“‘Ye meaner beauties of the night,That poorly satisfy our eyesMore by your number than your light,You common people of the skies,What are you when the sun shall rise!“‘You curious chanters of the woodThat warble forth Dame Nature’s lays,Thinking your meaning understoodBy your weak accents, what’s your praiseWhen Philomel her voice doth raise!“‘Ye violets that first appear,By your pure purple mantles known,Like the proud virgins of the yearAs if the spring were all your own,What are you when the rose is blown!“‘So when my mistress shall be seenIn form and beauty of her mind,By virtue first, then choice a queen,Tell me, is she not one designedThe Eclipse and Glory of her kind?’”
“‘Ye meaner beauties of the night,That poorly satisfy our eyesMore by your number than your light,You common people of the skies,What are you when the sun shall rise!“‘You curious chanters of the woodThat warble forth Dame Nature’s lays,Thinking your meaning understoodBy your weak accents, what’s your praiseWhen Philomel her voice doth raise!“‘Ye violets that first appear,By your pure purple mantles known,Like the proud virgins of the yearAs if the spring were all your own,What are you when the rose is blown!“‘So when my mistress shall be seenIn form and beauty of her mind,By virtue first, then choice a queen,Tell me, is she not one designedThe Eclipse and Glory of her kind?’”
“‘Ye meaner beauties of the night,That poorly satisfy our eyesMore by your number than your light,You common people of the skies,What are you when the sun shall rise!
“‘Ye meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the sun shall rise!
“‘You curious chanters of the woodThat warble forth Dame Nature’s lays,Thinking your meaning understoodBy your weak accents, what’s your praiseWhen Philomel her voice doth raise!
“‘You curious chanters of the wood
That warble forth Dame Nature’s lays,
Thinking your meaning understood
By your weak accents, what’s your praise
When Philomel her voice doth raise!
“‘Ye violets that first appear,By your pure purple mantles known,Like the proud virgins of the yearAs if the spring were all your own,What are you when the rose is blown!
“‘Ye violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year
As if the spring were all your own,
What are you when the rose is blown!
“‘So when my mistress shall be seenIn form and beauty of her mind,By virtue first, then choice a queen,Tell me, is she not one designedThe Eclipse and Glory of her kind?’”
“‘So when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice a queen,
Tell me, is she not one designed
The Eclipse and Glory of her kind?’”
Folding the verses, Standish held out his hand for the letter, and placed the one carefully within the other, his deliberate movements betraying the preoccupation of his mind; then raising his gloomy eyes to the Elder’s face, he said,—
“Your son speaks of Rebecca. When Isaac’s ambassador asked her from her kinsfolk they made answer, ‘We will call the damsel, and inquire at her mouth.’ So say I to you, Elder.”
“What! if Lora consent, you will not refuse her to my son?”
“We will call the damsel, and inquire at her mouth. Oh, no, we will not startle her again, as your sonconfesses that he did on that ill-starred night. Give me the letter if you will, and I will bid her read and ponder it through the night, and to-morrow I will come and tell you; or no,—if it be as you wish, she shall come herself and tell you.”
“I felt that my boy’s words must move a father’s heart,” replied the Elder with a loving complacency, which sank abashed before the fierce glance of the captain’s eyes, as he strode away, muttering,—
“Had not they suited my purpose, his mops and mows had been my scoff.”
Down near the edge of the bluff that finishes Harden Hill stood Lora, leaning lightly against a birch, whose silver bark seemed some quaint ornament of her white samite robe, like the gauzy scarf thrown around her head and shoulders. One slender foot in its silver-buckled shoe showed beneath the hem of her robe as if about to follow the earnest gaze bent seaward. So profound was the maiden’s meditation that she did not hear her father’s step, and was only roused by his sombre voice asking,—
“Of what are you dreaming, Lora?”
“Oh! Is it time to go home, father?”
“Of what are you dreaming, child?”
“Nay, father dear, my dreams are not worth the telling.” And with a pretty air of coaxing the girl turned and laid a hand upon her father’s arm; but he, withdrawing a step, almost sternly persisted,—
“But yet I will know them, Lora. Tell me truly, of what or of whom were you thinking, and why did you look so earnestly over the sea?”
“The moon is rising, father,” stammered the young girl with a piteous attempt at unconcern. “I was looking at her.”
“’Tis not like you, my maid, to trifle and palter in your replies. Will you tell me of what or of whom you thought?”
“Nay, father, if you insist I must obey, but mayhap you’ll be vexed at my thought.”
“Mayhap ’tis my own thought, child. Mayhap I’ve come to wish what you were wishing as you looked over the sea.”
“Oh, no, no, father, and no indeed!” cried Lora with a horror-stricken look upon her face. “’Tis not your wish, and yet perhaps ’twill be what—and it may be but mine own foolish fancy, but I was thinking, father dear, that if the time comes soon, I would well like to lie just here under this loving tree that seems bending to clip me in its arms; just here, father, on this little slope, with the sea singing lullaby at my feet, and the fair moon making a silver road from earth to heaven, and the whispering leaves of the birch,—to lie down still and dreamless, with this my robe of white samite folded close around my feet, and my hair, so far too heavy now, uncoiled and unbraided, and my two hands clasped upon my breast, and some of mother’s fair white posies beneath them”—
“Lora! Lora! For Christ’s sweet sake, look at me! Look at me, darling, and change that smile for one that I dare to meet! Change it for tears, mine own, tears rather than such a smile; but no, no—see, here is a letter, a letter full of this world’s love, and life, and a man’s honest human longing to make my maid his wife. Wrestling wants to marry you, my bird, my flower, my little Lora! Oh, Lora, Lora darling, understand me, and take that awful smile from your lips! Wrestling would marry you, and I give my full and free consent; yes, freely and gladly, dear. See, here’sthe letter, and some pretty poesy, and such honey-sweet words,—take it, darling, and read it; or no,—’tis gruesome here among the graves; come home to mother, and read it sitting in her lap. Come, pussy, come! You love him, don’t you, my lass? That’s all that ails you, isn’t it? Oh, say you love him and will be his wife, and we’ll build you such a fair little home close beside father’s, my poppet; and there’ll be little children by and by to call me granddad, and make a hobby-horse of Gideon— Nay, nay, she hears not a word! Lora! Lora! Speak to me!”
“This letter, father! Did it come from Ras? Did he write it with his own hand?”
“Yes, my darling. Come home and read”—
“I am reading it now, and more—and more.”
“Nay, dear, you have not opened it.” And Myles, pale and trembling, tried to take the letter from between Lora’s folded hands. But she, drawing away, held it firmly, and gazing fixedly out to sea murmured,—
“He loves me so! Dear lad! He loves me so, and thinks of all it may cost him, and yet—brave Ras! brave and noble heart! She clings to him, and he will not push her aside! Oh, poor woman, how she writhes in her agony, and clings and clings; and now he has carried her into the hovel and laid her down, and one says, ‘’Tis the plague, and yon poor gentleman must die for his charity,’ and he turns away and whispers, ‘Lora!’ Yes, darling, yes! I know now that I love you, dear,—wait—nay, he cannot wait, but goes before, and I—will come—yes, dear heart, I will”—
And before her father could grasp her she slid from his hands, and lay there beneath the birch-tree, the moon shining upon her white robe, and her face as white, and the hands clasping the letter to her breast.
PEEPING TOM AND HIS BROTHER.
Dame Alice Bradford sat alone in her fair bedroom, its latticed windows swinging wide to admit the flower-laden breeze that, young and fresh as when we saw it peeping in at the council of the fathers and the stitching of the little maids, peeped now at the still figure of the matron, sitting for once quite idle, her hands folded listlessly upon her lap. She was thinking, as it chanced, of that very morning, long ago, when the green footstool cover was finished, and her little Mercy and Desire Howland had admired it so much, and each begun one like it; and now Mercy, her one daughter, her little ewe lamb as she called her in thought, was Mistress Vermayes, with a home in Boston and a grand future before her, and Desire Howland was married to John Gorham; and although her two boys William and Joseph were as good sons as a mother need ask, they were sons, and not daughters, nor was Dame Alice in haste to see them bring daughters home to her.
A few slow, meek tears gathered in her eyes and overflowed just as the door opened and the governor came in with a letter in his hand. A glance at his wife showed him her case, and he said tenderly,—
“Is it the empty nest, sweetheart, that grieves you?”
“Nay, Will, how can I be lonesome while you are left to me?”
“Well and bravely said, my wife, and yet I blame thee not, I blame thee not. I miss the dear maid myself oftener than I would like to say. But you know how oft we’ve spoke of your sister Mary Carpenter in her lonely estate since her mother died”—
“And my mother as well as hers,” suggested Alice with a little sob.
“Why surely, dear heart, and I know well that you grieve for her; but now I’ve written to Mary, bidding her come and make her home with us, and offering to pay the charges of her voyage, since she is left in such straitened case, and here’s the letter all ready to send by Kenelm Winslow, who is summoned by his brother to England to receive some instructions. Kenelm will go to Bristol and see Mary, but I have bidden her not to wait for his escort back, but to come so soon as she can light of safe company, since you need her here.”
“Oh, Will dear, which shall I praise first, your tender thought for me, or your goodness to my sister?”
“Well, for that matter, dame, I fancy it all comes under one head, for if it were not to pleasure you I know not that I should urge Mistress Carpenter across the seas to bear me company.”
“There’s a young gentlewoman below asking to see our dame,” said the voice of Tabitha Rowse at the door, and Alice, with a gentle look of love and thanks in her husband’s face, followed the girl downstairs, and entering the new parlor said pleasantly,—
“Oh, it is you, Mistress Gillian, is it? I should think Tabitha would have remembered you.”
“I have not been in Plymouth more than once or twice since the dear Elder’s funeral,” said Gillian sorrowfully.
“The dear Elder, yes,” replied Dame Alice. “He’s been mourned but once among us, for the first mourning hath not ceased, nor will it soon with those who knew and loved him.”
“Yet none loved him like me, for he was the best friend, the only friend I had in all the world!” And in a burst of emotion honest enough, and yet more uncontrolled than the emotions of most persons of that place and time, Gillian sobbed and cried, and hid her face upon the cushion of the great chair beside which she had sunk, until the dame, laying a hand upon the round shoulder whence the cape had slipped, said kindly yet reprovingly,—
“Nay, Gillian, ’tis not meet to give way to even the worthiest grief in such fashion as this. Dry up your eyes now, while I go to fetch you some orange-flower water, and when you have drunk it we will speak of other matters.”
“Nay, dear lady, I want no orange-flower water, nor to keep you longer than need be, but I have come to you a beggar, and would fain make my petition ere my courage fails.”
“A petition, maiden? Well, now, what is it? Something that I can grant, I hope, for I love to pleasure young maids for my dear daughter’s sake.”
“Ah, sweet Dame Alice, if I might come and be a daughter to you! There’s my petition all in one word,—that I may come and live with you. Am I overbold?”
“To live with me, Gillian? Why, how do you mean, child?”
“Let me come and be in the place of a daughter and yet not claim a daughter’s love or rights, unless, indeed,I serve you so well that you cannot but love me a little, and so comfort your own heart. I have no home, and I know no one with whom I am so fain to live as with you, dear dame.”
“But your aunt, Lucretia Brewster”—
“They are going to Connecticut as soon as may be, and my aunt says she needs me not, if I can find another home, and Love Brewster and his wife treat me ill, and since the dear, dear old Elder died I have no one left to say one kind or careful word to me; and oh, dame, I do wish, and more than once or twice, that I lay beside my mother”—
“Poor child, poor orphan child!” murmured Alice Bradford, laying a hand upon the girl’s silken tresses as the head rested against her knee in all the abandonment of grief. “Yes, you shall come and stay with us for a while, at least, if the governor consent, as I am sure he will, and if your kinsfolk make no objection. Love and Sarah are here to-day, are they not?”
“Yes; Sarah’s father, Master Prence, is removing his chattels left in the house he used while he was governor, and Love and Sarah came to help him.” And Gillian, her end attained, rose gracefully to her feet, straightened her dress and smoothed back her ruddy hair, while Dame Alice, gazing out of the window toward the harbor, sadly thought of the bereavement Plymouth that day was suffering; for a colony of some of her best men, headed by Thomas Prence, with Nicholas Snow and his wife, once Constance Hopkins, Cook, Doane, Bangs, and others, were embarking with all their cattle and household goods for Nauset on the Cape, there to found the town of Eastham, fondly dreaming it should become the successor of Plymouth, which bysuccessive emigrations, deaths, and shrinkage of values seemed threatened with extinction, dull and lifeless. As Bradford himself wrote that day in the journal so invaluable to us all,—
“Thus was this poor church left like an ancient mother, grown old and forsaken of her children, until she that had made many rich herself became poor.”
Fighting against the depression of spirits and want of interest in what remained that assailed his spirit, the governor gladly consented to accept Gillian Brewster, as everybody called her, as an inmate of his house, and a few days later she was installed in the pretty bedroom first occupied by Priscilla Carpenter, now a portly and sedate matron, wife of John Cooper, of Barnstable, and at a later date by Mercy Bradford, lately become Mistress Vermayes. Nor did her new patrons regret their generosity for some time to come, since the girl, warned perhaps by late misadventures, restrained the “wicked lightnings of her eyes” to such flashes of summer lightning as only served to startle and amuse the beholder, or at most to suggest electrical forces beneath the surface, and to arouse a certain interest in the nature that concealed them. Sometimes, to be sure, the governor’s serious and intent gaze would rest upon the girl’s face until she turned uneasily away, and sometimes Dame Alice would speak in her gentle and pure-toned voice of the beauty of modesty and reserve in a maiden’s character; but William and Joseph noticed her hardly more than they did their mother’s kitten, and when occasionally she tried some little coquetries upon them, William would look bored and absent-minded, and Joseph laugh in a satirical fashion hard for Gillian’s hot temper to endure. One word between the brothersmay explain much that to the girl herself never was explained. It was spoken in the first days of Gillian’s sojourn under their father’s roof, when the two young men, gun on shoulder, were traversing the hills about Murdock’s Pond in search of birds to tempt their mother’s languid appetite. It was Joseph who said, wiping his brow and resting his “piece” upon a crotched tree, for the day was warm,—
“Bill, this maid Gillian is the one David Alden spoke of last harvest, isn’t she?”
“Ay, is she. And mind you, Joe, what he said of her?”
“That she would wile a bird off a bough; yes, that’s what Dave said, and Betty Alden, she puts in, ‘Allowing ’twas a male bird, so she would.’”
“Ay, Betty’s keen as a needle, and as straight. Well, Joe, if she’s made a fool of a score, there’s no call for us to make it two-and-twenty, is there?”
“Indeed there’s not, and I wouldn’t vex the dear mother for a cargo of red-gold heads like hers.”
“Nor for any other. So, that’s settled, Joe, and you’re breathed by now. Come on.”
An hour later the young men, worn, weary, and sore athirst, welcomed the sound of rushing waters, heard but not seen through the thick foliage, and Joseph, in the advance as usual, cried out,—
“Hullo! Here’s Jenney’s Mill close at hand. We’ve got enough birds for a famous stew, so let’s stop and rest awhile, and speak with the miller’s folk.”
“‘Folk’ standing for Abby and Sally and Sue Jenney,” said William provokingly.
“And Sam and his new wife, who was a great friend of yours, Master Bill, while she was called NannyLettice, and the Widow Jenney, who to my mind is better company than the girls.”
“Ho! Ho! Well, there’s naught like a sober mind to recommend a young fellow, and I’m glad to see it cropping up in your field, Father Joseph. Well, we’ll make a neighborly call upon the widow, and while you talk about Parson Chauncey’s notions of immersion and Mr. Ainsworth’s psalmody I’ll e’en say a word of a lighter sort to the young gentlewomen.”
“Have your jest, Will, have your jest,” returned the younger brother coolly, “but I know somewhat you don’t.”
“Think you do, I dare say! A wise man in his own conceit is Joe Bradford.”
But seeing that his brother, instead of being teased, was holding himself very quiet and peeping through the branches of the young maples crowding down to the brink of the little river Plymouth modestly calls The Town Brook, William stepped softly behind him, and with something of the guilty joy of Actæon, looked upon almost as fair a sight as he did.
No prettier spot was then, or until very lately, to be found in the dear old town which is mother of us all, than Holmes’s Dam, or as it then was called Jenney’s Mill, where in the midst of a dense wood The Town Brook, rushing toward the sea, found itself at a very early date impeded by a dam, more or less artificial and effectual according to the owner, but always sufficient to turn the big wheel of the gristmill first erected by Stephen Dean, husband of that Betty Ring who inherited so little of her mother’s great estate, and afterward carried on by burly John Jenney, who sat as Assistant at the council board when Duxbury wrung consent forseparate identity from the mother town. And now John slept, althoughnotwith his English fathers, and his widow jointly with her son Samuel administered the mill and ground the grain not only of Plymouth, but of Duxbury, Sandwich, and several other towns. With so wide a custom the miller’s was a flourishing business, and might have been still more so had it been more carefully carried on, but alas! John Jenney was a shipowner, and aspired to setting up salt-works at Clark’s Island, and in fact had a soul above the pottles of meal by which he was supposed to live; and when his widow succeeded to his estate the customers complained that they were forced to share their grain with rats and mice, and that the miller’s widow was too easy tempered to be very efficient. Now, however, that the oldest son was married and the daughters were grown up, things went better, and the mill became a popular resort for the young people, especially in hot weather.
But all this time the governor’s sons are peeping through the boscage, and we peeping with them see four young girls, their kirtles of blue and white homespun linen drawn about their knees, while with bare feet they comfortably paddle in a little pool formed by a bend of the stream, floored with beach sand and bordered by a grassy bank, whereon the four damsels sit, and chat with all the sweet volubility of blackbirds. The rays of the morning sun sifting through the branches of the young oaks overhead dance merrily upon heads of gold and brown, and the flaxen locks that curl around Susan Jenney’s head, while her eyes, blue as the blossom of the flax, gleam beneath as she says,—
“We wouldn’t do this to-night, girls, would we?”
“I dare say the lads wouldn’t say nay, if we asked them to a wading match,” replied her sister Sally with a twinkling laugh, while Abby, older than the rest, looked sharply among the bushes, saying,—
“Who knows but we’re spied upon! I feel a creep up my back.”
“’Tis Harry Wood, be sure on’t!” cried Susan with a little flirt of her white toes that sent the water into her sister’s face, while William Bradford, softly pulling Joseph backward, whispered in his lowest tones,—
“Betty Alden’s there, and she’d never forgive us if she knew we’d spied on them.”
“Here goes, then!” and Joseph, laughing silently, pointed his gun at the sky and pulled the trigger, then hastily turned back to his post of observation, clinging to Will’s arm and shaking with an earthquake of suppressed merriment, as if he would go to pieces.
“’Tis like a plump of white ducks that hear the shot pattering around them,” whispered William; but Joe was beyond speech, and could only gasp and shake with laughter as he watched the girls, who with little shrieks and screams and exclamations clung to each other, staring wildly around, and then gathering their feet up under their skirts wriggled backward in some mysterious feminine fashion, until gaining the shelter of the undergrowth they stood up and looked around them in timid defiance for a moment, and then, no foe presenting himself, Abby, as oldest and bravest, darted out, and seizing the shoes and stockings lying in a heap, bore them triumphantly under shelter.
Some fifteen minutes later, William and Joseph Bradford, dignified and grave as two young parsons, arrived at the door of the mill and were received by Abby andSally Jenney, demure and self-possessed as possible, but with eyes on the alert for any indication that these were the peeping Toms whom they suspected.
“We’ve a surprise for you, William,” remarked Abby, as steps were heard descending the stairs. “Who do you suppose is visiting us from out of town?”
“Is anybody visiting you? I had not heard of it.”
“Well, here she is. Betty, you did not think we’d have company so soon to bid you welcome, did you, now?”
“Nay, Betty, heed her not,” exclaimed William, rising to claim the privilege of a salute. “’Tis no company, but only two of your old playmates. Why, you’re looking fresh as the morning, Betty, isn’t she, Joe?” And both young men gravely surveyed the blushing girl from head to foot, noticing especially the white thread hose and dainty buckled shoes that covered the feet but now so rosy white in the water of the little pool.
“How long is it since I saw you, Betty?” demanded Joseph presently, and William paused in a speech to Sally to hear the reply.
“I really do not know, Joe; don’t you?”
“I can’t say, Betty, can’t say at all;” and Betty, casting a hasty glance at his face, was met by so serene a smile that she comfortably assured herself, “It was not they, or they didn’t see.”
“We’re going to have a little company to-night, and some games in the old mill,” said Abby presently. “Will you both come? And if the young gentlewoman at your house would like to make one of the guests, we’re more than happy to have her.”
“My mother is beholden to you for remembering hercompanion, but I doubt if Gillian Brewster can be spared,” said William a little hastily, and perhaps a little haughtily, for he shrank from seeing the siren who had wrought such mischief among some of his friends introduced to others under shelter of his mother’s name. But Joseph, heedless of his brother’s tone and only half hearing his words, replied almost in the same breath,—
“You’re very thoughtful, Abby, and I doubt not Gillian will like to come. I’ll bring her in my boat.”
“Gillian Brewster!” murmured Betty in a tone of dismay that drew William Bradford’s attention to her face, suddenly pale and disturbed, and going close to the girl who had been to him almost a sister for the first ten years of their lives, he whispered, “Shall I prevent it, Betty?”
“No, no, Will! Why should I care? She’s naught to me.”
“Nay, I thought”—
“’Tis a poor custom, Will; better break it off while you can.”
“The custom of thinking?”
“Ay. How is Mercy, and when did your mother hear from her last?”
Half an hour soon ran away, and so did the great stone pitcher of cider which the miller’s wife insisted upon producing, and the young men took leave, promising to be ready at an early hour for the evening’s frolic.
JENNEY’S MILL BY MOONLIGHT.
“For ’tis the twenty-first of June,The merriest day in all the year,”
“For ’tis the twenty-first of June,The merriest day in all the year,”
“For ’tis the twenty-first of June,The merriest day in all the year,”
“For ’tis the twenty-first of June,
The merriest day in all the year,”
sang Jack Jenney, the younger brother of the mill and the miller, as to amuse his sister’s visitors he threw the great wheel into gear and set the machinery in motion. “Put in a grist, you young idiot, and don’t grind off the face of the stones,” growled Samuel, standing by, and not so hospitable as to forget business.
“Well, here’s Squire Pabodie’s Indian waiting—English, too, but that wants daylight. Here, bear a hand, Sam, with the Indian.” And the two young men poured the two bushels of gold-colored maize into the hopper, while little Hope Howland, bending over to see it drawn down the vortex of the cruel stones, cried,—
“Poor Indian! Do you know, Jack, one of those Englishmen that came from Boston to see the Rock where our fathers first landed was at the governor’s to dinner, and father was there, and Master Bradford said he must have some more Indian ground, and the man made great eyes and said,—
“‘But does your excellency chastise the savages in such fashion as that?’ He thought, poor gentleman, that we ground up the Indians!”
“And doubtless he feared our governor next would roar,—
‘Fee, fie, faw, fum!I smell the blood of an Englishman!And be he alive, or be he dead,I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!’”
‘Fee, fie, faw, fum!I smell the blood of an Englishman!And be he alive, or be he dead,I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!’”
‘Fee, fie, faw, fum!I smell the blood of an Englishman!And be he alive, or be he dead,I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!’”
‘Fee, fie, faw, fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
And be he alive, or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!’”
And John Howland junior put his great hands upon his sister’s shoulders to draw her back, saying, “But we won’t have you ground this grist, Hope; so don’t tumble in. Mother wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, John, how you tease!” cried Hope, pouting, yet clinging to the arm of her stalwart brother, a fine young fellow, who at a later date calmly incurred judicial censure and a heavy fine for the sake of warning some Quakers, in whose belief he had no share, that they were about to be arrested and imprisoned. And from that day to our own the stout Howland blood has held its own, foremost in that Army of Occupation which the departing Pilgrims left to hold the land their prowess had won.
But while this little scene was enacted around the hopper, William Pabodie, who, bringing his father’s corn to mill late in the afternoon, had accepted an invitation to spend the evening and join the merrymaking, wandered out of the house, and standing beside the pool, idly broke the branch of lilac that some one had given him into little bits and cast them upon the waters.
“Nay, don’t spoil the pretty posy so,” cooed a dulcet voice at his elbow. “If you don’t want it, give it to me.”
“And welcome, Mistress Gillian,” replied the young man coldly, as he held out the flowering branch.
“Oh, but ’tis all torn and ragged,” remonstrated the girl, touching it, then drawing back as if it wounded her. “Trim it for me with your knife, good MasterWilliam. Nay, then, I’ll not borrow your unfriendly tone. A scant two months agone ’twas Jill and Willy”—
“I ever hated the name of Willy since I was a baby!” exclaimed the young man petulantly, yet taking the branch and trimming it as he was bid, while Gillian, pressing close to his side, watched the operation as if it were some rare and fascinating sight.
“But why are you so changed to me?” murmured she, scorning the side issue, and like a true woman keeping to the point of personal interest.
“Changed? Am I changed?” asked the man helplessly.
“Oh, Will! Think of the night you took me in your sledge to ride across the snow.”
“’Twas a great while ago,” muttered Pabodie awkwardly.
“Ah, yes, a great while ago; and all that is fair and sweet and worthy to be had in remembrance of all my life is a great while ago,” said the girl bitterly, and as she raised her great dark eyes to the moon, whose light mingled with that of dying day, Pabodie could not but see that they were full of tears, and that the ripe mouth quivered piteously. What man ever yet saw such a sight unmoved, especially when the face was so wondrous fair, the June air so full of fragrance, the moon so softly bright.
“Nay, Gillian, I never meant to be unkind to you!” murmured William Pabodie, half unconsciously taking the hand whose finger-tips grazed his palm, and at the least invitation nestled so confidingly into it.
“Gillian,” said a clear, cool voice just beside the pair. “I am sent to call you both to a game,—a game for all of us to play together.”
And Betty Alden, whose light footfall had not been heard through the sound of the falling waters, quietly looked into William Pabodie’s face, superbly glanced over Gillian’s, let her eyes rest for a moment upon the branch of lilac which Gillian had seized, although Pabodie all unconsciously still held it, and then, with one of those smiles upon her lips which most women remember to have smiled, and most men shiver in remembering to have seen, she turned and climbed the little path to the mill door.
“And now you’ll never speak to me again, lest Betty Alden should chide,” cried Gillian, turning sharply aside, and with a gesture of inimitable grace resting her folded arms against a tree-trunk, and laying her forehead upon them, while a storm of unfeigned sobs and tears shook the very tree she leaned on. William Pabodie, flinging the lilac branch to the ground, would have passed her by, but she made no movement to detain him, and so he lingered, looked at her in sore perplexity for a moment, then said in a voice of contemptuous kindness,—
“It distresses me to see you so, Gillian, and in very truth there’s no call for it; I’m not your lover, and that you know”—
“Oh, yes, I know it, I know it! Poor me, there’s none to love me, and those I could love to the death care less for me than for another’s frown.”
“Nay, mistress, I’m one that fears no woman’s frown, nor change my friends to suit any fancy but mine own.”
“But alas, Gillian’s not one of those friends!”
“Why, yes you are, Gillian, yes you are as much my friend as—as ever.”
“I’m your friend? Ay, but are you mine, Will?”
“Yes—that is to say”—
“That is to say, so far as Betty Alden permits,” cried Gillian, honestly losing control of herself, and flashing into the young man’s eyes a look that made him start back as Julio did when Lamia suddenly revealed herself a serpent. Without a word he strode past her and up the hill, where seeking out his friend, Will Bradford, he drew him aside and said, “Would you do me a kindness, Will?”
“You know I would, man. What is it?”
“Take Gillian Brewster away as soon as may be.”
“Oho! What has she done now?”
“That’s what I can’t tell you, Bill, but you’ll trust me that it’s no discourtesy that I can help, to make such a petition.”
“I know that, Bill Pabodie.”
“Well, then”—
“I’ll manage it, but not of a sudden.”
“No, no; only so that I may get a quiet word with Betty before I leave.”
“Ay, it’s in that quarter the storm is brewing, is it? Well, in an hour or so I’ll manage it.”
But before the hour was over Gillian herself, for after all she was as yet but a young maid, and not seasoned in such matters as another ten years might have seasoned her, came to William, and resting on his arm said plaintively,—
“I’m very weary, Will. When might we be leaving?”
“They’re just going to supper, and while they sit down we can slip away if you like, and in sooth you do look weary,” said Bradford not unkindly, andGillian, in a little impulse of womanliness, replied with a wan smile,—
“Nay, I’ll not take you from your supper. There’s a roast pig and apple-sauce, I hear.”
“Oh, that’s naught, that’s naught,” protested the young man; but his healthy appetite so rose up in approval of the roasted suckling that it looked out at his eyes, and Gillian, laughing a little, scoffingly said,—
“If it’s naught to you, it’s something to me, and I’ll not stir till I’ve had roast pig and seed-cake and a glass of sweet wine, and mayhap a little taste of arrack punch. May I sit by you, Will, and sip out of your glass?”
“Yes, that will be fine,” cried Will, seeing a happy compromise open before him. “If you’ll sit by me and look at no other fellow but me, I’ll stay; but if you’re going to tease me, I’ll not.”
“I’ll look at none but you,” promised Gillian gently, but her active brain was already shaping the query, “What does he know? What has he heard?” and then replying to itself, “What matter! Fools all of them, and I the worst fool of all.”
So amidst the frank, possibly unrefined, certainly hearty merriment of the time and place the roast pig and roasted russet apples were eaten, and the loaf of seed-cake and another of fruit-cake were cut in great wedges and passed around, and a choice comfiture of wild cranberries with candied lemon peel and plenty of sugar was served on little wooden trenchers, carved in the winter evenings by Samuel Jenney as a present to his bride; and there was plenty of beer and cider, which to our hardy sires were no more injurious than cold water to us, who have bred nerves in place of theirmuscles and brawn; and there was sweet Spanish wine for the ladies, passed from hand to hand in a little pewter wine-cup, burnished like silver; and there was a good joram of punch for every man; and the girls with little gasps and chokings put their lips to the edge of the rummers, while Gillian, nestling close to William Bradford’s side, was gentle and quiet as a chidden child, and spoke to none but him, eating the while as a bird might, and no more, until in his heart the young man felt that William Pabodie was after all something of a churl, and not over courteous to the governor’s guest, and Pabodie forgetting them both watched Betty Alden, who now and again glanced at or spoke to him just as she did to Sam Jenney or John Howland, and was the brightest, the merriest, the most winsome lass of that gay circle of men and maids.
“And now we’ll go, Will,” whispered Gillian, as all rose from the table.
“Yes, poor little Jill, we’ll go now,” replied Bradford far more tenderly than ever he had spoken before; and Joseph, who heard it, turned sharply, and surveying his brother with astonishment whispered,—
“If there’s a score, need we make it two-and-twenty, Bill?”
“Gillian is tired, and I am taking her home in the boat,” answered William coldly. “Will you come with us, or on foot later?”
“Take care of yourself, man, and I’ll give as good an account of myself,” retorted Joe a little huffed, and presently the governor’s boat glided down Town Brook, which glittered like a stream of silver under the full moon. In the stern, her elbow on the gunwale and her hand supporting a sorrowful face upturned to the sky,reclined Gillian, a dusky red shawl half covering her neck and arms, and throwing up in startling relief the exquisitely molded hand and wrist lying palm uppermost upon her knee.
Close beside her sat Bradford, silently dreaming a young man’s vague sweet dreams of the wonder of womanhood, while the Indian boatman, erect and silent as a bronze automaton, guided the boat down the rapid stream, and far within the dewy covert of the wood a whippoorwill made his perpetual moan, echoed softly back from the breast of Dark Orchard Hill.
At the mill, the after-supper fun grew fast and furious, and who but Betty Alden to lead and queen it with a gay vivacity of invention and power of will that made itself felt by all within its reach, while William Pabodie, his own man once more now that the strange sorcery of Gillian’s presence was withdrawn, calmly bided his time, and at last, when Giles Hopkins, over from Barnstable on a visit, was trolling a sea-song and all the rest joining in the chorus, he edged between Betty and the girl next to her, saying,—
“Come out to the doorstep, Betty; I’ve something to say to you before I go home.”
“Then say it here, or leave it unsaid, for I’ve no mind for the doorstep,” drawled Betty with would-be carelessness; but some instinct told the lover that here was a citadel whose half-hearted garrison might be taken by assault, and grasping her by the arm, he moved toward the door, exclaiming half laughingly,—
“You must come, Betty, for else I’ll make such a noise that they’ll all stop singing to turn and look at us.”
“You’re overbold, William Pabodie,” replied Bettyicily; but yielding to both force and argument she allowed herself to be led not only to the doorstep, but down the steep path, through the garden all odorous with pinks and roses, to the spot beside the pool where still lay the broken branch of lilac, and where upon the old willow-trunk still seemed to linger the perfume of Gillian’s presence.
“Why do you bring me here?” asked Betty, a sob rising in her throat, but bravely choked back again.
“Because here where an hour or two ago you set me down as false and fickle, here have I brought you to hear me say that I love you, Betty; and, what is more, I never have loved any woman but you, and if I may not have you for my wife I’ll go a bachelor to my grave. Betty, will you be my wife?”
“If you’ve naught else to recommend you, Master Pabodie, none can accuse you of want of courage,” replied Betty quietly, and throwing aside the mask that in the last hours had smothered her true feelings, she stood before him pale, stern, and pitiless. The young fellow looked at her in dismay.
“Betty! Don’t you believe me, Betty?”
“Believe you when, or at which time? I believed a year or so ago that you cared somewhat for me, at least you came as near to saying it as I would let you, till I could know mine own mind”—
“And then did your mind turn to me, Betty?” demanded the lover eagerly.
“There was no time for it to turn, unless it had been such a weather-cock as yours, for I had not well got to thinking of the matter before I saw that you had forgot it, and were running like a well-broke spaniel at Gillian Brewster’s heel, so I thought no more on’t, and was justas well content it should be so. And then Gillian went away, and you, just like our Neptune when father’s from home, went questing round seeking a master, and seemed willing to have me for one; and partly because you plagued me so, I came here to stay awhile, and then when you came to-day, and whispered in mine ear that it was to see me you’d made the excuse to come, my silly vanity believed the tale, and I had well-nigh been fool enough to trust you, as I would one of my own brothers who know not how to lie; but happily for me, Gillian also came, and I found you toying with her, and giving flowers, and looking into her eyes, and—oh, I know not what all—it makes me sick, it does, and all I want is to go mine own way, and have you go yours, and let there be an end of all this folly here and now.”
The words were no sharper than the voice was cold, and the lover had well-nigh accepted the dismissal and turned away hopeless and humiliated, but that as he looked gloomily down, the moonlight glinted upon the buckle of a little shoe, and he perceived that the foot was viciously, if silently, grinding a blossom of the poor lilac branch into the earth. Somehow, he could not have told how, that sight brought courage to the all but discouraged heart, and suddenly seizing both cold and repellent hands, the young man pressed them to his breast, crying,—
“No, Betty, no, and no again! I’ll not believe you. I’ll not take such an answer. I’ll not give you up, nor turn to any way that is not your way! Betty, I love you. I never have loved any but you. I’ll have you and none other for my wife. Betty, darling, can’t you forgive a blind folly, a stupid, senseless blunder? I could say a good deal to excuse myself but for the duty everyman owes to every woman, and that I’ll not forego, even to defend myself to you”—
“Oh, I know well enough whatsheis,” murmured Betty; the young man paused, but would not, could not speak the thoughts that arose in his mind. Perhaps Betty was, after all, not ill pleased, for let men say what they will of the jealousies of women, there is among them anesprit de corpsthat rises indignantly in every true woman’s breast when she hears her own sex or any member of it scorned by man.
So an abrupt silence fell between the two,—an eloquent silence, for as his hands firmly grasped hers, and the strong throbbing of his pulses vibrated along her nerves, there was no need of words, until after a few wonderful moments, moments that life could never repeat, the young man drew his true love close, close to his heart, and their lips met in a betrothal kiss.
ROBED IN WHITE SAMITE.
There was company at the captain’s house, the same dear friends whom we have seen with him on so many joyous occasions, the Aldens, the Howlands, the Brewsters, the Pabodies and Hatherleys, and Cudworths; and from Plymouth, the governor and his wife, the Hopkinses, and other of the captain’s friends and associates of the old time now so long gone by, and yet so powerful in the ties then formed. Parson Rayner was there, too, and Ralph Partridge, but it was as friends and neighbors that they came, and the only official word the minister of Duxbury uttered was when he wrung the captain’s hand and said, “‘Be strong and of a good courage,’ my friend,” and Standish, lifting sombre eyes to the speaker’s face, answered him never a word.
And in the midst lay Lora, very pale and still, with the golden lashes folded close upon the cheek hardly whiter now than it had always been, and the faint rose tint lingering in the lips just touched with that mysterious smile that seems the trace of a joy so divine, so all powerful, that it bursts even the icy fetters of death, and insists upon revealing itself, if ever so dimly, for the assurance of those who must see before they can believe. The pale golden hair that was the mother’s pride and boast was released from all bands, and lay a shining and rippling mantle at either side of the slender figure which ather father’s desire was clothed in the robe of white samite he had brought her from over seas, saying in his pride that thus the mistress of his ancestral home should be clothed. And now! Alas, poor father! it clothed her for her nuptials indeed, but she must cross a darker sea than the Atlantic to enter into her kingdom. The delicate hands lay folded upon the breast, and beneath them some snowdrops that Betty Pabodie had nurtured, watering them with her tears and foreseeing this day, of which indeed Lora had calmly and cheerfully spoken more than once.
“Put on her shoes, and fold the train of her robe around her feet,” commanded the father. “She said it should be so.” And wonderingly the mother obeyed, for in these awful hours none dared to intrude upon the darkness that clothed Standish more gloomily than the mantle the Angel of Death had lightly laid around the maiden.
Once in the middle of the night, Barbara, rising from her sleepless couch, sought him where he sat alone with Lora, and throwing herself upon her knees beside him, her arms around him, and her head upon his breast, she cried,—
“Oh, Myles, Myles, let us try to bear it together. Do not shut me out of your heart. Oh, Myles, my heart is breaking—comfort me!”
“Hush, wife, hush! What need of words or clamor? Let her rest, let her rest—and leave us alone, good wife, my maid and me—go!”
Then chilled, silenced, well-nigh affrighted, the mother crept away, and left the defeated soldier to his own bitter retrospect.
The brothers, working day and night, fashioned anoaken casket, not of the gruesome shape in use at a later date, but more like a dainty cradle, and the women had spread in it a couch of sweet herbs and the fragrant tips of the balsam fir and the blossoms of the immortelle which they called life-everlasting. A pillow of dried rose-leaves and lavender-blossoms and the hop-flowers that soothe to dreamless slumber was laid ready for the gentle head, and a sheet of fine linen was spread over all.
“The captain said when he brought home that bolt of Hollands linen from Antwerp, that it was for Lora’s wedding clothes,” sobbed Barbara, as she drew the shining folds from the chest that held her most valued household treasures, and Priscilla Alden, with an arm around her friend’s neck, kissed her, and bit her tongue lest it should say in spite of her, “Had he let her marry Wrestling Brewster, she might have needed wedding clothes of another sort from these.”
And now all have looked their last, and the mother’s tears have dropped thick and fast upon those eyes that will weep no more, and the father, silent, stern, and tearless, has laid a hand upon that golden hair that no longer twines around his fingers, and Betty has gently drawn one of the snowdrops from between those resistless fingers, a snowdrop that she will press in her Bible over the words “for of such are the kingdom of heaven,” the cover is laid gently over that fragrant cradle, and the brothers, with the Alden sons who have been Lora’s playmates and dear friends, place it upon the bier and carry it along the field path her light feet have so often trod, past the Brewster homestead, where now only Love and his family remained, and so on to what to-day we call Harden Hill; here around the little church already outgrown, and soon to besuperseded, the graves of some of those who thus far had passed away were made; others, indeed, had directed that their remains should rest upon Burying Hill in Plymouth, and some would lie within the radius of light from their own hearthstones; but a few were here, and the captain with his own hands marked out the spot where Lora had fallen on that night when she knew, months before the news came over seas, that Wrestling Brewster was dead. There they laid her, softly, gently, as still we lay down the loved ones whom rudest touch could not harm, or crash of thunders disturb, and her own kinsmen did the rest. A little heap of turfs was piled near, and as the others turned away Alexander and Josiah began to lay them; but Hobomok, the faithful friend and long-time servitor of Standish, laid a finger upon Alick’s arm, saying in his guttural voice,—
“Hobomok do something for the Moonlight-on-the-water. Hobomok put the green cover over her.”
“He’s right, Alick,” said Josiah, with a friendly glance at the old Indian. “He’s all but worshiped Lora ever since she was born. Let him lay the turf.”
“We couldn’t better show our friendship for you, Hobomok.”
“Hob know all about it,” replied the red man sententiously, and the brothers followed the long line of friends who scattered along the road toward their different homes.
Standish walked silently beside his wife until nearly at his own door he stopped, looking frowningly out across the sea, his teeth set hard upon his nether lip, as if fighting out some problem in his own mind; then falling back, he touched William Bradford upon the arm, and drew him a little aside.
“Send home the rest with your sons, Bradford, and stay here to-night.”
“My good friend, many occasions call me to Plymouth”—
“No occasion greater than the choice of life and death; nay, if all they say be true, the choice of salvation or damnation,—nothing weightier than such a choice, is there, Will?”
“What ails you, old friend? Your grief has—has made you ill!”
And the governor, grasping his friend’s arm, looked apprehensively at the deep color that suddenly had overspread the pallor of his face, and at the fierce light that some thought had kindled in the gloomy depths of his eyes, hollow and strained by vigils and unshed tears.
“Tush, man! I’m not gone mad. I’m not such a weakling as to let any grief master the man in me. It’s only that I’m in a strait between God and the Enemy, and there’s no man alive I’d choose for umpire but you.”
“If you need me, Myles, I’m with you, whatever else betide.”
And the two men grasped hands and looked into each other’s eyes. Then with a voice more moved than any had heard from him in three days Standish said, “I thought I could count upon your kindness, Will, if you knew my need. Let all the rest go, and when darkness has fallen, we two will come back to my little maid’s grave, and I’ll tell you there.”
And so it was. The funeral feast, almost a necessity where so many came from far, was served and eaten nearly in silence, and then the guests departed, Dame Bradford under charge of her two sons, and tenderlyserved by Gillian, whose volatile spirit was quenched in the abundant tears that meant so little from her eyes.
Night had fallen, and the waning moon was shining mournfully over the waters, when at a signal from his host Bradford followed him into the open air and, with a word or two, along the path the funeral procession had just trodden.
The young birch was in leaf, and a little west wind rustled and sighed among its branches, casting flickering shadows across the new-turfed mound, lined from west to east that the sleeper, obedient to the great call, might in upstanding face the rising of the Sun of Righteousness.
“Sit you down, Bradford. There’s a rock she’s often rested on. Don’t speak until I gather my thoughts and know what ’tis I mean to say.”
Without reply Bradford, drawing his cloak around him, for the spring night was chill, sat down upon the boulder, where indeed Lora had dreamed away many an hour, gazing across the sea that ever drew her with its vague, sad calling, and waited silently while Standish, with folded arms and head bent upon his breast, paced up and down, up and down, now standing upon the crumbling edge of the cliff near at hand, now pacing back to the little church a bow-shot from the shore.
At last, with sudden and hurried footsteps, as though fearing to linger over his decision, the soldier drew near, holding a folded paper in his hand, and exclaimed,—
“Bradford! You too have an only daughter. If a man insulted her bitterly, bitterly, what would you do to him?”
“Insulted her? How?”
“No matter how. What would you do to him?”
“It is not fair to ask me such a question in such a way, Myles, if you mean to find an augury for your own course in my reply. I cannot tell what I should do until I know all, and mayhap not then. But surely no man ever offered insult to the sweet maid who’s gone?”
“’Tis all you know about it. Well, here’s the story. When I was in England almost a score of years ago, I went to Standish Hall to talk with my kinsman now in authority there, and asked him if he would do me the justice his father denied to my father. He seemed a kindly man enough, or mayhap ’twas only that he was a smooth courtier, and cozened easily enough a rough soldier who has never learned to lie. At all odds, it ended in our making a solemn compact, that if the child my wife then looked for should be a girl, she was to become the wife of that man’s son, then a child of two or three years old, and all that ought by right to have been mine should be settled upon her and her younger children. We did not set it down on parchment, nor call witnesses to our oaths; but we grasped hands upon it, and passed our word each to each as honest gentlemen, and there it rested. When I was in England ten years or so ago, I traveled down to Eton to see the boy, and give him a little compliment, small enough for the heir of Standish Hall, but large enough for my own pocket. I said naught to him about Lora, of course, though I let him know that I felt more than a kinsman’s interest in him, and he seemed a brave lad, a trifle set up, but I could pardon that. Well, the time went on, and there was some talk of Wrestling Brewster and my girl. I dealt with that as seemed good to me, and then I wrote to my kinsman, and said the time had come to consider our contract, and that my girl was woman grownand his boy must be one and twenty, and I asked how and where we should meet to give them to each other. Almost a year went by, and my blood already began to stir at the delay, although I schooled myself to believe it no slight, when at the last a letter came, this letter. Wait till I read it out, for though there’s no light, I can see every word as if ’twere printed off on mine own eyeballs. First a flummery of ‘dear kinsman’ and the like vapid compliment, and then:—
“‘As touching what you call the contract of marriage between our children, I confess I had all but forgot that we two did hold some such discourse a matter of eighteen years ago; but what will you, cousin? These young folk must still take their own way, and my son before reaching his majority had set his fancy upon a young gentlewoman, one of the great Howard family, and with a very pretty estate tacked to her petticoat, marching well with our lands of Boisconge. So they were betrothed some months ago and will be married come Whitsuntide. Hoping the fair and worthy Mistress Lora, whose name so pleasantly recalls our family tree, will soon marry to please you as well as herself, I remain,’ et cetera, et cetera.
“There, now, William Bradford, what would you have done to the man who so scorned your Mercy?”
“My faith, Standish!” cried the governor, springing to his feet, “I cannot blame your anger, for ’tis righteous. Your cousin is but a knave in spite of his fair words”—
“And what would you have done with him, had you been in my place?” persisted Standish coldly.
“Nay, what could be done?” faltered Bradford so lamely that Standish uttered a little bitter laugh of derision.
“There you see! You’ve studied Christian charity so long that you will not say Kill him! and your manhood will not let you say Forgive him! and you can find no middle way.
“But I, thank God, am not so hampered; and as I finished reading that letter my fist clenched on old Gideon’s hilt, and I promised him that he should carry conviction to that false, proud heart. I would have gone at once, but I saw that my little maid was grievously ill, and I could not leave her; then I saw that she would die, and one day I drew Gideon from his scabbard and thrust his sharp tooth through that cartel,—see, here are the marks of him,—and I bade him hold fast till we could wet that paper in the red ink of my reply”— But here the governor interrupted him,—
“Myles! Man has no right to predetermine vengeance. In the heat of affront I too might have longed to combat to the death with one who had so lightlied my child, but I never could have stored up death for him like that.”
“You were bred to the land and to books, Bradford, and I to arms,” replied the soldier haughtily; and then in sudden revulsion of feeling, he grasped his friend’s hand, saying hoarsely, “I never can be the man you are, Will, and you better deserved than I to have had that saint for a daughter. But come, now, I must e’en tell you the whole, as if ’twere to a father confessor, and, by my faith, I wish you were one, for the old practice rises up in a man’s mind when trouble comes. But there! I won’t rake up old disputes, but rather on with my shrift: I was fully purposed, then, so soon as my sweet maid was gone, to travel to England and seeking out Ralph Standish challenge him to mortal combat, and to thrustmy brave old sword with that letter spitted upon its blade through his false heart and so avenge my girl. I was as fully purposed that way as ever I was to eat when I was hungry and saw victual before me, and I’m not more apt to change my purpose than a mastiff is to lose his grip.
“The night she died I went down by the edge of the water and tramped along the beach the night through, yearning to throw myself in and get to him. I was half mad, I think, and could I have reached that black heart then, I fear I should have shamed my manhood by not leaving the villain time to defend himself. The next night, that is, last night, I was calmer, for as I had not slept nor eaten, I was not so full of lustyhood, and sending the others away, I sat by my darling the night through, alone, save when the poor wife came and I would not let her stay. Poor Barbara! I’ve not remembered her grief as I should; but mine swallowed up all else, because it was so much bigger and stronger than all else. So sitting by her, and reading that gentle, subtle smile that mayhap you marked upon her pretty mouth— How can I tell you, Will? Didst ever grasp a handful of sea sand and try to hold it fast?”
“Ay, and felt it slip, grain by grain, between my fingers.”
“Yes. You catch my meaning, as I knew you would. Even like those grains of sand, my fierce desire for that man’s life slipped and slipped away, and what I had deemed a noble vengeance grew to seem only a brutal thirst for blood, and the thought of him and of his offense seemed to fade into the forgotten years whose record is closed. Perhaps I slept, perhaps I dreamed without sleeping, but all at once it seemed to me that my maid stood beside me, close, and yet so far away Idared not put out a hand to touch her; and that smile was on her lips, and someway it seemed to speak its meaning without words, and the meaning was, ‘To him that overcometh’— That was all, and yet, something,—that dear spirit or mine own heart, or my memory of that Book she ever made me read to her all through the last year,—something told me that it was to him that overcometh his own self, to him who can trust his vengeance to the Lord and forego it for himself,—to such an one that the path lies open to the place where Lora has gone; but to the man of bloodshed and heady violence that path is no more to be traced than a highway through this wilderness.
“But when the daylight came, and I had eaten and slept, I began to think ’t was all a fantasy bred of long watching and fasting, and that my first thought was the best, and even I fancied that I was growing old and my hardihood was on the wane, and the cold apathy of age was what held my hand; and so, tossed this way and that, and sore bestead with doubt and anguish, I turned to some other for calmer counsel and a juster view. In the old days I would have sought a priest, but now I turn to you, Will; give me your counsel,—tell me where is my right.”
Throwing himself upon the ground, the soldier hid his face upon the fresh green mound and lay exhausted and passive. His friend stood many moments motionless, his eyes uplifted to the sky, where the little white clouds flying across the face of the waning moon gave her a look of hurry and perturbation, as if she too were sore beset by the doubts and temptations of the earthly atmosphere. At last he slowly spoke:—
“Old friend, I am no better or wiser man than you,and I can only speak as a fallible sinner may to one for whose welfare he yearns as for his own. It seems to me that God has already answered you through that dear child who has gone to Him. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ saith He, and the promise to him that overcometh is as precious and as many-sided as’ the white stone that he shall receive, and which commentators hold to mean the diamond”—
“Enough, enough, man!” cried Standish, starting to his feet. “I cannot listen to so many words. I care naught for commentators or texts. Tell me as man to man, may I go and kill mine enemy or no!”
“Well, then, no! You shall here and now kneel down and lay your revenge at the foot of Christ’s cross and leave it there. Man! Has your enemy hurt you more than those who drove the spikes through his hands and feet, what time He prayed ‘Father, forgive them; they know not what they do’? and bethink you how easy vengeance would have been to Him.”
“Ay. Knew not what they did!” muttered Standish. “Knowing it or not, that man slew my child, for had it not been for the contract, I would have let her marry Brewster, and she might have been to-day a happy wife and mother.”
“And if you will reckon in that fashion,” replied Bradford sternly, “it was surely you who slew Wrestling Brewster, since it was because he might not have Lora that he went to England and found his death. Should not God and our dear Elder have required his blood at your hand?”
A great silence was the only answer, and presently Bradford spoke again, and now in the tone of assured conviction and well-grounded authority that in somemoods the human soul yearns to hear, especially an ardent, impetuous, and loving soul like that of Standish; a nature that, while the impulse lasts, will dare heaven and hell and earth to achieve its purposes, and when the revulsion comes distrusts all that is within, and turns like a drowning man to some external authority. Such a man makes a good soldier, for as he says, “Go here, and go there!” to those beneath him, he is ready to add, “For I also am a man under authority.”
And in this need, characterizing some of the strongest souls that animate humanity, masculine and feminine, lies the yearning for confession and guidance, absolution and penance, that has for centuries been the strongest weapon in the hand of the Catholic Church.
“No, my friend, you shall not carry this controversy away from this spot. It is Satan who buffets you so sorely, and if you will fight, it is with him the combat shall be. Which is the stronger, you, or that great dragon, that old serpent, whom Michael, of old, fought and conquered? Fighthimin the name of the Lord, and with Gideon if you will, but here and now relinquish all, yes, every iota of the desire for your brother’s blood. Destroy that letter,—yes, tear it in pieces here beside Lora’s grave, and bury the remembrance of it as you have buried her. You have left it to me, Myles, and I have been given this to say to you. Take it, in the name of God who hears us.”
“I take it as I took her message,” replied Standish in a low voice, and rising to his knees, for he had been lying prone beside the grave, he sought about for a moment, and finding a bit of stick began carefully to remove one of the turfs at the foot of the new-made grave. Laying it at one side, he took the letter fromunder his knee, where he had held it, and quietly tore it into fragments, which he held in his left hand, while with the right he scooped a hollow in the loose loam beneath the sod; but in deepening the cavity his fingers encountered some foreign substance, and drawing it out, held up to the moonlight a little package enveloped in a strip of the cloth-like inner bark of the birch-tree, and bound around with cord twisted of fibres of the hackmatack.
“Some of Hobomok’s work,” murmured Standish, carefully unrolling the bark, and disclosing a curiously shaped and much worn stone of a peculiarly hard and dense quality, fashioned at one end into a neck by which it could be securely carried, and at the other sharpened to a curved edge capable of cutting wood.
“Why, ’t is Hobomok’s totem!” exclaimed Standish, turning it over and over. “He always wore it about his neck, and for all he calls himself a praying Indian, I sorely mistrusted he prayed as much to his totem as to any other god, nor would he ever let us see him use it, or take it in our hands, though the boys have urged him more than enough. The dear maid used to talk to him in her gentle way, and try to make a good Christian of him, just as she used to set up her dolls and play go to meeting with them, and with as great results. But now,—did he bury it here for a charm to keep away the afrits, or did he lay it at her feet to show that in her sweet patience of death she had conquered his unbelief even as she conquered that other savage, her father?”
“Ask him,” suggested Bradford, but Standish, carefully replacing the totem in its covering, shook his head.
“No, no! Hobomok is too much of a gentleman topry into what is not meant for him to know, and I should be ashamed to let him know that I had surprised what he fain would have held a secret.
“No, I’ll lay the letter in first, and then the totem to keep it down, and my little maid will understand all that is meant by the one and the other. There! And now, friend, I thank you. We’re growing old men, Will; ‘it is toward evening, and the day is far spent,’ but this night’s work will stand both for you and for me when all else fails. Come, let us be going.”