A LOVE PHILTRE.
The last pniese had made his uncouth obeisance and departed, and busy
hands were removing all signs of the late commotion in haste that the
setting sun should find the village ready for its Sunday rest and peace,
when Myles Standish suddenly presented himself before Priscilla Molines
as she came up from the spring with a pile of wooden trenchers in her
hands.
"Mistress Molines a word with you," began he with an unconscious
imperiousness that at once aroused the girl's rebellious spirit.
"Nay, Captain, I am not of your train band, and your business must await
my pleasure and convenience. Now, I am over busy."
"Nay, then, if I spoke amiss I crave your pardon, mistress, and had we
more time I would beat my brains for some of the flowery phrases I used
to hear among the court gallants who came to learn war in Flanders. But
I also have business almost as weighty as thine and as little able to
brook delay. So I pray you of your courtesy to set down your platters on
this clean sod, and listen patiently to me for a matter of five
minutes."
"I am listening, sir."
"Nay, put down the platters or let me put them down."
"There then, and glad am I"--
"Of what, mistress?"
"That I'm not often under thy orders, sir."
"Ah! But we'll waste no time in skirmishing, fair enemy. Tell me rather
what didst mean by the loving-cup thou sendst me? May I take it sooth
and truly as relenting on thy part?"
"I send you a loving-cup, sir!" exclaimed the girl, her eyes flashing,
and her color rising.
"Yes. Call it by what name you will; I mean the cup Desire Minter
brought me from thee, with a message that I should drink thy health."
"Loth were I to think, Captain Standish, that you would willfully insult
a maid with none to defend her, and so I will charitably suppose that
you have been forced to drink too many healths to guard well thine own.
Good e'en, sir."
"Now by the God that made us both, wench, I'll have an end of this. Nay,
not one step dost thou stir until you or I are laid in a lie."
"A lie, Captain Standish!"
"Mayhap my own lie. I say that Desire Minter brought me a silver cup of
some sweet posset, such as you have made for our sick folk time and
again, and bade me from you quaff it to your health."
"And that is God's truth, say you, sir?"
"Mistress Molines, my word has not often been doubted, and you force me
to remind you that I come not of mechanical"--
"Nay, nay, stop there, an' it please you, sir! We'll unwind this coil
before we snarl another. Fear not that my base mechanical blood shall
ever sully your noble strain; but mean though I be, my habit is a
tolerably truthful one, and I tell you once and for all that I sent you
no cup, I made you no posset, I desired no health drunk by you."
"Nay, then, what hath this girl Desire wrought? And truth to tell
Priscilla, I fear me 't is poison, for a shrewd pain seizeth me ever and
anon, and a strange heaviness is in my head."
"And there's a sultry color on your cheek--nay, then, we'll see the
surgeon"--
"And thou 'lt forgive whatever I have said amiss, Priscilla, for mayhap
I'll trouble thee no more. Like enough she hath revenged herself"--
"For your scorn of her love," interposed Priscilla vivaciously. "Like
enough, like enough. Come to the house, Captain, and let us take counsel
with the dear mother. She still knows best."
"Go thou, Priscilla. It hardly beseems a man and a soldier to seek
redress for a wench's love scratch at the hands of an old woman--nay,
nay, fire not up afresh! No one can honor Mistress Brewster more than I
do, but tell me, is she a man or is she young? Sooth now, Priscilla!"
"And still in thy masterful mood thou 'lt have the last word, doughty
Captain. But go you home, then, and bid John Alden make a fire and heat
a good kettle of water, and I'll away to the mother who will deal with
Desire in short measure."
"'T is good counsel and I'll follow it, for in sober sadness I feel
strangely amiss." And the soldier, who now was as livid as he had been
flushed, strode away up the hill, while Priscilla picking up the
trenchers fled like a lapwing into the house where she found Desire
seated sullenly in a corner, while the elder, his wife, and the governor
were gathered together near the fire cozily discussing the events of
the day. Standing before them and restraining her natural vivacity that
it might not discredit the importance of her story, Priscilla in brief
and pungent phrases told the story of the loving draught, and as Desire
rose and stole toward the door laid a hand upon her arm that effectually
detained her until the elder sternly said,--
"Remain you here, Desire Minter, until this report is sifted."
"Were it not well to send at once for our good physician, that he may
know what hath been done before he sees the captain?" suggested Bradford
mildly, and the elder assenting, Priscilla was dispatched for doctor
Fuller, who arrived within the minute, and listened with profound
attention, while Mistress Brewster, to whom alone the girl would reply,
extracted from her a most startling story.
"The captain first of all asked me to wife, and if he had not been wiled
away from me by artful"--
"Nay, nay, Desire, thou 'rt not to say such things as that," interposed
the dame with gentle severity, and Bradford added in much the same
tone,--
"'T was thine own idle fancy, girl, that set thee on such a notion. The
captain hath averred to me as Christian man that he never made proffer
to thee nor wished so to do since first he set eyes on thee."
"He did then," muttered Desire sullenly, and Mistress Brewster
interposed.
"Leaving that aside, tell us, Desire, what didst thou give the captain
to drink, and why didst say that Priscilla sent it?"
"Marry, because she hath bewitched him, and I wot well he would take it
from her without gainsaying."
"But what was it thou gavest him?"
"'T was--there was a wench here with the savages, and Squanto told me
she was a wise woman and knew how to work spells"--
"Well then, go on, Desire."
"And so I went with her pulling herbs in the fields and swamps, and with
one word English and one of jabber, we knew each other's meaning, and I
gave her the buckle of my belt which was broke and none here could mend
it."
"A generous gift, truly," interposed the elder, but his wife beseeching
silence with a gesture asked,--
"And what gave she thee, Desire?"
"Some herbs, mother."
"And what were the herbs to do?"
"She said steep them well, and give the broth to any man I fancied, and
it would turn his fancy on me."
"A love philtre! _Vade retrograde Sathanas!_" exclaimed the elder half
rising from his chair, but here the doctor eagerly interposed,--
"What like was the herb, girl? Hast any of it in store for a second
dose?"
"Mayhap--a little," muttered Desire twisting and turning, but seeing no
means of escape.
"Go and fetch it," commanded the elder. "And Priscilla do thou go too
and see that the wretched creature doth not make way with it."
"And sith John Howland is after a sort betrothed to the poor bemused
child, I think it well to summon him, that he may advise with us as to
the sequela of this folly. I will call him to the Council." And Bradford
followed the two girls from the room.
"If she hath murdered the captain, she shall die the death," exclaimed
the elder striding about the room, and pausing before the great chair
where his pale and fragile wife sat looking up at him with beseeching
eyes.
"Nay, William, she is hardly older than our own dear girls, and it would
ill become us who still carry our own lives in our hands to deprive a
poor silly maid of hers."
"So the best road out of the maze is to cure the captain," remarked
Doctor Fuller dryly. "After that we'll marry the girl to John Howland,
and trust him to keep her quiet. Here they come."
And in at the open door came the governor and Howland, Desire and
Priscilla, who carried in her hand a little box full of half-dried
leaves, which she presented to the doctor, who solemnly pulling from his
pocket a pair of clumsy iron-bowed spectacles put them astride his nose,
and taking the herbs to the window carefully examined them, while all
the rest stood anxiously around staring with all their might.
"Hm! Hah! Yes, well yes, I see, I see!" murmured the botanist, and then
turning to Bradford he fixed him with a meditative gaze over the tops of
his barnacles and said,--
"You know something of botany, Governor. Say you not that this is the
_Platanthera Satyrion_, the herb supposed to give vigor to the hearts of
those wild men whom the mythologists celebrate?"
"Is it? I should have taken it for the iris whose flower I have noted in
these swamps."
"'T is akin, ay, distant kin, but with the difference that maketh one
harmless, and 't other deadly. I will take it to Sister Winslow's house
and examine it with my books, but still I can aver at once that 't is
Platanthera; and if it is also Satyrion I will promise that it shall
prove only nauseous and distasteful to our good Captain, and by no means
deadly. I will go to see him."
"And John Howland," said the Governor turning toward the young man who
stood looking with aversion at the figure of Desire, who with her head
in her apron wept loud and angrily, "it seemeth to me that since this
maid is betrothed to you, and is manifestly unfit to guide herself, that
it is best for you to marry her here, and now, and after that train her
into more discretion than she naturally showeth."
"May it please you, Master Bradford, and you, Elder," replied Howland
coldly, "it seemeth to me that a woman who shows so little modesty in
the pursuit of one man is scarce fit wife for another. I did indeed
promise my late dear mistress whose ward this girl was, that I would
care for her, and if need be take her to wife; but sure am I that if
that godly and discreet matron could know of all this, she would hold me
free of my bonds, the rather that I have never looked upon her with that
tenderness that God putteth in our hearts toward those"--
"Nay, then, if it comes to that," interposed Desire, snatching away her
apron and showing a swollen and tear-stained face, "I hate and despise
thee, John Howland, and always have and always will; and if I took thee
for my bachelor at all it was only in hope that 't would give a jealous
twinge to the heart of a better man, and if at the last I failed of him
thou wouldst be better than none; but I've changed my mind, and now I'll
none of thee, not if ne'er another man"--
"Peace, shameless wench!" thundered the elder, striking the table with
his hand. "Profane not the ears of a decent matron with such talk. John
Howland, it is my rede that thou art free of thy pledge to marry this
woman. What say you, Governor?"
"I agree with you, Elder Brewster, that since both man and maid desire
to render back their troth that they should be permitted so to do; and I
further suggest that by the first occasion presenting, Desire Minter be
sent back to her friends in England, who will, as Mistress Carver told
me, be content to receive her."
"Amen!" ejaculated John Howland with such unction that Bradford gravely
smiled as he followed him from the room, and murmured under his
breath,--"He will wed Elizabeth Tilley, an' I'm not mistaken."