A Pilgrim Maid Part 13

"She is quieter, but it is not that she is better," whispered Dame Eliza.

Priscilla Alden stood ready with a spoon and gla.s.s in one hand, water in a small ewer in the other, always the efficient, sensible girl when needed.

Constance accepted the gla.s.s, took from it the spoon, gave the gla.s.s back to Priscilla and poured from the dark phial into the spoon the dose of belladonna that Doctor Fuller had explained to her would be proper to use in an extreme case of danger.

"How wonderful that he should have told me particularly about toadstool poisoning, yet it is because of the children," Constance's dual mind was saying to her, even while she poured the remedy and prayed with all her might for its efficacy.

"Open her mouth," she said to her father, and he obeyed her. Constance poured the belladonna down Damaris's throat.

Even after the first dose the child's rigor relaxed before a long time had pa.s.sed. The dose was repeated; the early dusk of the grayest month closed down upon the watchers in that room. The neighbours slipped away to their own homes and duties; night fell, and Stephen Hopkins, his wife, Giles, and Constance stood around that bed, feeling no want of food, watching, watching the gradual cessation of the wracking convulsions, the relaxation of the stiffened little limbs, the fall of the strained eyelids, the quieter breathing, the changing tint of the skin as the poison loosed its grip upon the poor little heart and the blood began to course languidly, but duly, through the congested veins.

"Constance, she is safe!" Stephen Hopkins ventured at last to say as Damaris turned on her side with a long, refreshing breath.

Giles went quickly from the room, and Constance turned to her father with sudden weakness that made her faint.

Constance swayed as she stood and her father caught her in his arms, tenderly drawing her head down on his shoulder, as great rending sobs shook her from relief and the acc.u.mulated exhaustion of hunger, physical weariness, anxiety, and grief.

"Brave little la.s.s!" Stephen Hopkins whispered, kissing her again and again. "Brave, quick-witted, loving, wise little la.s.s o' mine!"

Dame Eliza spoke never a word, but on her knees, with her head buried in the bright patch bedspread, one of Damaris's cold little hands laid across her lips, she wept as Constance had never dreamed that her stepmother could weep.

"Better look after her, Father," Constance whispered, alarmed. "She will do herself a mischief, poor soul! Mother, oh--she loves me not! Father, comfort her; I will rest, and then I shall be my old self."

"You did not notice that Priscilla had come back," her father said. "She is in the kitchen, and the kettle is singing on the hob. Go, dear one, and Priscilla will give you food and warm drink. Let me help you there. My Constance, Damaris would be far beyond our love by now had you not saved her. You have saved her life, Constance! What do we not all owe to you?"

"It was Doctor Fuller. He taught me. He is wise, and knew that children might take harm from toadstools, playing in the woods as ours do. It was not due to me that Damaris was saved," Constance said.

She was not conscious of how heavily she leaned on her father's arm, which lovingly enfolded her, leading her to the big chair in the inglenook. The fire leaped and crackled; the steam from the singing kettle on the crane showed rosy red in the firelight; Hecate, Puck, and Lady Fair basked in the warmth, and Priscilla Alden knelt on the hearth stirring something savoury in the saucepan that sat among the raked-off ashes, while John Alden, who had brought Priscilla back to be useful to the worn-out household, sat on the settle, leaning forward, elbows on knees, the bellows between his hands, ready to pump up wind under a flame that might show a sign of flagging.

"Dear me, how cosy it looks!" exclaimed Constance, involuntarily, her drooping muscles tautening to welcome the brightness waiting for her. "It does not seem as though there ever could come a sorrow to threaten a hearthstone so shut in, so well tended as this one!"

"It did not come, my dear; it only looked in at the window, and when it saw the tended hearth, and how well-armed you were to grapple with it, off it went!" cried Priscilla, drawing Constance into the high-backed chair. "Feet on this stool, my pretty, and this napery over your knees! That's right! Now this bowl and spoon, and then your Pris will pour her hot posset into your bowl, and you must shift it into your sweet mouth, and we'll be as right as a trivet, instanter!"

Priscilla acted as she chattered, and Constance gladly submitted to being taken care of, lying back smiling in weary, happy acquiescence.

Priscilla's posset was a heartening thing, and Constance after it, munched blissfully on a biscuit and sipped the wine that had been made of elder too brief a time before, yet which was friendly to her, nevertheless.

Constance's lids drooped in the warmth, her head nodded, her fingers relaxed. Priscilla caught her gla.s.s just in time as it was falling, and Constance slept beside the fire while John and Priscilla crept away, and Giles came to take their place, to keep up the blaze in case a kettle of hot water might be needed when Damaris wakened from her first restoring sleep.

At dawn Doctor Fuller came in and Constance aroused to welcome him.

"Child, what an experience you have borne!" the good man said, bending with a moved face to greet Constance. "To think that I should have been absent! Your practice was more successful than mine; the squaw is dead. And you remembered my teaching, and saved the child with the nightshade we gathered and distilled that fair day, more than two months ago! 'Twas a lesson well conned!"

"'Twas a lesson well taught," Constance amended. "Sit here, Doctor Fuller, and let me call my father. You will see Damaris? And her mother is in need of a quieting draught, I think. The poor soul was utterly spent when last I saw her, though I've selfishly slept, nor known aught of what any one else might be bearing."

Constance slipped softly through the door as she spoke, into the bedroom where Damaris lay. The little girl was sleeping, but her mother lay across her feet, her gloomy eyes staring at the wall, her face white and mournful.

"Doctor Fuller is come, Stepmother," whispered Constance. "Shall he not see Damaris? And you, have you not slept?"

"Not a wink," said Dame Eliza, rising heavily. "To me it is as if Damaris had died, and that that child there was another. I bore the agony of parting from her, and now must abide by it, meseems, for I cannot believe that she is here and safe. Constance, it is to you----." She stopped and began again. "I was ever fond of calling you your father's daughter, making plain that I had no part in you. It was true; none have I, nor ever can have. But in my child you have the right of sister, and the restorer of her life. Damaris's mother, and Damaris is your father's other daughter, is heavily in your debt. I do not know----." She paused. She had spoken slowly, with difficulty, as if she could not find the words, nor use them as she wished to when she had found them. Young as she was, Constance saw that her stepmother was labouring under the stress of profound emotion, that tore her almost like a physical agony.

"Now, now, prithee, Mistress Hopkins!" cried Constance, purposely using her customary t.i.tle for her stepmother, to avoid the effect of there being anything out of the ordinary between them. "Bethink thee that I have loved Damaris dearly all her short life, and that her loss would have wounded me hardly less than it would have you. What debt can there be where there is love? Would I not have sacrificed anything to keep the child, even for myself? And what have I done but remember what the doctor taught me, and give her drops? Do not, I pray thee, make of my selfishness and natural affection a matter of merit! And now the doctor is waiting. Will you not go to him and let him treat you, too?--for indeed you need it. And he will tell you how best to bring Damaris back to her strength. I am going out into the morning air, for my long sleep by the hot fire hath made me heavy. I will be back in a short time to help with breakfast, Stepmother!"

Constance s.n.a.t.c.hed her cloak and ran out by the other door to escape seeing the doctor again and hearing her stepmother dilate to him upon the night's events.

The sun was rising, resplendent, but the air was cold.

"And no wonder!" Constance thought, startled by her discovery. "Winter is upon us; to-day is December! Our warmth must leave us, and then will danger of poisoning be past, even in sheltered spots, such as that in which our little la.s.s near found her death!"

She spread her arms out to the sun rays, and let the crisp, sea wind cool her face.

"What a world! What a world! How fair, how glad, how sweet! Oh, thank G.o.d that it is so to us all this morning! Never will I repine at hardships in kind Plymouth colony, nor at the cost of coming on this pilgrimage, for of all the world in Merry England there is none to-day happier or more grateful than is this pilgrim maid!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

Christmas Wins, Though Outlawed.

Little Damaris, who had so nearly made the last great pilgrimage upon which we must all go, having turned her face once more toward the world she had been quitting, resumed her place in it but languidly. Never a robust child, her slender strength was impaired by the poison which she had absorbed. Added to this was the sudden coming of winter upon Plymouth, not well prepared to resist it, and it set in with violence, as if to atone for dallying on its way, for allowing summer to overlap its domain. Without a word to each other both Dame Eliza and Constance entered into an alliance of self-denial, doing without part of the more nourishing food out of their scanty allowance to give it to Damaris, and to plot in other ways to bring her back to health.

Constance scarcely knew her stepmother. Silent, where she had been p.r.o.ne to talk; patient, where she had been easily vexed; with something almost deprecatory in her manner where she always had been self-a.s.sertive, Dame Eliza went about her round of work like a person whom her husband's daughter had never known.

Toward Constance most of all was she changed. Never by the most remote implication did she blame her, whereas heretofore everything that the girl did was wrong, and the subject of wearisome, scolding comment. She avoided unnecessary speech to Constance, seemed even to try not to look at her, but this without the effect of her old-time dislike; it was rather as if she felt humiliated before her, and could not bring herself to meet the girl's eyes.

Constance, as she realized this, began to make little overtures toward her stepmother. Her sweetness of nature made her suffer discomfort when another was ill-at-ease, but so far her cautious attempts had met with failure.

"We have been in Plymouth a year, lacking but a sen' Night, Stepmother," Constance said one December day when the snow lay white on Plymouth and still thickened the air and veiled the sky. "And we have been in the New World past a year."

"It is ordered that we remember it in special prayer and psalmody to the Lord, with thanksgiving on the anniversary of our landing; you heard that, Constantia?" her stepmother responded.

"No, but that would be seemly, a natural course to follow," said Constance.

"There is not one of us who is not reliving the voyage hither and the hard winter of a year ago, I'll warrant. And Christmas is nearing."

"That is a word that may not be uttered here," said Dame Eliza with a gleam of humour in her eyes, though she did not lift them, and a flitting smile across her somewhat grimly set lips.

"Oh, can it be harmful to keep the day on which, veiled in an infant's form, man first saw his redemption?" cried Constance. "There were sweetness and holiness in Christmas-keeping, meseems. If only we could cut out less violently! Stepmother, will you let me have my way?"

"Your way is not in my guidance, Constantia," said Dame Eliza. "It is for your father to grant you, or refuse you; not me."

"This is beyond my father's province," laughed Constance. "Will you let me make a doll--I have my box of paints, and you know that a gift for using paints and for painting human faces is mine. I will make a doll of white rags and dress her in our prettiest coloured ones, with fastenings upon her clothes, so that they may be taken off and changed, else would she be a trial to her little mother! And then I will paint her face with my best skill, big blue eyes, curling golden hair, rose-red cheeks and lips, and a fine, straight little nose. Oh, she shall be a lovely creature, upon my honour! And will you let me give her to Damaris on Christmas morning, saying naught of it to any one outside this house, so no one shall rebuke us, or fine my father again for letting his child have a Christmas baby, as they fined him for letting Ted and Ned play at a harmless game? Then I shall know that there is one happy child on the birthday of Him who was born that all children, of all ages, should be happy, and that it will be, of all the possible little ones, our dear little la.s.s who is thus full of joy!"

Mistress Hopkins did not reply for a moment. Then she raised the corner of her ap.r.o.n and wiped her eyes, muttering something about "strong mustard."

"How fond you are of my little Damaris," she then said. "You know, Constantia, that I have no right to consent to your keeping Christmas, since our elders have set their faces dead against all practices of the Old Church. Yet are your reasons for wishing to do this, or so it seems to me in my ignorance, such as Heaven would approve, and it sorely is borne upon me that many worser sins may be wrought in Plymouth than making a delicate child happy on the birthday of the Lord. Go, then, and make your puppet, but do not tell any one that you first consulted me. If trouble comes of it they will blame you less, who are young and not so long removed from the age of dolls, than me, who am one of the Mothers in Israel."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Stepmother!" cried Constance jumping up and clapping her hands with greater delight than if she had herself received a Christmas gift.

"I'll never betray you, never! None shall know that any but my wicked, light-minded self had a hand in this profanation of----. What does it profane, Stepmother?"

"Plymouth and Plymouth pilgrimage," said Dame Eliza, and this time the smile that she had checked before had its way.

Constance ran upstairs to look for the pieces which were to be transformed by fairy magic, through her means, from shapeless rags to a fair and rosy daughter for pale Damaris. She remembered, wondering, as she knelt before her chest, that she had clapped her hands and pranced, and that Dame Eliza had not reproved her.

Constance was busy with her doll till Christmas morning, the more so that she must hide it from Damaris and there was not warmth anywhere to sit and sew except in the great living room where Damaris amused Ocea.n.u.s most of the darksome days. But Damaris's mother connived with Constance to divert the child, and there were long evenings, for, to give Constance more time, Dame Eliza put Damaris early to bed, and Constance sat late at her sewing.

Thus when Christmas day came there sat on the hearth, propped up against the back of Stephen Hopkins's big volume of Shakespeare, a doll with a painted face that had real claim to prettiness. She wore a gown of sprigged muslin that hung so full around the pointed stomacher of her waist that it was a scandal to sober Plymouth, and a dangerous example to Damaris, had she been inclined to vain light-mindedness. And--though this was a surprise also to Dame Eliza--there was a horse of brown woollen stuff, with a tail of fine-cut rags and a mane of ravelled rags, and legs which, though considerably curved as to shape and unreliable as to action, were undeniably legs, and four in number. There were bright, black b.u.t.tons on the steed's head suggestive of eyes, and the red paint in two spots below them were all the fiery nostrils the animal required. This was Giles's contribution to the joy of his ailing baby brother. Ocea.n.u.s was a frail child whose grasp on life had been taken at a time too severe for him to hold it long, nor indeed did he.

"Come out and wander down the street, Con," Giles whispered to Constance under the cover of the shouts of the two children who had come downstairs to find the marvellous treasures, the doll and horse, awaiting them, and who went half mad with joy, just like modern children in old Plymouth, as if they had not been little pilgrims.

"There will be amus.e.m.e.nt for thee; come out, but never say I bade you come. You can make an errand."

"Oh, Giles, you are not plotting mischief?" Constance implored, seeing the fun in her brother's eyes and fearing an attempt at Christmas fooling.

"No harm afoot, but we hope a little laughter," said Giles, nodding mysteriously as he left the house.

Constance could not resist her curiosity. She wrapped herself in her cloak against the cold and tied a scarf over her hair, before drawing its hood over her head.

"You look like a witch, like a sweet, lovely witch," cried Damaris, getting up from her knees on which she had seemed, and not unjustly, to be worshipping her doll, whom she had at once christened Connie, and running over to hug her sister, breathless. "Are you a witch, Constance, and made my Connie by magic? No, a fairy! A fairy you are! My fairy, darling, lovely sister!"

"Be grateful to Constantia, as you should be, Damaris, but prate not of fairies. I will not let go undone all my duty as a Puritan and pilgrim mother. Constantia is a kind sister to you, which is better, than a fairy falsehood," said Dame Eliza, rallying something of her old spirit.

Constance kissed Damaris and whispered something to her so softly that all the child caught was "Merry." Yet the lost word was not hard to guess.

Then Constance went out and down the street, wondering what Giles had meant. She saw a small group of men before her, near the general storehouse for supplies, and easily made out that they were the younger men of the plantation, including those that had come on the Fortune, and that Giles and Francis Billington were to the fore.

Up the street in his decorous raiment, but without additional marking of the day by his better cloak as on Sunday, came Governor Bradford with his unhastening pace not quickened, walking with his English thorn stick that seemed to give him extra, gubernatorial dignity, toward the group. The younger lads nudged one another, laughing, half afraid, but not Giles. He stood awaiting the governor as if he faced him for a serious cause, yet Constance saw that his eyes danced.

"Good morning, my friends," said William Bradford. "Not at work? You are apportioned to the building of the stockade. It is late to begin your day, especially that the sun sets early at this season."

"It is because of the season, though not of the sun's setting, that we are not at work," said Giles, chosen spokesman for this prank by his fellows, and now getting many nudges lest he neglect his office. "Hast forgotten, Mr. Bradford, what day this is? It offends our conscience to work on a day of such high reverence. This be a holy day, and we may not work without sin, as the inward voice tells us. We waited to explain to you what looked like idleness, but is rather prompted by high and lofty principles."

The governor raised his eyebrows and bowed deeply, not without a slight twitching of his lips, as he heard this unexpected and solemn protest.

"Indeed, Giles Hopkins! And is it so? You have in common with these, your fellow labourers, a case of scruples to which the balm of the opinions of your elders and betters, at least in experience and authority, does not apply? Far be it from me to interfere with your consciences! We have come to the New World, and braved no slight adversity for just this cause, that conscience unbridled, undriven, might guide us in virtue. Disperse, therefore, to your homes, and for the day let the work of protection wait. I bid you good morning, gentlemen, and pray you be always such faithful harkeners to the voice of conscience."

The governor went on, having spoken, and the actors in the farce looked crestfallen at one another, the point of the jest somewhat blunted by the governor's complete approval. Indeed there were some among them who followed the governor. He turned back, hoping for this, and said: "This is not done to approve of Christmas-keeping but rather to spare you till you are better informed."

"What will you do, Giles?" asked Constance, as her brother joined her, Francis also, not in the least one with those who relinquished the idea of a holiday.

"Do? Why follow our consciences, as we were commended for doing!" shouted Francis tossing his hat in the air and catching it neatly on his head in the approved fashion of a mountebank at a fair in England.

"Our consciences bid us play at games on Christmas," supplemented Giles. "Would you call the girls and watch us? Or we'll play some games that you can join in, such as catch-catch, or p.u.s.s.y-wants-a-corner."

Constance shook her head. "Giles, be prudent," she warned. "You have won your first point, but if I know the governor's face there was something in it that betokened more to come. You know there'll be no putting up with games on any day here, least of all on this day, which would be taken as a return to abandoned ways. Yet it is comical!" Constance added, finding her role of mentor irksome when all her youth cried out for fun.

"Good Con! You are no more ready for unbroken dulness than we are!" Francis approved her. "Come along, Giles; get the bar for throwing, and the ball, and who said pitch-and-toss? I have a set of rings I made, I and--someone else." Francis's face clouded. Pranks had lost much of their flavour since he lacked Jack.

Seeing this, Giles raced Francis off, and the other conscientious youths who refused work, streamed after them.

Constance continued her way to the Alden home. She thought that a timely visit to Priscilla would bring her home at such an hour as to let her see the end of the morning escapade.

Elizabeth Tilley drifted into Priscilla's kitchen in an aimless way, not like her usual busy self, although she made the reason for her coming a recipe which she needed. Soon Desire Minter followed her, asking Priscilla if she would show her how to cut an ap.r.o.n from a worn-out skirt, but, like Elizabeth, Desire seemed listless and uncertain.

"There's something wrong!" cried Desire at last, without connection. "There is a sense of there being Christmas in the world somewhere to-day, and not here! I am glad that I go back to England as soon as opportunity offers."

"There is Christmas here, most conscientiously kept!" laughed Constance. "Hark to the tale of it!" And she told the girls what had happened that morning.

"Come with me, bear me company home, and we shall, most probably, see the end of it, for I am sure that the governor is not done with those lads," she added.

Desire and Elizabeth welcomed the suggestion, for they were, also, about to go home.

"See yonder!" cried Constance, pointing.

Down the street there was what, in Plymouth, const.i.tuted a crowd, gathered into two bands. With great shouting and noise one band was throwing a ball, which the other band did its utmost to prevent from entering a goal toward which the throwers directed it. Alone, one young man was throwing a heavy bar, taking pride in his muscles which balanced the bar and threw it a long distance with ease and grace.

"To think that this is Plymouth, with merrymaking in its street on Christmas day!" exclaimed Desire, her eyes kindling with pleasure.

"Ah, but see the governor is coming, leading back those men who went to work; he has himself helped to build the stockade. Now we shall see how he receives this queer idea of a holiday, which is foreign to us, though it comes from England," said Constance.

Governor Bradford came toward the shouting and mirth-making with his dignified gait unvaried. The game slackened as he drew nearer, though some of the players did their best to keep it up at the same pace, not to seem to dread the governor's disapproval.

Having gained the centre of the players, the governor halted, and looked from one to another.

"Hand me that ball, and yonder bar, and all other implements of play which you have here," he said, sternly. "My friends," he added to the men who had been at work, "take from our idlers their toys."

There was no resistance on the part of the players; they yielded up bats, ball, and bar, the stool-ball, goal sticks, and all else, without demur, curious to see what was in the wind.

"Now, young men of Plymouth colony," said Governor Bradford, "this morning you told me that your consciences forbade you to work on Christmas day. Although I could not understand properly trained Puritan consciences going so astray, yet did I admit your plea, not being willing to force you to do that which there was a slender chance of your being honest in objecting to, for conscience sake. You have not worked with your neighbours for half of this day. Now doth my conscience arouse, nor will it allow me, as governor, to see so many l.u.s.ty men at play, while others labour for our mutual benefit. Therefore I forbid the slightest attempt at game-playing on this day. If your consciences will not allow you to labour then will mine, though exempting you from work because of your sense of right, yet not allow you to play while others work. For the rest of this day, which is called Christmas, but which we consider but as the twenty-fifth day of this last month of the year, you will either go to work, or you will remain close within your various houses, on no account to appear beyond your thresholds. For either this is a work-a-day afternoon, or else is it holy, which we by no means admit. In either case play is forbidden you. See to it that you obey me, or I will deal with you as I am empowered to deal."

The young men looked at one another, some inclined to resent this, others with a ready sense of humour, burst out laughing; among these latter was Giles, who cried: "Fairly caught, Governor Bradford! You have played a Christmas game this day yourself and have won out at it! For me, as a choice between staying close within the house and working, I will take to the stockade. By your leave, then, Governor, I will join you at the work, dinner being over."

"You have my leave, Giles Hopkins," said William Bradford, and there was a twinkle in his eyes as he turned them, with no smile on his lips, upon Giles.

Giles went home with Constance in perfect good humour, taking the end of his mischief in good part.

"For look you," he said, summing up comments upon it to his sister. "I don't mind encountering defeat by clever outwitting of me. We tried a scheme and the governor had a better one. What I mind is unfairness; that was fair, and I like the governor better than I ever did before."

Stephen Hopkins stood in the doorway of the house as the brother and sister came toward it. He was gazing at the skyline with eyes that saw nothing near to him, preoccupied, wistful, in a mood that was rare to him, and never betrayed to others. His eyes came back to earth slowly, and he looked at Giles and Constance as one looks who has difficulty in seeing realities, so occupied was he with his thoughts. He put out a hand and took one of Constance's hands, drawing it up close to his breast, and he laid his left hand heavily on Giles's shoulder.

"Across that ocean it is Christmas day," he said, slowly. "In England people are sitting around their hearths mulling ale, roasting apples, singing old songs and carols. When I was young your mother and I rode miles across a dim forest, she on her pillion, I guiding a mettlesome beauty. But she had no fear with my hand on his bridle; we had been married but since Michaelmas. We went to visit your grandmother, her mother, Lady Constantia, who was a famous toast in her youth. You are very like your mother, Constance; I have often told you this. Strange, that one can inhabit the same body in such different places in a lifetime; stranger that, still in the same body, he can be such an altered man! Giles, my son, I have been thinking long thoughts to-day. There is something that I must say to you as your due; nay something, rather, that I want to say to you. I have been wrong, my son. I have loved you so well that a defect in you annoyed me, and I have been hard, impatient, offending against the charity in judgment that we owe all men, surely most those who are our nearest and dearest. I accused you unjustly, and gave you no opportunity to explain. Giles, as man to man, and as a father who failed you, I beg your pardon."