Meshach Milburn had locked the store after writing some letters, and had taken the broad street for Judge Custis's gate. The news of his disappearance towards the Furnace, with an extravagant livery team, had spread among all the circle around the principal tavern, and they were discussing the motive and probabilities of the act, with that deep inner ignorance so characteristic of an instinctive society. Old Jimmy Phoebus, a huge man, with a broad face and small forehead, was called upon for his view.
"It's nothin' but a splurge," said Jimmy; "sooner or later everybody splurges--shows off! Meshach's jest spilin' with money and he must have a splurge--two hosses and a nigger. If it ain't a splurge I can't tell what ails him to save my life."
A general chorus went up of "Dogged if I kin tell to save my life!"
Levin Dennis, the terrapin-buyer, made a wild guess, as follows:
"Meshach, I reckon, is a goin' into the hoss business. He's a ben in everything else, and has tuk to hosses. If it tain't hosses, I can't tell to save my life!"
All the lesser intellects of the party executed a low chuckle, spun around half-way on their boot-heels and back again, and muttered: "Not to save my life!"
Jack Wonnell, wearing one of the new bell-crowns, and barefooted, and looking like a vagrant who had tried on a militia grenadier's imposing bearskin hat, let off this irrelevant addendum:
"Ole Milbun's gwyn to see a gal. Fust time a man changes his regler course wilently, it's a gal. I went into my bell-crowns to git a gal. Milbun's gwyn get a gal out yonda in forest. If that ain't it, can't tell to save m' life!"
The smaller fry, not being trained to suggestion, grinned, held their mouths agape, executed the revolution upon; one heel, and echoed: "Dogged ef a kin tell t' save m' life!".
"He's a comin', boys, whooep!" exclaimed Jimmy Phoebus. "Now we'll all take off our hats an' do it polite, for, by smoke! thar's goin' to be hokey-pokey of some kind or nuther in Prencess Anne!"
The smallish man in the Guy Fawkes hat and the old, ultra-genteel, greenish gaiters, walked towards them with his resinous bold eyes to the front, his nose informing him of what was in the air like any silken terrier's, and yet with a pallor of the skin as of a sick person's, and less than his daily expression of hostility to Princess Anne.
"He's got the ager," remarked Levin Dennis, "them's the shakes, comin' on him by to-morrey, ef I know tarrapin bubbles!"
The latter end only of the nearest approach to profanity current in that land was again heard, fluttering around: "to save my life!"
Jimmy Phoebus had the name of being descended from a Greek pirate, or patriot, who had settled on the Eastern Shore, and Phoebus looked it yet, with his rich brown complexion, broad head, and Mediterranean eyes. "Good-afternoon, Mr. Milburn!" spoke Jimmy, loud and careless.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Phoebus. Gentlemen, good-afternoon!"
As he responded, with a voice hardly genial but placating, Milburn lifted his ancient and formidable hat, and in an instant seemed to come a century nearer to his neighbors. His stature was reduced, his unsociableness seemed modified; he now looked to be a smallish, friendless person, as if some ownerless dog had darted through the street, and heard a kind chirp at the tavern door, where his reception had been stones. His voice, with a little tremor in it, emboldened Levin Dennis also to speak:
"Look out for fevernager this month, Mr. Milburn!"
Meshach bowed his head, gliding along as if bashfully anxious to pass.
"Nice weather for drivin'!" added Jack Wonnell, having also taken off his own tile of frivolity, to feel the effect; but this remark was regarded by the group as too forward, and a low chorus ran round of "Jack Wonnell can't help bein' a fool to save his life!"
Milburn said to himself, passing on: "Are those voices kinder than usually, or am I more timid? What is it in the air that makes everything so acute, and my cheeks to tingle? Am I sick, or is it Love?"
The word frightened him, and the sand under his feet seemed to crack; a woodpecker in an old tree tapped as if it was the tree's old heart quickened by something; the houses all around looked like live objects, with their windows fixed upon his walk, like married folks' eyes. As he came in sight of Judge Custis's residence, so expressive of old respect and long intentions, the money-lender almost stopped, so mild and peacefully it looked at him--so undisturbed, while he was palpitating.
"Why this pain?" thought Milburn. "Am I afraid? That house is mine. Do I fear to enter my own? And yet it does not fear me. It has been there so long that it has no fears, and every window in it faces benignant to my coming. The three gables survey yonder forest landscape like three old magistrates on the bench, administering justice to a county where never till now was there a ravisher!"
The thought produced a moment's intellectual pride in him, like lawless power's uneasy paroxysm. "It is the Forest these gentles have to fear to-day!" he thought, resentfully, then stopped, with another image his word aroused:
"What has that forest ever felt of injury or hate, with every cabin-door unlatched, no robber feared by any there, the blossoms on the negro's peachtree, the ripe persimmons on the roadside, plenteous to every forester's child, and humility and affection making all richer, without a dollar in the world, than I, the richest upstart of the forest, compelled to buy affection, like an indifferent slave!"
A large dog at Custis's home, seeing him walk so slowly, came down the path to the gate, also walking slow, and showed neither animosity nor interest, except mechanically to walk behind him towards the door.
"The dog knows me," thought the quickened heart of Meshach, "from life-long seeing of me, but never wagged his tail at me in all that time. Could I acquire the heart even of this dog, though I might buy him? My debtor's step would still be most welcome to him, and he would eat my food in strangeness and fear."
Milburn walked up the steps, and sounded the substantial brass knocker. It struck four times, loud and deep, and the stillness that followed was louder yet, like the unknown thing, after sentence has been passed. He seemed to be there a very long time with his heart quite vacant, as if the debtor's knocker had scared every chatterer out of it, and yet his temples and ears were ringing. He was thinking of sounding the knocker again, when a lady's servant, partly white, rolled back the bolt, and bowed to his question whether the Judge was in.
He entered the broad hall of that distinguished residence, and taking the Entailed Hat from his head, hung it up at last, where better head-coverings had been wont to keep equal society, on a carved mahogany rack of colonial times. The venerable object, once there, gave a common look to everything, as Meshach thought, and deepened his personal sense of unworthiness. He tried to feel angry, but apprehension was too strong for passion even to be simulated.
"O, discriminating God!" he felt, within, "is it not enough to create us so unequal that we must also cringe in spirit, and acknowledge it! I expected to feel triumphant when I lodged my despised hat in this man's house, but I feel meaner than before."
The room, whose door was opened by the lady's maid, was the library, containing three cumbrous cases of books, and several portraits in oil, with deep, gilded frames, a map of Virginia and its northeastern environs, including all the peninsula south of the Choptank river and Cape Henlopen; and near the door was a tall clock, that a giant might stand in, solemnly cogging and waving time, and giving the monotony of everlasting evening to the place, which was increased by the flickering fire of wood on the tall brass fire-irons, before which some high-backed, wide, comfortable leather chairs were drawn, all worn to luxurious attitudes, as if each had been the skin of Judge Custis and his companions, recently evacuated.
A woman's rocking-chair was disposed among them, as though every other chair deferred to it. This was the first article to arrest Milburn's attention, so different, so suggestive, almost a thing of superstition, poised, like a woman's instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, like the sphere it moved upon, traversing a greater arc than a giant's seat would fill. Purity and conquest, power and welcome, seemed to abide within it, like the empty throne in Parliament.
Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with his foot. It started so easily and so gracefully, that, when it died away, he pressed his lips to the top of it, nearest where her neck would be, and whispered aloud, with feeling, "God knows that kiss, at least, was pure!"
He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not inscribed, he guessed at them all, right or wrong, from the insight of local lore or envious interpretation.
"Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue," thought Meshach, "with wine and beef in his cheeks, and silver and harlotry in his eye, was the Irish tavern-keeper of Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against the banished princes whom Cromwell's name ever made to swear and shiver, and they paid him in a distant office in Accomac, where they might never see him and his bills again, and there they let him steal most of the revenue, and, of course, his loyalty was in proportion to his booty. Many a time, no doubt, he was procurer for both royal brothers, Charles and James, making his tavern their stew, with Betty Killigrew, or Lucy Walters, or Katy Peg, or even Anne Hyde, the mother of a queen--of her who was the Princess Anne, godmother of our worshipful town here. I have not read in vain," concluded Meshach, "because my noble townsmen drove me to my cell!"
The next portrait was clothed in military uniform, with a higher type of manhood, shrewd and vigilant, but magisterial. "That should be Major-general John Custis," thought Milburn, looking at it, "son of John the tapster, and a marrying, shifty fellow, who first began greatness as a salt-boiler on these ocean islands, till his father's friend, Charles II., in a merry mood, made Henry Bennet, the king's bastard son's father-in-law, Earl of Arlington and lessee of Virginia. All the province for forty shillings a year rent! Those were pure, economical times, indeed, around the court. So salt-boiler John flunkeyed to Arlington's overseers, named his farm 'Arlington,' hunted and informed upon the followers of the Puritan rebel Bacon, then turned and fawned upon King William, too. His grandchildren, all well provided for, spread around this bay. So much for politics in a merchant's hands!"
The tone of Meshach's comment had somewhat raised his courage, and a sense of pleasurable interest in the warm room and genial surroundings led him to pass the time, which was of considerable length, quite contentedly, till Judge Custis was ready.
Meanwhile, the steeple-top hat was giving some silent astonishment to the house-servants, assembled to gaze upon it from the foot of the hall. The neat chamber-servant, Virgie, had carried the wondrous information to the colonnade that the dreadful creditor had come, and Roxy, the table waiter, had carried it from the colonnade to the kitchen, where the common calamity immediately produced a revolution against good manners.
"Hab he got dat debbil hat on he head, chile?" inquired Aunt Hominy, laying down the club with which she was beating biscuit-dough on the block.
"Yes, aunty, he's left it on the hat-rack. I'm afraid to go past it to the do'."
Aunt Hominy threw the club on the blistered bulk of dough, and retreated towards the big black fireplace, with a face expressive of so much fright and cunning humor together that it seemed about to turn white, but only got as far as a pucker and twitches.
"De Lord a massy!" exclaimed Aunt Hominy, "chillen, le's burn dat hat in de fire! Maybe it'll liff de trouble off o' dis yer house. We got de hat jess wha' we want it, chillen. Roxy, gal, you go fotch it to Aunt Hominy!"
The girl started as if she had been asked to take up a snake: "'Deed, Aunt Hominy, I wouldn't touch it to save my life. Nobody but ole Samson ever did that!"
"Go' long, gal!" cried Aunt Hominy, "didn't Miss Vessy hole dat ar' hat one time, an' pin a white rose in it? Didn't he, dat drefful Meshach Milbun, offer Miss Vessy a gole dollar, an' she wouldn' have none of his gole? Dat she did! Virgie, you go git dat hat, chile! Poke it off de rack wid my pot-hook heah. 'Twon't hurt you, gal! I'll sprinkle ye fust wid camomile an' witch-hazel dat I keep up on de chimney-jamb."
Aunt Hominy turned towards the broadly notched chimney sides, where fifty articles of negro pharmacy were kept--bunches of herbs, dried peppers, bladders of seeds, and bottles of every mystic potency.
"Aunty," answered Virgie, "if I wasn't afraid of that Bad Man, I would be afraid to move that hat, because Miss Vessy would be mortified. Think of her seeing me treating a visitor's things like that. Why, I'd rather be sold!"
"Dat hat," persisted Aunt Hominy, "is de ruin ob dis family. Dat hat, gals, de debbil giv' ole Meshach, an' made him wear it fo' de gift ob gittin' all de gole in Somerset County. Don't I know when he wore it fust? Dat was when he begun to git all de gole. Fo' dat he had been po' as a lizzer, sellin' to niggers, cookin' fo' heseff, an' no' count, nohow. He sot up in de loft of his ole sto' readin' de Bible upside down to git de debbil's frenship. De debbil come in one night, and says to ole Meshach: 'Yer's my hat! Go, take it, honey, and measure land wid it, and all de land you measure is yo's, honey!' An' Meshach's measured mos' all dis county in. Jedge Custis's land is de last."
The relation affected both girls considerably, and the group of little colored boys and girls still more, who came up almost chilled with terror, to listen; but it produced the greatest effect on Aunt Hominy herself, whose imagination, widened in the effort, excited all her own fears, and gave irresistible vividness to her legend.
"How can his hat measure people's lands in, Aunty?" asked Virgie, drawing Roxy to her by the waist for their mutual protection.
"Why, chile, he measures land in by de great long shadows dat debbil's hat throws. Meshach, he sots his eyes on a good farm. Says he, 'I'll measure dat in!' So he gits out dar some sun-up or sundown, when de sun jest sots a'mos' on de groun, an' ebery tree an' fence-pos' and standin' thing goes away over de land, frowin' long crooked shadows. Dat's de time Meshach stans up, wid dat hat de debbil gib him to make him longer, jest a layin' on de fields like de shadow of a big church-steeple. He walks along de road befo' de farm, and wherever dat hat makes a mark on de ground all between it an' where he walks is ole Meshach's land. Dat's what he calls his mortgage!"
The children had their mouths wide open; the maids heard with faith only less than fear.
"But, Aunt Hominy," spoke Roxy, "he never measured in Judge Custis's house, and all of us in it, that is to be sold."
"Didn't I see him a doin' of it?" whispered Aunt Hominy, stooping as if to creep, in the contraction of her own fears, and looking up into their faces with her fists clinched. "He's a ben comin' along de fence on de darkest, cloudiest nights dis long a time, like a man dat was goin' to rob something, and peepin' up at Miss Vessy's window. He took de dark nights, when de streets of Prencess Anne was clar ob folks, an' de dogs was in deir cribs, an' nuffin' goin' aroun' but him an' wind an' cold an' rain. One night, while he was watchin' Miss Vessy's window like a black crow, from de shadow of de tree, I was a-watchin' of him from de kitchen window. De moon, dat had been all hid, come right from behin' de rain-clouds all at once, gals, an' scared him like. De moon was low on de woods, chillen, an' as ole Meshach turned an' walked away, his debbil's shadow swept dis house in. He measured it in dat night. It's ben his ever since."
"Well," exclaimed Roxy, after a pause, "I know I wouldn't take hold of that hat now."
"I am almost afraid to look at it," said Virgie, "but if Miss Vessy told me to go bring it to her, I would do it."
"Le's us all go together," ventured Aunt Hominy, "and take a peep at it. Maybe it won't hurt us, if we all go."
Aware that Judge Custis and his wife were not near, the little circle of servants--Aunt Hominy, Virgie, Roxy, and the four children, from five to fourteen years of age--filed softly from the kitchen through the covered colonnade, and thence along the back passage to the end of the hall, where they made a group, gazing with believing wonder at the King James tile.
* * * Vesta Custis, having changed her morning robe for a walking-suit, and slightly rearranged her toilet, and knelt speechless awhile to receive the unknown will of Heaven, came down the stairs at last, in time to catch a glimpse of half-a-dozen servants staring at a strange old hat on the hall rack. They hastily fled at her appearance, but the idea of the hat was also conveyed to her own fancy by their unwonted behavior. She looked up an instant at the queer, faded article hanging among its betters, and with a reminiscence of childhood, and of having held it in her hand, there descended along the intervening years upon the association, the odor of a rose and the impression of a pair of bold, startled eyes gazing into hers. She opened the library door, and the same eyes were looking up from her father's easy-chair.
"Mr. Milburn, I believe?" said Vesta, walking to the visitor, and extending her hand with native sweetness.
He arose and bowed, and hardly saw the hand in the earnest look he gave her, as if she had surprised him, and he did not know how to express his bashfulness. She did not withdraw the hand till he took it, and then he did not let it go. His strong, rather than bold, look, continuing, she dropped her eyes to the hand that mildly held her own, and then she observed, all calm as she was, that his hand was a gentleman's, its fingers long and almost delicate, the texture white, the palm warm, and, as it seemed to her, of something like a brotherly pressure, respectful and gentle too.
As he did not speak immediately, Vesta returned to his face, far less inviting, but peculiar--the black hair straight, the cheek-bones high, no real beard upon him anywhere, the shape of the face broad and powerful, and the chops long, while the yellowish-brown eyes, wide open and intense, answered to the open, almost observant nostrils at the end of his straight, fine nose. His complexion was dark and forester-like, seeming to show a poor, unnutritious diet. He was hardly taller than Vesta. His teeth were good, and the mouth rather small. She thought he was uncertain what to say, or confused in his mind, though no sign of fear was visible. Vesta came to his rescue, withdrawing her hand naturally.
"I have seen you many times, Mr. Milburn, but never here, I think."
"No, miss, I have never been here." He hesitated. "Nor anywhere in Princess Anne. You are the first lady here to speak to me."
His words, but not his tone, intimated an inferiority or a slight. The voice was a little stiff, appearing to be at want for some corresponding inflection, like a man who had learned a language without having had the use of it.
"Will you sit, Mr. Milburn? You owe this visit so long that you will not be in haste to-day. I hope you have not felt that we were inhospitable. But little towns often encourage narrow circles, and make people more selfish than they intend."
"You could never be selfish, miss," said Milburn, without any of the suavity of a compliment, still carrying that wild, regarding gaze, like the eyes of a startled ox.
Vesta faintly colored at the liberty he took. It was slightly embarrassing to her, too, to meet that uninterpretable look of inquiry and homage; but she felt her necessity as well as her good-breeding, and made allowance for her visitor's want of sophistication. He was like an Indian before a mirror, in a stolid excitement of apprehension and delight. The most beautiful thing he ever saw was within the compass of his full sight at last, and whether to detain it by force or persuasion he did not know.
Her dark hair, silky as the cleanest tassels of the corn, fell as naturally upon her perfect head as her teeth, white as the milky corn-rows, moved in the May cherries of her lips. The delicate arches of her brows, shaded by blackbirds' wings, enriched the clear sky of her harmonious eyes, where mercy and nobility kept company, as in heaven.
"How could you know I was unselfish, Mr. Milburn?"
"Because I have heard you sing."
"Oh, yes! You hear me in our church, I remember."
"I have heard you every Sunday that you sung there for years," said Meshach, with hardly a change of expression.
"Are you fond of music, Mr. Milburn?"
"Yes, I like all I have ever heard--birds and you."
"I will sing for you, then," said Vesta, taking the relief the talk directed her to. A piano was in another room, but, to avoid changing the scene, as well as to use a simpler accompaniment for an ignorant man's ears, she brought her guitar, and, placing it in her lap, struck the strings and the key, without waiting, to these tender words:
"Oh, for some sadly dying note,
Upon this silent hour to float,
Where, from the bustling world remote,
The lyre might wake its melody!
One feeble strain is all can swell.
From mine almost deserted shell,
In mournful accents yet to tell
That slumbers not its minstrelsy.
"There is an hour of deep repose,
That yet upon my heart shall close,
When all that nature dreads and knows
Shall burst upon me wondrously;
Oh, may I then awake, forever,
My harp to rapture's high endeavor;
And, as from earth's vain scene I sever,
Be lost in Immortality."
Vesta ceased a few minutes, and, her visitor saying nothing, she remarked, with emotion.
"Those lines were written at my grandfather's house, in Accomac County, by a young clergyman from New York, who was grandfather's rector, Rev. James Eastburn. He was only twenty-two years old when he died, at sea, of consumption. His is the only poetry I have ever heard of, Mr. Milburn, written in our beautiful old country here."
"I wondered if I should ever hear you sing for me," spoke Milburn, after hesitation. "Now it is realized, I feel sceptical about it. You are there, Miss Custis, are you not?"
Vesta was puzzled. Under other circumstances she would have been amused, since her humor could flow freely as her music. It faintly seemed to her that the little odd man might be cracked in the head.
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Milburn. If it were a dream, I should have no expression all this day but song. I think I never felt so sad to sing as just now. Father is ill. Mamma is ill. I have become the business agent of the family, and have heard within this hour that papa is deeply involved. You are his creditor, are you not?"
Meshach Milburn bowed.
"What is the sum of papa's notes and mortgages? Is it more than he can pay by the sacrifice of everything?"
"Yes. He has nothing to sell at forced sale which will bring anything, but the household servants here; these maids in the family are marketable immediately. You would not like to sell them?"
"Sell Virgie! She was brought up with me; what right have I to sell her any more than she has to sell me?"
"None," said Milburn, bluntly, "but there is law for it."
"To sell Roxy, too, and old Aunt Hominy, and the young children! how could I ever pray again if they were sold? Oh! Mr. Milburn, where was your heart, to let papa waste his plentiful substance in such a hopeless experiment? If my singing in the church has given you happiness, why could it not move you to mercy? Think of the despair of this family, my father's helpless generosity, my mother's marriage settlement gone, too, and every other son and daughter parted from them!"
"I never encouraged one moment Judge Custis's expenditure," said Meshach, "though I lent him money. The first time he came to me to borrow, my mind was in a liberal disposition, for you had just entered it with your innocent attentions. I supposed he wanted a temporary accommodation, and I gave it to him at the lowest rate one Christian would charge another."
"You say that I influenced you to lend my father money? Why, sir, I was a child. He has been borrowing from you since my earliest recollections."
The creditor took from his breast-pocket a large leather wallet, and, arising, laid its contents on the table. He opened a piece of folded paper, and drew from it two objects; one a lock of blue-black hair like his own, and the other a pressed and faded rose.
"This flower," said Milburn, with reverence, "Judge Custis's daughter fastened in my derided hat. I kept it till it was dead, and laid it away with my mother's hair, the two religious objects of my life. That faded rose made me your father's creditor, Miss Custis."
Vesta took the rose, and looked at him with surprise and inquiry.
"Oh, why did not this flower speak for us?" she said; "to open your lips after that, to save my father? Then you informed yourself, and knew that he was hurrying to destruction, but still you gave him money at higher interest."
Milburn looked at her with diminished courage, but sincerity, and answered: "Your voice sang between us, Miss Custis, every time he came. I did not admit to myself what it was, but the feeling that I was being drawn near you still opened my purse to your father, till he has drained me of the profits of years, which I gave him with a lavish fatality, though grasping every cent from every source but that. I did know, then, he could not probably repay me, but every Sabbath at the church you sang, and that seemed some compensation. I was bewitched; indistinct visions of gratitude and recognition from you filled the preaching with concourses of angels, all bearing your image, and hovering above me. The price I paid for that unuttered and ever-repelled hope has been princely, but never grudged, and it has been pure, I believe, or Heaven would have punished me. The more I ruined myself for your father, the more successful my ventures were in all other places; if you were my temptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of the God in whose temple it was born."
Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit.
"Do I understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open under their startled lashes. "My father has spoken of a degrading condition? Is it to love you?"
For the first time Meshach Milburn dropped his eyes.
"I never supposed it possible for you to love me," he said, bitterly. "I thought God might permit me some day to love you."
"Do you know what love is?" asked Vesta, with astonishment.
"No."
"How came you, then, to be interpreting my good acts so basely, carrying even my childhood about in your evil imagination, and cursing my father's sorrow with the threat of his daughter's slavery?"
Milburn heard with perfect humility these hard imputations.
"You have not loved, I think, Miss Custis?" he said, with a slight flush. "I have believed you never did."
He raised his eyes again to her face.
"I loved my father above everything," faltered Vesta. "I saw no man, besides, admiring my father."
"Then I displaced no man's right, coveting your image. Sometimes it seemed you were being kept free so long to reward my silent worship. I do not know what love is, but I know the gifts of God, as they bloom in nature, repel no man's devotion. The flowers, the birds, and the forest, delighted my childhood; my youth was spent in the study of myself and man; at last a beautiful child appeared to me, spoke her way to my soul, and it could never expel her glorious presence. All things became subordinate to her, even avarice and success. She kept me a Christian, or I should have become utterly selfish; she kept me humble, for what was my wealth when I could not enter her father's house! I am here by a destiny now; the power that called you to this room, so unexpectedly to me, has borne us onward to the secret I dreaded to speak to you. Dare I go further?"
She was trying to keep down her insulted feelings, and not say something that should forever exasperate her father's creditor, but the possibility of marrying him was too tremendous to reply.
"This moment is a great one," continued Milburn, firmly, "for I feel that it is to terminate my visions of happiness, and of kindness as well. You have expressed yourself so indignantly, that I see no thought of me has ever lodged in your mind. Why should it have ever done so? Though I almost dreamed it had, because you filled my life so many years with your rich image, I thought you might have felt me, like an apparition, stealing around this dwelling often in the dark and rain, content with the ray of light your window threw upon the deserted street. Now I see that I was a weak dunce, whose passion nature lent no nerve of hers to convey even to your notice. Better for me that I had hugged the debasing reality of my gold, and lost my eyes to everything but its comfort!"
He looked towards the door. Vesta sat down in the fairy rocker, and detained him.
"You have told me the feeling you think you had, Mr. Milburn. Poor as we Custises are now, it will not do to be proud. How did you ever think that feeling could be returned by me? My youth, my connections, everything, would forbid me, without haughtiness, to see a suitor in you. Then, you took no means to turn my attention towards you. You could have been neighborly, had you desired. You did not even wear the commonest emblems of a lover--"
She paused. Milburn said to himself:
"Ah! that accursed Hat."
The interruption ruffled his temper:
"I have had reasons, also proud, Miss Custis, to be consistent with my perpetual self here. I will put the substantial merits of my case to you, since I see that I am not likely to make myself otherwise attractive. This house is already mine. The law will, in a few weeks, put me in possession of your father's entire property. I shall change outward circumstances with him in Princess Anne. He is too old to adopt my sacrifices, and recover his situation; he may find some shifting refuge with his sons and daughters, but, even if his spirit could brook that dependence, it would be very unnecessary, when, by marrying his creditor, you can retain everything he now has to make his family respectable. I offer you his estate as your marriage portion!"
He took up from the table the notes her father had negotiated, and laid them in her lap.
Vesta sat rocking slowly, and deeply agitated. She had in her mouth the comfort and honor of her parents, which she could confer in a single word. It was a responsibility so mighty that it made her tremble.
"Oh! what shall I say?" she thought. "It will be a sin to say 'Yes.' To say 'No' would be a crime."
"You shall retain every feature of your home--your servants, your mother, and her undiminished portion; your liberty in the fullest sense. I will contribute to send your father to the legislature or to congress, to sustain his pride, and keep him well occupied. The Furnace he may appear to have sold to me, and I will accept the unpopularity of closing it. I ask only to serve you, and inhabit your daily life, like one of these negroes you are kind to, and if I am ever harsh to you, Miss Vesta, I swear to surrender you to your family, and depart forever."
Vesta shook her head.
"There is no separation but one," she said, "when Heaven has been called down to the marriage solemnity. It is before that act that we must consider everything. How could I make you happy? My own happiness I will dismiss. Yours must then comprehend mine. Kindness might make me grateful, but gratitude will not satisfy your love."
"Yes," exclaimed Milburn, chasing up his advantage with tremulous ardor; "the long famine of my heart will be thankful for a dry crust and a cup of ice. Here at the fireside let me sit and warm, and hear the rustle of your dress, and grow in heavenly sensibility. You will redeem a savage, you will save a soul!"
"It is not the price I must pay to do this, I would have you consider, sir," Vesta replied, with her attention somewhat arrested by his intensity; "it is the price you are paying--your self-respect, perhaps--by the terms on which you obtain me. It may never be known out of this family that I married you for the sake of my father and mother. But how am I to prevent you from remembering it, especially when you say that I am the sum of your purest wishes? If your interest would consume after you obtained me, we might, at least, be indifferent; but if it grew into real love, would you not often accuse yourself?"
Meshach Milburn sat down, cast his large brown eyes upon the floor, and listened in painful reflection.
"You cannot conceive I have had any real love for you?" he exclaimed, dubiously.
"You have seen me, and desired me for your wife; that is all," said Vesta, "that I can imagine. Lawless power could do that anywhere. To be an obedient wife is the lot of woman; but love, such as you have some glimmering of, is a mystic instinct so mutual, so gladdening, yet so free, that the captivity you set me in to make me sing to you will divide us like the wires of a cage."
"There is no bird I ever caught," said Meshach Milburn, "that did not learn to trust me. Your comparison does not, therefore, discourage me. And you have already sung for me, the saddest day of your life!"
A slight touch of nature in this revelation of her strange suitor called Vesta's attention to the study of him again. With her intelligence and sense of higher worth coming to her rescue, she thought: "Let me see all that is of this Tartar, for, perhaps, there may be another way to his mercy."
As she recovered composure, however, she grew more beautiful in his sight, her dark, peerless charms filling the room, her kindling eyes conveying love, her skin like the wild plum's, and her raven brows and crown of luxuriant hair rising upon a queenly presence worthy of an empress's throne. Such beauty almost made Milburn afraid, but the energies of his character were all concentrated to secure it.
"Who are you?" she asked, with a calm, searching look, cast from her highest self-respect and alert intelligence. "Have you any relations or connections fit to bring here--to this house, to me?"
"Not one that I know," said the forester. "I am nothing but myself, and what you will make of me."
"Where were you born and reared?"
"The house does not stand which witnessed that misery," spoke Milburn, with a flush of obdurate pride; "it was burned last night, not far from the furnace which swallowed your father's substance."
"Why, I would be afraid of you, Mr. Milburn, if your errand here was not so practical. Omens and wonders surround you. Birds forget their natural life for you. Iron ceases to be occult when you take it up. Your birthplace in this world disappears by fire the night before you foreclose a mortgage upon a gentleman's daughter. Is all this sorcery inseparable from that necromancer's Hat you wear in Princess Anne?"
She had touched the sensitive topic by a skilful approach, yet he changed color, as if the allusion piqued him.
"Nature never rebuked my hat, Miss Vesta, and you are so like nature, it will not occupy your thoughts. I recollect the day you decorated my old hat; said I: 'perhaps this vagrant head-covering, after all its injuries and wanderings, may some day find a peg beneath my own roof, and the kind welcome of a lady like that little miss.' That was several years ago, and to-day, for the first time, my hat is on the rack of your hall. The long wish of the heart is not often denied. We are not responsible for it. The only conspiracy I have plotted here, was that I did not oppose most natural occurrences, all drawing towards this scene. My magic was hope and humility. I dared to wear my ancestor's hat in the face of a contemptuous and impertinent provincial public, and it gave me the pride to persevere till I should bring it home to honors and to noble shelter. If you despise my hat, you will despise me."
"Oh, no; Mr. Milburn! I try never to despise anything. If you wore your family hat from some filial respect, it was, in part, piety. But was that, indeed, your motive in being so eccentric?"
Milburn felt uneasy again. He hesitated, and said:
"In perfect truth, I fear not. There may have been something of revenge in my mind. I had been grossly insulted."
"Is it not something of that revenge which instigates you here--even in this profession of love?" exclaimed Vesta, judicially.
Meshach looked up, and the shadows cleared from his face.
"I can answer that truthfully, lady. Towards you, not an indignant thought has ever harbored in my brain. It has been the opposite: protection, worship, tender sensibility."
"Has that exceptional charity extended to my father?"
"No."
Vesta would have been exasperated, but for his candor.
"My father never insulted you, sir?"
"No, he patronized me. He meant no harm, but that old hat has worn a deep place in my brain through carrying it so long, and it is a subject that galls me to mention it. Yet, I must be consistent with my only eccentricity. Wherever I may go, there goes my hat; it makes my identity, my inflexibility; it achieves my promise to myself, that men shall respect my hat before I die."
"Pardon me," said Vesta, not uninterested in his character, "I can understand an eccentricity founded on family respect. We were Virginians, and that is next to religion there. The negroes of our family share it with us. You had a family, then?"
Milburn shook his head.
"No; not a family in the sense you mean. Generations of obscurity, a parentage only virtuous; no tombstone anywhere, no crest nor motto, not even a self-deluding lie of some former gentility, shaped from hand to hand till it commits a larceny on history, and is brazen on a carriage panel! We were foresters. We came forth and existed and perished, like the families of ants upon the ant-hills of sand. We migrated no more than the woodpeckers in your sycamore trees, and made no sound in events more than their insectivorous tapping. Out yonder beyond Dividing Creek, in the thickets of small oak and low pines, many a little farm, scratched from the devouring forest, speckling the plains and wastes with huts and with little barns of logs, once bore the name of Milburn through all the localities of the Pocomoke to and beyond the great Cypress Swamp. They are dying, but never dead. The few who live expect no recognition from me, and, happy in their poverty, envy me nothing I have accumulated. My name has grown hard to them, my hat is the subject of their superstitions, my ambition and success have lost me their sympathy without giving me any other social compensation. You behold a desperate man, a merciless creditor, a tussock of ore from the bogs of Nassawongo, yet one whose only crimes have been to adore you, and to wear his forefathers' hat."
"Is this pride, then, wholly insulted sensibility, Mr. Milburn?"
"I cannot say, Miss Custis. You may smile, but I think it is aristocracy."
"I think so, too," exclaimed Vesta reflectively; "you are a proud man. My father, who has had reason to be proud, is less an aristocrat, sir, than you."
Milburn's flush came and stayed a considerable while. He was not displeased at Vesta's compliment, though it bore the nature of an accusation.
"You are aristocratic," explained Vesta, "because you adopted the obsolete hat of your people. Whatever vanity led you to do it, it was the satisfaction of some origin, I think."
She checked herself, seeing that she was entering into his affairs with too much freedom.
"I suppose that somewhere, some time," spoke the strange visitor, "some person of my race has been influential and prosperous. Indeed, I have been told so. He was elevated to both the magistracy and the scaffold, but my hat had even an older origin."
"Tell me about that ancestor," said Vesta, the heartache from his greater errand instigating her to defer it, while she was yet barely conscious that the man was original, if not interesting.
He told a singular tale, tracing his hat to Raleigh's times and through Sir Henry Vane to America, till it became the property of Jacob Milborne, the popular martyr who was executed in New York, and his brethren driven into Maryland, bringing with them the harmless hat as their only patrimony.
Before he began, Milburn drew up his compact little figure and opened the door to the hall. The wind or air from some of the large, cold apartments of the long house, coming in by some crack or open sash, gave almost a shriek, and scattered the fire in the chimney.
Vesta felt her blood chill a moment as her visitor re-entered with the antediluvian hat, and placed it upon the table beneath the lamp.
It had that look of gentility victorious over decay, which suggested the mummy of some Pharaoh, brought into a drawing-room on a learned society's night. Vesta repressed a smile, rising through her pain, at the gravity of the forester guest, who was about to demonstrate his aristocracy through this old hat. It seemed to her, also, that the portraits of the Custises, on the wall, carried indignant noses in the air at their apparently conscious knowledge of the presence of some unburied pretender, as if, in Westminster Abbey, the effigies of the Norman kings had slightly aroused to feel Oliver Cromwell lying among them in state.
The hat, Vesta perceived, was Flemish, such as was popular in England while the Netherlands was her ally against the house of Spain, and, stripped of its ornaments, was lengthened into the hat of the Puritans.
Vesta attempted to exert her liberality and perceive some beauty in this hat, but the utmost she could admit was the tyranny of fashion over the mind--it seemed, over the soul itself, for this old hat, inoffensive as it was, weighed down her spirits like a diving-bell.
The man, without his hat, had somewhat redeemed himself from low conversation and ideas, but now, that he brought this hat in and associated his person with it, she shrank from him as if he had been a triple-hatted Jew, peddling around the premises.
The obnoxious hat also exercised some exciting influence over Meshach Milburn, if his changed manner could be ascribed to that article, for he resumed his strong, wild-man's stare, deepened and lowered his voice, and without waiting for any query or expression of his listener, told the tale.
