ROBED IN WHITE SAMITE.
There was company at the captain’s house, the same dear friends whom
we have seen with him on so many joyous occasions, the Aldens, the
Howlands, the Brewsters, the Pabodies and Hatherleys, and Cudworths;
and from Plymouth, the governor and his wife, the Hopkinses, and other
of the captain’s friends and associates of the old time now so long
gone by, and yet so powerful in the ties then formed. Parson Rayner was
there, too, and Ralph Partridge, but it was as friends and neighbors
that they came, and the only official word the minister of Duxbury
uttered was when he wrung the captain’s hand and said, “‘Be strong and
of a good courage,’ my friend,” and Standish, lifting sombre eyes to
the speaker’s face, answered him never a word.
And in the midst lay Lora, very pale and still, with the golden lashes
folded close upon the cheek hardly whiter now than it had always
been, and the faint rose tint lingering in the lips just touched with
that mysterious smile that seems the trace of a joy so divine, so all
powerful, that it bursts even the icy fetters of death, and insists
upon revealing itself, if ever so dimly, for the assurance of those
who must see before they can believe. The pale golden hair that was
the mother’s pride and boast was released from all bands, and lay a
shining and rippling mantle at either side of the slender figure which
at her father’s desire was clothed in the robe of white samite he had
brought her from over seas, saying in his pride that thus the mistress
of his ancestral home should be clothed. And now! Alas, poor father!
it clothed her for her nuptials indeed, but she must cross a darker
sea than the Atlantic to enter into her kingdom. The delicate hands
lay folded upon the breast, and beneath them some snowdrops that Betty
Pabodie had nurtured, watering them with her tears and foreseeing this
day, of which indeed Lora had calmly and cheerfully spoken more than
once.
“Put on her shoes, and fold the train of her robe around her feet,”
commanded the father. “She said it should be so.” And wonderingly the
mother obeyed, for in these awful hours none dared to intrude upon the
darkness that clothed Standish more gloomily than the mantle the Angel
of Death had lightly laid around the maiden.
Once in the middle of the night, Barbara, rising from her sleepless
couch, sought him where he sat alone with Lora, and throwing herself
upon her knees beside him, her arms around him, and her head upon his
breast, she cried,--
“Oh, Myles, Myles, let us try to bear it together. Do not shut me out
of your heart. Oh, Myles, my heart is breaking--comfort me!”
“Hush, wife, hush! What need of words or clamor? Let her rest, let her
rest--and leave us alone, good wife, my maid and me--go!”
Then chilled, silenced, well-nigh affrighted, the mother crept away,
and left the defeated soldier to his own bitter retrospect.
The brothers, working day and night, fashioned an oaken casket, not
of the gruesome shape in use at a later date, but more like a dainty
cradle, and the women had spread in it a couch of sweet herbs and the
fragrant tips of the balsam fir and the blossoms of the immortelle
which they called life-everlasting. A pillow of dried rose-leaves and
lavender-blossoms and the hop-flowers that soothe to dreamless slumber
was laid ready for the gentle head, and a sheet of fine linen was
spread over all.
“The captain said when he brought home that bolt of Hollands linen from
Antwerp, that it was for Lora’s wedding clothes,” sobbed Barbara, as
she drew the shining folds from the chest that held her most valued
household treasures, and Priscilla Alden, with an arm around her
friend’s neck, kissed her, and bit her tongue lest it should say in
spite of her, “Had he let her marry Wrestling Brewster, she might have
needed wedding clothes of another sort from these.”
And now all have looked their last, and the mother’s tears have dropped
thick and fast upon those eyes that will weep no more, and the father,
silent, stern, and tearless, has laid a hand upon that golden hair that
no longer twines around his fingers, and Betty has gently drawn one of
the snowdrops from between those resistless fingers, a snowdrop that
she will press in her Bible over the words “for of such are the kingdom
of heaven,” the cover is laid gently over that fragrant cradle, and
the brothers, with the Alden sons who have been Lora’s playmates and
dear friends, place it upon the bier and carry it along the field path
her light feet have so often trod, past the Brewster homestead, where
now only Love and his family remained, and so on to what to-day we
call Harden Hill; here around the little church already outgrown, and
soon to be superseded, the graves of some of those who thus far had
passed away were made; others, indeed, had directed that their remains
should rest upon Burying Hill in Plymouth, and some would lie within
the radius of light from their own hearthstones; but a few were here,
and the captain with his own hands marked out the spot where Lora had
fallen on that night when she knew, months before the news came over
seas, that Wrestling Brewster was dead. There they laid her, softly,
gently, as still we lay down the loved ones whom rudest touch could
not harm, or crash of thunders disturb, and her own kinsmen did the
rest. A little heap of turfs was piled near, and as the others turned
away Alexander and Josiah began to lay them; but Hobomok, the faithful
friend and long-time servitor of Standish, laid a finger upon Alick’s
arm, saying in his guttural voice,--
“Hobomok do something for the Moonlight-on-the-water. Hobomok put the
green cover over her.”
“He’s right, Alick,” said Josiah, with a friendly glance at the old
Indian. “He’s all but worshiped Lora ever since she was born. Let him
lay the turf.”
“We couldn’t better show our friendship for you, Hobomok.”
“Hob know all about it,” replied the red man sententiously, and the
brothers followed the long line of friends who scattered along the road
toward their different homes.
Standish walked silently beside his wife until nearly at his own door
he stopped, looking frowningly out across the sea, his teeth set hard
upon his nether lip, as if fighting out some problem in his own mind;
then falling back, he touched William Bradford upon the arm, and drew
him a little aside.
“Send home the rest with your sons, Bradford, and stay here to-night.”
“My good friend, many occasions call me to Plymouth”--
“No occasion greater than the choice of life and death; nay, if all
they say be true, the choice of salvation or damnation,--nothing
weightier than such a choice, is there, Will?”
“What ails you, old friend? Your grief has--has made you ill!”
And the governor, grasping his friend’s arm, looked apprehensively at
the deep color that suddenly had overspread the pallor of his face, and
at the fierce light that some thought had kindled in the gloomy depths
of his eyes, hollow and strained by vigils and unshed tears.
“Tush, man! I’m not gone mad. I’m not such a weakling as to let any
grief master the man in me. It’s only that I’m in a strait between God
and the Enemy, and there’s no man alive I’d choose for umpire but you.”
“If you need me, Myles, I’m with you, whatever else betide.”
And the two men grasped hands and looked into each other’s eyes. Then
with a voice more moved than any had heard from him in three days
Standish said, “I thought I could count upon your kindness, Will, if
you knew my need. Let all the rest go, and when darkness has fallen, we
two will come back to my little maid’s grave, and I’ll tell you there.”
And so it was. The funeral feast, almost a necessity where so many came
from far, was served and eaten nearly in silence, and then the guests
departed, Dame Bradford under charge of her two sons, and tenderly
served by Gillian, whose volatile spirit was quenched in the abundant
tears that meant so little from her eyes.
Night had fallen, and the waning moon was shining mournfully over the
waters, when at a signal from his host Bradford followed him into the
open air and, with a word or two, along the path the funeral procession
had just trodden.
The young birch was in leaf, and a little west wind rustled and sighed
among its branches, casting flickering shadows across the new-turfed
mound, lined from west to east that the sleeper, obedient to the great
call, might in upstanding face the rising of the Sun of Righteousness.
“Sit you down, Bradford. There’s a rock she’s often rested on. Don’t
speak until I gather my thoughts and know what ’tis I mean to say.”
Without reply Bradford, drawing his cloak around him, for the spring
night was chill, sat down upon the boulder, where indeed Lora had
dreamed away many an hour, gazing across the sea that ever drew her
with its vague, sad calling, and waited silently while Standish, with
folded arms and head bent upon his breast, paced up and down, up and
down, now standing upon the crumbling edge of the cliff near at hand,
now pacing back to the little church a bow-shot from the shore.
At last, with sudden and hurried footsteps, as though fearing to linger
over his decision, the soldier drew near, holding a folded paper in his
hand, and exclaimed,--
“Bradford! You too have an only daughter. If a man insulted her
bitterly, bitterly, what would you do to him?”
“Insulted her? How?”
“No matter how. What would you do to him?”
“It is not fair to ask me such a question in such a way, Myles, if you
mean to find an augury for your own course in my reply. I cannot tell
what I should do until I know all, and mayhap not then. But surely no
man ever offered insult to the sweet maid who’s gone?”
“’Tis all you know about it. Well, here’s the story. When I was in
England almost a score of years ago, I went to Standish Hall to talk
with my kinsman now in authority there, and asked him if he would do
me the justice his father denied to my father. He seemed a kindly
man enough, or mayhap ’twas only that he was a smooth courtier, and
cozened easily enough a rough soldier who has never learned to lie. At
all odds, it ended in our making a solemn compact, that if the child
my wife then looked for should be a girl, she was to become the wife
of that man’s son, then a child of two or three years old, and all
that ought by right to have been mine should be settled upon her and
her younger children. We did not set it down on parchment, nor call
witnesses to our oaths; but we grasped hands upon it, and passed our
word each to each as honest gentlemen, and there it rested. When I was
in England ten years or so ago, I traveled down to Eton to see the
boy, and give him a little compliment, small enough for the heir of
Standish Hall, but large enough for my own pocket. I said naught to him
about Lora, of course, though I let him know that I felt more than a
kinsman’s interest in him, and he seemed a brave lad, a trifle set up,
but I could pardon that. Well, the time went on, and there was some
talk of Wrestling Brewster and my girl. I dealt with that as seemed
good to me, and then I wrote to my kinsman, and said the time had come
to consider our contract, and that my girl was woman grown and his boy
must be one and twenty, and I asked how and where we should meet to
give them to each other. Almost a year went by, and my blood already
began to stir at the delay, although I schooled myself to believe it no
slight, when at the last a letter came, this letter. Wait till I read
it out, for though there’s no light, I can see every word as if ’twere
printed off on mine own eyeballs. First a flummery of ‘dear kinsman’
and the like vapid compliment, and then:--
“‘As touching what you call the contract of marriage between our
children, I confess I had all but forgot that we two did hold some such
discourse a matter of eighteen years ago; but what will you, cousin?
These young folk must still take their own way, and my son before
reaching his majority had set his fancy upon a young gentlewoman, one
of the great Howard family, and with a very pretty estate tacked to
her petticoat, marching well with our lands of Boisconge. So they were
betrothed some months ago and will be married come Whitsuntide. Hoping
the fair and worthy Mistress Lora, whose name so pleasantly recalls
our family tree, will soon marry to please you as well as herself, I
remain,’ et cetera, et cetera.
“There, now, William Bradford, what would you have done to the man who
so scorned your Mercy?”
“My faith, Standish!” cried the governor, springing to his feet, “I
cannot blame your anger, for ’tis righteous. Your cousin is but a knave
in spite of his fair words”--
“And what would you have done with him, had you been in my place?”
persisted Standish coldly.
“Nay, what could be done?” faltered Bradford so lamely that Standish
uttered a little bitter laugh of derision.
“There you see! You’ve studied Christian charity so long that you will
not say Kill him! and your manhood will not let you say Forgive him!
and you can find no middle way.
“But I, thank God, am not so hampered; and as I finished reading that
letter my fist clenched on old Gideon’s hilt, and I promised him that
he should carry conviction to that false, proud heart. I would have
gone at once, but I saw that my little maid was grievously ill, and
I could not leave her; then I saw that she would die, and one day I
drew Gideon from his scabbard and thrust his sharp tooth through that
cartel,--see, here are the marks of him,--and I bade him hold fast till
we could wet that paper in the red ink of my reply”-- But here the
governor interrupted him,--
“Myles! Man has no right to predetermine vengeance. In the heat of
affront I too might have longed to combat to the death with one who had
so lightlied my child, but I never could have stored up death for him
like that.”
“You were bred to the land and to books, Bradford, and I to arms,”
replied the soldier haughtily; and then in sudden revulsion of feeling,
he grasped his friend’s hand, saying hoarsely, “I never can be the man
you are, Will, and you better deserved than I to have had that saint
for a daughter. But come, now, I must e’en tell you the whole, as if
’twere to a father confessor, and, by my faith, I wish you were one,
for the old practice rises up in a man’s mind when trouble comes. But
there! I won’t rake up old disputes, but rather on with my shrift: I
was fully purposed, then, so soon as my sweet maid was gone, to travel
to England and seeking out Ralph Standish challenge him to mortal
combat, and to thrust my brave old sword with that letter spitted
upon its blade through his false heart and so avenge my girl. I was as
fully purposed that way as ever I was to eat when I was hungry and saw
victual before me, and I’m not more apt to change my purpose than a
mastiff is to lose his grip.
“The night she died I went down by the edge of the water and tramped
along the beach the night through, yearning to throw myself in and get
to him. I was half mad, I think, and could I have reached that black
heart then, I fear I should have shamed my manhood by not leaving the
villain time to defend himself. The next night, that is, last night,
I was calmer, for as I had not slept nor eaten, I was not so full of
lustyhood, and sending the others away, I sat by my darling the night
through, alone, save when the poor wife came and I would not let her
stay. Poor Barbara! I’ve not remembered her grief as I should; but mine
swallowed up all else, because it was so much bigger and stronger than
all else. So sitting by her, and reading that gentle, subtle smile that
mayhap you marked upon her pretty mouth-- How can I tell you, Will?
Didst ever grasp a handful of sea sand and try to hold it fast?”
“Ay, and felt it slip, grain by grain, between my fingers.”
“Yes. You catch my meaning, as I knew you would. Even like those grains
of sand, my fierce desire for that man’s life slipped and slipped away,
and what I had deemed a noble vengeance grew to seem only a brutal
thirst for blood, and the thought of him and of his offense seemed to
fade into the forgotten years whose record is closed. Perhaps I slept,
perhaps I dreamed without sleeping, but all at once it seemed to me
that my maid stood beside me, close, and yet so far away I dared
not put out a hand to touch her; and that smile was on her lips, and
someway it seemed to speak its meaning without words, and the meaning
was, ‘To him that overcometh’-- That was all, and yet, something,--that
dear spirit or mine own heart, or my memory of that Book she ever made
me read to her all through the last year,--something told me that it
was to him that overcometh his own self, to him who can trust his
vengeance to the Lord and forego it for himself,--to such an one that
the path lies open to the place where Lora has gone; but to the man of
bloodshed and heady violence that path is no more to be traced than a
highway through this wilderness.
“But when the daylight came, and I had eaten and slept, I began to
think ’t was all a fantasy bred of long watching and fasting, and that
my first thought was the best, and even I fancied that I was growing
old and my hardihood was on the wane, and the cold apathy of age was
what held my hand; and so, tossed this way and that, and sore bestead
with doubt and anguish, I turned to some other for calmer counsel and
a juster view. In the old days I would have sought a priest, but now I
turn to you, Will; give me your counsel,--tell me where is my right.”
Throwing himself upon the ground, the soldier hid his face upon the
fresh green mound and lay exhausted and passive. His friend stood many
moments motionless, his eyes uplifted to the sky, where the little
white clouds flying across the face of the waning moon gave her a look
of hurry and perturbation, as if she too were sore beset by the doubts
and temptations of the earthly atmosphere. At last he slowly spoke:--
“Old friend, I am no better or wiser man than you, and I can only
speak as a fallible sinner may to one for whose welfare he yearns as
for his own. It seems to me that God has already answered you through
that dear child who has gone to Him. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’
saith He, and the promise to him that overcometh is as precious and
as many-sided as’ the white stone that he shall receive, and which
commentators hold to mean the diamond”--
“Enough, enough, man!” cried Standish, starting to his feet. “I cannot
listen to so many words. I care naught for commentators or texts. Tell
me as man to man, may I go and kill mine enemy or no!”
“Well, then, no! You shall here and now kneel down and lay your revenge
at the foot of Christ’s cross and leave it there. Man! Has your enemy
hurt you more than those who drove the spikes through his hands and
feet, what time He prayed ‘Father, forgive them; they know not what
they do’? and bethink you how easy vengeance would have been to Him.”
“Ay. Knew not what they did!” muttered Standish. “Knowing it or not,
that man slew my child, for had it not been for the contract, I would
have let her marry Brewster, and she might have been to-day a happy
wife and mother.”
“And if you will reckon in that fashion,” replied Bradford sternly, “it
was surely you who slew Wrestling Brewster, since it was because he
might not have Lora that he went to England and found his death. Should
not God and our dear Elder have required his blood at your hand?”
A great silence was the only answer, and presently Bradford spoke
again, and now in the tone of assured conviction and well-grounded
authority that in some moods the human soul yearns to hear, especially
an ardent, impetuous, and loving soul like that of Standish; a nature
that, while the impulse lasts, will dare heaven and hell and earth to
achieve its purposes, and when the revulsion comes distrusts all that
is within, and turns like a drowning man to some external authority.
Such a man makes a good soldier, for as he says, “Go here, and go
there!” to those beneath him, he is ready to add, “For I also am a man
under authority.”
And in this need, characterizing some of the strongest souls that
animate humanity, masculine and feminine, lies the yearning for
confession and guidance, absolution and penance, that has for centuries
been the strongest weapon in the hand of the Catholic Church.
“No, my friend, you shall not carry this controversy away from this
spot. It is Satan who buffets you so sorely, and if you will fight,
it is with him the combat shall be. Which is the stronger, you, or
that great dragon, that old serpent, whom Michael, of old, fought and
conquered? Fight _him_ in the name of the Lord, and with Gideon if you
will, but here and now relinquish all, yes, every iota of the desire
for your brother’s blood. Destroy that letter,--yes, tear it in pieces
here beside Lora’s grave, and bury the remembrance of it as you have
buried her. You have left it to me, Myles, and I have been given this
to say to you. Take it, in the name of God who hears us.”
“I take it as I took her message,” replied Standish in a low voice, and
rising to his knees, for he had been lying prone beside the grave, he
sought about for a moment, and finding a bit of stick began carefully
to remove one of the turfs at the foot of the new-made grave. Laying
it at one side, he took the letter from under his knee, where he had
held it, and quietly tore it into fragments, which he held in his
left hand, while with the right he scooped a hollow in the loose loam
beneath the sod; but in deepening the cavity his fingers encountered
some foreign substance, and drawing it out, held up to the moonlight
a little package enveloped in a strip of the cloth-like inner bark of
the birch-tree, and bound around with cord twisted of fibres of the
hackmatack.
“Some of Hobomok’s work,” murmured Standish, carefully unrolling the
bark, and disclosing a curiously shaped and much worn stone of a
peculiarly hard and dense quality, fashioned at one end into a neck by
which it could be securely carried, and at the other sharpened to a
curved edge capable of cutting wood.
“Why, ’t is Hobomok’s totem!” exclaimed Standish, turning it over and
over. “He always wore it about his neck, and for all he calls himself
a praying Indian, I sorely mistrusted he prayed as much to his totem
as to any other god, nor would he ever let us see him use it, or take
it in our hands, though the boys have urged him more than enough. The
dear maid used to talk to him in her gentle way, and try to make a good
Christian of him, just as she used to set up her dolls and play go to
meeting with them, and with as great results. But now,--did he bury
it here for a charm to keep away the afrits, or did he lay it at her
feet to show that in her sweet patience of death she had conquered his
unbelief even as she conquered that other savage, her father?”
“Ask him,” suggested Bradford, but Standish, carefully replacing the
totem in its covering, shook his head.
“No, no! Hobomok is too much of a gentleman to pry into what is not
meant for him to know, and I should be ashamed to let him know that I
had surprised what he fain would have held a secret.
“No, I’ll lay the letter in first, and then the totem to keep it down,
and my little maid will understand all that is meant by the one and
the other. There! And now, friend, I thank you. We’re growing old
men, Will; ‘it is toward evening, and the day is far spent,’ but this
night’s work will stand both for you and for me when all else fails.
Come, let us be going.”