By Jane G. Austin
STANDISH OF STANDISH. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
BETTY ALDEN. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
A NAMELESS NOBLEMAN. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25; paper, 50 cents.
DR. LE BARON AND HIS DAUGHTERS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
THE DESMOND HUNDRED. A Novel. 16mo, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
NANTUCKET SCRAPS. Being the Experiences of an Off-Islander In
Season and Out of Season. 16mo, $1.50.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY,
BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
BETTY ALDEN
THE FIRST-BORN DAUGHTER OF
THE PILGRIMS
BY
JANE G. AUSTIN
AUTHOR OF “STANDISH OF STANDISH,” “A NAMELESS NOBLEMAN,” “DR.
LE BARON AND HIS DAUGHTERS,” “THE DESMOND HUNDRED,”
“NANTUCKET SCRAPS,” ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1891
Copyright, 1891,
BY JANE G. AUSTIN
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
TO
MY DEAR COUSINS
MARSTON AND MARY WATSON
AND THEIR
HILLSIDE
WHERE BETTY ALDEN HAS BEEN SO PLEASANTLY CRADLED
DURING THE PAST YEAR
This Story of her Life and Times
IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
PLYMOUTH
_Michaelmas, 1891_
PREFACE.
Everybody has sympathized with Mr. Dick who could not keep King
Charles’s head out of his memorial, and I hope everybody will
sympathize with me who have been unable to keep Betty Alden in this her
memorial so constantly as I wished and she deserved. But as the whole
includes the less, her story will be found threaded through that of her
people and her times in that modest subordination to which the lives
of her sex were trained in that day. He who would read for himself the
story of this noble woman, the first-born daughter of the Pilgrims,
must seek it through ancient volumes and mouldering records, until at
Little Compton in Rhode Island he finds upon her gravestone the last
affectionate and honorable mention of Elizabeth, daughter of John and
Priscilla Alden, and wife of William Pabodie. Or in lighter mood, he
may consider the rugged rhyme tradition places in her mouth upon the
occasion of the birth of her great great grandchild:--
“Rise daughter! To thy daughter run!
Thy daughter’s daughter hath a son.”
One word upon a subject which has of late been a good deal discussed,
but by no means settled, and that is, the burial place of Myles
Standish. In the absence of all proof in any such matter, tradition
becomes important, and so far as I have been able to determine, the
tradition that some of the earliest settlers were buried in the
vicinity of a temporary meeting-house upon Harden Hill in Duxbury is
more reliable than the tradition that Standish was laid in an old
burying ground at Hall’s Corner which probably was not set aside as a
burial place in 1656, the date of his death.
It is matter of surprise and regret to most persons that the Pilgrims
took so little pains to perpetuate the memory of their graves, and
their doing so would have been a wonderful aid to those who would read
the palimpsest of the past. But a little recollection diminishes the
wonder, if not the regret. Practically, the Pilgrims had neither the
money wherewith to import gravestones, nor the skill to fashion and
sculpture them; ethically, their lives were fashioned after an ideal,
and that ideal was Protestantism in its most primitive intention, a
protest against Rome, her creeds and her usages; prayers for the dead
were to them a horrible superstition; Purgatory a mere invention of
the powers of hell; an appeal to saints, angels, or the spirits of the
departed was a direct insult to the Divine Supremacy. The instant the
soul left the body Protestantism decreed that it was not only useless
but profane to follow it with prayers (much less masses), or with any
other remembrance which might be construed as intruding upon “the
counsels of the Almighty,” so that while private grief was sternly
rebuked as rebellion against the chastisements of a just and offended
God, every form of funeral service, domestic or congregational, was set
aside as superstitious and dangerous.
The only exceptions to this rule were the volleys of musketry fired
over the graves of certain of the leaders, as Carver, Standish,
Bradford, and a few others, but these stern military honors were
unaccompanied by even the prayer of a chaplain.
It was perhaps not altogether from fear of the Indians that the fifty
of the Mayflower Pilgrims who were left alive that first spring
smoothed the graves of the fifty who were gone, and planted them to
corn; possibly they also feared their own hearts, sorely tempted by
nature to cherish and adorn those barren graves where so much love and
hope lay buried; and any step in that direction was a step backward
from that “city” they had crossed the seas to seek in the wilderness.
It is I think certain that not one of the original Pilgrim graves was
marked by any sort of monument. The few we now delight to honor were
identified by those of their children to whom the third generation
erected tablets. A few persons, of loving and unbigoted hearts, begged
to be buried beside their departed friends, and Standish in his last
will allowed a sunset gleam of his tender nature to shine out when
he asked to be laid as near as conveniently might be to his two
dear daughters; but neither he nor any of the others who made this
testamentary petition mentioned where the graves were, beside which
they fain would lie, nor in any one instance have they been positively
identified. That of Elder Brewster, concerning whose burial we have
many particulars, is altogether unknown, except that it seems to have
been made upon Burying Hill. Perhaps that of Standish is there also,
for when he says,--“If I die at Duxburrow I should like,” etc., he may
mean that if he dies in Duxbury he would fain be carried to Plymouth,
there to lie beside his daughters and very likely his two little sons
as well.
But to me it seems a small matter, this question of the grave of
Standish. He lived to be old and very infirm, and neither his old age,
his infirmities, nor his final surrender to death are any part of his
memory. For me, he stands forever as he stood in his glorious prime
among the people he so unselfishly championed, a tower of strength,
courage, and endurance, the shining survival of chivalry, the gallant
paladin whose coat-armor gleams amid the throng of russet jerkins
and mantles of hodden gray, like the dash of color with which Turner
accents his wastes of sombre water and sky. So let him stand, so let
us look upon him, and honor him and glory in him, nor seek to draw
the veil with which Time mercifully hides the only defeat our hero
ever knew, that last fatal battle when age, and “dolorous pain,” and
fell disease, conquered the invincible, and restored to earth all that
was mortal of a magnificent immortality. We cannot erect a monument
over that forgotten grave, but in some coming day let us hope that
the descendants of the soldier Pilgrim will possess themselves of the
little peninsula where the site of his home may still be traced, and
there place some memorial stone to tell that on this fairest spot of
fair Duxbury’s shore lived and died the man who gave Duxbury her name,
and bequeathed to us an inheritance far richer than that which was
“surreptitiously detained” from him.
BOSTON, _October, 1891_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A WHISPER IN THE EAR 1
II. A SHARP PAIR OF SCISSORS 10
III. TREASON 17
IV. THOU ART THE MAN! 24
V. HOW MISTRESS ALICE BRADFORD INTRODUCED
HER SISTER PRISCILLA CARPENTER TO PLYMOUTH
SOCIETY 39
VI. A VIPER SCOTCHED, NOT KILLED 56
VII. MORTON OF MERRY MOUNT 68
VIII. STANDISH AT MERRY MOUNT 74
IX. THE KYLOE COW 93
X. THE UNEXPECTED 102
XI. GOVERNOR BRADFORD PAYS A VISIT 111
XII. SIR CHRISTOPHER GARDINER 121
XIII. ONE! TWO! THREE! FIRE! 129
XIV. SIR CHRISTOPHER ENJOYS THE CHASE 137
XV. AND DESCRIBES IT 145
XVI. A MILLSTONE FOR SIR CHRISTOPHER 159
XVII. “TWO IS COMPANY, THREE IS TRUMPERY” 171
XVIII. THE LITTLE BOOK 182
XIX. A MUCH-MARRIED MAN 189
XX. BETTY’S JOURNEY AND THE GARRETT WRECK 196
XXI. “AH, BROTHER OLDHAME, IS IT THOU!” 208
XXII. THE MOONLIGHT AND THE DAWN 223
XXIII. “LOREA STANDISH IS MY NAME” 233
XXIV. AVERY’S FALL AND THACHER’S WOE 240
XXV. JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER 251
XXVI. GILLIAN 265
XXVII. DONNA MARIA DE LOS DOLORES 275
XXVIII. A SALT-FISH DINNER 286
XXIX. TOO LATE! TOO LATE! 295
XXX. PEEPING TOM AND HIS BROTHER 304
XXXI. JENNEY’S MILL BY MOONLIGHT 315
XXXII. ROBED IN WHITE SAMITE 326
XXXIII. A BOLD BUCCANEER 341
XXXIV. THE HILT OF A RAPIER 356
XXXV. CANARY WINE AND SEED-CAKE 363
XXXVI. BETTY BEARDS THE LION 372
XXXVII. “MARY STANDISH, MY DEAR DAUGHTER-IN-LAW” 379
BETTY ALDEN.
CHAPTER I.
A WHISPER IN THE EAR.
“Tell him yourself, Pris.”
“No, no, Bab, I know too much for that! These men love not to be taught
by a woman, although, if all were known, full many a whisper in the
bedchamber comes out next day at the council board, and one grave
master says to another, ‘Now look you, tell it not to the women lest
they blab it!’ never mistrusting in his owl-head that a woman set the
whole matter afloat.”
“Oh, Pris, you do love to jibe at the men. How did you ever persuade
yourself to marry one of them?”
“Why, so that one of them might be guided into some sort of discretion.
Doesn’t John Alden show as a bright example to his fellows?”
“And all through his wife’s training, eh, Pris?”
“Why, surely. Didst doubt such a patent fact, Mistress Standish?”
“But now, Pris, in sober sadness tell me what has given you such dark
suspicions of these new-comers, and how do you venture to whisper
‘treason’ and ‘traitor’ about a man who has been anointed God’s
messenger, even though it has been in the papistical Church of
England?”
“If the English bishops are such servants of antichrist as the governor
and the Elder make them out, I should conceive that their anointing
would be rather against a man’s character than a warrant for it.”
And Priscilla Alden laughed saucily into the thoughtful face of her
friend and neighbor, Barbara Standish, who, knitting busily at a little
lamb’s-wool stocking, shook her head as she replied,--
“Mr. Lyford is not a man to my taste, and I care not to hear him
preach, but yet, we are told in Holy Writ not to speak evil of
dignitaries, nor to rail against those set over us”--
“Then surely it is contrary to Holy Writ for this Master Lyford to
speak evil of the governor and to rail against the captain, as he doth
continually”--
“Who rails against the captain, Mistress Alden?” demanded a cheerful
voice, as Myles Standish entered at the open door of his house, and,
removing the broad-leafed hat picturesquely pulled over his brow,
revealed temples worn bare of the rust-colored locks still clustering
thickly upon the rest of his head, and matching in color the close,
pointed beard and the heavy brows, beneath which the resolute and
piercing eyes his enemies learned to dread in early days now shone with
a genial smile.
“Who has been abusing the captain?” repeated he, as the women laughed
in some confusion, looking at each other for an answer. Priscilla was
the first to find it, and glancing frankly into the face of the man she
might once have loved replied,--
“Why, ’tis I that am trying to stir Barbara into showing you what a
nest of adders we are nourishing here in Plymouth, and moving you and
the governor to set your heels upon them before it be too late.”
As she spoke, the merry gleam died out of the captain’s eyes, and
grasping his beard in the left hand, as was his wont in perplexity, he
said gravely,--
“These are large matters for a woman’s handling, Priscilla, and it may
chance that Barbara’s silence is the better part of your valor. But
still,--what do you mean?”
“I mean that Master Oldhame and Master Lyford as the head, and their
followers and creatures as the tail, are maturing into a very pretty
monster here in our midst, which if let alone will some fine morning
swallow the colony for its breakfast, and if only it would be content
with the men I would say grace for it, but, unfortunately, the women
and children are the tender bits, and will serve as a relish to the
coarser meat.”
“Come, now, Priscilla, a truce to your quips and jibes, and tell me
what there is to tell. I cry you pardon for noting your forwardness in
what concerned you not”--
“Nay, Myles, you’ve said it now,” interposed Barbara, with a little
laugh, while Priscilla, gathering her work in her apron, and looking
very pretty with her flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes, jumped up
saying,--
“At all events, John Alden’s dinner concerns both him and me, and I
will go and make it ready; a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse,
and a penny pipe as well as a trumpet to warn a deaf man that the enemy
is upon him. Put your nose in the air, Captain Standish, and march
stoutly on into the pitfall dug for your feet.”
“Come, come, Mistress Alden! These are no words for a gentlewoman,”
began the captain angrily, but on the threshold Priscilla turned, a
saucy laugh flashing through the anger of her face, and reminding the
captain in his own despite of a sudden sunbeam glinting across dark
Manomet in the midst of a thunder-storm.
“Here’s the governor coming up the hill, Myles,” whispered she, “and
you may finish the rest of your scolding to him. I’m frighted as much
as is safe for me a’ready.”
And light as a bird she ran down the hill just as Bradford reached
the door and, glancing in, said in his sonorous and benevolent voice,
“Good-morrow to you, Mistress Standish. I am sorry to have frighted
away your merry gossip, but I am seeking the goodman-- Ah, there you
are, Captain! I would have a word with you at your leisure.”
“Shall I run after Priscilla, Myles?” asked Barbara, cordially
returning the governor’s greeting.
“Nay, wife, we two will walk up to the Fort,” replied Standish, and
replacing his hat, he led the way up the hill to the Fort, where he
ushered his friend into a little room contrived in the southeastern
angle for his private use: his office, his study, his den, or his
growlery by turns, for here was his little stock of books, his
writing-table and official records; here his pipes and tobacco; a stand
of private arms crowned by Gideon; the colony’s telescope fashioned
by Galileo; and here a deep leathern chair with a bench nigh at
hand, where through many a silent hour the captain sat, and amid the
smoke-wreaths of his pipe mused upon things that had been, things that
might have been, and things that never could be, never could have been.
“Have a stool by the porthole, Will; ’tis something warm for
September,” said he, as he closed the door.
“Ay, but you always have a good air at this east window, and a fair
view as well,” returned the governor, seating himself.
“The view of the Charity is but a fleeting one, since she sails in the
morning,” remarked Standish dryly.
“Yes, she does,” assented Bradford, with an air of embarrassment not
lost upon the captain, who smiled ever so little, and lighted his pipe,
saying between the puffs,--
“’Tis safe enough to smoke in this den of mine, Will, and your tobacco
is a wonderful counselor.”
“Say you so, Myles? Then pass over your pouch, for I am in sore need of
counsel and sought it of you.”
“Such as I have is at your command, Governor. What is the matter?”
“Well, ’tis hard to put it in any dignified or magisterial phrase,
Myles, since, truth to tell, it comes of the distaff side of the
house”--
“Ay, ay, I can believe it! Has Priscilla Alden been whispering with
your wife?”
“Nay, not that I know of; in truth, ’tis somewhat idler than even that
foundation, for Mistress Alden is one of our own, but this--well,
to tell the story in manful sincerity, my wife informs me that Dame
Lyford, who is as you know in childbed, and much beholden for care and
comfort to both your wife and mine, as well as to Priscilla Alden, last
night fell a-crying, and said she was a miserable wretch to receive
nourishment and tendance at their hands when her husband was practicing
with Oldhame and others for our destruction. In the beginning, Alice
set this all down as the querulous maundering of a sick woman; but
when the other persisted, and spoke of treasonable letters that her
husband had writ, and read out to Oldhame in her very presence, Dame
Bradford began to pay some heed, and ask questions, until by the time
the woman’s strength was overborne and she could say no more, the
skeleton of a plot lay bare, which should it be clothed upon with
sinew, and flesh, and armor, and weapons, might slay us all both as a
colony and as particular men.”
“A dragon, Priscilla called it,” interposed the captain.
“Priscilla! Did Mistress Lyford say as much to her as to my wife?”
asked the governor, a little piqued.
“Nay, I know not, for I was, according to my wont, too outspoken to
listen as I should.”
“Well, but explain, I beg of you.”
“All is, that Priscilla began some sort of warning anent this very
matter, and I angered her with some jibe at women meddling in matters
too mighty for them, so that I know not what she might have had to
tell.”
The Governor of Plymouth smiled in a subtle fashion peculiar to men
whose vision extends beyond their own time. “Women,” said he slowly,
as he pressed the tobacco into his pipe,--“women, Myles, are like the
bit of lighted tinder I will lay upon this inert mass of dried weed.
The tinder is so trivial, so slight a thing, so difficult to handle,
so easily destroyed,--and yet, brother man, how without it should we
derive the solace and counsel of our pipes?”
Glancing at each other, the soldier and the statesman laughed somewhat
shamefacedly, and Myles said,--
“Ay, ’tis the pith of Æsop’s fable of the Lion and the Mouse.”
“Well, yes, although that is a thought too arrogant, perhaps; and yet
Master Lion is ofttimes a stupid fellow, though he is styled king of
beasts.”
“And what is the net just now, my Lord Lion?” demanded Standish, who
could not quite relish Bradford’s philosophy. The governor roused
himself at the question, and laying aside his meditative mood replied,--
“We both know, Captain, that all who are with us are not of us, and we
have not forgot what false reports those disaffected fellows carried
home in the Anne, nor the mutterings and plottings we have heard and
suspected since.”
“Shorten John Oldhame by the head and you will kill the whole mutiny.”
“That sounds very simple, but is hardly a feasible course, Captain,
especially as we have no proof in the matter, and it is upon this very
question of proof that I came to consult you.”
“And I just shut off the only source of proof I am like to get.”
“Nay, it is not likely that Mistress Alden knows more than my wife
has already repeated to me of what Dame Lyford can reveal, but our
good friend Master Pierce came to my house to-day about some matters
I am sending to my wife’s sister, Mary Carpenter, and all by chance
mentioned that he had in trust a parcel of letters writ by Lyford, with
one or two by Oldhame, and that both men had charged him to secrecy in
the business. Now, Standish, those letters contain the moral of the
whole matter.”
“To be sure; it is like drawing a double tooth to see them sail out of
the harbor.”
“Captain, it is my duty as the chief officer of this colony to learn
the contents of these missives.”
“Yes, but how? The traitors will not betray themselves.”
“I must privately open and read their letters,--it is my duty.”
“No, no, Will; no, no! I can’t give in to that; I can’t help you there,
man! To open and read another man’s letter, and on the sly, is all one
with hearkening at a keyhole, or telling a lie, or turning your back on
an enemy without a blow. You can’t do that, Will, let the cause be what
it may.”
And as the captain’s astonished gaze fixed itself upon his friend’s
face, Bradford colored deeply, yet made reply in a voice both resolute
and self-respecting,--
“I feel as you do, Standish, and as any honorable man must; but
this is a matter involving more than mine own honor or pleasure. If
these men are persuading our associates in England to withdraw from
their agreement, and refuse to send us further supplies, or to find
a market for our commodities, and so help out our own struggles for
subsistence, we and all these weaklings dependent upon us are lost.
You know yourself how hardly we came through the famine of last year,
and although by the mercy of God we now may hope to provide our own
food, what can we do for clothes, for tools, for even the means of
communication with our old home, if the Adventurers throw us over, or
if they demand immediate repayment of the moneys advanced? In every
way, and for all sakes, it is imperative that we prevent an evil and
false report going home to those upon whose help we still must rely for
the planting of our colony.”
“To be sure it is the usage of war to intercept the enemy’s
dispatches,” mused Standish, tugging at his russet beard and scowling
heavily.
“To be sure it is,” returned Bradford eagerly. “And although these men
are not avowed enemies, we can see that they are not friends. Do but
mark how thick they are with Billington, and Hicks, and all the other
malcontents. Oldhame’s house is a regular Cave of Adullam.”
“Well, Will, tell me what I am to do or to say in the matter. You know
that I am ready for any duty, however odious.”
“I fain would have you go aboard the Charity with me to inspect her
carriages.”
“Is there any chance of a fight?”
“No, no. I shall not go aboard until the last moment, when all but
Winslow have left.”
“Winslow’s errand home is to see the Adventurers?”
“As the colony’s agent, yes.”
“And he knows your intent?”
“Not yet. I have spoken of it to no man until I had your mind upon it,
Standish. To-night I shall summon the Assistants to my house, and lay
the matter before them, but I felt moved to speak of it first to you in
private.”
“Lest I should blaze out before them all, where you could not argue the
matter coolly with me, eh?”
Bradford smiled as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to go.
“I could not do with your disapproval, old friend,” said he.