The Hearth and Eagle Read Online Free PDF Page A

scarlet cloak to screen her from the inert Brents above.
    Phebe clenched her teeth and hurried through her dressing. Mark teased her for her modesty, but she suffered deeply at the public nature of all private acts on board the ship. She put on her everyday gown of French serge, blue as the cornflowers in the meadow at home, and her white lawn falling collar, its points embellished with rows of tucks, in elaboration exactly suitable to a prosperous yoeman’s daughter. The collar was limp from the sea air and hung badly. Phebe sighed, thinking of the care her mother had lavished on fine linen for the journey. Mark impatiently wrapped her in her blue hooded cloak and hurried her out on deck.
    The Easterly wind had not brought rain, nor was it cold this April day, as the little
Jewell
bounded across the waves, seeming as eager as Mark was to hurtle herself toward the Western sea and be quit of Old England forever.
    There was scarce room to move on deck, since all the passengers who were well enough had come out to wedge themselves amongst the water barrels, the chicken coops, and the long boat, and they were heartily cursed by the harassed sailors. But there was no other place to take the air. Only Mark by dint of his exuberant interest and treats of strong water to the crew was allowed on the fore deck, and Captain Hurlston permitted no one but his officers on the poop.
    Phebe leaned against the starboard rail, her eyes on the shadowy coastline. She was always quiet, even in their moments of passionate love, but Mark’s jubilance was checked by the expression of her face as they neared the headlands of Dorsetshire.
    He put his arm around her. “Take heart—” he whispered, bending down, for she was small and her smooth brown head barely reached to his shoulder. “It’s a great venture, Phebe.”
    Her indrawn breath dilated her nostrils. Her fingers twisted in the folds of her cloak. “I know.”
    How well she knew, for him, the restlessness, the discontent at home, and the zest for the untried which had all compelled him to this venture. His nature was made for struggle. It had been so with their marriage. She had not loved as soon as he did, but her indifference had excited him as much as her father’s opposition had angered him.
    Mark’s father was but a small Dorchester clothier, never prosperous, and of late oppressed by the new taxes, harried by imposts and restrictions to the verge of bankruptcy, while Phebe Edmunds was the child of a wealthy yoeman farmer, who was distantly connected with gentry and freeholder of the same Dorsetshire acres which had been granted to his ancestors after the Conquest.
    But when Phebe’s love had at last grown strong as Mark’s, her indulgent father’s. opposition wore itself out. Six months ago on her eighteenth birthday they had married and found great joy in each other. Yet she had known Mark still unsatisfied.
    He detested Dorchester, and the clothier’s trade to which he had never given but grudging attention anyway, preferring always the wharves and sea eight miles away at Weymouth. That she understood, but she long fought against another realization. Her own beloved home, the great sprawling half-timbered house set in gentle meadows and warm with the affection of a close-knit family—this he detested even worse.
    “Yet what
is
it you want so much?” she had cried, as she began to see the extent of his unrest. “What can New England give us better than we have here? It’s not as though we were Separatists.”
    Mark’s underlip had jutted out in the stubborn way she had come to dread. “No need to be Puritan to build new and free in a new land.” He had thrown a resentful glance around the Edmunds’ great Hall where they were sitting, at the sparkling casement windows newly curtained in a delicate rose sarcenet, at the carved oaken chairs, the gilded court cupboard, the polished floor cloth painted like a chequerboard and warmed by a Turkey rug.
    “Soon,