But we must not linger with the guests, although each one seems like a friend, nor may we pause to enumerate the dainties spread in graceful profusion upon the tables set between the house and the edge of the bluff; suffice it to say that Barbara has delegated to Priscilla Alden the part of caterer, and well has she sustainedher reputation, using the abundant material placed at her service to the very best advantage, and winning from each of her assistants the very best service they knew how to render. Nor does the banquet fail to receive ample justice at the hands of the banqueters, beginning with those dignitaries seated in state at a table covered with Barbara’s best napery, and provided with all the magnificence of silver, pewter, and china that she has been able to muster, not only from her own stores, but those of her neighbors. Here on either hand of the captain sit Elder Brewster and Ralph Partridge, with Winslow at the other end of the table, flanked by William Collier and Timothy Hatherley; at another table preside John Alden and John Howland, with Thomas Prence, William Bassett, and Jonathan Brewster, already a leading man in the colony: and at these two tables are seated nearly all the heads of families soon to be enrolled as the freemen of Duxbury, while their wives and younger children cluster around a third table, headed by Barbara and Priscilla, and the young people enjoy themselves amazingly at their own board, as remote as possible from that of the elders, their fun a little chastened by the presence of those young matrons Mistress Prence and Mistress Love Brewster, themselves no more than girls.
And so was Duxbury’s birthday celebrated, and still the honest mirth and neighborly kindliness went on, until the sun dropped behind Captain’s Hill, and the red cow lowed at the bars of her pasture hard by.
Then, after a little silence that made itself felt, Elder Brewster rose in his place and said,—
“Brethren and children, this is a day of solemn joy to us who now have become a town by ourselves, evenas children going out from their father’s house to begin a home of their very own; a day to remember, brethren, and to set down in our annals, that when in time to come our children’s children shall ask, ‘Why do ye these things?’ they shall find an answer ready to their hands. Some of you upon whom mine eyes now rest were fellow-passengers with me in the ship Mayflower, and ye remember, as I do, the barren and comfortless shore whereon we landed and were fain to call it home. Some of us, turning our eyes to that southern shore, can almost see the hillside where in those first months we day by day laid away the forms of those dearest to our natural hearts, or most precious to the life of our little colony; we recall the suffering by sea, the suffering by land, the cold and hunger and misery and grievous toil we then endured; but do we recall them to lament, to sorrow like babes over our own distresses? Nay, men, we recall them in joy and praise, in wonder and admiration at His goodness who hath so wonderfully brought plenty out of famine, joy out of sorrow, the morning out of night. Well may we say with Israel, ‘I am less than the least of thy mercies; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two companies!’
“Is it not verily true? There lieth Plymouth, fair and prosperous, the mother of us all in this new land; and here stand we, sturdy, well-grown children, fit to take our own part in the world, ay, and to comfort her should she call upon us. Have we not cause for rejoicing, ay, and for a firm resolve to show ourselves in some degree worthy of such singular mercies? Brethren, my heart is too full to speak further save to One. Let us pray.”
Up rose the old men, the grave and bearded men, thematronly women whose eyes ran over with the memories the elder had invoked; up rose the young men, rejoicing in their strength, yet reverent of their sires, and of the story they had learned in childhood and would not forget in age; the lads, the maidens, the little children, all rose, and stood with bowed heads and hushed breath to listen to the tremulous voice of that aged servant of God as, forgetting all save Him to whom he spoke, he poured forth one of those fervent and trustful appeals whose eloquent power are matter of history. And as he raised his hands in benediction, calling down a special blessing upon the new town and each and every one of its homes, a plume of smoke rose from Burying Hill far to the south, and the sunset gun boomed out its solemn detonation.
“Plymouth says Amen!” whispered Priscilla Alden in Betty’s ear; and the girl silently pointed to Lora Standish, upon whose head the last sunbeam had laid a finger, lighting the pale gold of her hair to the nimbus of a saint. Priscilla looked, and suddenly clasped her own child close to her side; but neither spoke.
“LOREA STANDISH IS MY NAME.”
“Lora! Aunt Bab! What do you think? Bessie Partridge has a sweetheart, and he’s going to be a minister, and his father is one of the old sort that we’re bound to hate; but the parson don’t care and has given his consent, and they’re to be married out of hand. There, now!”
“But, Betty, dear child, do catch your breath and sit down and put back your hair all blown over your face”—
“I know, Aunt Bab, I know; but I just put Jo’s saddle on the colt and cantered him over here at his best speed, and of course my hair is blown about. Lora, I could shake you, you provoking girl, with your hair like new carded flax, and your fresh kirtle and wimple, and your stitchery in your hand”—
“The sampler is well-nigh done,” interrupted the mother proudly, “and I think she hath done it fairly enough, don’t you, Betty Alden?”
“Certainly I do, auntie, and I know as well as though you said it I shall never be a patch on Lora for delicate needlework; but then there are so many of us, and mother has no time for her needle, and the boys and father do wear out their hosen most unmercifully, and keep me darning or knitting all the time. I’ve a stocking in my pocket here for Jonathan; but first let me have a good view of the sampler, Lora.”
“Wait but till I cut off my silk at the end of ‘name,’” said Lora, busily fastening her thread at the back of the canvas. “There, now I’ve the needle safe! You know you lost one for me last time you were here, and mother and I hunted an hour for it.”
“I know,” replied Betty penitently, “and if you had not found it mother was going to send John and Jo over to the governor to see if he had some in store.”
“He had some direct from Whitechapel by the Lyon,” remarked Barbara, “but the price is advanced to fivepence each, and we must be careful.”
“You see I have still the flourishing at the end to do,” said Lora, handing Betty the frame in which a long and narrow piece of linen was tightly stretched and nearly covered with parallel lines of embroidery done in various colored silks. Near the lower end came a verse, or at least some rhymes running thus:—
“Lorea Standish is my name.Lord, guide my heart that I may do Thy will;Also fill my hands with such convenient skillAs will conduce to virtue void of shame,And I will give the glory to Thy name.”
“Lorea Standish is my name.Lord, guide my heart that I may do Thy will;Also fill my hands with such convenient skillAs will conduce to virtue void of shame,And I will give the glory to Thy name.”
“Lorea Standish is my name.Lord, guide my heart that I may do Thy will;Also fill my hands with such convenient skillAs will conduce to virtue void of shame,And I will give the glory to Thy name.”
“Lorea Standish is my name.
Lord, guide my heart that I may do Thy will;
Also fill my hands with such convenient skill
As will conduce to virtue void of shame,
And I will give the glory to Thy name.”
The letters forming these words were characterized by a noble independence and freedom from any slavish adherence to custom, some of them being capitals and some small, some little and some big, and theD’sturning their backs or their faces to their comrades as a vagrant fancy dictated. Such as it was, however, this sampler was in Betty Alden’s eyes a work of art commanding her respectful admiration, mingled with a warmer feeling rising from her very sincere love for the artist.
“Oh, Lora!” cried she, throwing an arm around thegirl’s slender neck and kissing her heartily, “one can see that you come of gentle blood, and are fitter for silken embroidery than for the milking-stool which is my usual workbench.”
“Nay, I would love to milk, and churn, and cook, and knit gray hosen, but father will not have it so,” said Lora a little wearily. “I may spin, and sew, and do my tent-stitch, and help mother make syllabubs and the like, but it angers him if I soil my hands or wear a homespun kirtle such as is fit for rough work”—
“Rough work and Lora are droll ideas to bring together, aren’t they, auntie?” interrupted Betty with another hug and kiss to her friend, whose sweet face had grown a little flushed and worried as she spoke.
“But come, dear, I want you to go with me to see Bessie and ask her if this wonderful news is sooth. She may come, mayn’t she, auntie?”
“Yes, child, so that you’re both back for supper. Father can’t abide finding Lora’s seat empty at table.”
“We’ll be sure to come. Now, Loly, where’s your hood?”
“Put on your sleeves and your cape, Lora. You’ll get burned else.”
“Yes, mother,” replied the girl patiently, and passing into her own bedroom returned presently with a cape covering her bare neck, and buttoning some loose sleeves to her shoulders, for in that day a gown with high neck and long sleeves was a vestment unknown, and when age or cold weather or out-of-door excursions demanded a covering for shoulders and arms it was supplied, as in Lora’s case, by temporary expedients. A little white linen hood tied under the chin completed the girl’s preparation, and with a gentle kiss upon her mother’scheek she joined Betty impatiently waiting upon the doorstep.
“Lora, I should think it would weary you to be such a cosset!” cried she, as the girls struck into a path leading northward through the captain’s lands to Eagle’s Creek, where hard by a clump of aged oaks stood the cottage where in the summer season Elder Brewster lived with his sons Love and Wrestling and the young wife of the former. Still trending north, the path led past Jonathan Brewster’s comfortable cottage near the Eagle’s Tree to Harden Hill, where a little way from the edge of the bluff stood a small and low building rudely put together of rough timber and hewn planks, with a thatched roof and windows of oiled cloth, and neither foundations nor chimney, the former unneeded because the colonists hoped at no distant day to replace this their one public edifice with something more elaborate and permanent, and the latter undreamed of as yet even in the mother-church of Plymouth, where the Rev. John Rayner and his colleague Charles Chauncey, both graduates of Cambridge, England, and bred in such luxury as England then knew, took turns in preaching, in overcoats and woolen gloves, sermons of two hours’ duration to a congregation the weaklings of which kept themselves alive by the use of foot-stoves and hot bricks in their laps, while the stronger members grimly endured sitting three and four hours in an atmosphere considerably more chill than the outdoor winter air.
Following this example, Duxbury built no chimneys to her first meeting-houses, and Elder Brewster in the beginning, with Ralph Partridge and John Holmes to succeed him, preached and prayed with only the fire of their own zeal to keep them warm.
A little way from the meeting-house stood a cottage owned by William Bassett, but at present occupied by the Rev. Mr. Partridge, who waited for his formal installation as pastor of the new-formed town before settling himself in a house of his own, and still lingered in The Nook, although he had already bought of William Latham a house whose magnificence has descended upon the pages of history for our admiring contemplation; a house, and not a cottage, for it boasted a second story with a garret overhead, and a roof sweeping majestically in the rear, from the roof-tree to the ground.
But the Partridges had not yet removed to their new nest, and it was in the vicinity of the little hired cottage on Harden Hill that Betty and Lora found their friend Bessie demurely watering and turning a web of fine linen laid to bleach upon the grass. As they approached she started and turned round, a rosy, sonsy lassie, plump as her name, and overflowing with health and spirits.
“Oh, Bess, is it true?” began Betty, laying a hand upon each of her friend’s shoulders and scrutinizing her face with its flaming blushes.
“Good-even, Betty, good-even, Lora! Is what true? What does she mean, Lora? Let me finish wetting my linen, you runagate!”
“Yourlinen! Aha! How many smocks and petticoats will it make? Or is it for sheets and pillowbers? And must we all come and help you sew it, or is there time a plenty?”
“Nay, Betty, there’s some one coming!” whispered Lora, as the figure of a tall young man of a decidedly clerical cut appeared from the front of the house, and Betty, all at once as demure as a kitten, seized one end of the linen, saying,—
“Certainly I’ll help you turn it, Bessie; and how is your mother to-night?”
“Mother’s well, and— Master Thacher, let me bring you acquainted with Mistress Alden and Mistress Standish, two of the chief of my friends.”
“And so right welcome in mine eyes,” replied the young man heartily, as he lightly kissed the cheek of first one and then the other girl, a ceremony no more remarkable then than shaking hands is to-day.
“My uncle Anthony has gone with Mr. Partridge to pay his respects to Captain Standish,” added he pleasantly. “All men delight to do honor to the Captain of Plymouth Colony.”
“You are very courteous to say so, sir,” replied Lora, with her pretty little air of dignity and reserve; “and your uncle will be right welcome.”
“’Tis strange we did not meet them in the way,” said Betty, whose brown eyes had not yet lost the gleam of merriment lighted by Bessie’s blushes.
“Oh, they went by Master Alden’s to see him as well; and look, there they all are now,—the captain and father and Master Thacher!” cried Bessie. “They must have come to your house just as you left it, Lora.”
“Nay, father was at work with Alick and Josias in the great field beside the road, and I doubt if the gentlemen went to the house at all,” said Lora, her face becoming radiant as her eyes met those of her father, now close at hand. Beside the captain strode the tall, gaunt figure of Ralph Partridge, a man whose many trials and persecutions had set their stamp upon a face naturally rugged, and bowed a form intended to be sturdy; at Standish’s other side walked a man younger in years than the dominie, but bearing upon his facemuch the same expression of strong endurance and unforgotten experiences,—a man with a story, as any one accustomed to reading faces would say, especially when, as now, the broad-leafed hat was removed, displaying the hair, thick as that of a youth, but white as that of a grandsire.
“Here, Thomas!” cried this last comer, as the elders approached the little group of young people; “come hither, lad, and let me present you to the notice of Captain Myles Standish, whose name I have so often heard upon your lips.”
“Doubtless ’twas for love of that poor old soldier that you have come hither, Master Thomas,” said the captain merrily, and under cover of the little jest the awkwardness of the meeting was overpast, and a blithe half hour ensued. At last, while the shadows lengthened, and the clouds took on their evening glory, and the sweet breath of evening primroses and lowing kine filled the sunset hour, Myles and Lora strolled home along the footpath, hand in hand, while Betty Alden, light as a deer, ran along in front of them, impatient to reach home before her mother needed her.
Arrived at the house, father and daughter paused to look across the bay at Plymouth peacefully sleeping in the westering light, with Manomet purple against the golden sky, and the wide stretch of water smooth as a mirror, save where it fawned against the point of the beach and the foot of the bluff where they stood.
“A fair scene, a goodly scene, daughter,” said the captain; “but not your home for very long.”
AVERY’S FALL AND THACHER’S WOE.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, even as to-day, the betrothal of a young couple was cause of rejoicing and festivity among their friends, and three days after Lora and Betty had made what we may call their engagement call upon Bessie Partridge, the minister’s family with its guests, and Elder Brewster and the Aldens, were invited to supper at the captain’s. Not to afternoon tea, mind you; nay, not even to that old-fashioned tea-time still popular in the rural districts, where the guests sit down to a table loaded with hot bread and toast and all manner of sweets, with the choice of tea or coffee to wash down the heavy meal.
But Barbara Standish had never even heard the names of tea or coffee, and honestly called the last meal of the day “supper,” setting it at about seven o’clock, when the labors of the day were over and all men at leisure for social enjoyment. At that hour, therefore, the guests sat down to a feast which I dare not describe because I have already described so many, but content myself with saying that it in no wise discredited Mistress Standish’s housewifery, and that when Dame Partridge asked for the “resait” of the frosted cake, the hostess proudly replied that Lora had so improved upon the old formula that it was left in her hands altogether, and Lora modestly added that she should be more than gladto run over and show Mrs. Partridge exactly how she made it.
“I’m obliged to you, dear,” responded the parson’s wife; “for,” with a sly glance at the betrothed pair sitting very stiffly and formally at the right hand of their hostess, “I expect we shall have to be making up some cake pretty soon.”
But our concern is not so much with the feast, of which these friends partook with frank and honest appetites, as with the conversation that came after, while the women gossiped together in the house over a drop of mulled wine, and the men, pipes in mouth and tankards of sound ale at hand, sat under the trees carefully preserved upon the edge of the bluff when the land was cleared for building.
Two wooden armchairs, the only approach to luxurious seats to be found in the captain’s cottage, had been set forth for the elder and Parson Partridge, and the next best given to Anthony Thacher, while the host, with Alden and Jonathan Brewster, sat upon a rude bench formed between two beech-trees. Hobomok, never far from his beloved hero, lay upon the grass solemnly smoking, and the younger men, Wrestling Brewster, commonly called Ras, as a diminutive of ’Rastling, John and Joseph Alden, Alick Standish, and Thomas Thacher hung about the door and windows of the great south room where Bessie, Betty, and Lora flitted around their mothers like pretty kittens around sober Tabitha.
Then it was that Myles, after a moment’s thought and a dubious clearing of his throat, said tentatively,—
“Master Thacher, when I heard that you were to be sent deputy from your new town of Yarmouth to our court at Plymouth, I resolved within myself, ifopportunity should offer, and your own mind prove toward the matter, that I would ask you to give me a particular account of your famous shipwreck upon the island men now call Thacher’s Woe from that disaster. Would it offend you if I now urge that petition?”
But even as the words left his mouth the captain regretted their utterance, for the man addressed cringed and started in his chair, as one who feels a touch upon a new wound, while the pallor of his singularly colorless face turned to ashen gray, and his light blue eyes dilated and wandered as those of one who sees a vision of terror.
“Nay”—resumed Myles hastily; but as hastily Thacher took the word out of his mouth.
“Not nay, but ay, good friend!” exclaimed he with an attempted smile. “I know well that the terror of those fearful hours has left its mark not only upon my outer man, but upon the forces of my mind, which are no longer altogether under mine own control, but, like a horse once well terrified at a certain spot, will still swerve and start in passing it, despite of his driver’s voice and rein. Albeit, even as it is well that the unruly steed should be often taken past the bugbear, which he will at last cease to dread, so it is well for me to talk of that day from time to time, and to tell its story as occasion shall befall, to friends who can enter into its solemnity.”
“You are right, my son,” said Elder Brewster quietly. “The unruly heart of man needs long and bitter discipline before it becomes truly meek.”
“Ne’ertheless, Master Thacher, I do withdraw my petition, and beg you instead of that story to tell us how you like our fashion of holding court by deputies rather thanpro coram publicoas hath been our wont until this year.”
“Nay, Captain Standish, one matter at a time an’t please you, and I have no mind to be balked of the glory of mine adventure. What say you, friends? Shall not I tell you of the shipwreck?”
“It would give me singular pleasure to hear it, Brother Thacher,” replied the parson, while the elder smiled approval, Jonathan Brewster murmured “Ay!” and the captain, lifting his shaggy beard and taking the pipe from his mouth, said with a merry gesture,—
“It were churlish to refuse to listen to a man who fain would tell his own adventures, so I will e’en put all scruples in my pocket and hearken with the rest of you.”
“Well spoke, mine host, and I can comfort you by saying truthfully that the qualm hath passed and I would rather tell the tale than be silent.
“You men of Plymouth have not forgotten the great storm of August in the year of grace 1635, for it was then that the French villain D’Aulney seized upon your rich trading-post at Castine which they now call Bragaduce, and turned John Willet adrift with only a shallop and a worthless due-bill. The terrific storm that wrecked Willet’s shallop and also the armed ship Angel Gabriel, bound to Boston in the Bay, overtook the humbler craft in which my cousin Dominie John Avery, his wife and six children, and I with my wife and four children, nine mariners, and other persons were making the voyage from Ipswich to Marblehead.”
“It was a bark of Isaac Allerton’s in which you voyaged, was it not?” asked Standish.
“Ay, he was owner, but not master.”
“Never mind who played master, if Allerton was owner, the boat was sure of ill luck,” growled Standish; but the Elder interposed serenely,—
“Your speech savors of superstition as well as uncharity, Captain Standish, and I had held you singularly free from both those vices.”
“I crave your pardon, Elder. I had clean forgot that Allerton was for a while your son-in-law. Go on an’ it please you, Master Thacher.”
But again the power of those memories he had so resolutely evoked overmastered the speaker, and it was in a hurried and broken voice and with a furtive gesture of the hand across the eyes that he again began:—
“I fain would tell you, but I cannot, what John Avery was, not to me alone who loved him better than David could love Jonathan, better than mine own brother who yet was dear to me, but to all the world; a man so good, so holy, so devout, that he seemed sent hither to remind us of the Man of Nazareth whose humble follower he was; and withal so keen of wit, and so sound of judgment, and so ready to help with heart and hand wherever he saw need, that I leaned upon him and yearned toward him in all difficulties as a little child with his mother. Verily I believe it was for the chastisement of mine own overweening love that this thing hath befallen.”
“Belike rather the God he served saw him fit for heaven, and so took him even as He did Elijah,” said the Elder reverently.
“It may be, venerable sir, it may be; but I cannot forget mine own arrogancy when John told me that the church at Marblehead had invited him, and he was fain to go, and I said, ‘Well and good, John, but you sha’n’t be rid of me, for I’ll go too, and naught but death shall part us.’ Ah me! Naught but death, says I, and verily ’t was naught but death!”
“Did it storm when you set forth?” asked Jonathan Brewster’s clear and somewhat cold voice; and Thacher, recalling himself with a start, replied in much the same tone:—
“No, although the weather looked threatening, and our master was in haste to sail, hoping to weather Cape Ann before the wind changed as he foreboded it would. But it was just off the Cape that it fell calm, and then all in a moment the storm burst, and the wind, veering to every point of the compass, caught us as if in a whirlpool, so that before the sailors could trim their sails they were torn from their hands, torn from the masts, or if they clung, only helped to tear the masts from the hull and the rudder from the stern. I am not shipman enough to tell you how it all befell, but this I know: that when the morning of Saturday, the 15th day of August in 1635, broke in such fury of wind and rain and raging waves as I never beheld before or since, our bark drove furiously upon a reef, and in the shock went all to pieces, carrying ten souls into eternity before one could cry God have mercy upon them! One of these was Peter Avery, a fine lad, who had gone aft to fetch a rope whereby to bind his mother to the stump of the foremast, and in that act of filial charity he died.”
“And his reward is with God,” murmured the Elder.
“We who survived,” continued Thacher, “speedily made our way from the crumbling wreck to the rock between whose horns our bows were jammed; and hardly were we all off when the last timber splintered beneath the hammer of the surge, and we were left, thirteen poor shivering wretches, two of them little babes in their mothers’ arms, clinging desperately to that naked rock, the helpless prey of white-headed wavesthat like wild beasts ran raging along the sides of our poor hold, and now and again with a victorious howl leaped up and seized first one and then another of those poor little ones whom neither a father’s arms nor a mother’s piteous embrace sufficed to save. One by one they went, those darlings of our lives, and as her infant was torn from her arms, Mary Avery, with a cry I shall never forget, grasped after it, and was carried away with it. Then my friend, who had followed them but that I held him back, struggled to his knees and prayed aloud. O my friends! when I remember those words, when I remember that face, drenched with the storm, blanched by the blow that brake his heart, yet luminous as was Stephen’s in his martyrdom, I feel like Paul who, being caught up to heaven, saw and heard what it is not lawful—nay, what it is not possible—for a man to repeat.”
“Nay, we would not have you try, my son,” whispered the Elder, while the captain folded his arms and grimly set his lips, and John Alden wept without disguise.
“The next thing I recall,” pursued Thacher softly, “is holding my cousin’s hand and saying over and over, ‘You shall not leave me, John, you shall not leave me! We will die together or we will live together!’ and I see once more amid the whirl and torment of the storm the smile wherewith he looked me in the face and said,—
“‘We will die together, Anthony, and please God we will live together!’ And then, while some loving cry to God rose afresh from his lips, came a giant wave and tore us asunder, and I knew no more until I was struggling in the waves with mine arm around my poor wife, and she clinging senseless to me.
“Then all His waves and storms went over me, and Iyielded up my spirit to Him who gave it; but it was not yet purified enough to go where my friend was gone before, and God in mercy granted me yet another season of probation. When the Lord’s Day broke, it found me with my poor wife stretched like two corpses upon the strand of a little islet hard by the rock I have named Avery’s Fall, and beside us a poor goat, who all unaided or uncared for had come safe to land. My poor wife! when she recovered her senses and looked about her and knew our piteous case, who can blame her that she cried,—
“‘A wretched goat saved, and my four sweet babies drowned! Doth God then care for oxen?’”
“The Father of us all can forgive the misery of a mother’s heart,” said the Elder, but Jonathan Alden gravely turned away his head and looked out toward the sea.
“Not only the milch goat, but a cheese and a rundlet of beer were washed ashore,” pursued Thacher, “and oh, piteous sight! the cradle whence my wife had snatched her babe came floating safe ashore, with the covering wrought by my sister in England for our first darling, safe in the bottom. Like Noah’s ark with the dove flown to return no more, it seemed to us, and as I dragged the cradle ashore and my poor wife sank beside it and buried her head in that pretty covering, her mad despair gave way in gracious tears, and she wept until she was able to pray.
“Thus, then, our Lord’s Day passed, but with the Monday came rescue, and we two with our empty cradle and its fair-wrought spread, and the poor goat whose life had hung in the balance, were all brought first to Boston, and then to Yarmouth.”
“But Thomas was not with you, was he?” asked Partridge at last, breaking his intent silence.
“Nay, and there is a matter wherein the Elder may hold me as superstitious as the captain,” replied Thacher, forcing a smile; “but it has seemed to me that the Lord, not ready to take him, and not willing to try him by the sharp discipline vouchsafed to me, interposed with a special Providence in his behalf.
“Only the night before we were to sail, Thomas had a dream, and, like Belshazzar of old, he could not in waking remember its tenure, but only its terror. Of one thing, however, he seemed fully assured, and that was that he must not sail upon our voyage; and so strong and terrible was his dread that he would not so much as come to see us off, but as we went our way to the shore he struck into the forest and made the fifteen miles or so afoot.”
“And has he never recalled the dream?” asked Mr. Partridge, with a look askance at his prospective son-in-law just then trying to snatch a rose from his sweetheart’s hand.
“No; that is, he has always seemed so ill at ease in talking of the matter that we have let it drop. It runs in my mind that it is as much a puzzlement to him as it can be to others.”
“‘There be more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ or in mine, quoth my old gossip Will Shakespeare,” said the captain, and Anthony Thacher heartily replied,—
“And spake the truth as fairly as though he had worn gown and bands. A great student of men was that same gossip of yours, Captain.”
“Ay, and a rollicking good fellow. I knew himwell, and something more than well, in the time I was in England after the peace of 1609, and in certain of his plays there’s many a quip and quirk shot at me and my poor achievements. Didst ever see a play called ‘Henry the Fourth’?”
“Nay, Captain, I was never in a playhouse in my life.”
“More’s your loss, friend. Well, in that play there’s a bit runs like this, or something so:—
—‘I remember, when the fight was done,When I was dry with rage, and desprit toil,Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,Fresh as a bridegroom’—
—‘I remember, when the fight was done,When I was dry with rage, and desprit toil,Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,Fresh as a bridegroom’—
—‘I remember, when the fight was done,When I was dry with rage, and desprit toil,Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,Fresh as a bridegroom’—
—‘I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage, and desprit toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom’—
Well, I’ll not give you the whole, if I remember it, and ’tis years since I thought on’t, but a little later it goes forward:—
‘I then, a’l smarting, with my wounds being cold,To be so pestered with a popinjay,Out of my grief and my impatience,Answered full carelessly, I know not what;He should or he should not; for ’t made me madTo see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,And talk so like a waiting gentlewomanOf guns, and drums, and wounds, (God save the mark!)And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earthWas parmaceti for an inward bruise;And that it was great pity, so it was,That villainous saltpetre should be diggedOut of the bowels of the harmless earth,Which many a good tall fellow had destroyedSo cowardly; and but for these vile guns,He would himself have been a soldier.’
‘I then, a’l smarting, with my wounds being cold,To be so pestered with a popinjay,Out of my grief and my impatience,Answered full carelessly, I know not what;He should or he should not; for ’t made me madTo see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,And talk so like a waiting gentlewomanOf guns, and drums, and wounds, (God save the mark!)And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earthWas parmaceti for an inward bruise;And that it was great pity, so it was,That villainous saltpetre should be diggedOut of the bowels of the harmless earth,Which many a good tall fellow had destroyedSo cowardly; and but for these vile guns,He would himself have been a soldier.’
‘I then, a’l smarting, with my wounds being cold,To be so pestered with a popinjay,Out of my grief and my impatience,Answered full carelessly, I know not what;He should or he should not; for ’t made me madTo see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,And talk so like a waiting gentlewomanOf guns, and drums, and wounds, (God save the mark!)And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earthWas parmaceti for an inward bruise;And that it was great pity, so it was,That villainous saltpetre should be diggedOut of the bowels of the harmless earth,Which many a good tall fellow had destroyedSo cowardly; and but for these vile guns,He would himself have been a soldier.’
‘I then, a’l smarting, with my wounds being cold,
To be so pestered with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience,
Answered full carelessly, I know not what;
He should or he should not; for ’t made me mad
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman
Of guns, and drums, and wounds, (God save the mark!)
And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
That villainous saltpetre should be digged
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.’
Oh, well, well, but I must laugh, and laugh again as I mind me of the day when Will Shakespeare firstmouthed those lines at me, and I stood staring like a stuck pig to hear mine own words so bedded in his poesy, like flies in amber in very sooth, for ’twas a story I had told him of a matter that happened to myself in the Low Countries”—
“Alas, my son,” interposed the Elder, raising his hand, “such memories suit but ill with the lives of ‘pilgrims and strangers’ like ourselves.”
“And for that very reason, Elder,” replied Standish a little hotly, “when you and Master Partridge and the rest besiege me to become a church-member, I will listen to naught of it. The old leaven is still a-working by fits and starts, and I’ll do no such despite to the saints as to count myself into their company. ‘Nay, nay, mine ancient,’ says Will to me one time when we stood side by side in Paul’s Walk, and saw a grand procession pass us by, ‘’tis better to watch the lightning than to handle it.’”
With a mischievous glance at the Rev. Ralph Partridge, Standish resumed his pipe, and the parson wisely remained silent.
JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER.
St. Martin’s summer was in the land; that lovely parting smile of the year, so full of love, so full of reminiscence and of promise, so full of pathos and of that vague yearning that lies at the core of every heart, and which I fancy Bossuet means when he speaks of “the inexorable weariness which lurks at the foundations of all our lives.”
The door of Standish’s cottage stood wide, and between it and the lattice opening upon the sea, letting in the sweet breath of marigolds and thyme basking in the southern sun, Barbara stepped lightly back and forth, spinning from her great wheel the fine yarn that would be woven or knit into the winter garments of the household.
A shadow across the floor made her turn, quick yet fearless as a bird building in a tree above a house whose inmates never have threatened it.
A tall, good-looking young man stood in the doorway, and with his eyes searched the room before he said,—
“Good-morrow, dame. Is Lora somewhere at hand?”
“Oh, good-morrow, Ras! Lora has gone to the top of the hill for a breath of evening air. It has been so warm to-day.”
“Yes, Hobomok calls it the Indian’s summer because it comes just before winter,” replied WrestlingBrewster absently; and then after another moment of hesitation he pulled off his wide hat, and coming close to the spinner’s side fixed his eyes upon hers with a shy appeal while he asked,—
“Do you think, dame, I might ask her?”
“Ask her what, Ras?”
“Oh, Dame Barbara, you know full well what I fain would ask.”
“There’ll be an apple-bee at your house or at Jonathan’s this week, will there not?”
“Ay, at Jonathan’s on the Thursday, and Lucretia bade me invite you all.”
“Well, then, you foolish boy, sure that is your errand to Lora, and you’ll find her on the hill, most like at what she calls her sunset seat.”
“’Twas I that made it for her,” said Wrestling eagerly, and Barbara, smiling in the way matrons smile at transparent youth, replied,—
“Then you know where it is. Go, and God go with you.”
“My grateful duty to you, dame,” murmured the young fellow, and went like an arrow from a bow.
A half hour later Barbara, setting her wheel aside, stepped to the door to look toward the hill, and to judge by the position of the sun how near the hour might be to supper time.
Coming up from the shore she saw her husband, and at the first glance knew that he was ill-pleased; with this conviction came a foreboding that made her turn her eyes again toward the hill, but now it was the daughter, and not the sun, for which she looked.
“Where’s Lora, wife?” inquired the captain so soon as he was within speaking distance.
“She went out an hour or so agone for a stroll,” replied the mother mildly. “She has been so steadily stitching at your new shirts, Myles, that I sent her to get a breath of fresh air.”
“Belike it’s she I saw upon the hill; ’twas a white gown, at all events.”
“And like you no longer to see her in white?” asked Barbara, apparently in great surprise. “Why, ’tis to please you she wears it, though it makes a mort of washing for poor Hepsey. But where hast been thyself, goodman?”
“To Plymouth, and Alice Bradford sends you a clutch of eggs from her new brought fowls.”
“Nay, but that’s more than kind!” cried Barbara. “And how fares she, and is it true that Prissie Wright will marry Manasses Kempton? And did you get the grist ground, and what said Miller Jenney of not having it yesterday?”
“Come, come, dame, ’tis not for naught your tongue wags like Priscilla Alden’s all of a sudden. Tell me what man is on the hill with our Lora, and what ’tis you’re keeping from me,—or would if you could. Out with it, Bab! who’s the man I saw up there?”
“Nay, Myles, that’s no tone for you to take towards me! ’Tis not one of the children nor one of the servants you’re speaking to.”
“What! ruffling her feathers like a Dame Partlet if you try to steal the chickens from under her! Nay, wife, that mood’s as strange to you as the chattering one, and both are but put on to turn my mind from its course; but ’tis no use, Bab, no use at all. Come, now, stop these manœuvres and ambushes and false sallies and all your simple strategy, and meet me in the open field. Was itWrestling Brewster that I saw sitting with Lora on her sunset seat?”
“I know not what you saw, Myles, but I know that Wrestling Brewster went up there to find Lora something like a half hour ago.”
“And you knew it?”
“I sent him.”
“You sent him! And for what?”
“For naught more than to find her, but I can guess his errand though he told it not.”
“Oh! And might the father of the maid venture so much as to ask what this errand might be?”
“Nay, Myles, be not so bitter! If I cannot go with you in this matter, ’tis because I love my child even more than you can love her.”
“Love your child! Love your own way and your own will, as you ever have done! Woman, do you defy me?”
“Oh, Myles, Myles!” And fearlessly approaching the angry man, Barbara laid a hand upon his arm and looked straight into his face with all her brave and noble soul shining out of those eyes whose wonderful charm time had not clouded in the least. The captain met them, and the terror of his frown subsided into an angry laugh.
“Well—you should not thwart me if you would not see me thwarted. But honestly, Barbara, have you forgotten or do you despise my constant wish for Lora’s future? Must I mind you once more of my contract with my cousin Ralph whereby his eldest son is to marry our daughter, and so to her and her children shall be restored the fair domain which his grandsire stole from mine? Know you not that naught in all thisworld sits nearer to my heart than this scheme, and that only last month I wrote to Ralph and told him that Lora was now turned eighteen, and if his boy was ready to fulfill the contract I would come to England with the maid, and see her seated at Standish Hall? Mind you all that, Mistress Barbara?”
“Ay, Myles, I mind it well, and I mind too that you did not tell me of that letter till ’twas gone.”
“Haply not, but what of that? Is a man bound to lay all his business before his wife, or to ask her leave to write to his own kinsman?”
“’Tis my kinsman in the same degree, mind you, husband. And because I too am born of Standish I have a right to speak, I have a right to know, and to decide in this matter,—yes, as good a right as yours, Myles.”
“Oho! ’Tis a cartel of battle, is it? Partlet against Chanticleer, eh? Well, our cousins the Standishes of Duxbury carry a gamecock for their crest, and I’ll e’en borrow his spurs.”
“Oh, Myles, Myles! This over-weening ambition of thine hath turned thy brain! When till now didst ever treat me thus?”
“Nay, I’ll not be wheedled with soft touch, nor tearful eyen, nor broken voice. There, there, let go mine arm and wipe thy tears away! Why, thou foolish lass, dost not know I’d liever face a tribe of Pequods than see thee weep? Tut, tut, silly wench, give me a kiss and be done with it. What chance hath Samson when Delilah cries?”
“But, dear my lord, listen now that your mood is somewhat softened. How can you be so sure that this great marriage will make our dear maid happy? Youknow how tender and how sensitive she is; you know how she clings to love, and seems to draw her life from us as the flowers do from the sun; sure am I, as sure as of to-day’s breath, that parted from home and father and mother and brothers and friends and all she has ever loved and clung to, our Lora would droop and die just as that sea-bird did that the boys caught and tried to tame.”
“And if she did!” cried the captain, flaming again into sudden wrath, the reflex perhaps of a stinging pain driven through his heart by his wife’s last words. “Had not she better die as mistress of Standish Hall and be buried with her ancestors in the tomb of the Standishes than to vegetate here as the wife of Wrestling Brewster and fill a nameless grave in these wilds?”
“Since God has forsaken you and the Evil One seized upon your mind, I have naught more to say,” returned Barbara, thoroughly angry on her own side; and as she turned into the house Standish, with a black frown darkening his whole presence, strode away toward the hill.
Almost an hour earlier Wrestling Brewster, making his way softly over the fallen leaves and ripe mosses of the hillside path, had stolen unawares upon as fair a picture as Captain’s Hill has ever seen, or ever shall while time and earth endure.
Very nearly where the monument stands to-day, there then grew a clump of oaks, and between two of them had been fixed a commodious bench, with a back quaintly carved and ornamented with a border of red cedar. From this vantage-point could be seen a fairer view than that of to-day, for man had not yet conquered Nature, nor substituted his uncouth and commonplace works for her perfection.
Clark’s Island, still covered with its primeval cedars and with its northern headland unwasted and majestic, lay like a bower upon the great field of flowing water, and matched Saquish, still an island, but beginning to throw out tentative arms toward the Gurnet’s Head, where six hundred years before Thorwald, brother of Leif, wounded unto death by the savages, desired to be buried, with a cross at his head and another at his feet, directing that the headland should thenceforth be known as Krossness. Toward these yearned the loving arm thrown out by Manomet toward the Duxbury shore,—that arm now reduced to a barren sandspit, but then a green and fruit-laden peninsula; and within it glittered in the evening light the harbor, deep enough at that day to float not only the Mayflower, but Captain Pierce’s Lyon, which now lay snugly anchored there, while the governor’s barge rowed away toward the town, bearing Bradford and Winslow home with the jolly mariner as their guest. Blue smoke-wreaths floating idly upward from Plymouth cottages told of housewives busy with the evening meal, and upon the crest of Burying Hill a twinkling gleam now and again showed that Lieutenant Holmes did not suffer the brasswork of the colony’s guns to grow dim now that they had come under his care.
But closer at hand than these things stretched the marshes, the beautiful Duxbury marshes with their grasses full grown and ripe, reposing under the sunset light like a fair garden, where great masses of color lay in harmonious contrast, and the heavy heads of seed bent, and rippled, and rustled to the evening breeze, murmuring sweet secrets that he carried straight out to sea and buried there.
O man, man! Lay out your modern gardens, and mass your pelargoniums and calceolarias and begonias and salvias and the rest, in beds of contrasting color, and then, if you would note your improvement upon ancient methods, go in the autumn and look at the marshes of the Old Colony, laid out by Mother Nature before Thorwald selected Krossness first as his chosen home, and then his chosen grave.
So fair, so wonderful, so entrancing, lay the view that evening at the foot of Captain’s Hill, yet Wrestling Brewster, albeit a man of singular delicacy of perception, never saw it; saw nothing, in fact, but the lissome form of a young maid clothed in white samite, with pale golden hair wound around her head and held by quaint silver pins with crystal heads that now and again caught the light and sent it flashing back like the aureole of a saint. The great gray eyes, wide open beneath their level brows, were steadfastly fixed upon some point far out at sea, the vanishing point of earth’s curve, the point where the straightforward look of human eyes glides off the surface of the globe and penetrates the ether beyond. What vision arose before the maiden’s eyes in that dim horizon realm? What thought or what dream parted the soft mouth, and tinged the pure pallor of the cheek? What meant the sigh that just stirred the flower at her throat?
So asked the heart of the young man standing motionless and devout in the edge of the little grove, until with the feeling of one who intrudes upon sacred mysteries he withdrew his gaze, and rustled the twigs of the shrub beside him. The girl turned quickly, and as she met his eyes smiled gently.
“Oh, is it you, Ras? I’m glad you came.”
“Are you, Lora? Are you glad I came? And I am glad that you are glad.”
“’Tis so fair, so heavenly a scene that I would all I love might enjoy it as well as I.”
“Lora! All you love, say you? Oh, Lora, do you love me?”
“Ras! Nay, let us not speak of just ourselves; we are so little and the sky is so great.”
“The sky, dear? But the sky and the sea and the forest, they are always here, and we may look at them all our lives long,—all our lives, Lora, our two lives that might be one.”
The gray eyes, still full of dreams, still questioning the far-off depths of the skies beyond the sea, reluctantly turned and rested fearlessly upon the eager and troubled face of the young man.
“What is it, Ras dear? Why are you so—so troubled is it? Why don’t you sit down here beside me and look as we have looked so often upon all this beauty? It was so good of you, Ras, to make this seat for me. It is the happiest place I know in all the world.”
“Then make it happiest to me, darling, by letting it be the place of our betrothal. Oh, Lora, I thought you knew,—I thought you understood, and—and—yes, I even dared to hope that you, just in some far-off maidenly, saintly fashion, felt somewhat the love that devours me like death until I know for certain that it is returned, and then indeed shall I pass from death unto life. Speak, Lora,—speak for God’s dear sake, speak to me.”
“But why are you so moved, Ras, and why after all these years of love and friendliness do you beg me as if I were some stranger to say that I love you?”
“Lora! Lora! You break my heart!”
“Oh, Ras, dear dear Ras! Don’t look so, don’t speak so! There are very tears in your eyes, and see, they call the tears to mine! Why truly, dear Ras, I love you, I love you dearly, as well as I love Alick or Josias,—as well as I love Betty Alden, who is the dearest friend I have, as well as”—
“Stop, stop, for pity’s sake! I thought I suffered before, but oh, Lora, you have given me my deathblow.”
“Nay, what is it, what is it I have done? What a wicked wretch I am to grieve you so, but how is it, dear? Indeed I do love you, Ras, I do indeed!”
“Yes, you love me as a child loves, as an angel loves, as you loved me years ago when I, already come to man’s estate, watched you growing to womanhood like a sweet flower, and vowed that you, and none but you, should be my wife; and for the sake of that vow and for love of you,—yes, an ever growing love of you, mine own sweet love,—I have never looked upon a maiden’s face save as a woman might. I have cared so little for their company that they flout me”—
“Yes, they call you the old bachelor,” interrupted Lora, half merrily and half penitently. “But I never once dreamed it was for love of me you held yourself so strange to all the others. But now I do know, Ras, it seems no more than honest that you should have what you have waited for, and if you want me for your wife, and my father and my mother make no objection, why I will please you thus far.”
“You will—you will be my wife!” exclaimed Wrestling. “Oh, Lora, do you mean it? Do you really, really mean that you will be my wife?”
“It seems to me, young man, that I have somewhat to say in this matter,” broke in a strident voice, and Lora looked up in dismay at her father’s face, very angry, very ominous, yet not turned upon her. At a later day Myles Standish was glad to remember that even in this extremity he never spoke one angry word, or cast one angry look to the child who was the idol of his life.
“Oh—Captain Standish!” stammered Wrestling, springing to his feet.
“Yes, Master Brewster, Captain Standish at your service, who ventures to suggest that you might have done better to ask his leave before urging his daughter to defy his wishes.”
“Oh, father!” And Lora, rising to her slender height, stepped forward and fearlessly slid a soft little hand into the captain’s brawny half-closed fist. “Defy you, father!” murmured she, looking into his face with eyes of loving reproach, “nay, I never could do that.”
“I know it, my pet, I know it; but there, make you home as soon as ever you may—mother is waiting for you—run away, child, run.”
“Nay, father, but I fain would know first why you are so angry with my dear friend Ras. He says he loves me very much, and he wants me to be his wife, and I love him too, and if you please to have it so, I said I would marry him”—
“As you might have said you would take a sail with him!” exclaimed the captain with angry fondness in his tone; but the fondness died away as his eyes turned from the fair face of his daughter to the flushed and anxious one of her suitor, while he said,—
“You may see for yourself, Wrestling Brewster, that this child knows not the meaning of marriage love. Sheis no fonder of you than of—say Betty Alden, or mayhap her pet cat”—
“Nay, nay, father, I must not let that go unsaid! Not love Ras better than I do Moppet! Oh, but I do!”
“Lora, if you will stay here, do not speak again until I speak to you,” commanded the father sternly.
“I would not be harsh upon you, young sir, for you are son of mine honored friend, Elder Brewster, and I believe a worthy son, but you did amiss, yes, shrewdly amiss, in speaking to my daughter before you did to me.”
Wrestling’s lips opened and closed again. He was about to say that Lora’s mother knew of his suit, but in the captain’s mood, that plea might only have brought down wrath upon his wife’s head.
“I have not found it fitting to tell all my affairs to all my neighbors,” pursued Standish haughtily. “But I have mine own intent with regard to my daughter, and that intent is not to marry her in this colony. Let that be answer enough for you, Master Wrestling, and if you like, you may advertise any other aspiring youth that designs to honor my daughter with an offer that it is but needless mortification, for my answer will be to all as it is to you,—nay, nay, nay!”
And with the last word Myles placed his daughter’s hand under his arm and led her down the hill, leaving Wrestling to cast himself prone upon the sunset seat, his face hidden upon the back of it, and his eyes smarting with the tears his manhood refused to allow to flow.
Almost at home, Standish, looking with anxious love into the lily face at his shoulder, said,—
“Poppet, you’re not over-sorry, are you? Why don’t you speak to me?”
“You bade me not speak until you spoke to me, father dear. Nay, but I am sorry, heartily sorry, you should have chided Ras so hardly. Poor lad! He was fit to cry when we left him.”
“But you do not really care for him, dear child? You are not set upon becoming his—his wife?”
“Nay, father, I do not care to be any man’s wife. I would far fainer stay at home with you and mother, but Ras seemed so keen upon the matter and declared I loved him not, that to make him content I said yes; for indeed I do love him, father, more than I love any man after you and the boys.”
“Ha, ha! My little lass, there’ll come a day when the boys, and haply your poor old dad as well, will fly down the wind like thistledown before the love that still lieth sound asleep in my maid’s pure heart.”
“Nay, father, not asleep, but too dear and too holy to be spoken of,” murmured Lora, a soft flush upon her cheek, a tender light in her eyes as she raised them to her father’s face.
“What! what!” stammered he, half affrighted lest the girl had lost her senses. “You love some one already!”
“Oh, father, so much, so dearly! ’Tis for that I love to go and sit all alone there upon the brow of the hill, where I may see the beauty He has made and gaze away and away into the heavens where He lives. Sure the hills of Judah were not so lovely as this place, and who can tell but some day He may descend and stand visibly upon them”—
“Aha!” breathed the captain, stopping short and gazing appalled upon the face of the girl, set seaward, with a half smile upon its lips and a look of yearning love inthe unfathomable eyes. But as he gazed she turned, and throwing an arm around his neck hid her face upon his breast with a sobbing sigh.
“Oh, father dear, I’m sorry I tried to speak about what no words can tell. Don’t talk to mother or to any one, will you, dear, and please do not ask me again. ’Tis so precious and so wonderful, and ’tis all the love I ever want beyond my home loves. You won’t talk about it, daddy dear, will you?”
“One word, Lora. You mean that your love is given to God alone?”
“To Him who loved me and gave Himself for me—to Him who is chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely—to the King in his beauty in the land that is very far off.”
“My child, my child!” groaned the father, drawing the girl’s form close to his thickly beating heart and pressing his lips upon her brow, while Jephthah’s agony turned him sick and white, and his eyes rose with an almost angry protest to the skies.
GILLIAN.
The apple-bee at Jonathan Brewster’s house by the Eagle’s Tree, where The Nook merges into Harden Hill, was in full tide, and one could hear the merry voices of men and maidens, and the cheerful shrilling of matrons talking above the din, before one reached the house. Beneath a clump of trees surrounding the great cedar known as the Eagle’s Tree a number of horses were tied with comfortable measures of corn and trusses of hay before them, and in the little cove lay half a dozen or so boats uneasily tumbling upon the incoming tide. These conveyances had brought the remoter dwellers in the new town of Duxbury and its neighborhood: the Aldens from Eagle Tree Pond, the De la Noyes from Stony Brook, the Soules from Powder Point, the Constant Southworths from North River, the Howlands from Island Creek, the Bassetts from Beaver Pond, and the Abraham Samsons from Bluefish River where they lived neighbors to the Aldens and intermarried with them.
Of The Nook people who came on foot, the Standishes, and Brewsters, and Pabodies, and Prences, and Colliers, and Doctor Comfort Starr, the new physician, with his family, and the Partridges, and Wadsworths, and others, had mustered strong and in every variety of condition, age, and sex; for our ancestors, having farfewer opportunities of amusement than we have, made a great deal more of each one as it came along, and not only sucked the juice from their orange, but ate every bit of the pulp. The apple-bee was but a prelude to the evening’s entertainment, and for weeks before, every young girl in the colony had planned her dress and simple ornaments, and dreamed of some face or voice that should belong to her own especial Robin Adair, or of the games and the songs and haply the contradances that might be permitted when the church-members had withdrawn; and Lucretia Brewster, with her daughter Mary and Love’s wife Sarah, and such fantastic aid as Gillian had chosen to bestow, had been for a week busy in preparing the house and a big shed just finished, for the reception of the expected guests and their steeds.
Gillian! Well, Gillian! And when one has said her name the subject widens until it becomes impossible to handle. Niece of Lucretia Brewster, whose sister had married a Spaniard, this Gillian, left a deserted orphan in some foreign port, had drifted back to England, and thence to New England, where a year or so before the apple-bee she had arrived by hand of Captain William Pierce, consigned along with a present of kersey and Hollands linen to Jonathan Brewster by a cousin who claimed that, as Lucretia was the girl’s nearest relative, her maintenance should fall upon Lucretia’s husband. At first the charge was joyfully accepted, for Gillian was just the age of Mary, Jonathan’s only daughter, and would be a sister to her, as they said. But as the weeks and months went on both Mary and her mother grew silent upon the subject of the new sister, while Jonathan, and his sons William and Jonathan and Benjamin,never ceased to congratulate the women and each other upon the joy and delight of her presence; the father especially often calling upon his wife to recognize how in this case virtue had brought its own reward, and their benevolence to the orphan received a blessing of singular richness almost in the first moments of its exercise.
To these pious thanksgivings Lucretia Brewster, who was a very discreet woman, never offered any contradiction; but when next her husband found some little matter essential to his comfort neglected, or some detail of the rigid family rule calmly set aside, the gentle explanation was, “I left it to Gillian to do;” or, “It was Gillian who chose to do it in spite of all I said.”
On these occasions Gillian sometimes came by a little reprimand, not half as severe, so Mary jealously remarked, as was administered to her very lightest offense, but apparently more than Gillian could bear, for before it was half over she would fall into such a passion of tears and sobs as seemed fit to rend her white throat asunder, and either crouch moaning upon the floor in some corner like a wounded creature, or rush headlong from the house to the woods, where she would hide all day long, and once all night long, although Brewster and his three sons searched and called for her till sunrise, when she appeared on the edge of a thicket, her wonderful deep red hair hanging all matted and tangled, with briers around her shoulders, her great passionate Spanish eyes dilated and full of gloomy fire, and her mouth, that bewildering, tempting, ripe red mouth, with its myriad expressions and suggestions, its curves and dimples, and its little laughing teeth, all drawn and pale.
Is it to be wondered at that, after the first few times,the uncle and guardian ceased to attempt even the discipline of a reproof, especially as for days after one of these passions the girl would shrink out of his presence with every mark of terror, and if he spoke to her, reply in hurried, timorous accents, with the air of one who dreads to give offense, and fears unmerited blame or misunderstanding.
So at last it came to pass that Gillian did what she would, and left undone what she chose, and quietly setting at naught all Lucretia’s admonitions or attempts at control, was ever bright and charming to her uncle, and remained a wonder and a fascination to the boys, who were all wildly in love with her, a condition shared by nearly every unmarried man in the Old Colony.
As for Mary, good, homely, ungraceful, slow moulded Mary Brewster, she wore herself thin and peevish in struggling against the innate depravity of her own heart which continually urged her to hate Gillian with a bitter hatred, more especially when John Turner, of Scituate, came a-wooing, and Gillian, having contemplated his courtship during a few visits, picked him up as a kitten might a great lumbering beetle, tossed him hither and yon, patted him with her velvet paws, suddenly thrust sharp claws through the velvet, gave him one or two contemptuous buffets to this side and to that, and finally walked away, purring serene indifference.
John Turner was perhaps the only man at the apple-bee who saw nothing to admire in Gillian, and Mary never looked her way. But Betty liked her, and now, as the girl flitted into the great kitchen where around the baskets and piles of apples, brought together from all the neighborhood for Lucretia Brewster to dry in her own superlative fashion, crowded the maids and matrons,who pared and cored, and quartered or sliced, the rosy fruit, it was Betty Alden who cried,—
“Oh, Jill, is that you? Come help me string these slices. These are our own apples, and mother wants to keep them separate from the rest, so Sally and Ruthy and I are doing them.”
“Did your brother Jo pick them?” asked Gillian, sinking down in her peculiar and graceful fashion upon the floor, beside Betty, but not offering to take the needle threaded with coarse flax that Sally held toward her.
“Jo and David picked them, you naughty girl, and talked of naught but you while they did it.”
“Betty, Betty, here’s Alick Standish coming this way, and don’t you blush; now mind you, Betty, don’t you blush! Fie! but you do! What makes her hate Alick so, Sally?” asked Gillian maliciously.
“Who hates Alick?” asked the cheery voice of the good-looking “heir apparent” of Myles Standish, who had obeyed a glance of Gillian’s eyes and joined the group.
“Who but the one who colors red as fire with vexation when he draws nigh,” replied the girl coolly; and Standish, curiously regarding the faces of the three, perceived that both Betty’s and Sally’s faces were aflame, while Gillian’s cream-white skin looked cool as a calla lily.
“Are you paring the apples I picked, Gillian?” asked another voice as David Alden joined the group.
“Nay, for ’twas Satan who first plucked an apple for a woman,” replied Jill, with a mocking little laugh; and Alick whispered in her ear, “There’s ne’er a son of Adam would refuse if you offered him the apple, Gillian.”
“What! not if he lost Paradise thereby?”
“The paradise of your love would”—
“Oh, Master Pabodie, do come and reason with these terrible blasphemers who are talking of Satan and nobody can tell what else. Say to Master Pabodie what you were saying to me, Alick!”
Thus dared, the young man looked half of mind to accept the challenge, but John Pabodie, shrewdly glancing at the audacious girl, replied, “Nay, mistress, I’m twenty years too old and haply twenty years too young to cope with such a matter. But here’s my son William just come home from Boston and farther, and I’ll leave him to fill the place of Paris, if one may quote the old mythologies in a Christian land.”
“Surely, when such a Helen rises before one’s eyes,” added a sonorous young voice, as Gillian suddenly stood up, her sinuous and suggestive figure displayed in a gown of creamy mull clinging to every curve, and covering yet not concealing the exquisite roundness of arms and shoulders white with that peculiarmatwhiteness never seen save in persons of Latin blood.
“Who was Helen?” asked Gillian very slowly, while the velvety darkness of her eyes rested with infantile confidence upon the handsome face of William Pabodie, who, after the pause of an instant, said significantly,—
“The handsomest woman that ever lived.”
A little silence ensued, and all eyes turned upon Gillian, who, nothing daunted, softly replied,—
“She must have been well pleased when Paris told her so.”
“Welcome home, William Pabodie!” cried Lucretia Brewster’s wholesome voice, scattering as with a puff ofwest wind the strained and bewildering atmosphere that seemed stifling the little group around the Spanish girl. “You know all these lads and lasses, your old neighbors, and I see that you have already made acquaintance with my niece Gillian,—Gillian Brewster, as we call her”—