Tales of the Chesapeake Part 13

An expression of agitation and cunning pa.s.sed over Mrs. Basil's face.

"Colonel Reybold," she whined, "I pity your blasted hopes. If I was a widow, they should be comfoted. Alas! my daughter is in love with one of the Fitzchews of Fawqueeah. His parents is cousins of the Jedge, and attached to the military."

The Congressman looked disappointed, but not yet satisfied.

"Give me at once the address of your husband," he spoke. "If you do not, I shall ask your daughter for it, and she cannot refuse me."

The mistress of the boarding-house was not without alarm, but she dispelled it with an outbreak of anger.

"If my daughter disobeys her mother," she cried, "and betrays the Jedge's incog., she is no Basil, Colonel Reybold. The Basils repudiate her, and she may jine the Dutch and other foreigners at her pleasure."

"That is her only safety," exclaimed Reybold. "I hope to break every string that holds her to yonder barren honor and exhausted soil."

He pointed toward Virginia, and hastened away to the Capitol. All the way up the squalid and muddy avenue of that day he mused and wondered: "Who is Fitzhugh? Is there such a person any more than a Judge Basil?

And yet there _is_ a Judge, for Joyce has told me so. _She_, at least, cannot lie to me. At last," he thought, "the dream of my happiness is over. Invincible in her prejudice as all these Virginians, Joyce Basil has made her bed amongst the starveling First Families, and there she means to live and die. Five years hence she will have her brood around her. In ten years she will keep a boarding-house and borrow money. As her daughters grow up to the stature and grace of their mother, they will be proud and poor again and breed in and out, until the race will perish from the earth."

Slow to love, deeply interested, baffled but unsatisfied, Reybold made up his mind to cut his perplexity short by leaving the city for the county of Fauquier. As he pa.s.sed down the avenue late that afternoon, he turned into E Street, near the theatre, to engage a carriage for his expedition. It was a street of livery-stables, gambling dens, drinking houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its sidewalks. The more pretentious _canaille_ of the city harbored there to prey on the hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance acquaintance of gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this street, just as the evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset, he saw something pa.s.s which made his heart start to his throat and fastened him to the spot. Veiled and walking fast, as if escaping detection or pursuit, the figure of Joyce Basil flitted over the pavement and disappeared in a door about at the middle of this Alsatian quarter of the capital.

"What house is that?" he asked of a constable pa.s.sing by, pointing to the door she entered.

"Gambling den," answered the officer. "It used to be old Phil Pendleton's."

Reybold knew the reputation of the house: a resort for the scions of the old tide-water families, where hospitality thinly veiled the paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villainy she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall; and, seeing him of respectable appearance, bowed ceremoniously as he let down a chain and opened the door.

"Short cards in the front saloon," he said; "supper and faro back.

Chambers on the third floor. Walk up."

Reybold only tarried a moment at the gaming tables, where the silent, monotonous deal from the tin box, the lazy stroke of the markers, and the transfer of ivory "chips" from card to card of the sweat-cloth, impressed him as the dullest form of vice he had ever found. Treading softly up the stairs, he was attracted by the light of a door partly ajar, and a deep groan, as of a dying person. He peeped through the crack of the door, and beheld Joyce Basil leaning over an old man, whose brow she moistened with her handkerchief. "Dear father," he heard her say, and it brought consolation to more than the sick man.

Reybold threw open the door and entered into the presence of Mrs.

Basil and her daughter. The former arose with surprise and shame, and cried:

"Jedge Basil, the Dutch have hunted you down. He's here--the Yankee creditor."

Joyce Basil held up her hand in imploration, but Reybold did not heed the woman's remark. He felt a weight rising from his heart, and the blindness of many months lifted from his eyes. The dying mortal upon the bed, over whose face the blue billow of death was rolling rapidly, and whose eyes sought in his daughter's the promise of mercy from on high, was the mysterious parent who had never arrived--the Judge from Fauquier. In that old man's long waxed mustache, crimped hair, and threadbare finery the Congressman recognized Old Beau, the outcast gamester and mendicant, and the father of Joyce and Uriel Basil.

"Colonel Reybold," faltered that old wreck of manly beauty and of promise long departed, "Old Beau's pa.s.sing in his checks. The chant coves will be telling to-morrow what they know of his life in the papers, but I've dropped a cold deck on 'em these twenty years. Not one knows Old Beau, the Bloke, to be Tom Basil, cadet at West Point in the last generation. I've kept nothing of my own but my children's good name. My little boy never knew me to be his father. I tried to keep the secret from my daughter, but her affection broke down my disguises. Thank G.o.d! the old rounder's deal has run out at last. For his wife he'll flash her diles no more, nor be taken on the vag."

"Basil," said Reybold, "what trust do you leave to me in your family?"

Mrs. Basil strove to interpose, but the dying man raised his voice:

"Tryphonee can go home to Fauquier. She was always welcome there--without me. I was disinherited. But here, Colonel! My last drop of blood is in the girl. She loves you."

A rattle arose in the sinner's throat. He made an effort, and transferred his daughter's hand to the Congressman's. Not taking it away, she knelt with her future husband at the bedside and raised her voice:

"Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, remember him!"

HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.

(_See note at end of poem._)

I.--THE MANOR.

"My corn is gathered in the bins,"

The Lord Augustin Herman said; "My wild swine romp in chincapins; Dried are the deer and beaver skins; And on Elk Mountain's languid head The autumn woods are red.

"So in my heart an autumn falls; I stand a lonely tree unleaved; And to my hermit manor walls The wild-goose from the water calls, As if to mock a man bereaved: My years are nearly sheaved.

"Go saddle me the Flemish steed My brother Verlett gave to me, What time his sister did concede Her dainty hand to hear me plead!

Poor soul! she's mouldering by the sea And I with misery."

The slave man brought the wild-maned horse All wilder that with stags he grazed-- Bred from the seed the knightly Norse Rode from Araby. Like remorse The eyes in his gray forehead blazed, As on his lord he gazed.

"Now guard ye well my lands and stock; Slack not the seine, ply well the axe; The eagle circles o'er the flock; The Indian at my gates may knock: The firelock prime for his attacks; I ride the sunrise tracks."

Swift as a wizard on a broom, The strong gray horse and rider ran, Adown the forest stripped of bloom.

By stump and bough that scarce gave room To pa.s.s the woodman's caravan, Rode the Bohemian.

"Lord Herman, stay," the brewer cried, "And Huddy's friendly flagon clink!"

And martial Hinoyossa spied The horseman, moving with the tide That ebbed from Appoquinimink, Nor stopped to rest or drink.

"Where rides old Herman?" Beekman mused; "That railing wife has turned his head."

"He keeps the saddle as he used, In younger days, when he enthused Three provinces," Pierre Alricks said, "And mapped their landscapes spread."

Broad rose Zuydt River as the sail Above his periauger flew; Loud neighed the steed to snuff the gale; But Herman saw not, swift and pale, Two carrier pigeons, winging true North-east, across the blue.

They quit the cage of Stuyvesant's spy, And lurking Willems' message bore: ("This morn rode Herman rapid by, Tow'rd Amsterdam, to satisfy Yet wider t.i.tles than he tore From shallow Baltimore!")

II.--REPLEVIN.

The second sunset at his back From Navesink Highlands threw the shade Of horse and Herman, long and black, Across the golden ripples' track, Where with the Kills the ocean played A measured serenade;

There where to sea a river ran, Between tall hills of brown and sand, A mountain island rose to span The outlet of the Raritan, And made a world on either hand, Soft as a poet planned:

Fair marshes pierced with br.i.m.m.i.n.g creeks, Where wild-fowl dived to oyster caves; And sh.o.r.es that swung to wooded peaks, Where many a falling water seeks The cascade's plunge to reach the waves, And greenest farmland laves:

Deep tide to every roadstead slips, And many capes confuse the sh.o.r.e, Yet none do with their forms eclipse Yon ocean, made for royal s.h.i.+ps, Whose swells on silver beaches roar And rock forevermore.

Old Herman gazed through lengthening shades Far up the inland, where the spires, Defined on rocky palisades, Flung sunset from their burnished blades, And with their bells in evening choirs Breathed homesick men's desires:

"New Amsterdam! 'tis thine or mine-- The foreground of this stately plan!

To me the Indian did a.s.sign Totem on totem, line on line-- Both Staten and the groves that ran Far up the Raritan.

"By spiteful Stuyvesant long restrained, Now, while the English break his power, Be Achter Kill again regained And Herman's t.i.tle entertained, Here float my banner from my tower, Here is my right, my hour!"