“No matter how. What would you do to him?”
“It is not fair to ask me such a question in such a way, Myles, if you mean to find an augury for your own course in my reply. I cannot tell what I should do until I know all, and mayhap not then. But surely no man ever offered insult to the sweet maid who’s gone?”
“’Tis all you know about it. Well, here’s the story. When I was in England almost a score of years ago, I went to Standish Hall to talk with my kinsman now in authority there, and asked him if he would do me the justice his father denied to my father. He seemed a kindly man enough, or mayhap ’twas only that he was a smooth courtier, and cozened easily enough a rough soldier who has never learned to lie. At all odds, it ended in our making a solemn compact, that if the child my wife then looked for should be a girl, she was to become the wife of that man’s son, then a child of two or three years old, and all that ought by right to have been mine should be settled upon her and her younger children. We did not set it down on parchment, nor call witnesses to our oaths; but we grasped hands upon it, and passed our word each to each as honest gentlemen, and there it rested. When I was in England ten years or so ago, I traveled down to Eton to see the boy, and give him a little compliment, small enough for the heir of Standish Hall, but large enough for my own pocket. I said naught to him about Lora, of course, though I let him know that I felt more than a kinsman’s interest in him, and he seemed a brave lad, a trifle set up, but I could pardon that. Well, the time went on, and there was some talk of Wrestling Brewster and my girl. I dealt with that as seemed good to me, and then I wrote to my kinsman, and said the time had come to consider our contract, and that my girl was woman grown and his boy must be one and twenty, and I asked how and where we should meet to give them to each other. Almost a year went by, and my blood already began to stir at the delay, although I schooled myself to believe it no slight, when at the last a letter came, this letter. Wait till I read it out, for though there’s no light, I can see every word as if ’twere printed off on mine own eyeballs. First a flummery of ‘dear kinsman’ and the like vapid compliment, and then:—
“‘As touching what you call the contract of marriage between our children, I confess I had all but forgot that we two did hold some such discourse a matter of eighteen years ago; but what will you, cousin? These young folk must still take their own way, and my son before reaching his majority had set his fancy upon a young gentlewoman, one of the great Howard family, and with a very pretty estate tacked to her petticoat, marching well with our lands of Boisconge. So they were betrothed some months ago and will be married come Whitsuntide. Hoping the fair and worthy Mistress Lora, whose name so pleasantly recalls our family tree, will soon marry to please you as well as herself, I remain,’ et cetera, et cetera.
“There, now, William Bradford, what would you have done to the man who so scorned your Mercy?”
“My faith, Standish!” cried the governor, springing to his feet, “I cannot blame your anger, for ’tis righteous. Your cousin is but a knave in spite of his fair words”—
“And what would you have done with him, had you been in my place?” persisted Standish coldly.
“Nay, what could be done?” faltered Bradford so lamely that Standish uttered a little bitter laugh of derision.