CHAPTER XXII.
THE MOONLIGHT AND THE DAWN.
A clumsy boat, very different from the trim racing craft that to-day skim the waters of Plymouth Bay weltered slowly toward the rude pier just below the new home of Myles Standish.
The passengers were also very different from those of to-day, and perhaps a parallel might be drawn in both cases between passengers and boat, but as it would not be in our own favor I will not pursue it, merely mentioning that the solidly built, honest, safe, capacious, and unpretending boat first mentioned contained Elder Brewster, Captain Standish, Edward Winslow, John Alden, Thomas Prence, William Collier, and two or three more of the “Immortals” from whom we are so glad to claim descent, and so sorry to confess that it has been such a tremendous descent.
Upon the bluff where stood the captain’s house, and scattered down the path to the shore, a path graded with military skill and precision, a merry crowd of men, women, and children stood waving hats and handkerchiefs and shouting words of welcome, whereat Standish smiled and Winslow remarked,—
“All Duxbury seems gathered to greet us; but how are they so sure that we bring the charter after so many disappointments?”
“I told them if we had it I would fly my private ensign,” replied Standish a little complacently; and Winslow, glancing at the mainmast, perceived a small flag whereon was deftly embroidered the owl with a rat in his talons, then as now the crest of the elder house of Standish.
“Ha! That is something new, is ’t not?” asked the master of Careswell, not well pleased that another should make heraldic pretensions before himself.
“Yes. My Lora embroidered it, and I told them all that if our errand to-day was successful I would fly it for the first time in honor of the birth of Duxbury.”
“Daughter of our dear mother Plymouth,” remarked Thomas Prence; and the captain somewhat uneasily replied,—
“God grant the daughter’s birth may not cost the mother’s life, as our good governor seems to forebode.”
“Nay, Master Bradford would have the sun stand still in heaven, and lucky is it for Duxbury that he is no Joshua,” retorted Winslow with a smile so near a sneer that Standish flushed angrily, and shouted with quite unnecessary vehemence to John Howard, who was steering,—
“Luff, man alive, luff! You’ll never fetch the pier! Can’t you see where you’re going?”
“There’s Hobomok waiting to catch the bowline,” resumed Winslow pacifically. “What a good faithful creature he has proved, and how fond of you, Captain!”
“He is my friend, and I am one that looks for faithfulness in a friend,” replied the captain significantly.
“You have a right to ask for what you give. And lo you now! there’s a pretty sight!” pursued the diplomat, undisturbed. “Those little maids all in white and flower-crowned mind one of the maids of Israel coming forth to meet the captain of Judah.”
“Or ‘Benjamin our little ruler,’ more aptly,” laughed Standish, whose pride had no taint of personal vanity.
“Those two slips of May are your Lora, and Betty Alden, are they not?” pursued Winslow.
“Yes; they are fast friends, and always together. Fair lasses enow, eh, John?”
“Methinks we’ve naught to complain of, Captain,” returned Alden placidly.
“They mind one of moonlight and dawn,” said Winslow with honest admiration in his voice. “Lora does not look like a colonist’s child, Captain.”
“No. She favors her forbears. There’s an old picture at Standish Hall that might have been painted for her likeness. Mayhap some day”—
“And Betty is a real rosebud of Old England. She does not copy her comely mother, Alden, and yet is as comely.”
“No. Sally is more like her mother,” replied John simply, and as the boat drew in to the wharf all three men looked approvingly at the two young girls just budding into maidenhood, and forming as sweet and pure a contrast as the moonlight and the dawn to which the courtly Winslow had compared them; for Betty in her wholesome growth had as it were absorbed color from the sunshine, willowy strength from the sea breeze, and fragrance from the epigæa, until her brown eyes sparkled and glinted like the sea in a sunny morning, and her crisp hair had netted the summer into its meshes, and her cheeks and lips throbbed with soft bright color like the petals of a wild rose. But Lora, as tall already as her friend, although several years younger, was slight as a flower stalk, her pale gold hair almost too heavy for her little head, her soft gray eyes almost too large for the pure oval of her face, the sweet color of her mouth too faintly reproduced in her cheeks. If Betty Alden resembled the dawn of a summer morning upon sea-girt field and forest, Lora Standish brought to mind a garden of annunciation lilies bathed in moonlight.
And now as the fond fathers gazed, and Winslow’s golden tongue dropped phrases sweet in their ears as honey of Hymettus, John Howard, ancestor of a grand line of Bridgewater yeomen, but at present in the household of Standish, deftly gave his tiller a turn that laid the boat’s nose softly against the pier, while Hobomok, with an inarticulate grunt of welcome, seized the line tossed him by John Alden and made it fast around an oaken pile well bedded in the wharf.
In a few moments the boat was empty, and its passengers mingled with the eager crowd who pressed forward to greet them. Chief of these was the new pastor, Ralph Partridge, a “gracious and learned man,” an alumnus of Cambridge and for twenty years a clergyman of the Established Church of England, but now, as Mather quaintly has it, he, “being distressed by the ecclesiastical setters, had no defence neither of beak nor claw, but a flight over the ocean. The place where he took covert was the Colony of Plymouth, and the Town of Duxbury in that Colony. This Partridge had not only the innocence of the dove, but also the loftiness of the eagle in the great soar of his intellectual abilities,” etc.
To this gentleman as the principal person among his guests Standish addressed himself, and taking from the breast of his doublet a package carefully enveloped in oiled silk, opened it and showed a sheet of parchment, brief as to its contents and crude as to its chirography, but bearing some very distinguished autographs, and carrying with it an importance to that group of people similar to that possessed in the eyes of a young wife by the title deeds of her new home, her dower house, and the birthplace of her future children.
“Here is the charter, reverend sir, and now the people of Duxbury have a right to invite you to become their pastor,” said the captain bluntly; but as Partridge took the parchment he looked at the man who gave it and said softly,—
“Shall I be your pastor, Captain Standish?”
“Nay, sir, this is no time for such questions,” replied Standish, rather displeased, and turning away he entered the house to lay aside some of his heavy clothes and don festal attire. In the principal room, deep in whispered council, stood Barbara Standish and Priscilla Alden, two comely and gracious matrons, at sight of whom the captain’s face softened into a merry smile.
“Now what mischief are you plotting, you two with your heads together like Guy Fawkes and Tyrrell?” exclaimed he. “Priscilla, never teach your rebel fashions to my well-trained dame, or I shall have her snatching at the reins!”
“And you’d rather she’d ride the pillion and cling to your belt with a ‘Good master, have a care of me’!” cried Priscilla, her dark eyes flashing as brightly as they had done some sixteen years before while she said, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”
“’Tis a woman’s rightful place, and I’ll be bound, when all’s said, you came over here to-day on a pillion with only your boy Jack to cling to.”
“Nay, we all came in the boat, down Bluefish River and so round. You see there’s so many of us,—John and Jo and Betty and David and Jonathan and Sally and Ruth and Molly; for I could not leave the babies at home without keeping Betty and Sally to mind them, and that was not to be thought of, says my Betty, who aye has her own way.”
“And marvelous that she should, seeing she comes of so weak a mother.”
“Oh, she takes after her father, poor child, and he would ever be aping the ways of his captain.”
Doubtless the captain would soon have provided himself with a retort, but Barbara laid a hand upon his arm.
“While you two are changing your merry quips and cranks, the supper waits,” said she. “Surely, Myles, you will wash your hands and straighten your hair; and Priscilla, is’t not time for you to put the last touch to the whips and syllabub?”
“True enough, Barbara, and lo, I’m gone!” cried Priscilla, and disappeared into the great cool dairy with its northern exposure, where the milk of the red cow and the two young daughters now added to her was manufactured by Barbara into not only butter, but all sorts of dainty confections. On this occasion, however, Priscilla Alden had as of old been summoned to help the housewife, and lend not only her hands but her incomparable culinary skill to the work of providing entertainment for the two or three score persons who had gathered to celebrate the birthday of their town. With most of these, or at least with the heads of the families, we are already acquainted, but in the seventeen years since the landing of the Mayflower many who were then children have grown to maturity and married; as for instance, Love Brewster, who has been for three years husband of Sarah, daughter of that William Collier the only man among the London Adventurers who proved his faith in the Pilgrims by coming to live among them. See him as he stands talking with Elder Brewster, his four fair daughters all within sight: Sarah Brewster, Elizabeth Southworth, Rebecca Cole, and Mary, whose sweet face and ample dowry have already comforted Thomas Prence for the loss of his first wife, gentle Patience Brewster.
So many of our friends are here collected that we may not mention half their names: Henry Samson, the little boy passenger of the Mayflower, with his bride, and his later come brother Abraham, soon to marry the daughter of Lieutenant Nash; the Howlands, not only stanch John and Elizabeth Tilley his wife, but John and Jabez their sons, and pretty Desire, fast friend of Betty Alden and Lora Standish. And here are some new-comers, the Pabodies, settled near John Alden on Bluefish River, but already owning land in The Nook, where the father promises to build a house for the first of his sons who shall marry. Three of the lads are here to-day, and William, a fine, manly young fellow of seventeen years, hangs around the group of laughing girls, and watches Betty Alden with all his eyes.
But we must not linger with the guests, although each one seems like a friend, nor may we pause to enumerate the dainties spread in graceful profusion upon the tables set between the house and the edge of the bluff; suffice it to say that Barbara has delegated to Priscilla Alden the part of caterer, and well has she sustained her reputation, using the abundant material placed at her service to the very best advantage, and winning from each of her assistants the very best service they knew how to render. Nor does the banquet fail to receive ample justice at the hands of the banqueters, beginning with those dignitaries seated in state at a table covered with Barbara’s best napery, and provided with all the magnificence of silver, pewter, and china that she has been able to muster, not only from her own stores, but those of her neighbors. Here on either hand of the captain sit Elder Brewster and Ralph Partridge, with Winslow at the other end of the table, flanked by William Collier and Timothy Hatherley; at another table preside John Alden and John Howland, with Thomas Prence, William Bassett, and Jonathan Brewster, already a leading man in the colony: and at these two tables are seated nearly all the heads of families soon to be enrolled as the freemen of Duxbury, while their wives and younger children cluster around a third table, headed by Barbara and Priscilla, and the young people enjoy themselves amazingly at their own board, as remote as possible from that of the elders, their fun a little chastened by the presence of those young matrons Mistress Prence and Mistress Love Brewster, themselves no more than girls.
And so was Duxbury’s birthday celebrated, and still the honest mirth and neighborly kindliness went on, until the sun dropped behind Captain’s Hill, and the red cow lowed at the bars of her pasture hard by.
Then, after a little silence that made itself felt, Elder Brewster rose in his place and said,—
“Brethren and children, this is a day of solemn joy to us who now have become a town by ourselves, even as children going out from their father’s house to begin a home of their very own; a day to remember, brethren, and to set down in our annals, that when in time to come our children’s children shall ask, ‘Why do ye these things?’ they shall find an answer ready to their hands. Some of you upon whom mine eyes now rest were fellow-passengers with me in the ship Mayflower, and ye remember, as I do, the barren and comfortless shore whereon we landed and were fain to call it home. Some of us, turning our eyes to that southern shore, can almost see the hillside where in those first months we day by day laid away the forms of those dearest to our natural hearts, or most precious to the life of our little colony; we recall the suffering by sea, the suffering by land, the cold and hunger and misery and grievous toil we then endured; but do we recall them to lament, to sorrow like babes over our own distresses? Nay, men, we recall them in joy and praise, in wonder and admiration at His goodness who hath so wonderfully brought plenty out of famine, joy out of sorrow, the morning out of night. Well may we say with Israel, ‘I am less than the least of thy mercies; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two companies!’
“Is it not verily true? There lieth Plymouth, fair and prosperous, the mother of us all in this new land; and here stand we, sturdy, well-grown children, fit to take our own part in the world, ay, and to comfort her should she call upon us. Have we not cause for rejoicing, ay, and for a firm resolve to show ourselves in some degree worthy of such singular mercies? Brethren, my heart is too full to speak further save to One. Let us pray.”
Up rose the old men, the grave and bearded men, the matronly women whose eyes ran over with the memories the elder had invoked; up rose the young men, rejoicing in their strength, yet reverent of their sires, and of the story they had learned in childhood and would not forget in age; the lads, the maidens, the little children, all rose, and stood with bowed heads and hushed breath to listen to the tremulous voice of that aged servant of God as, forgetting all save Him to whom he spoke, he poured forth one of those fervent and trustful appeals whose eloquent power are matter of history. And as he raised his hands in benediction, calling down a special blessing upon the new town and each and every one of its homes, a plume of smoke rose from Burying Hill far to the south, and the sunset gun boomed out its solemn detonation.
“Plymouth says Amen!” whispered Priscilla Alden in Betty’s ear; and the girl silently pointed to Lora Standish, upon whose head the last sunbeam had laid a finger, lighting the pale gold of her hair to the nimbus of a saint. Priscilla looked, and suddenly clasped her own child close to her side; but neither spoke.