“I’m obliged to you, dear,” responded the parson’s wife; “for,” with a sly glance at the betrothed pair sitting very stiffly and formally at the right hand of their hostess, “I expect we shall have to be making up some cake pretty soon.”
But our concern is not so much with the feast, of which these friends partook with frank and honest appetites, as with the conversation that came after, while the women gossiped together in the house over a drop of mulled wine, and the men, pipes in mouth and tankards of sound ale at hand, sat under the trees carefully preserved upon the edge of the bluff when the land was cleared for building.
Two wooden armchairs, the only approach to luxurious seats to be found in the captain’s cottage, had been set forth for the elder and Parson Partridge, and the next best given to Anthony Thacher, while the host, with Alden and Jonathan Brewster, sat upon a rude bench formed between two beech-trees. Hobomok, never far from his beloved hero, lay upon the grass solemnly smoking, and the younger men, Wrestling Brewster, commonly called Ras, as a diminutive of ’Rastling, John and Joseph Alden, Alick Standish, and Thomas Thacher hung about the door and windows of the great south room where Bessie, Betty, and Lora flitted around their mothers like pretty kittens around sober Tabitha.
Then it was that Myles, after a moment’s thought and a dubious clearing of his throat, said tentatively,—
“Master Thacher, when I heard that you were to be sent deputy from your new town of Yarmouth to our court at Plymouth, I resolved within myself, if opportunity should offer, and your own mind prove toward the matter, that I would ask you to give me a particular account of your famous shipwreck upon the island men now call Thacher’s Woe from that disaster. Would it offend you if I now urge that petition?”
But even as the words left his mouth the captain regretted their utterance, for the man addressed cringed and started in his chair, as one who feels a touch upon a new wound, while the pallor of his singularly colorless face turned to ashen gray, and his light blue eyes dilated and wandered as those of one who sees a vision of terror.
“Nay”—resumed Myles hastily; but as hastily Thacher took the word out of his mouth.
“Not nay, but ay, good friend!” exclaimed he with an attempted smile. “I know well that the terror of those fearful hours has left its mark not only upon my outer man, but upon the forces of my mind, which are no longer altogether under mine own control, but, like a horse once well terrified at a certain spot, will still swerve and start in passing it, despite of his driver’s voice and rein. Albeit, even as it is well that the unruly steed should be often taken past the bugbear, which he will at last cease to dread, so it is well for me to talk of that day from time to time, and to tell its story as occasion shall befall, to friends who can enter into its solemnity.”
“You are right, my son,” said Elder Brewster quietly. “The unruly heart of man needs long and bitter discipline before it becomes truly meek.”
“Ne’ertheless, Master Thacher, I do withdraw my petition, and beg you instead of that story to tell us how you like our fashion of holding court by deputies rather than pro coram publico as hath been our wont until this year.”