The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

by George Alfred Townsend

  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE HAT FINDS A RACK.

  Meshach Milburn had locked the store after writing some letters, and hadtaken the broad street for Judge Custis's gate. The news of hisdisappearance towards the Furnace, with an extravagant livery team, hadspread among all the circle around the principal tavern, and they werediscussing the motive and probabilities of the act, with that deep innerignorance so characteristic of an instinctive society. Old JimmyPhoebus, a huge man, with a broad face and small forehead, was calledupon for his view.

  "It's nothin' but a splurge," said Jimmy; "sooner or later everybodysplurges--shows off! Meshach's jest spilin' with money and he must havea splurge--two hosses and a nigger. If it ain't a splurge I can't tellwhat 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 ineverything else, and has tuk to hosses. If it tain't hosses, I can'ttell to save my life!"

  All the lesser intellects of the party executed a low chuckle, spunaround half-way on their boot-heels and back again, and muttered: "Notto save my life!"

  Jack Wonnell, wearing one of the new bell-crowns, and barefooted, andlooking like a vagrant who had tried on a militia grenadier's imposingbearskin hat, let off this irrelevant _addendum_:

  "Ole Milbun's gwyn to see a gal. Fust time a man changes his reglercourse 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'ttell to save m' life!"

  The smaller fry, not being trained to suggestion, grinned, held theirmouths 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'llall take off our hats an' do it polite, for, by smoke! thar's goin' tobe 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 thefront, his nose informing him of what was in the air like any silkenterrier's, and yet with a pallor of the skin as of a sick person's, andless 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 thatland was again heard, fluttering around: "to _save_ my life!"

  Jimmy Phoebus had the name of being descended from a Greek pirate, orpatriot, who had settled on the Eastern Shore, and Phoebus looked ityet, 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, Milburnlifted his ancient and formidable hat, and in an instant seemed to comea century nearer to his neighbors. His stature was reduced, hisunsociableness seemed modified; he now looked to be a smallish,friendless person, as if some ownerless dog had darted through thestreet, and heard a kind chirp at the tavern door, where his receptionhad been stones. His voice, with a little tremor in it, emboldened LevinDennis 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 offhis own tile of frivolity, to feel the effect; but this remark wasregarded 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 thanusually, or am I more timid? What is it in the air that makes everythingso 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; awoodpecker in an old tree tapped as if it was the tree's old heartquickened by something; the houses all around looked like live objects,with their windows fixed upon his walk, like married folks' eyes. As hecame in sight of Judge Custis's residence, so expressive of old respectand long intentions, the money-lender almost stopped, so mild andpeacefully it looked at him--so undisturbed, while he was palpitating.

  "Why this pain?" thought Milburn. "Am I afraid? That house is mine. Do Ifear to enter my own? And yet it does not fear me. It has been there solong that it has no fears, and every window in it faces benignant to mycoming. The three gables survey yonder forest landscape like three oldmagistrates on the bench, administering justice to a county where nevertill now was there a ravisher!"

  The thought produced a moment's intellectual pride in him, like lawlesspower's uneasy paroxysm. "It is the Forest these gentles have to fearto-day!" he thought, resentfully, then stopped, with another image hisword aroused:

  "What has that forest ever felt of injury or hate, with every cabin-doorunlatched, no robber feared by any there, the blossoms on the negro'speachtree, the ripe persimmons on the roadside, plenteous to everyforester's child, and humility and affection making all richer, withouta 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 thepath to the gate, also walking slow, and showed neither animosity norinterest, except mechanically to walk behind him towards the door.

  "The dog knows me," thought the quickened heart of Meshach, "fromlife-long seeing of me, but never wagged his tail at me in all thattime. Could I acquire the heart even of this dog, though I might buyhim? My debtor's step would still be most welcome to him, and he wouldeat 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 waslouder yet, like the unknown thing, after sentence has been passed. Heseemed to be there a very long time with his heart quite vacant, as ifthe debtor's knocker had scared every chatterer out of it, and yet histemples and ears were ringing. He was thinking of sounding the knockeragain, when a lady's servant, partly white, rolled back the bolt, andbowed to his question whether the Judge was in.

  He entered the broad hall of that distinguished residence, and takingthe Entailed Hat from his head, hung it up at last, where betterhead-coverings had been wont to keep equal society, on a carved mahoganyrack of colonial times. The venerable object, once there, gave a commonlook to everything, as Meshach thought, and deepened his personal senseof unworthiness. He tried to feel angry, but apprehension was too strongfor passion even to be simulated.

  "O, discriminating God!" he felt, within, "is it not enough to create usso unequal that we must also cringe in spirit, and acknowledge it! Iexpected to feel triumphant when I lodged my despised hat in this man'shouse, 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 northeasternenvirons, including all the peninsula south of the Choptank river andCape Henlopen; and near the door was a tall clock, that a giant mightstand in, solemnly cogging and waving time, and giving the monotony ofeverlasting evening to the place, which was increased by the flickeringfire of wood on the tall brass fire-irons, before which somehigh-backed, wide, comfortable leather chairs were drawn, all worn toluxurious attitudes, as if each had been the skin of Judge Custis andhis companions, recently evacuated.

  A woman's rocking-chair was disposed among them, as though every otherchair deferred to it. This was the first article to arrest Milburn'sattention, so different, so suggestive, almost a thing of superstition,poised, like a woman's instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, likethe sphere it moved upon, traversing a greater arc than a giant's seatwould fill. Purity and conquest, power and welc
ome, seemed to abidewithin it, like the empty throne in Parliament.

  Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with his foot. Itstarted so easily and so gracefully, that, when it died away, he pressedhis lips to the top of it, nearest where her neck would be, andwhispered aloud, with feeling, "God knows that kiss, at least, waspure!"

  He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not inscribed, heguessed at them all, right or wrong, from the insight of local lore orenvious interpretation.

  "Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue," thought Meshach, "with wineand beef in his cheeks, and silver and harlotry in his eye, was theIrish tavern-keeper of Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against thebanished princes whom Cromwell's name ever made to swear and shiver, andthey paid him in a distant office in Accomac, where they might neversee him and his bills again, and there they let him steal most of therevenue, and, of course, his loyalty was in proportion to his booty.Many a time, no doubt, he was procurer for both royal brothers, Charlesand James, making his tavern their stew, with Betty Killigrew, or LucyWalters, or Katy Peg, or even Anne Hyde, the mother of a queen--of herwho was the Princess Anne, godmother of our worshipful town here. I havenot read in vain," concluded Meshach, "because my noble townsmen droveme to my cell!"

  The next portrait was clothed in military uniform, with a higher type ofmanhood, shrewd and vigilant, but magisterial. "That should beMajor-general John Custis," thought Milburn, looking at it, "son of Johnthe tapster, and a marrying, shifty fellow, who first began greatness asa salt-boiler on these ocean islands, till his father's friend, CharlesII., in a merry mood, made Henry Bennet, the king's bastard son'sfather-in-law, Earl of Arlington and lessee of Virginia. All theprovince for forty shillings a year rent! Those were pure, economicaltimes, indeed, around the court. So salt-boiler John flunkeyed toArlington's overseers, named his farm 'Arlington,' hunted and informedupon the followers of the Puritan rebel Bacon, then turned and fawnedupon King William, too. His grandchildren, all well provided for, spreadaround this bay. So much for politics in a merchant's hands!"

  The tone of Meshach's comment had somewhat raised his courage, and asense of pleasurable interest in the warm room and genial surroundingsled him to pass the time, which was of considerable length, quitecontentedly, till Judge Custis was ready.

  * * * * *

  Meanwhile, the steeple-top hat was giving some silent astonishment tothe house-servants, assembled to gaze upon it from the foot of the hall.The neat chamber-servant, Virgie, had carried the wondrous informationto the colonnade that the dreadful creditor had come, and Roxy, thetable waiter, had carried it from the colonnade to the kitchen, wherethe common calamity immediately produced a revolution against goodmanners.

  "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 theblock.

  "Yes, aunty, he's left it on the hat-rack. I'm afraid to go past it tothe do'."

  Aunt Hominy threw the club on the blistered bulk of dough, and retreatedtowards the big black fireplace, with a face expressive of so muchfright 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 inde fire! Maybe it'll liff de trouble off o' dis yer house. We got de hatjess wha' we want it, chillen. Roxy, gal, you go fotch it to AuntHominy!"

  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 Samsonever did that!"

  "Go' long, gal!" cried Aunt Hominy, "didn't Miss Vessy hole dat ar' hatone time, an' pin a white rose in it? Didn't he, dat drefful MeshachMilbun, offer Miss Vessy a gole dollar, an' she wouldn' have none of hisgole? Dat she did! Virgie, you go git dat hat, chile! Poke it off derack wid my pot-hook heah. 'Twon't hurt you, gal! I'll sprinkle ye fustwid camomile an' witch-hazel dat I keep up on de chimney-jamb."

  Aunt Hominy turned towards the broadly notched chimney sides, wherefifty articles of negro pharmacy were kept--bunches of herbs, driedpeppers, bladders of seeds, and bottles of every mystic potency.

  "Aunty," answered Virgie, "if I wasn't afraid of that Bad Man, I wouldbe 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'drather 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 obgittin' all de gole in Somerset County. Don't I know when he wore itfust? 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 downto git de debbil's frenship. De debbil come in one night, and says toole 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 littlecolored boys and girls still more, who came up almost chilled withterror, to listen; but it produced the greatest effect on Aunt Hominyherself, whose imagination, widened in the effort, excited all her ownfears, 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'shat throws. Meshach, he sots his eyes on a good farm. Says he, 'I'llmeasure dat in!' So he gits out dar some sun-up or sundown, when de sunjest 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 detime 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. Hewalks along de road befo' de farm, and wherever dat hat makes a mark onde 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 onlyless than fear.

  "But, Aunt Hominy," spoke Roxy, "he never measured in Judge Custis'shouse, 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 ifto creep, in the contraction of her own fears, and looking up into theirfaces with her fists clinched. "He's a ben comin' along de fence on dedarkest, cloudiest nights dis long a time, like a man dat was goin' torob something, and peepin' up at Miss Vessy's window. He took de darknights, when de streets of Prencess Anne was clar ob folks, an' de dogswas in deir cribs, an' nuffin' goin' aroun' but him an' wind an' coldan' rain. One night, while he was watchin' Miss Vessy's window like ablack crow, from de shadow of de tree, I was a-watchin' of him from dekitchen window. De moon, dat had been all hid, come right from behin' derain-clouds all at once, gals, an' scared him like. De moon was low onde woods, chillen, an' as ole Meshach turned an' walked away, hisdebbil's shadow swept dis house in. He measured it in dat night. It'sben his ever since."

  "Well," exclaimed Roxy, after a pause, "I know I wouldn't take hold ofthat hat now."

  "I am almost afraid to look at it," said Virgie, "but if Miss Vessy toldme 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 ofservants--Aunt Hominy, Virgie, Roxy, and the four children, from five tofourteen years of age--filed softly from the kitchen through the coveredcolonnade, and thence along the back passage to the end of the hall,where they made a group, gazing with believing wonder at the King Jamestile.

  * * * Vesta Custis, having changed her morning robe for a walking-suit,and slightly rearranged her toilet, and knelt speechless awhile toreceive the unknown will of Heaven, came down the stairs at last, intime to catch a glimpse of half-a-dozen s
ervants staring at a strangeold hat on the hall rack. They hastily fled at her appearance, but theidea of the hat was also conveyed to her own fancy by their unwontedbehavior. She looked up an instant at the queer, faded article hangingamong its betters, and with a reminiscence of childhood, and of havingheld it in her hand, there descended along the intervening years uponthe association, the odor of a rose and the impression of a pair ofbold, startled eyes gazing into hers. She opened the library door, andthe same eyes were looking up from her father's easy-chair.

  "Mr. Milburn, I believe?" said Vesta, walking to the visitor, andextending her hand with native sweetness.

  He arose and bowed, and hardly saw the hand in the earnest look he gaveher, as if she had surprised him, and he did not know how to express hisbashfulness. She did not withdraw the hand till he took it, and then hedid not let it go. His strong, rather than bold, look, continuing, shedropped her eyes to the hand that mildly held her own, and then sheobserved, all calm as she was, that his hand was a gentleman's, itsfingers long and almost delicate, the texture white, the palm warm, and,as it seemed to her, of something like a brotherly pressure, respectfuland gentle too.

  As he did not speak immediately, Vesta returned to his face, far lessinviting, but peculiar--the black hair straight, the cheek-bones high,no real beard upon him anywhere, the shape of the face broad andpowerful, and the chops long, while the yellowish-brown eyes, wide openand intense, answered to the open, almost observant nostrils at the endof his straight, fine nose. His complexion was dark and forester-like,seeming to show a poor, unnutritious diet. He was hardly taller thanVesta. His teeth were good, and the mouth rather small. She thought hewas uncertain what to say, or confused in his mind, though no sign offear was visible. Vesta came to his rescue, withdrawing her handnaturally.

  "I have seen you many times, Mr. Milburn, but never here, I think."

  "No, miss, I have never been here." He hesitated. "Nor anywhere inPrincess Anne. You are the first lady here to speak to me."

  His words, but not his tone, intimated an inferiority or a slight. Thevoice was a little stiff, appearing to be at want for some correspondinginflection, like a man who had learned a language without having had theuse of it.

  "Will you sit, Mr. Milburn? You owe this visit so long that you will notbe in haste to-day. I hope you have not felt that we were inhospitable.But little towns often encourage narrow circles, and make people moreselfish than they intend."

  "You could never be selfish, miss," said Milburn, without any of thesuavity of a compliment, still carrying that wild, regarding gaze, likethe eyes of a startled ox.

  Vesta faintly colored at the liberty he took. It was slightlyembarrassing to her, too, to meet that uninterpretable look of inquiryand homage; but she felt her necessity as well as her good-breeding, andmade allowance for her visitor's want of sophistication. He was like anIndian before a mirror, in a stolid excitement of apprehension anddelight. The most beautiful thing he ever saw was within the compass ofhis full sight at last, and whether to detain it by force or persuasionhe did not know.

  Her dark hair, silky as the cleanest tassels of the corn, fell asnaturally upon her perfect head as her teeth, white as the milkycorn-rows, moved in the May cherries of her lips. The delicate archesof her brows, shaded by blackbirds' wings, enriched the clear sky of herharmonious 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," saidMeshach, 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 talkdirected her to. A piano was in another room, but, to avoid changing thescene, as well as to use a simpler accompaniment for an ignorant man'sears, she brought her guitar, and, placing it in her lap, struck thestrings 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, sheremarked, 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, afterhesitation. "Now it is realized, I feel sceptical about it. You arethere, 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 herthat the little odd man might be cracked in the head.

  "Yes, indeed, Mr. Milburn. If it were a dream, I should have noexpression all this day but song. I think I never felt so sad to sing asjust now. Father is ill. Mamma is ill. I have become the business agentof the family, and have heard within this hour that papa is deeplyinvolved. 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 canpay 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 aremarketable immediately. You would not like to sell them?"

  "Sell Virgie! She was brought up with me; what right have I to sell herany 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! howcould I ever pray again if they were sold? Oh! Mr. Milburn, where wasyour heart, to let papa waste his plentiful substance in such ahopeless experiment? If my singing in the church has given youhappiness, why could it not move you to mercy? Think of the despair ofthis family, my father's helpless generosity, my mother's marriagesettlement gone, too, and every other son and daughter parted fromthem!"

  "I never encouraged one moment Judge Custis's expenditure," saidMeshach, "though I lent him money. The first time he came to me toborrow, my mind was in a liberal disposition, for you had just enteredit with your innocent attentions. I supposed he wanted a temporaryaccommodation, and I gave it to him at the lowest rate one Christianwould charge another."

  "You say that I influenced you to lend my father money? Why, sir, I wasa child. He has been borrowing from you since my earliestrecollections."

  The creditor took from his breast-pocket a large leather wallet, and,arising, laid its contents on the table. He opened a piece of foldedpaper, and drew from it two objects; one a lock of blue-black hair likehis own, and the other a pressed and faded rose.

  "This flower," said Milburn, with reverence, "Judge Custis's daughterfastened in my derided hat. I kept it till it was dead, and laid it awaywith my mother's hair, the two religious objects of my life. That fadedrose 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 lipsafter that, to save my father? Then you informed yourself, and knew thathe was hurrying to destruction, but still you gave him money at higherinterest."

  Milburn looked at her with diminished courage, but sincerity, anda
nswered: "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 beingdrawn near you still opened my purse to your father, till he has drainedme 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 yousang, and that seemed some compensation. I was bewitched; indistinctvisions of gratitude and recognition from you filled the preaching withconcourses of angels, all bearing your image, and hovering above me. Theprice I paid for that unuttered and ever-repelled hope has beenprincely, but never grudged, and it has been pure, I believe, or Heavenwould have punished me. The more I ruined myself for your father, themore successful my ventures were in all other places; if you were mytemptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of the God in whose templeit was born."

  Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit.

  "Do I understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open undertheir 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. "Ithought 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, carryingeven my childhood about in your evil imagination, and cursing myfather'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 slightflush. "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 itseemed you were being kept free so long to reward my silent worship. Ido not know what love is, but I know the gifts of God, as they bloom innature, repel no man's devotion. The flowers, the birds, and the forest,delighted my childhood; my youth was spent in the study of myself andman; at last a beautiful child appeared to me, spoke her way to my soul,and it could never expel her glorious presence. All things becamesubordinate to her, even avarice and success. She kept me a Christian,or I should have become utterly selfish; she kept me humble, for whatwas my wealth when I could not enter her father's house! I am here by adestiny now; the power that called you to this room, so unexpectedly tome, has borne us onward to the secret I dreaded to speak to you. Dare Igo further?"

  She was trying to keep down her insulted feelings, and not say somethingthat should forever exasperate her father's creditor, but thepossibility of marrying him was too tremendous to reply.

  "This moment is a great one," continued Milburn, firmly, "for I feelthat it is to terminate my visions of happiness, and of kindness aswell. You have expressed yourself so indignantly, that I see no thoughtof 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 yearswith your rich image, I thought you might have felt me, like anapparition, stealing around this dwelling often in the dark and rain,content with the ray of light your window threw upon the desertedstreet. Now I see that I was a weak dunce, whose passion nature lent nonerve of hers to convey even to your notice. Better for me that I hadhugged the debasing reality of my gold, and lost my eyes to everythingbut its comfort!"

  He looked towards the door. Vesta sat down in the fairy rocker, anddetained him.

  "You have told me the feeling you think you had, Mr. Milburn. Poor as weCustises are now, it will not do to be proud. How did you ever thinkthat feeling could be returned by me? My youth, my connections,everything, would forbid me, without haughtiness, to see a suitor inyou. Then, you took no means to turn my attention towards you. You couldhave been neighborly, had you desired. You did not even wear thecommonest 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 myperpetual self here. I will put the substantial merits of my case toyou, since I see that I am not likely to make myself otherwiseattractive. This house is already mine. The law will, in a few weeks,put me in possession of your father's entire property. I shall changeoutward circumstances with him in Princess Anne. He is too old to adoptmy sacrifices, and recover his situation; he may find some shiftingrefuge with his sons and daughters, but, even if his spirit could brookthat dependence, it would be very unnecessary, when, by marrying hiscreditor, you can retain everything he now has to make his familyrespectable. I offer you his estate as your marriage portion!"

  He took up from the table the notes her father had negotiated, and laidthem in her lap.

  Vesta sat rocking slowly, and deeply agitated. She had in her mouth thecomfort and honor of her parents, which she could confer in a singleword. 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.' Tosay 'No' would be a crime."

  "You shall retain every feature of your home--your servants, yourmother, 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 mayappear to have sold to me, and I will accept the unpopularity of closingit. I ask only to serve you, and inhabit your daily life, like one ofthese negroes you are kind to, and if I am ever harsh to you, MissVesta, 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 calleddown to the marriage solemnity. It is before that act that we mustconsider everything. How could I make you happy? My own happiness I willdismiss. Yours must then comprehend mine. Kindness might make megrateful, 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 cupof ice. Here at the fireside let me sit and warm, and hear the rustle ofyour 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 hisintensity; "it is the price you are paying--your self-respect,perhaps--by the terms on which you obtain me. It may never be known outof 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 saythat I am the sum of your purest wishes? If your interest would consumeafter you obtained me, we might, at least, be indifferent; but if itgrew into real love, would you not often accuse yourself?"

  Meshach Milburn sat down, cast his large brown eyes upon the floor, andlistened 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," saidVesta, "that I can imagine. Lawless power could do that anywhere. To bean obedient wife is the lot of woman; but love, such as you have someglimmering of, is a mystic instinct so mutual, so gladdening, yet sofree, that the captivity you set me in to make me sing to you willdivide us like the wires of a cage."

  "There is no bird I ever caught," said Meshach Milburn, "that did notlearn 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 calledVesta's attention to the study of him again. With her intelligence andsense of higher worth coming to her rescue, she thought: "Let me see allthat is of this Tartar, for, perhaps, there may be another way to hismercy."<
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  As she recovered composure, however, she grew more beautiful in hissight, her dark, peerless charms filling the room, her kindling eyesconveying love, her skin like the wild plum's, and her raven brows andcrown of luxuriant hair rising upon a queenly presence worthy of anempress's throne. Such beauty almost made Milburn afraid, but theenergies of his character were all concentrated to secure it.

  "Who _are_ you?" she asked, with a calm, searching look, cast from herhighest self-respect and alert intelligence. "Have you any relations orconnections fit to bring here--to this house, to me?"

  "Not one that I know," said the forester. "I am nothing but myself, andwhat 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 fromthe furnace which swallowed your father's substance."

  "Why, I would be afraid of you, Mr. Milburn, if your errand here was notso practical. Omens and wonders surround you. Birds forget their naturallife for you. Iron ceases to be occult when you take it up. Yourbirthplace in this world disappears by fire the night before youforeclose a mortgage upon a gentleman's daughter. Is all this sorceryinseparable from that necromancer's Hat you wear in Princess Anne?"

  She had touched the sensitive topic by a skilful approach, yet hechanged color, as if the allusion piqued him.

  "Nature never rebuked my hat, Miss Vesta, and you are so like nature, itwill not occupy your thoughts. I recollect the day you decorated my oldhat; said I: 'perhaps this vagrant head-covering, after all its injuriesand wanderings, may some day find a peg beneath my own roof, and thekind welcome of a lady like that little miss.' That was several yearsago, 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 responsiblefor it. The only conspiracy I have plotted here, was that I did notoppose most natural occurrences, all drawing towards this scene. Mymagic was hope and humility. I dared to wear my ancestor's hat in theface of a contemptuous and impertinent provincial public, and it gave methe pride to persevere till I should bring it home to honors and tonoble shelter. If you despise my hat, you will despise me."

  "Oh, no; Mr. Milburn! I try never to despise anything. If you wore yourfamily hat from some filial respect, it was, in part, piety. But wasthat, 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 revengein my mind. I had been grossly insulted."

  "Is it not something of that revenge which instigates you here--even inthis 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 indignantthought 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 adeep place in my brain through carrying it so long, and it is a subjectthat galls me to mention it. Yet, I must be consistent with my onlyeccentricity. Wherever I may go, there goes my hat; it makes myidentity, my inflexibility; it achieves my promise to myself, that menshall respect my hat before I die."

  "Pardon me," said Vesta, not uninterested in his character, "I canunderstand an eccentricity founded on family respect. We wereVirginians, and that is next to religion there. The negroes of ourfamily 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, aparentage only virtuous; no tombstone anywhere, no crest nor motto, noteven a self-deluding lie of some former gentility, shaped from hand tohand till it commits a larceny on history, and is brazen on a carriagepanel! We were foresters. We came forth and existed and perished, likethe families of ants upon the ant-hills of sand. We migrated no morethan the woodpeckers in your sycamore trees, and made no sound in eventsmore 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 wasteswith huts and with little barns of logs, once bore the name of Milburnthrough all the localities of the Pocomoke to and beyond the greatCypress Swamp. They are dying, but never dead. The few who live expectno recognition from me, and, happy in their poverty, envy me nothing Ihave accumulated. My name has grown hard to them, my hat is the subjectof their superstitions, my ambition and success have lost me theirsympathy without giving me any other social compensation. You behold adesperate man, a merciless creditor, a tussock of ore from the bogs ofNassawongo, yet one whose only crimes have been to adore you, and towear his forefathers' hat."

  "Is this pride, then, wholly insulted sensibility, Mr. Milburn?"

  "I cannot say, Miss Custis. You may smile, but I think it isaristocracy."

  "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 notdispleased at Vesta's compliment, though it bore the nature of anaccusation.

  "You are aristocratic," explained Vesta, "because you adopted theobsolete hat of your people. Whatever vanity led you to do it, it wasthe satisfaction of some origin, I think."

  She checked herself, seeing that she was entering into his affairs withtoo much freedom.

  "I suppose that somewhere, some time," spoke the strange visitor, "someperson of my race has been influential and prosperous. Indeed, I havebeen 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 hisgreater errand instigating her to defer it, while she was yet barelyconscious that the man was original, if not interesting.

  He told a singular tale, tracing his hat to Raleigh's times and throughSir Henry Vane to America, till it became the property of JacobMilborne, the popular martyr who was executed in New York, and hisbrethren driven into Maryland, bringing with them the harmless hat astheir only patrimony.[1]

  Before he began, Milburn drew up his compact little figure and openedthe door to the hall. The wind or air from some of the large, coldapartments of the long house, coming in by some crack or open sash, gavealmost a shriek, and scattered the fire in the chimney.

  Vesta felt her blood chill a moment as her visitor re-entered with theantediluvian hat, and placed it upon the table beneath the lamp.

  It had that look of gentility victorious over decay, which suggested themummy of some Pharaoh, brought into a drawing-room on a learnedsociety's night. Vesta repressed a smile, rising through her pain, atthe gravity of the forester guest, who was about to demonstrate hisaristocracy through this old hat. It seemed to her, also, that theportraits of the Custises, on the wall, carried indignant noses in theair at their apparently conscious knowledge of the presence of someunburied pretender, as if, in Westminster Abbey, the effigies of theNorman kings had slightly aroused to feel Oliver Cromwell lying amongthem in state.

  The hat, Vesta perceived, was Flemish, such as was popular in Englandwhile 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 thishat, but the utmost she could admit was the tyranny of fashion over themind--it seemed, over the soul itself, for this old hat, inoffensive asit was, weighed down her spirits like a diving-bell.

  The man, without his hat, had somewhat redeemed himself from lowconversation and ideas, but now, that he brought this hat in andassociated his person with it, she shrank from him as if he
had been atriple-hatted Jew, peddling around the premises.

  The obnoxious hat also exercised some exciting influence over MeshachMilburn, if his changed manner could be ascribed to that article, for heresumed his strong, wild-man's stare, deepened and lowered his voice,and without waiting for any query or expression of his listener, toldthe tale.