Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pilgrims

by Jane G. Austin

  CHAPTER IX.

  ROSE.

  "Myles!"

  "Ay, sweetheart, here am I."

  "A little drink--nay, I want it not. I was dreaming thy cousin Barbarawas making a sallet, and I was fain to taste it, it looked so cool andfresh,--and I wakened. I would well like some sallet, Myles."

  "As soon as the day dawns, my Rose, I will go and look for herbs. Imarked some sorrel on the hill yester e'en, albeit something dry andsere."

  "Why doth the ship roll so sorely, Myles?"

  "Thou 'rt not on shipboard, child, but in our little hospital hereashore. Mindest thou not how thou didst mourn and cry to me, 'Take meashore, Myles, take me ashore, that I may breathe sweet air and live.'So I lapped thee in blankets and brought thee, to-morrow is a se'nnight.Like you not this sweet new dwelling?"

  "Well enow; but sweet air will not make me live if the time hath comefor me to die." And the sick girl smiled wanly, inscrutably, the smileof one who knows what he will not say.

  The face of the fearless soldier grew white with terror, and almostangrily he replied,--

  "Hush, child! Thy time to die hath not come. Never think it, for itshall not be."

  "Nay, Myles, thou canst not daunten Death with thy stern voice andmasterful eye, though thou canst quell a score of other foes with oneglance."

  And Rose, moving her frail little hand toward the sinewy fist clenchedupon the bed-covering, slid a finger within its grasp, and went softlyon with a pathetic ring of gayety in her voice,--

  "I was dreaming, too, of home, mine own old home. I was gatheringcowslips in the meadow at St. Mary's, and mother stood by with littleMaudlin in her arms. They smiled, both of them, ah how sweetly theysmiled upon me, and I filled my pinafore with the cowslips, soft, cool,wet cowslips,--I feel them in my hand now, so cool, so wet! Myles, Ifain would have those cowslips, may I not?"

  "Child! Child! Thou 'lt break my heart!"

  "Mother and Maudlin both died the year I saw thee first, dost remember,Myles?"

  "Try to sleep a little, my darling. I will say thee a psalm, or perhapsone of those old Manx ballads thou didst use to lilt so lightly."

  "Mistress White says they are ungodly, and a snare of Satan," repliedRose dreamily, and before Myles could utter the wrathful comment thatquivered upon his lips she went on,--

  "It was across her grave I saw thee, dear, dost mind thee of that hour?"

  "Thy mother's grave? ay, I mind me."

  "Yes, thou camest with thy cousin Barbara to seek thy grandsire'sgravestone and to search out the muniments of thy race. Thou 'lt neverlay hands on that inheritance, Myles."

  "I care not, so thou wilt get strong and well again, my Rose, my Rose!"And with a groan but half driven back upon his heart, the soldierturned his head aside and set his teeth upon his trembling lip. ButRose, more alive in the past than the present, rambled on in her sweet,weak voice,--

  "'Not only this wild hunting ground and ruined lodge where we abide, butmany a fair manor in England, and many a stately home is his,' that waswhat Barbara told me about thee afterward; and when I praised thypresence, for I loved thee or ever I knew it myself, she straightenedher neck and said full proudly, 'Ay, and not only a goodly man, but abrave soldier and noble soul.' 'Twas she who first saw that thou lovedstme, Myles, and came and wept for joy upon my neck."

  "Peace, peace, dear child. Thou wastest thy strength in talkingovermuch. Sleep, canst thou not, dear heart?"

  "Dost think that Barbara will come hither? She promised me surefast thatshe would so soon as there was a company ready. She said it was solonely there in Man when I was gone. Will she come, think you, Myles?"

  "Like enow, sweetheart. Barbara mostly carries out what she promises.But"--

  "And thou 'lt be very, very good to thy cousin, wilt thou not, Myles?Thou 'rt all she has now."

  "Surely both of us will be good to our kinswoman, dear wife, and all themore that, as thou sayest, it was by going to visit her that I first sawthee, blooming like a very rose in that gray old Manx churchyard."

  "I was ever friends with Barbara, but I loved her all the more for thysake, dear. And she was well pleased that we two should wed--leastwaysshe said so."

  "And if she said it she meant it, for in all the years she tarried in mymother's house I never knew her tell a lie or wear two faces. But now,verily, child, I must have thee rest. Speak not again unless thouneedest somewhat. I will have it so, my Rose."

  "Then let me lay my hand in thine. There, then, good-night."

  "Good-night, mine own."

  And while the winter night lapsed through hours of deadly chill anddarkness into the sad twilight of early morning the soldier satmotionless, holding that fragile hand, gazing upon that lovely face,lovely yet so changed from the cherubic beauty that had won his heartamid the summer fields of Man but three short years before.

  What he thought, what he felt in those hours, he could not himself haverevealed, for a man's emotion is usually in inverse proportion to itsexpression, and Myles Standish was essentially a man of action and notof words; but God only knows how these strong inarticulate naturessuffer in the agony that divides bone from marrow, and yet leaves thesufferer conscious of the capacity to live and to suffer yet again andagain.

  In some respects this vigil resembled that of Bradford in hearing ofDorothy's death, in some it was widely different, for with Bradford'sgrief was mingled self-reproach and keen introspection; he weighed hisown life, he found it wanting, he condemned it, and offering hissuffering as righteous penance, he extolled the justice of God, andsubmitted himself as a culprit to the scourge.

  But Standish thought neither of the justice of God nor of his owndemerits, nor had he skill or practice for introspection. "A man underauthority and having soldiers under him," he both rendered and expectedobedience, prompt, entire, and unquestioning. His was a nature ofloyalty so magnificent as to need no buttresses of reason, or ofself-distrust, a loyalty so sweet as to be unconscious of itself, aloyalty so entire that the soul could not get outside of it to considerit objectively.

  The order came from the King of kings, and it was to be obeyed, orendured; the King could do no wrong.

  Nor indeed had he been skilled to search, could Myles have found matterfor self-reproach in all his dealings with the child dying at his side.

  Busy from his boyhood in the pursuit of arms, and loving his mother withall the force of his great nature, the man had cared little for otherwomen, turning with scorn from the meretricious charms of those heencountered in camp or among his comrades, and finding no time orinclination to seek others, so that except for the light fancies of anhour, or the calm affection for his cousin Barbara, whom he found on oneof his visits to his home in Chorley giving a daughter's tendance to hismother, Standish had passed his three and thirtieth birthday ignorant ofthe nature of love, and mocking at its power.

  But the first glance at the lovely girl weeping beside her mother'sgrave warned him that a new hour had struck, and a new foe opposed him;nor was he long in making full and frank surrender to an authority asstrong as it was gentle, and as tyrannous as sweet.

  Motionless and erect the soldier sat the long night through, and as ifshe gathered strength from the grasp of his healthy hand, Rose sleptquietly until the sun rose, and the women still well enough to wait uponthe sick came softly in.

  Then she opened her eyes, fixed them upon his with a tender smile, andsaid,--

  "Poor Myles! Thou hast watched all night while selfish I held thee andslept. But now begone and get thine own rest and food. I shall do wellwith these kind friends."

  "I'll leave thee, then, for a little, but I shall not be far away, andif thou needest, send," replied her husband releasing his hand from thefrail yet burning grasp that still held him. "Dame Turner, thou 'lt seethat I am called if she asks for me, wilt thou?"

  "Surely, Captain, but she is doing bravely this morning, and you hadbetter rest."

  "Nay, but let her not ask twice for me, or aught else."

  L
eaving the house, and drawing one or two eager breaths of fresh air,Standish climbed the hill where already the fortification he hadproposed was nearly complete, though not yet armed. Stepping upon agreat beam, squared but not laid in place, he stood looking around himas if to see what Nature and his own work could offer to fill the greatgulf opening in the future.

  A light fog still clung to the face of the water and hung in the hollowsof the hills; shrouded in its folds the Mayflower lay like a spectreship, ugly, unsafe, full of discomfort and misery, but yet the only linkbetween this handful of dying men and their home. Standish gazed at herwith a gathering darkness upon his face, until the burden of his thoughtbroke out in a savage murmur,--

  "_Couldst_ not make thy way through yonder shoals and bring us to thefair shores I told her of! If it be thy fault, Thomas Jones!"--

  The slow clenching of a jaw square and strong as a mastiff's finishedthe sentence, and Standish's eyes came back to the rude hut where allhe loved lay dying, perhaps through this man's fault. At his feet laythe sketch as it were of the town he and his comrades had laid down inoutline, and intended to build up as time and strength allowed. AlreadyLeyden Street, or The Street, as it was at first called, lay a distinctthoroughfare from the Rock to the Fort, the eastern and westernextremities of the village. Along this street were staked out plots ofland, some larger and some smaller in the proportion of eight feetfrontage to each person in a family, the single men, and those women andchildren already left desolate, being divided among the householders,and the whole company reduced to nineteen families.

  Standish's own house, not yet finished, lay nearest to the Fort, whichwith its armament were to be his especial charge, and several of thesingle men had been appointed to his family. Their own illness, and thatof Mistress Standish had, however, interfered with this arrangement, andonly John Alden shared the house as yet with Standish, the two mensometimes eating at the Common house, the only one except the hospitalreally finished, and sometimes cooking for themselves such food as theycould lay hands upon, for the house, unlike some of the others, alreadyboasted a chimney laid up of sticks and clay, and showed a generousfireplace in the larger or living room which, with two littlesleeping-rooms and a loft, comprised the whole accommodation.

  Upon this little home so hopefully begun, so neglected during the lastten days, Myles gazed long and wistfully, smiling sadly as he saw Aldencome out and look up and down the street for him, finally going to seekhim in the Common house, a substantial structure some twenty feetsquare, built of hewn oaken logs, fitted together as closely aspossible, and the crevices stopped with clay, which freely washed out instormy weather.

  The roof, like all the rest, was covered with thatch formed of driedreeds and grasses, and the windows were filled with oiled linen insteadof glass, still an article of costly luxury. Above the Common housestood the building which the increasing mortality of the colony haddemanded as a hospital, and below it was the storehouse, where most ofthe common stock of goods was collected, although some of the passengersand their possessions still remained on board the brig, where Jones gavethem but scant hospitality or kindness.

  Folding his arms more closely as the chill wind of February swept infrom seaward, Standish gazed upon all these objects as if they for thefirst time attracted his attention, and then, as the lifting fogrevealed the distant landscape, he turned and fixedly regarded Captain'sHill rising in its bold isolation to the north. Long he gazed, and then,slightly shaking his head, stepped down from the beam and paced aboutthe little enclosure, half unconsciously examining the work of platformand parapet, and following with a gunner's eye the range of the piecesyet unmounted; pausing longest before the eastern front, he marked withsatisfaction how well the minion there to be placed would guard thelanding and sweep the solitary street, and even knelt to look along itsimaginary barrel.

  Rising he brushed the soil from his knees with almost a smile,muttering,--

  "Ay, lad, thou 'rt needed, thou 'rt needed, and he who is needed has noright to desert his post."

  But suddenly the smile faded, for as he turned to leave the Fort hiseyes fell upon Cole's Hill, where but a few rods from the Common house,and under its protection, they had dug the graves of those already dead,and where lay room enough for many more. But his battle fought, and hismind resolved, Myles was too much master of himself to need a secondconflict, and setting his lips firmly beneath the tawny moustache thatshaded them, he strode down the hill, and at his own door found JohnAlden waiting for him and changing greetings with a party of four menarmed with sickles and attended by two dogs.

  "Wish you good-morrow, Captain," said the foremost, a sturdy youngfellow with a pleasant English face.

  "Good-morrow Peter Browne, and you, John Goodman," replied the captaincordially. "Whither away?"

  "To cut thatch in the fields nigh yon little pond," replied Brownepointing in a westerly direction. "And I am taking Nero along to giveaccount of any Indians that may be lurking there."

  "And John Goodman's spaniel to rouse the game for Nero to pull down,"said Standish with a smile. "Well, God speed you."

  And turning into the unfinished house he found Alden watching him with alook of silent friendliness and sympathy more eloquent than words;returning the greeting as mutely and as heartily, Standish would havepassed into his own bedroom, but the younger man interposed,--

  "Thou 'lt break thy fast, Captain, wilt thou not? All is ready andwaiting your coming; some of the bean soup you liked yester even, andsome fish"--

  "Presently, presently, good John! I would but bathe and refresh myself.Nay, look not so doubtingly after me, friend. I am a man, and know aman's devoir."

  He spoke with a smile as brave as it was gentle, and passing in closedthe door.

  "Doth he know she is dying!" muttered John throwing himself upon abench; "and Priscilla sickening and her mother dead!"