ROSE.
"Myles!"
"Ay, sweetheart, here am I."
"A little drink--nay, I want it not. I was dreaming thy cousin Barbara
was making a sallet, and I was fain to taste it, it looked so cool and
fresh,--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. I
marked some sorrel on the hill yester e'en, albeit something dry and
sere."
"Why doth the ship roll so sorely, Myles?"
"Thou 'rt not on shipboard, child, but in our little hospital here
ashore. Mindest thou not how thou didst mourn and cry to me, 'Take me
ashore, 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 come
for me to die." And the sick girl smiled wanly, inscrutably, the smile
of one who knows what he will not say.
The face of the fearless soldier grew white with terror, and almost
angrily he replied,--
"Hush, child! Thy time to die hath not come. Never think it, for it
shall not be."
"Nay, Myles, thou canst not daunten Death with thy stern voice and
masterful eye, though thou canst quell a score of other foes with one
glance."
And Rose, moving her frail little hand toward the sinewy fist clenched
upon the bed-covering, slid a finger within its grasp, and went softly
on with a pathetic ring of gayety in her voice,--
"I was dreaming, too, of home, mine own old home. I was gathering
cowslips in the meadow at St. Mary's, and mother stood by with little
Maudlin in her arms. They smiled, both of them, ah how sweetly they
smiled 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, I
fain 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 perhaps
one of those old Manx ballads thou didst use to lilt so lightly."
"Mistress White says they are ungodly, and a snare of Satan," replied
Rose dreamily, and before Myles could utter the wrathful comment that
quivered 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's
gravestone and to search out the muniments of thy race. Thou 'lt never
lay 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 soldier
turned his head aside and set his teeth upon his trembling lip. But
Rose, 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, but
many a fair manor in England, and many a stately home is his,' that was
what Barbara told me about thee afterward; and when I praised thy
presence, for I loved thee or ever I knew it myself, she straightened
her neck and said full proudly, 'Ay, and not only a goodly man, but a
brave soldier and noble soul.' 'Twas she who first saw that thou lovedst
me, Myles, and came and wept for joy upon my neck."
"Peace, peace, dear child. Thou wastest thy strength in talking
overmuch. Sleep, canst thou not, dear heart?"
"Dost think that Barbara will come hither? She promised me surefast that
she would so soon as there was a company ready. She said it was so
lonely 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 the
more that, as thou sayest, it was by going to visit her that I first saw
thee, 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 thy
sake, dear. And she was well pleased that we two should wed--leastways
she said so."
"And if she said it she meant it, for in all the years she tarried in my
mother'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 thou
needest 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 and
darkness into the sad twilight of early morning the soldier sat
motionless, holding that fragile hand, gazing upon that lovely face,
lovely yet so changed from the cherubic beauty that had won his heart
amid the summer fields of Man but three short years before.
What he thought, what he felt in those hours, he could not himself have
revealed, for a man's emotion is usually in inverse proportion to its
expression, and Myles Standish was essentially a man of action and not
of words; but God only knows how these strong inarticulate natures
suffer in the agony that divides bone from marrow, and yet leaves the
sufferer conscious of the capacity to live and to suffer yet again and
again.
In some respects this vigil resembled that of Bradford in hearing of
Dorothy's death, in some it was widely different, for with Bradford's
grief was mingled self-reproach and keen introspection; he weighed his
own life, he found it wanting, he condemned it, and offering his
suffering as righteous penance, he extolled the justice of God, and
submitted himself as a culprit to the scourge.
But Standish thought neither of the justice of God nor of his own
demerits, nor had he skill or practice for introspection. "A man under
authority and having soldiers under him," he both rendered and expected
obedience, prompt, entire, and unquestioning. His was a nature of
loyalty so magnificent as to need no buttresses of reason, or of
self-distrust, a loyalty so sweet as to be unconscious of itself, a
loyalty so entire that the soul could not get outside of it to consider
it objectively.
The order came from the King of kings, and it was to be obeyed, or
endured; the King could do no wrong.
Nor indeed had he been skilled to search, could Myles have found matter
for 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 with
all the force of his great nature, the man had cared little for other
women, turning with scorn from the meretricious charms of those he
encountered in camp or among his comrades, and finding no time or
inclination to seek others, so that except for the light fancies of an
hour, or the calm affection for his cousin Barbara, whom he found on one
of his visits to his home in Chorley giving a daughter's tendance to his
mother, Standish had passed his three and thirtieth birthday ignorant of
the nature of love, and mocking at its power.
But the first glance at the lovely girl weeping beside her mother's
grave 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 as
strong as it was gentle, and as tyrannous as sweet.
Motionless and erect the soldier sat the long night through, and as if
she gathered strength from the grasp of his healthy hand, Rose slept
quietly until the sun rose, and the women still well enough to wait upon
the sick came softly in.
Then she opened her eyes, fixed them upon his with a tender smile, and
said,--
"Poor Myles! Thou hast watched all night while selfish I held thee and
slept. But now begone and get thine own rest and food. I shall do well
with these kind friends."
"I'll leave thee, then, for a little, but I shall not be far away, and
if thou needest, send," replied her husband releasing his hand from the
frail yet burning grasp that still held him. "Dame Turner, thou 'lt see
that I am called if she asks for me, wilt thou?"
"Surely, Captain, but she is doing bravely this morning, and you had
better rest."
"Nay, but let her not ask twice for me, or aught else."
Leaving the house, and drawing one or two eager breaths of fresh air,
Standish climbed the hill where already the fortification he had
proposed was nearly complete, though not yet armed. Stepping upon a
great beam, squared but not laid in place, he stood looking around him
as if to see what Nature and his own work could offer to fill the great
gulf opening in the future.
A light fog still clung to the face of the water and hung in the hollows
of the hills; shrouded in its folds the Mayflower lay like a spectre
ship, ugly, unsafe, full of discomfort and misery, but yet the only link
between this handful of dying men and their home. Standish gazed at her
with a gathering darkness upon his face, until the burden of his thought
broke out in a savage murmur,--
"_Couldst_ not make thy way through yonder shoals and bring us to the
fair 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 finished
the sentence, and Standish's eyes came back to the rude hut where all
he loved lay dying, perhaps through this man's fault. At his feet lay
the sketch as it were of the town he and his comrades had laid down in
outline, and intended to build up as time and strength allowed. Already
Leyden Street, or The Street, as it was at first called, lay a distinct
thoroughfare from the Rock to the Fort, the eastern and western
extremities of the village. Along this street were staked out plots of
land, some larger and some smaller in the proportion of eight feet
frontage to each person in a family, the single men, and those women and
children 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, which
with its armament were to be his especial charge, and several of the
single men had been appointed to his family. Their own illness, and that
of Mistress Standish had, however, interfered with this arrangement, and
only John Alden shared the house as yet with Standish, the two men
sometimes eating at the Common house, the only one except the hospital
really finished, and sometimes cooking for themselves such food as they
could lay hands upon, for the house, unlike some of the others, already
boasted a chimney laid up of sticks and clay, and showed a generous
fireplace in the larger or living room which, with two little
sleeping-rooms and a loft, comprised the whole accommodation.
Upon this little home so hopefully begun, so neglected during the last
ten days, Myles gazed long and wistfully, smiling sadly as he saw Alden
come out and look up and down the street for him, finally going to seek
him in the Common house, a substantial structure some twenty feet
square, built of hewn oaken logs, fitted together as closely as
possible, and the crevices stopped with clay, which freely washed out in
stormy weather.
The roof, like all the rest, was covered with thatch formed of dried
reeds and grasses, and the windows were filled with oiled linen instead
of glass, still an article of costly luxury. Above the Common house
stood the building which the increasing mortality of the colony had
demanded as a hospital, and below it was the storehouse, where most of
the common stock of goods was collected, although some of the passengers
and their possessions still remained on board the brig, where Jones gave
them but scant hospitality or kindness.
Folding his arms more closely as the chill wind of February swept in
from seaward, Standish gazed upon all these objects as if they for the
first time attracted his attention, and then, as the lifting fog
revealed the distant landscape, he turned and fixedly regarded Captain's
Hill rising in its bold isolation to the north. Long he gazed, and then,
slightly shaking his head, stepped down from the beam and paced about
the little enclosure, half unconsciously examining the work of platform
and parapet, and following with a gunner's eye the range of the pieces
yet unmounted; pausing longest before the eastern front, he marked with
satisfaction how well the minion there to be placed would guard the
landing and sweep the solitary street, and even knelt to look along its
imaginary 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 no
right to desert his post."
But suddenly the smile faded, for as he turned to leave the Fort his
eyes 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 his
mind resolved, Myles was too much master of himself to need a second
conflict, and setting his lips firmly beneath the tawny moustache that
shaded them, he strode down the hill, and at his own door found John
Alden waiting for him and changing greetings with a party of four men
armed with sickles and attended by two dogs.
"Wish you good-morrow, Captain," said the foremost, a sturdy young
fellow with a pleasant English face.
"Good-morrow Peter Browne, and you, John Goodman," replied the captain
cordially. "Whither away?"
"To cut thatch in the fields nigh yon little pond," replied Browne
pointing in a westerly direction. "And I am taking Nero along to give
account 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 a
look of silent friendliness and sympathy more eloquent than words;
returning the greeting as mutely and as heartily, Standish would have
passed into his own bedroom, but the younger man interposed,--
"Thou 'lt break thy fast, Captain, wilt thou not? All is ready and
waiting your coming; some of the bean soup you liked yester even, and
some 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 a
man's devoir."
He spoke with a smile as brave as it was gentle, and passing in closed
the door.
"Doth he know she is dying!" muttered John throwing himself upon a
bench; "and Priscilla sickening and her mother dead!"