The Third Summer's Garnered Yield
Side by side now, through the weary days of another year, Constance
Hopkins and her stepmother bore and vanquished the cruel difficulties
which those days brought.
Dame Eliza had been sincere in her contrition as was proved by the one
test of sincerity--her actions bore out her words.
Toward Giles she held herself kindly, yet never showed him affection.
But toward Constance her manner was what might be called eagerly
affectionate, as if she so longed to prove her love for the girl that
the limitations of speech and opportunity left her unsatisfied of
expression.
Hunger was the portion of everyone in Plymouth; conditions had grown
harder with longer abiding there, except in the one--though that was
important--matter of the frightful epidemic of the first winter.
In spite of want Constance grew lovelier as she grew older. She was now
a full-grown woman, tall with the slenderness of early youth. Her scant
rations did not give her the gaunt look that most of the pilgrims, even
the young ones, wore as they went on working hard and eating little.
Instead, it etherealized and spiritualized Constance's beauty. Under her
wonderful eyes, with their far-off look of a dreamer warmed and
corrected by the light in them of love and sacrifice, were shadows that
increased their brilliance. The pallor that had replaced the wild-rose
colour in her cheeks did not lessen the exquisite fairness of her skin,
and it set in sharp contrast to it the redness of her lips and
emphasized their sweetness.
Dame Eliza watched her with a sort of awe, and Damaris was growing old
enough to offer to her sister's beauty the admiration that was apart
from her adoring love for that sister.
"Connie would set London afire, Stephen Hopkins," said Dame Eliza to her
husband one day. "Why not send her over to her cousins in Warwickshire,
to your first wife's noble kindred, and let her come into her own? It
seems a sinful thing to keep her here to fade and wane where no eye can
see her."
"This from you, Eliza!" cried Stephen Hopkins, honestly surprised, but
feigning to be shocked. "Nay but you and I have changed roles! Never was
I the Puritan you are, yet have I seen enough of the world to know that
it hath little to offer my girl by way of peace and happiness, though it
kneel before her offering her adulation on its salvers. Constance is
safer here, and Plymouth needs her; she can give here, which is in very
truth better than receiving; especially to receive the heartaches that
the great world would be like to give one so lovely to attract its eye,
so sensitive to its disillusionments. And as to wasted, wife, Con gives
me joy, and you, too, and I think there is not one among us who does not
drink in her loveliness like food, where actual food is short. Captain
Myles and our doctor would be going lame and halt, and would feel blind,
I make no doubt, did they not meet Constance Hopkins on their ways, like
a flower of eglantine, fair and sweet, and for that matter look how she
helps the doctor in his ministrations! Nay, nay, wife; we will keep our
Plymouth maid, and I am certain there will come to her from across seas
one day the romance and happiness that should be hers."
"Ah, well; life is short and it fades us sore. What does it matter where
it passes? I was a buxom lass myself, as you may remember, and look at
me now! Not that I was the rare creature that your girl is," sighed Dame
Eliza. "Is it true that Mr. Weston is coming hither?"
"True that he is coming hither," assented her husband, "and to our
house. He hath made us many promises, but kept none. He hath come over
with fishermen, in disguise, hath been cast away and lost everything at
the hands of savages. He is taking refuge with us and we shall outfit
him and deal with him as a brother. I do not believe his protestations
of good-will and the service he will do us in return, when he gets back
to England. Yet we must deal generously, little as we have to spare,
with a man in distress such as his."
"Giles is coming now, adown the way with a stranger; is this Mr.
Weston?" asked Dame Eliza.
"I'll go out to greet and bring him in. Yes; this is the man," said Mr.
Hopkins, going forth to welcome a man, whom in his heart he could not
but dread. The guest stayed with the Hopkins family for a few days, till
the colony should be won over to give him beaver skins, under his
promise to repay them with generous interest, when he should have traded
them, and was once more in England to send to Plymouth something of its
requirements.
On the final day of his stay Mr. Weston arose from the best seat in the
inglenook, which had been yielded to him as his right, and strolled
toward the door.
"Come with me, my lad," he said to Giles. "I have somewhat to say to
thee."
"Why not say it here?" asked Giles, surlily, though he followed slowly
after their guest.
"Giles Hopkins, you like me not," said Weston, when they had passed out
of earshot. "Why is it? Surely I not only use you well, but you are the
one person in this plantation that hath all the qualities I like best in
a man: brains, courage, youth, good birth, which makes for spirit, and
good looks. Your sister is all this and more, yet is the 'more' because
she is a maid, and that excludes her from my preference for my purposes.
Giles Hopkins, are you the man I take you for?"
"Faith, sir, that I cannot tell till you have shown me what form that
taking bears," said Giles.
"There you show yourself! Prudence added to my list of qualities!"
applauded Weston, clapping Giles on the back with real, or pretended
enthusiasm. "I take you for a man with resolution, courage to seize an
opportunity to make your fortune, to put yourself among those men of
consequence who are secure of place, and means to adorn it. Will you
march with me upon the way I will open to you?"
"'I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none,'"
replied Giles. "I don't know where I learned that, but it sounds like
one of my father's beloved phrases, from his favourite poet. It seems
well to fit the case."
"Shakespeare is not a Puritan text book," observed Weston, dryly. "No
Hopkins is ever fully atune with such a community as this. Therefore,
Giles, will you welcome my offer, as a more canting Plymouth pilgrim
might not. Not to waste more time: Will you collect, after I have gone,
all the skins which you can obtain from these settlers? And will you
hold them in a safe place together, assuring your neighbours that you
are secured of a market for them at better prices than they have ever
received? And will you then, after you have got together all the skins
available, ship them to me by means which I will open to you as soon as
I am sure of your cooperation? This will leave your Plymouth people
stripped to the winds; their commodity of trade gone, and, scant of food
as they are, they will come to heel like dogs behind him who will lead
them to meat. This will be yourself. I will furnish you with the means
to give them what they will require in order to be bound to you. You
shall be a prince of the New World, holding your little kingdom under
the great English throne; there shall be no end to your possible
grandeur. I will send you men, commodities for trade, arms, fine cloth
and raiment to fulfil the brightest fairy dreams of youth. And look you,
Giles Hopkins, this is no idle boast; it is within my power to do
exactly as I promise. Are you mine?"
"Yours!" Giles spoke with difficulty, the blood mounting to his temples
and knotting its veins, his hands clenching and unclenching as if it was
almost beyond him to hold them from throttling his father's guest. "Am I
a man or a cur? Cur? Nay, no cur is so low as you would make me. Betray
Plymouth? Turn on these people with whom I've suffered and wrought? I
would give my hand to kick you out into yonder harbour and drown you
there as you deserve. I have but to turn you over to our governor, and
short ways will you get with the good beaver skins which have been given
to you by these people you want me to trick, scant though they are of
everything, and that owing to you who have never sent them anything but
your lying promises. Nay, turn not so white! You may keep your courage,
as you keep your worthless life. Neither will I betray you to them. But
see to it that this last day of your stay here is indeed the last one!
Only till sunset do I give you to get out of Plymouth. If you are within
our boundaries at moonrise I will deliver you over, and urge your
hanging. And be sure these starved immigrants will be in a mood to hang
you higher than Haman, when they hear of what you have laid before me,
against them who are in such straits."
Mr. Weston did not delay to test Giles's sincerity. There was no
mistaking that he would do precisely as he promised, and Weston took his
departure a good two hours before sundown.
Giles stood with his hands in his pockets beside his father as Weston
departed.
"Giles, courtesy to a guest is a law that binds us all," suggested
Stephen Hopkins.
"Mercy, rather," said Giles, tersely. He nodded to Mr. Weston without
removing his hands. "A last salute, Mr. Weston," he said. "I expect
never to meet you again, neither in this, nor any other world."
"Giles!" cried Constance, shocked.
"Son, what do you know of this man that you dare insult him in
departing?" said Mr. Hopkins.
"That never will Plymouth receive one penny of value for the beaver
skins he hath taken, nor gratitude for the kindness shown him when he
was destitute," said Giles, turning on his heel shortly and leaving his
father to look after Weston, troubled by this confirmation of the doubt
that he had always felt of this false friend of Plymouth colony.
The effect upon Giles of having put far from him temptation and stood
fast by his fellow-colonists, though no one but himself knew of it, was
to arouse in him greater zeal for the welfare of Plymouth than he had
felt before, and greater effort to promote it.
Plymouth had been working upon the community plan; all its population
labouring together, sharing together the results of that labour, like
one large family. And, though the plan was based upon the ideal of
brotherhood, yet it worked badly; food was short, and the men not equal
in honest effort, nor willing to see their womankind tilling the soil
and bearing heavy burdens for others than their own families. So while
some bore their share of the work, and more, others lay back and
shirked. There must be a remedy found, and that at once, to secure the
necessary harvest in the second year, and third summer of the life of
the plantation.
Giles Hopkins went swinging down the road after he had seen the last of
Mr. Weston. He was bound for the governor's house, but he came up with
William Bradford on the way and laid before him his thoughts.
"Mr. Bradford," he said, "I've been considering. We shall starve to
death, even though we get the ship that is promised us from home,
bringing us all that for which we hope, unless we can raise better
crops. I am one of the youngest men, but may I lay before you my
suggestion?"
"Surely, my son," said Governor Bradford. "Old age does not necessarily
include wisdom, nor youth folly. What do you advise?"
"Give every family its allotment of land and seed," said Giles. "Let
each family go to work to raise what it shall need for itself, and abide
by the result of its own industry, or indolence, always supposing that
no misfortune excuses failure. I'll warrant we shall see new days--or
new sacks filled, which is more to the point--than when we let the
worthless profit by worth, or worth be discouraged by the leeches upon
it."
Governor Bradford regarded Giles smilingly. "Thou art an emphatic lad,
Giles, but I like earnestness and strong convictions. Never yet was
there any one who did not believe in his own panacea for whatever evil
had set him to discovering it! It was Plato's conceit, and other
ancients with him, that bringing into the community of a commonwealth
all property, making it shared in common, was to make mankind happy and
prosperous. But I am of your opinion that it has been found to breed
much confusion and discontent, and that it is against the ordinance of
God, who made it a law that a man should labour for his own nearest of
kin, and transmit to them the fruit of his labours. So will I act upon
your suggestion, which I had already considered, having seen how wrong
was Plato's utopian plan, or at least how ill it was working here. With
the approval of our councillors, I will distribute land, seed, and all
else required, and establish individual production instead of our
commonality."
"It is time we tried a new method, Governor Bradford," said Giles.
"Another year like these we've survived, and there would be no survival
of them. I don't remember how it felt to have enough to eat!"
"Poor lad," said the governor, kindly, though to the full he had shared
the scarcity. "It is hard to be young and hungry, for at best youth is
rarely satisfied, and it must be cruel to see every day at the worst!
But I have good ground to hope that our winter is over and past, and
that the voice of the turtle will soon be heard in our land. In other
words, I think that a ship, or possibly more than one, will be here this
summer, bringing us new courage in new helpers, and supplies in plenty."
"It is to be hoped," said Giles, and went away.
The new plan was adopted, and it infused new enthusiasm into the
Plymouth people. Constance insisted upon having for her own one section
of her father's garden. Indeed all the women of the colony went to work
in the fields now, quite willingly, and without opposition from their
men, since their work was for themselves.
"It was wholly different from having their women slaving for strong men
who were no kin to them, as they had done when the community plan
prevailed," said the men of Plymouth. And so the women of Plymouth went
to work willingly, even gaily.
There was great hope of a large crop, early in May, when all the land
was planted, and little green heads were everywhere popping up to
announce the grain to come. Constance had planted nothing but peas; she
said that she loved them because they climbed so bravely, and put out
their plucky tendrils to help themselves up. Her peas were the pride of
her heart, and all Plymouth was admiring them, when the long drouth set
in.
From the third week in May till the middle of July not a drop of rain
fell upon the afflicted fields of Plymouth. The corn had been planted
with fish, which for a time insured it moisture and helped it, but
gradually the promising green growth drooped, wilted, browned, and on
the drier plain, burned and died under the unshadowed sun.
Constance saw her peas drying up, helpless to save them. She fell into
the habit of sitting drooping like the grain, on the doorstep of the
Leyden Street house, her bonnet pushed back, her chin in her hands,
sorrowfully sharing the affliction of the soil.
Elder Brewster, passing, found her thus, and stopped.
"Not blithe Constantia like this?" he said.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Brewster," said Constance, rising, "just like this. The
drouth has parched my heart and dried up my courage. For nine weeks no
rain, and our life hanging upon it! Oh, Elder Brewster, call for a day
of fasting and prayer that we may be pitied by the Lord with the
downfall of his merciful rain! Without it, without His intervention,
starvation will be ours. But it needs not me to tell you this!"
"My daughter, I will do as you say; indeed is it time, and I have been
thinking so," replied the elder. "The day after to-morrow shall be set
aside to implore Heaven's mercy on our brave plantation, which has borne
and can offer the sacrifice of a long-suffering patience to supplement
its prayers."
The day of fast and prayer arose with the same metallic sky that had
cloudlessly stretched over Plymouth for two months. Not a sign of mercy,
nor of relenting was anywhere above them as the people of Plymouth, the
less devout subdued to the same fearless eagerness to implore for mercy
that the more devout ones felt, went silently along the dusty roads,
heads bent beneath the scorching sun, without having tasted food,
assembling in their meeting house to pray.
In the rear of the bare little building stood the Indians who lived
among the Englishmen, Squanto at their head, with folded arms watching
and wondering what results should follow this appeal to the God of the
white men, now to be tested for the first time in a great public way as
to whether He was faithful to His promise, as these men said, and
powerful to fulfil.
All day long the prayer continued, with the coming and going of the
people, taking turns to perform the necessary tasks of the small farms,
and to continue in supplication.
There had been no hotter day of all those so long trying these poor
people, and no cloud appeared as the sun mounted and reached his height,
then began to descend. Damaris took Constance's hand as they walked
homeward, then dropped it.
"It is too hot; it burns me," she said, fretfully.
Constance raised her head and pushed back her hair with the backs of her
burning hands. She folded her lips and snuffed the air, much as a fine
dog stands to scent the birds. Constance was as sensitive to atmospheric
conditions as a barometer.
"Damaris, Damaris, rain!" she cried.
And the "little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand," was rising on the
horizon.
Before bedtime the sky was overcast, and the blessed, the prayed-for
rain began to fall. Without wind or lightning, quietly it fell, as if
the angels of God were sent to open the phials of the delicious wetness
and pour it steadily upon Plymouth. As the night went on the rain
increased, one of the soft, steady, soaking rains that penetrate to the
depths of the sun-baked earth, find the withered rootlets, and heal and
revivify.
Plymouth wakened to an earth refreshed and moistened by a downpour so
steady, so generous, so calm that no rain could have seemed more like a
direct visitation of Heaven's mercy than this, which the reverent and
awe-stricken colony, even to the doubting Indians, so received. For by
it Plymouth was saved.
It was two weeks later that Doctor Fuller came hastily to Stephen
Hopkins's door.
"Friends," he said, with trembling voice, "the _Anne_ is coming up!
Mistress Fuller and my child are aboard, as we have so often reminded
one another. Constance, you promised to go with me to welcome this
fateful ship."
"Have I time to make a little, a very small toilette, doctor mine?"
cried Constance, excitedly. "I want to look my prettiest to greet
Mistress Fuller, and to tell her what I--what we all owe to you."
"You have a full half hour, yet it is a pleasure to watch the ship
approach. Hasten, then, vain little Eve of this desolate First Abiding
Place!" the doctor gave her permission.
Constance ran away and began to dress with her heart beating fast.
"I wonder why the _Anne_ means so much to me, as if she were the
greatest event of all my days here?" she thought.
Her simple white gown slipped over her head and into place and out of
its thin, soft folds her little throat rose like a calla, and her face,
all flushed, like a wild rose.
She pinned a lace neckerchief over her breast, and laid its ruffles into
place with fluttering fingers, catching it with a delicate hoop of
pearls that had been her mother's. For once she decided against her
Puritan cap, binding her radiant hair with fillets of narrow blue velvet
ribbon, around and over which its little tendrils rose, wilful and
resisting its shackles.
On her hands she drew long mitts of white lace, and she slipped her feet
into white shoes, which had also once been worn by her mother in
far-away days when she danced the May dances in Warwickshire.
Constance's glass was too small, too high-hung, to give her the effect
of her complete figure, but it showed her the face that scanned it, and
what it showed her flushed that lovely face with innocent joy in its
loveliness, and completed its perfection.
She got the full effect of her appearance in the eyes of the four men in
the colony whom, till this day, she had loved best, her father, Giles,
Doctor Fuller, and Myles Standish, as she came down the winding stairway
to them.
They all uttered an involuntary exclamation, and took a step toward her.
Her father took her hand and tucked it into his own.
"You are attired like a bride, my wild rose," he said. "Who are you
going to meet?"
"Who knows!" cried Constance, gaily, with unconscious prophecy.
"Mistress Fuller, but who can say whom else beside?"
The _Anne_ came up with wide-spread canvas, free of the gentle easterly
breeze. Her coming marked the end of the hardest days of Plymouth
colony; she was bringing it much that it needed, some sixty colonists;
the wives and children of many who had borne the brunt of the beginning
and had come on the _Mayflower_; new colonists, some among Plymouth's
best, some too bad to be allowed to stay, and stores and articles of
trade abundantly.
As the coming of the _Anne_ marked the close of Plymouth's worst days,
so it meant to many who were already there the dawn of a new existence.
Doctor Fuller took into his arms his beloved wife and his child, with
grateful tears running down his face.
He turned to present Mistress Fuller to Constance, but found, instead,
Captain Myles Standish watching with a smile at once tender, melancholy,
and glad another meeting. A young man, tall, browned, gallant, and
fearless in bearing, with honest eyes and a kindly smile, had come off
the _Anne_ and had stood a moment looking around him. His eyes fell upon
Constance Hopkins on her father's arm, her lips parted, her eyes
dilated, her cheeks flushed, a figure so exquisite that he fell back in
thrilled wonder. Never again could he see another face, so completely
were his eyes and heart filled by this first sight of Constance Hopkins,
unconsciously waiting for him, her husband-to-be, upon the shore of the
New World.
Damaris was clinging to her hand; Giles and her step-mother were
watching her with loving pride; it was easy to see that all those who
had come ashore from the _Anne_ were admiring this slender blossom of
Plymouth.
But the young man went toward her, almost without knowing that he did
so, drawn to her irresistibly, and Constance looked toward him, and saw
him for the first time, her pulses answering the look in his eyes.
Myles Standish joined them; he had learned the young man's name.
"Welcome, Nicholas Snowe, to Plymouth," he said. "We have borne much,
but we have won our fight; we have founded our kingdom. Nicholas Snowe,
this is a Plymouth maid, Constance Hopkins."
"I am glad you are come," said Constance; her voice was low and the hand
that she extended trembled slightly.
"I, too, am glad that you are here, Nicholas Snowe," added Stephen
Hopkins. "Yes, this is Constance Hopkins, a Plymouth maid, and my
dearest lass."
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
Transcriber's Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
Page 36: "remanent" changed to "remnant" (what would my remnant of life
be to me)
Page 51: "so" changed to "no" (I mean no such thing, as well you know)
Page 67: "senstive" changed to "sensitive" (a girl, sensitive and easily
wounded)
Page 83: "devasting" changed to "devastating" (The devastating diseases
of winter)
Page 106: "begining" changed to "beginning" (the beginning of a street)
Page 140: "wordly" changed to "worldly" (to take pride in worldly things)
Page 160: normalised "work-aday" (her work-a-day tasks)
Page 180: changed case of "Come" to lower case (come with me; I need
you)
Page 192: "mercie" changed to "merci" (belle dame sans merci)
Page 196: "be" changed to "he" (he began to teach Constance other
things)
Page 210 "Shakspeare" normalised to "Shakespeare" (we mortals be,
as Shakespeare, whom)