The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

by George Alfred Townsend

  CHAPTER V.

  THE BOG-ORE TRACT.

  Resolution of character and executive power had been trifled away byJudge Custis. The trader had concluded their interview with a decisionand fierceness that left paralysis upon the gentleman's mind. He saw, insad fancy, the execution served upon his furniture, the amazement of hiswife, the pallor of his daughter, the indignation of his sons. He alsoshrank before the impending failure of his furnace and abandonment ofthe bog-ore tract, on which he had raised so much state and local fame;people would say: "Custis was a fool, and deceived himself, while oldSteeple-top Milburn played upon the Custises' vanity, and turned theminto the street."

  "No doubt," thought the Judge, "that fellow, Milburn, can get anythingwhen he gets my house. The poor folks' vote he may command, because heis of their class. He is a lender to many of the rich. Who could havesuspected his intelligence? His address, too? He handled me as if I werea forester and he a judge. A very, very remarkable man!" finished JudgeCustis, taking the last of the brandy.

  He was interrupted by the entrance of Samson Hat.

  "Where's your master, boy?" asked the Judge.

  "He's gone up to de ole house, Judge, where his daddy and mammy died.It's de place where I hides after my fights."

  "May the ague strike him there! Let the bilious sweat from the mill-pondbe strong to-night, that, like Judas of old, his bowels may drop out!But, no," continued the irresolute man, "I have no right to hate him."

  "Judge," softly said the old negro, "my marster is a sick man. He ain'thappy like you an' me. He's 'bitious. He's lonely. Dat's enough to spileangels. But a gooder man I never knowed, 'cept in de onpious sperrit.He's proud as Lucifer. He's full of hate at Princess Anne and all depeople. Your darter may git a better man, not a pyorer one."

  "Purity goes a very little way," exclaimed the Judge, "on the male sideof marriage contracts. It's always assumed, and never expected. You neednot remember, Samson, that I expressed any anger at your master!"

  "My whole heart, judge, is to see him happy. Hard as he is, dat man haspower to make him loved. Your darter might go farder and fare wuss! Iwish her no harm, God knows!"

  The negro said an humble good-night, and the Judge lay down upon his bedto think of the dread alternatives of the coming week; but, voluptuouseven in despair, he slept before he had come to any conclusion.

  Samson Hat walked up the side of the mill-pond on a sandy road, dividedfrom the water by a dense growth of pines. The bullfrogs and insectsserenaded the forest; the furnace chimney smoked lurid on the midnight.At the distance of half a mile or more an old cabin, in decay, stood ina sandy field near the road; it had no door in the hollow doorway, nosash in the one gaping window; the step was broken leading to the sill,and some of the weather-boarding had rotted from the skeleton. The oldend-chimney bore it toughly up, however, and the low brick props underthe corners stood plumb. Within lay a single room with open beams, asort of cupboard stairway projecting over the fireplace, and anotherdoor and window were in the rear. Before this fireplace sat MeshachMilburn on an old chair, fairly revealed by the light of some of theburning weather-boarding he had thrown upon the hearth. On the hearthwas a little heap of the bog iron ore and a bottle.

  "Come in, Samson!" he called. "Don't think me turned drunkard because Iam taking this whiskey. I drink it to keep out the malaria, and partlyas a communion cup; for to-night the barefooted ghosts who have droopedand withered here are with me in spirit."

  "Dey was all good Milburns who lived heah, marster," said the negro."Dey had hard times, but did no sin. Dey shook wid chills and fevers,not wid conscience."

  "I shall shake with neither," said the money-lender. "Go up into theloft, and sleep till you are called. I want the horses early forPrincess Anne!"

  The negro obeyed without remark, and disappeared behind thecupboard-like door. Milburn sat before the fire, and looked into itlong, while a procession of thoughts and phantoms passed before it.

  He saw a poor family of independent Puritans setting sail at differentdates from English seaports. Some were indentured servants, hoping for acareer; others were avoiding the civil wars; others were small politicalmalefactors, noisy against the oppressions of their hero, Cromwell, andconspirators against his power; and, thrown by him in English jails,were only delivered to be sold into slavery, driven through the streetsof market-towns, placed on troop ships between the decks, among thehorses, and set up at auction in Barbadoes, like the blacks; whence theyin time continued onward westward. One, the fortunate possessor of somecompetence, sailed his own ship across the Atlantic, and delivered up toMassachusetts her governor and gentry. Another, incapable of beingsuppressed, though a servant, seized the destinies of an aristocraticcolony, and held them for a while, until accumulating enemies bore himdown, and wedlock and the gibbet followed close together. Poverty wouldnot relinquish its gripe upon the race; they struggled up like clodsupon the ploughshare, and fell back again into the furrow.

  As Meshach Milburn thought of these things he took up a portion of thebog ore from the hearth.

  "Here is iron," he said, thoughtfully, "true iron, which makes the bloodred, moulds into infinite forms, nails houses together, binds wheels,and casts into cannon and ball. But this iron ran into a bog, formed lowcombinations, and had no other mould than twigs and leaves afforded. Itsvolcanic origin was forgotten when it ran with sand and gravel away fromthe mountain vein and upland ore along the low, alluvial bar, till, likean oyster, the iron is dredged from the stagnant pool, impure,inefficacious, corrupted. So is it with man, whose magnetic spiritfollows the dull declivity to the barren sandbars of the world, andlodges there. I am of the bog ores; but that exists which will flux withme, clean me of rust, and transmit my better quality to posterity. O,youth, beauty, and station--lovely Vesta! for thee I will be iron!"

  Milburn looked around the single room inquiringly. He placed his fingerupon the crevices in the weather-boarding; he opened the little closetbelow the stairs, and a weasel dashed out and shot through the door; heascended the steep, short stairs, and with a torch examined the blackshingles, but nothing was there except a litter of young owls, whoseparents had gone poaching. Then, returning, he searched on every openbeam and rotting board, as if for writing.

  "They could not write!" he thought. "Nothing is left to me, not even asign, down a century and a half, to tell that I had parents!"

  As he spoke he felt an object move behind him, and, looking back, theshadow of the Entailed Hat was dancing on the wall. As he threw his headback, so did it; as he retired from it, the hat enlarged, until thelittle room could hardly hold its shadow. Retiring again, he lifted itfrom his head with bitter courtesy, and the shadow did the same. The manand the shadow looked each at a peaked hat and stroked it.

  "This is everything," exclaimed Milburn. "The hundred humble heads areat rest in the sand; one grave-stone would mock them all. But once thefamily brain expanded to a hat, and that survived the race. I am theQuaker who respects his hat, the Cardinal who is crowned with it; yes,and the dunce who must wear it in his corner!"

  Then the picture of his parents arose upon his sight: a cheerful father,with two or three old slaves, ploughing in the deep sand, to drop someshrivelled grains of corn, or tinkering a disordered mill-wheel thatmoved a blacksmith's saw. Ever full of confidence in nothing which couldincrease, credulous and sanguine, tender and laborious, Milburn's sirenursed his forest patches as if they were presently to be richplantations, and was ever "pricing" negroes, mules, tools, andimplements, in expectation of buying them. Nothing could diminish hisconfidence but disease and old age. He heard of the great "improvement"on the Furnace tract, and took his obedient wife and brood there. As thelaborers pulled out the tussocks and roots, encrusted with iron, fromthe swamp and creek, fever and ague came forth and smote them both.

  How wretched that scene when, almost too haggard to move, father andmother, in this one bare room where Meshach sat, groaning amid theirmany offspring, saw death with weakness creep upon each
other--deathwithout priest or doctor, without residue or cleanliness--the death themillion die in lowly huts, yet, oh, how hard!

  "Haste, sonny, _good_ boy," the frightened father had said, knowing nothow ill he was, in his dependence on his wife; "take the horse, and rideinto Snow Hill for the doctor. Poor mother is dreadful sick!"

  Then, leaping upon the lean old horse, bare-backed and with a ropebridle, Meshach had pushed through the deep sand, bareheaded andbarefooted, and almost crazy with excitement, until he entered theshining streets of the sandhilled town, and sensitively rushed into thedoctor's office, crying, "Daddy and mammy is sick, at the Furnace!" andtold his name, and wheeled, and fled.

  But, as the boy rode home, more slowly, past the river full ofsplutter-docks, the yellow masts of vessels rising above the woods, theflat fields of corn everywhere bounded by forest, and the small whitehouses of the better farmers, and at last entered the murmurous,complaining woods, he saw but one thing--his mother.

  Was she to disappear from the lonely clearing, and leave only the hutand its orphans? she, who kept heaven here below, and was the saints,the arts, the all-sufficient for her child? With her there could be nopoverty; without her riches would be only more sand. With a littlemolasses she made Christmas kingly with a cake. She could name a littlechicken "Meshach," and every egg it laid was a new toy. A mocking-birdcaught in the swamp became one of the family by her kindness; would itever sing again? The religion they knew was all of her. The poor slavessaw no difference in mistresses while she was theirs. In sickness shewas in her sphere--health itself had come. And once, the tenderestthing in life, when his father and she had quarrelled, and the light oflove being out made the darkness of poverty for the only time visible,Meshach saw her weeping, and he could not comfort her.

  Then, blinded by tears, he lashed his nag along, and entered the lowdoor. She was dead!

  "Sonny, mammy's gone!" the wretched father groaned; the little children,huddling about the form, lifted their wail; the mocking-bird could findno note for this, and was hushed.

  Milburn arose; the fire was low. He walked to the door, and there was asign of day; the all-surrounding woods of pine were still dark, but onthe sandy road and hummock-field some light was shining, likehopefulness against hope; the farm was ploughed no more; the ungratefulcenturies were left behind and abandoned, like old wildernessbattle-fields, so sterile that their great events remain ever unvisited.

  "Ho! Samson, boy! It is time!"

  "Yes, marster!" answered the negro in the loft.

  As the negro gathered himself up and passed down the stairs, he sawMeshach Milburn before the fire, stirring the coals. Passing out, Samsonstood a moment at the gate, and lounged up the road, not to lose hismaster. As he stood there, flames burst out of the old hut and glistenedon the evergreen forest, lighting the tops of the mossy cypresses in themill-pond, and revealing the forms of the sandy fields. Before he couldstart back Samson saw his master's figure go round and round the house,lighting the weather-boarding from place to place with a torch; and thenthe low figure, capped with the long hat, came up the road as if atmighty strides, so lengthened by the fire.

  "No need of alarm, boy!" exclaimed the filial incendiary. "Henceforth myonly ancestral hall is _here_!"

  He held the ancient tile up in the light of the blaze.

  "Ah, marster!" said the negro, "yo' hat will never give comfort like ahome, fine as de hat may be, mean as de roof! De hat will never hold twoheads, and dat makes happiness."

  "The hat, at least," answered Milburn, bitterly, "will cover me where Igo. Such rotted roofs as that was make captives of bright souls."

  They looked on the fire in silence a few minutes.

  "You have burnt me out, boss," said old Samson, finally. "I ain't got noplace to go an' hide when I fights, now. It makes me feel solemn."

  "Peace!" replied Meshach Milburn. "Now for the horses and PrincessAnne!"