A Pilgrim Maid Part 8

It was a brief ceremony, divested of all but the necessary questions and replies, yet to all present it was not lacking in impressiveness, for the memory of recent suffering was vivid in every mind; the longing for the many who were dead was poignant, and the consciousness of the uncertainty of the future of the young people, who were thus beginning their life together, was acute, though no one would have allowed its expression, lest it imply a lack of faith.

When Mr. Winslow had p.r.o.nounced John and Priscilla man and wife, Elder William Brewster arose and, with extended hands, called down upon their heads the blessing of the G.o.d of Israel, and prayed for their welfare in this world, their reward in the world to come.

Without any of the merriment which accompanied congratulations and salutations at a marriage in England, these serious men and women came up in turn and gravely kissed the bride upon her cheek, and shook John Alden's hand. Yet each one was fond of Priscilla and had grieved with her on her father's, mother's, and brother's deaths, and each one honoured and truly was attached to John Alden.

But even in Plymouth colony youth had to be more or less youthful.

"Come, now; we're taking you home!" cried Francis Billington. "Fall in, girls and boys, big and little, grown folks as well, if only you will, and let us see our bride and her man started in their new home! And who remembers a rousing chorus?"

John Alden had been building his house with the help of the older boys; to it now he was taking Priscilla on her wedding journey, made on her own feet, a distance of a few hundred yards.

"No rousing choruses here, sir," said Edward Winslow, sternly. "If you will escort our friends to their home--and to that there can be no objection--let it be to the sound of G.o.dly psalms, not to profane songs."

"You offer us youngsters little inducement to marry when our time comes," muttered Francis, but he took good care that Mr. Winslow should not hear him, having no desire to run counter at that moment to Mr. Winslow's will, knowing that he and Jack were already in danger of being dealt with by the authorities. And where was Jack? He had not seen his brother since the previous day.

Boys and young men in advance, girls and the younger women following, the bridal pair bringing up the rear, the little procession went up Leyden Street and drew up at the door of the exceedingly small house which John Alden had made for his wife. Francis, who had const.i.tuted himself master of ceremonies, made the escort divide into two lines and, between them, John and Priscilla walked into their house. And with that the wedding was over.

For an instant the young people held their places, staring across the s.p.a.ce that separated them, with the blank feeling that always follows after the end of an event long antic.i.p.ated.

Then Constance turned with a sigh, looking about her, wondering if she really were to resume her work-a-day tasks, first of all get dinner.

She met her father's intent gaze and his look startled her. He beckoned her, and she stepped back out of the line and joined him.

"Giles, Constance; where is he?" demanded Stephen Hopkins.

"Father, I don't know! Isn't he here?" she cried.

"He is not here, nor is John Billington," said her father. "No one has seen either of them since last night. Is it likely that they would absent themselves willingly from this wedding; Giles, who is so fond of John Alden; John Billington, who is so fond of anything whatever that breaks the monotony of the days?"

Constance shook her head. "No, Father," she whispered.

"No. And you have no clue to this disappearance, Constance?" her father insisted.

"Father, Father, no; no, indeed!" protested Constance. "I did not so much as miss the boys from among us. But what could have befallen them? It can't be that they have come to harm?"

"Constance," said her father with a visible effort, "Giles was deeply angry with me yesterday----"

"Father, dear Father, you are quite wrong!" Constance interrupted him. "There was no mistaking how delighted Giles was with your making the treaty. Indeed I saw in him all the old-time love and pride in you that we used to make a jest--but how we liked it!--in the dear days across the water, when we were children."

Stephen Hopkins let her have her say. Then he shook his head.

"It may all be as you say, Constance," he said, sadly. "I also felt in Giles, saw in his face, the affection I have missed of late. But when the Billingtons came making that disturbance I went out--angry, Con; I admit it--and accused Giles of abetting them in what might have caused us serious trouble. And he, in turn, was furiously angry with me. He did not reply to my accusation, but spoke impertinently to me, and went away. I have not seen him since."

"Oh, Father, Father!" gasped Constance, her lips trembling, her face pale.

"I know, my daughter," said Stephen Hopkins, almost humbly. "But it was an outrageous thing to risk offending our new allies, and inviting the death of us all. And Giles did not deny having a hand in it, remember. But I confess that I should have first asked him whether he had, or not."

"Poor Father," said Constance, gently. "It is hard enough to be anxious about your boy without being afraid that you wronged him. How I wish that Giles would not always stand upon his dignity, and scorn speech! How I wish, how I pray, that you may come to understand each other, to trust each other, and be as we were when you trotted Giles and me upon your knees, and I sometimes feared that you liked me less than you did your handsome boy, who was so like you."

"Who is so like me," her father corrected her. "You were right, Con, when you said that Giles and I were too alike to get on well together; the same quick temper, rash action, swift conclusions."

"The same warm heart, high honour, complete loyalty," Constance amended, swiftly.

"Father, if you could but once and for ever grasp that! Giles is you again in your best traits. He can be the reliance that you are, but if he turns wrong----"

She paused and her father groaned.

"Ah, Constance, you are partial to me, yet you stab me. If I have turned him wrong, is what you would say! How womanly you are grown, my daughter, and how like your dead mother! But, Con, this is no time to stand discussing traits, not even to adjust the blame of this wretched business. How shall I find the boy?"

"Why, for that, Father, you know far better than I," said Constance, gently, taking her father's arm. "Let us go home, dear man. I should think a party to scour the woods beyond us? And Squanto would be our best help, he and Captain Standish, wouldn't they? But I am sure the boys will be in for supper. You know they are sharp young wolves, with a scent like the whole pack in one for supper! Giles is safe! And as to Jack Billington, tell me truly, Father, can you imagine anything able to harm him?" She laughed with an excellent reproduction of her own mirth when she possessed it, but it was far from hers now.

Constance shared to the uttermost her father's apprehension. If her poor, hasty father had again accused Giles of that which he had not done, and this when he was aglow with a renewal of the old confidence between them, then it well might be that Giles, equally hot-headed, had done some desperate thing in his first sore rage. The fact that he had been absent from the wedding of John Alden, whom he cared for deeply; that he had missed his supper and breakfast; and that John Billington, reckless, adventurous Jack, was missing at the same time, left Constance little ground for hope that nothing was wrong.

But nothing of this did she allow to escape in her manner of speech.

She gaily told her father all about her morning: how cleverly she had lengthened Priscilla's gown, her own mother's gown, lent Pris; how becomingly she had arranged Pris's pretty hair; all the small feminine details which a man, especially a brave, manly man of Stephen Hopkins's kind, is supposed to scorn, but which Constance was instinctively sympathetic enough to know rested and amused her father; soothed him with its pretty femininity; relaxed him as proving that in a world of such pretty trifles tragedy could not exist.

"My stepmother is not come back yet," Constance said, with a swift glance around, as she entered. "Father, when she comes in with the baby you must test his newly discovered powers; Ocea.n.u.s is beginning to stand alone! Now I must go doff my Sunday best--Father, I never can learn to call it the Sabbath; please forgive me!--and put on my busy-maid clothes! What a brief time a marriage takes! I mean in the making!" She laughed and ran lightly away, up the steep stairs that wound in threatening semi-spiral, up under the steep lean-to roof.

"Bless my suns.h.i.+ne!" said Stephen Hopkins, fervently, as he watched her skirt whisk around the door at the stairway foot.

But upstairs, in the small room that she and Damaris shared, his "suns.h.i.+ne" was blurred by a swift rain of tears.

CHAPTER XII.

The Lost Lads.

A gray evening of mist drifting in from the sea settled down upon Plymouth. It emphasized the silence and seemed to widen and deepen the vacuum created by the absence of Giles and John. For the supper hour, at which they were enthusiastically prompt to return to give their hearty appet.i.tes their due, came and pa.s.sed without bringing back the boys.

Stephen Hopkins pushed away his plate with its generous burden untouched, threw on his wide-brimmed hat, and strode out of the house without a word. Constance knew that he had gone to ask help from Myles Standish, to organize a search, and go out to find the lost.

Damaris crept into her sister's lap and sat with her thin little hands in Constance's, mutely looking up into the white, sorrowing face above her.

Even Dame Eliza was reluctantly moved to something like pity for the girl's silent misery, and expressed it in her way.

"At least," she said, suddenly, out of the deep silence enveloping them, "here is one thing gone wrong without my sending. No one can say that I had a finger raised to push your brother out of the right course this time!"

Constance tried to reply, but failed. Not directly had her stepmother had a share in this misfortune, but how great a share had she in the estrangement between father and son that was at the bottom of the present misunderstanding? Constance would not remind her stepmother of this, and no other reply was possible to her in her intense anxiety.

The night wore away, the dawn came, lifting the fog as the sun shot up out of the sea. Stephen Hopkins came out of the princ.i.p.al bedroom on the ground floor of the house showing in his haggard face that he had not slept. Constance came slowly down the winding stairs, pale, with dark circles under her eyes which looked as though they had withdrawn from her face, retreated into the mind which dwelt on Giles since they could no longer see him, and the brain alone could fulfil their office.

"There's no sort of use in getting out mourning till you're sure of having a corpse, so I say," said Mistress Eliza, impatiently. "Giles is certain to take care of himself. I've no manner of patience with people who borrow what they can't return, and how would you return trouble, borrowed from nothing and n.o.body?"

Nevertheless she helped both Constance and her father to a generous bowlful of porridge, and set it before them with a snapped-out: "Eat that!" which Constance was grateful to feel concealed uneasiness on her stepmother's own part.

Another day, and still another, wore themselves away. Constance fought to keep her mind occupied with all manner of tasks, hoping to tire herself till she must sleep at night, but nevertheless slept only brokenly, lying staring at the three stars which she could see through the tiny oblong window under the eaves, or into the blackness of the slanting roof, listening to Damaris's quiet breathing, and thinking that childhood was not more blessed in being happy than in its ability to forget.

Stephen Hopkins had gone with Captain Standish, Francis Billington, and Squanto to scour the woods for miles, although labouring hands could ill be spared at that season. They returned at the close of their fourth day of absence, and no one ventured to question them; that they had not so much as a clue to the lost lads was clearly written on their faces.

Constance drew her stool close to her father after supper was over, and wound her arms about him and laid her head on his breast, unrebuked by her stepmother.

"Read the fifty-first psalm, my daughter; it was the penitential psalm in England in my beginnings," Stephen Hopkins said, and Constance read it in a low voice, which she dared not raise, lest it break.

An hour later, an hour which had been pa.s.sed in silence, broken only by Dame Eliza's taking Damaris up to bed, the sound of voices was heard coming down the quiet street. Stephen Hopkins's body tautened as he sat erect, and Constance sprang to her feet. No one ever went outside his house in the Plymouth plantation after the hour for family prayers, which was identical in every house. But someone was abroad now; it was not possible----?

"It is Squanto," said Stephen Hopkins, catching the Indian's syllables of broken English.

"And Francis Billington, and another Indian, talking in his own tongue!" added Constance, shaking with excitement.

The door opened; Stephen Hopkins did not move to open it. There entered the three whom those within the house had recognized; Francis's face was crimson, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

"You come to tell me that my son is dead?" said Stephen Hopkins, raising his hand as if to ward off a blow.

"No, we don't! Don't look like that, Mr. Hopkins, Con!" cried Francis. "Jack and Giles are all right----"

"Ma.s.sasoit send him," said Squanto, interrupting the boy, as if he wanted to save Stephen Hopkins from betraying the feeling that an Indian would scorn to betray, for Mr. Hopkins had closed his eyes and swayed slightly as he heard Francis's high boyish voice utter the words he had so hungered to hear.

Squanto pointed to the Indian beside him as he spoke. "Ma.s.sasoit sent him. Ma.s.sasoit know where boys go. Nawsett. It not far; Ma.s.sasoit more far. Nawsett Indians fight you when you come, not yet got Plymouth found. Nawsett. Both boys, both two." Squanto touched two fingers of his left hand. "Not dead, not sick, not hurt. You send, Ma.s.sasoit say. Get boys you send Nawsett. Squanto go show Nawsett." Squanto looked proudly at his hearers, rejoicing in his good news.

"Praise G.o.d from Whom all blessings flow," said Stephen Hopkins, bowing his head, and Constance burst into tears and seized him around the neck, while Francis drew his sleeves across his eyes, muttering something about: "Rather old Jack was all right."

Dame Eliza came down the stairs, having heard voices, and recognized them as Indian, but had been unable to catch what was said. She stopped as she saw the scene before her, and her face crimsoned. She at once knew the purport, though not the details, of the message delivered through Squanto by Ma.s.sasoit's messenger, and that the lost lads were safe. With a quick revulsion from the anxiety that she had felt, she instantly lost her temper.

"Stephen Hopkins, what is this unseemingly exhibition? Will you allow your daughter to behave in this manner before a youth, and two savage men? Shame on you! Stand up, Constantia, and let your father alone. So Giles is safe, I suppose? Well, did I not tell you so? Bad sixpences are hard to lose; your son will give you plenty of the scant comfort you've already had from him. No fear of him not coming back to plague me, and to disgrace you," she scolded.

"Oh, Stepmother, when we are so glad and thankful!" sighed Constance, lifting her tired, tear-worn face, over which the light of her gladness and grat.i.tude was beginning to s.h.i.+ne.

There was nothing to be done that night but to try to adjust to the relief that had come, and to wait impatiently for morning to arrange to bring home the wanderers.

Stephen Hopkins was ahead of the sun in beginning the next day, and as soon as he could decently do so, he set out to see Governor Bradford to ask his help.

"I rejoice with you, my friend and brother," said dignified William Bradford, when he had heard Mr. Hopkins's story. "Like the woman in the Gospel you call in your neighbours to rejoice with you that the lost is found. I will at once send the shallop to sail down the coast and bring off our thorn-in-the-flesh, young John Billington, and your somewhat unruly lad with him. As your brother in our great enterprise and your true well-wisher, let me advise that you deal sternly with Giles when he is returned to us. He hath done exceeding wrong thus to afflict you, and with you, all of our community to a lesser extent, by anxiety over his safety. Furthermore, it is a time in which we need all our workers; he hath not only deprived us of his own services, but hath demanded the valuable hours of others in striving to rescue him. I doubt not that you will do your duty as a father, but let me remind you that your duty is not leniency, but sternness to the lad who is too nearly man to fail us all as he hath done."

"It is true, William Bradford, and I will do my best though it hath afflicted me that I may have driven the lad from me by blaming him when it was not his desert, and that because of this he went away," said Mr. Hopkins.

"If this were true, Stephen, yet would it not excuse Giles," said William Bradford, whose one child, a boy, had been left behind in England to follow his father to the New World later, and who was not versed in ways of fatherhood to highstrung youths of Giles's age. "It becometh not a son to resent his father's chastis.e.m.e.nts, which, properly borne, may result in benefit, whether or not their immediate occasion was a matter of justice or error. So deal with your son sternly, I warn you, nor let your natural pleasure in receiving him safe back again relax you toward him."

The shallop was launched with sufficient men to navigate her, Squanto accompanying them to guide them southward to the tribe that held Giles and John, in a sense, their captives.

On the third day after her departure the shallop came again in sight, nosing her way slowly up the harbour against a wind dead ahead and blowing strong. There was time, and to spare for any amount of preparation, and yet to get down on the sands to see the shallop come to anchor, and be ready to welcome those whom she bore. Nevertheless, Constance hurried her simple toilet till she was breathless, snarling the comb in her hair; tying her shoe laces into knots which her nervousness could hardly disentangle; chafing her delicate skin with the vigorous strokes she gave her face; stooping frequently to peer out of her bedroom window to see if, by an impossible mischance, the shallop had come up before she was dressed, although the one glimpse that she had managed to get of the small craft had shown that the shallop was an hour away down the harbour.

At last her fl.u.s.tered mishaps were over, and Constance was neat and trim, ready to go down to the beach.

"Damaris, little sister, come up and let me see that none of the dinner treacle is on the outside of your small mouth," Constance called gaily down the stairs.

Damaris appeared, came half way, and stopped forlornly.

"Mother says she will take me, Constance," the child said, mournfully. "She says that you will greet Giles with warm welcome, and that I must not help in it, for that Giles is wicked, and must be frowned upon. Is Giles wicked, Constance? He is good to me; I love him, not so much as you, but I do love Giles. Must I not be glad when he comes, Sister?"

"Oh, Damaris, darling, your kind little heart tells you that you would want a welcome yourself if you were returning after an absence! And we know that the father of that bad son in the Gospel went out to meet him, and fell on his neck! But I must not teach you against your mother's teaching! You know, little la.s.s, whether or not I think our big brother bad!" said poor Constance. "Where is your mother?"

"She hath gone to fetch Ocea.n.u.s back; he crawled out of the open door and went as fast as a spider down the street, crawling, Constance! He looked so funny!" and Damaris laughed.

Constance laughed too, and cried gaily, with one of her sudden changes from sober to gay: "And so Ocea.n.u.s is beginning to run off, too! What a time we shall have, Damaris, with our big brother marching away, and our baby brother crawling away, both of them caring not a b.u.t.ton whether we are frightened about them, or not!"

She flitted down the stairs with her lightness of movement that gave her the effect of a half-flight, caught Damaris to her and kissed her soundly, and set her down just in time to escape rebuke for her demonstrativeness from Dame Eliza, who returned with her face reddened, and Ocea.n.u.s kicking under one arm, hung like a sack below it, and screaming with baffled rage and the desire of adventure. On the beach nearly everyone of the small community was gathered to see the arrival.

Constance stole up behind Priscilla Alden, and touched her shoulder.

"You are not the only happy girl here to-day, my bonny bride," she said.

Priscilla turned and caught Constance by both hands.

"Nor the only one glad for this cause, Constance," she retorted. "Indeed I rejoice beyond my powers of telling, that Giles is come to thee, and that thou art spared the bitter sorrow that we feared had fallen upon thee!"

"Well do I know that, dear Pris," said Constance. "Where is my father?"

"Yonder with William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Elder Brewster; do you not see?" Priscilla replied nodding toward the group that stood somewhat apart from the others. Constance crossed over to them, and curtseyed respectfully to the heads of this small portion of the king's subjects.

"Will you not come with me, my father?" she said, hoping that Stephen Hopkins would stand with her on the edge of the sands to be the first whom Giles would see on arriving, identifying himself with her who, Giles would know, was watching for him with a heart leaping out toward him.

"No, Daughter, I will remain here. I am to-day less Giles Hopkins's father than one of the representatives of this community, which he and John Billington have offended," replied Stephen Hopkins, but whether with his mind in complete accord with his decision, or stifling a longing to run to meet his son, like that other father of whom Constance had spoken to Damaris, the girl could not tell.

She turned away, recognizing the futility of pleading when her father was flanked as he then was.

The shallop was beached and the lost lads leaped out, John with a broad grin on his face, unmixed enjoyment of the situation visible in his every look; Giles with his eyes troubled, joy in getting back struggling with his misgivings as to what he might find awaiting him.

The first thing that he found was Constance, and there was no admixture in the delight with which he seized his sister's hands--warmer greeting being impossible before a concourse which would rebuke it sternly--and replied fervently to her: "Oh, Giles, how glad I am to see you again!"

"And I to see you, sweet sis! Ah, there is Pris! I missed her wedding. And there is John Alden!" said Giles, shading his eyes with his hand, but Constance saw the eyes searching for his father, and merely glancing at Priscilla and John.

"Our father is with the other weighty men of our plantation, waiting for you, Giles. You and John must go to them," suggested Constance.

Giles shrugged his shoulders. "Otherwise they will not know we are back?" he asked. "Very well; come, then, Jack. The sooner the better; then the G.o.ds are propitiated."

The two wilful lads walked over to the grave men awaiting them.

"We thank you, Governor Bradford, for sending the shallop after us," said Giles.

"Is this all that you have to say?" demanded William Bradford!