Sundry Herbs and Simples
Stephen Hopkins and his son drew no nearer together as the days went by.
Hurt and angry, Giles would not bend his stiff young neck to humble
himself, checking any impulse to do so by reminding himself that his
father had been unjust to him.
Yet Doctor Fuller, good, kind, and wise, had the right of it when he
said to the lad one day, laying his arm across Giles's shoulders,
caressingly:
"Remember, lad, that who is right, or who is wrong in a quarrel, or an
estrangement, matters little, since we are all insects of a day and our
dignity at best a poor thing, measured by Infinite standards. But he is
always right who ends a quarrel; ten thousand times right if he does it
at the sacrifice of his own sense of injury, laying down his pride to
lift a far greater possession. There may be a difference of opinion as
to which is right when two have fallen out, but however that be, the
situation is in itself wrong beyond dispute, and all the honour is his
who ends it."
Giles heard him with lowered head, and knit brows, but he did not resent
the brief sermon. Doctor Fuller was a gentle spirit; all his days were
given over to healing and helping; he was free from the condemnatory
sternness of most of the colonists, and Giles, as all others did, loved
him.
Giles kicked at the pebbles in the way, the slow colour mounting in his
face. Then he threw back his head and looked the good doctor squarely in
the eyes.
"Ah, well, Doctor Fuller," he said. "I'd welcome peace, but what would
you? My father condemns me, sees no good in me, nor would he welcome
back the old days when we were close friends. There will be a ship come
here from home some time on which I can sail back to England. It will be
better to rid my father of my hateful presence; yet should I hate to
leave Sis--Constance."
"May the ship never leave the runway that shall take you from us, Giles,
lad," said the doctor. "You are blind not to see that it is too-great
love for thee that ails thy father! It often works to cross purposes,
our unreasonable human affection. But the case is by no means past
curing when love awry is the disease. Do your part, Giles, and all will
be well."
But Giles did not alter his course, and when Captain Myles Standish said
to Stephen Hopkins: "We set forth on the eighteenth of September to
explore the Massachusetts. I shall take ten men of our colour, and three
red men, two besides Squanto. Let me have your lad for one of my band,
old friend. I think it will be his remedy." Stephen Hopkins welcomed the
suggestion, as Giles himself did, and it was settled. The Plymouth
company sailed away in their shallop on a beautiful, sunshiny morning
when the sun had scarcely come up out of the sea.
Giles and his father had shaken hands on parting, and Stephen Hopkins
had given the boy his blessing; both were conscious that it might be a
final parting, since no one could be sure what would befall the small
band among untried savages.
Yet there was no further reconciliation than this, no apology on the one
side, nor proffered pardon on the other.
Constance clung long around her brother's neck in the dusk in which she
had risen to prepare his breakfast; she did not go down to see the
start, being heavy hearted at Giles's going, and going without lifting
the cloud completely between him and his father. She bade him good-bye
in the long low room under the rear of the lean-to, where wood was piled
and water buckets were set and storage made of supplies.
"Oh, Giles, Giles, my dearest, may God keep you and bring you back!"
Constance whispered, and then let her brother go.
She went about her household tasks that morning with lagging step and
unsmiling lips. Damaris followed her, wistfully, much depressed by the
unusual dejection of Constance, who, in spite of her stepmother's
disapproval of anything like merriment, ordinarily contrived to
entertain Damaris to the top of her bent when the household tasks were
getting done.
"Will Giles never come home again, Connie?" the child asked at last, and
Constance cried with a catch in her voice:
"Yes, oh yes, little sister! We know he will, because we so want him!"
"There must be a better ground for hope than our poor desires,
Damaris," Dame Eliza was beginning, speaking over the child at
Constance; when opportunely a shadow fell across the floor through the
open door and Constance turned to see Doctor Fuller smiling at her.
"Good morning, Mistress Hopkins; good morning little Damaris; and good
morning to you, Constance lass!" he said. "Is this a day of especial
business? Are you too busy for charity to your neighbours, beginning
with me, and indirectly reaching out to our entire community?"
Constance smiled at him with that swift brightening of her face that was
one of her chief attractions; her expression was always playing between
grave and gay.
"It is not a day of especial business, Doctor Fuller," she said, "or at
least all our days are especial ones where there is everything yet to be
done. But I could give it over to charity better than some other days,
and if it were charity to you--though I fear there is nothing for such
as I to do for such as you--then how gladly would I do it, if only to
pay a tittle of the debt we all owe to you."
"Good child!" said the doctor. "I need help and comradeship in my herb
gathering; it is to be done to-day, if you will be that helper. There is
no wind, and there is that benignity of sun and sky that hath always
seemed to me to impart special virtue to herbs gathered under it. So
will you come with me? We will gather the morning long, and this
afternoon I purpose distilling, in which necessary work your deft
fingers will be of the greatest assistance to me."
"Gladly will I go," cried Constance, flushing with pleasure. "I will
fetch my basket and shears, put on my bonnet, and be ready in a trice.
Shall I prepare a lunch, or shall I be at home again for dinner?"
"Neither, Constance; there is yet another alternative." Doctor Fuller
looked with great satisfaction at Constance's happier face as he spoke;
she had been so melancholy when he had come. "I have arranged that you
shall be my guest at dinner in my house, and after it we will to work in
my substitute for a laboratory. Mistress Hopkins, Constance will be
quite safe, be assured; and you, I trust, will not mind a quiet day with
Damaris and Oceanus to bear you company?"
"And if I did mind it, would that prevent it?" demanded Dame Eliza with
a toss of her head. "Not even with a 'by your leave' does Constantia
Hopkins arrange her goings and comings."
"Which was wholly my fault in not first putting my question to you,
instead of to Constance directly," said Doctor Fuller. "And surely there
is no excuse for my blundering, I who am trained to feel pulses and look
at tongues! But since it is thus happily concluded, and your stepmother
is glad to let you have a sort of holiday, come then; hasten, Constance
girl!"
Constance ran upstairs to hide her laughing face. She came down almost
at once with that face shaded by a deep bonnet, a basket hung on her
arm, shears sticking up out of it, pulling on long-armed half-gloves as
she came.
As they walked down the narrow street Constance glanced up at Doctor
Fuller, interrogatively.
"And----?" the doctor hinted.
"And I was wondering whether you were not treating me to-day as your
patient?" Constance said. "A patient with a trouble of the mind, and
also a heart complaint?"
"Which means----?" The doctor again waited for Constance to fill out his
question.
"Which means that you knew I was sorely troubled about Giles; that he
had gone without better drawing to his father; that I was anxious about
him, even while wishing him to go; and that you gave me this day in the
woods with you for my healing," Constance answered.
"At least not for your harm, little maid," said the doctor. "It hath
been my experience that the gatherer of herbs gets a healing of spirit
that is not set down in our books among the beneficial qualities of the
plants, but which may, under conditions, be their best attribute.
Although the singing of brooks and birds, the sweetness of the winds,
the solemn nobility of the trees, the vastness of the sky, the
over-brooding presence of God in His creation are compounded with the
herbs, and impart their powers to us with that of the plants."
"That is true," said Constance. "I feel my vexations go from me as if my
soul were bathed in a miraculous elixir, when I go troubled to the woods
and sit in them awhile."
"Of a certainty," agreed the doctor, bending his tall, thin figure to
pick a small leaf which he held up to Constance. "See this, with its
likeness to the halberd at its base? This is vervain, which is called
'Simpler's Joy,' because of the good it yields to those who, like us
to-day, are simplers, gatherers of simple herbs for mankind's benefit.
Now let us hope that this single plant is a forerunner of many of its
kind, for it hath been a sacred herb among the ancients, as among
Christians, and it should be an augury of good to us to find it. Look
you, Constance, I do not mind confessing it to you, for you are not only
young, but of that happy sort who yield to imagination something of its
due. I like my omens to be favourable, not in superstition, though our
brethren would condemn me thus, but from a sense of harmony and the
satisfaction of it."
"How pleasant a hearing is that, Doctor Fuller!" laughed Constance. "I
love to have the new moon aright, though well I know the moon and I have
naught in common! And though I do not believe in fairies, yet do I like
to make due allowance for them!"
"It is the poetry of these things, and children like you and me, my
dear, are not to be deprived of poetry by mere facts and common sense,"
said the doctor, sticking in the band of his hat the sprig of blue
vervain which his sharp eyes had discovered.
"Yonder on the side of that sandy hill shall we find mints, pennyroyal,
and the close cousin of it, which is blue curls. There is the prunelle,
and welcome to it! Gather all you can of it, Constance. That is
self-heal, and a sovereign remedy for quinsy. So is it a balm for wounds
of iron and steel tools, and for both these sorts of afflictions, what
with our winter climate as to quinsy and our hard labour as to wounds, I
am like to need abundant self-heal."
Thus pleasantly chatting Doctor Fuller led the way, first up the sandy
hill where grew the pennyroyal, all along the border of the woods where
self-heal abounded. They found many plants unexpectedly, which the
doctor always hailed with the joy of one who loved them, rather more
than of the medical man who required them, and Constance busily snipped
the stems, listening to the doctor's wise and kindly talk, loving him
for his goodness and kindness to her in making her heart light and
giving her on this day, which had promised to be sad, of his own
abundant peace.
"Now, Constance, I shall lead you to a secret of my own," announced the
doctor as the sun mounted high above them, and noon drew near. "Come
with me. But do not forget to rejoice in this wealth of bloom, purple
and blue, these asters along the wayside. They are the glory of our new
country, and for them let us praise God who sets beauty so lavishly
around us, having no use but to praise Him, for not to any other purpose
are these asters here, and yet, though I cannot use them, am I humbly
thankful for them. And for these plumes of golden and silver flowers
beside them, which we did not know across the seas. Now, Constance, what
say you to that?"
He pointed triumphantly to a small group of plants with heart-shaped
leaves, having small leaves at their base, and which twisted as they
grew around their neighbouring plants, or climbed a short distance on
small shrubs. Groups of drooping berries of brilliant, translucent
scarlet lighted up the little plant settlement, hanging as gracefully as
jewels set by a skilful goldsmith for a fair lady's adornment.
"I think they are wonderfully beautiful. They are like ornaments for a
beautiful lady! What are they?" cried Constance.
"They are themselves the beautiful lady," Doctor Fuller said, with a
pleased laugh. "That is their name--belladonna, which means 'beautiful
lady.' They are _Atropa Belladonna_, to give them their full title. But
their beauty is only in appearance. If they are a belle dame, then she
is the _belle dame sans merci_, a cruel beauty if you cross her. You
must never taste these berries, Constance. I myself planted these vines.
I brought them with me, carefully set in soil. The beautiful lady can be
cruel if you take liberties with her, but she is capable of kindness. I
shall gather the belladonna now and distil it. In case any one among us
ate of poisonous toadstools, and were seized with severe spasms of the
nature of the effect of toadstools, belladonna alone would save them.
Nightshade, we also call this plant. See, I will myself gather this, by
your leave, my assistant, and place it in my own herb wallet."
The doctor suited the action to the word, arose from his knees and
carefully brushed them. "When Mistress Fuller comes, which is a weary
day awaiting, I hope she may not find me fallen into untidiness," he
said, whimsically. "Constance, the ship is due that will bring my wife
and child, if my longing be a calendar!"
"Indeed, dear Doctor Fuller, I often think of it," said Constance. "You
who are so good to us all are lonely and heavy of heart, but none is
made to feel it. The comfort is that Mistress Fuller and your little
one are safe and you will yet see them, while so many of the women who
came hither in our ship are not here now, and those who loved them will
never see them in this world again."
"Surely, my child. I am not repining, for, though I am opposed to the
extreme strict views of some of our community, and they look askance
upon me for it at times, yet do I not oppose the will of God," said the
doctor, simply.
"Who of them fulfils it as you do?" cried Constance. "You who go out to
minister to the sick savages, not content to heal your own brethren?"
"And are not the savages also our brothers?" asked the doctor, taking up
his wallet. "Come then, child; we will go home, and this afternoon shall
you learn something of distilling, as you have, I hope, this morning
learned something of selecting herbs for remedies."
Constance went along at the doctor's side, swinging her bonnet, not
afraid of the hot September sun upon her face. It lighted up her
disordered hair, and turned it into the semblance of burnished metal,
upon which the doctor's eyes rested with the same satisfaction that had
warmed them as he looked on the generous beauty of aster and goldenrod,
and he saw with pleasure that Constance's face was also shining, its
brightness returned, and he was well content with the effect of his
prescription for this patient.
Constance had a gift of forgetting herself in an ecstasy that seized her
when the weight of her new surroundings was lifted. With Doctor Fuller
she felt perfect sympathy, and her utter delight in this lovely day
bubbled up and found expression.
Doctor Fuller heard her singing one of her little improvised songs,
softly, under her breath, to a crooning air that was less an air than a
succession of sweet sounds. It was the sort of little song with which
Constance often amused the children of the settlement, and Doctor
Fuller, that childlike soul, listened to her with much of their pleasure
in it.
"Blossom, and berry, and herb of grace;
Purple and blue and gold lighting each place;
Herbs for our body and bloom for our heart--
Beauty and healing, for each hath its part.
Under the sunshine and in the starlight,
Warp and woof weareth the pattern aright.
Shineth the fabric when summer's at end:
The garment scarce hiding the Heart of our Friend,"
Constance sang, nor did the doctor interrupt her simple Te Deum by a
word.
At the doctor's house dinner awaited them, kept hot, for they were
tardy. After it, and when Constance had helped to put away all signs of
its having been, the doctor said to her:
"Now for my laboratory, such as it is, and for our task, my apprentice
in medicine!" He conducted Constance into a small room, at the rear of
the house where he had set up tables of various sizes of his own
manufacture, and where were ranged on the shelves running around three
sides of the room at different heights, bowls, glasses of odd
shapes--the uses of which were not known to Constance--and small,
delicate tools, knives, weights, and piles of strips of linen, neatly
rolled and placed in assorted widths in an accessible corner.
"Mount this stool, Constance, and watch," the doctor bade her. "Pay
strict attention to what I shall do and tell you. Take this paper and
quill and note names, or special instructions. I am serious in wishing
you to know something of my work. I need assistance; there is no man to
be spared from man's work in the plantation, and, to speak the truth,
your brain is quicker to apprehend me, as your hand is more skilful to
execute for me in the matters upon which I engage than are those of any
of the lads who are with us. So mount this high stool, my lass, and
learn your lesson."
Constance obeyed him. Breathlessly she watched the beginnings of the
distillation of the belladonna which she had seen gathered.
As the small drops fell slowly into the glass which the doctor had set
for them, he began to teach Constance other things, while the
distillation went on.
"These are my phials, Constance," he said. "Commit to memory the names
of their contents, and note their positions. See, on these shelves are
my drugs. Do you see this dark phial? That is for my belladonna. Now
note where it is to stand. In that line are poisons. Their phials are
dark, to prevent mistaking them for less harmful drugs, which are on
this other shelf, in white containers."
The doctor taught, and Constance obediently repeated her lesson, till
the sound of the horn that summoned the settlers to their homes for
supper, and the level rays of the sun across the floor, warned the
doctor and his pupil that their pleasant day was over.
"But you must return, till you are letter perfect in your knowledge,
Constance," the doctor said. "I have decided that there must be one
person among us whom I could dispatch to bring me what I needed in case
I were detained, and could not come myself."
"I will gladly learn, Doctor Fuller," said Constance, her face
confirming her assurance. "I have no words to tell you how happy it
makes me to hope that I may one day be useful in such great matters."
"As you will be," the doctor said. "But remember, my child, the lesson
of the fields: It does not concern us whether great or small affairs are
given us to do; the one thing is to do well what comes our way; to be
content to fill the background of the picture, or to be a figure in the
foreground, as we may be required. Aster, goldenrod, herb, all are doing
their portion."
"Indeed you have helped me to see that, dear Doctor Fuller," said
Constance, gently. "It is not ambition, but the remembrance of last
winter's hardships, when there was so little aid, that makes me wish I
could one day help."
"Yes, Constance; I know. Good-night, my child, and thank you for your
patient attention, for your help; most of all for your sweet
companionship," said the doctor.
"Oh, as to that, I am grateful enough to you! You made to-day a happy
girl out of a doleful one!" cried Constance. "Good-night, Doctor
Fuller!"
She ran down the street, singing softly:
"Flower, and berry, and herb of grace;"
till she reached her home and silenced her song with a kiss on eager
Damaris's cheek.