A Pilgrim Maid: A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620

by Marion Ames Taggart

  CHAPTER III

  Weary Waiting at the Gates

  "Call Giles hither. I need help to strap these blankets to carry safely,Mr. Hopkins," said Dame Eliza Hopkins, bustling up to her husband twohours after the _Mayflower_ had made anchorage.

  "To carry whither, wife?" asked Mr. Hopkins, with the amused smile thatalways irritated his excitable wife by its detached calmness.

  "Will you not need the blankets at night? Truth to tell this Cape Codair seems to me well fit for blankets."

  "And for what other use should they be carried ashore? Or would theykeep us warm left on the ship?" demanded Mistress Eliza. "Truly, StephenHopkins, you are a test of the patience of a saint!"

  "Which needs no testing, since the patience of the saints has passedinto a proverb," commented Stephen Hopkins. "But with all humility Iwould answer 'yes' to your question, _Eliza_: the blankets would surelykeep you warmer when on the ship than if they were ashore, since it ison the ship that you are to remain."

  "Remain! On the ship? For how long, pray? And why? Do you not think thatI have had enough and to spare of this ship after more than two monthswithin her straitened cabin, and Oceanus crying, poor child, and wearingupon me as if he felt the hardship of his birthplace? Nor is MistressWhite's baby, Peregrine, happier than my child in being born on this_Mayflower_. When one is not crying, the other is and oftener than notin concert. Why should I not go ashore with the others?" demandedMistress Eliza, in quick anger.

  "Ah, wife, wife, my poor Eliza," sighed Mr. Hopkins, raising his hand tostem the torrent. "Leave not all the patience of the saints to those inparadise! You, with all the other women, will remain on the ship whilecertain of the men--the rest being left to guard you--go in the shallopto explore our new country and pick the fittest place for oursettlement. How long we may be gone, I do not know. Rest assured it willnot be an absence wilfully prolonged. You will be more comfortable herethan ashore. It is likely that when you do go ashore to begin the newhome you will look back regretfully at the straitened quarters of thelittle ship that has served us well, in spite of sundry weaknesses whichshe developed. Be that as it may, this delay is necessary, as reflectionwill show you, so let us not weary ourselves with useless discussion ofit."

  Mistress Hopkins knew that when her husband spoke in this manner,discussion of his decision was indeed useless. She had an awe of hiswisdom, his amused toleration of her, of his superior birth andeducation, and, though she ventured to goad him in small affairs, whenit came to greater ones she dared not dispute him. So now she bit herlip, as angry and disappointed tears sprang to her eyes, but did notreply.

  Stephen Hopkins produced from his inner pocket an oblong packet sewn inan oilskin wrapper.

  "Here, Eliza," he said, "are papers of value to this expedition,together with some important only to ourselves, but to us sufficientlyso to guard them carefully. The public papers were entrusted to me justbefore we sailed from Southampton by one interested in the welfare ofthis settlement. My own papers relate to the English inheritance thatwill be my children's should they care to claim it. These papers I mustleave in your care now that I am to go on this exploring party ashore. Iwill not risk carrying them where savages might attack us, though I havekept them upon me throughout the voyage. Guard them well. Not for worldswould I lose the papers relating to the community, sorry as I should beto lose my own, for those were a trust, and personal loss would benothing compared to the loss of them."

  He handed the packet to his wife as he spoke and she took it, turning itcuriously over and about.

  "I hope the English inheritance will one day come to Damaris andOceanus," she said, bitterly, her jealousy of the two children of herhusband's first wife plain to be seen. "Here's Giles," she added,hastily thrusting the packet into her bosom with a violence that herhusband noted and wondered at.

  "Father," said Giles, coming up, "take me with you."

  Gloom and discontent were upon his brow. Giles's face was fast growinginto a settled expression of bitterness. His stepmother's dislike forhim, and for his sister, Giles bore less well than Constance. Thenatural sweetness of the girl, her sunny hopefulness, led herceaselessly to try to make things pleasant around her, to be alwaysready to forget and begin again, hoping that at last she might win herstepmother's kindness. But Giles never forgot, consequently never couldhope that the bad situation would mend, and he returned Mistress Eliza'sdislike with compound interest. He was a brave lad, capable of strongattachments, but the bitterness that he harboured, the unhappiness ofhis home life, were doing him irreparable harm. His father was keenlyalive to this fact, and one of his motives in coming to the New Worldwith the Puritans, with whose strict views he by no means fullysympathized, was to give Giles the opportunity to conquer thewilderness, and in conquering it to find a vent for his energy,happiness for himself.

  Mr. Hopkins turned to the boy now and sighed, seeing that he had heardhis stepmother's expression of hope that _her_ children would receivetheir father's English patrimony. But he said only:

  "Take you with me where, Giles?"

  "Exploring the country. I am too old, too strong to stay here with thewomen and children. Besides, I want to go," said Giles, shortly.

  "But few of the men are to go, my son; you will not be reckoned amongthe weaklings in staying," said Mr. Hopkins, laying his hand upon theboy's shoulder with a smile that Giles did not return. "Enough havevolunteered; Captain Standish has made up his company. You are best hereand will find enough to do. Have you thought that you are my eldest, andthat if we met with savages, or other fatal onslaught, that you musttake my place? I cannot afford to risk both of us at once. You are myreliance and successor, Giles lad."

  The boy's sullen face broke into a piteous smile; he flushed and lookedinto his father's eyes with a glance that revealed for an instant thedominant passion of his life, his adoring love for his father.

  Then he dropped his lids, veiling the light that he himself wasconscious shone in them.

  "Very well, If you want me to stay, stay it is. But I'd like to go. Andif there is danger, why not let me take your place? I should not know asmuch as you, but I would obey the captain's orders, and I am as strongas you are. Better let me go if there's any chance of not returning," hesaid.

  "Your valuable young life for mine, my boy? Hardly that!" said StephenHopkins with a comradely arm thrown across the boy. "I shall always be apiece of drift from the old shore; you will grow from your youth intothe New World's life. And what would my remnant of life be to me if myeldest born had purchased it?"

  "You are young enough, Father," began Giles, struggling not to showthat the expression of his father's love moved him as it did.

  Mistress Eliza, who had been watching and listening to what was saidwith scornful impatience, broke in.

  "Let the lad go. He will not be helpful here, and your little childrenneed your protection, not to speak of your wife, Mr. Hopkins."

  At the first syllable Giles had hastened away. Stephen Hopkins turned onher. "The boy is more precious than I am. It is settled; he is to stay.Take great care of the packet I have entrusted to you," he said.

  For four days the ship's carpenters had busied themselves in puttingtogether and making ready the shallop which the _Mayflower_ had carriedfor the pilgrims to use in sailing the shallow waters of the bays andrivers of the new land, to discover the spot upon which they shoulddecide to make their beginning.

  The small craft was ready now, and in the morning set out, taking asmall band of the men who had crossed on the _Mayflower_, as muchammunition and provisions as her capacity allowed them, to proceed noone knew whither, to encounter no one knew what.

  Constance stood wistfully, anxiously, watching the prim white saildisappear.

  Humility Cooper and Elizabeth Tilley--the cousins, who, thoughConstance's age, seemed so much younger--and Priscilla Mullins--whothough older, seemed but Constance's age--were close beside her, and,seated on a roll of woollen cloth, sat Rose Standish, drooping as nowshe always dro
oped, often coughing, watching with her unnaturally cleareyes, as the girls watched, the departure of the little craft that boretheir beloved protectors away.

  The country that lay before them looked "wild and weather-beaten." Allthat they could see was woods and more woods, stretching westward tomeet the bleak November sky, hiding who could say what dangers of wildbeasts and yet more-savage men?

  Behind them lay the heaving ocean, dark under the scudding clouds, andwhich they had just sailed for two months of torture of body and mind.

  If the little shallop were but sailing toward one single friend, ifthere were but one friendly English-built house beside whose hearth theadventurers might warm themselves after a handclasp of welcome!Desolation and still more desolation behind and before them! What awfulsecrets did that low-lying, mysterious coast conceal? What could thefuture hold for this handful of pilgrims who were to grapple withouthuman aid with the cruelties of a severe clime, of preying creatures,both beast and human?

  Rose Standish's head bent low as the tipmost point of the shallop's mastrounded a promontory, till it rested on her knees and her thinshoulders heaved. Instantly Constance was on her knees before her,gently forcing Rose's hands from her face and drawing her head upon hershoulder.

  "There, there!" Constance crooned as if to a baby. "There, there, sweetRose! What is it, what is it?"

  "Oh, if I knew he would ever come back! Oh, if I knew how to go on, how,how to go on!" Rose sobbed.

  "Captain Myles come back!" cried Constance, with a laugh that she wasdelighted to hear sounded genuine.

  "Why, silly little Rose Standish, don't you know nothing could keep thecaptain from coming back? Wouldn't it be a sorry day for an Indian, orfor any beast, when he attacked our right arm of the colony? No fear ofhim not coming back to us! And how to go on, is that it? In your owncozy little house, with Prissy and the rest of us to help you look afterit till you are strong again, and then the fair spring sunshine, and thesalt winds straight from home blowing upon you, and you will not need toknow how to go on! It will be the rest of us who will have to learn howto keep up with you!"

  "Kind Constance," whispered Rose, stroking the girl's cheek and lookingwistfully into her eyes as she dried her own. "You keep me up, thoughyou are so young! Not for nothing were you named Constantia, forconstant indeed you are! I will be good, and not trouble you. Usually Ifeel sure that I shall get well, but to-day--seeing Myles go----.Sometimes it comes over me with terrible certainty that it is not for meto see this wilderness bloom."

  "Just tiredness, dear one," said Constance, lovingly, and as if she werea whole college of learned physicians. "Have no fear."

  Mistress Hopkins came in search of them, carrying the baby Oceanus withmanifest protest against his weight and wailing.

  "I have been looking for you, Constantia," she said, as if this were asevere accusation against the girl. "You are to take this child. Have Inot enough to do and to put up with that I must be worn threadbare byhis crying? And what a country! Your father has been tormenting me withhis mending and preparation for this expedition so that I have not seenit as it is until just now. Look at it, only look at it! What a place tobring a decent woman to who has never wanted! Though I may not have beenthe fine lady that his first wife was, yet am I a comfortable farmer'sdaughter, and Stephen Hopkins should not have brought me to a coast morebleak and dismal than the barrens of Sahara. Woods, nothing but woods!And full of lions, and tigers, and who knows what other raving, ragingwild vermin--who knows? What does thy father mean by bringing me tothis?"

  Constance pressed her lips together hard, a burning crimson flooding herface as she took the baby violently thrust upon her and straightened hisdisordered wrappings, reminding herself that his mother was not hisfault.

  "Why as to that, Mistress Hopkins," said Priscilla Mullins in herdownright, sensible way, "Mr. Hopkins did not bring you. We all camewillingly, and I make no doubt that all of us knew quite well that itwas a wilderness to which we were bound."

  "There is knowing and knowing, Priscilla Mullins, and the knowing beforeseeing is a different thing from the knowing and seeing. Stephen Hopkinshad been about the world; he even set sail for Virginia, which as Iunderstand is somewhere not far from Cape Cod, though not near enough togive us neighbours for the borrowing of a salt rising, or the trade of arecipe, or the loan of a croup simple should my blessed babe turnsuffocating as he is like to do in this wicked cold wind; and thesethings are the comforts of a woman's life, and her right--as all goodwomen will tell thee before thou art old enough to know what the lack isin this desolation. So it is clear that Stephen Hopkins had no right tobring me here, innocent as I was of what it all stood for, and hardenough as it is to be married to a man whose first wife was of thegentry, and whose children that she left for my torment are like to her,headstrong and proud-stomached, and hating me, however I slave for them.And your father, Constantia Hopkins, has gone now, not content withbringing me here across that waste o' waters, and never is it likelywill come back to me to look after that innocent babe that was born onthe ocean and bears its name according, and came like the dove to theark, bearing an olive branch across the deluge. But much your fathercares for this, but has gone and left me, and it is no man's part toleave a weak woman to struggle alone to keep wild beasts and Indiansfrom devouring her children; and so I tell you, and so I maintain. Andnever, never have I looked upon a scene so forsaken and unbearable asthat gray woodland that the man who swore to cherish me has led meinto."

  Constance quite well knew that this hysterical unreason in herstepmother would pass, and that it was not more worth heeding than thewind that whistled around the ship's stripped masts. Mistress Eliza hada vixenish temper, and a jealous one. She frequently lashed herself intoa fury with one or another of the family for its object and felt thebetter for it, not regarding how it left the victim feeling.

  But though she knew this, Constance could not always act upon herknowledge, and disregard her. She was but a very young girl and now shewas a very weary one, with every nerve quivering from tense anxiety inwatching her father go into unknown danger.

  She sprang to her feet with a cry.

  "Oh, my father, my father! How dare you blame him, my patient, wise,forbearing father! Why did he bring you here, indeed! He--so fine, sonoble, so hard-pressed with your tongue, Mistress Hopkins!--I will nothear you blame him. Oh, my father, my dear, dear, good father!" shesobbed, losing all sense of restraint in her grief.

  Suddenly on hearing this outburst, Mistress Hopkins, as is sometimes theway of such as she, became as self-controlled as she had, but a momentbefore, been beside herself. And in becoming quiet she became much moreangry than she had been, and more vindictive.

  "You speak to me like this?--you dare to!" she said in a low, furiousvoice. "You will learn to your sorrow what it means to flout me. Youwill pay for this, Constantia Hopkins, and pay to the last penny, toyour everlasting shame and misery."

  Constance was too frightened by this change, by this white fury, whichshe had never seen before in her stepmother, to answer; but before shecould have answered, Doctor Fuller, who had strayed that way in time tohear the last of Dame Eliza's tirade, Constance's retort, and this finalthreat, took Constance by the arm and led her away.

  "Quiet, my dear, quiet and calm, you know! Don't let yourself forgetwhat is due to your father's wife, to yourself, still more to yourconscience," he warned her. "And remember that a soft answer turnethaway wrath."

  "Oh, it doesn't, Doctor Fuller, indeed it doesn't!" sobbed Constance,utterly unstrung. "I've tried it, tried it again and again, and it onlymakes the wrath turn the harder upon me; it never turns it away! Indeed,indeed I've faithfully tried it."

  "It's a hard pilgrimage for you at times I fear, Constance, but neverturn aside into wrong on your part," said the good doctor, gently.

  "Oh, I'm sorry I flared up, I am sorry I spoke angrily. But my father!To blame him when he is so patient, and has so much to endure! Must Ibeg his wife's pardon?" said Consta
nce, humbly.

  Doctor Fuller concealed a smile. Sorry as he was for Constance, andindignant at her stepmother's unkindness, it amused him to note howcompletely in her thoughts Constance separated herself from the leastconnection with her.

  "I think it would be the better course, my dear, and I admire you forbeing the one to suggest it," he answered, with an encouraging pat onConstance's sleeve.

  "Well, I will. I mean to do what is right, and I will," Constancesighed. "But I truly think it will do no good," she added.

  "Nor I," Doctor Fuller agreed with her in his thoughts, but he took goodcare not to let this opinion reach his lips.