The Entailed Hat Part 28

"Oh," said Jack, shutting one eye hard and joining in the grin, "sence I ben in love I kin say lots o' smart things like that. I have seen purty little Roxy grow up from a chile, an' as she begin to round up and git tall, says I: 'n.i.g.g.e.r or no n.i.g.g.e.r, she's angel!' The white gals they all throwed off on me, caze I wasn't earnin' nothin', an' I sot my eyes on Roxy Custis an' I says: 'What kin I do fur to make her s.h.i.+ne to me?'

So I kept a-follerin' of her everywhere, an' I see her one day comin'

along the road a-pickin' of the wild blossoms an' with her han' full of 'em, an' I says: 'Roxy, what you doin' of with them flowers?' 'They're fur my missis, Miss Vesty,' says she; 'she lives on wild flowers, an'

they're all I has to give her, an' I want her to love me as much as Virgie.' You see Levin, the t'other gal, Virgie, waits on Miss Custis, an' Roxy she was a little jealous. Then I says: 'Roxy, I kin git you flowers for your missis. I know whair the magnoleys is bloomin' the whitest an' a-scentin' the whole day long.' 'Do you?' says she, 'Oh, Mr. Wonnell, I would like to have a bunch of magnoleys to put on Miss Vesty's toilet every day.' 'I'll git 'em fur you, Roxy,' says I, 'becaze I allus thought you was a little beauty.' Says she: 'I'd give most anything to surprise Miss Vesty with flowers every day,--rale wild ones!' 'Then,' says I, 'Roxy, I'll git' em fur you for a kiss!' An' she most a-blushed blood-red an' ran away."

"That's what I told you, Jack, she's raised too well to be talkin' to white fellers."

"n.o.body's raised too well," rejoined Jack Wonnell, "to be deef to love and kindness. Says I to myself: 'Jack, you skeert that gal. Now say nothin' mo' about the kiss, an' go git her the flowers every day, an'

she'll think mo' of you!' So away I went to King's Creek an' pulled the magnoleys, an' I come to the do' an' asked ole Hominy to bring down Roxy for a minute. Roxy she come, an' was gwyn to run away till she saw my flowers, an' she stopped a minute an' says I: 'I jest got 'em for you, Roxy, becaze I see you when you was a little chile.' She tuk 'em an'

says: 'It was very kind of you, sir,' an' kercheyed an' melted away.

Next day I was thar agin, Levin, an' I says, to make it seem like a trade: 'Roxy, kin ye give me a cup of coffee?' 'Law, yes!' she says, forgittin' her blus.h.i.+n' right away. So I kept shady on love an' put it on the groun's of coffee, an', Levin, I everlastin'ly fotched the wild flowers till that gal got to be a-lookin' fur me at the do' every day, an' I'd hide an' see her come to the window an' peep fur me. One day she says, as I was drinkin' of the coffee: 'Mr. Wonnell, what do you put yourself at sech pains fur to 'blige a pore slave girl that ain't but half white?' I thought a minute, so as to say something that wouldn't skeer her off, an' I says: 'Roxy, it's becaze I'm sech a pore, worthless feller that the white gals won't look at me!' The tears come right to her eyes, an' she says: 'Mr. Wonnell, if I was white I would look at you.' 'I believe you would,' says I, 'becaze you've got a white heart, Roxy.'"

"Jack, you're a dog-gone smart lover," said Levin. "I didn't think you had no kind of sense."

"Love-makin' is the best sense of all," said Jack, "it's that sense that keeps the woods a-full of music, where the birds an' bees is twitterin'

and hummin' an' a-matin'. Love is the last sense to come, after you can see, an' hear, an' feel, an' they're give to people to find out something purty to love. Love was the whole day's work in the garding of Eden befo' man got too industrious, an' it's all the work I do, an' I hope I do it well."

"Now what did Roxy tell you about Meshach Milburn and Judge Custis?"

"You see, Levin, as I kept up the flower-givin', I could see a little love start up in purty Roxy, but she didn't understand it, an' I was as keerful not to skeer it as if it had been a snow-bird hoppin' to a crumb of bread. She would talk to me about her little troubles, an' I listened keerful as her mammy, becaze little things is what wimmin lives on, an'

a lady's man is only a feller patient with their little talk. The more I listened the more she liked to tell me, an' I saw that Roxy was a-thinkin' a great deal of me, Levin, without she or me lettin' of it on.

"This mornin' she came to the door with her eyes jest wiped from a-cryin'. Says I, 'Roxy, little dear, what ails you?' 'Oh, nothin','

says she, 'I can't tell you if thair is.' 'Here's your wild flowers for Miss Vesty,' says I, 'beautiful to see!' 'Oh,' says Roxy, 'Miss Vesty won't need 'em now.' Says I: 'Roxy, air you goin' to have all that trouble on your mind an' not let me carry some of it?' 'Oh, my friend,'

she says, 'I must tell you, fur you have been so kind to me: don't whisper it! But my master is in debt to Meshach Milburn, an' _he's_ married Miss Vesty, an' we think we're all gwyn to be sold or made to live with that man that wears the bad man's hat.' Says I: 'Roxy, darling, maybe I kin buy you.' 'Oh, I wish you was my master,' Roxy said. An' jest at that minute, love bein' oncommon strong over me this mornin', I took the first kiss from Roxy's mouth, an' she didn't say nothin' agin it."

Here Jack Wonnell kissed the atmosphere several times with deep unction, and ended by a low whoop and whistle, and looked at Levin Dennis with one eye shut, as if to get Levin's opinion of all this.

"Well," Levin said, "I never ain't been in love yet. I 'spect I ought to be. But mother is all I kin take keer of, and, pore soul! she's in so much trouble over me that she can't love n.o.body else. I git drunk, an'

go off sailin' so long, an' spend my money so keerless, that if the Lord didn't look out for her maybe she'd starve."

"Yes, Levin, you likes brandy as much as I likes the gals. You go off for tarrapin, an' taters, an' oysters, an' peddles 'em aroun' Prencess Anne, an' then somebody pulls you in the grog-shops an' away goes your money, an' your mother ain't got no tea and coffee."

"Jack," said Levin, abruptly, "do you believe in ghosts?"

"I don't know, Levin. If I saw one maybe I would, but I'm too trashy for ghosts to see me."

"Well, now," Levin said, "there's a ghost, or something, that looks out for mother when I'm drunk or gone, an' it leaves tea and coffee in the window for her."

"Sho'! why, Levin, that's Jimmy Phoebus! He's ben in love with your mother for years an' she won't have him, but he keep's a hangin' on.

He's your mother's ghost."

"No, Jack. I thought it was till Jimmy come to me an' asked me who I guessed it was. He was a little jealous, I reckon. I said: 'It's you, of course, Jimmy!' 'No,' says he, 'by smoke! I don't do any hokey-pokey like that. What I give, I go and give with no sneakin' about it or prying into Ellanory's poverty.' He was right down mad, but he couldn't find nothing out. So I think it may be the ghost of father, drowned at sea, bringing tea and coffee, and sometimes a dress, and a pair of shoes, too, to keep mother warm."

Levin Dennis, standing against the tiller, seemed to Jack Wonnell to be fair and spiritual as a woman, as his comely brow and large eyes grew serious with this relation of his father's mysterious fate. His dark auburn hair, in short ringlets parted in the middle, gave his sunburnt countenance a likeness to some of the old gentle families with which he was allied, his father having been a son of younger sons, in a date when primogeniture prevailed in all this bay region; and therefore, possessing nothing, he went into the war against England as a sailor, and his family influence obtained for him command of the new privateer launched on the Manokin, the _Ida_, which set sail with a good crew and superior armament, amid the acclaims of all Somerset, and, sailing past the Capes into the ocean with all her bunting flying, slid down the farther world to everlasting silence and the vapors of mystery.

His widow waited long and patiently with this only boy, Levin, a scarcely lisping child, and stories of every kind were current; that the captain had been captured and hanged by the enemy, and the s.h.i.+p burned or condemned; that he had hoisted the black flag and become a pirate and quit the western world for the East India waters; and finally, that the _Ida_ foundered off Guiana and every soul was drowned.

The widow, a beautiful woman, neglected by her husband's connection, who were sullen at the loss of their investment and their expected profits from the vessel, lived in the little house she had owned before her marriage, and sank into the plainer cla.s.s of people, almost losing her ident.i.ty with the ruling families to which her son was kin, but in her humbler cla.s.s highly respected and solicited in marriage.

She was still young and fair, and Jimmy Phoebus, a hale bachelor, and captain of a trading schooner, had endeavored to marry her for years, and held on to his hope patiently, exercising many kind offices for her, though his means were limited, and he had poor kin looking to him for help. She feared the absent lover might be alive and return to find her another's wife.

So her son, growing up without a father's discipline, and being too respectable, it was supposed, to put to a trade or be indentured, lived by fugitive pursuits on land and water, hauling and peddling vegetables and provisions at times; and now, by the gift of Jimmy Phoebus, he sailed his little sloop or cat-boat chiefly to carry terrapin to Baltimore. Rough sailor acquaintances, exposure, a credulous, easily led nature, and almost total neglect of school at a time when education was a high privilege, had made him wayward and often intemperate, but without developing any selfish or cruel characteristics, and being of an agreeable exterior and affable disposition, he fell a prey to any strangers who might be in town--gunners, negro buyers, idle planters, and spreeing overseers, many of whom hired his company and vessel to take their excursions; and, while loving his mother, and being her only reliance, she saw him slipping further and further into manhood without steadiness or education or fixed principles, or any female influence to draw him to domestic constraints.

His slender, supple figure, and marks of gentility in his limbs, and shapely brow and large, gentle eyes, poorly consorted with ragged clothes, bare feet, and absolute dependence on chance employment, the latter becoming more precarious as his age and stature made more demands for money through his false appet.i.tes.

"Jack," said Levin Dennis, "what do you mean by gittin' money to buy Roxy Custis? You never git no money."

"Won't he give it to me? Him?" Jack Wonnell indicated the hatchway down which Joe Johnson had gone. "He's got bags of it."

"Him? Why, Jack, how much money do you s'pose a beautiful servant like Roxy will fetch?"

"Won't that piece _he's_ gwyn to give you buy her?"

"Five dollars? Why, you poor fool, she will bring five hundred dollars--maybe thousands. This n.i.g.g.e.r trader, with all his gold, would be hard pushed, I 'spect, to buy Roxy."

Jack looked downcast, and failed to wink or whistle.

"Gals like her," said Levin, "goes for mistresses to rich men, an'

sometimes they eddicates 'em, I've hearn tell, to know music, an'

writin', an' grammar, an' them things."

"And a pore man who wouldn't abuse a gal most white like that, but would respect her an' marry her, too, Levin, they makes laws agin him! Maybe I kin steal Roxy?"

Here Jack whistled low, shut one eye with deep knowingness, and grinned behind his bell-crown.

"Oh, you simpleton!" Levin said. "Where could you take her to?"

"Pennsylvany, Cannydy, Turkey, or some of them Abolition states up thar"--Jack Wonnell indicated the North with his finger. "Ain't there no place where a white man kin treat a bright-skinned slave like that as if they both was a Christian?"

"No," answered Levin, "not in this world."

The hero of the bell-crowns was much affected, and Levin thought he really was whimpering, though his vacant grin was a poor frame for grief.

"Jack," said Levin, "if what Roxy Custis told is true, the gal is the slave of your pertickler enemy, Meshach Milburn."

The wearer of the rival species of hat was "badly sobered," as Levin mentally expressed it, at this dismal solution of his gentle dreams of love. He arose and walked to the bow of the boat, and looked down into the flying waves over which the cat-boat skipped, as if he might seek the solution of his own disconnected yet harmless life in the bottom of the sound, among the oyster rocks.

The water was now speckled with canoes and periaugers (pirogues), and little sail-boats coming from Deil's Island preaching, and before them rose out of the bay the low woody islands and capes which, with white straits between, enclose from the long blue nave of the Chesapeake the scalloped aisle called Tangier Sound. Like pigeons and wrens around some cathedral, the wild-fowl flew in these involuted, almost fantastic, architectures of archipelago and peninsula, which, lying flat to the water, yet took ragged perspective there, as if some Gothic builder had laid his foundations, but had not bent the tall pines together, that grew above in palm-like groves, to make the groined roofs and arches of his design.

Here could be seen the ospreys, sailing in graceful pairs above the herrings' or the old wives' shoals, taking with elegance and conscientiousness the daily animal food that even man demands, with all his sentiments and gospels. There the canvas-back duck, in a little flock, broke the Sabbath to dive for the wild celery that grows beneath the sound. In yonder tree the bald eagle was starting out upon his Algerine work of vehemence and piety, to intercept the hawk and steal his cargo. The wild swan might be those faint, far birds flying so high over Kedge's Straits, in the south, and the black loon, spreading his wings like a demon, disappears close to the cat-boat, and rises no more till memory has forgotten him.

Levin Dennis steered close to a point where he had been wont to scatter food for the black ducks, and draw them to the gunner's ambush.

Sheldrakes and goosanders, coots and gulls, whifflers and dippers, made the best of Sunday, and bathed and wrote their winged penmans.h.i.+p on the white sheet of water.

Poor Jack Wonnell returning, with something on his face between a grin and a tear, said:

"Levin, didn't I never harm n.o.body?"