The Entailed Hat Part 66

"This sympathy to-day will make you an independent man for life,"

exclaimed the engineer.

"I have done Milburn's first errand right," Judge Custis thought; "five minutes' delay would have been fatal."

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

GARTER-SNAKES.

At Princess Anne Vesta had moved her husband to Teackle Hall, and he occupied her father's room and seemed to be growing better, though the doctor said that he had best be sent to the hills somewhere.

The free woman, Mary, whom Jimmy Phoebus sent to Vesta, had arrived very opportunely, and took Aunt Hominy's place in the kitchen, where all the children's echoes were gone, the poor woman's own bereavement thrilling the ears of Virgie, Roxy, and Vesta herself; but, alas! her tale was not legal testimony, because she was a little black.

Jack Wonnell had found unexpected favor in Meshach Milburn's eyes, and was appointed to sleep in the store and watch it; and there Roxy came down in the twilights, and, with pity more than affection, heard him weave the illusion of his love for her, willing to be amused by it, because it was so sincere with him; for Jack was all lover, and meek and artful, bold and domestic, soft and outlawed, as the houseless Thomas cat that makes highways of the fences, and wooes the demurest kitten forth by the magic of his purring.

"Roxy," said Jack, "I'm a-goin' to git you free, gal, fur I 'spect Meshach Milburn will give me a pile o' money fur a-watchin' of the sto'.

Then we'll go to Canaday, whar, I hearn tell, color ain't no pizen, an'

we'll love like the white doves an' the brown, that both makes the same coo, so happy they is."

"Jack," said the soft-eyed, pitying maid, "you're a pore foolish fellow, but I like to hear you talk. I reckon there is no harm in you. Virgie is in love, too, with a white man, but you mustn't breathe it."

"Never," said Jack, making solemn motions with his eyes, and cuddling closer in dead earnest of sympathy. "Hope I may die! Can't tell, to save my life! Who-oop! Tell me, Roxy!"

"Pore sister Virgie, she was made to love, and, though it's hopeless, I think she loves Mr. Tilghman, our minister, because he loved Miss Vesty once, and Virgie wors.h.i.+ps Miss Vesty like her sister."

Vesta told the story of Mary, the free woman, to her husband, who listened closely and said:

"I know of but one thing, my darling, that will make such ignorance and cruelty fade out in the forests of this peninsula: an iron road. A new thing, called the railroad-engine, has just been made by an Englishman, one George Stephenson, and a specimen of it has been sent to New York, where I have had it examined. The errand your father went to do for me, he has done well. I shall send him to Annapolis next, to get a charter for a railroad up this peninsula that will pa.s.s inside the line of Maryland, and penetrate every kidnapping settlement hidden there, and light, intercourse, and law shall exterminate such barrac.o.o.ns as Johnson's."

Vesta was glad to hear her father praised by her husband, and hopes rekindled of some happier family reunion, when she should feel the heartache die within her that now raged intermittently during her vestal honeymoon. A letter came on the fourth day which dashed these hopes to the ground, and it was as follows:

"DORCHESTER COUNTY, MD., _October--, 1829_.

"_Darling Niece_,--Idol of my heart, let me begin by entreating you to take a conservative course when I break the sad intelligence to you of the death of my dear sister, Lucy, at Cambridge, yesterday, of the heart disease. She was the star of the house of McLane. She is gone. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord, and I shall take a conservative though _consistent_ course on the parties who have inflicted this injury upon you, my dear niece, and upon your calm and collected, if stricken, uncle.

"'The Lord moves in a _mysterious_ way, his wonders to perform,'

and his humble instruments require only to be _inflexible and conservative_ to do all things well. Be a.s.sured that _righteousness_ shall be done upon the adversaries of our family, and _that_ right speedily. My own grief is composed in the satisfaction I shall take, and the a.s.surance that your sainted mother is where the wicked cease from troubling.

"The financial arrangements of my dear sister were of the most conservative and high-toned character, as was to have been expected of her.

"You may be desirous, my outraged, but, I hope, still _spirited_, idol, to hear the particulars of Lucy's death. She did not reach Cambridge till near midnight, having made the long journey from Princess Anne without fitting companions, and, in the excited state of her feelings, after she left Vienna in the evening, a depression of the spirits, accompanied by a fluttering of the heart, came on, and rapidly increased, and, by the time she arrived at our relatives', she was nearly dead with nervous apprehension and weakness. On seeing me, she revived sufficiently to make her will in the most _sisterly_ and conservative manner.

"A physician was procured, but he p.r.o.nounced her system so debilitated and detoned as hardly probable to outride the shock, the nervous centres being depressed and atrophy setting in.

"She talked incessantly about the _Entailed Hat_, and said it was a permanent shadow and weight upon your heart, and made me promise to _mash_ it, if it could conservatively be done.

"I read to my dear sister from _the Book of Books_, and tried to compose her feelings, but she broke out ever and anon, 'Oh, Brother Allan! to think I have raised children to be bought and sold, and married to foresters and trash.' She was deeply sensitive as to what would be said about it in Baltimore.

"Just before she died, she said, 'Do not bury me at Princess Anne, where that fiend can come near me with his frightful Hat! Take me to Baltimore, where there are no bog-ores, nor old family chattels, to disturb the respectability of death. Apologize for my daughter, _and do her justice_.'

"And so this grand woman died, in the confidence of a blessed immortality, leaving us to vindicate her motives and continue her conservative course, and to meet at her funeral next Friday, at our church in Baltimore, where Rev. John Breckenridge will preach the funeral sermon over this murdered saint.

"With conservative, yet proud, grief, "Affectionately, your uncle, "ALLAN McLANE."

"Oh, sir!" Vesta exclaimed, turning blindly towards her husband; "mother is dead. Where can I turn?"

"Where but to me, poor soul!" Milburn replied, knowing nothing of Mrs.

Custis's late feelings against him. "Your father shall be notified, and I am able to attend the funeral with you."

"It is in Baltimore," Vesta sobbed.

"Well, honey, there I am ordered by the doctor to go, and get above the line of malaria, in the hills. I can make the effort now."

Her grief and loneliness deprived her of the will to refuse him. Roxy was selected to be her mistress's maid upon the journey, and William Tilghman and Rhoda Holland were to take them in the family carriage down to Whitehaven landing for the evening steamer.

Jack Wonnell, in officious zeal to be useful, gathered flowers, and hung around Teackle Hall to run errands; and, in order not to exasperate Vesta's husband, appeared bareheaded as the party set off, Milburn's hat-box being one of the articles of travel, and Milburn vouchsafing these words to Jack:

"There is a dollar for you, Mr. Wonnell. I rely upon you to watch my old store and conduct yourself like a man."

"I'll do it," answered Jack, grinning and blus.h.i.+ng; "hope I may die!

Good-bye, Miss Vesty. Purty Roxy, don't you forgit me 'way off thair in Balt'mer. I'll teach Tom to sing your name befo' you ever see me agin."

He waved his arms, with real tears dimming his vision, and Roxy affected to shed some tears also, as she waved good-bye to Virgie, whose eyes were turned with wistful pain upon the beautiful face of her mistress receding down the vista. Vesta threw her a kiss and reclined her head upon her husband's shoulder.

That evening, an hour before the carriage was to return, Virgie and the free woman, Mary, walked together down to Milburn's store, to see if Jack Wonnell was on the watch. As they trode in the soft gra.s.s and sand under the old storehouse they saw the bell-crowned hat--a new one, brought from the ancient stock that very day--s.h.i.+ning glossily on Wonnell's high, eccentric head, as he sat in the hollow window of the old storehouse and talked to the mocking-bird, which he was feeding with a clam-sh.e.l.l full of boiled potato and egg, and some blue haws.

"Tom, say 'Roxy,' an' I'll give ye some, Tommy! Now, boy! 'Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy! _purty_ Roxy! Poor ole Jack! poor ole Jack!'"

The bird flew around Wonnell's head, biting at the hat which stood in such elegant irrelevance to the remainder of his dress, and cried, "Meshach, he! he! he! Vesty, she! Vesty, Meshach! Vesty, Meshach!" but said nothing the village vagrant would teach it. He showed the patience idleness can well afford, and, feeding it a little, or withholding the food awhile, continued to plead and teach:

"'Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy! Poor, pore Jack! pore Jack!' Now, Tom, say 'Roxy, Roxy, pore Jack!'"

The bird flew and struck, and sang a little, very n.i.g.g.ardly, and so, as the lights in the west sank and faded, the s.h.i.+ftless lover continued in vain to seek to give the bird one note more than the magician, his master, had taught.

The stars modestly appeared in the soft heavens, and Princess Anne gathered its roofs together like a camp of camels in the desert, and, with an occasional bleat or bark or human sound, seemed dozing out the soft fall night, absorbed, perhaps, in the spreading news of Mrs.

Custis's death and Vesta's wedding-journey, that had to be taken at last.

"Miss Virgie," said the woman Mary--ten years her senior, but comely still--"have you ever loved like me? Oh, I had a kind husband, and, helpless as I was, I tried to love once more. Maybe it was a sin."

"I love my mistress as if she was myself," Virgie said; "I feel as if, in heaven, before we came here, I was with her, Mary! I love her father, too, as if he was not my master, but my friend. Oh, how I love them all!

But what can I do to show my love--poor naked slave that I am? They say they will soon set me free. Mary, how do people feel when they are free?"