A Pilgrim Maid Part 1

A Pilgrim Maid.

by Marion Ames Taggart.

CHAPTER I.

With England's Sh.o.r.es Left Far Astern.

A young girl, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with a sweet seriousness that was neither joy nor sorrow upon her fair pale face, leaned against the mast on the Mayflower's deck watching the bustle of the final preparations for setting sail westward.

A boy somewhat older than she stood beside her whittling an arrow from a bit of beechwood, whistling through his teeth, his tongue pressed against them, a livelier air than a pilgrim boy from Leyden was supposed to know, and sullenly scorning to betray interest in the excitement ash.o.r.e and aboard.

A little girl clung to the pretty young girl's skirt; the unlikeness between them, though they were sisters, was explained by their being but half sisters. Little Damaris was like her mother, Constance's stepmother, while Constance herself reflected the delicate loveliness of her own and her brother Giles's mother, dead in early youth and lying now at rest in a green English churchyard while her children were setting forth into the unknown.

Two boys--one older than Constance, Giles's age, the other younger than the girl--came rushing down the deck with such impetuosity, plus the younger lad's head used as a battering ram, that the men at work stowing away hampers and barrels, trying to clear a way for the start, gave place to the rough onslaught.

Several looked after the pair in a way that suggested something more vigorous than a look had it not been that fear of the pilgrim leaders restrained swearing. Not a whit did the charging lads care for the wrath they aroused. The elder stopped himself by clutching the rope which Constance Hopkins idly swung, while the younger caught Giles around the waist and nearly pulled him over.

"I'll teach you manners, you young savage, Francis Billington!" growled Giles, but he did not mean it, as Francis well knew.

"If I'm a savage I'll be the only one of us at home in America," chuckled the boy.

"Getting ready an arrow for the savage?" he added.

"It's all decided. There's been the greatest to-do ash.o.r.e. Why didn't you come off the ship to see the last of 'em, Constance?" interrupted the older boy. Constance Hopkins shook her head, sadly.

"Nay, then, John, I've had my fill of partings," she said. "Are they gone back, those we had to leave behind?"

"That have they!" cried John Billington. "Some of them were sorry to miss the adventure, but if truth were told some were glad to be well out of it, and with no more disgrace in setting back than that the Mayflower could not hold us all. Well, they've missed danger and maybe death, but I'd not be out of it for a king's ransom. Giles, what do you think is whispered? That the Speedwell could make the voyage as well as the Mayflower, though she be smaller, if only she carried less sail, and that her leaking is--a greater leak in her master Reynolds's truth, and that she'd be seaworthy if he'd let her!"

"Cur!" growled Giles Hopkins. "He knows he'd have to stay with his ship in the wilderness a year it might be and there's better comfort in England and Holland! We're well rid of him if he's that kind of a coward. I wondered myself if he was up to a trick when we put in the first time, at Dartmouth. This time when we made Plymouth I smelled a rat certain. Are we almost loaded?"

"Yes. They've packed all the provisions from the Speedwell into the Mayflower that she will hold. We'll be off soon. Not too soon! The sixth day of September, and we a month dallying along the sh.o.r.e because of the Speedwell's leaking! Constantia, you'll be cold before we make a fire in the New World I'm thinking!"

John Billington chuckled as if the cold of winter in the wilderness were a merry jest.

"Cold, and maybe hungry, and maybe ill of body and sick of heart, but never quite losing courage, I hope, John, comrade!" Constance said, looking up with a smile and a flush that warmed her white cheeks from which heavy thoughts had driven their usual soft colour.

"No fear! You're the kind that says little and does much," said John Billington with surprising sharpness in a lad that never seemed to have a thought to spare for anything but madcap pranks.

"Here come Father, and the captain, and dear John," said little Damaris.

Stephen Hopkins was a strong-built man, with a fire in his eye, and an air of the world about him, in spite of his severe Puritan garb, that declared him different from most of his comrades of the Leyden community of English exiles.

With all her likeness to her dead English girl-mother, who was gentle born and well bred, there was something in Constance as she stood now, head up and eyes bright, that was also like her father.

Beside Mr. Hopkins walked a thick-set man, a soldier in every motion and look, with little of the Puritan in his air, and just behind them came a young man, far younger than either of the others, with an open, pleasant English face, and an expression at once shy and friendly.

"Oh, dear John Alden!" cried little Damaris, and forsook Constance's skirt for John Alden's ready arms which raised her to his shoulder.

Giles Hopkins's gloom lifted as he returned Captain Myles Standish's salute.

"Yes, Captain; I'm ready enough to sail," he said, answering the captain's question.

"Mistress Constantia?" suggested Myles Standish.

"Is there doubt of it when we've twice put in from sea, and were ready to sail when we left Southampton a month ago?" asked Constance. "Sure we are ready, Captain Standish, as you well know. Where is Mistress Rose?"

"In the women's cabin with Mistress Hopkins putting to rights their belongings as fast as they can before we weigh anchor, and get perhaps stood on our heads by winds and waves," Captain Standish smiled. "Though the wind is fine for us now." His face clouded. "Mistress Rose is a frail rose, Con! They will be coming on deck to see the start."

"The voyage may give sweet Rose new strength, Captain Standish," murmured Constance coming close to the captain and slipping her hand into his, for she was his prime favourite and his lovely, frail young wife's chosen friend, in spite of the ten years difference in their ages.

"Ah, Con, my la.s.s, G.o.d grant it, but I'm sore afraid for her! How can she buffet the exposure of a wilderness winter, and--hush! Here they are!" whispered Myles Standish.

Mistress Eliza Hopkins was tall, bony, sinewy of build, with a dark, strong face, determination and temper in her eye. Rose Standish was her opposite--a slight, pale, drooping creature not more than five years above twenty; patience, suffering in her every motion, and clinging affection in every line of her gentle face.

Constance ran to wind her arm around her as Rose came up and slipped one little hand into her husband's arm.

Mrs. Hopkins frowned.

"It likes me not to see you so forward with caresses, Constantia," she said, and her voice rasped like the ship's tackles as the sailors got up the canvas.

"It is not becoming in the elect whose hearts are set upon heavenly things to fawn upon creatures, nor make unmaidenly displays."

Giles kicked viciously at the rope which Constance had held. It was not hard to guess that the unnatural gloom, the sullenness that marked a boy meant by Nature to be pleasant, was due to bad blood between him and this aggressive stepmother, who plainly did not like him.

"Oh, Mistress Hopkins," cried Constance, flushing, "why do you think it is wrong to be loving? Never can I believe G.o.d who made us with warm hearts, and gave us such darlings as Rose Standish, didn't want us to love and show our love."

"You are much too free with your irreverence, Mistress Constantia; it becomes you not to proclaim your Maker's opinions and desires for his saints," said Mrs. Hopkins, frowning heavily.

"'Sdeath, Eliza, will you never let the girl alone?" cried Stephen Hopkins, angrily.

"As though we had nothing to think of in weighing anchor and leaving England for ever--and for what else besides, who knows--without carping at a little girl's loving natural ways to an older girl whom she loves? I agree with Connie; it's good to sweeten life with affection."

"Connie, forsooth!" echoed Mrs. Hopkins, bitterly. "Are we to use meaningless t.i.tles for young women setting forth to found a kingdom? And do you still use the oaths of worldlings, as you did just now? Oh, Stephen Hopkins, may you not be found unworthy of your high calling and invoke the wrath of Heaven upon your family!"

Stephen Hopkins looked ready to burst out into hot wrath, but Myles Standish gave him a humorous glance, and shrugged his shoulders.

"What would you?" he seemed to say. "Old friend, bad temper seizes every opportunity to wreak itself, and we who have seen the world can afford to let the women fume. Jealousy is a worse vice than an oath of the Stuart reign."

Stephen Hopkins harkened to this unspoken philosophy; Myles Standish had great influence over him. This, with the rapid gathering on deck of the rest of the pilgrims, served to avert what threatened to be an explosion of pardonable wrath. They came crowding up from the cabins, this courageous band of determined men and women, and gathered silently to look their last on home, and not merely on home, but on the comforts of the established life which to many among them were necessary to their existence.

There were many children, sober little men and women, in unchildlike caricatures of their elders' garb and with solemn round faces looking scared by the gravity around them.

Priscilla Mullins gathered the children together and led them over to join Constance Hopkins. She and Constance divided the love of the child pilgrims between them. Priscilla, round of face, smooth and rosy of cheek, wholesome and sensible, was good to look upon. It often happened that her duty brought her near to wherever John Alden might chance to be, but no one had ever suspected that John objected.

John Alden had been taken on as cooper from Southampton when the Mayflower first sailed. It was not certain that the pilgrims could keep him with them. Already they had learned to value him, and many a glance was now exchanged that told the hope that sunny little Priscilla might help to hold the young man on this hard expedition.

The crew of the Mayflower pulled up her sails, but without the usual sailor songs. Silently they pulled, working in unison to the sharp words of command uttered by their officers, till every shred of canvas, under which they were to set forth under a favouring wind, was strained into place and set.

On the sh.o.r.e was gathered a crowd gazing, wondering, at this departure. Some there were who were to have been of the company in the lesser ship, the Speedwell, which had been remanded from the voyage as unfit for it. These lingered to see the setting forth for the New World which was not to be their world, after all.

There were many who gazed, pityingly, awe-struck, but bewildered by the spirit that led these severe-looking people away from England first, and then from Holland, to try their fortunes where no fortune promised.

Others there were who laughed merrily over the absurdity of the quest, and these called all sorts of jests and quips to the pilgrims on the ship, inviting to a contest of wit which the pilgrims utterly disdained.

And then the by-standers on wharf and sands of old Plymouth became silent, for, as the Mayflower began to move out from her dock, there arose the solemn chant of a psalm.

The air was wailing, lugubrious, unmusical, but the words were awesome.

"When Israel went out from Egypt, from the land of a strange people," they were singing.

"A strange people!" And these pilgrims were of English blood, and this was England which they were thus renouncing!

What curious folk these were!

But this psalm was followed by another: "The Lord is my shepherd."

Ah, that was another matter! No one who heard them, however slight the sympathy felt for this unsympathetic band, but hoped that the Lord would shepherd them, "lead them beside still waters," for the sea might well be unquiet.

"Oh, poor creatures, poor creatures," said a buxom woman, snuggling her baby's head into her deep shoulder, and wiping her own eyes with her ap.r.o.n. "I fain must pity 'em, that I must, though I'm none too lovin' myself toward their queer dourness. But I hope the Lord will shepherd 'em; sore will they need it, I'm thinkin', yonder where there's no shepherds nor flocks, but only wild men to cut them down like we do haw for the church, as they all thinks is wicked!" she mourned, motherly yearning toward the people going out the harbour like babes in the wood, into no one would dare say what awful fate.

The pilgrims stood with their faces set toward England, with England tugging at their heart strings, as the strong southeasterly wind filled the Mayflower's canvas and pulled at her shrouds.

And as they sailed away the monotonous chant of the psalms went on, floating back to England, a farewell and a prophecy.

Rose Standish's tears were softly falling and her voice was silent, but Constance Hopkins chanted bravely, and the children joined her with Priscilla Mullins's strong contralto upholding them.

Even Giles sang, and the two scamps of Billington boys looked serious for once, and helped the chant.

Myles Standish raised his soldier's hat and turned to Stephen Hopkins, holding out his right hand.

"We're fairly off this time, friend Stephen," he said. "G.o.d speed us."

"Amen, Captain Myles, for else we'll speed not, returned Stephen Hopkins.

"Oh, Daddy, we're together anyway!" cried Constance, with one of her sudden bursts of emotion which her stepmother so severely condemned, and she threw herself on her father's breast.

Mr. Hopkins did not share his wife's view of his beloved little girl's demonstrativeness. He patted her head gently, tucking a stray wisp of hair under her Puritan cap.

"There, there, my child, there, there, Connie! Surely we're together and shall be. So it can't be a wilderness for us, can it?" he said.

An hour later, the wind still favouring, the Mayflower dropped sunsetward, out of old Plymouth Harbour.

CHAPTER II.

To Buffet Waves and Ride on Storms.

The wind held fair, the golden September weather waited on each new day at its rising and sent it at its close, radiantly splendid, into the sea ahead of the Mayflower as she swept westward.

Full canvas hoisted she was able to sail at her best speed under the favouring conditions so that the hopeful young people whom she carried talked confidently of the houses they would build, the village they would found before heavy frosts. Captain Myles Standish, always impetuous as any of the boys, was one of those who let themselves forget there were such things as storms.

"We'll be New Englishmen at this rate before we fully realize we've left home; what do you say, my la.s.sies three?" he demanded, pausing in a rapid stride of the deck before Constance Hopkins and two young girls who were her own age, but seemed much younger, Humility Cooper and her cousin, Elizabeth Tilley.

"What do you three mermaidens in this forward nook each morning?" Captain Standish went on without waiting for a reply to his first question, which indeed, he had not asked to have it answered.

"Elizabeth's mother, Mistress John Tilley, is sick and declares that she shall die," said Constance, Humility and Elizabeth being shyly silent before the captain.

"No one ever thought to live through sea-sickness, nor wanted to," declared Captain Myles with his hearty laugh. "Yet no one dies of it, that is certain. And is Mistress Ann Tilley also lain down and left Humility to the mercy of the dolphins? And is your stepmother, too, Con, a victim? It's a calm sea we've been having by comparison. I've sailed from England into France when there was a sea running, certes! But this--pooh!"

"Humility's cousin, Mistress Ann Tilley, is not ill, nor my stepmother, Captain Standish, but they are attending to those who are, and to the children. Father says that when he sailed for Virginia, before my mother died, meaning to settle there, that the storm that wrecked them on Bermuda Island and kept us from being already these eleven years colonists in the New World, was a wind and sea that make this seem no more than the lake at the king's palace, where the swans float."

Constance looked up smiling at the captain as she answered, but he noted that her eyes were swollen from tears.

"Take a turn with me along the deck, child," Captain Myles said, gruffly, and held out a hand to steady Constance on her feet.

"Now, what was it?" he asked, lightly touching the young girl's cheek when they had pa.s.sed beyond the hearing of Constance's two demure little companions. "Homesick, my la.s.s?"

"Heartsick, rather, Captain Myles," said Constance, with a sob. "Mistress Hopkins hates me!"

"Oh, fie, Connie, how could she?" asked the captain, lightly, but he scowled angrily. There was much sympathy between him and Stephen Hopkins, neither of whom agreed with the extreme severity of most of the pilgrims; they both had seen the world and looked at life from their wider experience.

Captain Standish knew that Giles's and Constance's mother had been the daughter of an old and honourable family, with all the fine qualities of mind and soul that should be the inheritance of gentle breeding. He knew how it had come about that Stephen Hopkins had married a second time a woman greatly her inferior, whose jealousy of the first wife's children saddened their young lives and made his own course hard and unpleasant. p.r.o.ne to speak his mind and fond of Giles and Constance, the impetuous captain often found it hard to keep his tongue between his teeth when Dame Eliza indulged in her favourite game of badgering, persecuting her stepchildren. Now, when he said: "Fie, how could she?" Constance looked up at him with a forlorn smile. She knew the captain was quite aware that her stepmother could, and did dislike her, and she caught the anger in his voice.

"How could she not, dear Captain Myles?" she asked. Then, with her pent-up feeling overmastering her, she burst out sobbing.

"Oh, you know she hates, she hates me, Captain!" she cried. "Nothing I can do is pleasing to her. I take care of Damaris--sure I love my little sister, and do not remember the half that is not my sister in her! And I wait on Mistress Hopkins, and sew, and do her bidding, and I do not answer her cruel taunts, nor do I go to my father complaining; but she hates me. Is it fair? Could I help it that my father loved my own mother, and married her, and that she was a lovely and accomplished lady?"

"Do you want to help it, if by helping you mean altering, Connie?" asked Captain Myles, with a twinkle. "No, child, you surely cannot help all these things which come by no will of yours, but by the will of G.o.d. And I am your witness that you are ever patient and dutiful. Bear as best you can, sweet Constantia, and by and by the wrong will become right, as right in the end is ever strongest. I cannot endure to see your young eyes wet with tears called out by unkindness. There is enough and to spare of hard matters to endure for all of us on this adventure not to add to it what is not only unnecessary, but unjust. Cheer up, Con, my la.s.s! It's a long lane--in England!--that has no turning, and it's a long voyage on the seas that ends in no safe harbour! And do you know, Connie girl, that there's soon to be a turn in this bright weather? There's a feeling of change and threatening in this soft wind."

Constance wiped her eyes and smiled, knowing that the captain wished to lead her into other themes than her own troubles, the discussion of which was, after all, useless.

"I don't know about the weather, except the weather I'm having," she said. "Ah, I don't want it to storm, not on the mid-seas, Captain Myles."

"Aye, but it's the mid-seas of the year, Connie, when the days and nights are one in length, and at that time old wise men say a storm is usually forthcoming. We'll weather it, never fear! If we are bearing westward a great hope and mission as we all believe--not I in precisely the same fashion as these stricter saints, but in my own way no less--then we are sure to reach our goal, my dear," said the captain cheerfully.