CHAPTER XXIII.
“LOREA STANDISH IS MY NAME.”
“Lora! Aunt Bab! What do you think? Bessie Partridge has a sweetheart, and he’s going to be a minister, and his father is one of the old sort that we’re bound to hate; but the parson don’t care and has given his consent, and they’re to be married out of hand. There, now!”
“But, Betty, dear child, do catch your breath and sit down and put back your hair all blown over your face”—
“I know, Aunt Bab, I know; but I just put Jo’s saddle on the colt and cantered him over here at his best speed, and of course my hair is blown about. Lora, I could shake you, you provoking girl, with your hair like new carded flax, and your fresh kirtle and wimple, and your stitchery in your hand”—
“The sampler is well-nigh done,” interrupted the mother proudly, “and I think she hath done it fairly enough, don’t you, Betty Alden?”
“Certainly I do, auntie, and I know as well as though you said it I shall never be a patch on Lora for delicate needlework; but then there are so many of us, and mother has no time for her needle, and the boys and father do wear out their hosen most unmercifully, and keep me darning or knitting all the time. I’ve a stocking in my pocket here for Jonathan; but first let me have a good view of the sampler, Lora.”
“Wait but till I cut off my silk at the end of ‘name,’” said Lora, busily fastening her thread at the back of the canvas. “There, now I’ve the needle safe! You know you lost one for me last time you were here, and mother and I hunted an hour for it.”
“I know,” replied Betty penitently, “and if you had not found it mother was going to send John and Jo over to the governor to see if he had some in store.”
“He had some direct from Whitechapel by the Lyon,” remarked Barbara, “but the price is advanced to fivepence each, and we must be careful.”
“You see I have still the flourishing at the end to do,” said Lora, handing Betty the frame in which a long and narrow piece of linen was tightly stretched and nearly covered with parallel lines of embroidery done in various colored silks. Near the lower end came a verse, or at least some rhymes running thus:—
“Lorea Standish is my name.
Lord, guide my heart that I may do Thy will;
Also fill my hands with such convenient skill
As will conduce to virtue void of shame,
And I will give the glory to Thy name.”
The letters forming these words were characterized by a noble independence and freedom from any slavish adherence to custom, some of them being capitals and some small, some little and some big, and the D’s turning their backs or their faces to their comrades as a vagrant fancy dictated. Such as it was, however, this sampler was in Betty Alden’s eyes a work of art commanding her respectful admiration, mingled with a warmer feeling rising from her very sincere love for the artist.
“Oh, Lora!” cried she, throwing an arm around the girl’s slender neck and kissing her heartily, “one can see that you come of gentle blood, and are fitter for silken embroidery than for the milking-stool which is my usual workbench.”
“Nay, I would love to milk, and churn, and cook, and knit gray hosen, but father will not have it so,” said Lora a little wearily. “I may spin, and sew, and do my tent-stitch, and help mother make syllabubs and the like, but it angers him if I soil my hands or wear a homespun kirtle such as is fit for rough work”—
“Rough work and Lora are droll ideas to bring together, aren’t they, auntie?” interrupted Betty with another hug and kiss to her friend, whose sweet face had grown a little flushed and worried as she spoke.
“But come, dear, I want you to go with me to see Bessie and ask her if this wonderful news is sooth. She may come, mayn’t she, auntie?”
“Yes, child, so that you’re both back for supper. Father can’t abide finding Lora’s seat empty at table.”
“We’ll be sure to come. Now, Loly, where’s your hood?”
“Put on your sleeves and your cape, Lora. You’ll get burned else.”
“Yes, mother,” replied the girl patiently, and passing into her own bedroom returned presently with a cape covering her bare neck, and buttoning some loose sleeves to her shoulders, for in that day a gown with high neck and long sleeves was a vestment unknown, and when age or cold weather or out-of-door excursions demanded a covering for shoulders and arms it was supplied, as in Lora’s case, by temporary expedients. A little white linen hood tied under the chin completed the girl’s preparation, and with a gentle kiss upon her mother’s cheek she joined Betty impatiently waiting upon the doorstep.
“Lora, I should think it would weary you to be such a cosset!” cried she, as the girls struck into a path leading northward through the captain’s lands to Eagle’s Creek, where hard by a clump of aged oaks stood the cottage where in the summer season Elder Brewster lived with his sons Love and Wrestling and the young wife of the former. Still trending north, the path led past Jonathan Brewster’s comfortable cottage near the Eagle’s Tree to Harden Hill, where a little way from the edge of the bluff stood a small and low building rudely put together of rough timber and hewn planks, with a thatched roof and windows of oiled cloth, and neither foundations nor chimney, the former unneeded because the colonists hoped at no distant day to replace this their one public edifice with something more elaborate and permanent, and the latter undreamed of as yet even in the mother-church of Plymouth, where the Rev. John Rayner and his colleague Charles Chauncey, both graduates of Cambridge, England, and bred in such luxury as England then knew, took turns in preaching, in overcoats and woolen gloves, sermons of two hours’ duration to a congregation the weaklings of which kept themselves alive by the use of foot-stoves and hot bricks in their laps, while the stronger members grimly endured sitting three and four hours in an atmosphere considerably more chill than the outdoor winter air.
Following this example, Duxbury built no chimneys to her first meeting-houses, and Elder Brewster in the beginning, with Ralph Partridge and John Holmes to succeed him, preached and prayed with only the fire of their own zeal to keep them warm.
A little way from the meeting-house stood a cottage owned by William Bassett, but at present occupied by the Rev. Mr. Partridge, who waited for his formal installation as pastor of the new-formed town before settling himself in a house of his own, and still lingered in The Nook, although he had already bought of William Latham a house whose magnificence has descended upon the pages of history for our admiring contemplation; a house, and not a cottage, for it boasted a second story with a garret overhead, and a roof sweeping majestically in the rear, from the roof-tree to the ground.
But the Partridges had not yet removed to their new nest, and it was in the vicinity of the little hired cottage on Harden Hill that Betty and Lora found their friend Bessie demurely watering and turning a web of fine linen laid to bleach upon the grass. As they approached she started and turned round, a rosy, sonsy lassie, plump as her name, and overflowing with health and spirits.
“Oh, Bess, is it true?” began Betty, laying a hand upon each of her friend’s shoulders and scrutinizing her face with its flaming blushes.
“Good-even, Betty, good-even, Lora! Is what true? What does she mean, Lora? Let me finish wetting my linen, you runagate!”
“Your linen! Aha! How many smocks and petticoats will it make? Or is it for sheets and pillowbers? And must we all come and help you sew it, or is there time a plenty?”
“Nay, Betty, there’s some one coming!” whispered Lora, as the figure of a tall young man of a decidedly clerical cut appeared from the front of the house, and Betty, all at once as demure as a kitten, seized one end of the linen, saying,—
“Certainly I’ll help you turn it, Bessie; and how is your mother to-night?”
“Mother’s well, and— Master Thacher, let me bring you acquainted with Mistress Alden and Mistress Standish, two of the chief of my friends.”
“And so right welcome in mine eyes,” replied the young man heartily, as he lightly kissed the cheek of first one and then the other girl, a ceremony no more remarkable then than shaking hands is to-day.
“My uncle Anthony has gone with Mr. Partridge to pay his respects to Captain Standish,” added he pleasantly. “All men delight to do honor to the Captain of Plymouth Colony.”
“You are very courteous to say so, sir,” replied Lora, with her pretty little air of dignity and reserve; “and your uncle will be right welcome.”
“’Tis strange we did not meet them in the way,” said Betty, whose brown eyes had not yet lost the gleam of merriment lighted by Bessie’s blushes.
“Oh, they went by Master Alden’s to see him as well; and look, there they all are now,—the captain and father and Master Thacher!” cried Bessie. “They must have come to your house just as you left it, Lora.”
“Nay, father was at work with Alick and Josias in the great field beside the road, and I doubt if the gentlemen went to the house at all,” said Lora, her face becoming radiant as her eyes met those of her father, now close at hand. Beside the captain strode the tall, gaunt figure of Ralph Partridge, a man whose many trials and persecutions had set their stamp upon a face naturally rugged, and bowed a form intended to be sturdy; at Standish’s other side walked a man younger in years than the dominie, but bearing upon his face much the same expression of strong endurance and unforgotten experiences,—a man with a story, as any one accustomed to reading faces would say, especially when, as now, the broad-leafed hat was removed, displaying the hair, thick as that of a youth, but white as that of a grandsire.
“Here, Thomas!” cried this last comer, as the elders approached the little group of young people; “come hither, lad, and let me present you to the notice of Captain Myles Standish, whose name I have so often heard upon your lips.”
“Doubtless ’twas for love of that poor old soldier that you have come hither, Master Thomas,” said the captain merrily, and under cover of the little jest the awkwardness of the meeting was overpast, and a blithe half hour ensued. At last, while the shadows lengthened, and the clouds took on their evening glory, and the sweet breath of evening primroses and lowing kine filled the sunset hour, Myles and Lora strolled home along the footpath, hand in hand, while Betty Alden, light as a deer, ran along in front of them, impatient to reach home before her mother needed her.
Arrived at the house, father and daughter paused to look across the bay at Plymouth peacefully sleeping in the westering light, with Manomet purple against the golden sky, and the wide stretch of water smooth as a mirror, save where it fawned against the point of the beach and the foot of the bluff where they stood.
“A fair scene, a goodly scene, daughter,” said the captain; “but not your home for very long.”