A Pilgrim Maid Part 5

"Stand by you and Jones will deal with me. Stand by him and you threaten me with your men, led by that fighting Standish of yours. Between you where does George Heaton stand?" asked Heaton sullenly, turning, nevertheless, to do Giles's bidding.

"You should have thought of this before," said Giles, coolly. "There never yet was wisdom and safety in rascality."

Captain Jones, whose connection with the pilgrims was no more than that he had been hired by them to bring them to the New World, was a man whose honesty many of his pa.s.sengers mistrusted, but against whom, as against the captain of the Speedwell that had turned back, there was no proof.

He was coming out of his cabin to his breakfast when Heaton brought the boys to him; he started visibly at the sight of Giles, but recovered himself instantly and greeted the lads affably.

"Good morning, my erstwhile pa.s.sengers and new colonists," he said. "I have wondered that at least the younger members of your community did not visit the ship. Welcome!" He held out his hand, but neither Giles nor John seemed to see it.

"Master Jones," said Giles, "there is no use wasting time and phrases. This man, at your orders, stole out of the women's cabin on this ship the papers left by my father in his wife's care. He has given them up to you. The story has only now--yesterday--come to our knowledge. Give me those papers."

"What right have you to accuse me, me, the master of this ship?" demanded Captain Jones, bl.u.s.tering. "Have a care that I don't throw you overboard. Take your boat and be gone before harm comes to you!"

"You would throw more than us overboard if you dared to touch us," returned Giles. "Nor is it either of us to whom harm threatens. Come, Master Jones, those papers! My father, none of the colony, knows of your crime. What do you think will befall you when they do know it? Hand us the papers, not one lacking, and we will let you go back to England free and safe. Refuse----Well, it's for you to choose, but I'd not hesitate in your place." Giles shrugged his shoulders, half turning away, as if after all the result of his mission did not concern him.

John saw a telepathic message exchanged between the captain and his tool. The question wordlessly asked Heaton whether the theft of the papers, their possession by the captain, actually was known, and Heaton's eyes answering: "Yes!"

Captain Jones swallowed hard, as if he were swallowing a great dose, as he surely was. After a moment's thought he spoke: "See here, Giles Hopkins, I always liked you, and now I father admire you for your courage in thus boarding my ship and bearding me. I admit that I hold the papers. But, as of course you can easily see, I am neither a thief nor a receiver of stolen goods. My reason for wanting those papers was no common one. I am willing to restore to you those which relate to your family inheritance, your father's personal papers, but those which relate to Plymouth colony I want. I can use them to my advantage in England. Take this division of the doc.u.ments and go back with my congratulations on your conduct."

"I would liefer your blame than your praise, sir," said Giles, haughtily, in profound disgust with the man. "It needs no saying that my father would part with any private advantage sooner than with what had been entrusted to him. First and most I demand the Plymouth colony doc.u.ments. Get the papers, not one lacking, and let me go ash.o.r.e. The wide harbour's winds are not strong enough for me to breathe on your ship. It sickens me."

Captain Jones gave the boy a malevolent look.

"A virtue of necessity," he muttered, turning to go.

"And your sole virtue?" suggested Giles to his retreating back.

Captain Jones was gone a long time. The boys fumed with impatience and feared harm to the papers, but George Heaton grinned at them with the utmost cheerfulness. He had completely sloughed off all share in the theft and plainly enjoyed his superior's discomfiture, being of that order of creatures whose malice revels in the mischances of others.

It proved that the captain's delay was due to his reluctance to comply with Giles's demand. He came at last, slowly, bearing in his hand the packet enveloped in oilskin which Giles remembered having seen in his father's possession.

"I must do your bidding, youngster," he said angrily, "for you can harm me otherwise. But what guarantee have I, if I hand these papers to you, that you will keep the secret?"

"I never said that the secret would be kept; I said that you should suffer no harm. An innocent person is accused of this theft; the truth must be known. But I can and do promise you that you shall not be molested; I can answer for that. As to guarantee, you know my father, you know the Plymouth pilgrims, you know me. Is there any doubt that we are honourable, conscientious, G.o.d-fearing, the sort that faithfully keep their word?" demanded Giles.

"No. I grant you that. Take your packet," said Captain Jones, yielding it.

"By your leave I will examine it," said Giles unfastening its straps.

"Do you doubt me?" bl.u.s.tered the captain.

"Not a whit," laughed John with a great burst of mirth, before Giles could answer.

"Why should we doubt you? Haven't you shown us exactly what you are?"

Giles turned over the papers one by one. None was missing. He folded them and replaced them in their case, buckling its straps.

"All the papers are here," he said. "John, we'll be off. This is our final visit to the Mayflower, Master Jones--unless I ship with you for England. Good voyage, as I hear they say in France. Hope you'll catch a bit of Puritan conscience before you leave the harbour."

Captain Jones followed the boys to the side of the ship where they were to reembark in their rowboat. At every step he grew angrier, the veins swelled in his forehead which was only a shade less purple-red than his cheeks. His defeat was a sore thing, the disappointment of the plans which he had laid upon the possession of the stolen doc.u.ments became more vividly realized with each moment, and the fact that two lads had thus conquered him and were going away with their prize infuriated him.

Giles had swung himself down into the boat and was shipping the oars, but John halted for a moment in a stuffy corner to gloat over the captain's empurpled face and to dally with a temptation to add picturesqueness to their departure. The temptation got the upper hand of him, though John usually held out both hands to mischief.

He drew Bouncing Bully from his breast and levelled it.

"Stop! Gunpowder!" screamed the captain, choking with fear and rage, and pointing at a small keg that stood hard by.

"I won't hit it," John grinned, delightedly. "Let's see how my gunpowder is." With a flourish the mad boy fired a shot into the wall of the tiny cabin, regardless of the fact that the likely explosion of the keg of gunpowder would have blown up the Mayflower and him with her.

The captain fell forward on his face, the men who were at work splicing ropes in the cubby-like cabin cowered speechless, their faces ashen.

John whooped with joy and fled, leaping into the rowboat which he nearly upset.

"What?" demanded Giles. "Who shot? Did he attack you, Jack?"

"Who? No one attacked me. I shot. Zounds, they were scared! In that pocket of a cabin, with a keg of gunpowder sitting close," chuckled John.

"What in the name of all that's sane did you do that for?" cried Giles. "Scared! I should say with reason! Why, Jack Billington, you might be blown to bits by this time, ship, men, yourself, and all!"

"I might be," a.s.sented Jack, coolly. "I'm not. Giles, you should have seen your shipmaster Jones! Flat on his face and fair blubbering with fear and fury! He loves us not, my Giles! I doubt his days are dull on the Mayflower, so long at anchor. 'Twas but kind to stir up a lively moment. Here, give me an oar! Even though you said you would row back, I feel like helping you. Wait till I settle Bouncing Bully. He's digging me in the ribs, to remind me of the joke we played 'em, I've no doubt; but he hurts. That's better. Now for sh.o.r.e and your triumph, old Giles!"

CHAPTER VIII.

Deep Love, Deep Wound.

Constance had escaped from Humility Cooper and Elizabeth Tilley who had affectionately joined her when she had appeared on her way to the beach to await Giles's return.

Constance invented a question that must be asked Elder Brewster because she knew that the girls, though they revered him, feared him, and never willingly went where they must reply to his gravely kind attempts at conversation with them. "I surely feel like a wicked hypocrite," sighed Constance, watching her friends away as she turned toward the house that sheltered the elder.

"What would dear little Humility say if she knew I had tried to get rid of her? Or Elizabeth either! But it isn't as though I had not wanted them for a less good reason. I do love them dearly! I must meet Giles and hear his news as soon as I can, and it can't be told before another. Mercy upon us, what was it that I had thought of to ask Elder Brewster! I've forgotten every syllable of it! Well, mercy upon us! And suppose he sees me hesitating here! I know! I'll confess to him that I was wishing I was in Warwickshire hearing Eastertide alleluias sung in my cousins' church, and ask him if it was sinful. He loves to correct me, dear old saint!"

Dimpling with mischief Constance turned her head away from a possible onlooker in the house to pull her face down into the proper expression for a youthful seeker for guidance. Then, quite demure and serious, with downcast eyes, she turned and went into the house.

Elder William Brewster kept her some time. She was nervously anxious to escape, fearing to miss the boys' arrival. But Elder Brewster was deeply interested in pretty Constance Hopkins, in whom, in spite of her sweet docility and patient daily performance of her hard tasks, he discerned glimpses of girlish liveliness that made him anxious and which he felt must be corrected to bring the dear girl into perfection.

Constance decided that she was expiating fully whatever fault there might have been in feigning an errand to Elder Brewster to get rid of the girls as she sat uneasily listening to that good man's exposition of the value of alleluias in the heart above those sung in church, and the baseness of allowing the mind to look back for a moment at the "shackles from which she was freed." Good Elder Brewster ended by reading from his roughened brown leather-covered Bible the story of Lot's wife to which Constance--who had heard it many times, it being an appropriate theme for the pilgrim band to ponder, sick in heart and body as they had been so long--did not harken.

At last she was dismissed with a fatherly hand laid on her shining head, and a last warning to keep in mind how favoured above her English cousins she had been to be chosen a daughter in Israel to help found a kingdom of righteousness. Constance ran like the wind down the road, stump-bordered, the beginning of a street, and came down upon the beach just as the boys reached it and their boat b.u.mped up on the sand under the last three hard pulls they had given the oars in unison.

"Oh! Giles, oh, Giles, oh Jack!" cried Constance fairly dancing under her excitement.

"Oh, Con, oh, Con! Oh, Constantia!" mocked John, hauling away on the painter and getting the boat up to her tying stake.

"What happened you? Have you news?" Constance implored them.

"We heard no especial news, Con," said Giles. "I'm not sure we asked for any. We have this instead; will that suffice you?"

He took from his breast the packet of papers and offered it to her.

"Oh, Giles!" sighed Constance, clasping her hands, tears of relief springing to her eyes. "All of them? Are they all safe? Thank Heaven!" she added as Giles nodded.

"Did you have trouble getting them? Who held them? Tell me everything!"

"Give me a chance Constantia Chatter," said Giles, using the name Constance had been dubbed when, a little tot, she ceaselessly used her new accomplishment of talking. "We had no trouble, no. We found the thief and made him confess what we already knew, that he was the master's cat's paw. Jones had to disgorge; he could not hold the papers without paying too heavy a penalty. So here they are. Why don't you take them?"

"I take them?" puzzled Constance, accepting them as Giles thrust them into her hand. "Do you want me to put them away for you? Are you not coming to dinner? There is not enough time to go to work before noon. The sun was not two hours from our noon mark beside the house when I left it."

"I suppose I am going to dinner," said Giles. "I am ready enough for it. No, I don't want you to put the papers away for me. You can do with them what you like. I should advise your giving them to Father, since they are his, but that is as you will. I give them into your hands."

"Giles, Giles!" cried Constance, in distress, instantly guessing that this meant that Giles was intending to hold aloof from a part in rejoicing over the recovery.

"Give them to Father yourself. How proud of you he will be that you ferreted out the thief and went so bravely, with only John, to demand them for him! It is not my honour, and I must not take it."

"Oh, as to honour, you got the first clue from Damaris, if there's honour in it, but for that I do not care. I did the errand when you sent me on it, or opened my way. However it came about I will not give the papers to my father. In no wise will I stoop to set myself right in his eyes. Perhaps he will say that the whole story is false, that I did not get the papers on the ship, but had them hidden till fear and an uneasy conscience made me deliver them up, and that you are shielding your brother," said Giles, frowning as he turned from Constance.

"And I thought now everything would be right!" groaned the girl--her lips quivering, tears running down her cheeks. "Giles, dear Giles; don't, don't be so bitter, so unforgiving! It is not just to Father, not just to yourself, to me. It isn't right. Giles! Will you hold this grudge against the father you so loved, and forget all the years that went before, for a miserable day when he half harboured doubt of you, and that when he was torn by influence, tormented till he was hardly himself?"

"Now, Constance, there is no need of your turning preacher," Giles said, harshly.

"If you like to swallow insult, well and good. It does not matter about a girl, but a man's honour is his chiefest possession. Take the papers, and prate no more to me. My father wanted them; there they are. He suspected me of stealing them; I found the thief. That's all there is about it. What is there to-day to eat? An early row makes a man hungry. Art ready, Jack? We will go to the house, by your leave, pretty Sis. Sorry to see your eyes reddening, but better that than other harm."

Constance hesitated as Giles went up the beach, taking John with him. For a moment she debated seeking Captain Standish, giving him the papers, and asking him to be intermediary between her father and this headstrong boy, who talked so largely of himself as "a man," and behaved with such wrong-headed, childish obstinacy. But a second thought convinced her that she herself might serve Giles better than the captain, and she took her way after her brother, beginning to hope, true to herself, that her father's pleasure in recovering the papers, his desire to make amends to Giles, would express itself in such wise that they would be drawn together closer than before the trouble arose.

It was turning into a balmy day, after a chilly morning. Though only the middle of March the air was full of spring. In the community house, as Constance entered, she found her stepmother, and Mrs. White--each with her Mayflower-born baby held in one arm--busily setting forth the dinner, while Priscilla and Humility and Elizabeth helped them, and the smaller children, headed by Damaris, attempted to help, were sharply rebuked for getting in the way, subsided, but quickly darted up again to take a dish, or hand a knife which their inconsistent elders found needed.

Several men--Mr. Hopkins, Mr. White; Mr. Warren, whose wife had not yet come from England; Doctor Fuller, in like plight; John and Francis Billington's father, John Alden and Captain Myles Standish, as a matter of course--were discussing planting of corn while awaiting the finishing touches to their carefully rationed noonday meal.

"If you follow my counsel," the captain was saying, "you will plant over the spot where we have laid so many of our company. Thus far we hardly are aware of our savage neighbours, but with the warm weather they will come forth from their woodlands, and who knows what may befall us from them? Better, say I, conceal from them that no more than half of those who sailed hither are here to-day. Better hide from their eyes beneath the tall maize the graves on yonder hillside."

"Well said, good counsel, Captain Myles," said Stephen Hopkins. "G.o.d's acre, the folk of parts of Europe call the enclosure of their dead. We will make our acre G.o.d's acre, planting it doubly for our protection, in grain for our winter need, concealment of our devastation."

Suddenly the air was rent with a piercing shriek, and little Love Brewster, the Elder's seven-year-old son, came tumbling into the house, shaking and inarticulate with terror.

Priscilla Mullins caught him into her lap and tried to sooth him and discover the cause of his fright, but he only waved his little hands frantically and sobbed beyond all possibility of guessing what words were smothered beneath the sobs.

"Elder Brewster promised to let the child pa.s.s the afternoon with Damaris," began Mrs. Hopkins, but before she got farther John Alden started up.

"Look there," he said. "Is it wonderful that Love finds the sight beyond him?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Look there,' said John Alden"]

Stalking toward the house in all the awful splendour of paint, feathers, beads, and gaudy blanket came a tall savage. He had, of course, seen the child and realized his fright and that he had run to alarm the pilgrims, but not a whit did it alter the steady pace at which he advanced, looking neither to left nor to right, his arms folded upon his breast, no sign apparent of whether he came in friendship or in enmity.

The first instinct of the colonists, in this first encounter with an Indian near to the settlement was to be prepared in case he came in enmity.

Several of the men reached for the guns which hung ready on the walls, and took them down, examining their horns and rods as they handled them. But the savage, standing in the doorway, made a gesture full of calm dignity which the pilgrims rightly construed to mean salutation, and uttered a throaty sound that plainly had the same import.

"Welcome!" hazarded Myles Standish advancing with outstretched hand upon the new-comer, uncertain how to begin his acquaintance, but hoping this might be pleasing. "Yes," said the Indian in English, to the boundless surprise of the Englishmen. "Yes, welcome, friend!" He took Captain Standish's hand.

"Chief?" he asked. "Samoset," he added, touching his own breast, and thus introducing himself.

"How in the name of all that is wonderful did he learn English!" cried Stephen Hopkins.

"Yes, Samoset know," the Indian turned upon him, understanding. "White men ships fish far, far sunrise," he pointed eastward, and they knew that he was telling them that English fishermen had been known to him, whose fishing grounds lay toward the east.

"'Tis true; our men have been far east and north of here," said Myles Standish, turning toward Stephen Hopkins, as to one who had travelled.

"Humphrey Gilbert, but many since then," nodded Mr. Hopkins.

"Big chief Squanto been home long time white men, he talk more Samoset," said Samoset. "Squanto come see----." He waved his hand comprehendingly over his audience, to indicate whom Squanto intended to visit.

"Well, womenfolk, you must find something better than you give us, and set it forth for our guest," said Stephen Hopkins. "Get out our English beer; Captain Myles I'll undertake, will join me in foregoing our portion to-morrow for him. And the preserved fruits; I'm certain he will find them a novelty. And you must draw on our store of trinkets for gifts. Lads--Giles, John, Francis--help the girls open the chest and make selection."

Samoset betrayed no understanding of these English words, maintaining a stolid indifference while preparations for his entertainment went on. But he did full justice to the best that the colonists had to set before him and accepted their subsequent gifts with a fine air of n.o.ble condescension, as a monarch accepting tribute.

Later with pipes filled with the refreshing weed from Virginia, which had circuitously found its way back to the New World, via England, the Plymouth men sat down to talk to Samoset.

Limited as was his vocabulary, broken as was his speech, yet they managed to understand much of what he told them, valuable information relating to their Indian neighbours near by, to the state of the country, to climate and soil, and to the people of the forests farther north.

Samoset went away bearing his gifts, with which, penetrating his reserve, the colonists saw that he was greatly pleased. He promised a speedy return, and to bring to them Squanto, from whose friendship and better knowledge of their speech and race evidently Samoset thought they would gain much.

The younger men--Doctor Fuller, John Alden and others, needless to say Giles, John, and Francis Billington, under the conduct of Myles Standish--accompanied Samoset for a few miles on his return.

The sun was dropping westward, the night promising to be as warmly kind as the day had been, and Constance slipped her hand into her father's arm as he stood watching their important guest's departure, under his escort's guardianship.

"A little tiny walk with me, Father dear?" she hinted. "I like to watch the sunset redden the sands, and it is so warm and fine. Besides, I have something most beautiful to tell you!"

"Good news, Con? This seems to be a day of good things," said her father, as Constance nodded hard. "The coming of yonder Indian seems to me the happiest thing that could well have befallen us. Given the friendship of our neighbouring tribes we have little to fear from more distant ones, and the great threat to our colony's continuance is removed. Well, I will walk with you child, but not far nor long. There is scant time for dalliance in our lives, you know."

They went out, Constance first running to s.n.a.t.c.h her cloak and pull its deep hood over her hair as a precaution against a cold that the warm day might betray her into, and which she had good reason to fear who had helped nurse the victims of the first months of the immigration.

"The good news, Daughter?" hinted Mr. Hopkins after they had walked a short distance in silence.

Constance laughed triumphantly, giving his arm a little shake. "I waited to see if you wouldn't ask!" she cried, "I knew you were just as curious, you men, as we poor women creatures--but of course in a big, manly way!" She pursed her lips and shook her head, lightly pinching her father to point her satire.

"Have a care, Mistress Constantia!" her father warned her. "Curiosity is a weakness, even dangerous, but disrespect to your elders and betters, what is that?"

"Great fun," retorted Constance.

Her father laughed. He found his girl's playfulness, which she was recovering with the springtide and the relief from the heavy sorrow of the first weeks in Plymouth, refreshing amid the extreme seriousness of most of the people around him. "Proceed with your tidings, you saucy minx!" he said.