Part 39 (1/2)
All tasted, and John Howland hastily gathering up a portion upon a wooden plate carried it to the Common house for the delectation of the women, that is to say, for Elizabeth Tilley, whose firm young teeth craunched it with much gusto.
Breakfast over, with a grace after meat that amounted to another service, the governor announced that some military exercises under the direction of Captain Standish would now take place, and the guests were invited to seat themselves in the vicinity of a fire kindled on the ground at the northerly part of the village about at the head of Middle Street, and designed more as a common centre and social feature than for need since the weather was mild and lovely, so peculiarly so that when it recurred the next November and the next, the people remembering that first feast said, ”Why, here is the Indians' summer again!” But on that day the only thought was that G.o.d accepted their thanksgiving and smiled His approval.
Hardly had the guests comprehended the announcement and placed themselves in order, when a wild fanfare of trumpets, an imposing roll of drums was heard from the vicinity of the Fort, and down the hill in orderly array marched the little army of nineteen men, preceded by the military band and led by their doughty Captain. Above their heads floated the banner of Old England, and beneath their corselets beat true English hearts; and yet here stood the nucleus of that power which a century and a half later was to successfully defy and throw off the rule of that magnificent but cruel stepdame; here stood the first American army; and then, as since, that score of determined souls struck terror into the hearts of five times their number.
”If they have beguiled us here to destroy us!” murmured Quadequina in his brother's ear.
”Canst not tell an eagle from a carrion-crow?” returned the wiser man.
”Would Winsnow, or The-Sword, or the Chief, or the powah, do this?
Peace, my brother.”
But as the military manoeuvres accompanied with frequent discharges of musketry, and accented at one point with a tremendous roar from the cannon of the Fort progressed, not only Quadequina, but many other of the braves became very uneasy; and to this cause as well as benevolence, may be attributed the offer made at dinner time by Quadequina to lead a hunting party of his own people into the woods to look for deer, whose haunts they well knew.
Standish alone suspected this _arriere pensee_, and when Bradford mildly applauded the generous kindness of their guests, he answered with a chuckle,--
”Ay, as kind as the traveler who begs the highwayman to let him go home and fetch a larger treasure.”
But in spite of his doubts the prince intended and made a _bona fide_ hunt, and returned early in the next day with as much venison as lasted the entire company four days.
”Oh, if I had but some Spanish chestnuts to stuff these turkeys, they might seem more like their brethren across the seas,” exclaimed Priscilla as she turned over a pile of the wild birds and chose those to be first cooked.
”Nay, but to me the flavor is better, and the meat more succulent of these than of any I ever saw at home,” replied John Alden. ”And the size! Do but look at this fellow, he will scale well-nigh twenty pound if an ounce.”
”If 't were a goose I would name it John, 't would be so prodigious a goose,” replied Priscilla with a glance so saucy and so bewitching that her adorer forgot to reply, and she went briskly on,--
”Come now, young man, there's much to do and scant time to talk of it.
Call me some of those gaping boys yonder and let them pluck these fowl, and bid John Billington come and break up these deer. And I must have wood and water galore to make meat for a hundred men. Stir thyself!”
”I was thinking, Priscilla--why not stuff the turkeys with beechnuts?
There is store of them up at our cottage.”
”How came they there? Doth our doughty Captain go birds-nesting and nutting in his by-times?”
”Nay, but I did, that is, I gathered the nuts for thee, and then--then feared if I offered them thou 'dst only flout me”--
”Oh, sure never was a poor maid so bestead with blind men--well, fetch thy beechnuts.”
”Nay, Priscilla, but blind, blind? How then am I blind, maiden, say?”
”Why, not to have discovered ere this how I dote upon beechnuts. There, get thee gone for them.”
The dressing of beechnuts proved a rare success, but the preparation proved so long a process that only the delicate young bird made ready for the table where Mistress Brewster presided was thus honored, although in after times Priscilla often made what she called goose-dressing; and when a few years later some sweet potatoes were brought to Plymouth from the Carolinas, she at once adopted them for the same purpose.
And so the festival went on for its appointed length of three days, and perhaps the hearty fellows.h.i.+p and good will manifested by the white men toward their guests, and their determination to meet them on the ground of common interests and sympathies, went quite as far as their evident superiority in arms and resources toward establis.h.i.+ng the deep-founded and highly valued peace, without which the handful of white men could never have made good their footing upon that stern and sterile coast.
On the Sat.u.r.day the feast was closed by a state dinner whose composition taxed Priscilla as head cook to the limit of her resources, and with flushed cheek and knitted brow she moved about among her willing a.s.sitants with all the importance of a Bechamel, a Felix, the _maitre-d'hotel_ of Cardinal Fesch with his two turbots, or luckless Vatel who fell upon his sword and died because he had no turbot at all; or even, rising in the grandeur of the comparison, we may liken her to Domitian, who, weary of persecuting Christians, one day called the Roman Senate together to decide with him upon the sauce with which another historic turbot should be dressed.
Some late arrivals among the Indians had that morning brought in several large baskets of the delicious oysters for which Wareham is still famous, and although it was an unfamiliar delicacy to her, Priscilla, remembering a tradition brought from Ostend to Leyden by some travelers, compounded these with biscuit-crumbs, spices, and wine, and was looking about for an iron pan wherein to bake them, when Elizabeth Tilley brought forward some great clam and scallop sh.e.l.ls which John Howland had presented to her, just as now a young man might offer a unique Sevres tea-set to the lady of his love.