The Entailed Hat Part 7

The Judge feebly looked at Vesta, then searched his mind with his eyes downcast, and finally spoke:

"My child, I am the victim of good intentions and self-enjoyment. I am less than a scoundrel and worse than a fool. I am a fraud, and you must be made to see it, for I fear you have been proud of me."

"Oh, father, I have!" said Vesta, with an instant's convulsion. "You were my G.o.d."

"Let us throw away idolatry, my darling. It is the first of all the sins. How loud speaks the first commandment to us this moment: 'Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before me'?"

"I have broken it," sobbed Vesta, "I loved you more than my Creator."

"Vesta," spoke the Judge, "you are the only thing of value in all my house. The work of nature in you is all that survives the long edifice of our pride. The treasure of your beauty and love still makes me rich to thieves, who lie in ambush all around us. We are in danger, we are pursued. O G.o.d! pity, pity the pure in heart!"

As the Judge, under his strong earnestness, so rare in him of late, threw wide his arms, and raised his brow in agony, Vesta felt her idolatry come back. He was so grand, standing there in his unaffected pain and helplessness, that he seemed to her some manly Prometheus, who had worked with fire and iron, to the exasperation of the jealous G.o.ds.

Admiration dried her tears, and she forgot her father's references to herself.

"What is iron?" she asked. "Tell me why you wanted to make iron! If I can enter into your mind and sympathize with the hopes you have had, it will lift my soul from the ground. Papa, I should have asked for this lesson long ago."

The Judge strode up and down till she repeated the question, and had brought him to his seat. He collected his thoughts, and resumed his worldly tone as he proceeded, with his old cavalier volatility, to tell the tale of iron.

"I have duplicated loans," he said at last, "on the same properties, incurring, I fear, a stigma upon my family and character; as well as the ruin of our fortune."

Vesta arose with pale lips and a sinking heart.

"Oh, father," she whispered, in a frightened tone, "who knows this terrible secret!"

"Only one man," said the Judge, cowering down to the carpet, with his courage and volatility immediately gone, "old Meshach Milburn knows it all! He has purchased the duplicate notes of protest, and holds them with his own. He has me in his power, and hates me. He will expose me, unless I submit to an awful condition."

"What is it, father?"

The Judge looked up in terror, and, meeting Vesta's pale but steady gaze, hid his face and groaned:

"Oh! it is too disgraceful to tell. It will break your mother's heart."

"Tell me at once!" exclaimed Vesta, in a low and hollow tone. "What further disgrace can this monster inflict upon us than to expose our dishonor? Can he kill us more than that?"

"I know not how to tell you, Vessy. Spare me, my darling! My face I hide for shame."

There was a pause, while Vesta, with her mind expanded to touch every point of suggestion, stood looking down at her father, yet hardly seeing him. He did not move.

Vesta stooped and raised her father's face to find some solution of his mysterious evasion. He shut his eyes as if she burned him with her wondering look.

"Papa, look at me this instant! You shall not be a coward to me."

He broke from her hands and retreated to a window, looking at her, but with a timorous countenance.

"I wish you to go this moment and find your creditor, Mr. Milburn, and bring him to me. You must obey me, sir!"

The father raised his hands as if to protest, but before he could speak a shadow fell upon the window, and the figure of a small, swarthy man covered with a steeple-crowned hat advanced up the front steps.

"Saviour, have mercy!" murmured Judge Custis, "the wolf is at the door."

Vesta took her father in her arms, and kissed him once a.s.suringly.

"Papa, go send a servant to open the door. Have Mr. Milburn shown into this room to await me. Do you go and engage my mother affectionately, and both of you remain in your chamber till I am ready to call you."

The proximity of the dreadful creditor had almost paralyzed Judge Custis, and he glided out like a ghost.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE HAT FINDS A RACK.

Meshach Milburn had locked the store after writing some letters, and had taken the broad street for Judge Custis's gate. The news of his disappearance towards the Furnace, with an extravagant livery team, had spread among all the circle around the princ.i.p.al tavern, and they were discussing the motive and probabilities of the act, with that deep inner ignorance so characteristic of an instinctive society. Old Jimmy Phoebus, a huge man, with a broad face and small forehead, was called upon for his view.

"It's nothin' but a splurge," said Jimmy; "sooner or later everybody splurges--shows off! Meshach's jest spilin' with money and he must have a splurge--two hosses and a n.i.g.g.e.r. If it ain't a splurge I can't tell what 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 in everything else, and has tuk to hosses. If it tain't hosses, I can't tell to save my life!"

All the lesser intellects of the party executed a low chuckle, spun around half-way on their boot-heels and back again, and muttered: "Not to save my life!"

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

"Ole Milbun's gwyn to see a gal. Fust time a man changes his regler course 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't tell to save m' life!"

The smaller fry, not being trained to suggestion, grinned, held their mouths 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'll all take off our hats an' do it polite, for, by smoke! thar's goin' to be 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 the front, his nose informing him of what was in the air like any silken terrier's, and yet with a pallor of the skin as of a sick person's, and less 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 that land was again heard, fluttering around: "to _save_ my life!"

Jimmy Phoebus had the name of being descended from a Greek pirate, or patriot, who had settled on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e, and Phoebus looked it yet, 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, Milburn lifted his ancient and formidable hat, and in an instant seemed to come a century nearer to his neighbors. His stature was reduced, his unsociableness seemed modified; he now looked to be a smallish, friendless person, as if some ownerless dog had darted through the street, and heard a kind chirp at the tavern door, where his reception had been stones. His voice, with a little tremor in it, emboldened Levin Dennis also to speak: