Judge Custis was the most important man in the county. He belonged to the oldest colonial family of distinction, the Custises of Northampton, whose fortune, beginning with King Charles II. and his tavern credits in Rotterdam, ended in endowing Colonel George Washington with a widow's mite. The Judge at Princess Anne was the most handsome man, the father of the finest family of sons and daughters, the best in estate, most various in knowledge, and the most convivial of Custises.
In that region of the Eastern Shore there is so little diversity of productions, the ocean and the loam alone contributing to man, that Judge Custis had an exaggerated reputation as a mineralogist.
He had begun to manufacture iron out of the bog ores found in the swamps and hummocks of a neighboring district, and, with the tastes of a landholding and slaveholding family, had erected around his furnace a considerable town, his own residence as proprietor conspicuous in the midst. There he spent a large part of the time, and not always in the company of his family, entertaining friends from the distant cities, enjoying the luxuries of terrapin, duck, and wines, and, as rumor said in the forest, all the pleasures of a Russian or German nobleman on a secluded estate.
He could lie down on the ground with the barefooted foresters, equal and familiar with them, and carry off their suffrages for the State Senate or the Assembly. In Princess Anne he was more discriminating, rising in that society to his family stature, and surrounded by alliances which demanded what is called "bearing." In short, he was the head of the community, and his wealth, originally considerable, had been augmented by marriage, while his credit extended to Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Not long after the occurrence of his young daughter, Vesta, placing the rose in Meshach Milburn's mysterious hat, Judge Custis said to his lady at the breakfast-table:
"That man has been allowed to shut himself in, like a dog, too long. He owes something to this community. I'll go down to his kennel, under pretence of wanting a loan--and I do need some money for the furnace!"
He took his cane after breakfast and passed out of his large mansion, and down the sidewalk of the level street. There were, as usually, some negroes around Milburn's small, weather-stained store, and Samson Hat, among them, shook hands with the Judge, not a particle disturbed at the latter's condescension.
"Judge," said Samson, looking that large, portly gentleman over, "you'se a good man yet. But de flesh is a little soft in yo' muscle, Judge."
"Ah! Samson," answered Custis, "there's one old fellow that is wrastling you."
"Time?" said the negro; "we can't fight him, sho! Dat's a fack! But I'm good as any man in Somerset now."
"Except my daughter's boy, the class-leader from Talbot."
"Is dat boy in yo' family," exclaimed Samson, kindling up. "I'll walk dar if he'll give me another throw."
The Judge passed into the wide-open door of Meshach Milburn's store. A few negroes and poor whites were at the counter, and Meshach was measuring whiskey out to them by the cheap dram in exchange for coonskins and eggs. He looked up, just a trifle surprised at the principal man's advent, and merely said, without nodding:
"'Morning!"
Judge Custis never flinched from anybody, but his intelligence recognized in Meshach's eyes a kind of nature he had not yet met, though he was of universal acquaintance. It was not hostility, nor welcome, nor indifference. It was not exactly spirit. As nearly as the Judge could formulate it, the expression was habitual self-reliance, and if not habitual suspicion, the feeling most near it, which comes from conscious unpopularity.
"Mr. Milburn," said Judge Custis, "when you are at leisure let me have a few words with you."
The storekeeper turned to the poor folks in his little area and remarked to them bluntly:
"You can come back in ten minutes."
They all went out without further command. Milburn closed the door. The Judge moved a chair and sat down.
"Milburn," he said, dropping the formal "mister," "they tell me you lend money, and that you charge well for it. I am a borrower sometimes, and I believe in keeping interest at home in our own community. Will you discount my note at legal interest?"
"Never," replied Meshach.
"Then," said the Judge, smiling, "you'll put me to some inconvenience."
"That's more than legal interest," answered Milburn, sturdily. "You'll pay the legal interest where you go, and the inconvenience of going will cost something too. If you add your expenses as liberally as you incur them when you go to Baltimore, to legal interest, you are always paying a good shave."
"Where you have risks," suggested the Judge, "there is some reason for a heavy discount, but my property will enrich this county and all the land you hold mortgages on."
"Bog ore!" muttered the money-lender. "I never lent money on that kind of risk. I must read upon it! They say manufacturing requires mechanical talent. How much do you want?"
"Three thousand."
"Secured upon the furnace?"
"Yes."
Meshach computed on a piece of paper, and the Judge, with easy curiosity, studied his singular face and figure.
He was rather short and chunky, not weighing more than one hundred and thirty pounds, with long, fine fingers of such tracery and separate action that every finger seemed to have a mind and function of its own. Looking at his hands only, one would have said: "There is here a pianist, a penman, a woman of definite skill, or a man of peculiar delicacy." All the fingers were well produced, as if the hand instead of the face was meant to be the mind's exponent and reveal its portrait there.
Yet the face of Meshach Milburn, if more repellent, was uncommon.
The effects of one long diet and one climate, invariable, from generation to generation, and both low and uninvigorating, had brought to nearly aboriginal form and lines his cheek-bones, hair, and resinous brown eyes. From the cheek-bones up he looked like an Indian, and expressed a stolid power and swarthiness. Below, there dropped a large face, in proportion, with nothing noticeable about it except the nose, which was so straight, prominent, and complete, and its nostrils so sensitive, that only the nose upon his face seemed to be good company for his hands. When he confronted one, with his head thrown back a little, his brown eyes staring inquiry, and his nose almost sentient, the effect was that of a hostile savage just burst from the woods.
That was his condition indeed.
"Look at him in the eyes," said the town-bred, "he's all forester!"
"But look at his hand," added some few observant ones.
Ah! who had ever shaken that hand?
It was now extended to the Judge and he took from its womanly fingers the terms of the loan. Judge Custis was surprised at the moderation of Meshach, and he looked up cheerfully into that ever sentinel face on which might have been printed "qui vive?"
"It's not the goodness of the security," said Meshach, "I make it low to you, socially!"
The Custis pride started with a flush to the Judge's eyes, to have this ostracised and hooted Shylock intimate that their relations could be more than a prince's to a pawnbroker. But the Judge was a politician, with an adaptable mind and address.
"Speaking of social things, Milburn," he said, carelessly, "our town is not so large that we don't all see each other sometimes. Why do you wear that forlorn, unsightly hat?"
"Why do you wear the name Custis?"
"Oh, I inherited that!"
"And I inherited my hat."
There was a pause for a minute, but before the Judge could tell whether it was an angry or an awkward pause, the storekeeper said:
"Judge Custis, I concede that you are the best bred man in Princess Anne. Where did you get authority to question another person about any decent article of his attire?"
"I stand corrected, Milburn," said the Judge. "Good feeling for you more than curiosity made me suggest it. And I may also remark to you, sir, that when you lend me money you will always do it commercially and not socially."
"Very well," remarked Meshach Milburn, "and if I ever enter your door, I will then take off my hat."
The next morning Meshach Milburn surprised Samson Hat by saying: "Boy, when you have another fight and make yourself a barbarian again, remember to bring back, from Nassawongo furnace, about a peck of the bog ores!"
The years moved on without much change in Princess Anne. The little Manokin river brought up oysters from the bay, and carried off the corn and produce. The great brick academy at neighboring "Lower Trappe" boarded and educated the brightest youths of the best families on the Peninsula; and these perceived, as the annual summers brought their fulness, what portion of their beauty remained with Vesta Custis. She was like Helen of Troy, a subject of homage and dispute in childhood, and became a woman, in men's consideration, almost imperceptibly. Sent to Baltimore to be educated, her return was followed by suitors--not youthful admirers only, but mature ones--and the young men of the Peninsula remarked with chagrin: "None of us have a chance! Some great city nabob will get her."
But the academy boys and visitors, and the townspeople, had one common opportunity to see her and to hear her--when she sang, every Sabbath and church day, in the Episcopal church.
Her voice was the natural expression of her beauty--sweet, powerful, free, and easily trained. A divine bird seemed hidden in the old church when this noble yet tender voice broke forth; but they who turned to see the singer who had made such Paradise, looked almost on Eve herself.
She was rather slight, tall, and growing fuller slowly every year, like one in whom growth was early, yet long, and who would wholly mature not until near middle life. Her head, however, was perfection, even in girlhood, not less by its proportions than its carriage: her graceful figure bore it like the slender setting, holding up the first splendor of the peach; a head of vital and spiritual beauty, where purity and luxuriance, woman and mind, dwelt in harmony and joy. As she seemed ever to be ripening, so she seemed never to have been a child, but, with faculties and sense clear and unintimidated, she was never wanting in modesty, nor accused of want of self-possession. Judge Custis made her his reliance and pride; she never reproved his errors, nor treated them familiarly, but settled the household by a consent which all paid to her character alone. More than once she had appeared at the furnace mansion when the Judge's long absence had awakened some jealousy or distrust:
"Father, please go home with me! I want you to drive me back."
The easy, self-indulgent Judge would look a slight protest, but at the soft, spirited command; "Come, sir! you can't stay here any more," dismissed his companions, and took his place at the head of Princess Anne society.
Vesta was almost a brunette, with the rich colors of her type--eyebrows like the raven's wing, ripe, red lips, and hair whose darkness and length, released from the crown into which she wound it, might have spun her garments. Her eyes were of a steel-blue, in which the lights had the effect of black. She was dark with sky breaking through, like the rich dusk and twilights over the Chesapeake.
People wondered that, with such beauty, ease, and accomplishments she was not proud; but her pride was too ethereal to be seen. It was not the vain consciousness of gifts and endowments, but the serene sense of worthiness, of unimpaired health, honor, and descent, which made her kind and thoughtful to a degree only less than piety. Grateful for her social rank and parentage, she adorned but did not forget them. The suitors who came for her were weighed in this scale of perfect desert--to be sons of such parents and associates of her married sisters and sisters-in-law. Not one had survived the test, yet none knew where he failed.
"Vesta is too good for any of them," exclaimed the Judge, on more than one occasion. "When I get the furnace in such shape that it will run itself I will take my daughter to Europe and give her a musical education."
In truth, the Judge had expectations of his daughter; for the reputation he had attained as a manufacturer was not without its drawbacks. He maintained two establishments; he supported a large body of laborers and dependents, some of whom he had brought from distant places under contract; the experiment in which he had embarked was still an experiment, and he was subject to the knowledge and judgment of his manager, being himself rather the patron than the manufacturer at the works. Many days, when he was supposed to be testing the percentage and mixture of his ores, he was gunning off on the ocean bars, crabbing on Whollop's Beach, or hunting up questionable company among the forest girls, or around the oystermen's or wrecker's cabins. He had plenty of property and family endorsers, however, and seldom failed to have a satisfactory interview with Meshach Milburn, who was now assisting him, at least once a quarter, to keep both principal and interest at home.
The Judge had grown thicker with Meshach, but the storekeeper merely listened and assented, and took no pains to incur another criticism on his motives. Meshach wore his great hat, as ever, to church and on festive days, and it was still derided, and held to be the town wonder. Vesta Custis often saw the odd little man come into church while she was singing, and she fancied that his large, coarse ears were turned to receive the music she was making, and she faintly remembered that once she had held in her hands that wonderful hat with its copper buckle in the band, and stiff, wide brim, flowing in a wave. More than that she knew nothing, except that the wearer was an humble-born, grasping creature--a forester without social propensities, or, indeed, any human attachments. The negro who abode under his roof was beloved, compared to the sordid master, and all testimony concurred that Meshach Milburn deserved neither commiseration, friendship, nor recognition. Her father, however, indulgent in all things, said the money-lender had a good mind, and was no serf.
Milburn had ceased to deal with negroes or dispense drams. His wealth was now known to be more than considerable. He had ceased, also, to lend money on the surrounding farms, and rumors came across the bay that he was a holder of stocks and mortgages on the Western Shore, and in Baltimore and Pennsylvania. The little town of Princess Anne was full of speculations about him, and even his age was uncertain; Jack Wonnell had measured it by hats. Said Jack:
"I bought my bell-crowns the year ole Milburn's daddy and mammy died. They died of the bilious out yer in Nassawongo, within a few days of each other. Now, I wear two bell-crowns a year. I come out every Fourth of July and Christmas. 'Tother day I counted what was left, and I reckoned that Meshach couldn't be forty-five at the wust."
Vesta Custis was only twenty years old when the townsfolk thought she must be twenty-five, so long had she been the beauty of Somerset. Her mother had always looked with apprehension on the possible time when her daughter would marry and leave her; for Judge Custis had long ceased to have the full confidence of his lady, whose fortune he had embarked without return on ventures still in doubt, and he always waived the subject when it was broached, or remarked that no loss was possible in his hands while Mrs. Custis lived.
