Here were collected the few pieces of furniture which William Molines and his wife had managed to bring over from France, Holland, and England, the three homes of their years before the Pilgrimage. The deep and wide carved chest of black oak, with cunningly wrought hinges and a key nearly as large as that of the Bastile, stood on one side of the fireplace, its depths well stored with damask and napery, bed linen and window curtains, some of Priscilla’s own spinning and some of her mother’s, while certain articles of fine damask wrought upon looms of Flanders, and bought even there at a great price, were hereditary treasures.
On the other side of the fireplace stood a “buffet,” of English make and quaintly carved with heads of beasts and gaping gargoyles which were the terror of Betty and her brothers on the rare occasions when they were allowed to penetrate the solemn solitudes of this state apartment. This buffet was not as well supplied as that of the governor’s wife, and boasted no Venetian glass, although there were four plain glass tumblers, or rummers, as they were then called, and a few pieces of Delft ware with a china bowl so precious that Priscilla seldom dared to look at it. Around the neck of one of the gargoyles projecting from the cornice of the buffet hung a string of curious Indian, or rather Ceylonese beads, each carved into semblance of an idol’s head, a fact happily unguessed by their owners, or indeed by Plymouth, which would have demanded an auto-da-fé of them in the town square; but by some unconscious cerebration Priscilla had decorated the other gargoyle with a string of wampum, thus balancing the superstition of oldest eastern idolatry with that of newest, or rather latest discovered, western. Later on, this string of wampum became quite an appreciable bit of property, but at present it was scarcely more than a curiosity; for although it had been recommended to the Pilgrims some four years previous to this date by Isaac de Razières, the delightful Dutchman who visited Plymouth with overtures of friendship and menace from New Amsterdam, it had not as yet become the circulating medium it did later, since both the New England Indians and the New England colonists had to be educated to its use,—a use invented by those unhappy Pequots and Narragansetts upon whose shore the quahaug shells were found in perfection. The thrifty Dutchman in his visit to Plymouth had brought a quantity of wampum for sale, and the Pilgrims, after listening to his account of its uses and value, invested fifty pounds with him at the rate of a penny for three bits of the blue, or six of the white shell, this price bringing the blue pieces nearly to the value of a cent of our currency.
But we must linger no longer over the description of Priscilla’s “withdrawing” room, as it might very literally be called, but stand aside to allow the Fathers of Plymouth to enter and find Sir Christopher Gardiner seated in an invalid-chair beside the fire, writing in a little pocket-book which at their entrance he closed and hid in his breast.
Grave salutations passed, the guests were seated, and Alden, who had ushered them in, would have left the room, but was bidden to remain by the governor, while Standish with one of his rare smiles added,—
“I can answer for my friend John’s discretion as for mine own.” At which pleasant word the giant looked foolishly glad, for it was the most friendly speech Standish had vouchsafed since the night when Alden’s ill-timed slumbers had so nearly dishonored his captain.
“And now, sir,” began Bradford in a tone finely mingled of magisterial authority and benevolent hospitality, “if you are sufficiently recovered from the hardships of your journey hither, we should be glad to hear some account of your coming into such straits, and especially of what complaint the rulers of the Bay Colony may have against you.”
“A truly reasonable inquiry, Master Governor, and one which I shall find joyful content in gratifying,” replied the knight, assuming an easier position, and stretching his shapely legs, clad in a pair of John Alden’s best hose, toward the fire. The action attracted Bradford’s notice, and, with Pris Carpenter’s fancies in his mind, he scrutinized his guest with more attention than men generally bestow upon one another’s personal appearance.
Tall, dark, with a hawk’s eyes, and an eagle’s nose above an enormous mustache, which could not, however, conceal a riotous and sensual mouth, with dark floating hair now carefully dressed, and a smooth-shaven cleft chin telling of both will and courage, the knight was beyond controversy a handsome man in spite of his forty or fifty years, and one well suited to turn the brain of a romantic girl. His expression of reckless and jeering self-assertion, thinly veiled under a mask of deference and deprecation, was less propitious than his features, but as Bradford shrewdly told himself was by no means the expression he would wear in conversation with a young maiden whom he wished to please.
“Yes, I shall be most happy, most content, to tell you whatever in your opinion, sir, it imports you to know of my poor history,” pursued Sir Christopher in a vague fashion, as if inwardly employed in concocting a romance to serve instead of the truth. “But I know not well where to begin. Shall I tell you that my father is a wealthy gentleman of Gloucester in England, and is, or was, poor man, nephew of that Bishop Gardiner, Lord of the see of Winchester, who did God service under Queen Mary”—