The Entailed Hat Part 82

"Poor Virgie, dey is wild-fowls, all bewildered by dat storm: geese and swans. Dey can't sing like angels."

"Yes," said the girl; "something sings, I know. What is it?"

"Jesus, maybe," the negro answered, looking at her, his eyes full of tears.

The great Breakwater, which required forty years and nearly a million tons of stone to build it, was then just commencing, and where it was to be, within the shallow bight of Henlopen, they saw the wrecks of many vessels, some sunken, some shattered in collision, some stranded in the marsh, proving the needs of commerce for such a work, and also the fury of the storm that had so innocently vanished, like a sleeping tiger after his b.l.o.o.d.y meal.

In the gentle suns.h.i.+ne floated the American flag upon several vessels there--the flag that first kissed the breeze upon that spot in the year 1776, when Esek Hopkins raised over the _Alfred_ the dyes of the peach and cream in the centre of his little squadron. And there, along the low bluff of the Kill, still lay the s.h.i.+ngle-boarded town of Lewes, in the torpor of nearly two hundred years, or since the Dutch De Vries had settled it in 1631. Lord Delaware, Argall, and the Swede, Penn, Blackbeard, Paul Jones, Lord Rodney, a thousand heroes, had known it well; the pilots, like sea-gulls, had their nests there; the Marylanders had invaded it, the Tories had seized it, pirates had been suckled there; and now the courts and lawyers had forsaken it, to go inland to Georgetown.

"Virgie," said Samson, "I'll try to buy some of de stone-boat captains to carry you to Phildelfy."

He waded the Kill, carrying her, and left her in an old Presbyterian church at the skirt of Lewes, and procured medicine for her, and then labored in vain nearly all day to get her pa.s.sage to a free state. The reply was invariable: "Can't take the risk of the whippin'-post and pillory for no n.i.g.g.e.r. Can't lose a long job like bringin' stone to the Breakwater to save one n.i.g.g.e.r."

At the hotel a colored man beckoned Samson aside--a fine-looking man, of a gingerbread color--and they went into the little old disused court-house, in the middle of a street, where there was a fire.

"Brother," said the stranger, "I see by your actions that you're trying to git a pa.s.sage North. Is it fur yourself?"

"No," Samson said, taking an inventory of the other's fine chest and strength, and mentally wis.h.i.+ng to have a chance at him; "I'm a free man, and kin go anywhere; but I have a friend."

"Why, old man," spoke the other, frankly, "I'm the agent of our society at this pint."

"What is it?" asked Samson, warily.

"The Protection Society. They educated me right yer. I went to school with white boys. Now, where is your friend?"

"What kin you do fur her?" asked Samson.

"It's a gal, is it? Why, I can just put her in my buggy, made and provided for the purpose, and drive her to the Quaker settlement."

"Where's that?"

"Camden--only thirty miles off. I've got free pa.s.ses all made out. Give yourself, brother, no more concern."

Samson looked at the handsome person long and well. The man stood the gaze modestly.

"Oh, if I had some knowledge!" spoke Samson; "I might as well be a slave if I know nothin'. I can't read. I wish I could read your heart!"

"I wish you could," said the man; "then you would trust me."

"What is your name?"

"Samuel Ogg."

"I want you to hold up your hand and swear, Sam Ogg, that you will never harm the pore chile I bring you. Say, 'Lord, let my body rot alive, an'

no man pity me, if I don't act right by her.'"

"It's a severe oath," said the stranger, "but I see your kind interest in the lady. Indeed, I'm only doing my duty."

He repeated the words, however, and Samson added, "G.o.d deal with you, Sam Ogg, as you keep dat oath. Now come with me!"

The girl was found asleep, but delirious, her large eyes, in which the blue and brown tints met in a kind of lake color, being wide open, and almost lost in their long lashes, while flood and fire, sun and frost, had beaten upon the slender encas.e.m.e.nt of her gentle life, that still kept time like some Parian clock saved from a conflagration, in whose crystal pane the golden pendulum still moves, though the hands point astray in the mutilated face.

Her teeth were shown through the loving lips she parted in her stormy dreams, like waves tossing the alabaster sails of the nautilus, or like some ear of Indian corn exposed in the gale that blows across the ta.s.selled field.

Her raiment, partly torn from her, showed her supple figure and neck, and, beneath her ma.s.s of silky hair, her white arm, like an ivory serpent, sustained her head, her handsome feet being fine and high-bred, like the soul that bounded in her maiden ambition.

There had been days when such as she called Antony away from his wife, and Caesar from his cla.s.sical selfishness; when on many an Eastern throne such beauty as this stirred to murmurous glory armies beyond compute, and clashed the cymbals of prodigious conquests. She lay upon the altar-cus.h.i.+ons of the church, like young Isaac upon his father's altar, and where the mourners knelt to pray for G.o.d's reconcilement, the cruelty of their law flashed over her like Abraham's superst.i.tious knife.

Priceless was this young creature, in n.o.ble hands, as wife or daughter, human food or fair divinity, and all the precious mysteries of woman awake in her to love and conjugality, like song and seed in the spring bird; yet a hard, steely prejudice had shut her out from every inst.i.tution and equality, let every crime be perpetrated upon her, made the scent of freedom in her nostrils worse than the incentive of the thief, and has outlasted her half a century, and is self-righteous and inflexible yet.

In that old churchyard that enclosed her slept revolutionary officers, who helped to gain freedom: they might be willing to rise with her, not to be buried in the same enclosure.

How small is religion, how false democracy, how far off are the judgments of heaven! There stood over the pulpit an inscription, itself presumptuous with aristocracy, saying, "The dead in Christ shall rise first;" as if those truly dead in the humility of Christ would not prefer to rise last!

Samson watched his new friend narrowly, whose countenance was profoundly piteous, and his teeth and lip made a "Tut-tut!" Satisfied with the man, Samson knelt by Virgie and kissed her once.

"Pore rose of slavery," said Samson, "forgive me dat I courted you like a gal, instead of like an angel. I am old, and ashamed of myself. Dear, draggled flower, we may never meet agin. May the Lord, if dis is his holy temple, save you pure and find you a home, Virgie. Good-bye!"

"Come," said the man, as Samson sat bowed and weeping, "the buggy is ready; I'll wrap you warm, Miss."

"Freedom!" spoke the girl, awakening; "oh, I must find it."

The next that Virgie knew, she was in a cabin loft, and voices were heard speaking in a room below.

"See me!" said one; "we sell you, dat's sho'! See me now! You make de best of it. Sam Ogg yer, we sold twenty-two times. Sam will be sold wid you and teach yo' de Murrell game."

"Politely, gentlemen," said a feminine voice; "I don't know that I have the nerve for it. My occupation has been marrying them. It is true that the hue-and-cry has made that branch dull, but I had great talent for it."

"Kidnapping," said a third voice, "is running low. It surrounds the whole slave belt from Illinois to Delaware. The laws of Illinois were made in our interests till Governor Harrison, whose free man was kidnapped, raised an excitement out there six years ago. Newt Wright, Joe O'Neal, and Abe Thomas were the smartest kidnappers along the Kentucky line. But Joe Johnson, who is getting ready to go south, will be the last man of enterprise in the business. John A. Murrell's idea is to divide fair with black men, sell and steal them back, and I think it is sagacious. It's safer, any way, than Patty Cannon's other plan."

"What is that, Mr. Ogg?" said the feminine-voiced negro.

"Making away with the negro-traders, they say."

"See me! see me!" exclaimed the first voice. "Dey'll hang her some day fur dat."

"Now," resumed Mr. Ogg, "a man of intelligence like you and me, Mr.

Ransom--pardon, sir, does your shackle incommode you? I'll stuff it with some wool--"

"Politely, Mr. Ogg; I'm ironed rather too tight."

"I say, Mr. Ransom, you and I can always play the average slaveholder for a fool. Why, I hardly get into any family before I make love to some member of it, and if I don't vamose with a black wench, it's with her mistress."

"Ah, Mr. Ogg, they are perfectly fiendish in resenting _that!_"