CHAPTER XXXI.
JENNEY’S MILL BY MOONLIGHT.
“For ’tis the twenty-first of June,
The merriest day in all the year,”
sang Jack Jenney, the younger brother of the mill and the miller, as to amuse his sister’s visitors he threw the great wheel into gear and set the machinery in motion. “Put in a grist, you young idiot, and don’t grind off the face of the stones,” growled Samuel, standing by, and not so hospitable as to forget business.
“Well, here’s Squire Pabodie’s Indian waiting—English, too, but that wants daylight. Here, bear a hand, Sam, with the Indian.” And the two young men poured the two bushels of gold-colored maize into the hopper, while little Hope Howland, bending over to see it drawn down the vortex of the cruel stones, cried,—
“Poor Indian! Do you know, Jack, one of those Englishmen that came from Boston to see the Rock where our fathers first landed was at the governor’s to dinner, and father was there, and Master Bradford said he must have some more Indian ground, and the man made great eyes and said,—
“‘But does your excellency chastise the savages in such fashion as that?’ He thought, poor gentleman, that we ground up the Indians!”
“And doubtless he feared our governor next would roar,—
‘Fee, fie, faw, fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
And be he alive, or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!’”
And John Howland junior put his great hands upon his sister’s shoulders to draw her back, saying, “But we won’t have you ground this grist, Hope; so don’t tumble in. Mother wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, John, how you tease!” cried Hope, pouting, yet clinging to the arm of her stalwart brother, a fine young fellow, who at a later date calmly incurred judicial censure and a heavy fine for the sake of warning some Quakers, in whose belief he had no share, that they were about to be arrested and imprisoned. And from that day to our own the stout Howland blood has held its own, foremost in that Army of Occupation which the departing Pilgrims left to hold the land their prowess had won.
But while this little scene was enacted around the hopper, William Pabodie, who, bringing his father’s corn to mill late in the afternoon, had accepted an invitation to spend the evening and join the merrymaking, wandered out of the house, and standing beside the pool, idly broke the branch of lilac that some one had given him into little bits and cast them upon the waters.
“Nay, don’t spoil the pretty posy so,” cooed a dulcet voice at his elbow. “If you don’t want it, give it to me.”
“And welcome, Mistress Gillian,” replied the young man coldly, as he held out the flowering branch.
“Oh, but ’tis all torn and ragged,” remonstrated the girl, touching it, then drawing back as if it wounded her. “Trim it for me with your knife, good Master William. Nay, then, I’ll not borrow your unfriendly tone. A scant two months agone ’twas Jill and Willy”—
“I ever hated the name of Willy since I was a baby!” exclaimed the young man petulantly, yet taking the branch and trimming it as he was bid, while Gillian, pressing close to his side, watched the operation as if it were some rare and fascinating sight.
“But why are you so changed to me?” murmured she, scorning the side issue, and like a true woman keeping to the point of personal interest.
“Changed? Am I changed?” asked the man helplessly.
“Oh, Will! Think of the night you took me in your sledge to ride across the snow.”
“’Twas a great while ago,” muttered Pabodie awkwardly.
“Ah, yes, a great while ago; and all that is fair and sweet and worthy to be had in remembrance of all my life is a great while ago,” said the girl bitterly, and as she raised her great dark eyes to the moon, whose light mingled with that of dying day, Pabodie could not but see that they were full of tears, and that the ripe mouth quivered piteously. What man ever yet saw such a sight unmoved, especially when the face was so wondrous fair, the June air so full of fragrance, the moon so softly bright.
“Nay, Gillian, I never meant to be unkind to you!” murmured William Pabodie, half unconsciously taking the hand whose finger-tips grazed his palm, and at the least invitation nestled so confidingly into it.
“Gillian,” said a clear, cool voice just beside the pair. “I am sent to call you both to a game,—a game for all of us to play together.”
And Betty Alden, whose light footfall had not been heard through the sound of the falling waters, quietly looked into William Pabodie’s face, superbly glanced over Gillian’s, let her eyes rest for a moment upon the branch of lilac which Gillian had seized, although Pabodie all unconsciously still held it, and then, with one of those smiles upon her lips which most women remember to have smiled, and most men shiver in remembering to have seen, she turned and climbed the little path to the mill door.
“And now you’ll never speak to me again, lest Betty Alden should chide,” cried Gillian, turning sharply aside, and with a gesture of inimitable grace resting her folded arms against a tree-trunk, and laying her forehead upon them, while a storm of unfeigned sobs and tears shook the very tree she leaned on. William Pabodie, flinging the lilac branch to the ground, would have passed her by, but she made no movement to detain him, and so he lingered, looked at her in sore perplexity for a moment, then said in a voice of contemptuous kindness,—
“It distresses me to see you so, Gillian, and in very truth there’s no call for it; I’m not your lover, and that you know”—
“Oh, yes, I know it, I know it! Poor me, there’s none to love me, and those I could love to the death care less for me than for another’s frown.”
“Nay, mistress, I’m one that fears no woman’s frown, nor change my friends to suit any fancy but mine own.”
“But alas, Gillian’s not one of those friends!”
“Why, yes you are, Gillian, yes you are as much my friend as—as ever.”
“I’m your friend? Ay, but are you mine, Will?”
“Yes—that is to say”—
“That is to say, so far as Betty Alden permits,” cried Gillian, honestly losing control of herself, and flashing into the young man’s eyes a look that made him start back as Julio did when Lamia suddenly revealed herself a serpent. Without a word he strode past her and up the hill, where seeking out his friend, Will Bradford, he drew him aside and said, “Would you do me a kindness, Will?”
“You know I would, man. What is it?”
“Take Gillian Brewster away as soon as may be.”
“Oho! What has she done now?”
“That’s what I can’t tell you, Bill, but you’ll trust me that it’s no discourtesy that I can help, to make such a petition.”
“I know that, Bill Pabodie.”
“Well, then”—
“I’ll manage it, but not of a sudden.”
“No, no; only so that I may get a quiet word with Betty before I leave.”
“Ay, it’s in that quarter the storm is brewing, is it? Well, in an hour or so I’ll manage it.”
But before the hour was over Gillian herself, for after all she was as yet but a young maid, and not seasoned in such matters as another ten years might have seasoned her, came to William, and resting on his arm said plaintively,—
“I’m very weary, Will. When might we be leaving?”
“They’re just going to supper, and while they sit down we can slip away if you like, and in sooth you do look weary,” said Bradford not unkindly, and Gillian, in a little impulse of womanliness, replied with a wan smile,—
“Nay, I’ll not take you from your supper. There’s a roast pig and apple-sauce, I hear.”
“Oh, that’s naught, that’s naught,” protested the young man; but his healthy appetite so rose up in approval of the roasted suckling that it looked out at his eyes, and Gillian, laughing a little, scoffingly said,—
“If it’s naught to you, it’s something to me, and I’ll not stir till I’ve had roast pig and seed-cake and a glass of sweet wine, and mayhap a little taste of arrack punch. May I sit by you, Will, and sip out of your glass?”
“Yes, that will be fine,” cried Will, seeing a happy compromise open before him. “If you’ll sit by me and look at no other fellow but me, I’ll stay; but if you’re going to tease me, I’ll not.”
“I’ll look at none but you,” promised Gillian gently, but her active brain was already shaping the query, “What does he know? What has he heard?” and then replying to itself, “What matter! Fools all of them, and I the worst fool of all.”
So amidst the frank, possibly unrefined, certainly hearty merriment of the time and place the roast pig and roasted russet apples were eaten, and the loaf of seed-cake and another of fruit-cake were cut in great wedges and passed around, and a choice comfiture of wild cranberries with candied lemon peel and plenty of sugar was served on little wooden trenchers, carved in the winter evenings by Samuel Jenney as a present to his bride; and there was plenty of beer and cider, which to our hardy sires were no more injurious than cold water to us, who have bred nerves in place of their muscles and brawn; and there was sweet Spanish wine for the ladies, passed from hand to hand in a little pewter wine-cup, burnished like silver; and there was a good joram of punch for every man; and the girls with little gasps and chokings put their lips to the edge of the rummers, while Gillian, nestling close to William Bradford’s side, was gentle and quiet as a chidden child, and spoke to none but him, eating the while as a bird might, and no more, until in his heart the young man felt that William Pabodie was after all something of a churl, and not over courteous to the governor’s guest, and Pabodie forgetting them both watched Betty Alden, who now and again glanced at or spoke to him just as she did to Sam Jenney or John Howland, and was the brightest, the merriest, the most winsome lass of that gay circle of men and maids.
“And now we’ll go, Will,” whispered Gillian, as all rose from the table.
“Yes, poor little Jill, we’ll go now,” replied Bradford far more tenderly than ever he had spoken before; and Joseph, who heard it, turned sharply, and surveying his brother with astonishment whispered,—
“If there’s a score, need we make it two-and-twenty, Bill?”
“Gillian is tired, and I am taking her home in the boat,” answered William coldly. “Will you come with us, or on foot later?”
“Take care of yourself, man, and I’ll give as good an account of myself,” retorted Joe a little huffed, and presently the governor’s boat glided down Town Brook, which glittered like a stream of silver under the full moon. In the stern, her elbow on the gunwale and her hand supporting a sorrowful face upturned to the sky, reclined Gillian, a dusky red shawl half covering her neck and arms, and throwing up in startling relief the exquisitely molded hand and wrist lying palm uppermost upon her knee.
Close beside her sat Bradford, silently dreaming a young man’s vague sweet dreams of the wonder of womanhood, while the Indian boatman, erect and silent as a bronze automaton, guided the boat down the rapid stream, and far within the dewy covert of the wood a whippoorwill made his perpetual moan, echoed softly back from the breast of Dark Orchard Hill.
At the mill, the after-supper fun grew fast and furious, and who but Betty Alden to lead and queen it with a gay vivacity of invention and power of will that made itself felt by all within its reach, while William Pabodie, his own man once more now that the strange sorcery of Gillian’s presence was withdrawn, calmly bided his time, and at last, when Giles Hopkins, over from Barnstable on a visit, was trolling a sea-song and all the rest joining in the chorus, he edged between Betty and the girl next to her, saying,—
“Come out to the doorstep, Betty; I’ve something to say to you before I go home.”
“Then say it here, or leave it unsaid, for I’ve no mind for the doorstep,” drawled Betty with would-be carelessness; but some instinct told the lover that here was a citadel whose half-hearted garrison might be taken by assault, and grasping her by the arm, he moved toward the door, exclaiming half laughingly,—
“You must come, Betty, for else I’ll make such a noise that they’ll all stop singing to turn and look at us.”
“You’re overbold, William Pabodie,” replied Betty icily; but yielding to both force and argument she allowed herself to be led not only to the doorstep, but down the steep path, through the garden all odorous with pinks and roses, to the spot beside the pool where still lay the broken branch of lilac, and where upon the old willow-trunk still seemed to linger the perfume of Gillian’s presence.
“Why do you bring me here?” asked Betty, a sob rising in her throat, but bravely choked back again.
“Because here where an hour or two ago you set me down as false and fickle, here have I brought you to hear me say that I love you, Betty; and, what is more, I never have loved any woman but you, and if I may not have you for my wife I’ll go a bachelor to my grave. Betty, will you be my wife?”
“If you’ve naught else to recommend you, Master Pabodie, none can accuse you of want of courage,” replied Betty quietly, and throwing aside the mask that in the last hours had smothered her true feelings, she stood before him pale, stern, and pitiless. The young fellow looked at her in dismay.
“Betty! Don’t you believe me, Betty?”
“Believe you when, or at which time? I believed a year or so ago that you cared somewhat for me, at least you came as near to saying it as I would let you, till I could know mine own mind”—
“And then did your mind turn to me, Betty?” demanded the lover eagerly.
“There was no time for it to turn, unless it had been such a weather-cock as yours, for I had not well got to thinking of the matter before I saw that you had forgot it, and were running like a well-broke spaniel at Gillian Brewster’s heel, so I thought no more on’t, and was just as well content it should be so. And then Gillian went away, and you, just like our Neptune when father’s from home, went questing round seeking a master, and seemed willing to have me for one; and partly because you plagued me so, I came here to stay awhile, and then when you came to-day, and whispered in mine ear that it was to see me you’d made the excuse to come, my silly vanity believed the tale, and I had well-nigh been fool enough to trust you, as I would one of my own brothers who know not how to lie; but happily for me, Gillian also came, and I found you toying with her, and giving flowers, and looking into her eyes, and—oh, I know not what all—it makes me sick, it does, and all I want is to go mine own way, and have you go yours, and let there be an end of all this folly here and now.”
The words were no sharper than the voice was cold, and the lover had well-nigh accepted the dismissal and turned away hopeless and humiliated, but that as he looked gloomily down, the moonlight glinted upon the buckle of a little shoe, and he perceived that the foot was viciously, if silently, grinding a blossom of the poor lilac branch into the earth. Somehow, he could not have told how, that sight brought courage to the all but discouraged heart, and suddenly seizing both cold and repellent hands, the young man pressed them to his breast, crying,—
“No, Betty, no, and no again! I’ll not believe you. I’ll not take such an answer. I’ll not give you up, nor turn to any way that is not your way! Betty, I love you. I never have loved any but you. I’ll have you and none other for my wife. Betty, darling, can’t you forgive a blind folly, a stupid, senseless blunder? I could say a good deal to excuse myself but for the duty every man owes to every woman, and that I’ll not forego, even to defend myself to you”—
“Oh, I know well enough what she is,” murmured Betty; the young man paused, but would not, could not speak the thoughts that arose in his mind. Perhaps Betty was, after all, not ill pleased, for let men say what they will of the jealousies of women, there is among them an esprit de corps that rises indignantly in every true woman’s breast when she hears her own sex or any member of it scorned by man.
So an abrupt silence fell between the two,—an eloquent silence, for as his hands firmly grasped hers, and the strong throbbing of his pulses vibrated along her nerves, there was no need of words, until after a few wonderful moments, moments that life could never repeat, the young man drew his true love close, close to his heart, and their lips met in a betrothal kiss.