“have a care, little mistress, there are duck eggs in that basket.”
the warning, called forth anxiously by goodwife allen, leaning over her half-door, was quite unheeded by rebellious margeret, who hurried out of the gate, swinging her burden quite as recklessly as before.
she felt herself to be in a very rash mood that morning, for was she not already in disgrace both at home and abroad? she had committed a very terrible offence on the day before, the sabbath, after she had been sitting long on the hard bench in the meeting-house, shuffling her feet, kicking her heels together and watching the sand of the pulpit hourglass drop slowly, grain by grain, as though it would never mark the sermon’s end. when master hapgood, as though in absence of mind, had turned the glass over, a signal that his talk would last for perhaps an hour more, she had heaved a long, loud sigh that resounded, in a pause of the speaker’s, to the furthest corner of the meeting-house. many of the puritan maids giggled openly, and more than one man, including master simon, smiled behind his hand, although the pastor’s black frown would have made any but the most abandoned child bow her head in shame. yet even to her mother’s sorrowful chiding on the way home, margeret had not replied meekly as a puritan maid should.
this morning, when she had been sent with a bundle of herbs to goodwife allen’s and had been directed to come quickly home again, she was openly loitering on the road and planning to stop when she reached the wide, sunny marsh and gather some of the gorgeous wild flowers that she had noticed when she passed. she was weary, she told herself, of all these strict rules, never to run and romp in the lanes, never to wear gay ribbons or bright dresses, always to sit quiet on the hard benches through the long, long, sunday sermons. presently, as she reflected thus and swung her basket in time to her rebellious thoughts, one of the duck eggs rolled over the edge and smashed in the dusty road.
“i don’t care,” cried margeret, stamping her foot, although there was no one to hear or see. “i don’t care!”
she might just as well have broken them all for, when she reached home, an hour later, laden with an armful of bright marsh flowers, her mother asked her for the eggs and she suddenly recollected that she had set the basket down upon a tussock as she waded in the swamp and had left it there.
“there is no time to go back to seek it now,” was all mistress radpath said.
margeret knew that she ought to declare that she was sorry, but naughtiness and impatience seemed to have fastened upon her that day and she kept silent.
“bring out your spinning-wheel, my child,” said her mother a little later. “neighbour deborah page is ill and we must spin for her as well as ourselves to-day.”
the little girl had just seen her father go past the door with his gardening tools on his shoulder and had been planning to follow and help him work among the flowers in the warm june sun. it was a pleasant day of clean-washed air and fresh salt breezes, one that she could scarce bear to think of spending within doors. she obeyed her mother very reluctantly, brought her wheel from its corner and sat down to spin. her fingers were clumsy and her temper short so that in a moment she had tangled her thread and jerked the treadle so roughly that it snapped. her mother’s look of mute reproach was more than she could bear.
“i care not at all,” she cried loudly and bitterly. “i wanted to break the hateful wheel. little girls must play sometimes!”
so saying, she rushed out of the door slamming it to behind her. she saw master simon standing on the path, looking gravely and sorrowfully after her, but she did not give him time to speak. taking refuge behind the great hawthorn bush she buried her face in the grass and burst into hot, angry tears.
after she had cried for some time and had, in part at least, washed away her wrath, she sat up to look about her and to wonder how, after all, she could have been so wicked. across the meadow, filled with bobolinks, she could look down to the harbour where the full june tide was running in. a little boat, sailed she knew by roger bardwell, the shoemaker’s apprentice, in such moments as he could steal from his harsh master, was flying joyously before the gay, warm wind. she could sniff a bewildering sweetness that filled the air, for the linden tree had bloomed the day before, driving mistress radpath’s bees nearly mad with joy. she had heard them humming in the branches nearly the whole night through and to-day again their song was loud in her ears. indeed, as she listened, the buzzing and whirring grew so insistent that she began to realise something had happened.
“why,” she exclaimed, “i believe that they are swarming.”
leaving her refuge behind the hawthorn bush, she peeped over the hedge of the little enclosed garden where the sundial stood and where the peacock had once dwelt. yes, there beyond, under the apple trees stood her mother, with eager eyes and cheeks pink with excitement, as she held up the new hive and sought to lure the bewildered bees within. the air seemed full of their black whirring little bodies, which bye and bye, however, gathered close and finally settled in a huge dark mass, hanging from the linden tree like some strange, gigantic fruit. then must mistress radpath exercise all her wiles, find the queen-bee and persuade her to enter the hive, to be followed at last by her train of black, buzzing courtiers.
“now that was as skilfully managed as ever i saw it!” exclaimed master simon. “scarce could i have done better myself.”
he chuckled as he spoke for it was a well-known joke in the household that master simon, although equal to any other emergency that might arise, could not come in too great haste to call mistress radpath, once the bees swarmed. he took the hive from her now and bent to kiss the successful bee-mistress before he went to put it in place beneath the apple-trees.
“goody parsons says i shall never have true skill until i learn to whisper charms and spells over the hives, as she does,” returned mistress radpath. “she says—but oh, my spinning, i shall never have it done!”
she went quickly into the house, leaving master simon to set the hive in its place at the end of the long row that stretched across the back of the garden. some of the hives, those that had been brought from england, were trim and blue-painted, the others were roughly framed out of wood cut in the forest. it chanced that the one just put into place was the best and most elaborate of all, for it had a pane of glass in its side through which one could see the newcomers already turning to the work that would result in the building up of a golden honeycomb. margeret, her anger almost forgotten now, slipped across the grass and stood at her father’s side, watching too. as she came near he murmured to himself a line that she had heard him quote before:
“the singing masons, building roofs of gold.”
“father,” she said, putting her hand into his and speaking hesitatingly, as she was not quite sure how she would be received, “what do those words mean and where did you first hear them?”
she was quite astonished when, for answer, master simon burst into a hearty laugh.
“my child,” he said, “that is almost the very question that was asked me forty years ago by my elderly aunt matilda of whom i was that moment thinking. and with that scowl upon your face, you look not unlike the severe dame herself as she asked it.”
“ah, tell me about it,” begged margeret, the scowl disappearing and the last of her anger quite swept away. she loved her father’s stories, especially those that had to do with his boyhood and that fierce and redoubtable aunt matilda.
master simon turned to the bench under the linden tree, at the edge of the little enclosed garden, and took her upon his knee.
“and so,” he queried, “that gust of temper is all gone by and you are willing to be friends with your father and mother again? what was it that put you into such a sudden passion? i did not know that you hated so to spin.”
“it was not just the spinning,” returned margeret, hanging her head. “it was because i was weary of working so much and being so dull and sober. it was because”—here was so terrible a confession that she could scarce bring it forth—“because i did not like to be a puritan maid and did not want to be good.”
her father only laughed and held her close.
“we all of us have that same thought at times,” he said, “and in every heart there stirs, now and then, an impatience with the strict and bare puritan life. we, who, when children, saw some of the glitter and gorgeousness of that golden age in england, the reign of queen elizabeth, cannot but feel a longing, sometimes, for that splendid pomp and show from which we have turned aside. it would be odd did not the echoes of our hidden desire still sound in the hearts of our sons and daughters. i can never forget how the great queen once made a royal progress through the town near which i dwelt, and how i ran in the dust beside her procession, staring with all my eyes at the glittering array. such shining soldiers, such ladies clad in velvet and cloth of gold, such heavy banners fluttering in the hot air! no queen in a fairy tale could have shown a more splendid picture. and when i went back to the cottage where i lived with my uncle and aunt, saw him in his dark coat and aunt matilda in her scant grey dress, and looked about at the bare walls and the rough furniture, then i, like you, felt suddenly that it was a dreary business this of trying to be a good puritan. yet the following of our faith is not all, thank heaven, in wearing a sober coat and going to meeting six hours every sabbath.”
“did you ever see the queen again?” asked margeret.
“yes, i saw and spoke with her once, when i was still a little boy and she was an old woman. how i chanced to see her, and how my staid uncle broke through our strictest puritan law, are both parts of the story that i was to tell you. well, we will have the story first and then talk a little further of this grievous business of being a puritan.
“you must remember,” he began, as margeret nestled closer against his arm, “since i have told you so often, that all through my boyhood i lived with my uncle at the edge of a great, wonderful garden that belonged, not to any of the people thereabout, but to the english crown. it was there that queen bess, when she was but the princess elizabeth tudor, had lived when she was a girl. there, too, my father, robert radpath, who was heir to the neighbouring estates, used to play with her when they were children and up to the time when she became queen. he never saw her after that day when she set off to london to assume the crown, but he was always loyal in her service and she stood ever his friend. he sailed on many of those long voyages for which queen elizabeth’s reign is famous; he and others of her brave sailors risked much that her flag should fly in distant, unknown corners of the world. when my father became a puritan and the persecuting laws bore so heavily upon all of that faith that even the queen’s interest seemed powerless to save him, she appointed him upon a mission to china, to bear a message from her to that far country’s mighty ruler. from that voyage he never returned.
“i was a very little boy at the time of his going, but i remember him well and remember, too, the day the royal messenger came with a letter written in the queen’s own hand ‘to my good friend and old comrade, robin radpath.’ he brought also a gorgeously be-ribboned and red-sealed packet that was to be delivered to ‘the right, high, mighty and invincible emperor of cathaye,’ with elizabeth’s signature upon it, written very large for the better reading of a monarch who knew only chinese. in three days my father had sailed away in one of her great high-prowed ships, sailed to meet disaster in some unknown sea, for he never came home again.”
“and that was how you came to dwell with your uncle?” asked margeret, for of this portion of her father’s life she never had heard before.
“yes, my mother being dead, her brother took me to his house where i lived henceforth with him and his sister, my aunt matilda. my father’s puritanism had cost him his estates, but my uncle, a humble man, had escaped the persecution that had, so far, struck only at the great lords. a rigid follower of the rules of his faith was my uncle, but my aunt matilda—ah, her strictness and severity left his far behind. he feared no man on earth, yet of his sister he was as afraid as was i.
“after all these years i cannot quite recollect how it befell that my uncle took me with him on a journey to london, it may have been only because i begged so hard to go. even less can i tell you how he came to do the thing that almost above all else is forbidden to puritans, to witness a show of play-actors. we were passing down a narrow crowded street when i saw a sign beside a gateway, a great placard setting forth that here within was to be enacted ‘a new play by master william shakespeare, the chronicle history of king henry the fifth, and his glorious victory of agincourt.’ i pulled my uncle’s arm to call his attention, he hesitated, passed by the gate, came back again and finally, muttering ‘say naught of this to your aunt,’ led me within.
“it was a strange sight for the eyes of a little puritan boy fresh from the country, the rough platform of the stage, the open space before it where stood a motley crowd of the common folk of london, the rows of boxes, and finally the gaily dressed actors who strode forth upon the boards. i believe rain fell upon us as we stood there, and that the sun came out and disappeared again, but to all that i gave little heed, for my heart and soul and eyes were with the gallant king henry, speeding away to france. it was a play full of clashing arms, of ringing war-cries and hard-fought battles, yet in the midst of it there was one who came forth to describe the higher blessings of a peaceful kingdom, likening it to a beehive, with each member doing his appointed task and having joy in his work. it was thus he spoke of the bees, ‘singing masons building roofs of gold.’ when the play was over, my uncle led me out, blind and deaf to the sights and sounds of london, only those stirring words ringing in my ears as they do still.”
“and did your aunt matilda ever find you out?” inquired margeret, hot on the trail of the rest of the story.
“my uncle made me promise again never to tell her,” master simon continued with a chuckle, “but he might have known that a little boy, so full of one idea as i was of that play, must spill the news abroad somehow. it was the day after our return that i was playing on the grass before our cottage while my aunt sat knitting in the doorway. suddenly she asked:
“‘simon, what is it that you are muttering?’
“she spoke so quickly and sharply that i, lost in a maze of dreams that i scarce understood, had no better wit than to tell her the line that was running through my head.
“‘singing masons,’ she snapped. ‘what means that? there are no such words in the bible and you have no business to be reading aught else. where heard you that, simon?’
“i had my scattered wits collected now, and i pretended not to hear.
“‘i think it is time i fed the hens,’ i said with sudden dutifulness. ‘see, the sun is almost down.’
“‘not until you answer me,’ she directed, but again i feigned not to hear and hurried across the grass. i heard her get up to follow and then i ran as fast as my short legs would permit.
“‘simon,’ she called after me, and i trembled lest i be caught and made to confess. i doubt whether she had the least suspicion of my uncle’s iniquity, or whether it was more than her curiosity that had become so roused. but well i knew that once she asked a question she was bound to have an answer.
“across the poultry yard i fled, despair in my heart, for i heard her footsteps coming close behind. i remember thinking that i could hide almost anywhere, being so little, but that the sun was so low that my great long shadow would betray me wherever i sought shelter. so i climbed the palings that bordered my uncle’s ground, crossed the lane and squeezed through the hedge into the great garden over the way. far off i could still hear my aunt’s shrill, high voice calling ‘simon, simon.’
“i have told you much of that garden, little margeret, but never, never can i tell you enough; of the spreading trees, the pleached walks that were cool long tunnels in the summer’s heat, and of the high, dark hedges, through whose arches i could glimpse such wealth of colour and sunshine that it seemed i must be peeping into paradise. i had walked there with my father when i was a tiny boy, and could still remember his tales of how he used to play there with the princess elizabeth, and how it was in the little enclosed garden at the centre, still called the queen’s garden, that the news had come that the english throne was hers. we often went there together to see the clipped yew-trees that the english gardeners call ‘maids-of-honour’ and to watch the old, old peacock trail his shabby feathers across the grass. the yews, my father said, had been named by the princess after her own maids-of-honour, and one in particular that would grow thin and straggling in spite of the gardener’s care was called, after an unfortunately ugly and sharp-tempered lady of her company, ‘mistress abigail peckham.’ after my father’s death i used to play there still, although my aunt did not greatly approve. the gardeners—there were but few of them now, and all of them old, because the queen came almost never to this estate of hers—were kind to me and taught me all i know of flowers and growing things.
“had i not been in such haste to escape my aunt i should have noticed a group of people at the distant gate, men on horseback and women in hoods and cloaks as though they had come on a journey. i took small heed of them, however, my only thought being that in the queen’s little garden i should be safe from pursuit, since there scarce any person save myself ever seemed to enter. yet this time, as i came panting through the hedge, i started back in amazement for there was some one there. a tall woman stood beside the bench and, as she turned toward me, i saw that her hair was red and her skin yellow and wrinkled like old parchment. she was wrapped in a great, grey riding cloak, although between its folds i could catch the glitter of jewelled embroideries and velvet slashed with gold.
“‘robin!’ she cried out when she saw me and then, in a moment added, ‘no, no, robin has long been dead.’
“‘my name is simon,’ i told her, ‘and i dwell with master parrish of this village,’ for so i had been taught to say.
“she scarcely seemed to hear me, but stood looking about, her face working oddly as though she wished to weep but had well-nigh forgotten how. thinking to cheer her, and wishing to show off the garden which i had begun to think of as my own, i touched her arm and pointed to the foremost yew-tree, lank and awkward after all the years.
“‘that,’ i said, ‘is the lady abigail peckham.’
“she looked at me in startled wonder.
“‘how came you to know that, boy?’ she asked sharply.
“‘my father told me,’ i answered, and, going from one to another of the maids-of-honour, i named them all, ‘cecelia, eleanor, gertrude and anne.’
“‘there is no one but my old play-fellow who ever heard those names,’ she said, the stiffness of her manner melting suddenly. ‘you must be the son of robin radpath.’
“‘and you,’ i answered boldly, for her smile had put me quite at ease, ‘must be the great queen elizabeth of england.’
“‘ay,’ she returned, ‘a queen who has outworn her time and who has come back to look once more before she dies upon the place where, of all her life, she was the happiest.’
“she began to move to and fro across the grass, seeming to greet each flower and shrub as though it were an old friend. suddenly, however, she turned to me again.
“‘are you of your father’s faith?’ she inquired.
“‘yes,’ i told her. ‘i am a puritan.’
“‘you say it boldly, boy,’ she said. ‘are you not afraid? no, you would scarce be your father’s son, did you show fear. ah, when i was young, i also was not afraid. i made men do as i willed and i forced a measure of tolerance upon my people. now i am an old woman, bullied by my ministers of state, who will not believe that until you let men worship as they will there can be no peace.’
“then she took my hand and spoke so gravely and earnestly that i can never forget her words.
“‘hark ye, lad,’ she said, ‘you shall bear a message from the age that is past to the age that is to come, a truth that an old woman has learned in tears and that the next generation, mayhap, must learn in blood. it is that the gospel of fear fills no churches, that no terror of imprisonment, pain or death will ever drive men from the religion they hold to be the true one. we of the church of england have made our mistake and well-nigh learned our sorry lesson, but will you of the puritan faith have eyes to see more clearly, or will you, too, sow the gospel of fear for a bitter reaping?’
“i was but a little boy, margeret, when i listened to those words, but i shall remember them as long as ever i live. here in the new england, where we are planting our fields and gardens with all of what we loved best in the old, we are planting too, as i can see, something more than gardens, the seeds of a new country and a new life. yet sometimes i fear that in our laws there is too much of harshness and severity, that our faith is more a terror of god’s wrath than a love for his kindness, that we also are planting deep the gospel of fear for a sorrowful reaping. it may be i am wrong and that man of fierce speech who cursed my garden was right after all. but, mistaken or not, we are doing a work that will some day prove to be a great one, so that we should all labour happily together like ‘singing masons building roofs of gold.’ that, to my mind, is what it is to be a puritan. so shall we, margeret, so easily grow weary of our task merely because the life seems bare and the labour long?”
“no, no,” she cried, slipping from his knee and flinging her arms about his neck, “and if you will come in and mend my spinning wheel, i will set about doing my share this very minute. but do you think that my work for others might some day be a little greater than mere spinning and something not—not quite so dull? must i wait until i am old to do more than that?”
her father laughed cheerily.
“no, you need not wait until you are old,” he said, “but it does no harm to be spinning while the greater adventure is tarrying on the way. who knows, it maybe in waiting for you only just around the corner of the next year.”
the sun stood high overhead as they went up the path together, while through the drone of the bees and the subdued twitter of the birds in the drowsy noonday, margeret could hear the whirr of her mother’s busy wheel. if all the toilers of hand and heart were like mistress radpath and master simon, the roofs of gold would soon be built to the very clouds.
