Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pilgrims

by Jane G. Austin

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.

  Midsummer was upon the land, and the heat and drought were intense. Dayafter day the sun rose fierce and pitiless, drinking up at a draughtwhat scanty dews had distilled in a night so brief and heated that itbrought no refreshment to herbage or to man. Day after day wistful eyessearched the horizon for a cloud if no bigger than a man's hand, andstill only the hard blue above and the palpitating horizon line staredblankly back. The crops languished in the field, some already dead, andthe scanty store saved from the seed corn quite gone. Many a day a fewclams, a lobster, or a piece of fish without bread or any vegetable, wasa family's whole subsistence.

  Early in July the ship Plantation had touched at Plymouth having onboard two hogsheads of dried peas for sale, but seeing the bitter needof the colonists the shipmaster raised the price to L8 per hogshead, andalthough they had the money, the Fathers refused to submit to theextortion, and the peas sailed southward.

  It is but forty miles from Plymouth to Boston Harbor, where about ahundred and fifty years later the women signed a declaration that theywould forego the use of tea rather than submit to extortion, and theirfathers and husbands and lovers flung a goodly cargo into the sea.

  But a stout spirit although it keeps a man up puts no flesh on hisbones, and soon it became a piteous sight to stand in the Town Squareand mark the faces and figures of those who passed by. Strong menstaggered from weakness as they walked, women glided along like mournfulwhite wraiths, even the little children in their quaint garb looked wornand emaciated. Standish, who relying upon his iron constitution and longtraining in a soldier's endurance, had regularly divided his rationswith some woman or child, had grown so gaunt and worn that he might wellhave posed as The Skeleton in Armor, when he held his monthly muster,and Mistress Brewster, although some private provision was made for her,wasted away piteously.

  "Where is the ship spoken by the master of the Plantation?" was thedaily cry, and daily Hobomok climbed the great tulip-tree on the crestof Watson's Hill and swept the horizon line with eyes keener than anywhite man's.

  "The Lord abaseth us for our sins," declared the elder. "Call a solemnassembly, proclaim a fast, let us entreat our God to have mercy, and ourLord to pardon. Who can tell but He yet may turn and have compassion,and spare the remnant of His people. Even as a servant looketh to thehand of his master even so let us wait upon our God, beseeching that Hespare, that He pardon, that He restore us, who for our sins areappointed to die."

  So spake the elder after the evening prayers of a day even moreexhausting than its predecessors, and Myles Standish, leaning againstthe wall for very weakness, muttered,--

  "Nay, what sin have these women and children wrought? What odds betweena God like that and the Shietan of the salvages? Nay, Elder, thou hastnot bettered the faith my mother lived and died by."

  But the fast was appointed for the next day, which fell on a Thursday,and as the sun sprang up with even an added blaze of pitiless heat, hesaw a mournful procession winding up the hill to the Fort, now socompleted as to offer a large lower room for purposes of devotion or ofrefuge, while the ordnance mounted on the roof gained a wider range, andpresented a more formidable aspect.

  At the head walked Elder Brewster, but the shadowy form of Mary his wifereclined in the old chair set beside the window, whence she could watchthe procession she was unable to join except in spirit. Then came theGovernor and the Captain, Allerton and Winslow, Warren and Fuller,Hopkins and Howland, Alden and Browne, and the rest of the gloriousband, the least of whom has his name written in the Libro d'Oro of themen posterity delighteth to honor. After the men came the women, meekand gentle, yet strong and courageous, and the children, poor littleheroes and heroines, involuntary martyrs like the Holy Innocents ofBethlehem.

  "Get thee to the roof, Hobomok," ordered the captain, "and say theprayers the elder hath so painfully taught thee; but mind me, lad, keepthine eyes upon the horizon and watch for the answer, whether it be asail, or whether it be a rain cloud. Shalt play the part of Elijah'sservant, and the elder is the very moral of the stern old prophet."

  No morsel of food, no drop of drink, had passed the lips of that wancompany since the pittance of the night before, and yet for nine longhours of that fearful day, the air so heated that it hardly fed thelungs, and the sun blazing so pitilessly upon the log structure that afaint odor of parching wood mingled with the torrid air within the Fort,yes, for nine long hours the elder prayed, or preached, or recited aloudthe deep abasement of the penitential psalms, and the wail of theprophets, proclaiming, yet deprecating, the wrath of an offended God.

  In the intervals others spoke; Doctor Fuller, himself a deacon in thechurch, and Bradford, whose petition less abject than that of the elder,called confidently for help, upon Him who twice fed a starvingmultitude, who promised that no petition in His name should gounanswered, who hungering in the wilderness knew the extremity offamine, who cried aloud, I Thirst, who has promised to be with His ownin all time till Time shall be no more.

  Standish, like the statue of a sentinel in bronze, stood at the doorleaning upon his snaphance, listening intently to all, and breathing adeep-throated Amen to the governor's prayer.

  Noon blazed overhead, and Priscilla, ah, poor white, attenuatePriscilla, crept down the hill to the elder's house, and gathering ahandful of fire-wood warmed some broth made from a rabbit snared byAlden the day before, and silently brought a cup to the mother, whodrank it with the tears brimming over her patient, faded eyes.

  "I am not worthy to fast with the rest of you. I am an unprofitableservant," whispered she handing back the cup and covering her face.

  "Oh, mother, mother, do not break my heart," cried the girl, whom thesmell of food had turned sick and faint. "It is not so, dear saint. TheLord will not have thee fast because He knows thou art alreadyperfected"--

  "Hush, hush, my child; thy words are both wild and wicked. Get thee backto the House of Prayer, and beg our God to forgive thy sin ofpresumption. Fare thee well--nay, one moment,--doth,--doth the elderlook sadly spent?--he is not over strong--and Jonathan? Didst mark himand the boys? Wrestling is but puny."

  "They are all in such strength as can be looked for, mother dear, andwill hold out as well as any." And Priscilla wanly smiled in the poorpinched face, adjusted the cushions and the foot-rest, and without somuch as a drop of cold water for herself, wearily climbed the hill. Thecaptain making room for her to pass looked with anxious sympathy intoher face, but spake no word, and again the withering hours passed on,and the elder prayed in a husky and broken whisper, and his hearersmuttered an Amen, hollow and mournful as the echo from an open tomb.

  Three o'clock, and Hobomok scrambled down from the roof, and stood inthe open doorway. His master saw and went out to him. In a moment hecame again, and passing between the banks of rude benches stood beforethe elder, who, pausing suddenly, fixed upon him a gaze of piteousinquiry, while a little movement among the hundred starving soulswatching and praying heralded his news.

  "The answer has come, Elder," announced the soldier briefly. "A fullrigged ship has just cleared Manomet headland, and a cloud black withrain is rolling up out of the Southwest."

  "Let us pray!" said the elder softly; and Standish bowed his head withthe rest as the holy man, his voice strong and fervent once more, pouredout for himself and his people such gratitude as perhaps is onlypossible from those "appointed to die," and suddenly rescued by the handof a merciful Father.

  A few moments later, as the procession wound down the hill, somewhatless formally than it had gone up, the southern and western sky wereblack with clouds already veiling the sun, and within an hour a soft andtender rain began to fall, soaking quietly into the earth gaping allover with the wounds of drought, and reviving, as Bradford quaintlyphrased it, both their drooping affections and their withered corn.

  "The white man's God is better than the red man's," remarked Hobomokprivately to Wanalancet, who was visiting Plymouth. "When our powahspray f
or rain, and cut themselves, and offer sacrifice, it comessometimes, but in noisy floods that tear up the earth, and beat down themaize, and do more harm than good. Wanalancet better turn praying Indianlike Hobomok."