Part 1 (1/2)
A Pilgrim Maid.
by Marion Ames Taggart.
CHAPTER I.
With England's Sh.o.r.es Left Far Astern.
A young girl, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with a sweet seriousness that was neither joy nor sorrow upon her fair pale face, leaned against the mast on the Mayflower's deck watching the bustle of the final preparations for setting sail westward.
A boy somewhat older than she stood beside her whittling an arrow from a bit of beechwood, whistling through his teeth, his tongue pressed against them, a livelier air than a pilgrim boy from Leyden was supposed to know, and sullenly scorning to betray interest in the excitement ash.o.r.e and aboard.
A little girl clung to the pretty young girl's skirt; the unlikeness between them, though they were sisters, was explained by their being but half sisters. Little Damaris was like her mother, Constance's stepmother, while Constance herself reflected the delicate loveliness of her own and her brother Giles's mother, dead in early youth and lying now at rest in a green English churchyard while her children were setting forth into the unknown.
Two boys--one older than Constance, Giles's age, the other younger than the girl--came rus.h.i.+ng down the deck with such impetuosity, plus the younger lad's head used as a battering ram, that the men at work stowing away hampers and barrels, trying to clear a way for the start, gave place to the rough onslaught.
Several looked after the pair in a way that suggested something more vigorous than a look had it not been that fear of the pilgrim leaders restrained swearing. Not a whit did the charging lads care for the wrath they aroused. The elder stopped himself by clutching the rope which Constance Hopkins idly swung, while the younger caught Giles around the waist and nearly pulled him over.
”I'll teach you manners, you young savage, Francis Billington!” growled Giles, but he did not mean it, as Francis well knew.
”If I'm a savage I'll be the only one of us at home in America,” chuckled the boy.
”Getting ready an arrow for the savage?” he added.
”It's all decided. There's been the greatest to-do ash.o.r.e. Why didn't you come off the s.h.i.+p to see the last of 'em, Constance?” interrupted the older boy. Constance Hopkins shook her head, sadly.
”Nay, then, John, I've had my fill of partings,” she said. ”Are they gone back, those we had to leave behind?”
”That have they!” cried John Billington. ”Some of them were sorry to miss the adventure, but if truth were told some were glad to be well out of it, and with no more disgrace in setting back than that the Mayflower could not hold us all. Well, they've missed danger and maybe death, but I'd not be out of it for a king's ransom. Giles, what do you think is whispered? That the Speedwell could make the voyage as well as the Mayflower, though she be smaller, if only she carried less sail, and that her leaking is--a greater leak in her master Reynolds's truth, and that she'd be seaworthy if he'd let her!”
”Cur!” growled Giles Hopkins. ”He knows he'd have to stay with his s.h.i.+p in the wilderness a year it might be and there's better comfort in England and Holland! We're well rid of him if he's that kind of a coward. I wondered myself if he was up to a trick when we put in the first time, at Dartmouth. This time when we made Plymouth I smelled a rat certain. Are we almost loaded?”
”Yes. They've packed all the provisions from the Speedwell into the Mayflower that she will hold. We'll be off soon. Not too soon! The sixth day of September, and we a month dallying along the sh.o.r.e because of the Speedwell's leaking! Constantia, you'll be cold before we make a fire in the New World I'm thinking!”
John Billington chuckled as if the cold of winter in the wilderness were a merry jest.
”Cold, and maybe hungry, and maybe ill of body and sick of heart, but never quite losing courage, I hope, John, comrade!” Constance said, looking up with a smile and a flush that warmed her white cheeks from which heavy thoughts had driven their usual soft colour.
”No fear! You're the kind that says little and does much,” said John Billington with surprising sharpness in a lad that never seemed to have a thought to spare for anything but madcap pranks.
”Here come Father, and the captain, and dear John,” said little Damaris.
Stephen Hopkins was a strong-built man, with a fire in his eye, and an air of the world about him, in spite of his severe Puritan garb, that declared him different from most of his comrades of the Leyden community of English exiles.
With all her likeness to her dead English girl-mother, who was gentle born and well bred, there was something in Constance as she stood now, head up and eyes bright, that was also like her father.
Beside Mr. Hopkins walked a thick-set man, a soldier in every motion and look, with little of the Puritan in his air, and just behind them came a young man, far younger than either of the others, with an open, pleasant English face, and an expression at once shy and friendly.
”Oh, dear John Alden!” cried little Damaris, and forsook Constance's skirt for John Alden's ready arms which raised her to his shoulder.
Giles Hopkins's gloom lifted as he returned Captain Myles Standish's salute.
”Yes, Captain; I'm ready enough to sail,” he said, answering the captain's question.
”Mistress Constantia?” suggested Myles Standish.
”Is there doubt of it when we've twice put in from sea, and were ready to sail when we left Southampton a month ago?” asked Constance. ”Sure we are ready, Captain Standish, as you well know. Where is Mistress Rose?”
”In the women's cabin with Mistress Hopkins putting to rights their belongings as fast as they can before we weigh anchor, and get perhaps stood on our heads by winds and waves,” Captain Standish smiled. ”Though the wind is fine for us now.” His face clouded. ”Mistress Rose is a frail rose, Con! They will be coming on deck to see the start.”
”The voyage may give sweet Rose new strength, Captain Standish,” murmured Constance coming close to the captain and slipping her hand into his, for she was his prime favourite and his lovely, frail young wife's chosen friend, in spite of the ten years difference in their ages.
”Ah, Con, my la.s.s, G.o.d grant it, but I'm sore afraid for her! How can she buffet the exposure of a wilderness winter, and--hus.h.!.+ Here they are!” whispered Myles Standish.
Mistress Eliza Hopkins was tall, bony, sinewy of build, with a dark, strong face, determination and temper in her eye. Rose Standish was her opposite--a slight, pale, drooping creature not more than five years above twenty; patience, suffering in her every motion, and clinging affection in every line of her gentle face.
Constance ran to wind her arm around her as Rose came up and slipped one little hand into her husband's arm.
Mrs. Hopkins frowned.
”It likes me not to see you so forward with caresses, Constantia,” she said, and her voice rasped like the s.h.i.+p's tackles as the sailors got up the canvas.
”It is not becoming in the elect whose hearts are set upon heavenly things to fawn upon creatures, nor make unmaidenly displays.”
Giles kicked viciously at the rope which Constance had held. It was not hard to guess that the unnatural gloom, the sullenness that marked a boy meant by Nature to be pleasant, was due to bad blood between him and this aggressive stepmother, who plainly did not like him.
”Oh, Mistress Hopkins,” cried Constance, flus.h.i.+ng, ”why do you think it is wrong to be loving? Never can I believe G.o.d who made us with warm hearts, and gave us such darlings as Rose Standish, didn't want us to love and show our love.”
”You are much too free with your irreverence, Mistress Constantia; it becomes you not to proclaim your Maker's opinions and desires for his saints,” said Mrs. Hopkins, frowning heavily.
”'Sdeath, Eliza, will you never let the girl alone?” cried Stephen Hopkins, angrily.
”As though we had nothing to think of in weighing anchor and leaving England for ever--and for what else besides, who knows--without carping at a little girl's loving natural ways to an older girl whom she loves? I agree with Connie; it's good to sweeten life with affection.”
”Connie, forsooth!” echoed Mrs. Hopkins, bitterly. ”Are we to use meaningless t.i.tles for young women setting forth to found a kingdom? And do you still use the oaths of worldlings, as you did just now? Oh, Stephen Hopkins, may you not be found unworthy of your high calling and invoke the wrath of Heaven upon your family!”
Stephen Hopkins looked ready to burst out into hot wrath, but Myles Standish gave him a humorous glance, and shrugged his shoulders.
”What would you?” he seemed to say. ”Old friend, bad temper seizes every opportunity to wreak itself, and we who have seen the world can afford to let the women fume. Jealousy is a worse vice than an oath of the Stuart reign.”
Stephen Hopkins harkened to this unspoken philosophy; Myles Standish had great influence over him. This, with the rapid gathering on deck of the rest of the pilgrims, served to avert what threatened to be an explosion of pardonable wrath. They came crowding up from the cabins, this courageous band of determined men and women, and gathered silently to look their last on home, and not merely on home, but on the comforts of the established life which to many among them were necessary to their existence.
There were many children, sober little men and women, in unchildlike caricatures of their elders' garb and with solemn round faces looking scared by the gravity around them.