A Pilgrim Maid Part 12

Although the older women raised disapproving brows at Constance, and shook their heads over her rose-tinted knots of ribbon, no one openly reproved her, and she slid into her place less pleased with her ornamentation than she had been while antic.i.p.ating a rebuke.

Captain Myles Standish rose up in his place and gave the history of his explorations in a clear-cut, terse way, that omitted nothing, yet dwelt on nothing beyond the narration of necessary facts.

It was a long story, however condensed, yet no one wearied of it, but listened enthralled to his account of the Squaw-Sachem of the tribe of the Ma.s.sachusetts, who ruled in the place of her dead spouse, the chief Nanepashemet, and was feared by other Indians as a relentless foe, and of the great rock that ended a promontory far in on the bay, at the foot of the three hills which were so good a site for a settlement, a rock that was fashioned by Nature into the profile of an Indian's face, and which they called Squaw Rock, or Squantum Head. As the captain went on telling of their inland marches from these three hills and their bay, and of the fertile country of great beauty which they everywhere came upon, there arose outside a commotion of children crying, and the larger children who were in charge of the small ones, calling frantically.

Squanto, admitted to the a.s.sembly as one who had borne an important part in the story that Myles Standish was relating, sprang to his feet and ran out of the house. He came back in a few moments, followed by another Indian--a tall, lithe, lean youth, with an unfriendly manner.

"What is this?" demanded Governor Bradford, rising.

"Narragansett, come tell you not friends to you," said Squanto.

The Narragansett warrior, with a great air of contempt, threw upon the floor, in the middle of the a.s.sembly, a small bundle of arrows, tied around with a spotted snake skin. This done, he straightened himself, folded his arms, and looked disdainfully upon the white men.

"Well, what has gone amiss with his digestion!" exclaimed Giles, aloud.

His father shook his head at him. "How do you construe this act and manner, Squanto? Surely it portendeth trouble."

"It is war," said Squanto. "Arrows tied by snake skin means no friend; war."

"Perhaps we would do well to let it lie; picking it up may mean acceptance of the challenge, as if it were a glove in a tourney. The customs of men run amazingly together, though race and education separate them," suggested Myles Standish.

"Squanto, take this defiant youngster out of here, and treat him politely; see that he is fed and given a place to sleep. Tell him that we will answer him----By your approval, Governor and gentlemen?"

"You have antic.i.p.ated my own suggestion, Captain Standish," said William Bradford bowing, and Squanto, who understood more than he could put into words, spoke rapidly to the Narragansett messenger and led him away.

"Shall we deliberate upon this, being conveniently a.s.sembled?" suggested Governor Bradford.

"It needs small consideration, meseems," said Myles Standish, impatiently. "Dismiss this messenger at once; do not let him remain here over night. The less your foe knows of you, the more your mystery will increase his dread of you. In the morning send a messenger of our own to the Narragansetts, and tell them that if they want war, war be it. If they prefer war to peace, let them begin upon the war at once; that we no more fear them than we have wronged them, and as they choose, so would we deal with them, as friends worth keeping, or foes to fear."

"Admirable advice," Stephen Hopkins applauded the captain, and the other Plymouth men echoed his applause.

Then, with boyish impetuosity and with laughter lighting up his handsome face, Giles leaped to his feet.

"Now do I know the answer!" he cried. "Let the words be as our captain hath spoken; no one could utter better! But there is a further answer! Empty their snakeskin of arrows and fill it round with bullets, and throw it down among them, as they threw their pretty toy down to us! And our stuffing of it will have a bad flavour to their palates, mark me. It will be like filling a Christmas goose with red peppers, and if it doesn't send the Narragansetts away from the table they were setting for us, then is not my name Giles Hopkins! And one more word, my elders and masters! Let me be your messenger to the Narragansetts, I beseech you! They sent a youth to us; send you this youth back to them. If it be hauteur against hauteur, pride for pride, I'll bear me like the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown, both together, in one person. See whether or not I can strike the true defiant att.i.tude!"

With which, eyes sparkling with fun and excitement, head thrown back, Giles struck an att.i.tude, folding his arms and spreading his feet, looking at once so boyish and so handsome that with difficulty Constance held her clasped hands from clapping him.

"Truth, friend Stephen, your lad hath an idea!" said Myles Standish, delightedly.

"It could not be better. Conceived in true harmony with the savages' message to us, and carrying conviction of our sincerity to them at the first glimpse of it! By all means let us do as Giles suggests."

There was not a dissentient voice in the entire a.s.sembly; indeed everyone was highly delighted with the humour of it.

There was some objection to allowing Giles to be the messenger, but here Captain Standish stood his friend, though Constance looked at him reproachfully for helping Giles into this risky business.

"Let the lad go, good gentlemen," he said. "Giles hath been with me on these recent explorations, and hath borne himself with fort.i.tude, courage, and prudence. He longs to play a man's part among us; let him have the office of messenger to the Narragansetts, and go thither in the early morning, at dawn. We will dismiss their youth at once, and follow him with our better message without loss of time."

So it was decided, and in high feather Giles returned to his home, Damaris on his shoulder, Constance walking soberly at his side, half sharing his triumph in his mission, half frightened lest her brother had but returned from unknown dangers to encounter worse ones.

"Oh, they'll not harm me, timorous Con!" Giles a.s.sured her. "They know that it is prudent to let lie the sleeping English bulldogs, of whom, trust me, they know by repute! Now, Sis, can you deck me out in some wise impressive to these savages, who will not see the dignity of our sober dress as we do?"

"Feathers?" suggested Constance, abandoning her anxiety to enter into this phase of the mission. "I think feathers in your hat, Giles, and some sort of a bright sash across your breast, all stuck through with knives? I will get knives from Pris and some of the others. And--oh, I know, Giles! That crimson velvet cloak that was our mother's, hung backward from your shoulder! Splendid, Giles; splendid enough for Sir Walter Raleigh himself to wear at Elizabeth's court, or to spread for her to walk upon."

"It promises well, Sis, in sound, at least," said Giles. "But by all that's wise, help me to carry this paraphernalia ready to don at a safe distance from Plymouth, and by no means betray to our solemn rulers how I shall be decked out!"

The sun was still two hours below his rising when Giles started, the crimson velvet cloak in a bag, his matchlock, or rather Myles Standish's matchlock lent Giles for the expedition, slung across his shoulder, a sword at his side, and the plumes fastened into his hat by Constance's needle and thread, but covered with another hat which surmounted his own.

Constance had arisen, also, and went with Giles a little way upon his journey. Stephen Hopkins had blessed him and bidden him farewell on the preceding night, not to make too much of his setting forth.

At the boundary which they had agreed upon, Constance kissed her brother good-bye, removing his second hat, and dressing the plumes crushed below it.

"Good-bye, my dear one," she said. "And hasten back to me, for I cannot endure delay of your return. And you look splendid, my Knight of the Wilderness, even without the crimson cloak. But see to it that you make it swing back gloriously, and wave it in the dazzled eyes of the Narragansetts!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'You look splendid, my knight of the wilderness'"]

Thus with another kiss, Constance turned back singing, to show to Giles how little she feared for him, and half laughing to herself, for she was still very young, and they had managed between them to give this important errand much of the effect of a boy-and-girl, masquerading frolic.

Yet, always subject to sudden variations of spirits, Constance had not gone far before she sat down upon a rock and cried heartily. Then, having sung and wept over Giles, she went sedately homeward to await his return in a mood that savoured of both extremes with which she had parted from him.

The waiting was tedious, but it was not long. Sooner than she had dared to hope for him, Giles came marching back to her, and as he sang as he came, at the top of a l.u.s.ty voice, Plymouth knew before he could tell it that his errand had been successful.

Giles went straight to Governor Bradford's house, whither those who had seen and heard him coming followed him.

"There is our gift of war rejected," said Giles, throwing down the spotted snakeskin, still bulging with its bullets. "They would have naught of it, but picked it up and gave it back to me with much air of solicitude, and with many words, which I could not understand, but which I doubt not were full of the warmest love for us English. And I was glad to get back the stuffed snakeskin and our good bullets, for here, so far from supplies, bullets are bullets, and if any of our red neighbours did attack us we could not afford to have lessened our stock in object lessons. All's well that ends well--where have I heard that phrase? Father, isn't it in a book of yours?" Giles concluded, innocently unconscious that he was walking on thin ice in alluding to a play of Shakespeare's, and his father's possession of it.

"You have done well, Giles Hopkins," said Governor Bradford, heartily, "both in your conception of this message, and in your bearing it to the Narragansetts. And so from them we have no more to fear?"

"No more whatever," said Giles.

"Nevertheless, from this day let us build a stockade around the town, and close our gates at night, appointing sentinels to take shifts of guarding us," said Myles Standish. "This incident hath shown me that the outlying savages are not securely to be trusted. I have long thought that we should organize into military form. I want four squadrons of our men, each squadron given a quarter of the town to guard; I want pickets planted around us, and at any alarm, as of danger from fire or foe, I want these Plymouth companies to be ready to fly to rescue."

"It shall be as you suggest, Captain," said Governor Bradford. "These things are for you to order, and the wisdom of this is obvious."

Constance and Giles walked home together, Constance hiding beneath her gown the plumes which she had first fastened into, then ripped out of Giles's hat.

"It is a delight to see you thus bearing your part in the affairs of Plymouth, Giles, dearest," she said. "And what fun this errand must have been!"

Giles turned on her a pain-drawn face.

"So it was, Constance, and I did like it," he said. "But how I wish Jack Billington had been with me! He was a brave lad, Constance, and a true friend. He was unruly, but he was not wicked, and the strict ways here irked him. Oh, I wish he had been here to do this service instead of me! I miss him, miss him."

Giles stopped abruptly, and Constance gently touched his arm. Giles had not spoken before of Jack's death, and she had not dared allude to it.

"I am sorry, too, dear Giles," she whispered, and Giles acknowledged her sympathy by a touch upon her hand, while his other hand furtively wiped away the tears that manhood forbade the boy to let fall.

CHAPTER XVII.

The Well-Conned Lesson.

Giles took a new place in Plymouth after his emba.s.sy to the Narragansetts. No longer a boy among his fellow pilgrims, he fulfilled well and busily the offices that were his as one of the younger, yet mature men.

He was given the discipline of the squadron, that, pursuant to Captain Standish's plan for guarding the settlement, was the largest and controlled the most important gate of the stockade which was rapidly put up around the boundary of Plymouth after the defiance of the Narragansetts. Though that had come to naught, it had warned the colonists that danger might arise at an unforeseen moment.

There was scarcity of provisions for the winter, the thirty-five dest.i.tute persons left the colony by the Fortune being a heavy additional drain upon its supplies. Everyone was put upon half rations, and it devolved upon Giles and John Alden to apportion each family's share. It was hard to subsist through the bitter weather upon half of what would, at best, have been a slender nourishment, yet the Plymouth people faced the outlook patiently, uncomplainingly, and Giles, naturally hot-headed, impatient, got more benefit than he gave when he handed out the rations and saw the quiet heroism of their acceptance.

He grew to be a silent Giles, falling into the habit of thoughtfulness, with scant talk, that was the prevailing manner of the Plymouth men. Between his father and himself there was friendliness, the former opposition between them, mutual annoyance, and irritation, were gone. Yet there they halted, not resuming the intimacy of Giles's childhood days. It was as if there were a reserve, rather of embarra.s.sment than of lack of love; as if something were needed to jostle them into closer intercourse.

Constance saw this, and waited, convinced that it would come, glad in the perfect confidence that she felt existed between them.

She was a busy Constance in these days. The warmth of September held through that November, brooding, slumberous, quiet in the sunshine that warmed like wine.

Constance and her stepmother cut and strung the few vegetables which they had, and hung them in the sunny corner of the empty attic room.

They spread out corn and pumpkins upon the floor, instructing the willing Lady Fair to see to it that mice did not steal them.

Dame Eliza, also, had grown comparatively silent. Her long tirades were wanting; she showed no softening toward Constance, yet she let her alone. Constance thought that something was on her stepmother's mind, but she did not try to discover what--glad of the new sparing of her sharp tongue, having no expectation of anything better than this from her.

Damaris had been sent with the other children to be instructed in the morning by Mrs. Brewster in sampler working and knitting; by her husband in the Westminster catechism, and the hornbook.

In the afternoon Damaris was allowed to play quietly at keeping house, with Love Brewster, who was a quiet child and liked better to play at being a pilgrim, and making a house with Damaris, than to share in the boys' games.

"Where do you go, lambkin?" Constance asked her. "For we must know where to find you, nor must it be far from the house."

"It is just down by that little patch, Connie; it's as nice as it can be, and it is the safest place in Plymouth, I'm sure," Damaris a.s.sured her earnestly. "You see there is a woods, and a hollow, and a big, big, great tree, and its roots go all out, every way, and we live in them, because they are rooms already; don't you see? And it's nice and damp--but you don't get your feet wet!" Damaris antic.i.p.ated the objection which she saw in Constance's eye. "It's only--only--soft, gentle damp; not wetness, and moss grows there, as green as green can be, and feathery! And on the tree are nice little yellow plates, with brown edges! Growing on it! And we play they are our best plates that we don't use every day, because they are soft-like, and we didn't care to touch them when we did it. But they make the prettiest best plates in the cupboard, for they grow, in rows, with their edges over the next one, just the way you set up our plates in the corner cupboard. So please don't think it isn't a nice place, Constance, because it is, and I'd feel terribly afflicted, and cast down, and as nothing, if I couldn't go there with Love."

Constance smiled at the child's quoting of the phrases which she had heard in the long sermons that Elder Brewster read, or delivered to them twice on Sunday, there being no minister yet come to Plymouth.

"You little echo!" Constance cried. "It surely would be a matter to move one's pity if you suffered so deeply as that in the loss of your playground! Well, dear, till the warmth breaks up I suppose you may keep your house with Love, but promise to leave it if you feel chilly there. We must trust you so far. Art going there now?"

"Yes, dear Constance. You have a heart of compa.s.sion and I love you with all of mine," said Damaris, expressing herself again like a little Puritan, but hugging her sister with the natural heartiness of a loving child.

Then she ran away, and Constance, taking her capacious darning bag on her arm, went to bear Priscilla Alden company at her mending, as she often did when no work about the house detained her.

Giles came running down the road when the afternoon had half gone, his face white. "Con, come home!" he cried, bursting open the door. "Hasten! Damaris is strangely ill."

Constance sprang up, throwing her work in all directions, and Priscilla sprang up with her. Without stopping to pick up a thread, the two girls went with Giles.

"I don't know what it is," Giles said, in reply to Constance's questions. "Love Brewster came running to Dame Hopkins, crying that Damaris was sick and strange. She followed him to the children's playground, and carried the child home. She is like to die; convulsions and every sign of poison she has, but what it is, what to do, no one knows. The women are there, but Doctor Fuller, as you know, is gone to a squaw who is suffering sore, and we could not bring him, even if we knew where he was, till it was too late. They have done all that they can recall for such seizures, but the child grows worse."

"Oh, Giles!" groaned Constance. "She hath eaten poison. What has Doctor Fuller told me of these things? If only I can remember! All I can think of is that he hath said different poisons require different treatment. Oh, Giles, Giles!"

"Steady, Sister; it may be that you can help," said Giles. "It had not occurred to any one how much the doctor had told you of his methods. Perhaps Love will know what Damaris touched."

"There is Love, sitting crouched in the corner of the garden plot, his head on his knees, poor little Love!"

Constance broke into a run and knelt beside the little boy, who did not look up as she put her arms around him.

"Love, Love, dear child, if you can tell me what Damaris ate perhaps G.o.d will help me cure her," she said. "Look up, and be brave and help me. Did you see Damaris eat anything that you did not eat with her?"

"Little things that grow around the big tree where it is wetter, we picked for our furniture," Love said at once. "Damaris said you cooked them and they were good. So then she said we would play some of them was furniture, and some of them was our dinner. And I didn't eat them, for they were like thin leather, only soft, and I felt of them, and couldn't eat them. But Damaris did eat them."

"Toadstools!" cried Constance with a gasp. "Toadstools, Love! Did they look like little tables? And did Damaris call them mushrooms?"

"Yes, like little tables," Love nodded his head hard. "All full underneath with soft crimped----"

But Constance waited for no more. With a cry she was on her feet and running like the wind, calling back over her shoulder to Giles: "I'll come quick! I know! I know! Tell Father I know!"

"She hath gone to Doctor Fuller's house," said Priscilla, watching Constance's flying figure, her hair unbound and streaming like a burnished banner behind her as she ran to get her weapon to fight with Death. "No girl ever ran as she can. Come, Giles; obey her. Tell your father and Mistress Hopkins that mayhap Constance can save the child."

They turned toward the house, and Constance sped on.

"Nightshade! The belladonna!" she was saying to herself as she ran. "I know the phial; I know its place. O, G.o.d, give me time, and give me wit, and do Thou the rest!" Past power to explain, she swept aside with a vehement arm the woman who found needed shelter for herself in Doctor Fuller's house, and kept it for him till his wife should come to Plymouth.

Into the crude laboratory and pharmacy--in which the doctor had allowed her to work with him, of the contents of which he had taught her so much for an emergency that she had little dreamed would so closely affect herself when it came--Constance flew, and turned to the shelf where stood, in their dark phials, the few poisons which the doctor kept ready to do beneficent work for him.

"Belladonna, belladonna, the beautiful lady," Constance murmured, in the curious way that minds have of seizing words and dwelling on them with surface insistence, while the actual mind is intensely working on a vital matter.

She took down the wrong phial first, and set it back impatiently.

"There should be none other like belladonna," she said aloud, and took down the phial she sought. To be sure that she was right, though it was labelled in the doctor's almost illegible small writing, she withdrew the cork. She knew the sickening odour of the nightshade which she had helped distil, an odour that dimly recalled a tobacco that had come to her father in England in her childhood from some Spanish colony, as she had been told, and also a wine that her stepmother made from wild berries.

Constance shuddered as she replaced the cork.

"It sickens me, but if only it will restore little Damaris!" she thought.

Holding the phial tight Constance hastened away, and, her breath still coming painfully, she broke into her swift race homeward, diminishing nothing of her speed in coming, her great purpose conquering the pain that oppressed her labouring breast.

When she reached her home her father was watching for her in the doorway. He took her hands in both of his without a word, covering the phial which she clasped, and looking at her questioningly.

"I hope so; oh, I hope so, Father!" she said. "The doctor told me."

Stephen Hopkins led her into the house; Dame Eliza met her within.

"Constance? Connie?" Thus Mistress Hopkins implored her to do her best, and to allow her to hope.

"Yes, yes, Mother," Constance replied to the prayer, and neither noted that they spoke to each other by names that they had never used before.

The first glimpse that Constance had of Damaris on the bed sent all the blood back against her heart with a pang that made her feel faint. It did not seem possible that she was in time, even should her knowledge be correct.

The child lay rigid as Constance's eyes fell on her; her lips and cheeks were ghastly, her long hair heightening the awful effect of her deathly colour. Frequent convulsions shook her body, her struggling breathing alone broke the stillness of the room.