MASTER HOPKINS'S GUEST
"'In Wakefield there lives a jolly pinder,
In Wakefield all on a green,
In Wakefield all on a green,--'
THERE, there, Damaris! Hushaby, hushaby! Go to sleep, like a good lass."
Damaris gurgled at Miles with a provokingly wide-awake crow. "I never
saw such a bad baby," sighed the little boy. "Do go to sleep, honey.
"'In Wakefield there lives a jolly pinder,--'"
"Oh, Miles," laughed Constance Hopkins, who, standing at the rude
table, was scouring the biggest kettle, "you have sung that half a
score of times. Is there no other song you know?"
"It is no time for the child to sleep now," interrupted Mistress
Hopkins. "I'll wrap her up, and, since 'tis so mild a morning, you may
take her forth into the air."
"O dear!" thought Miles, "I'm a man, not a nurse." He never considered
that it was any kindness on his new guardians' part when, instead of
putting him to heavy outdoor tasks, they set him to minding the baby
and helping about the house. "Like a girl," Miles told himself, with
an indignant sniff. It was not two weeks since he left the sick-house,
and his legs were still a little uncertain, but he was sure he was fit
to work again, or, at any rate, fit to run away and play with the other
boys.
But he took the baby now and walked forth meekly, because he lived
in some dread of Mistress Elizabeth Hopkins. She was a thin-lipped,
energetic young woman, who mended Miles's clothes scrupulously, and,
with equal conscientiousness, boxed his ears whenever he tracked dirt
on her clean floors. Her sharp tongue, though, he feared more than
her hands, for Mistress Hopkins scolded at everything and everybody;
indeed, the only members of the household whom her words never troubled
were Oceanus, who was so young he just blinked his eyes when she
talked, and Master Hopkins, on whom people's fretting had as much
effect as it would have had upon the great rock at the landing place.
After all, Miles was rather glad to get out into the air, away from
the living room, where Mistress Hopkins was already chiding Constance.
The morning was fair and warm, with no wind stirring, and the harbor
sparkled invitingly, so, shouldering the unwelcome Damaris, he started
happily to the shore.
But his contentment speedily had an end, for, not halfway to the
landing, he was overtaken by Francis Billington, Jack Cooke, and Joe
Rogers, who at once addressed him in disrespectful wise. "Ho, Miles,
that's brave work, tending a baby," jeered Francis.
"You meddle with your own matters," Miles replied sulkily.
"Come with us, Miles," Jack put in pacifically. "We're going along
shore to the first brook--"
"We do not want a baby with us," Joe interrupted.
"_You_ might stay with me, Jack," Miles pleaded, as the others turned
away.
Jack, a freckled little fellow with merry eyes, dug the heel of his
shoe into the dirt. "The other lads will be having sport," he said
half-heartedly.
"Then go with them," cried Miles. "Only you were very fain to play with
me on shipboard."
Even this last thrust failed; Jack ran after the others down the hill,
and Miles, feeling cross and ill-treated, was left to himself.
'Twould look too much as if he were following his ungracious friends if
he went on to the landing, so he turned back to Elder Brewster's house.
There Priscilla Mullins, a girl orphaned by the winter's sickness, who,
because she was eighteen, was classed by Miles as a woman, was sweeping
the doorstone with a broom of birch twigs. She paused in the labor
teasingly to throw him a kiss, and tell him his busy sister and the
lads were cooking by the brookside.
Sure enough, in the level space between the base of the bluff on which
the cottage stood and the cove, Miles found Dolly, and Dolly's poppet
Priscilla, and Love, and Wrestling, and Solomon, and Trug, who was not
admitted to Mistress Hopkins's house because his great paws dirtied her
floor,--all busied in making delectable pies of mud.
But when Miles joined them, Love withdrew from the mud-pie game, and
wished to play at holding a council, such as his father and all the men
were holding that morning in the Common House to regulate the military
affairs of the colony. Dolly insisted that she should be allowed to
come to the council too, for all Love urged that women never were
invited thither, and the argument was growing bitter, when an unwonted
tumult in the village street drew Miles's attention. A confused sort
of calling and shrill shouting it seemed, that made his heart quicken
between curiosity and alarm; so, snatching up Damaris, he scaled the
bluff, while the rest of the children scrambled close behind him.
On the doorstone Mistress Brewster and Priscilla were gazing in silent
wonder toward the street, and, looking thither too, Miles saw a man
stalk past to the landing, very deliberately, as if he knew the place
and held he had the right to come there. It was no one of the settlers,
though, but a great, half-naked fellow with a coppery face--an Indian.
Dolly and Wrestling clutched Mistress Brewster's skirts, the little
boy fairly crying, and Miles himself, it must be owned, held Damaris
fast and drew a step nearer the doorstone. But next moment he noted the
Indian carried for weapons only a bow and two arrows, with which he
could not kill all the settlement, and, moreover, at his heels tagged
venturously Giles Hopkins and several of the other boys, and even
Goodwife Billington, very clamorous, and the Governor's serving maid.
So Miles, not to be outdone by a petticoat, swaggered into the roadway
and joined himself to the little group of curious folk, who, always
ready to flee if he should turn on them, followed close at the savage's
heels, down the steep hill, past Peter Browne's cottage, even to the
door of the Common House.
The noise in the street had already disturbed the men at their
conference, and they came flocking forth at the door, the Governor, the
Elder, and the Captain, with a score of other stout fighters crowding
behind them. But the Indian, never a whit abashed, strode boldly up
to them, would even have pressed into the house, had not their ranks
barred his passage. Nothing chilled, he halted, and, stretching forth
his hands, spoke in a guttural tone: "Welcome."
"Do Indians talk English?" Miles whispered to Giles, who stood beside
him. "Hush, hush, Damaris! The black man won't hurt you."
But Damaris, quite unconvinced, clutched Miles tightly round the neck
and went on crying lustily, till at last Goodwife Billington seized him
by the collar. "Thou good-for-naught lad!" she scolded. "Wilt thou kill
the poor babe? Take her back to the house, thou runagate! Ay, ay, let
her scream herself ill, so thou mayest gape and gaze. I would I had the
up-bringing of thee!"
Some people besides himself liked to gape and gaze, Miles thought,
but, without reply, he gathered the wailing Damaris into his arms and
trudged slowly up the hill. There, by the Governor's house, it chanced
he met with Francis and Jack and Joe, who, scenting something unusual
in the village, had hastened back through the fields. "What is it has
happened, Miles?" cried Joe.
Miles, glancing over his shoulder, saw with unkind satisfaction that
the men had taken the savage into the Common House, out of sight.
"'Twas naught," he said airily. "Just a great Indian came into town."
"Did you see him?" urged Francis. "Tell us about it."
"Humph! You've no wish to talk to me when I'm tending a baby," sniffed
Miles, and trudged on to Master Hopkins's house, so elate at his
triumph that he forgot to be angry with Damaris for dragging him away
from the sport.
At the noon meal, indeed, he heard all and more than he could have
learned, had he lingered about the door of the Common House, for Ned
Lister was bubbling over with talk of the Indian. As Master Hopkins had
stayed at the Common House and Dotey had none of his fellow-servant's
faculty for gathering news, he proved the only tale-monger of the
household; so the whole family harked to him respectfully, and even
Mistress Hopkins forgot her usual sarcasms on his galloping tongue.
"This is not a savage from these parts," Ned explained; "he comes from
the eastward, from Monhegan, whither the ships out of England go to
fish. He has been on shipboard there and so has got a smattering of
the English tongue. One Captain Dermer brought him to Cape Cod, and he
has been in these parts now some eight months. And he told us a deal
of the nations hereabout. This open place where we have settled is
called Patuxet. It was a village of the savages once, but three or four
years back came a great plague, and all the people died, so now we are
undisputed masters of the soil. Next unto us dwell the Massasoits, a
tribe of some sixty fighting men; and to the southeast, those savages
whom our men gave a brush to on their explorations in December, are the
Nausets, near a hundred strong."
Ned paused to secure himself another slice of cold mallard; then
started on a new train: "You should 'a' seen the Indian fellow eat. He
asked for beer, but we gave him strong water, and biscuit and butter
and cheese and pudding, and a piece of mallard thereto, and he liked
all very well, and ate right heartily."
"He is not the only idler who looks for a full meal," said Mistress
Hopkins scathingly. "Where have they put the vile creature now?"
"Vile creature, mistress?" Ned repeated. "Sure, he says that in his own
country he is a great lord of land, a Sagamore--"
"I would he were back in his own country," Mistress Hopkins answered
sharply. "The murderous wretch! I shall not draw a breath in peace till
he be hence. Here, Ned, 'tis little enough work you'll do if you go
forth, do you stay this afternoon in the house to protect us."
There was an instant of disappointed silence on Lister's part, then,
"'Tis you she means, Ned Dotey," he cried, and, without staying to take
his cap, bolted out at the door.
Nor was this the only desertion which Mistress Hopkins suffered; for,
at their first opportunity, Dotey and Giles also slipped away, and
Miles stayed behind only because he was so little that the mistress
shook him when he attempted to follow. But speedily he had a bright
thought, and asked Mistress Hopkins if perhaps, since she was afraid of
the Indian, she would not like him to fetch Trug to the house to guard
them.
Thus Miles was allowed, at last, to bring his dog home, and so grateful
was he, that he remained patiently tending Damaris all the long
afternoon. He found a certain enjoyment in his position, however; he
was sole man in the cottage, and he wondered, should other Indians
follow this first one, if Mistress Hopkins wouldn't let him take one of
the muskets and fight for her. When it came dark at last, he knowingly
inspected the fastenings of the door, and told Constance not to be
afraid; he and Trug could defend them.
Poor Constance needed more comfort than that, for she was in a sorry
fright. Her hands shook as she laid the table, and, when a step sounded
crisply in the dooryard, she gave a nervous cry and dropped the pile of
trenchers. It was only Ned Lister, however, who stamped in, bareheaded
and whistling cheerfully.
"You have come back, then, since 'tis suppertime?" Mistress Hopkins
greeted him sarcastically.
"Nay, I'm not hungry," Ned answered, as he sauntered over to the fire
where Miles sat with Damaris, "'tis that the master sent me ahead to
bid you make ready the guest chamber and the bed of state. Our Indian
lord there, the Sagamore Samoset, is to lodge here to-night."
For a moment Mistress Hopkins looked at the speaker in dumb amazement.
"If Master Hopkins does not punish you roundly for such a lie, Edward
Lister," she said at last, deliberately, "it will not be for want of my
urging him."
"It's the truth, though," Ned answered indifferently.
"O me!" Constance cried, with a sudden nervous wail, "I know we'll all
be slain ere daybreak. O dear!" She turned to run into the bedroom,
when Lister caught her by the arm. "Don't cry, Constance," he urged;
"there's no need to fear. Captain Standish and some of the others are
coming hither to spend the night and keep watch. You'll be safe enough."
But the girl, breaking from him, vanished into the chamber, whither
Mistress Hopkins, snatching up Damaris, followed her; so, for some
moments, Miles was free to ask questions and Ned to answer, as it liked
them best. But, so soon as Master Hopkins's deliberate step sounded
on the doorstone, Mistress Hopkins came forth and, as he entered
the living room, confronted him: "Is that savage to be lodged here
to-night, Stephen? Among us, where my children are?"
"He must go somewhere, Elizabeth," the master of the house replied
unruffled. "He is set to stay among us for the night, and the tide is
out so we may not convey him on shipboard. We can lodge him in the
little closet next our chamber."
"He shall not come into the house!" said Mistress Hopkins, with her
thin lips set.
"Edward Lister, do you spread out the bed within the closet," Master
Hopkins went on unheedingly.
With a wink at Miles, Ned crossed the room in unusual haste, and Miles,
taking a candle, followed after into the closet, a tiny room with one
black window, where stood an old chest and a hogshead and a rolled-up
mattress, which Ned began leisurely to spread out. "What think you,
Miles?" he whispered, as the boy closed the door behind him. "It's good
there is one person in the house whom the dame cannot rattle off as she
list, eh?"
Miles nodded vaguely, his attention all fixed on the least details of
the commonplace room which now had a fearful interest from the guest
it was to shelter. The thought of the savage stranger filled the place
with such awesome fancies that he could not help going out from it
very hastily ahead of Lister, who grumbled a little that Miles was so
speedy to be off with the candle.
Once in the bright living room, however, he became very brave indeed,
and wondered to Giles Hopkins when the Sagamore Samoset would come.
His mood grew the bolder when the elder lad showed him a dirk knife he
had placed under his doublet. "For there's no being sure with these
treacherous savages," Giles said seriously.
But when the Sagamore came at last, the boys found that the Hopkins
household would be well guarded, for with him were not only Master
Hopkins and Dotey, but big John Alden and Captain Standish. The very
sight of the latter reassured Miles, so down he sat on the floor by the
hearth, with his arm round Trug, who, as soon as he spied the Indian,
bristled the hair on his back and uttered a throaty growl.
Mistress Hopkins and Constance and the two babies kept within the south
chamber; but the men by themselves were enough to fill the living room.
There were but two stools, besides the form on the hearth and a chest
against the wall, so long-legged Giles must curl himself up on the
floor by Miles, while Ned Lister set himself upon the table. They bade
the Indian be seated on the form by the fire, right over against Miles,
who, be sure, stared at him with eyes wide open.
The Sagamore Samoset, he saw, was a tall, straight man, of complexion
like an English gypsy, smooth-faced, with coarse black hair that fell
to his shoulders behind, but was cut before. Since his coming into
the settlement, his English hosts had put upon him a horseman's coat,
which he wore with much pride and dignity; indeed, all his gestures and
carriage were not only decent, but of a certain stateliness. "Why, he
is somewhat like other men," Miles whispered softly to Giles, but Trug
grumbled in his throat.
Only one candle was burning in the room, but the firelight cast a
flickering brightness on the faces of the men. Captain Standish and
Lister and the Indian had lighted pipes of tobacco, and the air was so
heavy with the smell of the smoke that Miles half drowsed, but through
his drooping eyelids he watched his English comrades, and watched the
Indian. Captain Standish was sitting adventurously right on the form
beside the Sagamore, and now and again they spoke together. Miles noted
that in the Indian's speech came strange words, which the Captain
seemed to try to understand, and once or twice the Captain even sought
to make use of them himself.
Miles wondered at this, and then his only wonderment was as to whether
he had been asleep. The logs on the hearth had broken into red embers;
the men had risen up; and, rubbing the heaviness from his eyes, Miles
saw Master Hopkins and the Captain usher their Indian guest into the
little closet room.
Straightway a certain tension in the company seemed to slacken; Giles
rose stiffly from the floor, and Trug put down his head upon his
paws, though he still kept one bright, half-opened eye fixed on the
door through which the Indian had gone. With a great creaking of the
trestles, Ned Lister dismounted from the table. "If he come to kill
us," he said in a low tone to Alden, "do you run in and call me so I
can have a share in the scuffle." Then, stretching himself mightily, he
disappeared into the north bedroom, where the serving men and the boys
of the household slept.
"Since you have two others to keep watch with you, Master Hopkins,"
spoke the Captain, as he took down his hat from the wall, "I'll go walk
a turn about the hill. I'll be back ere the half-hour is up."
He had put his hand to the latch, when Miles, on the impulse, sprang to
his feet and ran to him. "May I come too, sir?" he whispered.
"You, Miles? Why, you were better in bed. Nay, come if you like."
Out of doors the air was crispy and silent, and pleasant smelling
after the smoky atmosphere of the crowded room. Overhead the stars
were dense and bright, but below, the lonely little settlement lay in
darkness, with never a spark of a candle showing. "How late is it,
Captain Standish?" Miles asked, in a hushed voice.
"I should say it was near on to midnight," the other replied, stepping
along so briskly that Miles's breath for talking was lost in the effort
to keep pace with him.
Up and up they toiled; past Goodman Billington's cottage; past the
black cabin where Alden and the Captain lived; and then by the
well-trodden path up the sheer hillside, till the planking of the broad
platform sounded hollow beneath their feet, and they stood among the
guns. The spark in the Captain's pipe gleamed red in the darkness, but
Miles could not see the Captain's features; he perceived only that he
turned his face from quarter to quarter, and remained longest gazing
into the black west, where the ridge of hills ran jagged against the
starry sky.
He watched the Captain's movements, but he did not venture to speak
till Standish himself broke out: "Well, there'll come no bands to
frighten us this night, I take it. We can march home, Miles. We've a
fair starlight to make the march under," he added, and, as they stepped
from the platform to the yielding turf, lingered an instant to gaze
skyward.
"Which is it that is the North Star, sir?" Miles hesitated.
"Why, that one yonder, lad. You know it well."
"I knew 'twas the North Star in England. I knew not if 'twere the same
here. It is such a long ways from home."
"It's the same sky, Miles, and the same Heaven, I take it, that we had
over us in England."
Miles threw back his head and once more stared up into the sky, that
was so vast it made him shrink and feel smaller even than before.
He sighed a little, he scarcely knew why, and put his hand on the
Captain's sleeve. Standish took Miles's hand in his, and so kept hold
on him as they came down from the hill, and in that pressure was
something so comforting that Miles was sorry when they reached the door
of Master Hopkins's house.
Within was heavy air, and a dull fire, and sleepy faces; Giles had gone
to lie down on his bed, and it did not need the Captain's bidding to
send Miles blinking after. Once, in the darkness, he was wakened by
hearing Lister protest inarticulately that he would rather have his
throat cut in his sleep ten times over than rise and watch; and once
Miles guessed hazily that some one was shaking him, and he tried to say
he was getting up, and in the midst dropped back on his pillow.
At the last the dazzle of warm sunlight on his face, and the rattle,
rattle of trenchers, brought him staggering and blinking to his feet.
Oh, yes, he remembered; the Sagamore Samoset had been there last night;
but he was not afraid of him, especially since 'twas daylight; indeed,
he wanted to see him again, so out he rushed into the living room.
"Well, sleepyhead!" Constance laughed at him, and Mistress Hopkins
was beginning to scold him because he had not awakened, for all her
efforts, till mid-morning, when Ned Lister sauntered in. "His Lordship
the Indian is safe departed, Constance," he said consolingly, as
he made a slow business of getting an axe from the chimney corner.
"They gave him a knife and a bracelet and a ring, and he is gone away
content."
"A good riddance, too!" snapped Mistress Hopkins. "And now do you,
Edward Lister, fetch two buckets of water and wash out the place where
the creature lodged. To bring such heathen under a Christian roof! I
hope I never set eyes on another of the coppery wretches again."
Ned shrugged his shoulders and said nothing till his mistress was quite
done; then he added meekly: "I misremembered; he said he was coming
back again in a night or two, and next time he is going to bring with
him a goodly number from the tribe of the Massasoits."