Standish of Standish Part 28

"John! Dear heart, what is it! Nay, try not to speak! Here, good John Howland, help me to lay him upon the bed--there then, dear one"--

"Fret not thyself, Kate, 't is but a pain in my head--ah--'t is shrewd enough, but it will pa.s.s--there, there, good wife, fret not thyself!"

"John Howland, wilt thou find Surgeon Fuller, and mayhap Dame Brewster, but no more. I will wring a napkin out of fair water and lay to his head, for it burneth like fire."

"Ay, it burneth like fire," muttered the sick man wearily moving the poor head from side to side, and Katharine left alone dropped for one moment upon her knees and raised streaming eyes and clasped hands to Heaven, then rose, and when the Doctor and gentle Mary Brewster entered she stood white and calm at her husband's head.

"Ay, ay, he hath sunstroke," muttered the surgeon, laying a hand upon the patient's forehead, "and no wonder, for it is shrewdly hot to-day, and he toiling away like any Hodge of them all. I must let him blood.

Canst get me a basin and a bandage, Mistress?"

"I will fetch them, Katharine. Sit you down." And the Elder's wife slipped out of the door and back again before even impatient Doctor Fuller could wonder where she was.

An hour later Carver arousing from the stupor that was growing upon him, asked to see William Bradford, who at once hobbled in from the neighboring house, although himself hardly able to sit up.

"It grieves me to find thee in such evil case, brother," said he painfully seating himself beside the sick man's pillow.

"Thy sorrows will last longer than mine, Will. I must set my house in order so far as I have time. Dost mind, Bradford, what I said to thee and Winslow and Standish, the time I saw ye standing upon the great rock in yon island before we landed in this place?"

"Yes, dear friend, I do remember."

"Well, 't was borne in upon me then, that I was only to look upon the Promised Land, and then for my sins to die, and that thou wert the Joshua who should conquer our Canaan and make the people to dwell safely therein. Thou shalt be their governor, Bradford, and--their servant."

"As thou hast ever been! Chief of all because the helper of all."

"Send for Winslow and Standish and the elder. I cannot long command my senses, and fain would speak--nay, 't was but a pa.s.sing pang. Send for them, and meanwhile call John Howland and Kate, my wife. I must hasten--hasten"--

Again the stupor crept over him, but steadily fighting it off, and holding his consciousness in the grasp of a strong man's will, he again opened his eyes as his wife, so pale, so still, so self-controlled, leaned over him and laid her cool fingers upon his brow.

"Ay, sweetheart, 't is thy touch. I could tell it among a hundred. Dear, wilt thou go home to thy father's house? He'll have thee, now thy poor 'Brownist' is gone. Or wilt thou go to thy sister Robinson? She will be fain to have thee."

"'Whither thou goest I will go,' my husband."

"Say you so, Dame? Ay, thou wast ever of a high heart, and a brave.

Mayhap our Lord will be merciful to both of us,--but His will be done.

Thou 'lt be submissive to thy G.o.d, Kate, as thou hast ever been to thy lord?"

"Ay, dear, my lord, I will try to do thy bidding even thus far."

"Ah, Kate, Kate, thou hast never failed in all our happy wedded life--fail not now--promise--promise"--

"Dear love, I promise to bow myself in all loving submission to whatsoever our G.o.d shall send."

"Ay, that is right, that is well, that is mine own n.o.ble Kate. And Howland, I leave her to thy care--be a brother, a leal and true friend--thou knowest what that word means--I can no more--my senses reel"--

"It needs no more, dear master, dear friend, if I may call my master so"--

"My friend," murmured Carver.

"Then I do pledge my word as a G.o.d-fearing man, that from this moment the first care, the chiefest duty of my life shall be to serve and s.h.i.+eld and comfort my dear lady so far as G.o.d gives me power. I will be her servant, her brother, her friend, in all ways, and under all comings, and so help me G.o.d, as I shall keep this my promise."

"Thou dost comfort my soul, even as it enters upon the valley of the shadow. Stand ye two aside and bring in my brethren."

Howland quietly opened the door, and the three who had stood grouped against the golden sky on that December evening on Clarke's Island silently entered the room and stood around the bed, where in the awful hush that clings about the last hour their chief lay half unconscious and yet able to rally his energies for one more mighty effort.

"Brethren, I go--G.o.d remaineth--His blessing be upon you, and all His Israel here.--Forgive my shortcomings--forgive if I have offended any, knowing or unknowing"--

"Thou hast ever been our best and dearest earthly friend--pardon thou us, dear saint!" murmured Winslow.

--"And if ye will follow my counsel, make William Bradford your Governor--and set aside all jealousy, all heart burning--Winslow dost promise?"

"Ay, friend, I promise right heartily."

"Standish?"

"Ay, Governor."

"Good-by--I can no more--Elder, say a prayer--yet cease before I die"--

And with a long, quivering sigh as of one who relinquishes his grasp of a burden too mighty for his strength, the first Governor of Plymouth Colony went to render an account of his stewards.h.i.+p.

CHAPTER XX.

FUNERAL--BAKED MEATS AND MARRIAGE FEASTS.

"Methinks our governor should not be buried with as little ceremony as we perforce have showed our meanest servant," said Captain Standish gloomily to Elder Brewster the evening of Carver's death. "You Separatists despise the ministering of the Church, but what have ye set in its place?"

"We clothe not the coffins of the dead with the filthy rags of Popery, and we pray not for the souls of them whom G.o.d hath taken into His own hand, for that were of the sins of presumption against which David doth specially pray, but yet,"--and the Elder's face softened, "I am of your mind, Captain, that we should honor our chief magistrate in the last service we can render him, and although by his own wish I ceased to pray for him ere the last breath was sped, and will never again pray for him or any parted soul, I well approve of such military honors as we are able to pay to his memory, and I will carry my musket with the rest, and fire it as you shall direct."

"Why, that's more than ever I would have looked for, Elder," exclaimed Standish in amaze. "But since you so proffer, I gladly accept your aid and countenance, and by your leave, since as yet we have no governor in place of him who is gone, I will order the funeral by mine own ideas."

"As a military man?"

"Surely. I claim no spiritual powers," and with a curious expression of content and disapproval upon his face the captain went away to so arrange and order his plan, that at sunrise on the third day a guard of twelve men, including the elder, presented themselves at the house of mourning, and receiving the coffin upon the crossed barrels of their muskets carried it along the brow of the hill to the grave newly opened amid the springing wheat.

Mistress Carver had made but one request, and that of piteous earnestness,--

"See that they make his grave where another may be dug close beside,"

pleaded she, and John Howland had seen that it was as she desired.

Earth to earth was reverently and silently laid, the grave was covered in, and then, at the captain's signal, the twelve muskets were fired in relays of four, and their mournful echo mingled with the sobbing dirge of the waves breaking upon the Pilgrim Rock, while the dense column of smoke rising grandly to heaven was the only monument then or ever erected to John Carver, that willing martyr and gallant gentleman who had indeed "given his life for the brethren."

Returning to the Common house the Guard of Honor joined with the rest of the townsmen in a Council, whereat they elected William Bradford to be their second Governor, and as he now lay ill in his bed, Isaac Allerton was chosen to be his a.s.sistant and mouthpiece.

Bradford, neither over elated nor daunted by his new dignities, accepted the nomination, and with few and brief intervals retained it until his own death some four-and-thirty years later, and n.o.bly and faithfully did he perform its duties.