GILLIAN.
The apple-bee at Jonathan Brewster’s house by the Eagle’s Tree, where
The Nook merges into Harden Hill, was in full tide, and one could hear
the merry voices of men and maidens, and the cheerful shrilling of
matrons talking above the din, before one reached the house. Beneath a
clump of trees surrounding the great cedar known as the Eagle’s Tree
a number of horses were tied with comfortable measures of corn and
trusses of hay before them, and in the little cove lay half a dozen or
so boats uneasily tumbling upon the incoming tide. These conveyances
had brought the remoter dwellers in the new town of Duxbury and its
neighborhood: the Aldens from Eagle Tree Pond, the De la Noyes from
Stony Brook, the Soules from Powder Point, the Constant Southworths
from North River, the Howlands from Island Creek, the Bassetts from
Beaver Pond, and the Abraham Samsons from Bluefish River where they
lived neighbors to the Aldens and intermarried with them.
Of The Nook people who came on foot, the Standishes, and Brewsters, and
Pabodies, and Prences, and Colliers, and Doctor Comfort Starr, the new
physician, with his family, and the Partridges, and Wadsworths, and
others, had mustered strong and in every variety of condition, age, and
sex; for our ancestors, having far fewer opportunities of amusement
than we have, made a great deal more of each one as it came along, and
not only sucked the juice from their orange, but ate every bit of the
pulp. The apple-bee was but a prelude to the evening’s entertainment,
and for weeks before, every young girl in the colony had planned her
dress and simple ornaments, and dreamed of some face or voice that
should belong to her own especial Robin Adair, or of the games and
the songs and haply the contradances that might be permitted when the
church-members had withdrawn; and Lucretia Brewster, with her daughter
Mary and Love’s wife Sarah, and such fantastic aid as Gillian had
chosen to bestow, had been for a week busy in preparing the house and
a big shed just finished, for the reception of the expected guests and
their steeds.
Gillian! Well, Gillian! And when one has said her name the subject
widens until it becomes impossible to handle. Niece of Lucretia
Brewster, whose sister had married a Spaniard, this Gillian, left a
deserted orphan in some foreign port, had drifted back to England, and
thence to New England, where a year or so before the apple-bee she
had arrived by hand of Captain William Pierce, consigned along with a
present of kersey and Hollands linen to Jonathan Brewster by a cousin
who claimed that, as Lucretia was the girl’s nearest relative, her
maintenance should fall upon Lucretia’s husband. At first the charge
was joyfully accepted, for Gillian was just the age of Mary, Jonathan’s
only daughter, and would be a sister to her, as they said. But as the
weeks and months went on both Mary and her mother grew silent upon the
subject of the new sister, while Jonathan, and his sons William and
Jonathan and Benjamin, never ceased to congratulate the women and each
other upon the joy and delight of her presence; the father especially
often calling upon his wife to recognize how in this case virtue had
brought its own reward, and their benevolence to the orphan received
a blessing of singular richness almost in the first moments of its
exercise.
To these pious thanksgivings Lucretia Brewster, who was a very discreet
woman, never offered any contradiction; but when next her husband found
some little matter essential to his comfort neglected, or some detail
of the rigid family rule calmly set aside, the gentle explanation was,
“I left it to Gillian to do;” or, “It was Gillian who chose to do it in
spite of all I said.”
On these occasions Gillian sometimes came by a little reprimand, not
half as severe, so Mary jealously remarked, as was administered to her
very lightest offense, but apparently more than Gillian could bear, for
before it was half over she would fall into such a passion of tears
and sobs as seemed fit to rend her white throat asunder, and either
crouch moaning upon the floor in some corner like a wounded creature,
or rush headlong from the house to the woods, where she would hide all
day long, and once all night long, although Brewster and his three sons
searched and called for her till sunrise, when she appeared on the
edge of a thicket, her wonderful deep red hair hanging all matted and
tangled, with briers around her shoulders, her great passionate Spanish
eyes dilated and full of gloomy fire, and her mouth, that bewildering,
tempting, ripe red mouth, with its myriad expressions and suggestions,
its curves and dimples, and its little laughing teeth, all drawn and
pale.
Is it to be wondered at that, after the first few times, the uncle and
guardian ceased to attempt even the discipline of a reproof, especially
as for days after one of these passions the girl would shrink out of
his presence with every mark of terror, and if he spoke to her, reply
in hurried, timorous accents, with the air of one who dreads to give
offense, and fears unmerited blame or misunderstanding.
So at last it came to pass that Gillian did what she would, and left
undone what she chose, and quietly setting at naught all Lucretia’s
admonitions or attempts at control, was ever bright and charming to
her uncle, and remained a wonder and a fascination to the boys, who
were all wildly in love with her, a condition shared by nearly every
unmarried man in the Old Colony.
As for Mary, good, homely, ungraceful, slow moulded Mary Brewster,
she wore herself thin and peevish in struggling against the innate
depravity of her own heart which continually urged her to hate Gillian
with a bitter hatred, more especially when John Turner, of Scituate,
came a-wooing, and Gillian, having contemplated his courtship during a
few visits, picked him up as a kitten might a great lumbering beetle,
tossed him hither and yon, patted him with her velvet paws, suddenly
thrust sharp claws through the velvet, gave him one or two contemptuous
buffets to this side and to that, and finally walked away, purring
serene indifference.
John Turner was perhaps the only man at the apple-bee who saw nothing
to admire in Gillian, and Mary never looked her way. But Betty liked
her, and now, as the girl flitted into the great kitchen where
around the baskets and piles of apples, brought together from all
the neighborhood for Lucretia Brewster to dry in her own superlative
fashion, crowded the maids and matrons, who pared and cored, and
quartered or sliced, the rosy fruit, it was Betty Alden who cried,--
“Oh, Jill, is that you? Come help me string these slices. These are our
own apples, and mother wants to keep them separate from the rest, so
Sally and Ruthy and I are doing them.”
“Did your brother Jo pick them?” asked Gillian, sinking down in her
peculiar and graceful fashion upon the floor, beside Betty, but not
offering to take the needle threaded with coarse flax that Sally held
toward her.
“Jo and David picked them, you naughty girl, and talked of naught but
you while they did it.”
“Betty, Betty, here’s Alick Standish coming this way, and don’t you
blush; now mind you, Betty, don’t you blush! Fie! but you do! What
makes her hate Alick so, Sally?” asked Gillian maliciously.
“Who hates Alick?” asked the cheery voice of the good-looking “heir
apparent” of Myles Standish, who had obeyed a glance of Gillian’s eyes
and joined the group.
“Who but the one who colors red as fire with vexation when he draws
nigh,” replied the girl coolly; and Standish, curiously regarding the
faces of the three, perceived that both Betty’s and Sally’s faces were
aflame, while Gillian’s cream-white skin looked cool as a calla lily.
“Are you paring the apples I picked, Gillian?” asked another voice as
David Alden joined the group.
“Nay, for ’twas Satan who first plucked an apple for a woman,” replied
Jill, with a mocking little laugh; and Alick whispered in her ear,
“There’s ne’er a son of Adam would refuse if you offered him the apple,
Gillian.”
“What! not if he lost Paradise thereby?”
“The paradise of your love would”--
“Oh, Master Pabodie, do come and reason with these terrible blasphemers
who are talking of Satan and nobody can tell what else. Say to Master
Pabodie what you were saying to me, Alick!”
Thus dared, the young man looked half of mind to accept the challenge,
but John Pabodie, shrewdly glancing at the audacious girl, replied,
“Nay, mistress, I’m twenty years too old and haply twenty years too
young to cope with such a matter. But here’s my son William just come
home from Boston and farther, and I’ll leave him to fill the place of
Paris, if one may quote the old mythologies in a Christian land.”
“Surely, when such a Helen rises before one’s eyes,” added a sonorous
young voice, as Gillian suddenly stood up, her sinuous and suggestive
figure displayed in a gown of creamy mull clinging to every curve,
and covering yet not concealing the exquisite roundness of arms and
shoulders white with that peculiar _mat_ whiteness never seen save in
persons of Latin blood.
“Who was Helen?” asked Gillian very slowly, while the velvety darkness
of her eyes rested with infantile confidence upon the handsome
face of William Pabodie, who, after the pause of an instant, said
significantly,--
“The handsomest woman that ever lived.”
A little silence ensued, and all eyes turned upon Gillian, who, nothing
daunted, softly replied,--
“She must have been well pleased when Paris told her so.”
“Welcome home, William Pabodie!” cried Lucretia Brewster’s wholesome
voice, scattering as with a puff of west wind the strained and
bewildering atmosphere that seemed stifling the little group around the
Spanish girl. “You know all these lads and lasses, your old neighbors,
and I see that you have already made acquaintance with my niece
Gillian,--Gillian Brewster, as we call her”--
“My name is Gillian de Cavalcanti,” interposed Gillian quietly, but
Lucretia, flushing angrily, continued without looking at her, “If
you will come with me, Will, I will take you to Mary and some other
friends, Lora Standish and her guest, Mercy Bradford from Plymouth.”
“My sister Anice well-nigh raves over Mistress Lora Standish,” replied
the young man, following his hostess, but even as he did so turning
to look once more at Gillian, whose eyes, soft and dewy as a chidden
child’s, followed him with a vague appeal that sent a tremor through
the young man’s heart.
“Can it be that her aunt does not treat her well?” asked he of himself,
and his next reply to Lucretia was so cold that she turned and looked
at him, and then remembering said to herself,--
“The poison works quickly.”
The apples were pared, cored, quartered, or sliced, and, threaded upon
twine, hung in festoons upon a frame erected for the purpose on the
south side of the house; the cores and skins and smaller apples were
heaped into the cider-press, which on the morrow would begin its work
of reducing them to the cheerful and wholesome beverage as essential to
our forefathers’ comfort as tea and coffee are to ours; the bountiful
supper had been eaten and merrily cleared away by a committee of
bustling matrons, and at last the great houseplace, the shed, and a
platform extending for some distance from the house were “sided off”
and swept, to make room for the frolics which to the young people were
the true meaning of the whole affair. “Kissing games” were in that day
not more objectionable than round dances are now, and perhaps that
visitor from Jupiter to whom we sometimes refer for impartial judgment
would have found them less so. Both classes of amusement depend very
much upon who indulges in them, and when Gillian’s soft warm lips
frankly pressed William Pabodie’s mouth a quick flush mounted to the
young man’s temples, and he cast a startled glance into the dark eyes
upraised to his with a look of fathomless meaning. Lucretia Brewster
saw that look, and her own matronly cheek colored angrily. Later in the
evening she sat herself down beside her sister-in-law, with whom she
was on very affectionate terms.
“Tired, ’Cretia?” asked Mistress Love Brewster with a pleasant smile.
“No, not to say tired, Sally, but a good deal worked up.”
“About what?”
“Well, one thing and another. You know my Mary’s to be married
Thanksgiving Day, and John Turner joins hands with her in begging me to
go to Scituate along with them and set her off in her housekeeping. You
know, being the only girl, she never’s quite let go of mammy’s apron
string; and for that matter, I’m as loath to part with her as ever she
can be with me.”
“Then, why not go?” asked Sarah sympathetically. “I’m sure the change
will be good for you, and you’ve had a mort of work and worry lately.”
“Yes, I know, but--well, I’ll tell you, Sally. I don’t want to go away
and leave Jonathan and the boys with nobody to do for them.”
“Why, there’s Jill and your Indian woman Quoy.”
“Yes, Quoy knows all about the house, and can get the meals and all
that as well if I was away as if I was here; but Gillian”--
“Why--yes, I suppose I know what you mean, ’Cretia. You’d be just as
well content if Gillian wasn’t here, eh?”
“Full as well,” replied Lucretia with emphasis, and gazed full in her
sister’s face. Then both turned and looked at the girl who, crying,
“Button, button, who’s got the button?” was daintily trying to pry
open the stalwart fist of Josias Standish, while Mary Dingley looked
uneasily on.
“Yes,” said Sarah softly, as if answering some unspoken appeal. “And
you don’t want to take her?”
“Take her, no! I believe Mary wouldn’t be married at all if it was to
carry that girl along with her.”
“Well, ’Cretia, I’ll take her, for a while at least. You know the Elder
is with us more than he is at Plymouth, and I’ll lay she won’t carry on
lightly under his eyes. I never knew any man like Father Brewster in my
life! He’d make the Old Boy behave himself, I believe, and never say a
hard word to him neither; and my boys are but boys, and I’ll risk Love.”
“Oh, it isn’t Jonathan I’m afraid of,” said Jonathan’s wife quickly.
“But”--
“Oh, don’t you say a word,” interrupted Sarah with a little laugh. “I
know all about it, and it’s just as it should be; but it would be main
lonesome for a young maid here with none but men for company, and I’ll
ask her to come and make me a visit.”
“Will you? Now that’s comfortable of you, Sally, right comfortable and
friendly,” replied Lucretia, rising to attend her summons, but with
a face so relieved from care and worry that Jonathan, meeting her,
whispered softly,--
“I’d liever look at thee than any of the young lasses, sweetheart.”