you to say another man’s quicker at aught than your father, but what came of it?”
“Why, when father had talked a little he shook his head and said in English, ‘Nay, I can make naught on’t; you must come to the governor;’ and then we all came on toward the housen, and daddy said to me that I should run home like a good girl, and tell you he would be here anon, when he had seen the governor.”
“Ay, he’ll not think of himself till every one else is served, but I’ll not let him balk himself of a good supper if I cook a dozen, one after the other.”
And Priscilla, stepping into the little bedroom off the kitchen, laid the sleeping baby in her cradle, and had no more than returned to the larger room when the door again opened to admit her husband, with a look of considerable perplexity upon his genial face.
“Well, goodman, and what’s it all about?” demanded Priscilla with her usual impetuosity, as, coming within the radius of her influence, John’s brow cleared, and an expectant smile softened his mouth.
“Why, dame, ’tis a coil, for you to unravel if thou canst. Betty told you, mayhap, of the prisoner the Indians brought in.”
“Yes?”
“Well, the governor and the captain and Hobomok are off to the woods after deer, and not yet home, and Dame Bradford and her sister are in the woods looking for wintergreen and sassafras for the spring beer the dame makes so famously after thy recipe”—
“Nay, she makes it better than I,” interrupted Priscilla, replying to her husband’s proud smile. “Well?”
“So Christian Penn would not let me leave the savages and the captive there, for the Indians couldn’t, and the white man wouldn’t, speak a word of English, and so”—
“You brought them home, goodman?”
“Why yes; how did you know that, Priscilla?”
“By art magic. Where are they now?”
“I left them in the cowshed until I knew thy mind about it, wife.”
“Nay, then, John! When was my mind other than thine in a deed of charity?” asked Priscilla tenderly. “Fetch them in, I pray thee, with no more ado.”
And in a moment more John had ushered in a figure at sight of which Priscilla exclaimed indignantly,—
“Why did you not unbind his arms, John Alden? The shame of seeing a white man so used by savages, and you not to make in to his rescue!”
“He would not have it, nor would the Indians,” expostulated John helplessly.
“Would not have it!” repeated his wife contemptuously, while with the scissors hanging at her girdle she cut the thong of deer-hide painfully binding the wounded wrists of the captive. As she approached, one of the Indians growled a remonstrance and muttered something, of which Alden understood only the words “Big Chief,” but with one stride he placed himself between his wife and the remonstrant, and first laboriously evolving Indian words equivalent to “Stand back! It’s all right!” he added in English,—
“The Big Chief isn’t at home, but I’m here, and my wife will do as she sees fit. It’ll be bad for the man who tries to hinder her.”
“And did not you want my husband to unbind your hands, friend?” asked Priscilla, as she gently removed the thong which had sunk deep into the bruised flesh.
“My thanks to you, fair dame,” replied the stranger, breaking silence for the first time. “No, I did not wish to be released until the Governor or the Captain of Plymouth had seen my plight and told me if it was by their command these savages had thus dealt with me; I knew not what might be the authority of this gentleman”—
“My husband is John Alden, lieutenant of the colony’s forces, and second in command to Captain Standish.”
“My service to you, Lieutenant Alden, and I crave your pardon for what may have seemed surly silence under your first advances; but truth to tell, I am a little overborne with fatigue and annoyance”—
“Indeed, sir, you are fit to drop,” broke in Priscilla indignantly. “Here, sit you down in the roundabout chair, and say not a word more till I fetch you a cup of cordial-waters. John, do get rid of these Indians. I hate the sight of them! Let them go wait at Master Hopkins’s until the governor comes home to take order with them”—
But at this moment, and while Priscilla, half filling a small silver cup with Hollands gin slightly tempered with water, held it to the lips of the fainting man, the door suddenly opened, and Bradford, followed by Standish and Hobomoc, entered the room.
“My wife and Christian Penn sent me up to ask about—ah yes—why—Captain, this gentleman is—Your name, good sir?”
“My name is Sir Christopher Gardiner,” replied the captive, rallying his strength to reply with dignity. “And as you seem to recall, we met once before at mypoor home in the Massachusetts. Well enough I know that my hospitality then was not such as befits either your quality or mine, and yet methinks your response is even less courteous.”
“We knew not who the fugitive might be of whom the Indians told us,” returned Bradford gravely. “But evil entreated though you seem to have been, your case would have been even worse had it not been for us.”
“They went about to kill you, man,” broke in Standish bluntly. “And if the hound the Bay Colony laid upon your track had not fallen in with one of our own Indians, you had long since tumbled across your own camp-fire, with an arrow through your heart.”
“Say you so, Captain,” replied Gardiner faintly. “’Tis but another proof that a man seldom knows his best friends; but why do the Bay people seek my life?”
“That is best known to yourself, sir,” began Bradford somewhat severely; but Priscilla Alden interposed,—
“I pray your pardon, Master Bradford, but this man needs care and tendance rather than catechizing just now. Look but at those arms and hands!”
“Ay, look!” exclaimed Gardiner, holding up his arms, yet forced at once to drop them through pain.
Bradford and Standish stared in amazement, for through the tattered and stripped sleeves of the knight’s doublet and fine Hollands shirt could be seen many and cruel weals as of stripes, some of them still bleeding, others crusted with dry blood, and others lividly bruised. The hands were in even yet more pitiable case, discolored, swollen, and cut so that they hardly looked like hands at all.
“What is this? What has chanced to your hands and arms, sir?” demanded the governor.
“Ask those red devils there,” replied Sir Christopher bitterly. “And let me ask if it was not done by your own orders.”
“By my orders! Never, so help me God!” cried Bradford; and then turning upon the Indians he demanded,—
“Is this your work, Weetonawah, or is it the Shawmut’s? Did I not warn you both to bring in the man with all care and humane tenderness?”
The Indians looked at each other, drew their skin mantles closer about them as if in assertion of their own dignity, and finally uttered a few words which Standish as briefly translated:—
“They say they did but a little whip him with sticks, and it is no harm.”
“But why did they whip him, little or much?”
“My faith! they could never have taken me alive, had not they beat my last weapon out of my hands,” broke in the knight. “When they are gone and I am a little refreshed I will tell you the whole story, gentlemen; but if you indeed wish me well, drive away these assassins and leave me to this comely matron’s tendance for a while, at least.”
“’Tis well spoken,” replied the governor in his usual placable voice. “John Alden, will it suit you to keep this man over-night, if no longer, and will you, Priscilla, give him the care he needs and you so well understand?”
“If the goodwife says yes, I’ll not say no,” declared Alden; and Priscilla added a little sharply,—
“’Tis the best word said yet.”
AND DESCRIBES IT.
Not until the next afternoon did Priscilla Alden allow her husband to report the patient ready to receive the visitors who awaited her summons, but when the governor, the captain, the Elder, and the doctor were finally admitted they found him a very different looking person from the captive driven into town by the Indians, who had already been paid their reward and dismissed.
Like most of the colonists, John Alden had enlarged his house from the rude shelter of the earliest years to a dwelling suited to a growing and thrifty family, so that at the other side of the door opening into the great cheerful kitchen with its southern and eastern windows lay a new room, more carefully finished than the first, its floor nearly covered with rugs of Priscilla’s own manufacture, its fireplace decorated with Dutch tiles, its woodwork painted, and its casement window set with real glass in leaden bands, instead of the oiled paper or linen which sufficed for the kitchen windows.
Here were collected the few pieces of furniture which William Molines and his wife had managed to bring over from France, Holland, and England, the three homes of their years before the Pilgrimage. The deep and wide carved chest of black oak, with cunningly wrought hinges and a key nearly as large as that of the Bastile, stood on one side of the fireplace, its depthswell stored with damask and napery, bed linen and window curtains, some of Priscilla’s own spinning and some of her mother’s, while certain articles of fine damask wrought upon looms of Flanders, and bought even there at a great price, were hereditary treasures.
On the other side of the fireplace stood a “buffet,” of English make and quaintly carved with heads of beasts and gaping gargoyles which were the terror of Betty and her brothers on the rare occasions when they were allowed to penetrate the solemn solitudes of this state apartment. This buffet was not as well supplied as that of the governor’s wife, and boasted no Venetian glass, although there were four plain glass tumblers, or rummers, as they were then called, and a few pieces of Delft ware with a china bowl so precious that Priscilla seldom dared to look at it. Around the neck of one of the gargoyles projecting from the cornice of the buffet hung a string of curious Indian, or rather Ceylonese beads, each carved into semblance of an idol’s head, a fact happily unguessed by their owners, or indeed by Plymouth, which would have demanded an auto-da-fé of them in the town square; but by some unconscious cerebration Priscilla had decorated the other gargoyle with a string of wampum, thus balancing the superstition of oldest eastern idolatry with that of newest, or rather latest discovered, western. Later on, this string of wampum became quite an appreciable bit of property, but at present it was scarcely more than a curiosity; for although it had been recommended to the Pilgrims some four years previous to this date by Isaac de Razières, the delightful Dutchman who visited Plymouth with overtures of friendship and menace from New Amsterdam, it had not as yet become the circulating medium it didlater, since both the New England Indians and the New England colonists had to be educated to its use,—a use invented by those unhappy Pequots and Narragansetts upon whose shore the quahaug shells were found in perfection. The thrifty Dutchman in his visit to Plymouth had brought a quantity of wampum for sale, and the Pilgrims, after listening to his account of its uses and value, invested fifty pounds with him at the rate of a penny for three bits of the blue, or six of the white shell, this price bringing the blue pieces nearly to the value of a cent of our currency.
But we must linger no longer over the description of Priscilla’s “withdrawing” room, as it might very literally be called, but stand aside to allow the Fathers of Plymouth to enter and find Sir Christopher Gardiner seated in an invalid-chair beside the fire, writing in a little pocket-book which at their entrance he closed and hid in his breast.
Grave salutations passed, the guests were seated, and Alden, who had ushered them in, would have left the room, but was bidden to remain by the governor, while Standish with one of his rare smiles added,—
“I can answer for my friend John’s discretion as for mine own.” At which pleasant word the giant looked foolishly glad, for it was the most friendly speech Standish had vouchsafed since the night when Alden’s ill-timed slumbers had so nearly dishonored his captain.
“And now, sir,” began Bradford in a tone finely mingled of magisterial authority and benevolent hospitality, “if you are sufficiently recovered from the hardships of your journey hither, we should be glad to hear some account of your coming into such straits, and especially of what complaint the rulers of the Bay Colony may have against you.”
“A truly reasonable inquiry, Master Governor, and one which I shall find joyful content in gratifying,” replied the knight, assuming an easier position, and stretching his shapely legs, clad in a pair of John Alden’s best hose, toward the fire. The action attracted Bradford’s notice, and, with Pris Carpenter’s fancies in his mind, he scrutinized his guest with more attention than men generally bestow upon one another’s personal appearance.
Tall, dark, with a hawk’s eyes, and an eagle’s nose above an enormous mustache, which could not, however, conceal a riotous and sensual mouth, with dark floating hair now carefully dressed, and a smooth-shaven cleft chin telling of both will and courage, the knight was beyond controversy a handsome man in spite of his forty or fifty years, and one well suited to turn the brain of a romantic girl. His expression of reckless and jeering self-assertion, thinly veiled under a mask of deference and deprecation, was less propitious than his features, but as Bradford shrewdly told himself was by no means the expression he would wear in conversation with a young maiden whom he wished to please.
“Yes, I shall be most happy, most content, to tell you whatever in your opinion, sir, it imports you to know of my poor history,” pursued Sir Christopher in a vague fashion, as if inwardly employed in concocting a romance to serve instead of the truth. “But I know not well where to begin. Shall I tell you that my father is a wealthy gentleman of Gloucester in England, and is, or was, poor man, nephew of that Bishop Gardiner, Lord of the see of Winchester, who did God service under Queen Mary”—
“Peace, ribald!” broke in the stern voice of ElderBrewster. “If indeed you are of kin to that bloody persecutor and servant of a yet more murderous mistress, boast not of it here among those who have fled into the wilderness to escape the cruelties of the Scarlet Woman and those who serve her.”
“Lo you now! I do most humbly crave your pardon, most worthy—nay, then, what do they call men who are no priests, and yet take upon them the priest’s office under John Calvin and his fellows?”
“Sorry should I be to seem discourteous or inhospitable to a wounded man,” exclaimed Bradford indignantly, “but men have been set in the bilboes and worse for less offense than such words.”
“Do I not know it?” retorted Gardiner. “Did not I, with these eyes, see mine own friend Thomas Morton set in the bilboes and direfully insulted in yon village of Boston, for less,—nay, for naught—for naught—but scaring a pack of saucy Indians by firing some hail-shot over their heads to fright them into bringing him a canoe? And did I not see him, less than two months gone by, haled down to the quay and put by main force aboard a skiff which rowed him out to the Handmaid, a crank leaky old tub, not half victualed or half found, and no provision for his comfort, nay, for his very life, but a handful or two of corn out of his own provision, stolen out of his house at Merry Mount before it was set afire? Yes, sirs, set afire as the Handmaid sailed out of port, as a taunt and a gibe to a helpless prisoner! Ha, ha, though! That word ‘helpless’ minds me of a merry joke even in the midst of such dolor. When our friends yonder had got poor Morton into their boat, and rowed him to the side of the Handmaid,—and marry, she’s much such a handmaid as Hagar of the Bible, turned out into thewilderness with neither meat nor water enough to keep poor Ishmael alive”—
“Profane man! Do you dare”—began Brewster, but with an uplifted hand and deprecatory bow the knight interrupted him:—
“Pardon, your reverence, though ’t was a most apposite quotation and surely more scriptural than profane,—but let it pass. As I was saying, when the boat reached the Handmaid’s rotund sides and a rope was thrown over, Morton was bidden to seize it and climb aboard; but, as he himself might say, he put in a demurrer, and represented that having no business on board the Handmaid he hesitated to intrude where perhaps he was not wanted. The tipstaves persisted, Morton desisted, until in the end the rope was drawn up and a noose let down instead, wherein they netted him and so hoysed him on board, he laughing like a fiend at their toil and rage.”
“They should have put the noose around his neck, and not hasted to pull him inboard,” growled Standish; and Sir Christopher, turning airily upon him, cried,—
“Say you so, Captain Sh—nay, Captain Standish? Well, and truly there’s little love lost ’twixt you and Morton. He had a story that you pleaded hard for leave to shoot him with your own hand, when he was down here at Plymouth a prisoner as I am now.”
“I would have been glad enough to meet him man to man, and let him who was the better marksman shoot the other.”
“And a very pretty main it would be between two such fighting cocks as”—
“Enough of this!” exclaimed the governor, silencing with a gesture not only the captain, who had sprung to his feet, but the Elder, who with a slow red mounting tohis cheek where it showed like the color in a hardy apple frozen and withered, yet clinging to the parent tree, seemed about to speak.
“Sir Christopher Gardiner, if that is indeed your name and degree, we men of Plymouth claim no titles, nor are we courtiers, skilled in cunning fence of word, but we have our own dignity as rulers of this little commonalty, and our self-respect as men. Be pleased, therefore, to lay aside all these quips and cranks, and tell us briefly who you are, and why you are found fleeing from the Bay, even at risk of your life.”
Somewhat impressed by the simple dignity of Bradford’s manner, and perhaps a little ashamed of his own levity, the knight at once threw it off, sat more upright in his chair, and fixing his eyes steadily upon Bradford’s face as if to avoid the challenge of Standish’s eager gaze, replied courteously,—
“I have already told you, Sir Governor, that I am Christopher Gardiner, son of a worthy gentleman of Gloucester in England. Early in youth I wandered away from home, and sojourned so many years among Jews, Turks, and other infidels, as the Prayer Book hath it, that my father disinherited me and gave my estates to a brother who clung to him—and to them. On the other hand, a certain potentate whose name you love not made me a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre and a Cavalier of the Milizia Aureata, commonly called the Golden Melice.”
“The Pope of Rome has no power to appoint a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre!” exclaimed Brewster, recalling worldly lore which he had thought forgotten. Gardiner bowed low and mockingly.
“Pardon! No doubt, reverend sir, you are betteracquainted with His Holiness than I can be, but I go on with mine account of myself. Coming back to England after well-nigh thirty years’ absence, I find my father dead, my brother and his brood in possession, and naught left for the poor exile, should he ever return, but a beggarly thousand crowns and a nook beside the hall-fire so long as he should behave himself!
“Well, well, ’t is not good for me to dwell on those days; so to cut the matter short, I took my thousand crowns, and a few more that had hidden among the tatters of my knightly robes, and came hither to the New World, hoping to escape from men and the weariness of their ways. I bought a bit of land from a copper-colored gentleman calling himself Chickatawbut who professed to own it, and who made much complaint that the men of Plymouth had stolen from his mother’s grave the choice bearskins laid over it to keep the good gentlewoman warm through the storms of winter”—