Part 1 (2/2)
Priscilla Mullins gathered the children together and led them over to join Constance Hopkins. She and Constance divided the love of the child pilgrims between them. Priscilla, round of face, smooth and rosy of cheek, wholesome and sensible, was good to look upon. It often happened that her duty brought her near to wherever John Alden might chance to be, but no one had ever suspected that John objected.
John Alden had been taken on as cooper from Southampton when the Mayflower first sailed. It was not certain that the pilgrims could keep him with them. Already they had learned to value him, and many a glance was now exchanged that told the hope that sunny little Priscilla might help to hold the young man on this hard expedition.
The crew of the Mayflower pulled up her sails, but without the usual sailor songs. Silently they pulled, working in unison to the sharp words of command uttered by their officers, till every shred of canvas, under which they were to set forth under a favouring wind, was strained into place and set.
On the sh.o.r.e was gathered a crowd gazing, wondering, at this departure. Some there were who were to have been of the company in the lesser s.h.i.+p, the Speedwell, which had been remanded from the voyage as unfit for it. These lingered to see the setting forth for the New World which was not to be their world, after all.
There were many who gazed, pityingly, awe-struck, but bewildered by the spirit that led these severe-looking people away from England first, and then from Holland, to try their fortunes where no fortune promised.
Others there were who laughed merrily over the absurdity of the quest, and these called all sorts of jests and quips to the pilgrims on the s.h.i.+p, inviting to a contest of wit which the pilgrims utterly disdained.
And then the by-standers on wharf and sands of old Plymouth became silent, for, as the Mayflower began to move out from her dock, there arose the solemn chant of a psalm.
The air was wailing, lugubrious, unmusical, but the words were awesome.
”When Israel went out from Egypt, from the land of a strange people,” they were singing.
”A strange people!” And these pilgrims were of English blood, and this was England which they were thus renouncing!
What curious folk these were!
But this psalm was followed by another: ”The Lord is my shepherd.”
Ah, that was another matter! No one who heard them, however slight the sympathy felt for this unsympathetic band, but hoped that the Lord would shepherd them, ”lead them beside still waters,” for the sea might well be unquiet.
”Oh, poor creatures, poor creatures,” said a buxom woman, snuggling her baby's head into her deep shoulder, and wiping her own eyes with her ap.r.o.n. ”I fain must pity 'em, that I must, though I'm none too lovin' myself toward their queer dourness. But I hope the Lord will shepherd 'em; sore will they need it, I'm thinkin', yonder where there's no shepherds nor flocks, but only wild men to cut them down like we do haw for the church, as they all thinks is wicked!” she mourned, motherly yearning toward the people going out the harbour like babes in the wood, into no one would dare say what awful fate.
The pilgrims stood with their faces set toward England, with England tugging at their heart strings, as the strong southeasterly wind filled the Mayflower's canvas and pulled at her shrouds.
And as they sailed away the monotonous chant of the psalms went on, floating back to England, a farewell and a prophecy.
Rose Standish's tears were softly falling and her voice was silent, but Constance Hopkins chanted bravely, and the children joined her with Priscilla Mullins's strong contralto upholding them.
Even Giles sang, and the two scamps of Billington boys looked serious for once, and helped the chant.
Myles Standish raised his soldier's hat and turned to Stephen Hopkins, holding out his right hand.
”We're fairly off this time, friend Stephen,” he said. ”G.o.d speed us.”
”Amen, Captain Myles, for else we'll speed not, returned Stephen Hopkins.
”Oh, Daddy, we're together anyway!” cried Constance, with one of her sudden bursts of emotion which her stepmother so severely condemned, and she threw herself on her father's breast.
Mr. Hopkins did not share his wife's view of his beloved little girl's demonstrativeness. He patted her head gently, tucking a stray wisp of hair under her Puritan cap.
”There, there, my child, there, there, Connie! Surely we're together and shall be. So it can't be a wilderness for us, can it?” he said.
An hour later, the wind still favouring, the Mayflower dropped sunsetward, out of old Plymouth Harbour.
CHAPTER II.
To Buffet Waves and Ride on Storms.
The wind held fair, the golden September weather waited on each new day at its rising and sent it at its close, radiantly splendid, into the sea ahead of the Mayflower as she swept westward.
Full canvas hoisted she was able to sail at her best speed under the favouring conditions so that the hopeful young people whom she carried talked confidently of the houses they would build, the village they would found before heavy frosts. Captain Myles Standish, always impetuous as any of the boys, was one of those who let themselves forget there were such things as storms.
”We'll be New Englishmen at this rate before we fully realize we've left home; what do you say, my la.s.sies three?” he demanded, pausing in a rapid stride of the deck before Constance Hopkins and two young girls who were her own age, but seemed much younger, Humility Cooper and her cousin, Elizabeth Tilley.
”What do you three mermaidens in this forward nook each morning?” Captain Standish went on without waiting for a reply to his first question, which indeed, he had not asked to have it answered.
”Elizabeth's mother, Mistress John Tilley, is sick and declares that she shall die,” said Constance, Humility and Elizabeth being shyly silent before the captain.
”No one ever thought to live through sea-sickness, nor wanted to,” declared Captain Myles with his hearty laugh. ”Yet no one dies of it, that is certain. And is Mistress Ann Tilley also lain down and left Humility to the mercy of the dolphins? And is your stepmother, too, Con, a victim? It's a calm sea we've been having by comparison. I've sailed from England into France when there was a sea running, certes! But this--pooh!”
”Humility's cousin, Mistress Ann Tilley, is not ill, nor my stepmother, Captain Standish, but they are attending to those who are, and to the children. Father says that when he sailed for Virginia, before my mother died, meaning to settle there, that the storm that wrecked them on Bermuda Island and kept us from being already these eleven years colonists in the New World, was a wind and sea that make this seem no more than the lake at the king's palace, where the swans float.”
Constance looked up smiling at the captain as she answered, but he noted that her eyes were swollen from tears.
”Take a turn with me along the deck, child,” Captain Myles said, gruffly, and held out a hand to steady Constance on her feet.
”Now, what was it?” he asked, lightly touching the young girl's cheek when they had pa.s.sed beyond the hearing of Constance's two demure little companions. ”Homesick, my la.s.s?”
”Heartsick, rather, Captain Myles,” said Constance, with a sob. ”Mistress Hopkins hates me!”
”Oh, fie, Connie, how could she?” asked the captain, lightly, but he scowled angrily. There was much sympathy between him and Stephen Hopkins, neither of whom agreed with the extreme severity of most of the pilgrims; they both had seen the world and looked at life from their wider experience.
Captain Standish knew that Giles's and Constance's mother had been the daughter of an old and honourable family, with all the fine qualities of mind and soul that should be the inheritance of gentle breeding. He knew how it had come about that Stephen Hopkins had married a second time a woman greatly her inferior, whose jealousy of the first wife's children saddened their young lives and made his own course hard and unpleasant. p.r.o.ne to speak his mind and fond of Giles and Constance, the impetuous captain often found it hard to keep his tongue between his teeth when Dame Eliza indulged in her favourite game of badgering, persecuting her stepchildren. Now, when he said: ”Fie, how could she?” Constance looked up at him with a forlorn smile. She knew the captain was quite aware that her stepmother could, and did dislike her, and she caught the anger in his voice.
”How could she not, dear Captain Myles?” she asked. Then, with her pent-up feeling overmastering her, she burst out sobbing.
”Oh, you know she hates, she hates me, Captain!” she cried. ”Nothing I can do is pleasing to her. I take care of Damaris--sure I love my little sister, and do not remember the half that is not my sister in her! And I wait on Mistress Hopkins, and sew, and do her bidding, and I do not answer her cruel taunts, nor do I go to my father complaining; but she hates me. Is it fair? Could I help it that my father loved my own mother, and married her, and that she was a lovely and accomplished lady?”
”Do you want to help it, if by helping you mean altering, Connie?” asked Captain Myles, with a twinkle. ”No, child, you surely cannot help all these things which come by no will of yours, but by the will of G.o.d. And I am your witness that you are ever patient and dutiful. Bear as best you can, sweet Constantia, and by and by the wrong will become right, as right in the end is ever strongest. I cannot endure to see your young eyes wet with tears called out by unkindness. There is enough and to spare of hard matters to endure for all of us on this adventure not to add to it what is not only unnecessary, but unjust. Cheer up, Con, my la.s.s! It's a long lane--in England!--that has no turning, and it's a long voyage on the seas that ends in no safe harbour! And do you know, Connie girl, that there's soon to be a turn in this bright weather? There's a feeling of change and threatening in this soft wind.”
Constance wiped her eyes and smiled, knowing that the captain wished to lead her into other themes than her own troubles, the discussion of which was, after all, useless.
”I don't know about the weather, except the weather I'm having,” she said. ”Ah, I don't want it to storm, not on the mid-seas, Captain Myles.”
”Aye, but it's the mid-seas of the year, Connie, when the days and nights are one in length, and at that time old wise men say a storm is usually forthcoming. We'll weather it, never fear! If we are bearing westward a great hope and mission as we all believe--not I in precisely the same fas.h.i.+on as these stricter saints, but in my own way no less--then we are sure to reach our goal, my dear,” said the captain cheerfully.
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