JEPHTHAH’S DAUGHTER.
St. Martin’s summer was in the land; that lovely parting smile of the
year, so full of love, so full of reminiscence and of promise, so
full of pathos and of that vague yearning that lies at the core of
every heart, and which I fancy Bossuet means when he speaks of “the
inexorable weariness which lurks at the foundations of all our lives.”
The door of Standish’s cottage stood wide, and between it and the
lattice opening upon the sea, letting in the sweet breath of marigolds
and thyme basking in the southern sun, Barbara stepped lightly back and
forth, spinning from her great wheel the fine yarn that would be woven
or knit into the winter garments of the household.
A shadow across the floor made her turn, quick yet fearless as a bird
building in a tree above a house whose inmates never have threatened it.
A tall, good-looking young man stood in the doorway, and with his eyes
searched the room before he said,--
“Good-morrow, dame. Is Lora somewhere at hand?”
“Oh, good-morrow, Ras! Lora has gone to the top of the hill for a
breath of evening air. It has been so warm to-day.”
“Yes, Hobomok calls it the Indian’s summer because it comes just before
winter,” replied Wrestling Brewster absently; and then after another
moment of hesitation he pulled off his wide hat, and coming close to
the spinner’s side fixed his eyes upon hers with a shy appeal while he
asked,--
“Do you think, dame, I might ask her?”
“Ask her what, Ras?”
“Oh, Dame Barbara, you know full well what I fain would ask.”
“There’ll be an apple-bee at your house or at Jonathan’s this week,
will there not?”
“Ay, at Jonathan’s on the Thursday, and Lucretia bade me invite you
all.”
“Well, then, you foolish boy, sure that is your errand to Lora, and
you’ll find her on the hill, most like at what she calls her sunset
seat.”
“’Twas I that made it for her,” said Wrestling eagerly, and Barbara,
smiling in the way matrons smile at transparent youth, replied,--
“Then you know where it is. Go, and God go with you.”
“My grateful duty to you, dame,” murmured the young fellow, and went
like an arrow from a bow.
A half hour later Barbara, setting her wheel aside, stepped to the door
to look toward the hill, and to judge by the position of the sun how
near the hour might be to supper time.
Coming up from the shore she saw her husband, and at the first glance
knew that he was ill-pleased; with this conviction came a foreboding
that made her turn her eyes again toward the hill, but now it was the
daughter, and not the sun, for which she looked.
“Where’s Lora, wife?” inquired the captain so soon as he was within
speaking distance.
“She went out an hour or so agone for a stroll,” replied the mother
mildly. “She has been so steadily stitching at your new shirts, Myles,
that I sent her to get a breath of fresh air.”
“Belike it’s she I saw upon the hill; ’twas a white gown, at all
events.”
“And like you no longer to see her in white?” asked Barbara, apparently
in great surprise. “Why, ’tis to please you she wears it, though it
makes a mort of washing for poor Hepsey. But where hast been thyself,
goodman?”
“To Plymouth, and Alice Bradford sends you a clutch of eggs from her
new brought fowls.”
“Nay, but that’s more than kind!” cried Barbara. “And how fares she,
and is it true that Prissie Wright will marry Manasses Kempton? And did
you get the grist ground, and what said Miller Jenney of not having it
yesterday?”
“Come, come, dame, ’tis not for naught your tongue wags like Priscilla
Alden’s all of a sudden. Tell me what man is on the hill with our Lora,
and what ’tis you’re keeping from me,--or would if you could. Out with
it, Bab! who’s the man I saw up there?”
“Nay, Myles, that’s no tone for you to take towards me! ’Tis not one of
the children nor one of the servants you’re speaking to.”
“What! ruffling her feathers like a Dame Partlet if you try to steal
the chickens from under her! Nay, wife, that mood’s as strange to you
as the chattering one, and both are but put on to turn my mind from
its course; but ’tis no use, Bab, no use at all. Come, now, stop these
manœuvres and ambushes and false sallies and all your simple strategy,
and meet me in the open field. Was it Wrestling Brewster that I saw
sitting with Lora on her sunset seat?”
“I know not what you saw, Myles, but I know that Wrestling Brewster
went up there to find Lora something like a half hour ago.”
“And you knew it?”
“I sent him.”
“You sent him! And for what?”
“For naught more than to find her, but I can guess his errand though he
told it not.”
“Oh! And might the father of the maid venture so much as to ask what
this errand might be?”
“Nay, Myles, be not so bitter! If I cannot go with you in this matter,
’tis because I love my child even more than you can love her.”
“Love your child! Love your own way and your own will, as you ever have
done! Woman, do you defy me?”
“Oh, Myles, Myles!” And fearlessly approaching the angry man, Barbara
laid a hand upon his arm and looked straight into his face with all her
brave and noble soul shining out of those eyes whose wonderful charm
time had not clouded in the least. The captain met them, and the terror
of his frown subsided into an angry laugh.
“Well--you should not thwart me if you would not see me thwarted. But
honestly, Barbara, have you forgotten or do you despise my constant
wish for Lora’s future? Must I mind you once more of my contract with
my cousin Ralph whereby his eldest son is to marry our daughter, and
so to her and her children shall be restored the fair domain which his
grandsire stole from mine? Know you not that naught in all this world
sits nearer to my heart than this scheme, and that only last month I
wrote to Ralph and told him that Lora was now turned eighteen, and
if his boy was ready to fulfill the contract I would come to England
with the maid, and see her seated at Standish Hall? Mind you all that,
Mistress Barbara?”
“Ay, Myles, I mind it well, and I mind too that you did not tell me of
that letter till ’twas gone.”
“Haply not, but what of that? Is a man bound to lay all his business
before his wife, or to ask her leave to write to his own kinsman?”
“’Tis my kinsman in the same degree, mind you, husband. And because
I too am born of Standish I have a right to speak, I have a right to
know, and to decide in this matter,--yes, as good a right as yours,
Myles.”
“Oho! ’Tis a cartel of battle, is it? Partlet against Chanticleer, eh?
Well, our cousins the Standishes of Duxbury carry a gamecock for their
crest, and I’ll e’en borrow his spurs.”
“Oh, Myles, Myles! This over-weening ambition of thine hath turned thy
brain! When till now didst ever treat me thus?”
“Nay, I’ll not be wheedled with soft touch, nor tearful eyen, nor
broken voice. There, there, let go mine arm and wipe thy tears away!
Why, thou foolish lass, dost not know I’d liever face a tribe of
Pequods than see thee weep? Tut, tut, silly wench, give me a kiss and
be done with it. What chance hath Samson when Delilah cries?”
“But, dear my lord, listen now that your mood is somewhat softened. How
can you be so sure that this great marriage will make our dear maid
happy? You know how tender and how sensitive she is; you know how she
clings to love, and seems to draw her life from us as the flowers do
from the sun; sure am I, as sure as of to-day’s breath, that parted
from home and father and mother and brothers and friends and all she
has ever loved and clung to, our Lora would droop and die just as that
sea-bird did that the boys caught and tried to tame.”
“And if she did!” cried the captain, flaming again into sudden wrath,
the reflex perhaps of a stinging pain driven through his heart by his
wife’s last words. “Had not she better die as mistress of Standish Hall
and be buried with her ancestors in the tomb of the Standishes than to
vegetate here as the wife of Wrestling Brewster and fill a nameless
grave in these wilds?”
“Since God has forsaken you and the Evil One seized upon your mind, I
have naught more to say,” returned Barbara, thoroughly angry on her own
side; and as she turned into the house Standish, with a black frown
darkening his whole presence, strode away toward the hill.
Almost an hour earlier Wrestling Brewster, making his way softly over
the fallen leaves and ripe mosses of the hillside path, had stolen
unawares upon as fair a picture as Captain’s Hill has ever seen, or
ever shall while time and earth endure.
Very nearly where the monument stands to-day, there then grew a clump
of oaks, and between two of them had been fixed a commodious bench,
with a back quaintly carved and ornamented with a border of red
cedar. From this vantage-point could be seen a fairer view than that
of to-day, for man had not yet conquered Nature, nor substituted his
uncouth and commonplace works for her perfection.
Clark’s Island, still covered with its primeval cedars and with its
northern headland unwasted and majestic, lay like a bower upon the
great field of flowing water, and matched Saquish, still an island,
but beginning to throw out tentative arms toward the Gurnet’s Head,
where six hundred years before Thorwald, brother of Leif, wounded unto
death by the savages, desired to be buried, with a cross at his head
and another at his feet, directing that the headland should thenceforth
be known as Krossness. Toward these yearned the loving arm thrown out
by Manomet toward the Duxbury shore,--that arm now reduced to a barren
sandspit, but then a green and fruit-laden peninsula; and within it
glittered in the evening light the harbor, deep enough at that day to
float not only the Mayflower, but Captain Pierce’s Lyon, which now lay
snugly anchored there, while the governor’s barge rowed away toward the
town, bearing Bradford and Winslow home with the jolly mariner as their
guest. Blue smoke-wreaths floating idly upward from Plymouth cottages
told of housewives busy with the evening meal, and upon the crest of
Burying Hill a twinkling gleam now and again showed that Lieutenant
Holmes did not suffer the brasswork of the colony’s guns to grow dim
now that they had come under his care.
But closer at hand than these things stretched the marshes, the
beautiful Duxbury marshes with their grasses full grown and ripe,
reposing under the sunset light like a fair garden, where great masses
of color lay in harmonious contrast, and the heavy heads of seed bent,
and rippled, and rustled to the evening breeze, murmuring sweet secrets
that he carried straight out to sea and buried there.
O man, man! Lay out your modern gardens, and mass your pelargoniums
and calceolarias and begonias and salvias and the rest, in beds of
contrasting color, and then, if you would note your improvement upon
ancient methods, go in the autumn and look at the marshes of the Old
Colony, laid out by Mother Nature before Thorwald selected Krossness
first as his chosen home, and then his chosen grave.
So fair, so wonderful, so entrancing, lay the view that evening at
the foot of Captain’s Hill, yet Wrestling Brewster, albeit a man of
singular delicacy of perception, never saw it; saw nothing, in fact,
but the lissome form of a young maid clothed in white samite, with pale
golden hair wound around her head and held by quaint silver pins with
crystal heads that now and again caught the light and sent it flashing
back like the aureole of a saint. The great gray eyes, wide open
beneath their level brows, were steadfastly fixed upon some point far
out at sea, the vanishing point of earth’s curve, the point where the
straightforward look of human eyes glides off the surface of the globe
and penetrates the ether beyond. What vision arose before the maiden’s
eyes in that dim horizon realm? What thought or what dream parted the
soft mouth, and tinged the pure pallor of the cheek? What meant the
sigh that just stirred the flower at her throat?
So asked the heart of the young man standing motionless and devout
in the edge of the little grove, until with the feeling of one who
intrudes upon sacred mysteries he withdrew his gaze, and rustled the
twigs of the shrub beside him. The girl turned quickly, and as she met
his eyes smiled gently.
“Oh, is it you, Ras? I’m glad you came.”
“Are you, Lora? Are you glad I came? And I am glad that you are glad.”
“’Tis so fair, so heavenly a scene that I would all I love might enjoy
it as well as I.”
“Lora! All you love, say you? Oh, Lora, do you love me?”
“Ras! Nay, let us not speak of just ourselves; we are so little and the
sky is so great.”
“The sky, dear? But the sky and the sea and the forest, they are always
here, and we may look at them all our lives long,--all our lives, Lora,
our two lives that might be one.”
The gray eyes, still full of dreams, still questioning the far-off
depths of the skies beyond the sea, reluctantly turned and rested
fearlessly upon the eager and troubled face of the young man.
“What is it, Ras dear? Why are you so--so troubled is it? Why don’t you
sit down here beside me and look as we have looked so often upon all
this beauty? It was so good of you, Ras, to make this seat for me. It
is the happiest place I know in all the world.”
“Then make it happiest to me, darling, by letting it be the place of
our betrothal. Oh, Lora, I thought you knew,--I thought you understood,
and--and--yes, I even dared to hope that you, just in some far-off
maidenly, saintly fashion, felt somewhat the love that devours me like
death until I know for certain that it is returned, and then indeed
shall I pass from death unto life. Speak, Lora,--speak for God’s dear
sake, speak to me.”
“But why are you so moved, Ras, and why after all these years of love
and friendliness do you beg me as if I were some stranger to say that I
love you?”
“Lora! Lora! You break my heart!”
“Oh, Ras, dear dear Ras! Don’t look so, don’t speak so! There are very
tears in your eyes, and see, they call the tears to mine! Why truly,
dear Ras, I love you, I love you dearly, as well as I love Alick or
Josias,--as well as I love Betty Alden, who is the dearest friend I
have, as well as”--
“Stop, stop, for pity’s sake! I thought I suffered before, but oh,
Lora, you have given me my deathblow.”
“Nay, what is it, what is it I have done? What a wicked wretch I am to
grieve you so, but how is it, dear? Indeed I do love you, Ras, I do
indeed!”
“Yes, you love me as a child loves, as an angel loves, as you loved me
years ago when I, already come to man’s estate, watched you growing
to womanhood like a sweet flower, and vowed that you, and none but
you, should be my wife; and for the sake of that vow and for love of
you,--yes, an ever growing love of you, mine own sweet love,--I have
never looked upon a maiden’s face save as a woman might. I have cared
so little for their company that they flout me”--
“Yes, they call you the old bachelor,” interrupted Lora, half merrily
and half penitently. “But I never once dreamed it was for love of me
you held yourself so strange to all the others. But now I do know, Ras,
it seems no more than honest that you should have what you have waited
for, and if you want me for your wife, and my father and my mother make
no objection, why I will please you thus far.”
“You will--you will be my wife!” exclaimed Wrestling. “Oh, Lora, do you
mean it? Do you really, really mean that you will be my wife?”
“It seems to me, young man, that I have somewhat to say in this
matter,” broke in a strident voice, and Lora looked up in dismay at
her father’s face, very angry, very ominous, yet not turned upon her.
At a later day Myles Standish was glad to remember that even in this
extremity he never spoke one angry word, or cast one angry look to the
child who was the idol of his life.
“Oh--Captain Standish!” stammered Wrestling, springing to his feet.
“Yes, Master Brewster, Captain Standish at your service, who ventures
to suggest that you might have done better to ask his leave before
urging his daughter to defy his wishes.”
“Oh, father!” And Lora, rising to her slender height, stepped forward
and fearlessly slid a soft little hand into the captain’s brawny
half-closed fist. “Defy you, father!” murmured she, looking into his
face with eyes of loving reproach, “nay, I never could do that.”
“I know it, my pet, I know it; but there, make you home as soon as ever
you may--mother is waiting for you--run away, child, run.”
“Nay, father, but I fain would know first why you are so angry with my
dear friend Ras. He says he loves me very much, and he wants me to be
his wife, and I love him too, and if you please to have it so, I said I
would marry him”--
“As you might have said you would take a sail with him!” exclaimed the
captain with angry fondness in his tone; but the fondness died away as
his eyes turned from the fair face of his daughter to the flushed and
anxious one of her suitor, while he said,--
“You may see for yourself, Wrestling Brewster, that this child knows
not the meaning of marriage love. She is no fonder of you than of--say
Betty Alden, or mayhap her pet cat”--
“Nay, nay, father, I must not let that go unsaid! Not love Ras better
than I do Moppet! Oh, but I do!”
“Lora, if you will stay here, do not speak again until I speak to you,”
commanded the father sternly.
“I would not be harsh upon you, young sir, for you are son of mine
honored friend, Elder Brewster, and I believe a worthy son, but you did
amiss, yes, shrewdly amiss, in speaking to my daughter before you did
to me.”
Wrestling’s lips opened and closed again. He was about to say that
Lora’s mother knew of his suit, but in the captain’s mood, that plea
might only have brought down wrath upon his wife’s head.
“I have not found it fitting to tell all my affairs to all my
neighbors,” pursued Standish haughtily. “But I have mine own intent
with regard to my daughter, and that intent is not to marry her in this
colony. Let that be answer enough for you, Master Wrestling, and if you
like, you may advertise any other aspiring youth that designs to honor
my daughter with an offer that it is but needless mortification, for my
answer will be to all as it is to you,--nay, nay, nay!”
And with the last word Myles placed his daughter’s hand under his arm
and led her down the hill, leaving Wrestling to cast himself prone upon
the sunset seat, his face hidden upon the back of it, and his eyes
smarting with the tears his manhood refused to allow to flow.
Almost at home, Standish, looking with anxious love into the lily face
at his shoulder, said,--
“Poppet, you’re not over-sorry, are you? Why don’t you speak to me?”
“You bade me not speak until you spoke to me, father dear. Nay, but I
am sorry, heartily sorry, you should have chided Ras so hardly. Poor
lad! He was fit to cry when we left him.”
“But you do not really care for him, dear child? You are not set upon
becoming his--his wife?”
“Nay, father, I do not care to be any man’s wife. I would far fainer
stay at home with you and mother, but Ras seemed so keen upon the
matter and declared I loved him not, that to make him content I said
yes; for indeed I do love him, father, more than I love any man after
you and the boys.”
“Ha, ha! My little lass, there’ll come a day when the boys, and haply
your poor old dad as well, will fly down the wind like thistledown
before the love that still lieth sound asleep in my maid’s pure heart.”
“Nay, father, not asleep, but too dear and too holy to be spoken of,”
murmured Lora, a soft flush upon her cheek, a tender light in her eyes
as she raised them to her father’s face.
“What! what!” stammered he, half affrighted lest the girl had lost her
senses. “You love some one already!”
“Oh, father, so much, so dearly! ’Tis for that I love to go and sit all
alone there upon the brow of the hill, where I may see the beauty He
has made and gaze away and away into the heavens where He lives. Sure
the hills of Judah were not so lovely as this place, and who can tell
but some day He may descend and stand visibly upon them”--
“Aha!” breathed the captain, stopping short and gazing appalled upon
the face of the girl, set seaward, with a half smile upon its lips and
a look of yearning love in the unfathomable eyes. But as he gazed
she turned, and throwing an arm around his neck hid her face upon his
breast with a sobbing sigh.
“Oh, father dear, I’m sorry I tried to speak about what no words can
tell. Don’t talk to mother or to any one, will you, dear, and please do
not ask me again. ’Tis so precious and so wonderful, and ’tis all the
love I ever want beyond my home loves. You won’t talk about it, daddy
dear, will you?”
“One word, Lora. You mean that your love is given to God alone?”
“To Him who loved me and gave Himself for me--to Him who is chief among
ten thousand and altogether lovely--to the King in his beauty in the
land that is very far off.”
“My child, my child!” groaned the father, drawing the girl’s form close
to his thickly beating heart and pressing his lips upon her brow, while
Jephthah’s agony turned him sick and white, and his eyes rose with an
almost angry protest to the skies.