The Washington Tavern, or, rather, the brick sidewalk which came up to its doors, and was the lounging-place for all the grown loiterers in Princess Anne, had been in the greatest activity all that Saturday afternoon, since it was reported by Jack Wonnell, who set himself to be a spy on Meshach's errand, that the steeple-hat had disappeared in the broad mansion of Judge Daniel Custis.
Jack Wonnell had a worn bell-crown on his head, exposed to all kinds of weather, as he was in the habit of fishing in these beaver-hats, and never owned an umbrella in his life. He lived near Meshach, in the old part of Princess Anne, near the bridge, and was the subject of the money-lender's scorn and contempt, as tending to make a mutual eccentricity ridiculous. Milburn had been willing to be hated for his hat, but Jack Wonnell made all unseasonable hats laughable, the more so that he was nearly as old a wearer of his bell-crowns as Milburn of the steeple-top. Although he had no such reasons of reverence and stern consistency as his rich neighbor, he seemed to have, in his own mind, and in plain people's, a better defence for violating the standard taste of dress.
The people said that Jack Wonnell, being a poor man, could not buy all the fashions, and was merely wearing out a bargain; that he knew he was ridiculous, and set no such conceit on his absurdity as that grim Milburn; and they rather enjoyed his playing the Dromio to that Antipholus, and turning into farce the comedy of Meshach's error.
Jack Wonnell had partly embraced his bargain by the example of Meshach. A frivolous, unambitious, childish fellow, amusing people, obliging people, running errands, driving stage, gardening, fishing, playing with the lads, courting poor white bound girls, incontinent, inoffensive, he had been impelled to bid off his lot of old hats by Jimmy Phoebus saying:
"Jack, dirt cheap! Last you all your life! Better hats than old Meshach Milburn's. You'll drive his'n out of town."
To his infinite amusement and dignity, his appearance in the bell-crown hats attracted the severe regard of Milburn, and set the little town on a grin. The joke went on till Jimmy Phoebus, Judge Custis, and some others prompted Jack Wonnell, with the promise of a gallon of whiskey, to ask Meshach to trade the steeple-top for the bell-crown. The intense look of outrage and hate, with the accompanying menace his townsman returned, really frightened Jack, and he had prudently avoided Milburn ever since, while keeping as close a watch upon his movements and whereabouts as upon some incited bull-dog, liable to appear anywhere.
In this way Jack Wonnell had followed Meshach to the court-house corner, where stood Judge Custis's brick bank--which, of late, had done little discounting--and, from the open space between it and the court-house in its rear, he peeped after Milburn up the main cross street, called Prince William Street, which stopped right at Judge Custis's gate. There, in the quiet of early afternoon, he heard the knocker sound, saw the door open, and beheld the Entailed Hat disappear in the great doorway. Then, scarcely believing himself, Wonnell ran back to the tavern, and exclaimed:
"May I be struck stone dead ef ole Meshach ain't gwyn in to the Jedge's!"
"You're a liar!" said Jimmy Phoebus, promptly, catching Jack by the back of the neck, and pushing his bell-crown down till it mashed over his nose and eyes, "What do you mean by tellin' a splurge like that?"
"I seen him, Jimmy," was the bell-crowned hero's smothered cry; "if I didn't, hope I may die!"
"What did he go there for?"
"I can't tell, Jimmy, to save my life!"
"Whoo-oo-p!" cried Phoebus, waving his old straw hat, itself nearly out of season. "If this is a lie, Jack Wonnell, I'll make you eat a raw fish. Levin"--to Levin Dennis--"you slip up by Custis's, and see if ole Meshach hain't passed around the fence, or dropped along Church Street and hid in the graveyard, where he sometimes goes. I'll stay yer, and make Jack Wonnell account for sech lyin'!"
Levin Dennis, a boyish, curly-haired, graceful-going orphan, walked up the cross street, passing Church lane and the Back alley, and slowly turned the long front of Teackle Hall, and went out the parallel street towards the lower bridge on the Deil's Island road, till he could turn and see the three great-chimneyed buildings of Teackle Hall lifting their gables and lightning-rods to his sight in their reverse, the partly stripped trees allowing that manorial pile to stand forth in much of its length and imposing proportions. Lest he might not be suspected of curiosity, Levin continued on to the bridge at Manokin landing, and counted the geese come out of a lawn on a willowy cape there, and take to water like a fleet of white schooners. He ascended the rise beyond the bridge, and looked over to see if Meshach might have taken a walk down the road. Then returning, he swept the back view of Princess Anne, from the low bluff of cedars on another inhabited cape on the right, which bordered the Manokin marshes, to the vale of the little river at the left, as it descended between Meshach's storehouse and the ancient Presbyterian church of the Head of Manokin, seated among its gravestones between its hitching-stalls and its respectable parsonage manse. Nothing was visible of the owner of the distinguishing hat.
So Levin Dennis returned more slowly around the north wing of Teackle Hall, looking at every window, as if Meshach might be there; but nothing did he see except the dog, which, to Levin's eye, appeared uneasy, and ran out of the gate to make friends with him.
"So, Turk!" Dennis muttered, patting the dog's head, "no wonder you're scared, boy, to see old Meshach Milburn come in."
Teackle Hall, according to rumor, was built at the close of the revolutionary war by an uncle, or grand-uncle, of Judge Custis, who came from Virginia, somewhere between Accomac and Northampton counties, and went into shipbuilding on the Manokin, adding some privateering and banking, too, and once, going abroad, he brought back from some ducal residence the plan of Teackle Hall, as Judge Custis found it on his coming into the property.
It was nearly two hundred feet in length, and would have made three respectable churches, standing in line, with their sharp gables to the front, the bold wings connected with the bolder centre by habitable curtains or colonnades, in which panels of slate or grained stone made an attic story above the lines of windows, and lintels and sills of the same stone, with high keystones, capped every window in the many-sided surface of the whole stately block, all built of brick brought over in vessels from the western shore, or possibly from the North, or Europe, and painted a gray stone color.
Its central gable had deep carved eaves, and a pediment-base to shed rain, and a large circular window in that pediment. The two mighty chimneys of that centre were parallel with the ridge of the roof, and rose nearly from the middle of the two opposite slopes, bespeaking four great fireplaces below, and a flat, low-galleried observatory upon the roof gave views of portions of the bay on clear days.
The wings of Teackle Hall had similar, but lower, chimneys, astraddle of their roofs, and forest trees--oak, gum, holly, and pine, with a great willow, and some tawny cedars, and bushes of rose and lilac--dotted the grassy lawn. The Virginia creeper and wild ivy climbed here and there to the upper windows, and a tall, broad, panelled doorway, opening on a low, open portico platform with steps, seemed to say to visitors: "Men of port and consideration come in this way, but inferiors enter by some of the smaller doors!"
Levin Dennis, who had never sounded that knocker, though he had often taken his terrapins to the kitchen, stared in concern at the door where it was reported Meshach Milburn had gone in, and would hardly have been surprised if that intruder had now appeared at one of the three deep windows over the door with a firebrand in his hand.
Levin muttered to himself: "Rich folks, I reckon, must make a trade. Maybe it's hosses--maybe not. I know it ain't hats."
He then turned down to the Episcopal Church, only a square from Teackle Hall, and on a street between it and the main street, though in a retired situation, its front turned from the town, and looking over the fields and farms, like a good pastor who is warming at the fire with his hands behind him.
A single-storied, long, low edifice of British bricks, with its semicircular choir next the street, and, adjoining the choir, a spire of more modern brickwork built up to an open bell cupola, and open ribbed dome, also of brick, tipped with a gilded cross, the ivy was greenly matted all round the choir, and ran along the side of the church, where Levin Dennis walked under four tall, round-topped windows of stained and wired glass, till he came to the end gable or front of the church, standing in unworldly contemplation of the graveyard and the back fields.
There, since the Stamp Act Congress, or when Princess Anne was not half a century old, the old church had taken its stand, backed up to the town, recluse from its gossip. Between its tall round doors, with little window-panes like spectacles let into their panels, the ivy vine arose in form like the print of The Crucified, reaching out its stems and tendrils wide of the one glorified window in the gable, in whose red dyes glimmered the triumph of a bloody countenance. The mossy walls, often scraped, the mossified pavement, the greenish tombs of marble under the maples and firs, showed the effect of shade, solitude, and humidity upon all things of brick in this climate, where wood was already rising into favor as building material, but to the detraction of picturesqueness and all the appearance of antiquity.
No sign of the unpopular townsman was to be seen anywhere, but, as Levin Dennis peeked around the foliage in the yard he beheld a man he had never observed before, and of a tall, bearded, suspicious, and ruffianly exterior, lying flat on the top of a memorial vault, with his head and feet half concealed in some cedar brambles.
"Hallo!" Dennis shouted.
"What do you hallo for?" spoke the man; "don't you never come to a churchyard to git yer sins forgive?"
"No," said the terrapin-finder, "not till I knows I has some sins."
"What air you prowlin' about the church then fur, anyhow?" demanded the stranger, standing up in his boots, into which his trousers were tucked; and he stood such a straight, long-limbed, lithe giant of a man that Levin saw he could never run away, even if the intruder meant to chew him up right there.
"I ain't a prowlin', friend," answered Levin Dennis. "I was jess a lookin'."
"Lookin' fur what, fur which, fur who?" said the man, taking a step towards Dennis, who felt himself to be no bigger than one of the other's long, ditch-leaping, good-for-wading legs.
"Why, I was jess a follerin' a man--that is, friend, not 'zackly a man, but a hat."
"A hat?" The man walked up to Dennis this time, and stood over him like a pine-tree over a sucker. "Yer's yer hat," pulling an old straw article, over-worn, from Dennis's head. "No wind's a blowin' to blow hats into graveyards. Or did you set yer hat under a hen in yere, by a stiffy?"
Dennis looked up, laughing, though not all at ease, but his amiable want of either intelligence or fear, which belong near together, made his most natural reply to the pertinacious intruder a disarming grin.
"No, man," Dennis said, "it was a hat on a man's head--ole Meshach Milburn's steeple-top. I was a follerin' of him."
"Stow your wid!" the man clapped the hat back on Levin's head. "You're a poor hobb, anyhow. Is thair any niggers to sell hereby?"
"Oh, that's your trade, nigger buyin'? Well, there's mighty few niggers to sell in Prencess Anne. Unless"--here a flash of intelligence shone in Levin's eyes--"unless that's what's took ole Meshach Milburn to Jedge Custis's. He goes nowhar unless there's trouble or money for him."
"And where is Judge Custis's, you rum chub?"
"Yander!" pointing to Teackle Hall.
"Ha! that is a Judge's? And niggers? Broke, too! Well, it's no hank for a napper bloke. So bingavast! Git! Whar's the tavern?"
"I'm a-goin' right thair," answered Levin, much relieved. "You must be a Yankee, or some other furriner, sir."
"No, hobb! I'm workin' my lay back to Delaware from Norfolk, by pungy to Somers's cove. Show me to the tavern and I'll sluice your gob. I'll treat you to swig."
At the prospect of a drink, of which he was too fond, Levin led the way to the Washington Tavern, where there was a material addition to the attendance since Jimmy Phoebus had called to every passer-by that Meshach Milburn, on the testimony of Jack Wonnell, had actually been and gone and disappeared in Judge Custis's doorway, and nearly a dozen townsfolks were now discussing the why and wherefore, when, suddenly, Levin Dennis came out of Church Street with a man over six feet high, of a prodigious pair of legs, and arms nearly as long, with a cold, challenging, yet restless pair of blue eyes, and with reddish-brown beard and hair, coarse and stringy. The free negro, Samson Hat, being a little way off, was observed to cast a beaming glance of admiration at the athletic proportions of the stranger, who looked as if he might shoulder an ox, or outrun a horse.
"Hallo!" exclaimed Jimmy Phoebus, looking the stranger over boldly, yet with indifference, at last. "You're cuttin' a splurge, Levin, too. Where's Meshach?"
"Can't see no sign of him, Jimmy. Guess Jack Wonnell hit it, an' he's gone in the Jedge's. Mebbe he's buyin' of Jedge Custis's niggers. That's this gentleman's business."
Jimmy Phoebus, himself no slight specimen of a man, gave another glance at the stranger from the black cherries of his eyes, and, apparently no better satisfied with the inspection, made no sign of acquaintance.
"Whoever ain't too nice to drink with a nigger buyer," said the man, independently, "can come in and set up his drink, with my redge, for I'm rhino-fat and just rotten with flush."
There was a pause for somebody to take the initiative, but Jimmy Phoebus, turning his big, broad Greekish face and small forehead on the stranger, remarked:
"I never tuk a drink with a nigger buyer yit, and, by smoke! I reckon I'm too old to begin."
The man stopped and measured Jimmy up in his eye.
"Humph!" he said with a sneer, "you look to be a little more than half nigger yourself. If I was dead broke I'd run you to market an' git my price for you."
"No doubt of it whatever, as fur as you're concerned," said Jimmy, unexcited, while the man pushed Levin Dennis in towards the bar.
Either the new movement of Meshach Milburn, or the example of the strange man, set Princess Anne in a tipsy condition that day. The stranger was full of money, and treating indiscriminately, and the pavement before the hotel was continually beset with the loiterers, and the bar took money and spread mischief. So when, an hour after dark, the unpopular townsman, avoiding the crowd, passed by on the opposite side of the street, nearest his own lodging, one of the loudest and most unanimous yells he had ever heard in his experience, rang out from the Washington Tavern.
"Steeple-top! Steeple-top! Old Meshach's loose. Whoo-o-op!"
"Laugh on!" thought Meshach, "till now I never knew the meaning of 'let them laugh who win.'"
He felt confirmed in his idea to be married in the Raleigh tile, and when he saw Samson Hat, Milburn said: "Boy, brush all my clothing well. Then go back to the livery stable, and order a buggy to be ready for you at ten o'clock. At that hour set out for Berlin; and bring back Rhody Holland with you in the morning."
"It's more dan thirty mile, marster, an' a sandy road."
"No matter. Take it slow. I will write you a letter to carry. Samson, I am going to be married to-night to the rose of Princess Anne."
"Dar's on'y one," said Samson. "Not Miss Vesty Custis?"
"Yes, Samson. Princess Anne may now have something to howl at. The poor girl may be lonesome, as, no doubt, she will be dropped everywhere on my account, and not a soul can I think of, to be my young lady's maid, unless it is Rhody."
"Yes, Marster, wid all your money you're pore in friends; in women-friends you is starved."
"You may go with me to the church," said Meshach, "I suppose you want to see me married."
"Yes, sir. Dat I do! Wouldn't miss dat fo' my Christmas gift. I 'spect dat gal Virgie will come wid Miss Vesty to de cer'mony, marster."
"Perhaps so. You are not thinking of love, too, Samson?"
"Well, don't know, marster. Virgie's a fine gal, sho' I am a little old, Marster Milburn, but I'll have to look out for myseff, I 'spec, now you done burnt down my spreein' place. Dar's a wife comin' in yar now. So if you don't speak a good word fur me wid some o' Miss Vesty's gals, I'm aboot done."
"Well, boy," Meshach said, "you have got the same chance I had: the upper hand. I owe you a nice little sum in wages, and you may be able to buy one of the Custis housemaids, and set her free, and marry her, or, be her owner. You are a free man."
Samson shook his head gravely.
"Dat won't do among niggers," he said. "Niggers never kin play de upper hand in love, like white people. Dey has to do it by love itseff: by kindness, marster."
Before nine o'clock Milburn and his negro left the old store by the town bridge, and passing by the river lane called Front Street, into Church Street, walked back of the hotel, avoiding its triflers, and reached the church in a few minutes unobserved. The long windows shed some light, however, but as it was Saturday night, this was attributed, by the few who noticed it, to preparations for the next Sabbath morning. Before setting out, Samson Hat, observing his employer to shake a trifle, asked him if a dram of whiskey would not be proper.
"No, boy; this is a wedding without wine. I shall need all my wits to find my manners."
He entered the church, and found it warmed, and the minister already present in his surplice, kneeling alone at the altar. Mr. Tilghman arose, with his youthful face very pale, and tears upon his cheeks, and seeing his neglected parishioner and the serving-man, came down the aisle.
"Mr. Milburn," he said, extending his hand, "I hope to congratulate, after this ceremony, a Christian-hearted bridegroom, and one who will take the rare charge which has fallen to him, in tender keeping. My endeavor shall be to love you, sir, if you will let me! Miss Vesta is the priestess of Princess Anne, and if you take her from our sight and hearing, even God's ministrations in this church will seem hollow, I fear."
"To me they would," said Milburn, "though from no disrespect to our pastor."
"You have been a faithful parishioner," resumed Tilghman, "during my brief labor here, as in my boyhood, when I little dreamed I should fill that desk. You know, perhaps, that it was from the hopeless love of my cousin Custis, I fled to God for consolation, and he made me his humble minister."
"I have heard so," said Milburn; "or, rather, I have seen so."
"Pardon my mentioning a subject so irrelevant to you, sir, but, though I have surrendered every vain emotion for my cousin, her happiness is a part of my religion, and this sudden conclusion of her marriage, about which I have asked only one question, has urged me to throw myself upon your sympathy."
"What do you ask, William Tilghman? No matter--your request is granted."
"How have I won your favor?" the young rector asked, somewhat surprised.
Milburn mechanically picked his hat from a pew, and held it a little way up.
"You were the only boy in this village who never cried after this hat."
"Then it was probably overlooked by me. I was like the other boys, mischievous, before my spirits had been depressed by unhappy love, and I did not know I was any exception to their habits."
"It was grateful to see that exception," said Milburn; "hooted people make fine distinctions."
"Oh, Mr. Milburn, forgive the boys! They are made for laughter, and little causes excite it, like dogs to bark, from health and exercise--scarcely more than that. The request I make is to let me be your friend, because I have been your wife's! Frankness becomes my calling, and I think you need friendly, cordial surroundings to bring out your usefulness, and give you the freedom that will take constraint out of your family life, and, without diminishing your good sensibilities, dispel any morbid ones. This will open a way for Vesta to see her domestic career, which, otherwise, might become so rapidly contracted as to disappoint you both. You have seen her the idol of her wide circle, free as a bird, indulged by her kind, and by Providence also, till joy and grace, beauty and health, faith and hope live abundant in her, and you are the beneficiary of it all. Her society hereafter you must control. May I become your friend, and let my love for your wife recommend me to your confidence, as you to mine and to my prayers?"
"Have I another friend already?" exclaimed Milburn, his voice quivering. "What wealth she brings me never known before! William, you will be ever welcome to me."
They clasped hands upon it, and old Samson Hat, sitting back, was heard to chuckle aloud such a warming laugh, that Meshach's response to it, in a sudden pallid shivering, seemed slightly out of keeping. He was recalled, however, by the entrance of Judge Custis with his daughter, and her maid, Virgie.
Vesta was very pale, but neither shrinking nor negative. On the contrary, she supported her father rather than received his support, and Milburn saw the Judge's worn, helpless face, with the pride faded from it, and pity for his daughter absorbing every other feeling of depression.
He wore his best cloth suit, with the coat tails falling to his knees behind, the body cut square to the hips, and the collar raised high upon his stock of white enamelled English leather. His low-buttoned vest exposed his shirt-buttons of crystal and gilt, and a ruffle, ironed by Roxy's slender hands with nimble touches, parted down the middle like sea foam on shell, and similar ruffles at the wrists were clasped by chain buttons of pearl and silver. His vest was of figured Marseilles stuff, and gaiters of the same material partly covered his shoes; and his heavy seal, with his coat of arms upon it, fell from a pale ribbon at his fob. Debtor though he was, and answering at the bar of the church to a heavy personal and family judgment, his large and flowing lines of body, deeply cut chin, full eyes, and natural height and grace of stature made him a marked and noble presence anywhere.
Vesta Custis, dropping off a mantle of blue velvet at a touch of her maid, stood in a party dress of white silk, the neck, shoulders, and arms bare; and, as she halted a minute in the aisle, Virgie struck the cloth sandals from her mistress's white slippers of silk, and, removing her hood of home-embroidered cloth, a veil of white fell to her train. The dingy light from the lamps of whale-oil gathered, like poor folks' children's marvelling eyes, around the pair of diamonds in her delicately moulded, but alert and generous ears. Her fine gold watch-chain, twice dependent from her neck, disappeared in the snowy mould of her bosom, on whose heaving drift swam a magnolia-bud and blossom, each with a leaf. Her father's picture, in a careful miniature set in pearls, lay higher on her breast, fastened by a pearl necklace. Her hands were covered with white gloves, and her arms were without ornament. Her hair, dropping in dark ringlets around her forehead and temples, was combed upward farther back, and then gathered around a pearl comb in high braids, and the plentiful loops drooped to her shoulder.
Milburn glanced at the treasures of her peerless bodily charms, never till now revealed to his sight, and their splendor almost made him afraid.
Never had he been at a theatre, a ball, or anywhere from which he could have foreseen a swan-like neck and bosom sculptured like these, and arms as white as the limbs of the silver-maple, and warmed with bridal-life and modesty.
Her lips, parted and red, her great rich eyes a goddess might have commanded through, with their eyebrows of raven-black, like entrances to the caves of the Cumaean sibyl, her small head borne as easily upon her neck as a dove upon a sprig--all flashed upon Milburn's thrilled yet flinching soul, as the revelation of a divinity.
As she stepped forward he spoke to her with that bold instinct or ecstasy she had observed when she first addressed him in her father's house, ten hours before.
"You have dressed yourself for me?" he said.
"Sir, such as I could command upon this necessity I thought to do you honor with."
"For me, to look so beautiful! what can I say? You are very lovely!"
"It is gracious of you to praise me. Shall we wait, or are you ready?"
He gave her his hand, unable to speak again, and she was calm enough to notice that his hand was now hot, as if he had fever. Her father, at her side, reached out also, and took the bridegroom's other hand:
"Milburn," he said, huskily, "this is no work of mine. My daughter has my consent only because it is her will."
"The nobler to me for that," Milburn spoke, with his countenance strangely flushed. "What shall we do, my lady?"
"Give me your arm; not that one. This is right. Have you brought a ring, sir?"
"Yes." He drew from his vest pocket a little, lean gold ring, worth hardly half a dollar.
"It was my poor mother's," he said.
Without another word she walked forward, her arm drawing him on, Virgie following, and her father bringing up the rear. Samson Hat, feeling uneasy at being awarded no part in the ceremony, slipped up the aisle as far as the big, stiff-aproned stove in the middle of the church, behind which he ducked his body, but kept his head and faculties in the centre of the events.
Mr. Tilghman had preceded them in his surplice, and taking his place at the altar, with his countenance pale as death, he read the exordium in an altered voice: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony."
"What 'company' is here?" thought Vesta. "Not alone these poor negroes and my father; no, I feel behind me, looking on, the generations of our pride and helpless ease, the worthy younger suitors I have been too exacting and particular to see the consideration and merits of, the golden hours I might have improved my mind in, with brilliant opportunities I was not jealous of, and which will be mine no more, because I had not trimmed my virgin lamp; and so I slept away my girlhood, till now I awaken at the cry, 'The bridegroom cometh,' and I behold! Yes, I have been a foolish virgin, and am surprised when my fate is here! Perhaps my guardian angel also stands behind me, the cross advanced that I must take, my crown concealed; but somewhere, midway of this journey of life, she may give it to me, and say, 'Well done!'"
"This 'company,'" thought Milburn, with swimming head, "gathered to see me marry! what company? I seem to feel, besides these negroes, my sole spectators, the populous forest peering on, the barefoot generations, the illiterate broods, the instinctive parents, the sandy graves. They give forth my lost tribe, and all cry at me, 'Go, leave us, proud one! despiser, go!' Yet there is one I see, pure as my bride, white as my captive's bosom, her soul all in her believing eyes, and saying, 'Oh, my son, it is a woman like me that has come into your life, and her heart is very tender, and, by your mother's dying love! be kind to the poor stranger you have bought.'"
He answered, "I will!" aloud, and it seemed almost a miraculous coincidence that it was a response to the minister's question, till he heard the corresponding inquiry put to his bride in the clergyman's low, but gentlest, tones:
"Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?"
"I will!" spoke the Judge's daughter, clear as music, and the Judge drew a long, deep sigh, saturated with tears, as if from the deepest wells of grief.
He could not distinctly answer, as he joined her hand to the minister's. The minister lost his office and speech for a moment, joining her hand to the bridegroom's. The slave-girl burst into a wail she could not control, and only Vesta stood calm as her bridegroom, putting her cool, moist hand in his palm of fire, and waited to repeat the Church's deliberate language.
When both had made this solemn promise, she reached for the little ring, and gave it to her old lover, the minister, and Virgie loosed her glove. Mr. Tilghman, his tears silently falling upon his book, passed the ring to Meshach, and saw its tiny circle hoop her white finger round, no bigger than a straw, yet formidable as the martyr's chain. His prayers were said with deep feeling, and he pronounced them man and wife. Then, shaking Meshach's hand, he said, with his boyish countenance bright as faith could make it:
"My friend, may I take my kiss?"
Meshach nodded his head, but his face was like a ball of fire, and he hardly knew what was asked. Mr. Tilghman kissed Vesta, saying,
"Cousin, your husband is my friend, and love and friendship both surround you now. May your happiness be, like your goodness, securest when you surmount difficulties, like those birds that cannot float at perfect grace till they have struggled above the clouds."
"May I kiss you now?" Milburn said, gazing with a wild look upon her rich eyes.
As she obediently raised her lips, a strange, warm, husky breath, not natural nor even passionate, came from his nostrils. The Judge, looking at this--no pleasing scene to him, the fairest Custis in two hundred years being devoured before his sight--exclaimed within his soul,
"Is Meshach drinking? His eyes look fiery."
So, after kissing his daughter also, and saying, "May God reward you with triumphs and compensation beyond our fears!" the Judge said:
"Milburn, I suppose, in the sudden conclusion of this union, you have made no arrangements as to where you will go; so come, of course, to Teackle Hall, and make it your home."
"Is that your wish, my dear one?"
Vesta replied, "Yes. But it is yours to choose, sir."
"You have some business with your father for an hour," Milburn said; "meantime, I require something at my warehouse, and, as it is yet early in the night, may I leave you a little while?"
She bowed her head again, and, while they proceeded towards the church-door, lingering there, Samson took the opportunity to seize both of Virgie's hands.
"Virgie," he exclaimed, "is all dat kissin a gwyin on an' we black folks git none of it? Come hyeah, purty gal, an' kiss yer ole gran'fadder!"
Virgie consented without resistance, till Samson continued, "Oh, what peach an' honey, Virgie! Gi me anoder one! I say, Virgie, sence my marster an' your mistis have done gone an' leff us two orphans, sposen we git Mr. Tilghman to pernounce us man an' wife, too?" Then Virgie drew away.
"Samson Hat," she said, "what's that you are talking about? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are old enough to be my father!"
"'Deed I ain't, my love. I'm good as four o' dese new kine o' Somoset County beaux. I'm a free man. Maybe I'll sot you free too, Virgie--me an' my marster yonder. He says we better git married. 'Deed he does."
"You are just an impertinent old negro," the girl replied. "Do you suppose any well-raised girl would have a man who got rich by cleaning the Bad Man's hat? You're nothing but the devil's serving-man, sir."
"Look out dat debbil don't ketch you, den," said Samson. "You pore, foolish, believin' chile! Look out dem purty black eyes don't cry for ole Samson yit. He's done bound to marry some spring chicken, ole Samson is, an' I reckon you'll brile de tenderest, Virgie."
Virgie, indignant, but fluttered at her first real proposal, and from one of the richest men of her color in Princess Anne, hastened to tie on her young mistress's walking-shoes, and, as they all stepped from the happy old church, where Vesta's voice had so often pierced, in her flights of harmony, to a bliss that seemed to carry her soul, like a lark, to heaven's gate, that
"singing, still dost soar, and, soaring, ever singest,"
she saw fall upon the pavement of the churchyard the long, preposterous, moon-thrown hat of the bridegroom.
"Oh, what will he do with that hat, now that he has married me?" Vesta thought. "Will he continue to afflict me with it?"
Her heart sank down, so that she felt relieved when he kissed her again at the church-gate, and saying, "I will come soon, darling," went, with his man, into Princess Anne.
"Is your buggy ready harnessed, Samson?" his master asked, when they turned the court-house corner.
"Yes, marster."
At this moment a large crowd of men, comprising all the idle population in town, as well as many Saturday-night bacchanalians from the country and coasts, some standing before the tavern, others on the opposite sidewalks or gathered on the court-house corner, seeing the hatted figure of Meshach rise against the moonlight, raised the scattering cry, finally deepening into a yell, of:
"Man with the hat loose! Steeple-top! Three cheers for old Meshach's hat!"
With a minute's irresolution, as if hesitating to go through the crowd, Milburn turned into the main street, crossed it, and continued down the opposite sidewalk, on the same side with his domicile, the jeers and jests still continuing.
"Dar's rum a workin' in dis town all arternoon, marster," his faithful negro said, "eber sence dat long man come in from de churchyard wid Levin Dennis. Look out, marster!"
He had scarcely spoken, when three men were seen to bar the way, two of them drunk, the third ugly with drink, emerging from a groggery that stood across the street from the tavern, where further beverage had been denied them. The first was Jack Wonnell. He hiccoughed, cried "Steeple-top!" and slunk behind a mulberry-tree. The second man was Levin Dennis, hardly able to stand, and he sat down on the groggery step, smiling up idiotically.
The third man, rising like a giant out of his boots, with his arms swaying like loose grapevines, and his bearded face streaked with tobacco drippings, looking insolence and contempt, brought the flat of one hand fairly down on the crown of Milburn's surprising tile, with the words:
"Halloo! Yer's Goosecap! Hocus that cady, Old Gripefist!"
The hat, age being against it, wilted down on Meshach's eyes, and the heedless stroke, unconsciously powerful, staggered him.
Samson, who had drunk in the giant's qualifications with an instant's admiration, immediately drew off, seeing his master insulted, and struck the tall stranger a blow with his fist. The man reeled, rallied, and sought to grapple with Samson. That skilful pugilist bent his knees, slided his shoulders back, and, avoiding the clutch, raised, and threw his trunk forward, with the blow studied well, and planted his knuckles in the white man's eyes. The tall ruffian went down as from a bolt of lightning.
Milburn saw all this happen in a minute of time, and his eye, looking for something to defend himself, dropped on the brick pier under the groggery steps, where Levin Dennis sat, stupefied by the scene. A brick in the pier was loose, and Milburn stepped towards it. In this small interval the hardy stranger had recovered himself and staggered to his feet, and had drawn a dirk-knife.
"The ruffian oly you!" he bellowed. "Knocked down! by a nigger, too! Hell have you, then!"
As he darted forward, he described a rapid circle backward and downward with the knife, aiming to turn it through Samson's bowels, which he would have done--that valorous servant being without defence, and not so much as a pebble of stone lying on the bare plain of the soil to give him aid--had not Meshach, wresting the loose brick from the pier, aimed it at the corresponding exposed portion of the assassin's body, and struck him full in the pit of the stomach. The man's eyes rolled, and he fell, like one stone-dead, his dirk sticking in the sidewalk.
"Let him lie there," said Meshach, contemptuously. "No danger of such a dog dying! If there is time he shall mend in the jail. Take to your buggy, boy, and keep out of the way."
The negro needed no warning, as the impiety of striking a white man was forbidden in a larger book than the Bible--the book of ignorance. He disappeared through the houses and was a mile out of Princess Anne, driving fast, before the new man had raised his head from the ground.
"Where is the nigger?" he gasped, his paleface painted by his bloodshot eyes. "What kind of coves are you to let a black bloke fight a white man? I'll cut his heart out before I tip the town."
He looked around on the crew which had crossed over from the tavern; Meshach had vanished in his store at the descent of the road. Jimmy Phoebus was the only one to speak.
"Nigger buyer," he said, "if you are around this town from now till midnight, or after midnight to-morrer, Sunday night, ole Meshach Milburn will have you in that air jail till Spring. By smoke! he'll find out yer aunty's cedents, whair you goin, whair you been, what's yer splurge, an all yer hokey pokey. You've struck the Ark of the Lord this time--ole Milburn's Entailed Hat! Take my advice an' travel!"
The man washed his face at the tavern pump, turned the bank corner, and disappeared in the night towards Teackle Hall.
