Standish of Standish Part 12

"Well enow; but sweet air will not make me live if the time hath come for me to die." And the sick girl smiled wanly, inscrutably, the smile of one who knows what he will not say.

The face of the fearless soldier grew white with terror, and almost angrily he replied,--

"Hush, child! Thy time to die hath not come. Never think it, for it shall not be."

"Nay, Myles, thou canst not daunten Death with thy stern voice and masterful eye, though thou canst quell a score of other foes with one glance."

And Rose, moving her frail little hand toward the sinewy fist clenched upon the bed-covering, slid a finger within its grasp, and went softly on with a pathetic ring of gayety in her voice,--

"I was dreaming, too, of home, mine own old home. I was gathering cowslips in the meadow at St. Mary's, and mother stood by with little Maudlin in her arms. They smiled, both of them, ah how sweetly they smiled upon me, and I filled my pinafore with the cowslips, soft, cool, wet cowslips,--I feel them in my hand now, so cool, so wet! Myles, I fain would have those cowslips, may I not?"

"Child! Child! Thou 'lt break my heart!"

"Mother and Maudlin both died the year I saw thee first, dost remember, Myles?"

"Try to sleep a little, my darling. I will say thee a psalm, or perhaps one of those old Manx ballads thou didst use to lilt so lightly."

"Mistress White says they are unG.o.dly, and a snare of Satan," replied Rose dreamily, and before Myles could utter the wrathful comment that quivered upon his lips she went on,--

"It was across her grave I saw thee, dear, dost mind thee of that hour?"

"Thy mother's grave? ay, I mind me."

"Yes, thou camest with thy cousin Barbara to seek thy grandsire's gravestone and to search out the muniments of thy race. Thou 'lt never lay hands on that inheritance, Myles."

"I care not, so thou wilt get strong and well again, my Rose, my Rose!"

And with a groan but half driven back upon his heart, the soldier turned his head aside and set his teeth upon his trembling lip. But Rose, more alive in the past than the present, rambled on in her sweet, weak voice,--

"'Not only this wild hunting ground and ruined lodge where we abide, but many a fair manor in England, and many a stately home is his,' that was what Barbara told me about thee afterward; and when I praised thy presence, for I loved thee or ever I knew it myself, she straightened her neck and said full proudly, 'Ay, and not only a goodly man, but a brave soldier and n.o.ble soul.' 'Twas she who first saw that thou lovedst me, Myles, and came and wept for joy upon my neck."

"Peace, peace, dear child. Thou wastest thy strength in talking overmuch. Sleep, canst thou not, dear heart?"

"Dost think that Barbara will come hither? She promised me surefast that she would so soon as there was a company ready. She said it was so lonely there in Man when I was gone. Will she come, think you, Myles?"

"Like enow, sweetheart. Barbara mostly carries out what she promises.

But"--

"And thou 'lt be very, very good to thy cousin, wilt thou not, Myles?

Thou 'rt all she has now."

"Surely both of us will be good to our kinswoman, dear wife, and all the more that, as thou sayest, it was by going to visit her that I first saw thee, blooming like a very rose in that gray old Manx churchyard."

"I was ever friends with Barbara, but I loved her all the more for thy sake, dear. And she was well pleased that we two should wed--leastways she said so."

"And if she said it she meant it, for in all the years she tarried in my mother's house I never knew her tell a lie or wear two faces. But now, verily, child, I must have thee rest. Speak not again unless thou needest somewhat. I will have it so, my Rose."

"Then let me lay my hand in thine. There, then, good-night."

"Good-night, mine own."

And while the winter night lapsed through hours of deadly chill and darkness into the sad twilight of early morning the soldier sat motionless, holding that fragile hand, gazing upon that lovely face, lovely yet so changed from the cherubic beauty that had won his heart amid the summer fields of Man but three short years before.

What he thought, what he felt in those hours, he could not himself have revealed, for a man's emotion is usually in inverse proportion to its expression, and Myles Standish was essentially a man of action and not of words; but G.o.d only knows how these strong inarticulate natures suffer in the agony that divides bone from marrow, and yet leaves the sufferer conscious of the capacity to live and to suffer yet again and again.

In some respects this vigil resembled that of Bradford in hearing of Dorothy's death, in some it was widely different, for with Bradford's grief was mingled self-reproach and keen introspection; he weighed his own life, he found it wanting, he condemned it, and offering his suffering as righteous penance, he extolled the justice of G.o.d, and submitted himself as a culprit to the scourge.

But Standish thought neither of the justice of G.o.d nor of his own demerits, nor had he skill or practice for introspection. "A man under authority and having soldiers under him," he both rendered and expected obedience, prompt, entire, and unquestioning. His was a nature of loyalty so magnificent as to need no b.u.t.tresses of reason, or of self-distrust, a loyalty so sweet as to be unconscious of itself, a loyalty so entire that the soul could not get outside of it to consider it objectively.

The order came from the King of kings, and it was to be obeyed, or endured; the King could do no wrong.

Nor indeed had he been skilled to search, could Myles have found matter for self-reproach in all his dealings with the child dying at his side.

Busy from his boyhood in the pursuit of arms, and loving his mother with all the force of his great nature, the man had cared little for other women, turning with scorn from the meretricious charms of those he encountered in camp or among his comrades, and finding no time or inclination to seek others, so that except for the light fancies of an hour, or the calm affection for his cousin Barbara, whom he found on one of his visits to his home in Chorley giving a daughter's tendance to his mother, Standish had pa.s.sed his three and thirtieth birthday ignorant of the nature of love, and mocking at its power.

But the first glance at the lovely girl weeping beside her mother's grave warned him that a new hour had struck, and a new foe opposed him; nor was he long in making full and frank surrender to an authority as strong as it was gentle, and as tyrannous as sweet.

Motionless and erect the soldier sat the long night through, and as if she gathered strength from the grasp of his healthy hand, Rose slept quietly until the sun rose, and the women still well enough to wait upon the sick came softly in.

Then she opened her eyes, fixed them upon his with a tender smile, and said,--

"Poor Myles! Thou hast watched all night while selfish I held thee and slept. But now begone and get thine own rest and food. I shall do well with these kind friends."

"I'll leave thee, then, for a little, but I shall not be far away, and if thou needest, send," replied her husband releasing his hand from the frail yet burning grasp that still held him. "Dame Turner, thou 'lt see that I am called if she asks for me, wilt thou?"

"Surely, Captain, but she is doing bravely this morning, and you had better rest."

"Nay, but let her not ask twice for me, or aught else."

Leaving the house, and drawing one or two eager breaths of fresh air, Standish climbed the hill where already the fortification he had proposed was nearly complete, though not yet armed. Stepping upon a great beam, squared but not laid in place, he stood looking around him as if to see what Nature and his own work could offer to fill the great gulf opening in the future.

A light fog still clung to the face of the water and hung in the hollows of the hills; shrouded in its folds the Mayflower lay like a spectre s.h.i.+p, ugly, unsafe, full of discomfort and misery, but yet the only link between this handful of dying men and their home. Standish gazed at her with a gathering darkness upon his face, until the burden of his thought broke out in a savage murmur,--

"_Couldst_ not make thy way through yonder shoals and bring us to the fair sh.o.r.es I told her of! If it be thy fault, Thomas Jones!"--

The slow clenching of a jaw square and strong as a mastiff's finished the sentence, and Standish's eyes came back to the rude hut where all he loved lay dying, perhaps through this man's fault. At his feet lay the sketch as it were of the town he and his comrades had laid down in outline, and intended to build up as time and strength allowed. Already Leyden Street, or The Street, as it was at first called, lay a distinct thoroughfare from the Rock to the Fort, the eastern and western extremities of the village. Along this street were staked out plots of land, some larger and some smaller in the proportion of eight feet frontage to each person in a family, the single men, and those women and children already left desolate, being divided among the householders, and the whole company reduced to nineteen families.

Standish's own house, not yet finished, lay nearest to the Fort, which with its armament were to be his especial charge, and several of the single men had been appointed to his family. Their own illness, and that of Mistress Standish had, however, interfered with this arrangement, and only John Alden shared the house as yet with Standish, the two men sometimes eating at the Common house, the only one except the hospital really finished, and sometimes cooking for themselves such food as they could lay hands upon, for the house, unlike some of the others, already boasted a chimney laid up of sticks and clay, and showed a generous fireplace in the larger or living room which, with two little sleeping-rooms and a loft, comprised the whole accommodation.

Upon this little home so hopefully begun, so neglected during the last ten days, Myles gazed long and wistfully, smiling sadly as he saw Alden come out and look up and down the street for him, finally going to seek him in the Common house, a substantial structure some twenty feet square, built of hewn oaken logs, fitted together as closely as possible, and the crevices stopped with clay, which freely washed out in stormy weather.

The roof, like all the rest, was covered with thatch formed of dried reeds and gra.s.ses, and the windows were filled with oiled linen instead of gla.s.s, still an article of costly luxury. Above the Common house stood the building which the increasing mortality of the colony had demanded as a hospital, and below it was the storehouse, where most of the common stock of goods was collected, although some of the pa.s.sengers and their possessions still remained on board the brig, where Jones gave them but scant hospitality or kindness.

Folding his arms more closely as the chill wind of February swept in from seaward, Standish gazed upon all these objects as if they for the first time attracted his attention, and then, as the lifting fog revealed the distant landscape, he turned and fixedly regarded Captain's Hill rising in its bold isolation to the north. Long he gazed, and then, slightly shaking his head, stepped down from the beam and paced about the little enclosure, half unconsciously examining the work of platform and parapet, and following with a gunner's eye the range of the pieces yet unmounted; pausing longest before the eastern front, he marked with satisfaction how well the minion there to be placed would guard the landing and sweep the solitary street, and even knelt to look along its imaginary barrel.

Rising he brushed the soil from his knees with almost a smile, muttering,--

"Ay, lad, thou 'rt needed, thou 'rt needed, and he who is needed has no right to desert his post."

But suddenly the smile faded, for as he turned to leave the Fort his eyes fell upon Cole's Hill, where but a few rods from the Common house, and under its protection, they had dug the graves of those already dead, and where lay room enough for many more. But his battle fought, and his mind resolved, Myles was too much master of himself to need a second conflict, and setting his lips firmly beneath the tawny moustache that shaded them, he strode down the hill, and at his own door found John Alden waiting for him and changing greetings with a party of four men armed with sickles and attended by two dogs.