A Pilgrim Maid Part 3

A deep murmur arose when the last person was landed, and it happened that Constance Hopkins was the last to step from the boat to the rock on which the landing was made, and to jump light-heartedly to the sand, amid the tall, dried weeds that waved on the sh.o.r.e.

"Praise G.o.d from whom all blessings flow," said Elder Brewster, solemnly. The pilgrim band of colonists sang the doxology with bowed heads.

Three days later the sh.o.r.es of the harbour echoed to the ring of axes, the sound of hammers, as the first house was begun, the community house, destined to shelter many families and to store their goods.

"Merry Christmas, Father!" said Constance, coming up to her father in the cold of the early bleak December morning.

"S-s-sh!" warned her father, finger upon lip. "Do you not know, my daughter, that the keeping of Christmas is abjured by us as savouring of popery, and that to wish one merry at yuletide would be reckoned as unrighteousness among us?"

"Ah, but Father, you do not think so! You do not go with all these opinions, and can it be wrong to be merry on the day that gladdened the world?" Constance pleaded.

"Not wrong, but praiseworthy, to be merry under our present condition, to my way of thinking," said Stephen Hopkins, glancing around at the drab emptiness of land and sky and harbour beyond. "Nay, child, I do not think it wrong to rejoice at Christmas, nor do I hold with the severity of most of our people, but because I believe that it will be good to begin anew in a land that is not oppressed, nor torn by king-made wars and sins, I have cast my lot, as has Myles Standish, who is of one mind with me, among this Plymouth band, and we must conform to custom. So wish me Merry Christmas, if you will, but let none hear you, and we will keep our heresies to ourselves."

"Yet the first house in the New World is begun to-day!" laughed Constance. "We are getting a Christmas gift."

"A happy portent to begin our common home on the day when the Prince of Peace came to dwell on earth! Let us hope it will bring us peace," said her father.

"Peace!" cried Constance, with a swift and terrified remembrance of the accusation which her stepmother had threatened bringing against herself and Giles.

CHAPTER V.

The New Year in the New Land.

The new year came in bringing with it a driving storm from the Atlantic. The h.o.a.ry pines threw up their rugged branches as if appealing to the heavens for mercy on the women and little children without shelter on the desolate coast. But the gray heavens did not relent; they poured snow and sleet down upon the infant colony, coating the creaking pines with ice that bent them low, and checked their intercession.

As fast as willing hands could work, taking it in continuous shifts by night as well as day, the community house went up. But the storm was upon the colonists before the shelter was ready for them, and even when the roof covered them, the cold laughed it to scorn, entering to wreak its will upon them.

Sickness seized one after another of the pilgrim band, men and women alike, and the little children fought croup and pneumonia, nursed by women hardly more fit for the task than were the little victims.

Rose Standish, already weakened by the suffering of the voyage, was among the first to be prostrated. She coughed ceaselessly though each violent breath wracked her frail body with pain. A bright colour burned in her cheeks, her beautiful eyes were clear and dilated, she smiled hopefully when her companions in exile and suffering spoke to her, and a.s.sured them that she was "much, much better," speaking pantingly, by an effort.

The discouragement with which she had looked upon the coast when the Mayflower arrived, gave place to hope in her. She spoke confidently of "next spring," of the "house Captain Myles would build her," of all that she should do "when warm weather came."

Constance, to whom she most confided her plans, often turned away to hide her tears. She knew that Doctor Fuller and the more experienced women thought that for this English rose there would be no springtime upon earth.

Constance had other troubles to bear as well as the hardships and sorrows common to the sorely beset community. She seemed, to herself, hardly to be a young girl, so heavily weighted was she with the burden that she carried. She wondered to remember that if she had stayed in England she should have been laughing and singing like other girls of her age, skating now on the Sherbourne, if it were frozen over, as it well might be. Perhaps she might be dancing, if she were visiting her cousins in Warwickshire, her own birthplace, for the cousins were merry girls, and like all of Constance's mother's family, quite free from puritanical ideas, brought up in the English Church, so not debarred from the dance.

Constance had no heart to regret her loss of youthful happiness; she was so far aloof from it, so sad, that she could not rise to the level of feeling its charm. Dame Eliza Hopkins had carried out her threat, had accused Giles of the theft of his father's papers, and Constance of being party to his wrong-doing, if not actually its instigator.

It had only happened that morning; Constance heavily awaited developments. She jumped guiltily when she heard her father's voice speaking her name, and felt his hand upon her shoulder.

She faced him, white and shaken, to meet his troubled eyes intently fastened upon her.

"The storm is bad, Constance, but it is not warm within. Put on your coat and come with me. I must speak with you," he said.

In silence Constance obeyed him. Pulling over her head a hood that, like a deep cowl, was attached to her coat, she followed her father into the storm, and walked beside him toward the marshy sh.o.r.e whither, without speaking to her, he strode.

Arrived at the sedgy ocean line he halted, and turned upon her.

"Constance," he began, sternly, "my wife tells me that valuable papers which I entrusted to her keeping have disappeared. She tells me further that she had dropped them--carelessly, as I have told her--into the hammock in which your little sister slept and that you saw them there, commenting upon it; that you soon called Giles to set right some slight matter in the hammock; and that shortly after you and he had left her, she discovered her loss. What do you know of this? Tell me all that you know, and tell me the truth."

Constance's fear left her at this word. Throwing up her head she looked her father in the eyes, nearly on a level with her own as she stood upon a sandy hummock. "It needs not telling me to speak the truth, Father. I am your daughter and my mother's daughter; it runs not in my blood to lie," she said.

Stephen Hopkins touched her arm lightly, a look of relief upon his face.

"Thank you for that reminder, my girl," he said. "It is true, and Giles is of the same strain. Know you aught of this misfortune?"

"Nothing, Father," said Constance. "And because I know nothing whatever about it, in answering you I have told you all that I have to tell."

"And Giles----" began her father, but stopped.

"Nor Giles," Constance repeated, amending his beginning. "Giles is headstrong, Father, and I fear for him often, but you know that he is honourable, truth-telling. Would your son steal from you?"

"But your stepmother says no one entered the cabin after you had left it before she discovered her loss," insisted Stephen Hopkins. "What am I to think? What do you think, Constance?"

"I think that there is an explanation we do not know. I think that my stepmother hates Giles and me, especially him, as he has the first claim to the inheritance that she would have for her own children. I think that she has seized this opportunity to poison you against us," said Constance, with spirited daring. "Oh, Father, dear, dear Father, do not let her do this thing!"

"Nay, child, you are unjust," said her father, gently. "I confess to Mistress Eliza's jealousy of you, and that there is not great love for you in her. But, Constance, do you love her, you or Giles? And that she is not so base as you suspect is shown by the fact that she has delayed until to-day to tell me of this loss, dreading, as she hath told me, to put you wrong in my eyes. Fie for shame, Constance, to suspect her of such outrageous wickedness, she who is, after all, a good woman, as she sees goodness."

"Father, if the packet were lost through her carelessness, would you not blame her? Is it not likely that she would shield herself at our cost, even if she would not be glad to lower us, as I am sure she would be?" persisted Constance.

"Well, well, this is idle talk!" Stephen Hopkins said, impatiently. "The truth must be sifted out, and suspicions are wrong, as well as useless. One word before I go to Giles. Upon your sacred honour, Constantia Hopkins, and by your mother's memory, can you a.s.sure me that you know absolutely nothing of the loss of this packet of papers?"

"Upon my honour and by my mother's memory, I swear that I do not know so much as that the packet is lost, except as Mistress Hopkins says that it is," said Constance. Then with a swift change of tone she begged: "Oh, Father, Father, when you go to Giles, be careful, be kind, I pray you! Giles is unhappy. He is ill content under the injustice we both bear, but I with a girl's greater submission. He is ready to break all bounds and he will do so if he feels that you do not trust him, listen to his enemy's tales against him. Please, please, dear Father, be gentle with Giles. He loves you as well as I do, but where your distrust of me would kill me, because I love you, Giles's love for you will turn to bitterness, if you let him feel that you are half lost to him."

"Nonsense, Constance," said her father, though kindly, "Giles is a boy and must be dealt with firmly. It will never do to coddle him, to give him his head. You are a girl, sensitive and easily wounded. A boy is another matter. I will not have him setting up his will against mine, nor opposing discipline for his good. It is for him to clear himself of what looks ill, not resent our seeing the looks of it."

Constance almost wrung her hands.

"Oh, Father, Father, do not go to Giles in that way! Sorrow will come of it. Think how you would feel to be thus suspected! A boy is not less sensitive than a girl; I fear he is more sensitive in his honour than are we. Oh, I am but a girl, but I know that I am right about Giles. I think we are given to understand as no man can how to deal with a proud, sullen boy like Giles, because G.o.d means us to be the mothers of boys some day! Be kind to Giles, dear Father; let him see that you trust him, as indeed, indeed you may!"

"Let us go back out of the storm to such shelter as we have, Constance," said Stephen Hopkins, smiling with masculine toleration for a foolish girl. "I have accepted your solemn a.s.surance that you are ignorant of this theft, if theft it be. Be satisfied that I have done this, and leave me to deal with my son as I see fit. I will not be unjust to him, but he must meet me respectfully, submissively, and answer to the evidence against him. I have not been pleased of late with Giles's ill-concealed resistance."

This time Constance did wring her hands, as she followed her father, close behind him. She attempted no further remonstrance, knowing that to do so would be not only to harm Giles's cause, but to arouse her father's quick anger against herself. But as she walked with bent head through the cutting, beating storm, she wondered why Giles should not be resistant to his life, and her heart ached with pitying apprehension for her brother.

All that long day of darkening storm and anxiety Constance did not see Giles. That signified nothing, however, for Giles was at work with the men making winter preparations which could not be deferred, albeit the winter was already upon them, while Constance was occupied with the nursing for which the daily increase of sickness made more hands required than were able to perform it.

Humility Cooper was dangerously ill, burning with fever, struggling for breath. Constance was fond of the little maid who seemed so childish beside her, and gladly volunteered to go again into the storm to fetch her the fresh water for which she implored.

At the well which had been dug, and over which a pump from the ship had been placed and made effective, Constance came upon Giles, marching up and down impatiently, and with him was John Billington, his chosen comrade, the most unruly of all the younger pilgrims.

"Well, at last, Con!" exclaimed Giles. "I've been here above an hour. I thought to meet you here. What has kept you so long?"

"Why, Giles, I could not know that you were awaiting me," said Constance, reasonably. "Oh, they are so ill, our poor friends yonder! I am sure many of them will go on a longer pilgrimage and never see this colony established."

"Lucky they!" said Giles, bitterly. "Why should they want to? n.o.body wants to die, and of course I am sorry for them, but better be dead than alive here--if it is to be called alive!"

"Oh, dear Giles, do you hate it so?" sighed Constance. "Nothing is wrong?" she added, glancing at John Billington, longing to ask her question more directly, but not wishing to betray to him the trouble upon her mind.

"Never mind talking before John," said Giles, catching the glance. "He knows all about it; I have told him. Have you cleared yourself, Sis, or are you also under suspicion?"

"Oh, dear Giles," said Constance again. "You are not--Didn't Father believe?--Isn't it all right?" She groped for the least offensive form for her question.

"I don't know whether or not Father believed that I am a thief," burst out Giles, furiously. "Nor a whit do I care. I told him the word of a man of honour was enough, and I gave him mine that I knew nothing about his wife's lies. I told him it seemed to me clear enough that she had made away with the papers herself, to defraud us. And I told him I had no proof of my innocence to give him, but it was not necessary. I told him I wouldn't go into it further; that it had to end right there, that I was not called upon to accept, nor would I submit to such a rank insult from any man, and that his being my father made it worse, not better."

"Oh, Giles, what did he say? Oh, Giles, what a misfortune!" cried Constance, clasping her hands.

"What did he say?" echoed Giles. "What do you think would be said when two such tempers as my father's and mine clash? For, mark you, Con, Stephen Hopkins would not stoop to vindicate himself from the charge of stealing. Stealing, remember, not a crime worthy of a gentleman."

"Oh, Giles, what crime is worthy of a gentleman?" Constance grieved. "Is there any dignity in sin, and any justice in varnishing some sins with the gloss of custom? But indeed, indeed, it is cruelly hard on you, Giles dear. Tell me what happened."

"The only thing that could happen. My father forgets that I am not a child. He flew into that madness of anger that we know him capable of, railed at me for my impertinence, insisted on my proving myself innocent of this charge, and declared that until I did, with full apology for the way I had received him, I was no son of his. So--Good day, Mistress Constantia Hopkins, I hope that you are well? I once had a sister that was like you, but sister have I none now, since I am not the son of my reputed father," said Giles, with a sneer and a deep bow.

Constance was in despair. The bitter mockery in Giles's young face, the bleak unhappiness in his eyes stabbed her heart. She knew him too well to doubt that this mood was dangerous.

"My own dear brother!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. "Oh, don't steel yourself so bitterly! Father loves you so much that he is stern with you, but it will all come right; it must, once this hot anger that you both share is past. You are too alike, that is all! Beg his pardon, Giles, but repeat that your word is enough to prove you innocent of the accusation. Father will see that, and yield you that, when you have met him halfway by an apology for hard words."

"See here, Con, why should I do that?" demanded Giles. "Is there anything in this desolation that I should want to stay here? I've had enough of Puritans; and Eliza is one of the strongest of them. Except for your sake, little Sis, why should I stay? And I will one day return for you. No, no, Con; I will sail for England when the ship returns, and make my own fortune, somewhere, somehow."

"Dame Eliza is not what she is because she is a Puritan. She is what she is because she is Dame Eliza. Think of the others whom we all love and would fain be like," Constance reminded him. "We must all be true to the enterprise we have undertaken, and----"

"Look here, sweet Con," John Billington interrupted her. "There is nothing to hold Giles to this dreary enterprise, nor to hold me, either. I am not in like plight to him. If any one accused me, suspected me as your father has him, and still more my father did it, I'd let these east winds blow over the s.p.a.ce I'd have filled in this settlement. I'm for adventure as it is, though my father cares little what Francis and I do, being a reckless, daring man who surely belongs not in this psalm-singing company. Giles and I will strike out into the wilderness and try our fortunes. We will try the savages. They can be no worse than white men, nor half as outrageous as your stepmother. Why, Con, how can you want your brother tamely to sit down under such an insult? No man should be called upon to prove himself honest! Giles must be off. Let your father find out for himself who is to blame for the loss of the papers, and repent too late for lending ear to his wife's story."

Constance stared for a moment at John, realizing how every word he said found a ready echo in Giles's burning heart, how potent would be this unruly boy's influence to draw her brother after him, now, when Giles was wounded in his two strongest feelings--his pride of honour, his love for his father--and she prayed in her heart for inspiration to deal wisely with this difficult situation.

Suddenly the inspiration came to her. She found it in John's last words.

"Nay, but Jack!" she cried, using Francis's name for his brother, disapproved by the elders who would have none of nicknames. "If needs be that Giles must leave this settlement, if he cannot be happy here, let him at least bide till he has cleared his name of a foul stain, for his honour's sake, for the sake of his dead mother, for my sake, who must abide here and cannot escape, being but a girl, young and helpless. Is it right that I should be pointed out till I am old as the sister of him who was accused of a great wrong and, cowardlike, ran away because he could not clear himself, nor meet the shame, and so admitted his guilt? No! Rather do you, John Billington, instead of urging him to run away, bend all your wit--of which you do not lack plenty!--to the ferreting out of this mystery. That would be the manly course, the kind course to me, and you have always called yourself my friend. Then prove it! Help my brother to clear himself and never say one more word to urge him away till he can go with a stainless name. Our father does not doubt Giles, of that I am certain. He is sore beset, and is a choleric man. What can any man do when his children are on the one hand, and his wife on the other? Be patient with our father, Giles, but in any case do not go away till this is cleared."

"She talks like a lawyer!" cried John Billington with his boisterous laugh "Like----what was that play I once saw before I got, or Father got into this serious business of being a Puritan? Wrote by a fellow called Shakespeare? Ah, I have it! Merchant of Venison! In that the girl turns lawyer and cozzens the Jew. Connie is another pleader like that one. Well, what say you, Giles, my friend? Strikes me she is right."

"It is not badly thought of, Constance," admitted Giles. "But can it be done? For if Mistress Hopkins has had a hand in spiriting away those papers for her own advantage and my undoing, then would it be hard to prove. What say you?"

"Oh, no, no, no!" cried Constance. "Truth is mighty, good is stronger than evil! Patience, Giles, patience for a while, and let us three bind ourselves to clear our good name. Will you, will you promise, my brother? And John?"

"Well, then, yes," said Giles, reluctantly; and Constance clasped her hands with a cry of joy. "For a time I will stay and see what can be done, but not for long. Mark you, Con, I do not promise long to abide in this unbearable life of mine."

"Sure will I promise, Connie," a.s.sented John. "Why should I go? I would not go without Giles, and it was not for my sake first we were going."

"Giles, dear Giles, thank you, thank you!" cried Constance. "I could not have borne it had you not yielded. Think of me thus left and be glad that you are willing to stand by your one own sister, Giles. And let us hope that in staying we shall come upon better days. Now I must take this ewer of water to poor Humility who is burned and miserable with thirst and pain. She will think I am never coming to relieve her! Oh, boys, it seems almost wicked to think of our good names, of any of our little trials, when half our company is so stricken!"

"You are a good girl, Connie," said John Billington, awkwardly helping Constance to a.s.sume her pitcher, his sympathy betrayed by his awkwardness. "I hope you are not chilled standing here so long with us."

"No, not I!" said Constance, bravely. "The New Year, and the New World are teaching me not to mind cold which must be long borne before the year grows old. They are teaching me much else, dear lads. So good-bye, and bless you!"

"'Twould have been downright contemptible to have deserted her," said Giles and John in the same breath, and they laughed as they watched her depart.

CHAPTER VI.

Stout Hearts and Sad Ones.

Constance turned away from the boys feeling that, till the trouble hanging over Giles was settled, waking or sleeping she could think of nothing else. When she reached the community house she forgot it, nor did it come to her as more than a deeper shadow on the universal darkness for weeks.

She found that during her brief absence Edward Tilley's wife had died; she had known that she was desperately ill, but the end had come suddenly. Edward Tilley himself was almost through with his struggle, and this would leave Humility, herself a very sick child, quite alone, for she had come in her cousins' care. Constance bent over her to give her the cooling water which she had fetched her.

"Elizabeth and I are alike now," whispered Humility, looking up at Constance with eyes dry of tears, but full of misery. "Cousin John Tilley was her father, and Cousin Edward and his wife but my guardians, yet they were all I had." Elizabeth Tilley had been orphaned two weeks before, and now John Tilley's brother, following him, would leave Humility Cooper, as she said, bereft as was Elizabeth.

"Not all you had, dear Humility," Constance whispered in her ear, afraid to speak aloud for there were in the room many sick whom they might disturb.

"My father will protect you, unless there is someone whom you would liefer have, and we will be sisters and meet the spring with hope and love for each other, together."

"They will send for me to come home to England, my other cousins, of that I am sure. Elizabeth has no one on her side to claim her. But England is far, far away, and I am more like to join my cousins, John and Edward Tilley and their kind, dear wives where they are now than to live to make that fearful voyage again," moaned Humility, turning away her head despairingly.

"Follow John and Edward Tilley! Yes, but not for many a day!" Constance rea.s.sured her, shaking up the girl's pillow, one deft arm beneath her head to raise it.

"Sleep, Humility dear, and do not think. Or rather think of how sweetly the wind will blow through the pines when the spring sunshine calls you out into it, and we go, you and I, to seek what new flowers we may find in the New World."

"No, no," Humility moved her head on the pillow in negation. "I will be good, Constance; I will not murmur. I will remember that I lie here in G.o.d's hand; but, oh Constance, I cannot think of pleasant things, I cannot hope. I will be patient, but I cannot hope. Dear, dear, sweet Constance, you are like my mother, and yet we are almost one age. What should we all do without you, Constance?"

Constance turned away to meet Doctor Fuller's grave gaze looking down upon her. "I echo Humility's question, Constance Hopkins: What should we all do without you? What a blessed thing has come to you thus to comfort and help these pilgrims, who are sore stricken! Come with me a moment; I have something to say to you."

Constance followed this beloved physician into the kitchen where her stepmother was busy preparing broth, her Mayflower baby, Ocea.n.u.s, tied in a chair on a pillow, Damaris sitting on the floor beside him in unnatural quiet.

Dame Eliza looked up as the doctor and Constance entered, but instantly dropped her eyes, a dull red mounting in her face.

She knew that the girl was ministering to the dying with skill and sympathy far beyond her years, and she remembered the patient sweetness with which Constance, during the voyage over, forgiving her injustice, had ministered to her when she was suffering--had tenderly cared for little Damaris.

Dame Eliza had the grace to feel a pa.s.sing shame, though not enough to move her to repentance, to reparation.

"Constance," Doctor Fuller said, "I am going to lay upon you a charge too heavy for your youth, but unescapable. You know how many of us have been laid to rest out yonder, pilgrims indeed, their pilgrimage over. Many more are to follow them. Mistress Standish among the first, but there are many whose end I see at hand. I fear the spring will find us a small colony, but those who remain must make up in courage for those who have left them. I want you to undertake to be my right hand. Priscilla Mullins hath already lost her mother, and her father and her brother will not see the spring. Yet she keeps her steady heart. She will prepare me such remedies as I can command here. Truth to tell, the supply I brought with me is running low; I did not allow for the need of so many of one kind. Priscilla is reliable; steady in purpose, memory, and hand. She will see to the remedies. But you, brave Constance, will you be my medical student, visiting my patients, lingering to see that my orders are carried out, nursing, sustaining? In a word do what you have already done since we landed, but on a greater scale, as an established duty?"

"If I can," said Constance, simply.