Full royally He rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad!”
One might suppose that Priscilla, gentle as tradition represents her, would have been attracted by the fire and spirit of the brave Captain. But perhaps she was not so very gentle. Was there a spice of feminine coquetry in her famous speech to John Alden, for all her sweet Puritanism? Or was it that she understood the dignity and worth of womanhood, and was the first in this new land to take her stand upon it?
The whole story of the courtship which her two lovers paid to her is a bit of human nature suddenly revealing itself in the flame of a great passion,—a mighty drama moving before us, and a chance light thrown upon the stage giving the life and motion of a scene within a scene. There is a touching quality in the modest feeling of the soldier; he is still a young man, not at all grizzled, or old, or gray, as the poet paints him,—perhaps thirty-five or thirty-six years old. Daring death at every daily exposure of the colony to dangers from disease, from the tomahawk, from the sea, from the forest, always the one to go foremost and receive the brunt, to put his own life and safety a barrier against the common enemy,—yet he shrank from telling a girl that she had fired his inflammable heart, and would fain let her know the fact by the one who, if he has left no record of polished tongue or ready phrase, was the one he loved as the hero loves the man of peace, the one who loved him equally,—the youth of twenty-three whose “countenance of gospel looks” could hardly at that time have carried in its delicate lineaments much of the greatness of nature that may have belonged to the ancestor of two of our Presidents.
For the purposes of romance, fathers and mothers are often much in the way; and the poet and the romancer, with a reckless disregard of the life and safety of Mr. William Mullins, her respected parent, represent Priscilla as orphaned while her father was yet alive. It was to Mr. Mullins that John Alden, torn between duty and passion, and doubtless pale with suffering, presented the Captain’s claims. If the matter was urged rather perfunctorily, Mr. Mullins seems not to have noticed it, as he gave his ready consent. But we may be confident that Priscilla did; and that, after all, maidenly delicacy would never have suffered her to utter her historic words, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” if the deadly sinking of his heart had not been evident in his downcast face. Does it need any chronicle to tell us what a flame of joy shot through John Alden’s heart at the instant of those words,—what an icy wave of despair quenched it,—what a horror of shame overcame Priscilla till her blushes became a pain? For when she had dared so much, and dared in vain, what else but shame could be her portion?
They must have been dark days that followed for the two young lovers. Can you not see John Alden trying to walk away his trouble on the stretch of the long beach, to escape his sense of treachery, his sorrow in his friend’s displeasure, his joy and his shame together?
“There, my cloak about my face,