Weary Waiting at the Gates
"Call Giles hither. I need help to strap these blankets to carry safely,
Mr. Hopkins," said Dame Eliza Hopkins, bustling up to her husband two
hours after the _Mayflower_ had made anchorage.
"To carry whither, wife?" asked Mr. Hopkins, with the amused smile that
always irritated his excitable wife by its detached calmness.
"Will you not need the blankets at night? Truth to tell this Cape Cod
air seems to me well fit for blankets."
"And for what other use should they be carried ashore? Or would they
keep us warm left on the ship?" demanded Mistress Eliza. "Truly, Stephen
Hopkins, you are a test of the patience of a saint!"
"Which needs no testing, since the patience of the saints has passed
into a proverb," commented Stephen Hopkins. "But with all humility I
would answer 'yes' to your question, _Eliza_: the blankets would surely
keep you warmer when on the ship than if they were ashore, since it is
on the ship that you are to remain."
"Remain! On the ship? For how long, pray? And why? Do you not think that
I have had enough and to spare of this ship after more than two months
within her straitened cabin, and Oceanus crying, poor child, and wearing
upon me as if he felt the hardship of his birthplace? Nor is Mistress
White's baby, Peregrine, happier than my child in being born on this
_Mayflower_. When one is not crying, the other is and oftener than not
in concert. Why should I not go ashore with the others?" demanded
Mistress Eliza, in quick anger.
"Ah, wife, wife, my poor Eliza," sighed Mr. Hopkins, raising his hand to
stem the torrent. "Leave not all the patience of the saints to those in
paradise! You, with all the other women, will remain on the ship while
certain of the men--the rest being left to guard you--go in the shallop
to explore our new country and pick the fittest place for our
settlement. How long we may be gone, I do not know. Rest assured it will
not be an absence wilfully prolonged. You will be more comfortable here
than ashore. It is likely that when you do go ashore to begin the new
home you will look back regretfully at the straitened quarters of the
little ship that has served us well, in spite of sundry weaknesses which
she developed. Be that as it may, this delay is necessary, as reflection
will show you, so let us not weary ourselves with useless discussion of
it."
Mistress Hopkins knew that when her husband spoke in this manner,
discussion of his decision was indeed useless. She had an awe of his
wisdom, his amused toleration of her, of his superior birth and
education, and, though she ventured to goad him in small affairs, when
it came to greater ones she dared not dispute him. So now she bit her
lip, as angry and disappointed tears sprang to her eyes, but did not
reply.
Stephen Hopkins produced from his inner pocket an oblong packet sewn in
an oilskin wrapper.
"Here, Eliza," he said, "are papers of value to this expedition,
together with some important only to ourselves, but to us sufficiently
so to guard them carefully. The public papers were entrusted to me just
before we sailed from Southampton by one interested in the welfare of
this settlement. My own papers relate to the English inheritance that
will be my children's should they care to claim it. These papers I must
leave in your care now that I am to go on this exploring party ashore. I
will not risk carrying them where savages might attack us, though I have
kept them upon me throughout the voyage. Guard them well. Not for worlds
would I lose the papers relating to the community, sorry as I should be
to lose my own, for those were a trust, and personal loss would be
nothing compared to the loss of them."
He handed the packet to his wife as he spoke and she took it, turning it
curiously over and about.
"I hope the English inheritance will one day come to Damaris and
Oceanus," she said, bitterly, her jealousy of the two children of her
husband's first wife plain to be seen. "Here's Giles," she added,
hastily thrusting the packet into her bosom with a violence that her
husband noted and wondered at.
"Father," said Giles, coming up, "take me with you."
Gloom and discontent were upon his brow. Giles's face was fast growing
into a settled expression of bitterness. His stepmother's dislike for
him, and for his sister, Giles bore less well than Constance. The
natural sweetness of the girl, her sunny hopefulness, led her
ceaselessly to try to make things pleasant around her, to be always
ready to forget and begin again, hoping that at last she might win her
stepmother's kindness. But Giles never forgot, consequently never could
hope that the bad situation would mend, and he returned Mistress Eliza's
dislike with compound interest. He was a brave lad, capable of strong
attachments, but the bitterness that he harboured, the unhappiness of
his home life, were doing him irreparable harm. His father was keenly
alive to this fact, and one of his motives in coming to the New World
with the Puritans, with whose strict views he by no means fully
sympathized, was to give Giles the opportunity to conquer the
wilderness, and in conquering it to find a vent for his energy,
happiness for himself.
Mr. Hopkins turned to the boy now and sighed, seeing that he had heard
his stepmother's expression of hope that _her_ children would receive
their father's English patrimony. But he said only:
"Take you with me where, Giles?"
"Exploring the country. I am too old, too strong to stay here with the
women and children. Besides, I want to go," said Giles, shortly.
"But few of the men are to go, my son; you will not be reckoned among
the weaklings in staying," said Mr. Hopkins, laying his hand upon the
boy's shoulder with a smile that Giles did not return. "Enough have
volunteered; Captain Standish has made up his company. You are best here
and will find enough to do. Have you thought that you are my eldest, and
that if we met with savages, or other fatal onslaught, that you must
take my place? I cannot afford to risk both of us at once. You are my
reliance and successor, Giles lad."
The boy's sullen face broke into a piteous smile; he flushed and looked
into his father's eyes with a glance that revealed for an instant the
dominant passion of his life, his adoring love for his father.
Then he dropped his lids, veiling the light that he himself was
conscious shone in them.
"Very well, If you want me to stay, stay it is. But I'd like to go. And
if there is danger, why not let me take your place? I should not know as
much as you, but I would obey the captain's orders, and I am as strong
as you are. Better let me go if there's any chance of not returning," he
said.
"Your valuable young life for mine, my boy? Hardly that!" said Stephen
Hopkins with a comradely arm thrown across the boy. "I shall always be a
piece of drift from the old shore; you will grow from your youth into
the New World's life. And what would my remnant of life be to me if my
eldest born had purchased it?"
"You are young enough, Father," began Giles, struggling not to show
that the expression of his father's love moved him as it did.
Mistress Eliza, who had been watching and listening to what was said
with scornful impatience, broke in.
"Let the lad go. He will not be helpful here, and your little children
need your protection, not to speak of your wife, Mr. Hopkins."
At the first syllable Giles had hastened away. Stephen Hopkins turned on
her. "The boy is more precious than I am. It is settled; he is to stay.
Take great care of the packet I have entrusted to you," he said.
For four days the ship's carpenters had busied themselves in putting
together and making ready the shallop which the _Mayflower_ had carried
for the pilgrims to use in sailing the shallow waters of the bays and
rivers of the new land, to discover the spot upon which they should
decide to make their beginning.
The small craft was ready now, and in the morning set out, taking a
small band of the men who had crossed on the _Mayflower_, as much
ammunition and provisions as her capacity allowed them, to proceed no
one knew whither, to encounter no one knew what.
Constance stood wistfully, anxiously, watching the prim white sail
disappear.
Humility Cooper and Elizabeth Tilley--the cousins, who, though
Constance's age, seemed so much younger--and Priscilla Mullins--who
though older, seemed but Constance's age--were close beside her, and,
seated on a roll of woollen cloth, sat Rose Standish, drooping as now
she always drooped, often coughing, watching with her unnaturally clear
eyes, as the girls watched, the departure of the little craft that bore
their beloved protectors away.
The country that lay before them looked "wild and weather-beaten." All
that they could see was woods and more woods, stretching westward to
meet the bleak November sky, hiding who could say what dangers of wild
beasts and yet more-savage men?
Behind them lay the heaving ocean, dark under the scudding clouds, and
which they had just sailed for two months of torture of body and mind.
If the little shallop were but sailing toward one single friend, if
there were but one friendly English-built house beside whose hearth the
adventurers might warm themselves after a handclasp of welcome!
Desolation and still more desolation behind and before them! What awful
secrets did that low-lying, mysterious coast conceal? What could the
future hold for this handful of pilgrims who were to grapple without
human aid with the cruelties of a severe clime, of preying creatures,
both beast and human?
Rose Standish's head bent low as the tipmost point of the shallop's mast
rounded a promontory, till it rested on her knees and her thin
shoulders heaved. Instantly Constance was on her knees before her,
gently forcing Rose's hands from her face and drawing her head upon her
shoulder.
"There, there!" Constance crooned as if to a baby. "There, there, sweet
Rose! What is it, what is it?"
"Oh, if I knew he would ever come back! Oh, if I knew how to go on, how,
how to go on!" Rose sobbed.
"Captain Myles come back!" cried Constance, with a laugh that she was
delighted to hear sounded genuine.
"Why, silly little Rose Standish, don't you know nothing could keep the
captain from coming back? Wouldn't it be a sorry day for an Indian, or
for any beast, when he attacked our right arm of the colony? No fear of
him not coming back to us! And how to go on, is that it? In your own
cozy little house, with Prissy and the rest of us to help you look after
it till you are strong again, and then the fair spring sunshine, and the
salt winds straight from home blowing upon you, and you will not need to
know how to go on! It will be the rest of us who will have to learn how
to keep up with you!"
"Kind Constance," whispered Rose, stroking the girl's cheek and looking
wistfully into her eyes as she dried her own. "You keep me up, though
you are so young! Not for nothing were you named Constantia, for
constant indeed you are! I will be good, and not trouble you. Usually I
feel sure that I shall get well, but to-day--seeing Myles go----.
Sometimes it comes over me with terrible certainty that it is not for me
to see this wilderness bloom."
"Just tiredness, dear one," said Constance, lovingly, and as if she were
a whole college of learned physicians. "Have no fear."
Mistress Hopkins came in search of them, carrying the baby Oceanus with
manifest protest against his weight and wailing.
"I have been looking for you, Constantia," she said, as if this were a
severe accusation against the girl. "You are to take this child. Have I
not enough to do and to put up with that I must be worn threadbare by
his crying? And what a country! Your father has been tormenting me with
his mending and preparation for this expedition so that I have not seen
it as it is until just now. Look at it, only look at it! What a place to
bring a decent woman to who has never wanted! Though I may not have been
the fine lady that his first wife was, yet am I a comfortable farmer's
daughter, and Stephen Hopkins should not have brought me to a coast more
bleak and dismal than the barrens of Sahara. Woods, nothing but woods!
And full of lions, and tigers, and who knows what other raving, raging
wild vermin--who knows? What does thy father mean by bringing me to
this?"
Constance pressed her lips together hard, a burning crimson flooding her
face as she took the baby violently thrust upon her and straightened his
disordered wrappings, reminding herself that his mother was not his
fault.
"Why as to that, Mistress Hopkins," said Priscilla Mullins in her
downright, sensible way, "Mr. Hopkins did not bring you. We all came
willingly, and I make no doubt that all of us knew quite well that it
was a wilderness to which we were bound."
"There is knowing and knowing, Priscilla Mullins, and the knowing before
seeing is a different thing from the knowing and seeing. Stephen Hopkins
had been about the world; he even set sail for Virginia, which as I
understand is somewhere not far from Cape Cod, though not near enough to
give us neighbours for the borrowing of a salt rising, or the trade of a
recipe, or the loan of a croup simple should my blessed babe turn
suffocating as he is like to do in this wicked cold wind; and these
things are the comforts of a woman's life, and her right--as all good
women will tell thee before thou art old enough to know what the lack is
in this desolation. So it is clear that Stephen Hopkins had no right to
bring me here, innocent as I was of what it all stood for, and hard
enough as it is to be married to a man whose first wife was of the
gentry, and whose children that she left for my torment are like to her,
headstrong and proud-stomached, and hating me, however I slave for them.
And your father, Constantia Hopkins, has gone now, not content with
bringing me here across that waste o' waters, and never is it likely
will come back to me to look after that innocent babe that was born on
the ocean and bears its name according, and came like the dove to the
ark, bearing an olive branch across the deluge. But much your father
cares for this, but has gone and left me, and it is no man's part to
leave a weak woman to struggle alone to keep wild beasts and Indians
from devouring her children; and so I tell you, and so I maintain. And
never, never have I looked upon a scene so forsaken and unbearable as
that gray woodland that the man who swore to cherish me has led me
into."
Constance quite well knew that this hysterical unreason in her
stepmother would pass, and that it was not more worth heeding than the
wind that whistled around the ship's stripped masts. Mistress Eliza had
a vixenish temper, and a jealous one. She frequently lashed herself into
a fury with one or another of the family for its object and felt the
better for it, not regarding how it left the victim feeling.
But though she knew this, Constance could not always act upon her
knowledge, and disregard her. She was but a very young girl and now she
was a very weary one, with every nerve quivering from tense anxiety in
watching her father go into unknown danger.
She sprang to her feet with a cry.
"Oh, my father, my father! How dare you blame him, my patient, wise,
forbearing father! Why did he bring you here, indeed! He--so fine, so
noble, so hard-pressed with your tongue, Mistress Hopkins!--I will not
hear you blame him. Oh, my father, my dear, dear, good father!" she
sobbed, losing all sense of restraint in her grief.
Suddenly on hearing this outburst, Mistress Hopkins, as is sometimes the
way of such as she, became as self-controlled as she had, but a moment
before, been beside herself. And in becoming quiet she became much more
angry than she had been, and more vindictive.
"You speak to me like this?--you dare to!" she said in a low, furious
voice. "You will learn to your sorrow what it means to flout me. You
will pay for this, Constantia Hopkins, and pay to the last penny, to
your everlasting shame and misery."
Constance was too frightened by this change, by this white fury, which
she had never seen before in her stepmother, to answer; but before she
could have answered, Doctor Fuller, who had strayed that way in time to
hear the last of Dame Eliza's tirade, Constance's retort, and this final
threat, took Constance by the arm and led her away.
"Quiet, my dear, quiet and calm, you know! Don't let yourself forget
what is due to your father's wife, to yourself, still more to your
conscience," he warned her. "And remember that a soft answer turneth
away wrath."
"Oh, it doesn't, Doctor Fuller, indeed it doesn't!" sobbed Constance,
utterly unstrung. "I've tried it, tried it again and again, and it only
makes the wrath turn the harder upon me; it never turns it away! Indeed,
indeed I've faithfully tried it."
"It's a hard pilgrimage for you at times I fear, Constance, but never
turn aside into wrong on your part," said the good doctor, gently.
"Oh, I'm sorry I flared up, I am sorry I spoke angrily. But my father!
To blame him when he is so patient, and has so much to endure! Must I
beg his wife's pardon?" said Constance, humbly.
Doctor Fuller concealed a smile. Sorry as he was for Constance, and
indignant at her stepmother's unkindness, it amused him to note how
completely in her thoughts Constance separated herself from the least
connection with her.
"I think it would be the better course, my dear, and I admire you for
being the one to suggest it," he answered, with an encouraging pat on
Constance's sleeve.
"Well, I will. I mean to do what is right, and I will," Constance
sighed. "But I truly think it will do no good," she added.
"Nor I," Doctor Fuller agreed with her in his thoughts, but he took good
care not to let this opinion reach his lips.