CHAPTER XIV

Light-Minded Man, Heavy-Hearted Master

Constance Hopkins sat at the side of the cave-like fireplace; opposite to where her father, engrossed in a heavy, much-rubbed, leather-bound book, toasted his feet beside the fire, as was his nightly wont.

He was too deeply buried in his reading to heed her presence, but the girl felt keenly that her father was there and that she had him quite to herself. The consciousness of this made her heart sing softly in her breast, with a contentment that she voiced in the softest humming, not unlike the contented song of the kettle on the crane, and the purring of the cat, who sat with infolded paws between her human friends.

Puck, the small spaniel, and Hecate, the powerful mastiff, who had come with the Hopkins family on the _Mayflower_, shared the hearth with Lady Fair, the cat, a right that their master insisted upon for them, but which Dame Eliza never ceased to inveigh against.

However, Dame Eliza had gone to attend upon a sick neighbour that night, a fact which Hecate had approvingly noted, with her deep-grooved eyelids half-open, and in which Constance, no less than Puck and Hecate, rejoiced.

There was the quintessence of domestic joy in thus sitting alone opposite her father, free from the sense of an unsympathetic element dividing them, in watching the charring of the tremendous back log, and the lovely colours in the salt-soaked small sticks under and over it which had been cast up by the sea and gathered on the beach for this consumption.

Damaris and baby Oceanus were tucked away asleep for the night. It was as if once more Constance were a child in England with her widowed father, and no second marriage had ever clouded their perfect oneness.

So Constance hummed softly, not to disturb the reader, the content that she felt not lessened by anxiety for Giles; there were hours in which she was assured of Giles's safe return, and this was one of them.

Stephen Hopkins had been conscious of his girl's loving companionship, though not aware that he felt it, till, at last, the small tune that she hummed crept through his brain into his thought, and he laid down his book to look at her.

She sat straight and prim by necessity. Her chair was narrow and erect--a carved, dark oaken chair, with a small round seat; it had been Constance's mother's, and had come out of her grandfather's Tudor mansion, wherein he had once entertained Queen Bess.

Constance's dress was of dark homespun stuff, coming up close under her soft chin, falling straight around her feet, ornamented but with narrow bands of linen at her neck and around her wrists. Yet by its extreme severity the Puritan gown said: "See how lovely this young creature is! Only her fleckless skin, her gracious outlines, could triumph over my barrenness!"

Obedient to her elders' demands upon her to curb its riotousness, Constance had brushed smooth and capped her lustrous hair, yet its tendrils escaped upon her brow; it glinted below the cap around her ears, and in the back of her neck, and shone in the firelight like precious metal.

Stephen Hopkins's eyes brightened with delight in her charm, but, though he was not one of the strictest of Plymouth colonists, yet was he too imbued with their customs to express his pleasure in Constance's beauty.

Instead he said, but his voice thrilled with what he left unsaid:

"It's a great thing, my girl, to draw such a woman as Portia, here in this leathern book. She shines through it, and you see her clever eyes, her splendid presence, best of all her great power to love, to humble herself, to forget herself for the man she hath chosen! I would have you conversant with the women here met, Constance; they are worthy friends for you, in the wilderness where such noble ladies are rare."

"Yet we have fine women and devoted ones here, Father," objected Constance, putting down the fine linen that she was hemstitching for her father's wearing. He noted the slender, supple hands, long-fingered, graceful, yet a womanly hand, made for loyalty.

"Far be it from me to belittle them who recognized their hard and repulsive duty in the plague last winter, and performed it with utter self-renunciation," said Stephen Hopkins. "But, Constance, there is a something that, while it cannot transcend goodness, enhances it and places its possessor on a sort of dais all her life. Your mother had it, child. She was beautiful, charming, winsome, gracious, yet had she a lordly way with her; you see it in a fine-bred steed; I know not how to describe it. She was mettlesome, spirited. It was as if she did the right with a sort of inborn scorn for aught low; had made her choice at birth for true nobility and could but abide by it for aye, having made that choice. You have much of her, my lass, and I am daily thankful for it. A fine lady, was your exquisite young mother, and that says it, though the term is lowered by common usage. I would that you could have known her, my poor child! It was a loss hard to accept that you were deprived of her too soon, and never could have her direct impress upon you. And yet, thank Heaven, she hath left it upon you in mothering you, though the memory of her doth not bless you. And you sit here, upon a Plymouth hearthstone, far from the civilization that produced her, and to this I brought you!"

"Oh, Father, Father, my darling!" cried Constance, flinging aside her work and dropping upon her knees beside him, for his voice quivered with an emotion that he never before had allowed to escape him, as he uttered a self-reproach that no one knew he harboured. "Oh, my father, dearest, don't you know that I am happy here? And are you not here with me? However fine a lady my sweet mother was--and for your sake I am glad indeed if you see anything of her in me!--yet was she no truer lady than you are a fine gentleman. And with you I need no better exemplar. As time goes on we shall receive from England much of the good we have left behind; our colony will grow and prosper; we shall not be crude, unlettered. And how truly noble are many of our company, not only you, but Governor Bradford, Mr. Brewster, Mr. Winslow; their wives; our Arm, Captain Myles; and--dearest of all, save you--Doctor Fuller! No maiden need lack of models who has these! But indeed, I want to be all that you would have me to be! I cannot say how glad I am if you see in me anything of my mother! Not for my sake; for yours, for yours!"

"Portia after all!" Stephen Hopkins cried, stroking Constance's cheek. "That proves how well he knew, great Will of Warwickshire--which is our county also, my lass! Not for their own sake do true women value their charm, but for him they love. 'But only to stand high in your account I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, exceed!' So spake Portia; so, in effect, spake you just now. That was your mother's way; she, too, longed to have, but to give, her possessions, herself----"

There came a knocking at the door and Constance sprang back to her chair, catching up her sewing, thrusting in her needle with shortened breath, not to be caught by her severe Plymouth neighbours in so unseemly a thing as betraying love for her father, leaning on his knee.

Mr. Hopkins answered the summons, and there entered Francis Eaton, Mr. Allerton, and John Howland, who having come to Plymouth as the servant of Governor Carver, was now living in the colony with his articles of bondage annulled, and was inclined to exceed in severity the other Puritans, as one who had not long had authority even over himself.

"Peace be to you, Mr. Hopkins," said John Howland, gravely. "Mistress Constantia, I wish you a good evening. Sir, we are come to consult you as to certain provisions to be made for the winter to come, as to care of the sick, should there be many----. Will that great beast bite? She seems not to like me, and I may say the feeling is mutual; I never could bear a beast."

"She will not bite you, John; she is but deciding on your credentials as set forth in the odour of your clothing," said Mr. Hopkins, smiling. "Down, Hecate, good lass! While I am here you may leave it to me to see to your dwelling and fireside, old trusty!"

Hecate wagged her whip like tail and instantly lay down, her nose on her extended paws, frowning at the callers.

"But what is this, Stephen Hopkins?" demanded Francis Eaton, picking up the marred, leather-covered great volume which Stephen Hopkins had laid down when he had risen. "Shakespeare! Plays! Fie, fie upon you; sir! I wot you know this is godless matter, and that you are sinning to set the example of such reading to your child."

Stephen Hopkins's quick temper blazed; he took a step in the speaker's direction, and Hecate was justified in growling at her master's lead.

"Zounds! Eaton," he cried. "I know that an Englishman's house is his castle, on whichever side of the ocean he builds it, and that I will not brook your coming into it to tell me--_you_ to tell _me_, forsooth!--that I am sinning! Look to your own affairs, sir, but keep your hands off mine. If you are too ignorant to know more of Shakespeare than to think him harmful, well, then, sir, you confess to an ignorance that is in itself a sin against the Providence that gave us poets."

"As to that, Francis Eaton," said Mr. Allerton, "Mr. Hopkins hath the best of it. We who strive after the highest virtue do not indulge in worldly reading, but there be those among us who would not condemn Shakespeare. But what is the noise I hear? Permit us to go yonder into your outer room, Mr. Hopkins, to satisfy ourselves that worse than play-reading is not carried on within this house."

"Noise? I heard no noise till now, being too much occupied to note it, but it is easy to decide upon its cause from here, though if you desire to go yonder, or to share the play, I'll not prevent you," said Mr. Hopkins, his anger mounting.

"Say, rather, as I seriously fear, that you are too accustomed to the sound to note it. I will pass over, as unworthy of you and of my profession, the insult you proffered me in suggesting that I would bear part in a wicked game," said Mr. Allerton, going toward the door.

He threw it open with a magnificent gesture and stalked through it, followed close by the other two, and by Hecate's growl and Puck's sharp barking.

Constance had dropped her work and sat rigidly regarding her father with amazed and frightened eyes.

Stephen Hopkins went after them, purple with rage. What they saw was a table marked off at its farther end by lines drawn in chalk. At the nearer end sat Edward Doty and Edward Lister, the men whom Stephen Hopkins had brought over with him on the _Mayflower_ to serve him. Beside them sat tankards of home-made beer, and a small pile of coins lay, one at each man's right hand.

Just as Francis Eaton threw open the door, Edward Lister leaned forward, balanced a coin carefully between his thumb and finger, and shot it forward over one of the lines at the other end.

"Aimed, by St. George! Well shot, Ted!" cried Edward Doty.

"See that thou beatest me not, Ned; thou art a better man than me at it," said Lister, and they both took a draught of beer, wiping their lips on their sleeve in high satisfaction with the flavour, the game, and each other.

"Shovelboard!" "Shuffleboard!" cried Francis Eaton and John Howland together, differing on the pronunciation of the obnoxious sport, but one in the boundless horror in their voices.

"Stephen Hopkins, I am profoundly shocked," said Mr. Allerton, turning with lowering brows upon their host. "A man of your standing among us! A man of your experience of the world! Well wot you that playing of games is forbid among us. That you should tolerate it is frightful to consider----"

"See here, Isaac Allerton," said Stephen Hopkins, stepping so close to his neighbour that Mr. Allerton fell back uneasily, "it is a principle among us that every man is to follow his conscience. If we have thrown off the authority of our old days, an authority mind you, that had much to be said for it, and set up our own conscience as the sole guide of our actions, then how dare you come into my house to reproach me for what I consider no wrong-doing? Ted and Ned are good fellows, on whose hands leisure hangs heavily, since they do not read Shakespeare, as does their master, whom equally you condemn. To my mind shovelboard is innocent; I have permitted my men to play it. Go, if you will, and report to our governor this heinous crime of allowing innocent play. But on your peril read me no sermon, nor set up your opinion in mine own house, for, by my honour, I'll not abide it."

"By no will of mine will I report you, my brother," said Isaac Allerton, but the gleam in his eye belied him; there was jealousy in this little community, as in all human communities. "You know that my duty will compel me to lay before Governor Bradford what I have seen. Since we have with our own eyes seen it, there needs no further witnesses."

"Imply that I would deny the truth, were there never a witness, and Heaven help you, Plymouth or no Plymouth, brother or no brother! I'm not a liar," cried Stephen Hopkins, so fiercely that Mr. Allerton and his companions went swiftly out the side door, Mr. Allerton protesting:

"Nay, then Brother and friend; thou art a choleric man, and lax as to this business, but no one would doubt your honour."

After they had gone Mr. Hopkins went back to his chair by the fireside, leaving Ted and Ned staring open-mouthed at each other, stunned by the tempest aroused by their game.

"Well, rather would I have held the psalm book the whole evening than got the master into trouble," said Ted.

"Easy done, since thou couldst no more than hold it, reading being beyond thee," grinned Ned. "Yet am I one with thy meaning, which is clearer to me than is print."

Constance dared not speak to her father when he returned to her. She glanced up at his angry face and went on with her stitchery in silence.

At length he stretched himself out, his feet well toward the fire, and let his right hand fall on Hecate's insinuating head, his left on Puck's thrusting nose.

"Good friends!" he said to the happy dogs. "I am ashamed, my Constance, so to have afflicted thee. Smile, child; thou dost look as though destruction awaited me."

"I am so sorry, Father! In good sooth, is there not trouble coming to you from this night's business?" asked Constance, folding up her work.

"Nothing serious, child; likely a fine. But indeed it will be worth it to have the chance it will buy me to speak my mind clearly to my fellow colonists on these matters. Ah, my girl, my girl, what sad fools we mortals be, as Shakespeare, whom also these grave and reverend seigniors condemn, hath said! We have come here to sail by the free wind of conscience, but look you, it must be the conscience of the few, greater thraldom than it was in the Old World! Ah, Constance, Constance, we came here to escape the thraldom of men, but to do that it needs that no men came! If authority we are to have, then let it be authoritative, say I; not the mere opinion of men. My child, have you ever noted how much human nature there is in a man?"

But the next day, during which Stephen Hopkins was absent from his home, when he returned at night his philosophy had been sadly jostled.

He had been called before the governor, reprimanded and fined, and his pride, his sense of justice, were both outraged when he actually had to meet the situation. Dame Eliza was in a state of mind that made matters worse. She had heard from one of those persons through whom ill news filters as naturally as water through a spring, that her husband had been, as she termed it, "disgraced before the world."

"They can't disgrace him, Stepmother," protested Constance, though she knew that it was useless to try to stem the tide of Dame Eliza's grievance. "My father is in the right; they have the power to fine, but not to disgrace him who hath done no wrong."

"Of course he hath done no wrong," snapped Dame Eliza. "Shovelboard was played in my father's kitchen when I was no age. Are these prating men better than my father? Answer me that! But your father has no right to risk getting into trouble for two ne'er-do-wells, like his two precious Edwards. They eat more than any four men I ever knew, and that will I maintain against all comers, and as to work they cannot so much as see it. Worthless! And for them will he risk our good name. For mark me, Constantia, shovelboard is a game, and gaming an abomination, and not to be mentioned in a virtuous household, yet would your father permit it played----"

"But you just said it was harmless, and that your father had a table!" cried Constance.

"My father was a good man, but not a Puritan," said Dame Eliza, somewhat confused to be called upon to harmonize her own statements. "In England shovelboard is one thing; in Plymouth a second thing, and two things are not the same as one thing. I am disgusted with your father, but what good does it do me to speak? Never am I heeded but rather am I flouted by the Hopkins brood, young and old, which is why I never speak, but eat my heart out in silence and patience, knowing that had I married as I might have married--aye, and that many times, I'd have you know--I'd not be here among sands and marshes and Indians and barrens, slaving for ungrateful people who think to show their better blood by treating me as they best know how! But it is a long lane that hath no turning, and justice must one day be my reward."

When Stephen Hopkins came in Dame Eliza dared not air her grievances; his angry face compelled silence. Even Constance did not intrude upon his annoyance, but contented herself with conveying her sympathy by waiting upon him and talking blithely to Damaris, succeeding at last in winning a smile from her father by her amusing stories to the child.

"There is a moon, Constance; is it too cold for you to walk with me? The sea is fair and silvery beneath the moon rays," said Mr. Hopkins after supper.

"Not a whit too chill, Father, and I shall like to be out of doors," cried Constance, disregarding her stepmother's frown, who disapproved of pleasure strolls.

Constance drew her cloak about her, its deep hood over her head, and went out with her father. Stephen Hopkins placed her hand in his arm, and led her toward the beach. It was a deep, clear autumn night, the moon was brilliant; the sea, still as a mirror, gave its surface for the path that led from the earth to the moon, made by the moon rays.

At last her father spoke to Constance.

"Wise little woman," he said, patting the hand in his arm, "to keep silent till a man has conquered his humours. Your mother had that rare feminine wisdom. What a comrade was she, my dear! Seeing your profile thus half-concealed by your hood I have been letting myself feel that she had returned to me. And so she has, for you are part of her, her gift to me! Trouble no more over my annoyance, Constance; I have conquered it. I do not say that there is no soreness left in me, that I should be thus dealt with, but I am philosopher enough to see that Myles Standish was right when he once said to me that I was a fool for my pains; that living in Plymouth I must bear myself Plymouth-wise."

"Father, have you had enough of impertinence in the day's doings, that your neighbours should dare to judge you, or will you tolerate a little more impertinence, and from your own daughter?" asked Constance.

"Now what's in the wind?" demanded Stephen Hopkins, stopping short.

"Nay, Father, let me speak freely!" Constance implored. "Indeed there is nothing in my heart that you would disapprove, could I bare it to your eyes. Does not this day's experience throw a light upon Giles?"

"Giles! How? Why?" exclaimed her father.

"Giles is as like you as are two peas in a pod, dear Father. He does not count himself a boy any longer. He hath felt that he was dealt with for offences that he had not done. He has been wounded, angry, sore, sad--and most of all because he half worships you. The governor, Mr. Winslow, no one is to you, nor can hurt you, as you can hurt Giles. Don't you feel to-day, Father, how hard it is for a young lad to bear injustice? When Giles comes home will you not show him that you trust him, love him, as I so well know you do, but as he cannot now be made to believe you do? And won't you construe him by what you have suffered this day, and comfort him? Forgive me, Father, my dearest, dearest! I do not mean wrong, and after all, it is only your Constance speaking her heart out to you," she pleaded.

For upwards of ten minutes Stephen Hopkins was silent while Constance hung trembling on his arm.

Then her father turned to her, and took her face in both his hands, tears in his eyes.

"It is only my Constance speaking; only my dearest earthly treasure," he said. "And by all the gods, she hath spoken sweetly and truly, and I will heed her! Yes, my Constance, I will read my own bitterness in Giles's heart, and I will heal it, if but the lad comes back safe to us."

With which promise, that sounded in Constance's ears like the carol of angels, her father kissed her thrice on brow, and lips, a most unusual caress from him. It was a thankful Constance that lay down beside Damaris that night, beneath the lean-to roof.

"Now I know that Giles will come back, for this is what has been meant in all that hath lately come to us," was her last thought as she drifted into sleep.