A MILITARY WEDDING.
"And thou 'rt not amazed, Elsie, that our captain and his kinswoman will
wed?" asked Governor Bradford of his wife in the privacy of the family
bedroom.
"No more than at the sun's rising in the East," replied Alice with a
demure little smile.
"Hm! Master Galileo saith the sun riseth not at all, and though the
power of Rome caused him to gainsay it, he did tell me privily in
Amsterdam that it was sooth, and the sun bided forever in the one place
while this round world turned over daily."
"I ever thought the good man was a little crazed," replied Mistress
Bradford serenely. "Like Paul, much learning had made him mad."
"Nay wife, 't was Festus charged Paul with madness, because the apostle
knew more than himself. Haply 't is so with Master Galileo."
"It may be, William. These be not matters for women to meddle withal,"
replied Alice meekly.
"But anent our captain's wooing of his cousin, Elsie? How is 't thou 'rt
not amazed like the rest of us?"
"Because I saw long since that Barbara would never wed another than her
cousin, and thou knowest, Will, how like draws to like, even across the
waste of ocean."
"Ay dame, I know it well and sweetly, and never shall I forget to give
thanks to Him whose wisdom reacheth from end to end, sweetly ordering
all things. But how chanced Mistress Barbara to confess her fondness to
thee, sweetheart?"
"Nay now! Though men do be our masters in most things, how dull they
still show themselves in others. As if a maid, or for that matter a
widow, would ever 'confess her fondness' for any man till he had wooed
her so to do, and but coyly then, if she be wise."
"Too coyly for him to credit her with overmuch tenderness," suggested
the bridegroom.
"Facts speak louder than words, and if a woman will set herself upon far
and perilous journeys, and compass sea and land to come to him who
calleth her, methinks he need not doubt her friendship for him. Nay now,
nay now, we talk of Barbara and the Captain, and I'll tell thee. Since I
was left alone in London,--so lonely too in my wide house in Duke's
Place,--I have taken dear and sweet counsel with Barbara, whom I first
knew in the congregation of Pastor Jacob, and she hath been my guest for
weeks and months at a time, so that if any two women know each other
well, their names are Barbara and Alice."
"But yet she never told thee that she loved her cousin? Now that is
passing strange."
"'T would to my mind have been far stranger had she so bewrayed
herself."
"But still those gentle eyes of thine read the secret of her heart?"
"I did mistrust it for long, but when I had thy letter, Will, and
settled my mind to come to thee, I told Barbara somewhat of the old
story"--
"Of how thou wast minded to spite thy comely face by cutting off its
nose?"
But Mistress Bradford had no smile for her husband's somewhat coarse
jest, and went quietly on,--
"And I told her, too, that her kinsman, Myles, had lost the sweet wife
of whom she had so often and so gently spoken; and at the last I told
her I was minded to sell all that I had and go to our folk in New
England, and I asked her would she go, to be ever and always my dear
sister if no other home should offer, and though we said no word that
day of Captain Standish, sure am I that he was in both our minds. And
now, dear man, dost see through the millstone?"
"Ay, since woman's wit hath delved a hole, I can see through it as well
as another." And the governor kissed his wife as merrily as another man,
while she adjusting the demure matron's cap about her fair young face
went out to see that the breakfast was fairly spread.
A fortnight later when the Anne had sailed, and the Little James had
returned and gone again upon a luckless fishing trip, and the new-comers
had settled into their appointed places, and the town was once more
quiet, there came a fair September day when work was laid aside, and
after breakfast the armies of the colony, at least a hundred souls in
all,--if we count the trumpeters, the buglers, the fifers, and the
drummers,--assembled on the Training Green just across the brook, and
after some evolutions marched in orderly array back again past the
spring and up the hill to the governor's house, where they were joined
by him and the elder. Then up and on to the captain's house, where a
guard of honor presented itself at the door, and ushered forth the
chief, carefully dressed in his uniform of state, while at his side
merrily clanked Gideon, resplendent, though none but he and his master
knew it, in such a furbishing and polishing as seldom had fallen to his
lot before.
Saluting his comrades gravely and with somewhat more of dignity than his
wont, the captain took his place, and the procession climbed the short
ascent remaining to the door of the Fort, where entered the dignitaries
and as many more as could find room. Here in the great room now used as
a place of worship a group of matrons and maids awaited them, with
Barbara in their midst, fair and stately in her white robes, the glory
of her eyes outvying any jewels she could have worn.
The meagre civil service was spoken by the governor, but at the request
of both bride and bridegroom the elder made a prayer to which the
captain listened more reverently than his wont, and cried Amen more
heartily.
Then they came forth these two Standishes made one, and the train band
escorted them to their home, and fired a salute of honor, whose
reverberating waves rolling across the waters broke at last upon the
foot of Captain's Hill, sighing away into silence over the quiet plain
where one day should be dug a warrior's grave, marked head and foot with
a great three-cornered stone.