As the Judge and Phoebus had turned the corner of the bank Samson Hat appeared, driving down Princess Anne's broad main street a young white girl.
"There's the nigger that set my peep in limbo," muttered the negro dealer, "but even he shall go past to-day. This accursed town is packed agin me."
He took a long look at Samson, however, who mildly returned it in the most respectful manner, as if he had never seen the strange gentleman before. "And now, my pals," Joe Johnson said, turning to Levin Dennis and Jack Wonnell, "we will all three go down to the bay and I'll pervide the lush, and pay the soap while you ketch the tarrapin, an' let me sleep my nazy off."
"I'll go an' no mistake!" cried Jack Wonnell, who had been taking a drink of pump-water out of his bell-crown. "So will you, Levin."
Levin Dennis hesitated; "I want to tell my mother first," he said, "maybe she won't like me fur to go of a Sunday. She'll send Jimmy Phoebus after me."
Joe Johnson took a bag of gold from inside his waist-band, hanging by a loop there, and held up a piece of five before the boy's bright eyes:
"Yer, kid! That's yourn if you don't have no mother about it. Pike away with me, pig widgeon, an' find your boat, and I pay you this pash at sundown."
Levin's credulous eyes shone, and with one reluctant look towards his mother's cottage he led the way into the country.
Little was said as they walked an hour or more towards the west, the stranger apparently brooding upon his indignities, and twice passing around the jug of brandy which Jack Wonnell was made to carry, and before noon they came to a considerable creek, out in which was anchored a small vessel bearing on her stern in illiterate, often inverted, letters the name: Ellenora Dennis.
"What's that glibe on yonder?" asked Johnson, pointing to the letters.
"That's his mother's name, boss," Jack Wonnell said, hitching at the stranger's breeches, "she's a widder, an' purty as a peach."
"Ain't you got no daddy, pore pap-lap?" Johnson asked coarsely.
"He's gone sence I was a baby," Levin answered; "he went on Judge Custis's uncle's privateer that never was heard of no mo'. We don't know if the British tuk him an' hanged him, or if the Idy sunk somewhair an' drowned him, or if she's a-sailin' away off. I has to take care of mother."
"Humph!" growled Joe Johnson; "son of a gander and a gilflirt: purty kid, too--got the ole families into him. No better loll for me!"
Drawing a punt concealed under some marsh brush, young Levin pushed off to his vessel, made her tidy by a few changes, pulled up the jib, and brought her in to the bank.
"Mr. Johnson, I never ketched tarrapin of a Sunday befo', but I reckon tain't no harm."
"Harm? what's that?" Joe Johnson sneered. "Hark ye, boy, no funking with me now! When I begin with a kinchin cove I starts squar. If ye think it's wicked to ketch tarrapin, why, I want 'em caught. If you don't keer, you kin jest stick up yer sail an' pint for Deil's Island, an' we'll make it a woyige!"
Not quite clear as to his instructions, Levin took the tiller, and Jack Wonnell superserviceably got the terrapin tongs, and stood in the bow while the cat-boat skimmed down Monie Creek before a good breeze and a lee tide. The chain dredge for terrapin was thrown over the side, but the boat made too much sail for Wonnell to take more than one or two tardy animals with his tongs, as they hovered around the transparent bottoms making ready for their winter descent into the mud.
"Take up your dredge," Johnson commanded in a few minutes. "It makes us go slow."
Jack Wonnell obediently made a few turns on the windlass, and as the bag came up, two terrapin of the then common diamond-back variety rolled on the deck, and a skilpot.
"That's enough tarrapins," Johnson said, "unless you're afraid it's doin' wrong, Levin. Say, spooney! is it wicked now?"
The boy laughed, a little pale of face, and Johnson closed his remark with:
"Nawthin' ain't wicked! Sunday is dustman's day to be broke by heroes. D'ye s'pose yer daddy on the privateer wouldn't lick the British of a Sunday? The way to git rich, sonny, is to break all the commandments at the post, an' pick 'em up agin at the score!"
"That's the way, sho' as you're born. Whoop! Johnson, you got it right!" chuckled Jack Wonnell, not clear as to what was said.
Levin Dennis felt a little shudder pass through him, but he gave the stranger the helm, and by Wonnell's aid raised the main-sheet, and the light boat went winging across Monie Bay, starting the water-fowl as it tacked through them.
"Here's another swig all round," Joe Johnson exclaimed, "and then I'll go below to lollop an hour, for I'm bloody lush."
Levin drank again, and it took the shuddering instinct out of him, and Joe Johnson cried, as he disappeared into the little cabin:
"Ree-collect! You pint her for Deil's Island thoroughfare, and wake me, pals, at the old camp-ground, fur to dine."
The two Princess Anne neighbors felt relieved of the long man's company, and Jack Wonnell lay on his back astern and grinned at Levin as if there was a great unknown joke or coincidence between them, finally whispering:
"Where does he git all his gold?"
Levin shook his head:
"Can't tell, Jack, to save my life. Nigger tradin', I reckon. It must be payin' business, Jack."
"Best business in the world. Wish I had a little of his money, Levin. Hu-ue-oo!" giving a low shout, "then wouldn't I git my gal!"
"Who's yo' gal, Jack, for this winter?"
"You won't tell nobody, Levin?"
"No, hope I may die!"
Jack put his bell-crown up to the side of his mouth, executed another grin, winked one eye knowingly, and whispered:
"Purty yaller Roxy, Jedge Custis's gal."
"She won't have nothin' to do with you, Jack; she's too well raised."
"She ain't had yit, Levin, but I'm follerin' of her aroun'. There ain't no white gal in Princess Anne purty as them two house gals of Jedge Custis's."
"Well, what kin you do with a nigger, Jack? You never kin marry her."
"Maybe I kin buy her, Levin."
"She ain't fur sale, Jack. Jedge Custis never sells no niggers. You can't buy a nigger to save your life. When some of Jedge Custis's niggers in Accomac run away he wouldn't let people hunt for 'em."
Jack Wonnell put his bell-crown to the side of his mouth again, grinned hideously, and whispered:
"Kin you keep a secret?"
Levin nodded, yes.
"Hope a may die?"
"Hope I may die, Jack."'
"Jedge Custis is gwyn to be sold out by Meshach Milburn."
"What a lie, Jack!"
Levin let the tiller half go, and the Ellenora Dennis swung round and flapped her sails as if such news had driven all the wind out of them.
"Jack," Levin exclaimed, "Jimmy Phoebus says you've turned out a reg'lar liar. Now I believe it, too."
"Hope I may die!" Jack Wonnell protested, "I never does lie: it's too hard to find lies for things when people comes an' tells you, or you kin see fur yourseff. Jimmy called me a liar fur sayin' Meshach Milburn was gone into the Jedge's front do', but we saw him come out of it, didn't we?"
"Yes, that was so; but this yer one is an awful lie."
"Well, Levin, purty yaller Roxy, she told me, an' she's too purty to tell lies. I loves that gal like peach-an'-honey, Levin, an' I don't keer whether she's white or no. She's mos' as white as me, an' a good deal better."
"So you do talk to Roxy some?"
"Levin, I'll tell you all about it, an' you won't tell nobody. Well, I picks magnoleys an' wild roses an' sich purty things fur Roxy to give her missis, an' Roxy gives me cake, an' chicken, an' coffee at the back door, knowin' I ain't got much to buy 'em with. Lord bless her! she don't half know I don't think as much of them cakes an' snacks an' warm rich coffee, as I do of her purty eyes. She's a white angel with a little coffee in her blood, but it's ole Goverment Javey an' more than half cream!"
Here Levin laughed loudly, and said that Jack must have learned that out of a book.
"Oh," said Jack, shutting one eye hard and joining in the grin, "sence I ben in love I kin say lots o' smart things like that. I have seen purty little Roxy grow up from a chile, an' as she begin to round up and git tall, says I: 'Nigger or no nigger, she's angel!' The white gals they all throwed off on me, caze I wasn't earnin' nothin', an' I sot my eyes on Roxy Custis an' I says: 'What kin I do fur to make her shine to me?' So I kept a-follerin' of her everywhere, an' I see her one day comin' along the road a-pickin' of the wild blossoms an' with her han' full of 'em, an' I says: 'Roxy, what you doin' of with them flowers?' 'They're fur my missis, Miss Vesty,' says she; 'she lives on wild flowers, an' they're all I has to give her, an' I want her to love me as much as Virgie.' You see Levin, the t'other gal, Virgie, waits on Miss Custis, an' Roxy she was a little jealous. Then I says: 'Roxy, I kin git you flowers for your missis. I know whair the magnoleys is bloomin' the whitest an' a-scentin' the whole day long.' 'Do you?' says she, 'Oh, Mr. Wonnell, I would like to have a bunch of magnoleys to put on Miss Vesty's toilet every day.' 'I'll git 'em fur you, Roxy,' says I, 'becaze I allus thought you was a little beauty.' Says she: 'I'd give most anything to surprise Miss Vesty with flowers every day,--rale wild ones!' 'Then,' says I, 'Roxy, I'll git' em fur you for a kiss!' An' she most a-blushed blood-red an' ran away."
"That's what I told you, Jack, she's raised too well to be talkin' to white fellers."
"Nobody's raised too well," rejoined Jack Wonnell, "to be deef to love and kindness. Says I to myself: 'Jack, you skeert that gal. Now say nothin' mo' about the kiss, an' go git her the flowers every day, an' she'll think mo' of you!' So away I went to King's Creek an' pulled the magnoleys, an' I come to the do' an' asked ole Hominy to bring down Roxy for a minute. Roxy she come, an' was gwyn to run away till she saw my flowers, an' she stopped a minute an' says I: 'I jest got 'em for you, Roxy, becaze I see you when you was a little chile.' She tuk 'em an' says: 'It was very kind of you, sir,' an' kercheyed an' melted away. Next day I was thar agin, Levin, an' I says, to make it seem like a trade: 'Roxy, kin ye give me a cup of coffee?' 'Law, yes!' she says, forgittin' her blushin' right away. So I kept shady on love an' put it on the groun's of coffee, an', Levin, I everlastin'ly fotched the wild flowers till that gal got to be a-lookin' fur me at the do' every day, an' I'd hide an' see her come to the window an' peep fur me. One day she says, as I was drinkin' of the coffee: 'Mr. Wonnell, what do you put yourself at sech pains fur to 'blige a pore slave girl that ain't but half white?' I thought a minute, so as to say something that wouldn't skeer her off, an' I says: 'Roxy, it's becaze I'm sech a pore, worthless feller that the white gals won't look at me!' The tears come right to her eyes, an' she says: 'Mr. Wonnell, if I was white I would look at you.' 'I believe you would,' says I, 'becaze you've got a white heart, Roxy.'"
"Jack, you're a dog-gone smart lover," said Levin. "I didn't think you had no kind of sense."
"Love-makin' is the best sense of all," said Jack, "it's that sense that keeps the woods a-full of music, where the birds an' bees is twitterin' and hummin' an' a-matin'. Love is the last sense to come, after you can see, an' hear, an' feel, an' they're give to people to find out something purty to love. Love was the whole day's work in the garding of Eden befo' man got too industrious, an' it's all the work I do, an' I hope I do it well."
"Now what did Roxy tell you about Meshach Milburn and Judge Custis?"
"You see, Levin, as I kept up the flower-givin', I could see a little love start up in purty Roxy, but she didn't understand it, an' I was as keerful not to skeer it as if it had been a snow-bird hoppin' to a crumb of bread. She would talk to me about her little troubles, an' I listened keerful as her mammy, becaze little things is what wimmin lives on, an' a lady's man is only a feller patient with their little talk. The more I listened the more she liked to tell me, an' I saw that Roxy was a-thinkin' a great deal of me, Levin, without she or me lettin' of it on.
"This mornin' she came to the door with her eyes jest wiped from a-cryin'. Says I, 'Roxy, little dear, what ails you?' 'Oh, nothin',' says she, 'I can't tell you if thair is.' 'Here's your wild flowers for Miss Vesty,' says I, 'beautiful to see!' 'Oh,' says Roxy, 'Miss Vesty won't need 'em now.' Says I: 'Roxy, air you goin' to have all that trouble on your mind an' not let me carry some of it?' 'Oh, my friend,' she says, 'I must tell you, fur you have been so kind to me: don't whisper it! But my master is in debt to Meshach Milburn, an' he's married Miss Vesty, an' we think we're all gwyn to be sold or made to live with that man that wears the bad man's hat.' Says I: 'Roxy, darling, maybe I kin buy you.' 'Oh, I wish you was my master,' Roxy said. An' jest at that minute, love bein' oncommon strong over me this mornin', I took the first kiss from Roxy's mouth, an' she didn't say nothin' agin it."
Here Jack Wonnell kissed the atmosphere several times with deep unction, and ended by a low whoop and whistle, and looked at Levin Dennis with one eye shut, as if to get Levin's opinion of all this.
"Well," Levin said, "I never ain't been in love yet. I 'spect I ought to be. But mother is all I kin take keer of, and, pore soul! she's in so much trouble over me that she can't love nobody else. I git drunk, an' go off sailin' so long, an' spend my money so keerless, that if the Lord didn't look out for her maybe she'd starve."
"Yes, Levin, you likes brandy as much as I likes the gals. You go off for tarrapin, an' taters, an' oysters, an' peddles 'em aroun' Prencess Anne, an' then somebody pulls you in the grog-shops an' away goes your money, an' your mother ain't got no tea and coffee."
"Jack," said Levin, abruptly, "do you believe in ghosts?"
"I don't know, Levin. If I saw one maybe I would, but I'm too trashy for ghosts to see me."
"Well, now," Levin said, "there's a ghost, or something, that looks out for mother when I'm drunk or gone, an' it leaves tea and coffee in the window for her."
"Sho'! why, Levin, that's Jimmy Phoebus! He's ben in love with your mother for years an' she won't have him, but he keep's a hangin' on. He's your mother's ghost."
"No, Jack. I thought it was till Jimmy come to me an' asked me who I guessed it was. He was a little jealous, I reckon. I said: 'It's you, of course, Jimmy!' 'No,' says he, 'by smoke! I don't do any hokey-pokey like that. What I give, I go and give with no sneakin' about it or prying into Ellanory's poverty.' He was right down mad, but he couldn't find nothing out. So I think it may be the ghost of father, drowned at sea, bringing tea and coffee, and sometimes a dress, and a pair of shoes, too, to keep mother warm."
Levin Dennis, standing against the tiller, seemed to Jack Wonnell to be fair and spiritual as a woman, as his comely brow and large eyes grew serious with this relation of his father's mysterious fate. His dark auburn hair, in short ringlets parted in the middle, gave his sunburnt countenance a likeness to some of the old gentle families with which he was allied, his father having been a son of younger sons, in a date when primogeniture prevailed in all this bay region; and therefore, possessing nothing, he went into the war against England as a sailor, and his family influence obtained for him command of the new privateer launched on the Manokin, the Ida, which set sail with a good crew and superior armament, amid the acclaims of all Somerset, and, sailing past the Capes into the ocean with all her bunting flying, slid down the farther world to everlasting silence and the vapors of mystery.
His widow waited long and patiently with this only boy, Levin, a scarcely lisping child, and stories of every kind were current; that the captain had been captured and hanged by the enemy, and the ship burned or condemned; that he had hoisted the black flag and become a pirate and quit the western world for the East India waters; and finally, that the Ida foundered off Guiana and every soul was drowned.
The widow, a beautiful woman, neglected by her husband's connection, who were sullen at the loss of their investment and their expected profits from the vessel, lived in the little house she had owned before her marriage, and sank into the plainer class of people, almost losing her identity with the ruling families to which her son was kin, but in her humbler class highly respected and solicited in marriage.
She was still young and fair, and Jimmy Phoebus, a hale bachelor, and captain of a trading schooner, had endeavored to marry her for years, and held on to his hope patiently, exercising many kind offices for her, though his means were limited, and he had poor kin looking to him for help. She feared the absent lover might be alive and return to find her another's wife.
So her son, growing up without a father's discipline, and being too respectable, it was supposed, to put to a trade or be indentured, lived by fugitive pursuits on land and water, hauling and peddling vegetables and provisions at times; and now, by the gift of Jimmy Phoebus, he sailed his little sloop or cat-boat chiefly to carry terrapin to Baltimore. Rough sailor acquaintances, exposure, a credulous, easily led nature, and almost total neglect of school at a time when education was a high privilege, had made him wayward and often intemperate, but without developing any selfish or cruel characteristics, and being of an agreeable exterior and affable disposition, he fell a prey to any strangers who might be in town--gunners, negro buyers, idle planters, and spreeing overseers, many of whom hired his company and vessel to take their excursions; and, while loving his mother, and being her only reliance, she saw him slipping further and further into manhood without steadiness or education or fixed principles, or any female influence to draw him to domestic constraints.
His slender, supple figure, and marks of gentility in his limbs, and shapely brow and large, gentle eyes, poorly consorted with ragged clothes, bare feet, and absolute dependence on chance employment, the latter becoming more precarious as his age and stature made more demands for money through his false appetites.
"Jack," said Levin Dennis, "what do you mean by gittin' money to buy Roxy Custis? You never git no money."
"Won't he give it to me? Him?" Jack Wonnell indicated the hatchway down which Joe Johnson had gone. "He's got bags of it."
"Him? Why, Jack, how much money do you s'pose a beautiful servant like Roxy will fetch?"
"Won't that piece he's gwyn to give you buy her?"
"Five dollars? Why, you poor fool, she will bring five hundred dollars--maybe thousands. This nigger trader, with all his gold, would be hard pushed, I 'spect, to buy Roxy."
Jack looked downcast, and failed to wink or whistle.
"Gals like her," said Levin, "goes for mistresses to rich men, an' sometimes they eddicates 'em, I've hearn tell, to know music, an' writin', an' grammar, an' them things."
"And a pore man who wouldn't abuse a gal most white like that, but would respect her an' marry her, too, Levin, they makes laws agin him! Maybe I kin steal Roxy?"
Here Jack whistled low, shut one eye with deep knowingness, and grinned behind his bell-crown.
"Oh, you simpleton!" Levin said. "Where could you take her to?"
"Pennsylvany, Cannydy, Turkey, or some of them Abolition states up thar"--Jack Wonnell indicated the North with his finger. "Ain't there no place where a white man kin treat a bright-skinned slave like that as if they both was a Christian?"
"No," answered Levin, "not in this world."
The hero of the bell-crowns was much affected, and Levin thought he really was whimpering, though his vacant grin was a poor frame for grief.
"Jack," said Levin, "if what Roxy Custis told is true, the gal is the slave of your pertickler enemy, Meshach Milburn."
The wearer of the rival species of hat was "badly sobered," as Levin mentally expressed it, at this dismal solution of his gentle dreams of love. He arose and walked to the bow of the boat, and looked down into the flying waves over which the cat-boat skipped, as if he might seek the solution of his own disconnected yet harmless life in the bottom of the sound, among the oyster rocks.
The water was now speckled with canoes and periaugers (pirogues), and little sail-boats coming from Deil's Island preaching, and before them rose out of the bay the low woody islands and capes which, with white straits between, enclose from the long blue nave of the Chesapeake the scalloped aisle called Tangier Sound. Like pigeons and wrens around some cathedral, the wild-fowl flew in these involuted, almost fantastic, architectures of archipelago and peninsula, which, lying flat to the water, yet took ragged perspective there, as if some Gothic builder had laid his foundations, but had not bent the tall pines together, that grew above in palm-like groves, to make the groined roofs and arches of his design.
Here could be seen the ospreys, sailing in graceful pairs above the herrings' or the old wives' shoals, taking with elegance and conscientiousness the daily animal food that even man demands, with all his sentiments and gospels. There the canvas-back duck, in a little flock, broke the Sabbath to dive for the wild celery that grows beneath the sound. In yonder tree the bald eagle was starting out upon his Algerine work of vehemence and piety, to intercept the hawk and steal his cargo. The wild swan might be those faint, far birds flying so high over Kedge's Straits, in the south, and the black loon, spreading his wings like a demon, disappears close to the cat-boat, and rises no more till memory has forgotten him.
Levin Dennis steered close to a point where he had been wont to scatter food for the black ducks, and draw them to the gunner's ambush. Sheldrakes and goosanders, coots and gulls, whifflers and dippers, made the best of Sunday, and bathed and wrote their winged penmanship on the white sheet of water.
Poor Jack Wonnell returning, with something on his face between a grin and a tear, said:
"Levin, didn't I never harm nobody?"
"Not as I ever heard about, Jack. They say you ain't got no sense, but you never fight nobody. Everybody kin git along with you, Jack!"
"No they can't, Levin. Meshach Milburn hates the ground I tread on. If he know'd I was in love with little Roxy he'd marry her to a nigger."
"What makes him hate you so, Jack?"
"Becaze I wears my bell-crowns, and he wears the steeple-top hat. He thinks I'm a-mockin' of him. Levin, I ain't got no other kind of hat to wear. Meshach Milburn needn't wear that air hat, but if I don't wear a bell-crown I must go bareheaded. I bought that lot of hats with the only dollar or two I ever had, as they say a fool an' his money is soon parted. The boys said they was dirt cheap. Now there wouldn't be nothin' to see wrong in my bell-crowns, ef all the people wasn't pintin' at ole Milburn's Entail Hat, as they call it. Why can't he, rich as a Jew, go buy a new hat, or buy me one? I don't want to mock him. I'm afeard of him! He looks at me with them loaded pistols of eyes an' it mos' makes me cry, becaze I ain't done nothin'. I'm as pore as them trash ducks," pointing to a brace of dippers, which were of no value in the market, "but I ain't got no malice."
"No, Jack. That trader could give you that bag of gold to keep and it would be safe, becaze it wasn't your own."
"I 'spect I will have to go to the pore-house some day, Levin; my ole aunt, who takes keer of me, can't live long, an' I ain't good fur nothin'. I can't git no jobs and I run arrands for everybody fur nothin', but the first money I git I'm gwyn to buy a new hat with. Ever sence I wore these bell-crowns Meshach hates me, an' I hope he's the only man that does hate me, Levin. I don't think Meshach kin be a bad man."
"How kin he be good, Jack?"
"Why, I have seen him in the woods when he didn't see me, calling up the birds. Danged if they didn't come and git on him! Now birds ain't gwyn to hop on a man that's a devil, Levin. Do you believe he deals with the devil?"
"I do," said Levin; "I see sich quare things I believe in most anything quare. These yer tarrapins has got sense, and they're no more like it than a stone. One night when we hadn't nothin' to eat at home, mother and me, an' she was a sittin' there with tears in her eyes wonderin' what we'd do next day, I ree-collected, Levin, that there was four tarrapins down in the cellar,--black tarrapin, that had been put there six months before. I said to mother: 'I 'spect them ole tarrapins is dead an' starved, but I'll go see.'
"I found 'em under the wood-pile, an' they didn't smell nor nothin', so I took 'em all four up to mother an' put 'em on the kitchen table befo' the fire, an' I devilled 'em every way to wake up, an' crawl, and show some signs of life. No, they was stone dead!
"'Well, mother,' says I, 'put on your bilin' water an' we'll see if dead tarrapin is fit fur to eat!' She smiled through her cryin', and put the water on, an' when it began to bubble in the pot, I lifted up one of them tarrapins an' dropped him in the bilin' water, an' Jack, I'll be dog-goned if them other three tarrapins didn't run right off the table an' drop on to the flo' an' skeet for that cellar door!
"I caught 'em an' biled 'em, an' as we sat there eatin' stewed tarrapin without no salt, or sherry wine, or coffee, or even corn-bread, we heard somethin' like paper scratchin' on the window, an' mother fell back and clasped her hands, an' said, 'There, do you hear the ghost?'
"I rushed to the door an' hopped into the yard, an' not a livin' creature did I see; but there on the window-shelf was packages of salt, coffee, tea, and flour, and a half a dollar in silver! I run back in the house, white as a ghost myself, an' I cried out, 'Mother, it's father's sperrit come again!'
"She made me git on my knees an' pray with her to give poor father's spirit comfort in his home or in heaven!"
