CANARY WINE AND SEED-CAKE.
It was in what Captain William Pierce called the ebb of the afternoon;
that dreamy, quiet leisure hour that falls in country places when the
heavy work and heavy feeding of the day are over, and the evening
milking and bedding the cattle and providing the pleasant meal called
supper still lie in the middle distance.
Priscilla, our own Priscilla, not forgotten or unloved,
although unmentioned and a little hidden behind the throng of
new-comers,--Priscilla Alden stood in the thrifty orchard of pear and
apple trees, planted twenty years before by her goodman, trees whose
lineal descendants may to-day be found in the place of the old ones,
just as Aldens still till the Aldens’ farm.
At the edge of the orchard a row of lime-trees shaded the well and
the southern door of the comfortable house, and beneath these trees
were set the beehives, whose dainty denizens loved the golden blossoms
so well that from morning until night they swarmed up and down their
fragrant pasture, making a sound like the surf upon a pebbly shore.
Priscilla is gone, those trees, those bees are gone, and you and I are
going, but the bees of to-day swarm just as vigorously through this
lime-tree at my window as those did then, and as the bees of two or
three centuries hence will through the trees whose seeds are not yet
planted. Only man is ephemeral and changeable: the bees and the trees
are conservative.
Some such idea, but too vague to be recognized by an unspeculative
brain, floated through Priscilla’s mind as, leaning against the trunk
of her favorite pear-tree, she gazed up into the yellow lime blossoms,
listened to the bees, and remembered the years when she and John had
planted the trees, while their little children looked on and asked
questions.
“Ah well, ah well!” murmured she at last. “’Tis their nature to
swarm--the children and the bees, both; and Betty shall have the best
hive as soon as they’re settled. Ah me!”
Then with one of her old impetuous motions Priscilla dashed her hands
across her eyes and cleared them of the coming tears. Good, kindly,
honest eyes still, if not so bright or so brown as they were once, and
as Betty’s are now; and a comely matron face, albeit the colors are
somewhat ripened; and the chestnut hair, lined with a silver thread
here and there, is put back under a matron’s coif, but the mobile lips
still disclose perfect teeth, and John Alden still holds it a delight
to take a kiss from those lips, and put his finger under that smooth,
round chin. ’Tis no more than later summer yet, and the frosts of
autumn are as yet far distant.
“Ah well, ah well!” said Priscilla once more, and restlessly plucked a
rose or two from the tall bush beside the door, those old-fashioned,
sweet white roses now almost forgotten. As she pinned them in the
kerchief covering her bosom, the matron paused, and with eye and ear
questioned the grassy path leading from the new-made highway to the
front of their own house. Yes, a horse was heavily trotting up the
path, and, going around the corner of the house, Priscilla was just
in time to meet Mistress Standish, mounted upon a pillion, with John
Haward in the saddle.
“And glad am I to see you, Barbara,” cried she, embracing and kissing
her friend with more vivacity than most mothers of her day ventured to
show. “’Tis a sight for sore eyes to look upon you. Where have you been
keeping yourself?”
“Where housewives must--at home,” replied Barbara pleasantly. “John,
you can lift the saddle and cool the mare’s back, but I shall not tarry
over an hour, so hold you within call.”
“Nay, you’ll stay supper,” remonstrated Priscilla as the two women
went into the house, and the hostess removed her guest’s riding gear.
“There’s a moon, you know.”
“Ay, and there’s a goodman at home,” retorted Barbara, and then, her
face suddenly losing its somewhat artificial air of cheerfulness, she
looked piteously in her friend’s eyes and said with a catch in her
voice,--
“’Tis about him, about Myles, that I’ve come to see you, Priscilla.”
“Why, what is the matter, dear? Is the captain ailing more than usual?”
“No, though he’s far from well, and naught angers him so quick as
saying so; but that’s not the worst. ’Tis his soul that’s sick,
Priscilla.”
“But how? Has the parson been at him again to join the church?”
“Nay, I’m afraid Master Partridge will never look over the things Myles
said the last time he urged him so vehemently, and the captain gave way
to the ache in his back, that he says is ever with him, and let out a
strange oath or two about meddling parsons and I know not what. To be
sure’t was in Dutch, but I think parson spelled out enough of it to
anger him, and”--
“And serve him right, plaguing a sick man with the catechism,” broke in
Priscilla. “But if not that, what is it ails the captain?”
“Why, it’s not so much the captain that’s ailing as Josiah, poor boy.”
“Josiah ailing!”
“Yes, with a sore and sharp disease called love-sickness, Priscilla.
You know he’s sweethearted Mary Dingley these five years or more, and a
dear, pretty, loving little maid she is.”
“Yes, and what’s come across their courting?”
“Why, there’s where Myles is distraught. Before our Lora went, you know
she and Mary Dingley were closer than sisters, and while my poor girl
lay sick Mary was ever at her side, and helped us dress her for her
burying”--
“Ah, the sweet saint, how pure and holy she looked when we had done!”
murmured Priscilla, but Barbara hurriedly raised her hand.
“Nay, talk not on ’t, or I shall lose sight of all else. ’Tis only by
times I dare to speak of her. You know when our Alick married your
Sally, his father would fain have had them come home to live; but
Sally had liever keep her own house, and Alick felt himself old enough
to be goodman,--and, well, never mind all that, but Josiah talked to
me--you know he was ever my own boy--at that time, and he said when he
and his Molly got wed, ’twould be his wish and will and her pleasure
to come home to us, and be the stay of our old age, and so ’twas
settled; but then my poor maid took sick, and there was no thought of
aught but her in the house, and when she was gone, Josiah, who loved
her tenderly, said not a word until the year came round and more, and
then, man fashion, he spoke out more honestly than shrewdly to his
father and me together, and said ’t was time now that he was wed, and
he would fain bring his wife to us to fill the place of her that was
gone. Mayhap ’twas just the word ‘fill the place’ that angered Lora’s
father; perhaps he forgot that he was young himself once, and that God
lightens the burdens that he lays upon young hearts lest they should be
broken before they’re used, while to us that have well-nigh done our
work he lets grief crush out this world’s life that we may be ready for
the next. But, however that may be, the captain took mortal offense at
the thought of any young woman filling Lora’s place at the hearth or
in the love of those who mourned her and should ever mourn her, and he
said things that no temper but one so sweet as my Josiah’s could have
brooked. If it had been Myles, he would have broke out at his father
and given as good as he got, and when o’ stormy nights I think of my
poor sailor lad at sea, I comfort myself with the thought that he’s
safe from breaking the fifth commandment. But there, ’tis not of son
Myles I’m speaking, but of poor Josiah.”
“And he took his father’s rating in brave patience as he ever does,--so
Alick says,” said Alick’s mother-in-law.
“Yes. Then Alick has told you of our trouble?” demanded Barbara almost
jealously, but Priscilla hastened to reply,--
“Oh, no. Only he loves to magnify his brother, who is more than dear to
him. But go on, Bab, with your story.”
“Well, dear, I tried to talk with the captain when we were alone, but
the wound was too deep and too angry to bear much handling, and so I
e’en left it to nature and to grace. But at the end he consented that
Josiah should marry, and he would talk with John Dingley about setting
up the young folks, and he promised never to say another bitter word to
Josiah about it; but on the other hand he would not go to the marriage,
and he bade me tell the poor lad that he was not to bring his lass to
the house either before or after they were married, for no, not for one
half hour should Lora’s place be filled, nor should any woman call him
father so long as he lived.”
“He bade Alick tell Sally as much as that, and she hasn’t been anigh
your house since,” interposed Sally’s mother indignantly; but Barbara
raised her shadowy blue eyes so piteously, and looked so imploringly
into her friend’s face, that a misty softness suddenly filled
Priscilla’s own eyes, and petting the other’s hand she said,--
“There, there, gossip, ’tis all right! Go on, go on.”
And Barbara, smiling faintly as one well used to control her own
feelings, and to make allowance for the impetuosity of others, went on:
“So I told Josiah, and he told Mary, and she her father and mother, and
not one of them would hearken to any marriage so shadowed, nor could I
blame them. All that was a year ago, and Josiah has been as good a son
as ever man could ask ever since; but a week apast or so, he spoke to
me, and said his youth was going, and Mary was of full age, and ’twas
not right that he should ask her to wait in her father’s house till her
younger sisters were married over her head, and he had made up his mind
to go to Connecticut and make a home whereto he might carry his wife.
John Haward could manage the farm, and Hobomok the fishing and boats,
and perhaps his brother Myles after this voyage would settle down
awhile at home. Oh, Priscilla, when I heard that word I felt as if the
end had come, and I must e’en lay down under the burthen that I could
not carry. Alick gone, and Myles gone, and my one sweet maid gone, and
my two dear little fellows left over on Burying Hill at Plymouth, and
now Josiah, the one whom, God forgive me, I haply loved the best”--
“No, no, it sha’n’t be, it can’t be,” interrupted Priscilla
impulsively. “Myles shall listen to reason; he shall see that what he
calls grief has grown into cruel selfishness. I’ll tell him so; I’ll
talk to him”--
“’Twas what I came to ask of you, dear Pris! Well do I know, that
from the days before I came until now, Myles has held you in singular
tenderness, and you may say to him things that no one else dare, and
that I will not say lest he mistake it for chiding, or for want of
love, or--well, now, how can I say it, Priscilla, but you know as well
as I, that when a woman has once made her husband ashamed of himself,
she has lost what she never will recover in his eyes. Our masters love
not to be mastered by a woman, and she the one sworn to obedience.”
“And so you’d put me in that place and make sure that hereafter Myles
shall not love me too well!” exclaimed Priscilla petulantly, and in
the same breath added, “No, no, that was but a peevish jest, and you
know it, Bab. Wait, now, till I take counsel with myself, for there’s
a thought lurking somewhere in the back of my head that I’d fain catch
and look in’s face before I say more.”
And jumping up, Priscilla went to a cupboard, and taking out a decanter
of canary wine and a loaf of seed-cake, placed them before her guest
with a napkin and a sheath-knife. Then, lifting a forefinger to silence
Barbara’s acknowledgments, she went to the open door, and stood
plucking some withered leaves and faded flowers from the white rosebush
with automatic tidiness, but with a mind altogether unconscious of the
body’s occupation.
A few moments of summer silence followed, that living silence of summer
so different from the deadly silence of winter, and then, suddenly
flinging her handful of leaves and roses upon the ground, Priscilla
turned, and coming back into the room cried triumphantly, “I have it
now, Barbara! ’Tis Betty!”
“Betty!” echoed Barbara dropping the morsel of cake from between her
fingers. “What about Betty?”
“She’s the one to speak to Myles about Josiah and Mary Dingley.”
“Betty!”
“Yes, Betty. See here, now, woman; ’tisn’t that I’m afeard of
Myles,--the dear knows that I never yet quailed before the face of man;
but, Bab, you’ve hit on one sad truth about our masters, and I’ll give
you another. They ill brook to be taught by their wives, say you, and
I will add, they still love a fair young face better than one whereon
they’ve watched the wrinkles come and the bloom fade out. Some thirty
years ago I was a comely lass enough, and our gallant captain thought
me so; but he’s seen me at least five times a sennight ever since, and
I could tell you well-nigh the day he stared long and shrewdly in my
face and said in his heart, ‘She’s lost her comeliness’”--
“Nay, nay, Pris, he’s said more than once that Sally’s not a patch upon
her mother.”
“Upon what her mother was once, was what he meant, gossip, no matter
what he said. Oh, don’t tell me, Bab! If I know naught else in this
world, I know Priscilla Alden, and I can spell out a page or so of
Myles Standish. But pass all that, and come to Betty.
“It’s not only that she’s far comelier than ever her mother was, but
she’s fresh and new in her matronhood; as a maid she held her tongue
before her elders as a maid should do, and I’ll lay you a pretty penny
that the captain don’t guess she has a tongue, and a headpiece to keep
it in, that’ll match any man in the colony, if once she starts out. Now
what I say is, that she shall go in boldly, as Esther did to Ahasuerus,
and speak her mind, and as Esther said, If she die, she dies. Thank
goodness, the captain can’t kill her outright, and she can stand a
strange word or two in Dutch better than poor Parson Partridge did.”
“Well, ’tis an idea to think on,” replied Barbara slowly, and
Priscilla, knowing that the matter was settled, smiled the smile of a
contented diplomat, and brushing the cake crumbs into the napkin, shook
them out of the door before she quietly clenched the matter by saying,--
“I’m going over to Betty’s in the morning, and I’ll speak to her.”