“We bought some bearskins of a native, but knew not where he got them,” said Bradford with an air of annoyance, and Sir Christopher’s great mustache stirred in malicious glee at seeing that the pin-prick had reached the quick.
“I bought my land, and I built mine house, and I planted my garden, and I hired some Indian guides to show me the haunts of the game and fish, and I began to live much such an innocent and beneficent life as that of Adam in Paradise”—
“With yon fair lady as your Eve?” demanded Standish. The knight turned his eyes upon him and the spark kindled in their depths, but again Bradford interposed,—
“Leaving aside tropes and metaphors, Sir Christopher,may we ask what relation the gentlewoman we found at your house sustains toward yourself?”
“She is my cousin, my housekeeper, my poor little friend. Ah, indeed, gentlemen, you may leave her alone with no fear but she will suffer enough both for her own peccadillos and mine, since those gloomy bigots of the Bay have seized and hold her close prisoner, with low diet, and questionings like those of the Holy Office, day by day.”
And the man’s voice took on so genuine a tone of pain and fear as he thought upon his helpless companion that even Brewster forbore to press the subject further, and Bradford not unkindly inquired,—
“And why didst thou flee from this poor paradise of thine?”
“I heard by my friendly Indians, the same who afterward told me that Mary was a prisoner, that there was mischief plotting against me in the council chamber at Boston, and one fine morning when I saw a boat filled with tipstaves and bum-bailiffs crossing the river half a mile or so from my house”—
“Neponset the Indians call it,” murmured John Alden; and Gardiner nodded good-humoredly.
“Ay, so they do, yet at that moment I tarried not to discover if Winthrop’s men had learned its name as well as its navigation, but, throwing my shot-pouch and powder-flask around my neck, thrusting my compass into one pocket and a full flask into the other, I bade my poor little cousin good-by, and well armed, as you may be assured, I plunged into the forest, and set out for the New Netherlands, some sixty or seventy leagues to the southwest of Boston Bay.”
“They thought you would try to reach Piscataqua,where Hilton and others are seated. Church of England men, they, and more of your own fashion.”
“Why, of course they so thought, Master Governor, and that is why I went not thither; nor did I seek to come here because I felt myself in need of some air less pure and less attenuate than that which circles round a conventicle; I pined for the company of ordinary mortals like myself.”
“You hardly reached the New Netherlands, however,” suggested Bradford dryly.
“No. I fell sick the first night, from sleeping on the bare ground in a pitiless storm of rain and sleet, and I rested for a day or so with some natives whom I knew. Besides, had they much harmed her I left behind, I would have gone back and revenged her by at least John Winthrop’s life.”
“Come, now, that’s spoken man fashion!” exclaimed Standish, and the two soldiers exchanged an almost friendly glance and smile. But the smile quickly faded from the knight’s face as his thoughts went back to his terrible experience in the wilderness, and resting his elbow on his knee, with his chin in the cup of his hand, he stared gloomily into the fire, and went on:—
“I heard once and again from Boston, and I sent a token to my poor girl, bidding my messenger lie, and say that I was safe and well; then I went on, and wandered for days, nay, for weeks, up and down, hither and yon, fevered, wounded, helpless, yet unbroken. I met natives who told me of a great river in the Pequod country,—Canaughticott they called it; but I could not cross it save by the favor of those savages, the most bloody and the most implacable of any in the country, and I saw it would be but madness to attempt it. ThenI was minded to linger about in the forest until summer, when I might make my way north to Piscataqua, or perhaps ship aboard some vessel bound to the New Netherlands, or even come hither and ask shelter,—in very truth I knew not what I would be at, for every way seemed barred, and I was too dazed and fevered much of the time to concoct a plan beyond the next meal, or the next lodging. At last the Massachusetts runner who had dogged the path to Piscataqua for two or three weeks tried another trail and came upon me. I since hear that he would have murthered me but for your influence, and I am beholden to you, one and all; for, sad as is my plight, I am not yet ready to make venture of a country even stranger to me than New England. But since the Bay had set a reward upon my head it might not safely rest even upon the dank leaves of the forest; and two days ago, while Samson so slept, the Philistines came upon him; that is to say, I wakened suddenly with a most uncomely savage bending over me, and trying to steal my snaphance which I hugged close to my breast. Alive in a moment, I sprang to my feet, dashed my fist into the fellow’s mouth and heard his teeth split off like icicles, even as I sprang for the other side of the thicket to make ready to shoot him. Now beyond that thicket lay a stream whose name I know not, but broader than the Thames at London”—
“Taunton River, we have named it,” again suggested Alden.
“Ay? Well, there lay a canoe pulled up on the bank, with the paddles in it. To seize that canoe and paddle across the river was my game, and haply so reach the New Netherlands; but as I put my shoulder to the bows the enemy fell upon me, a half dozen at leastof hellish whooping savages with all their murderous motives uppermost. With one mighty heave I pushed off and sprang in, at the same moment presenting my piece now at this, now at that one of the savages. Well I knew that any one of them might hide behind a tree and pick me off with an arrow, and I found time to marvel that they did not, for how was I to know that they had been ordered to take me alive and unharmed? but even as the canoe felt the stream and swerved away from the shore, even as a delusive hope of escape danced before my eyes, the stern of the tittlish craft ran upon a rock, and presto! I was in the water, and what is worse, my piece and my rapier were at the bottom of the stream! I stooped to grope for the good blade, but it lay too deep, and as I rose they were upon me, yelling like fiends. One weapon remained, my little dagger of Venice, which I would not have lost for a gold piece, sith it is a dagger of happy memories and hath carved me many a puzzling knot, even as the great Alexander untied the Gordian knot with his own good blade”—
“Your dagger is safe, and shall be restored. I pr’ythee get on,” remonstrated Bradford.
“Sir, your impatience is flattering to my poor powers of narration, and sooth to say, I found myself much interested in the story as it went on. Well, I drew the dagger and I shook it in their faces after a most terrible fashion, and I swore most roundly that the first man who came within reach should taste its point; and so fearful and so truthful was my mien that they slunk back, and I even began to cast lightning glances toward the canoe as it lay stranded not many feet away, when some direct emissary of Satan whispered a plan to those impsof the same master, and two of them, retiring to the bushes, cut half a dozen or so of long poles and stripped them of their leaves and little shoots; then each man seizing one, they began to try to knock the dagger out of my hands, and as I swiftly changed it from side to side, and turned every way to shelter it, their dastardly blows rained down upon my hands and arms until the sleeves were cut to tatters and the skin beneath to ribbons of most unseemly hue. I held on so long as a man’s will may conquer flesh and blood, for I fancied that, knowing me to be a man of some daring and endurance they fain would take me alive to test my courage under torture, and I had liever provoke them to kill me then and there; but in the end, when the dagger was beaten out of my numb and swollen fingers, they closed in upon me like foul wolves upon a wounded stag, and all was over.
“They bound my arms, as Master Alden can tell you, most cruelly, and so soon as themselves were refreshed—although not so much as a drop of water gave they me until at night I managed to drink from a pool where we lay for a few hours—they set off for Plymouth; and the rest you know.”
“And the man is over-weary for safety. ’Tis best to leave him to rest, and to Mistress Alden’s ministrations.”
So spake Samuel Fuller, the kindly surgeon and physician of the Pilgrims; and Bradford cordially replied,—
“Yes and indeed, Doctor. Sir Christopher, we do not make you any answer just now, except that we are beholden to you for your courteous reply to our inquiries, and we will now leave you to repose. To-morrow we shall know better what to reply. We wish you good-e’en.”
“Good-evening, Sir Governor, and each of you gentlemen. Captain Standish, it would please me much if by and by you would waste an hour in talk with me of the stirring adventures we both have known in those realms of heathenesse beyond the seas.”
“It will give me singular pleasure so to do, Sir Christopher,” replied Standish; and so in amity and sympathy parted two men who with equal pleasure would have fought hand to hand until one lay dead upon the field, or, as they that evening did, over a tankard of strong ale, rehearsed for each other’s benefit their battles of old time.
A MILLSTONE FOR SIR CHRISTOPHER.
“Here, Betty woman! You shall help mother and carry the strange gentleman’s breakfast to him. I’m too put about with my baking to redd myself fit to see him. Put a clean towel over the sarver, set the salt and pepper pot upon it, and take father’s beer-mug to fill him out a measure of my oldest home-brewed. He said but yesterday he loved a cool tankard better than strong waters of a morning.”
“Shall I take one of the real damask napkins for him, mother? There are two in the drawer of the dresser newly laundered.”
“Yes. Give him of the best, poor fellow, while he’s with us, for he goes from us to prison, and mayhap to worse.”
“What worse, mother?” demanded Betty, pausing as she shook out the folds of the Antwerp damask napkin, and turning her face toward her mother, whose quick eye marked its sudden pallor.
“Pho, child! I did but shoot at random; there’s no harm coming to the man that I know of. Here, now, here’s the little bird done to a turn, and some manchets of wheat bread, and a cup of honey, and the tankard. That’s enough for any man’s breakfast, be he sick or well. What’s that, now?”
“Just a bit of mayflower, mother, that I found yesterday in the nook south the hill, you know.”
“Yes, yes, but—well, have thine own way, poppet,—thou ’rt a good child.”
And the tray, decorated with a little silver cup holding the two or three reckless sprigs of epigæa, which had ventured before their time into a world not yet ready for them, was carried into the fore-room, where Sir Christopher stood at the window impatiently considering his swollen and discolored hands from which he had removed the bandages.
Before we attend to him, however, let us here note that theEpigæa repensstill blooms in Plymouth so early, that by May-day it is gone; and it is not, and never was, and never will be an arbutus, although a world which chooses to say “commence” instead of “begin,” and “locate” instead of “build,” insists upon calling it so, and probably will so insist as long as time endures.
“Ah! Good-morrow, little maid!” exclaimed the knight, a smile replacing the scowl of vexation. “I have not seen you before. Are you Master Alden’s daughter?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Betty, placing her tray upon the table, and then turning to make her little curtsy, for Betty knew her manners as well as any young gentlewoman alive. “Mother was over-busy this morning to attend you, and so sent me with your breakfast.”
“And a right tempting breakfast, too!” declared Gardiner, seizing the pewter beer-mug and half emptying it at a draught. “Ha! ’tis good! A right honest strike of malt!” added he, carefully wiping his long mustachios and smiling upon Betty, who stood solemnly regarding him. “And a posy, too! A posy that looks marvelously like thyself, child, so sweet and tender, yetblossoming from out austere and rigid foliage. What is thy name, little one?”
“Elizabeth Alden, sir; but I’m mostly called Betty.”
“Ay, then, this flower is the Bettina, or the Betty-belle, or the Bettissimo, is it not?”
“Nay, sir; we call it mayflower, because father says it minds him of the English may that blooms in the hedges where he was born. But the doctor, who is wondrous wise about herbs, will still give it some hard name I cannot remember. He knows botany, the doctor does.”
“Ay, does he? Well, I would he knew a way to make me a well man and a free one.” And the knight, hastily pushing aside his half-eaten breakfast, began to pace up and down the room in restless anger and impatience. Betty, halfway to the door, stopped and regarded him pitifully, then timidly said,—
“I would I could help you, sir. Shall I bring my kitten to see you? or mayhap you’d like Shakem better?”
“And what is Shakem, thou pretty child?”
“He’s father’s little dog that catches rats and shakes them so merrily, and he knows tricks, too: he’ll stand up and beg, and he’ll catch the bits on his nose, and he’ll play at being dead”—
“Nay, then, Betty, he’s not for me! I need no mimic deaths to mind me of mine own. Ohé!”
“Is that the ‘worse’ that mother meant? Oh, I’m so sorry, sir!”
“Worse that thy mother meant? Now what’s that riddle, child?”
“Mayhap I should not have told it again; but mother made the manchets and broiled the bird, while we had but bean soup and coarse bread for breakfast, becauseshe said you’d go from here to prison and it might be to worse.”
“Said she so? Ha! is it resolved upon, then? But no, no, no! Winthrop and the rest would not dare, especially with Gorges at my back. I can make them see ’twould be but self-murther for them to give him and the council so excellent a weapon against them. There’s no danger, no danger of death, but I must write to Sir Ferdinando”—
“Is he at the Bay, sir, and will he serve you if you can make him know?” asked Betty eagerly; and the knight, who had forgotten her, turned with a sudden smile and uplifted eyebrows.
“What! we’re in council together, are we, Betty? Nay, Sir Ferdinando Gorges is in England, and— Come, now, child, I read thine honest eyes, and I know thou ’rt sorry for me, and would not add to my discomfort, hadst thou the chance of doing it.”
“Nay, sir, indeed and indeed I would not do so.”
“I am sure of it. Well, then, Betty, promise me thou’lt not say over again what just slipped my lips, and most particularly the name. I’ll be sworn thou hast even now forgotten”—
“Nay, sir, I’ve not forgotten; ’tis Sir Ferdinando Gorges that would befriend you, but he’s in England and may not be reached, but an the Bay does you an injury he’ll revenge it.”
“Thou hast too good a memory, Betty, and a wonderful quickness for thy years,” replied the knight, biting his lip, and staring almost angrily at the child. “Yet I must e’en trust thee. Thou’lt not lisp one word of that lesson thou hast so pat? Mind you, child, ’twas not meant for your ears!”
“I’ll not say it over to any one, sir, and I did not want to hear it.” And Betty, with a pretty air of dignity, took up the tray and was leaving the room when Sir Christopher recalled her:—
“Betty, you’re taking away my posy! Was not it meant to tarry with the poor prisoner, and comfort him a little?”
“Yes, indeed, sir. Will you be so gentle as to take it off the tray?”
“Ay, and thank you, Betty. Good-by, my pretty turnkey.”
“I know not what that is, sir. Can I bring you aught else?”
“Yes, Betty. I fain would have pens and ink and paper, if I may; and will you or some other ministering sprite redd up the room a little?”
“I’ll ask mother, sir,” replied Betty comprehensively, and disappeared, leaving Sir Christopher plunged in meditation both perplexing and futile.
“I must wait and see how much they know before I frame my reply,” at length said he aloud; and throwing off the weight with a shrug of his broad shoulders, he took a small dressing-case from one of the inner pockets of his doublet, and began to comb, to perfume, and to curl the long dark hair which was in itself an abomination to the Puritans, and an object of scorn to the Pilgrims.
“The right mustachio still excels the left,” muttered he discontentedly, as by help of a tiny pocket mirror he carefully scrutinized the result of his labors, and separating the hairs of the left-hand mustache tried to give it a more formidable appearance, although it already nearly touched his eye and covered his cheek. Agentle tap upon the door disturbed him, but without interrupting his occupation he cried, “Come in,” and a moment later, “Oh, ’tis my little Betty again! She has brought some paper and pens, and she finds me at my toilet. What think you of my lovelocks, little Betty?”
“I never saw such on a man before, sir.”
“Nay, that’s no answer, madam! I asked how liked you them.”
“I would like them”—
“Well, say it out, thou strange child.”
“I would like them on a woman right well, sir.”
“But not on a man?”
“Nay. Even Alick was shorn long since.”
“And who is Alick, pr’ythee?”
“Alick Standish, the captain’s oldest son.”
“And your little sweetheart?”
“Nay, sir, mother says ’tis not pretty to talk of such things, though like enough we’ll marry when we’re old enough, for our two fathers are close friends.”
“And how much older must you be, mistress, ere you may speak of such things?”
“Well, Susan Ring is no more than fifteen, and she is to marry Thomas Clarke so soon as he has William Wright’s house finished, for he’s a carpenter, and William Wright would fain marry Prissie Carpenter, the governor’s wife’s sister”—
“Ohé! I had forgotten! So, so, indeed, and so it is! Now, then, here is a coil!”
Betty, perceiving that her prattle was no longer heard, ceased abruptly, and in silence completed the spreading of the bed, and dusting and arranging the furniture with all the mature and responsible methods not uncommonlycharacterizing the oldest daughter of a large family, especially in those early days. Suddenly the knight broke silence:—
“Betty, you know Mistress Carpenter?”
“Prissie?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, yes, sir, I know her very well. We have merry games of play together, and I am main fond of her.”
“Well, child, I also know her a little, and I too am fond of her, but that is another of the things you may not tell abroad.”
“And yet you have never been here before, have you, sir?”
“No, thank the Lord, I never have, nor shall I willingly come again, I promise you, my Betty; but being here, I fain would change a word or two with Mistress Carpenter, whom I knew in England before ever she or I came hither.”
“And that will not be hard, sir, for she often runs in to have a chat with mother, and I will tell her”—
“No, no, no, child, that will never do!” broke in Sir Christopher impatiently. “Did I not tell thee ’twas a secret?”
“Yes, sir, but you would speak with Prissie, you said,” replied Betty, her eyes wide with wonder and a growing instinct of wrong-doing. “You had best tell mother about it, sir.”
“Nay, Betty, I thought thou wert my little friend, and felt sorry that those cruel men at the Bay will presently serve me worse than they did my friend Master Morton.”
“He was here, and I liked him not at all. Hemiscalled Alick’s father, and mother would not make jelly for him though he asked it of her.”
“So! What a little partisan thou art, Betty! and I’ll venture thy mother is, too. But, Betty, there was another man there at Boston, whom they whipped until the blood ran down to his heels, and then they cut off his ears, and laid a hot iron on his cheek”—
“Oh, sir!” And Gardiner paused, startled at the power of expression developed in that little flower-face by horror, and anger, and pity beyond its years. His own face softened to perhaps its best expression as, laying a hand upon the glittering hair, he kindly said,—
“Nay, then, ’tis not a tale for the ears of a little maid; but thou’dst not like to have me so served, if thou couldst hinder?”
“Oh, sir, but how can I hinder?”
“Why, I know not that thou canst, and yet—the first way is to keep my counsel even from thy mother.”
“I always tell mother, and sometimes father, all I do, but—I will not tell what can harm you, sir; only please tell me no more.”
“But, Betty, dear little Betty, I was just going to ask you to do me one little kindness, and tell nobody about it. Won’t you be the friend of a poor wretch who is to be so cruelly used if you do refuse to help him?”
“Indeed and indeed, sir, I would help you at one word if I could, but I may not tell a lie, even though to save you and me too from a den of lions.”
“Daniel, eh? Well, little Daniel, I ask thee to tell no lies, nor to do anything to hurt thy tender conscience, but only to carry a little folded bit of paper to Mistress Priscilla Carpenter, and fetch me another which she will send.”
“Oh, I can do so much as that, sir,” replied Betty, relieved at what seemed to her a very harmless proposition.
“But you must give her the billet when she is all alone, Betty, and you must not let any one—not any one, mind—know a word about it from first to last. Can you do that?”
“Oh, yes, easy enough,—but”—and Betty pondered, finger on lip; then suddenly turning her brook-brown eyes upon the dark face of the man of the world, she demanded, “Is it right for me to do it, sir? Since I may not ask mother or father, you must tell me, sir, is it right?”
Nobody knows why Sir Christopher Gardiner fled his native land, nor why he dreaded to put himself in reach of its authorities; but whatever may have been his crimes, I believe none injured his own soul more, none at the last day will hang more like a millstone around his neck, than the offense he now offered to the little one who made him for the moment her arbiter of right and wrong; for he said, but turned away from her eyes while he said,—
“Yes, child, ’tis right, and so would your mother say if you could ask her; but she would far liever you did not, for she would then feel that she must tell your father, and he the governor, and so I should be balked of what will be a comfort to me while I am burned and bleeding in the hangman’s hands up yonder.”
“Oh, sir! oh, sir! The pity on’t—and—and—indeed, I’ll carry your token.”
“There, then, there, then, dear little maid,—don’t cry! I pr’ythee don’t cry! Come, now, I’ll give it up! I’ll say no more about it.”
“Nay, sir, I’ll do it, and I’ll not tell, and ’twill be a comfort to you when—oh dear, oh dear,—but sith you say ’tis right, and mother would call it right”—
“Nay, I’ll not do it,—and yet—and yet”—
“But why will you not, sir? ’Tis not that I was naughty and did refuse at the first? Sometimes when I’ve been froward, father will not let me fetch his pipe or his dry slippers, and says, ‘Thank you, Elizabeth, but I’ll serve myself,’ and I’d rather he’d beat me, or scold, as mother will.”
“My child, I’m not vexed, and—well, there—wait a bit—now, here it is, just these half dozen lines thou seest, Betty; surely there’s no harm in such a scrap of paper, is there, child?”
“You say not, sir,” replied Betty submissively, yet sadly, for she liked not her errand, although resting in the confidence of a nature itself upright, upon the assurance of her elder that she was doing right in obeying him.
At dinner time, with the tray came Betty, again with an apology from her mother; and when she had set it down she took a scrap of paper from her bosom and handed it to the knight, who, impatiently unfolding it, read in a very rude and Gothic scrawl the two words,—
“Ask Betty.Priscilla Carpenter.”
“‘Ask Betty,’” repeated the knight aloud. “That is all there is in it, Betty. But what is the message that I am to ask?”
“Prissie cannot write much, but she made shift to read your billet, and she sends her love and kind remembrance,” repeated the child glibly. “And she said if you got leave to walk out, and I went with you, we should go to look for the mayflowers just below theFort Hill, down near the palisades, and mayhap she would be there about three hours after noon. And if you cannot go to walk, or father goes with you, she will pass by this window while they are at lecture in the Fort, but it would be no more than to say good-by.”
“Now that goes almost too well to be true, little Betty!” exclaimed the knight, rubbing his hands, and wincing as he did so, for they were not yet healed, while Betty, sadly changed from the careless and merry little maid of the morning hours, withdrew without a word.
After dinner, as he had expected, Sir Christopher received a visit from his host, who told him that the governor still awaited a reply to the letter he had sent by Indian runners to Governor Winthrop at the Bay, and that meanwhile Sir Christopher was to rest content where he was, or, if it better suited him, to walk about the town.
“That proposal jumps well with mine own fancies,” replied Gardiner smilingly. “Your little daughter brought me these posies this morning, and told me of how and where they grow, and I should well like to study them in their habitat. I cherish a singular love for herbal lore, and have the theories of Fuchsius and Bauhin at my fingers’ ends.”
“You should talk with our doctor, then,” replied Alden. “He is marvelously learned in all such matters, and can pluck you to pieces the prettiest posy that grows, and break your head with the learned names he’ll find in it.”
“Ay, I doubt not,” returned Gardiner coldly. “But in my captivity I better love the company of a prattling child than of a man who may be mine enemy.”
“Nay, friend, we’re none of us enemies of yours, norof any but those who are enemies of God and the king; still so far as my will goes, Betty is free to walk with you if her mother needs her not.”
“And may I ask of your courtesy that you will put the matter before your dame, as I am not like to see her?”
“Surely, although the mistress bade me say that she is presently coming to look once more at your wounded hands and arms.”
“Oh, they are all but well. Sound flesh and good blood like mine heal apace.” And Sir Christopher, with a self-approving smile, held up his well-shaped hands and straightened his comely figure.
John Alden looked and listened, but made no response, unless a slow smile that began almost imperceptibly, and widened and widened until it showed nearly all his broad white teeth, could be called so. But before it gained its full development he had left the room.
“TWO IS COMPANY, THREE IS TRUMPERY!”
And so it fell that about three o’clock that afternoon, as Sir Christopher Gardiner and Betty Alden wandered along the southern foot of Burying Hill, then called Fort Hill, searching under the lee of every rock and clump of bushes for the epigæa, as often to be found by its pure spicy fragrance as by sight of its coy clusters of pink and white blossoms, Prissie Carpenter, a little basket in her hand, came strolling along the brookside, rather ostentatiously bound upon the same errand.
“Now would I like the skill of a painter fellow I knew in Holland, one Martin Ryckaert, a man I could take by the heel and eat him body and bones as I would a prawn; but give him his charcoal and his paints and his canvas, and he’d picture out this scene for you as if you saw it.”
So spake Sir Christopher, who, old swashbuckler though he was, possessed a real love of nature and a real appreciation of beauty in whatever form it revealed itself, as he stood upright with folded arms and looked about him, while Betty, her little fingers grimed with soil and scratched with briers, delved amid the thickset ground pine to find the flowers hiding there.
It was one of those early April days which redeem the character of the froward month, and make one almost love its capricious yet prophetic gleams betterthan the assured joys of June. A high wind from the west drove before it great white cumuli, glittering like silver in the strong sunlight, and careering across the sky and dropping down behind Manomet as if in an illimitable game of hide-and-seek and catch-who-catch-can. The waves, uneasy at beholding liberty they might not have, and games they might not join, leaped as high as they could toward that azure playground, laughed back to the sun who laughed with them, or, breaking hoarsely upon the shore, sent up their voices of sturdy discontent. The trees, moved by such gigantic melody to bear their part in the grand antiphony, clashed their bare branches in a rhythm too vast for the human ear to comprehend, while the evergreens murmured and sobbed and whispered together, lamenting that they had not even dried leaves to send whirling down that wondrous dance. The brook, its icy winter shroud still clinging to the banks, rose up to assert that life defies the shroud, and that there is a power of spring which shall vanquish death again and again forever; and as the brown waters went tumbling and leaping down toward the ocean which the icy shroud can never compass, their sweet voices joined in the universal song like children in the choir. On sheltered slopes and sunny hillsides the grass was springing green, and though no flowers disputed the epigæa’s precedence, the violets and anemones, the snowdrops and the Solomon’s seal, stood with finger on lip and foot on the threshold, waiting for courage to cross it.
Coming up the brookside in her blue skirt and mantle, a white handkerchief tied over her hair, which in spite of it escaped in a hundred little dancing tendrils, Prissie seemed a part of the great sweeping harmony of skyand wind and sea and shore, and the knight, as with his extended right arm he swept in the lines of a magnificent imaginary landscape, felt, as his eyes first lighted upon that figure, more as if it were the fitting centre andmotifof his piece than a real personage.
“A red cloak would be better,” muttered he. “And yet no,—no,—the cold purity of blue is more harmonious, and marries well with sky and sea, but— Aha, Betty, there’s your friend Mistress Carpenter!”
“Is it? Oh, yes! I’ll call her.”
“Nay, we’ll stroll that way and see the brook near at hand, and you may search for gooseberries while I exchange a word with pretty Prissie.”
“There are no gooseberries as yet, sir,” replied Betty, bewildered; but the knight only laughed and strode farther down the hill toward the brook.
At that very moment Myles Standish pushed his round head and square shoulders through the trap door leading from the interior of the Fort to the flat roof, along the parapet of which his beloved guns were ranged, and lightly stepped off the ladder, saying,—
“Come out hither, Wright, and I’ll show you through the perspective glass the beginnings of my new house. Ha! Does not the hill show fairly against the sky?”
“The Captain’s Hill, all men call it,” said William Wright, carefully coming out upon the roof, and shading his eyes with his hand as he looked across the water to the bold eminence, tree-crowned and majestic, upon whose skirts Standish had already erected a summer cottage soon to be solidified into a dwelling.
“I know they do,” replied his companion absently, while he adjusted the clumsy glass solemnly deposited in his charge by the chiefs of the colony. “But I betterlike to call it Duxbury, for it minds me of hills I knew of old.”
“I know no hills called Duxbury in England,” objected Wright cautiously.
“Nay, the hills are called Pennine, but the place where I first saw them is in the manor of Duxbury. Ha! look you here, Wright, here’s matter close at hand more nearly concerning us than the Pennine hills. See you yonder?”
“’Tis Mistress Carpenter and—and the man Gardiner,” stammered Wright, staring down into the valley at his feet.
“Ay, and little Betty Alden picking posies so far away that she might as well be at home. Mind you, now, my friend, how close the rascal walks to the maiden’s side, and how those hawk’s eyen of his stare into her fair face; and by my faith, he’s grasping her hand and she, poor maid, knows not how to pull it away!”
“She might an’ she would,” muttered William Wright jealously.
“Oh, I know not, I know not,” retorted Myles, teasing him. “She’s but a withy lass, and mayhap afraid of him. Is it true she’s troth-plight to you, Wright?”
“Yes—that is no; she never would give her promise sure and fast, but I had hoped”—
“Then, man, if you will be said by my advice, you’ll make down to the brook at best speed and secure that faltering hope before it is floated away like the flowers the silly maid is stripping off and flinging into the brook, not knowing what she’s about. Go down, Wright, and claim your own.”
“Nay, Captain,” returned Wright, whose thin face had grown tallow-pale, and whose thin lips refused totake moisture from a tongue almost as dry. “If Mistress Carpenter finds her pleasure in such company and such folly I’ll not trouble her with mine. No, I’m not for a young gentlewoman who brings such manners and such morals from the wicked courts of kings.”
“Come, come, Wright, I’ll not listen to your light-lying of Mistress Bradford’s sister. ’Tis a good girl as ever stepped and a pure maid as lives in Plymouth, but she’s young, man, a score of years younger than you, and doubtless she’s known the man in England, and they’ve met by chance, and he is parley-vooing after the fashion of his kind, and she knows not how to be rid of him. Come, go you down, man! Or go with me, if it suits you better.”
“No, Captain, I’ll not go.” And the stubborn face hardened in the utterly discouraging way some faces can. “But I’ll ask this much of your kindness, friend: go you and meet them, and find out, as you so well can do, what is the meaning and the intent of it all; and especially tell me if you as an honest man will say to me that this maid is such a maid as a cautious, God-fearing man may crave for his wife. I will trust to your discretion rather than to mine own fears, Standish.”
“Well, man, I’ll try to warrant your trust,” replied the captain, laughing a little, “although I do not feel it in myself to be the judge in a Court of Love such as they hold in France and those parts. But you may be sure I’ll deal fairly both by you and the maid. Come after sunset and I’ll tell you how I have fared.”
“Nay, Pris, sweet Pris, ’tis such a pretty name I fain would dwell on’t since I may not take sweeter dews upon my lips, believe me, fairest, I have forgot nothing of that fair memory; all I then said I say now andagain and again! I came to New England for naught but to find thee once more, and to woo thee for mine own dear wife and lady paramount so long”—
But upon the smooth and dulcet tones of the knight suddenly intruded a strident and mocking voice:—
“Good-e’en to you, Mistress Prissie; so you are looking for mayflowers already?”
“Ah! Oh, Captain Standish, how you startled me! I knew not you were here.”
“Nay, I’m grieved to have startled you, mistress, but why should not I take my walks abroad and look for mayflowers as well as you, or at least as well as this gentleman, whose walks in life have not always led him in such pleasant paths, more than mine own. How say you, Sir Christopher? We did not gather posies much in those stirring days among the Turks wherein I first met your knightship.”
“I do not remember meeting you, Captain Standish, before I came to New England,” replied the knight coldly.
“No? Well, you are an older man than I, and your memory more laden, so like enough a little matter may well slip out of it. But when I saw you there at Passonagessit t’other day I was sure ’twas not the first time. And how is the fair lady we saw with you? Your wife, is she not?”
“No, sir, she is not my wife!” thundered Sir Christopher, and the captain’s face assumed an expression of dismay and embarrassment.
“Not your wife!” echoed he. “Nay, nay; if I’d known that, I would not have named her in presence of this modest gentlewoman. But how is it, then, that she spake of you as her lord? Nay, I’ll not push thematter, sith I see ’tis an over-delicate matter. Wow! this wind cuts through one’s blood. Mistress Prissie, I much fear me you’ll catch a megrim if you linger longer by the brookside, and Betty, ’tis high time thou wert helping thy mother with the supper; run home, little maids, and Sir Christopher, I’ll show you something more to your taste than spring flowers and young lassies. Come up to the Fort and help me fire the sunset gun.”
Sir Christopher’s face was very dark, and possibly enough the captain had not so easily taken his captive, but that Prissie Carpenter, ashamed and terrified at the meaning she suspected under the captain’s debonair look and voice, had already fled toward the village, followed by Betty with a basket full of flowers, but a conscience full of thorns.
Seeing that resistance had thus become useless, the knight gloomily accepted his defeat, and clomb the hill beside the captain, whose jovial manner suddenly dropped into silence, nor did he speak until the two men stood upon the roof of the Fort. Then, while the sun, disdaining the mantle of gold and purple officiously presented by the western clouds, sank in undimmed glory to the horizon, and resting there an instant seemed to view once more the fair domain he now must abandon, Standish, his lighted match in one hand, laid a finger of the other upon his companion’s breast.
“Sir Christopher Gardiner,” said he, “we breed no Mary Groves in these parts, and yon young gentlewoman is the sister of our governor, and the promised wife of one of our worthiest citizens. ’Twould go hard with the man that trifled with her, and well do I hope no more hath been said than is soon forgotten and will leave no blot behind.”
“Since when hath Myles Standish added the duty of father confessor to his other cares?” demanded Gardiner with a sneer.
“Ask rather, what sin hath he committed so notable as to call for the penance of listening to thy confession, my son?” retorted the captain good-humoredly. “Nay, man, take my hint in good part, as indeed ’tis meant. This maid is not for thy fooling, and thine own affairs are like to give thee trouble enough without mixing and moiling them further. Ha! the sun is going”— Puff! and the dull boom of heavy metal resounded across the quiet town, and startled the eagle circling above his nest on Captain’s Hill.
Then the two men went silently down the hill, and whatever may have been the knight’s secret resolves of virtue, he never again found the opportunity to test them.
“Now, Betty,” said her mother, as the family rose from that meal we call tea, but they named supper, “I will put the babies to bed, and then step up the hill to Mistress Standish’s to see little Lora, who is worse of her measles to-night, and thou wash up the dishes and redd the kitchen, and then go to bed like a good little lass. I’ll take in the gentleman’s supper, and ask what he fancies for his breakfast. John, you’ll find me at the captain’s when ’tis time for lecture.”
“Ay, dame; and meantime I’ll smoke a quiet pipe here with Betty and dry my wet feet.”
But hardly had the mother disappeared when John Alden felt two tender arms about his neck, and heard a broken whisper,—
“Oh, father! I’m so sorry!”
“What! Betty, child, is’t thou? And crying! Nay,then, little woman, what is it all about? Come sit on father’s knee and tell him thy trouble. What makes thee sorry, my little maid?”
“I—don’t—know—father.”
“Don’t know! Nay, how canst thou be sorry and not know why? That’s naught but foolishness, Betty.”
“Please, father, will you speak to mother, and not have me carry the gentleman’s sarver into the fore-room, nor make his bed any more?”
“What! what!” exclaimed Alden, pushing the child back until he could look into her wet and troubled face. “Nay, then, Betty, I ’ll have the truth of thee; has the man been rude to thee, or said a word amiss?”
“I—oh, don’t look so angry, father; you frighten me.”
“But I will be answered, Betty! Why dost thou fear to go into this man’s room? What has he said to thee?”
“He’s said naught but kindness, father; he never spoke a cross word, not one. What should he scoldmeabout?”
And the innocent wonder of the sweet face filled the man with fear lest his child might have understood him. Yet still with his own persistence he asked,—
“But why dost thou not want to take him his victual, poppet?”
“I may not tell you, daddy dear, because I promised sure and fast I would not tell, but I’d rather he asked mother or you”—
“Asked us what, child?”
“To help him— Nay, father, please do not ask me, for I promised I would tell nobody, and he said they’d cut off his ears and burn his cheeks”—
“Tut, tut, he’s been scaring thee, thou silly littlemaid, and I doubt not asking thee to help him escape. Now isn’t that the great secret?”
“No, daddy—that is, perhaps he thought Pris would help him escape”—
“Pris? Why, what has she to do with this man, or thou with either of them?”
“Mother’s coming, and I don’t want to tell her, for she’d chide me so sharply if I did not give up the secret, and I promised, father dear, I promised, and you said I ought to die rather than tell a willful lie.”
“And so I did. Well, I’ll think on’t; go back to thy dishes now.”
And as Priscilla bustled into the room and hastily put on her outdoor gear she noticed neither how grave her husband looked, nor how little progress Betty had made with the dishes.
A little later, as John Alden brought his wife home from the lecture, he said,—
“William Wright was telling me that he saw Prissie Carpenter and our Betty with Sir Christopher Gardiner by the brook picking posies this afternoon.”
“Why ’twas you that bade me send Betty out with him!” exclaimed Priscilla, forestalling the objection in her husband’s voice.
“I know it, and I’d better have left the matter to you, wife. It was ill thought on, and we’ll not have our little maid called in question if the man is plotting an escape”—
“Talking with Pris Carpenter, was he?” interrupted Priscilla sharply.
“Yes”—
“Then it wasn’t escape he was talking of, but his own captivity to her charms. She knew him inEngland, John; she told me so, and showed me a token he gave her. Mayhap he’s come to marry her!”
“And the woman Mary Grove, what make you of that, wife?”
“Oh, a body must have charity, and many a mare’s nest is naught but a tangle in the hedge. We’ll see.”
“Ay, but we’ll not have our Betty mixed in with any such matter, Priscilla, and I pray thee keep her away from this man while he is in our house. Do not send her to the fore-room again; one of the boys can carry in the sarver, or I will do’t myself, but Betty is not to go in thither again.”
“As thou sayest, John,” replied Priscilla with a meekness reserved for the rare occasions when her husband chose to assert his authority; so thus it came about that not again during the week he remained at Plymouth did Sir Christopher Gardiner find speech with the child, who never to her dying day revealed the secret she had promised to keep, and never quite comforted herself for the duplicity into which she had been led.
THE LITTLE BOOK.
An uneasy and difficult week passed over Plymouth, its shadow resting especially upon John Alden’s house, when one fine sunshining morning Jo, the second boy, rushed into the house, with the news,—
“Mother, there’s a big boat down from the Bay, and a captain in it, bigger than our captain, and the governor’s son, and a mort more of men come to get the man in our fore-room.”
“And where’s thy father, Jo?”
“Oh, he’s down there at the waterside, and all the other men, talking with the Bay folk, and I ran off to tell you, mother.”
“That’s my brave boy! He doesn’t forget mother, does he?” And Priscilla turned to look fondly at her second-born, a fine, manly little fellow, with a marvelous likeness to his uncle Joseph Molines, victim of the first winter’s pestilence, the brother whom Priscilla had so fondly loved, so deeply mourned.
“Well, poor man, if he’s to be carried away prisoner by so many warders, I’ll e’en toss him up a dainty dish for his last dinner with us,” continued she busily. “Jo, my man, run down and ask father if any of the Indians have brought in oysters to-day, and if not, to get some clams or a lobster; and be quick, my boy, for it’s hard on noon. And, Betty, see if there are somefresh eggs in the hen roost,—I’ll make an omelet with herbs; and there’s a fine salmon to serve with cream sauce and a sallet”—
“We might kill a chicken, mother,” suggested John, the grave first-born, so like his father in everything.
“Nay, not to-day, Johnny,” replied Priscilla, somewhat embarrassed, for her mind reverted to a little discovery of her own, and her eyes glanced toward the high mantel where lay a small brown-covered notebook much worn at the edges, and although apparently of trifling value, just then a greater weight upon the mind of the mistress than even her silver cup, or her six teaspoons.
It was but the day before that Betty had picked up this book just outside the house, and bringing it to her mother said she thought the gentleman had dropped it out of his pocket, for she had seen it in his room upon the table. Opening it at random, Priscilla read a few words only, but those so strange that, instead of at once restoring the book, she laid it aside until she should have time to consider her duty in the matter. On one side lay hospitality and honor, but on the other was the obligation to justice and to the common weal, which to those early settlers was a matter far more vital than to us, for it included not only their own interests, but perhaps the very lives of all belonging to them. If here indeed was “a snake in the tender grass,” had she a right to let him wind his beautiful deadly way out of reach of justice? But on the other hand, was the danger deadly enough to warrant her in betraying the man who had eaten her salt? This controversy of mind, sufficiently perplexing to a woman of Priscilla’s day and training, was suddenly resolved by the news broughthome by John Alden that the Boston boat would return directly after noon-meat, and that Sir Christopher Gardiner would return with her.
“Then come you in here a moment, John,” said Priscilla, rising from her almost untasted dinner, and leading the way to her bedroom.
John ruefully rose, his eyes upon his plate, where lay a huge segment of suet pudding which he had just begun to absorb in his own slow and methodical fashion. Betty’s quick eyes saw the whole.
“I’ll turn a basin over it, father, and set it by the fire till you’re ready for it,” said she with a flashing smile; and her father, smiling also, replied,—
“Thou’rt ever a good little wench, Betty!”
“See here, John! See this little book!” exclaimed Priscilla, shutting the door so promptly as nearly to catch her husband’s last foot in the crack. “’Tis the man’s, and mayhap the governor ought to know he’s a Catholic for one thing. See, see! Isn’t that what this page meaneth?”
“Ay, he was reconciled, as they call it, on such a day and”— But as Alden pored over the scribbled entry, murmuring vaguely such words as more clearly presented themselves, his impetuous wife interrupted him:—
“I gave him fish for his dinner to-day, sith I would not have a dog lack meat to his mind in mine own house, but still I remember how those fiends of Catholics murdered my grandsire in cold blood, and his wife after him, for naught but that they were Huguenots, as we are, and I must hate Catholics forevermore.”
“Nay, wife, not hate them,—not hate whom God has made and still spares for repentance,” suggested John; but Priscilla impatiently tossed her head.
“God is God, and I’m but poor Priscilla, his creature. I cannot love and hate all in one breath the same thing.”
“Nay, wife, but thou didst give the man what meat his conscience called for on a Friday?”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“And now will deliver him to death, if so it be?”
“Oh, I cannot tell; but I hate Catholics; my father bade me do so.”
“And yet thou dost feed them, and I’ll be bound thou’lt see that this man’s tender wounds are well covered from the cold before he goes aboard.”
“There, now, I’m glad you spoke on’t, John! I’ll lap his arms with a good woolen bandage, and you must lend him your old horseman’s cloak to wrap himself withal. The governor’ll fetch it some day when he goes up to visit the Bay governor again.”
“Nay, wife, I don’t see but thou dost humbly follow thy God, and love the sinner while thou dost hate the sin.” And John slowly and fondly smiled down upon the petulant brown face of the wife he still loved as well as when first he wooed her.
“Oh, I know not how that may be, my Jeannot,” replied Priscilla, laughing and blushing a little as she saw herself trapped. “But here’s the little book.”
“Ay, here’s the little book, and to my mind the best thing is for me to carry it straight to the governor and let him do with it as he lists. ’Tis a matter too weighty for us to handle alone.”
“Doubtless you’re right, John, and here it is,” and Priscilla, with a little sigh of vague regret, handed the book to her husband, and watched him as he at once left the house to carry it to the governor.
But Betty kept the pudding warm for his supper.
That afternoon Sir Christopher Gardiner, formally made over to the custody of Captain John Underhill and Lieutenant Dudley, son of the deputy-governor, sailed out of Plymouth wearing John Alden’s cloak, in which he sullenly muffled the lower part of his face, while a slouched hat nearly covered the upper.
“Are you sick?” bluntly demanded Underhill, who had orders to treat his prisoner honorably and kindly.
“Nay, I’m sorry,” retorted the knight.
“Fortune of war, comrade,” returned the Puritan captain not unkindly, “and there’s no very sharp measure laid up for you, as I take it. Our governor bade me have a care for your comfort, and the Plymouth governor hath writ a long letter to Master Winthrop, all in your favor, as I know from what he was saying to Alden.”
“‘Have no fear,’ says he, ‘it shall do him no harm;’ and t’other returns, ‘We did but our duty, and yet would be right loath to hurt the man.’ Now what make you of that, man?”
“Read the governor’s letter and you’ll know more than I do,” replied Sir Christopher gloomily.
“Read it! Nay, that’s not my business. But ’tis a hugeous letter.”
And from the pocket of his doublet Underwood drew forth a little packet carefully sealed and superscribed,—