CHAPTER IV

The First Yuletide

Constance had a tender conscience, quick to self-blame. She was unhappy if she could impute to herself a fault, ill at ease till she had done all that she could to repair wrong. Although her stepmother's dislike for her, still more her open expression of it, was cruelly unjust and prevented all possibility of love for her, still Constance deeply regretted having spoken to her with lack of respect.

But when she made humble apology for the fault and begged Mrs. Hopkins's pardon with sweet sincerity, she was received in a manner that turned contrition into bitterness.

Dame Eliza looked at her with a cold light in her steely blue eyes, and a scornful smile. Plainly she was too petty herself to understand generosity in others, and construed Constance's apology into a confession of fear of her.

"Poor work spreading bad butter over a burnt crust," she commented. "There's no love lost between us, Constantia Hopkins; maybe none ever found, nor ever will be. I don't want your fair words, nor need you hope your father will not one day see you, and that sullen brother of yours, as do I. So waste no breath trying to get around me. Damaris is fretting; look after her."

Poor Constance! She had been so honestly sorry for having been angry and having given vent to it, had gone to her stepmother with such sincerity, hoping against hope, for the unnumbered time, that she could make their relation pleasanter! It was not possible to help feeling a violent reaction from this reception, to keep her scorned sweetness from turning to bitterness in her heart.

She told the story to Giles, and it made him furiously angry.

"You young ninny to humble yourself to her," he cried, with flashing eyes. "Will you never learn to expect nothing but injustice from her? It isn't what we do, or say; it is jealousy. She will not let our father love us, she hates the children of our mother, and hates our mother's memory, that she was in every way Mistress Eliza's superior, as she guesses, knowing that she was better born, better bred, and surely better in character. I remember our mother, Con, if not clearly. I'm sorry you have not even so much recollection of her. You are like her, and may be thankful for it. I could trounce you for crawling to Mistress Hopkins! Learn your lesson for all time, and no more apologies! Con, I shall not stand it! No matter how it goes with this colony, I shall go back to England. I will not stay to be put upon, to see my father turned from me."

"Oh, Giles, that could never be!" cried Constance. "Father will never turn from us."

"I did not say from _us_; I said from _me_," retorted Giles. "You are different, a girl, and--and like Mother, and--several other reasons. But I often see that Father is not sure whether he shall approve me or not. It will not be so long till I am twenty-one, then I shall get out of reach of these things."

Constance's troubled face brightened. To her natural hopefulness Giles's twenty-first birthday was far enough away to allow a great deal of good to come before it.

"Oh, twenty-one, Giles! You'll be prospering and happy here before that," she cried.

"But I must tell no more of troubles with my stepmother to Giles," she added mentally. "It will never do to pile fuel on his smouldering fires!"

The next day when Constance was helping Mistress Hopkins with her mending, she noticed the oilskin-wrapped packet that her father had left with his wife for safe keeping, tossed carelessly upon the hammock which swung from the side of the berth which she and her stepmother shared, the bed devised by ingenuity for little Damaris.

"Is not that packet in Damaris's hammock Father's packet of valuable papers?" Constance asked. "Is there not a risk in letting them lie about, so highly as he prizes them?"

She made the suggestion timidly, for Dame Eliza did not take kindly to hints of this nature. To her surprise her stepmother received her remark not merely pleasantly, but almost eagerly, quick with self-reproach.

"Indeed thou art right, Constantia, and I am wrong to leave it for an instant outside the strong chest, where I shall put it under lock and key," she said, nevertheless not moving to rescue it. "I have carried it tied around my neck by a silken cord and hidden in my bosom till this hour past. I dropped it there when I was trying to mend Damaris's hammock. Thanks to you for reminding me of it. What can ail that hammock defies me! I have tried in all ways to strengthen it, but it sags. Some night the child will take a bad fall from it. Try you what you can make of it, Constantia."

"I am not skilful, Stepmother," smiled Constance. "Giles is just outside studying the chart of our voyage hither. Let me call him to repair the hammock. We would not have you fall at night and crack the pretty golden pate, would we, Damaris?" The child shook her "golden pate" hard.

"That you would not, Connie, for you are good, good to me!" she cried.

Mistress Hopkins looked on the little girl with somewhat of softening of her stern lips, yet she felt called upon to reprimand this lightness of speech.

"Not 'Connie,' Damaris, as thou hast been often enough told. We do not hold with the ungodly manner of nicknames. Thy sister is Constantia, and so must thou call her. And you must not put into the child's head notions of its being pretty, Constantia. Beauty is a snare of the devil, and vanity is his weapon to ensnare the soul. Do not let me hear you again speak to a child of mine of her pretty golden pate. As to the hammock if you choose to call your brother to repair it for his half-sister I have nothing against the plan."

Constance jumped up and ran out of the cabin.

"Giles, Giles, will you come to try what you can do with Damaris's sleeping hammock?" she called.

"What's wrong with it?" demanded Giles, rising reluctantly, but following Constance, nevertheless.

"I don't know, but Mistress Hopkins says she cannot repair it and that the child is like to fall with its breaking some night," said Constance, entering again the small, close cabin of the women. "Here is Giles, Mistress Hopkins; he will try what he can do," she added.

Giles examined the hammock in silence, bade Constance bring him cord, and at last let it swing back into place, and straightened himself. He had been bent over the canvas with it drawn forward against his breast.

"I see nothing the matter with the hammock except a looseness of its cords, and perhaps weakness of one where I put in the new one. You could have mended it, Con," he said, ungraciously, and sensitive Constance flushed at the implication that her stepmother had not required his help, for she never could endure anything like a disagreeable atmosphere around her.

"Giles says 'Con,'" observed Damaris, justifying herself for the use of nicknames.

"Giles does many things that we do not approve; let us hope he will not lead his young sister and brother into evil ways," returned her mother, sourly. "But thou shouldst thank him when he does thee a service, not to be deficient on thy side in virtue."

"You know Giles doesn't need thanks for what he does for small people, don't you, Hop-o-my-Thumb?" Giles said and departed, successful in both his aims, in pleasing the child by his name for her, and displeasing her mother.

Two hours later Constance was sitting rolled up in heavy woollens like a cocoon well forward of the main mast, in a sheltered nook, reading to Rose Standish, who was also wrapped to her chin, and who when she was in the open, seemed to find relief from the oppression that made breathing so hard a matter to her.

Mistress Hopkins came toward them in furious haste, her mouth open as if she were panting, one hand pressed against her breast.

"Constantia, confess, confess, and do not try to shield thy wicked brother!" she cried.

"Confess! My wicked brother? Do you mean the baby, for you cannot mean Giles?" Constance said, springing to her feet.

"That lamb of seven weeks! Indeed, you impudent girl, I mean no such thing, as well you know, but that dreadful, sin-enslaved, criminal, Gile----"

"Hush!" cried Constance, "I will not hear you!"

There was a fire in her eyes that made even Mistress Eliza halt in her speech.

"Giles Hopkins has stolen your father's packet, the packet of papers which you saw in the hammock and reminded me to put away," she said, more quietly. "I shall leave him to be dealt with by your father who must soon return. But you, you! Can you clear yourself? Did you help him steal it? Nay, did you call him in for this purpose, warning him that he should find the packet there, and to take it? Is this a plan between you? For ever have I said that there was that in you two that curdled my blood with fear for you of what you should become. Not like your godly father are you two. From elsewhere have you drawn the blood that poisons you. Confess and I will ask your father to spare you."

Constance stood with her thick wrappings falling from her as she threw up her hands in dumb appeal against this unbearable thing. She was white as the dead, but her blue eyes burned black in the whiteness, full of intense life.

"Mistress Hopkins, oh, Mistress Hopkins, consider!" begged Rose Standish, also rising in great distress. "Think what it is that you are saying, and to whom! You cannot knowingly accuse this dear girl of connivance in a theft! You cannot accuse Giles of committing it! Why, Captain Myles is fonder of the lad than of any other in our company! Giles is upright and true, he says, and fearless. Pray, pray, take back these fearful words! You do not mean them, and when you will long to disown them they will cling to you and not forsake you, as does our mad injustice, to our lasting sorrow. What can be more foreign to our calling than harsh judgments, and angry accusations?"

"I am not speaking rashly, Mistress Standish," insisted Dame Eliza.

"Not yet three hours gone Constantia saw lying in Damaris's hammock a valuable packet of papers, left me in trust by her father. I asked her to mend the hammock, which was in disorder, but she called her brother to do the simple task. No one else hath entered the cabin at my end of it since. The packet is gone. Would you have more proof? Could there be more proof, unless you saw the theft committed, which is manifestly impossible?"

"But why, good mistress, should the boy and girl steal these papers? What reason would there be for them to disturb their father's property?" asked Rose Standish.

"I have heard my uncle say, who is a barrister at home, that one must search for the motive of a crime if it is to be established." She glanced with a slight smile at Constance's stony face, who neither looked at her, nor smiled, but stood gazing in wide-eyed horror at her stepmother.

"Precisely!" triumphed Dame Eliza. "Two motives are clear, Mistress Standish, to those who are not too blinded by prejudice to see. Those Hopkins girl and boy hate me, fear and grudge my influence with their father. Would they not like to weaken it by the loss of papers entrusted to me, a loss that he would resent on his return? There is one motive. As to the other: you do not know, but I do, and so did they, that part of these papers related to an inheritance in England, from which they would want their half-brother and sister excluded. Needs it more?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Rose Standish, as Constance groaned. "To any one knowing Giles and Constance this is no more than if you said Fee, fi, fo, fum! They plotting to weaken you with their father! They stealing to keep the children from a share in their inheritance, so generous as they are, so good to the little ones! Fie, Mistress Hopkins! It is a grievous sin, you who are so strict in small matters, a grievous sin thus to judge another, still more those to whom you owe the obligation of one who has taken their dead mother's place."

Constance began to tremble, and to struggle to speak. What she would have said, or what would have come of it, cannot be known, for at that moment the Billington boys, John and Francis, came hurtling down upon them, shouting:

"The shallop, the shallop is back! It is almost upon us on the other side. Come see, come see! Dad is back, and all the rest, unless the savages have killed some of them," Francis added the final words in solo.

The present trouble must be laid aside for the great business in hand of welcome.

Poor Constance turned in a frozen way to follow Rose and her stepmother to the other side of the ship.

Her father--her dear, dear, longed-for father--was come back. He might be bringing them news of a favoured site where they would go to begin their new home.

At last they were to step upon land again, to live in some degree the life they knew of household task and tilling, walking the woods, drawing water, building fires--the life so long postponed, for which they all thirsted.

But if she and Giles were to meet their father accused of theft! If they should see in those grave, kind, wise eyes a shadow of a doubt of his eldest children! Constance felt that she dared not see him come if such a thing were so much as possible.

But when the shallop was made fast beside the _Mayflower_ and Constance saw her father boarding the ship among the others of the returning expedition, and she met the glad light in his eyes resting upon her, all fear was swallowed up in immense relief and joy.

With a low cry she sprang to meet him and fell sobbing on his shoulder, forgetful of the stern on-lookers who would condemn such display of feeling.

"Oh, father, father, if you had never come back!" she murmured.

"But I have come, daughter!" Stephen Hopkins reminded her. "Surely you are not weeping that I have come! We have great things to tell you, attacks by savages, some hardships, but we have brought grain which we found hidden by the Indians, and we have found the right place to establish our dwelling."

Constance raised her head and dried her eyes, still shaken by sobs. Her father looked keenly at the pale, drawn face, and knew that something more than ordinary lay behind the overwhelming emotion with which she had received him.

"Poor child, poor motherless child!" he thought, and the pity of that moment went far in influencing his subsequent treatment of Constance when he learned what had ailed her on his arrival.

Now he patted her shoulder and turned toward the middle of the ship's forward deck where his comrades of the expedition were relating their experiences, and displaying their trophies.

Golden corn lay on the deck, spread upon a cloth, and the pilgrims who had remained with the ship were handling it as they listened to John Alden, who was made the narrator of this first report, having a ready tongue.

"We found a pond of fresh water," he was saying, "and not far from it cleared ground with the stubble of a gathered harvest upon it. Judge whether or not the sight was pleasant to us, as promising of fertile lands when the forests were hewn. And we came upon planks of wood that had lately been a house, and a kettle, and heaps of sand, with handmarks upon it, not long since made, where the sand had been piled and pressed down, into which, digging rapidly, we penetrated and found the corn you see here. The part of it we took, but the rest we once more covered and left it. And see ye, brethren, there have we the seed for our own next season's harvest, the which we were in such doubt of obtaining from home in time. It is a story for night, when we have leisure, to tell you of how we saw a few men and a dog, who ran from us, and we pursuing, hoping to speak to them, but they escaped us. And how later on, we saw savages cutting up great fish of tremendous size along the coast, and how we were attacked by another savage band one night. But all this we reserve for another telling. We came at last into a harbour and found it deep enough for the _Mayflower_ on our sounding it. And landing we marched into the land and found fields, and brooks, and on the whole that it was a fit country for our beginning. For the rest it is as you shall decide in consultation, but of our party we are all in accord to urge you to accept this spot and hasten to take possession of it as the winter cometh on apace."

"Let us thank God for that He hath led us into a land of corn, and guided us for so many weary days, over so many dreary miles," said William Brewster, the elder of the pilgrims.

John Carver, who was chosen on the _Mayflower_ as their governor, arose and out of a full heart thanked God for His mercies, as Elder Brewster had recommended.

The _Mayflower_ weighed anchor in the morning to carry her brave freight to their new home. The wind set hard against her, and it was the second day before she entered Plymouth harbour, as they resolved to name their new habitation, a name already bestowed by Captain Smith, and the name of their final port of embarkation in England.

No sign of life met them as the pilgrims disembarked. Silently, with full realization of what lay before them, and how fraught with significance this beginning was, the pilgrims passed from the ship that had so long been their home, and set foot--men, women, and children--upon the soil of America.

A deep murmur arose when the last person was landed, and it happened that Constance Hopkins was the last to step from the boat to the rock on which the landing was made, and to jump light-heartedly to the sand, amid the tall, dried weeds that waved on the shore.

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow," said Elder Brewster, solemnly. The pilgrim band of colonists sang the doxology with bowed heads.

Three days later the shores of the harbour echoed to the ring of axes, the sound of hammers, as the first house was begun, the community house, destined to shelter many families and to store their goods.

"Merry Christmas, Father!" said Constance, coming up to her father in the cold of the early bleak December morning.

"S-s-sh!" warned her father, finger upon lip. "Do you not know, my daughter, that the keeping of Christmas is abjured by us as savouring of popery, and that to wish one merry at yuletide would be reckoned as unrighteousness among us?"

"Ah, but Father, you do not think so! You do not go with all these opinions, and can it be wrong to be merry on the day that gladdened the world?" Constance pleaded.

"Not wrong, but praiseworthy, to be merry under our present condition, to my way of thinking," said Stephen Hopkins, glancing around at the drab emptiness of land and sky and harbour beyond. "Nay, child, I do not think it wrong to rejoice at Christmas, nor do I hold with the severity of most of our people, but because I believe that it will be good to begin anew in a land that is not oppressed, nor torn by king-made wars and sins, I have cast my lot, as has Myles Standish, who is of one mind with me, among this Plymouth band, and we must conform to custom. So wish me Merry Christmas, if you will, but let none hear you, and we will keep our heresies to ourselves."

"Yet the first house in the New World is begun to-day!" laughed Constance. "We are getting a Christmas gift."

"A happy portent to begin our common home on the day when the Prince of Peace came to dwell on earth! Let us hope it will bring us peace," said her father.

"Peace!" cried Constance, with a swift and terrified remembrance of the accusation which her stepmother had threatened bringing against herself and Giles.