Resolution of character and executive power had been trifled away by Judge Custis. The trader had concluded their interview with a decision and fierceness that left paralysis upon the gentleman's mind. He saw, in sad fancy, the execution served upon his furniture, the amazement of his wife, the pallor of his daughter, the indignation of his sons. He also shrank before the impending failure of his furnace and abandonment of the bog-ore tract, on which he had raised so much state and local fame; people would say: "Custis was a fool, and deceived himself, while old Steeple-top Milburn played upon the Custises' vanity, and turned them into the street."
"No doubt," thought the Judge, "that fellow, Milburn, can get anything when he gets my house. The poor folks' vote he may command, because he is of their class. He is a lender to many of the rich. Who could have suspected his intelligence? His address, too? He handled me as if I were a forester and he a judge. A very, veryremarkable man!" finished Judge Custis, taking the last of the brandy.
He was interrupted by the entrance of Samson Hat.
"Where's your master, boy?" asked the Judge.
"He's gone up to de ole house, Judge, where his daddy and mammy died. It's de place where I hides after my fights."
"May the ague strike him there! Let the bilious sweat from the mill-pond be strong to-night, that, like Judas of old, his bowels may drop out! But, no," continued the irresolute man, "I have no right to hate him."
"Judge," softly said the old negro, "my marster is a sick man. He ain't happy like you an' me. He's 'bitious. He's lonely. Dat's enough to spile angels. But a gooder man I never knowed, 'cept in de onpious sperrit. He's proud as Lucifer. He's full of hate at Princess Anne and all de people. Your darter may git a better man, not a pyorer one."
"Purity goes a very little way," exclaimed the Judge, "on the male side of marriage contracts. It's always assumed, and never expected. You need not remember, Samson, that I expressed any anger at your master!"
"My whole heart, judge, is to see him happy. Hard as he is, dat man has power to make him loved. Your darter might go farder and fare wuss! I wish her no harm, God knows!"
The negro said an humble good-night, and the Judge lay down upon his bed to think of the dread alternatives of the coming week; but, voluptuous even in despair, he slept before he had come to any conclusion.
Samson Hat walked up the side of the mill-pond on a sandy road, divided from the water by a dense growth of pines. The bullfrogs and insects serenaded the forest; the furnace chimney smoked lurid on the midnight. At the distance of half a mile or more an old cabin, in decay,stood in a sandy field near the road; it had no door in the hollow doorway, no sash in the one gaping window; the step was broken leading to the sill, and some of the weather-boarding had rotted from the skeleton. The old end-chimney bore it toughly up, however, and the low brick props under the corners stood plumb. Within lay a single room with open beams, a sort of cupboard stairway projecting over the fireplace, and another door and window were in the rear. Before this fireplace sat Meshach Milburn on an old chair, fairly revealed by the light of some of the burning weather-boarding he had thrown upon the hearth. On the hearth was a little heap of the bog iron ore and a bottle.
"Come in, Samson!" he called. "Don't think me turned drunkard because I am taking this whiskey. I drink it to keep out the malaria, and partly as a communion cup; for to-night the barefooted ghosts who have drooped and withered here are with me in spirit."
"Dey was all good Milburns who lived heah, marster," said the negro. "Dey had hard times, but did no sin. Dey shook wid chills and fevers, not wid conscience."
"I shall shake with neither," said the money-lender. "Go up into the loft, and sleep till you are called. I want the horses early for Princess Anne!"
The negro obeyed without remark, and disappeared behind the cupboard-like door. Milburn sat before the fire, and looked into it long, while a procession of thoughts and phantoms passed before it.
He saw a poor family of independent Puritans setting sail at different dates from English seaports. Some were indentured servants, hoping for a career; others were avoiding the civil wars; others were small political malefactors, noisy against the oppressions of their hero, Cromwell, and conspirators against his power; and, thrown by him in English jails, were only delivered to be sold into slavery, driven through the streets of market-towns, placedon troop ships between the decks, among the horses, and set up at auction in Barbadoes, like the blacks; whence they in time continued onward westward. One, the fortunate possessor of some competence, sailed his own ship across the Atlantic, and delivered up to Massachusetts her governor and gentry. Another, incapable of being suppressed, though a servant, seized the destinies of an aristocratic colony, and held them for a while, until accumulating enemies bore him down, and wedlock and the gibbet followed close together. Poverty would not relinquish its gripe upon the race; they struggled up like clods upon the ploughshare, and fell back again into the furrow.
As Meshach Milburn thought of these things he took up a portion of the bog ore from the hearth.
"Here is iron," he said, thoughtfully, "true iron, which makes the blood red, moulds into infinite forms, nails houses together, binds wheels, and casts into cannon and ball. But this iron ran into a bog, formed low combinations, and had no other mould than twigs and leaves afforded. Its volcanic origin was forgotten when it ran with sand and gravel away from the mountain vein and upland ore along the low, alluvial bar, till, like an oyster, the iron is dredged from the stagnant pool, impure, inefficacious, corrupted. So is it with man, whose magnetic spirit follows the dull declivity to the barren sandbars of the world, and lodges there. I am of the bog ores; but that exists which will flux with me, clean me of rust, and transmit my better quality to posterity. O, youth, beauty, and station—lovely Vesta! for thee I will be iron!"
Milburn looked around the single room inquiringly. He placed his finger upon the crevices in the weather-boarding; he opened the little closet below the stairs, and a weasel dashed out and shot through the door; he ascended the steep, short stairs, and with a torch examined the black shingles, but nothing was there except a litter of young owls, whose parents had gone poaching. Then,returning, he searched on every open beam and rotting board, as if for writing.
"They could not write!" he thought. "Nothing is left to me, not even a sign, down a century and a half, to tell that I had parents!"
As he spoke he felt an object move behind him, and, looking back, the shadow of the Entailed Hat was dancing on the wall. As he threw his head back, so did it; as he retired from it, the hat enlarged, until the little room could hardly hold its shadow. Retiring again, he lifted it from his head with bitter courtesy, and the shadow did the same. The man and the shadow looked each at a peaked hat and stroked it.
"This is everything," exclaimed Milburn. "The hundred humble heads are at rest in the sand; one grave-stone would mock them all. But once the family brain expanded to a hat, and that survived the race. I am the Quaker who respects his hat, the Cardinal who is crowned with it; yes, and the dunce who must wear it in his corner!"
Then the picture of his parents arose upon his sight: a cheerful father, with two or three old slaves, ploughing in the deep sand, to drop some shrivelled grains of corn, or tinkering a disordered mill-wheel that moved a blacksmith's saw. Ever full of confidence in nothing which could increase, credulous and sanguine, tender and laborious, Milburn's sire nursed his forest patches as if they were presently to be rich plantations, and was ever "pricing" negroes, mules, tools, and implements, in expectation of buying them. Nothing could diminish his confidence but disease and old age. He heard of the great "improvement" on the Furnace tract, and took his obedient wife and brood there. As the laborers pulled out the tussocks and roots, encrusted with iron, from the swamp and creek, fever and ague came forth and smote them both.
How wretched that scene when, almost too haggard to move, father and mother, in this one bare room where Meshach sat, groaning amid their many offspring, saw death with weakness creep upon each other—death without priest or doctor, without residue or cleanliness—the death the million die in lowly huts, yet, oh, how hard!
"Haste, sonny,goodboy," the frightened father had said, knowing not how ill he was, in his dependence on his wife; "take the horse, and ride into Snow Hill for the doctor. Poor mother is dreadful sick!"
Then, leaping upon the lean old horse, bare-backed and with a rope bridle, Meshach had pushed through the deep sand, bareheaded and barefooted, and almost crazy with excitement, until he entered the shining streets of the sandhilled town, and sensitively rushed into the doctor's office, crying, "Daddy and mammy is sick, at the Furnace!" and told his name, and wheeled, and fled.
But, as the boy rode home, more slowly, past the river full of splutter-docks, the yellow masts of vessels rising above the woods, the flat fields of corn everywhere bounded by forest, and the small white houses of the better farmers, and at last entered the murmurous, complaining woods, he saw but one thing—his mother.
Was she to disappear from the lonely clearing, and leave only the hut and its orphans? she, who kept heaven here below, and was the saints, the arts, the all-sufficient for her child? With her there could be no poverty; without her riches would be only more sand. With a little molasses she made Christmas kingly with a cake. She could name a little chicken "Meshach," and every egg it laid was a new toy. A mocking-bird caught in the swamp became one of the family by her kindness; would it ever sing again? The religion they knew was all of her. The poor slaves saw no difference in mistresses while she was theirs. In sickness she was in her sphere—health itself had come. And once, the tenderest thing in life, when his father and she had quarrelled, and the light of love being out made the darkness of poverty for the only time visible, Meshach saw her weeping, and he could not comfort her.
Then, blinded by tears, he lashed his nag along, and entered the low door. She was dead!
"Sonny, mammy's gone!" the wretched father groaned; the little children, huddling about the form, lifted their wail; the mocking-bird could find no note for this, and was hushed.
Milburn arose; the fire was low. He walked to the door, and there was a sign of day; the all-surrounding woods of pine were still dark, but on the sandy road and hummock-field some light was shining, like hopefulness against hope; the farm was ploughed no more; the ungrateful centuries were left behind and abandoned, like old wilderness battle-fields, so sterile that their great events remain ever unvisited.
"Ho! Samson, boy! It is time!"
"Yes, marster!" answered the negro in the loft.
As the negro gathered himself up and passed down the stairs, he saw Meshach Milburn before the fire, stirring the coals. Passing out, Samson stood a moment at the gate, and lounged up the road, not to lose his master. As he stood there, flames burst out of the old hut and glistened on the evergreen forest, lighting the tops of the mossy cypresses in the mill-pond, and revealing the forms of the sandy fields. Before he could start back Samson saw his master's figure go round and round the house, lighting the weather-boarding from place to place with a torch; and then the low figure, capped with the long hat, came up the road as if at mighty strides, so lengthened by the fire.
"No need of alarm, boy!" exclaimed the filial incendiary. "Henceforth my only ancestral hall ishere!"
He held the ancient tile up in the light of the blaze.
"Ah, marster!" said the negro, "yo' hat will never give comfort like a home, fine as de hat may be, mean as de roof! De hat will never hold two heads, and dat makes happiness."
"The hat, at least," answered Milburn, bitterly, "will cover me where I go. Such rotted roofs as that was make captives of bright souls."
They looked on the fire in silence a few minutes.
"You have burnt me out, boss," said old Samson, finally. "I ain't got no place to go an' hide when I fights, now. It makes me feel solemn."
"Peace!" replied Meshach Milburn. "Now for the horses and Princess Anne!"
Vesta Custis, dressing in her chamber, heard early wheels upon the morning air, and looking through the blinds saw a double team coming up the road from Hardship.
"Mother," she said, "is that father coming, yonder? No, it is not his driver."
"Why, Vesta!" exclaimed Mrs. Custis, "that is old Milburn's man."
"Samson Hat? so it is. What is he doing with two horses?"
Here Vesta laughed aloud, and began to skip about in her long, slender, worked slippers, whose insteps would spare a mouse darting under.
"Mamma, it is Milburn himself, in a hack and span. See there; the steeple-top hat, copper buckle and all! Isn't he too funny for anything! But, dear me! he is staring right up at this window. Let us duck!"
Vesta's long, ivory-grained arms, divided from her beautiful shoulders only by a spray of lace, pulled her mother down.
"Don't be afraid, dear! he can see nothing but the blinds. Perhaps he is looking for the Judge."
Vesta rose again in her white morning-gown, like a stag rising from a snow-drift. A long, trembling movement, the result of tittering, passed down the graceful column of her back.
"He sits there like an Indian riding past in a show, mamma! Did you ever see such a hat?"
"I think it must be buggy by this time," said the mother; and both of them shook with laughter again. "Unless," added Mrs. Custis, "the bugs are starved out."
"Poor, lonely creature," said Vesta, "he can only wear such a hat from want of understanding."
"Hisunderstandingis good enough, dear. He has the green gaiters on."
They laughed again, and Vesta's hair, shaken down by her merriment, fell nearly to her slipper, like the skin of some coal-black beast, that had sprung down a poplar's trunk.
"Ah! well," exclaimed Vesta, as her maid entered and proceeded to wind up this satin cordage on her crown, "what men are in their minds, can woman know? Old ladies, not unfrequently, wear their old coal-scuttle bonnets long past the fashion, but it is from want. This man is his own master and not poor. His companion is a negro, and his taste a mouldy hat, old as America. How happy are we that it is not necessary to pry into such minds! A little refinement is the next blessing to religion."
"Your father's mind is a puzzle, too, Vesta. He has everything which these foresters lack,—education, society, standing, and comforts. But he returns to the forest, likean opossum, the moment your eye is off him. He can't be traced up like this man, by his hat. I think it's a shame on you, particularly. If he don't come home this day, I shall send for my brother and force an account of my property from Judge Custis!"
The wife sat down and began to cry.
"I'll take the carriage after breakfast, mamma, and seek him at the Furnace or wherever he may be. Those bog ores have given him a great deal of trouble."
"I wish I had never heard of bog ore," exclaimed Mrs. Custis. "When the money was in bank, there was no ore about it. He goes to the forest looking like a magistrate and a gentleman; he always comes back looking like a bog-trotter and a drunkard. There must bewomenin it!"
Here, in an impulse of weak rage, the poor lady got up and walked to her mirror and looked at her face. Apparently satisfied that such charms were trampled on, she dried her tears altogether, and resumed:
"Ginny, go out of the room! (to the neat mulatto lass). Vesta, my dear daughter, I would not cast a stain upon you for the world; but flesh and bloodwillcry out. If your father don't do better I will separate from him, and leave Princess Anne!"
"Why,mother!"
The daughter's bright eyes were large and startled now, and their steel-blue tint grew plainer under her rich black eyebrows.
"I will do it, if I die, unless he reforms!"
"Why, mother!"
Vesta stood with her lips parted, and her beautiful teeth just lacing the coral of the lip. She could say no more for a long moment. Rising as she spoke, with her head thrown back, and her mould the fuller and a pallor in her cheeks, she looked the Eve first hearing the Creator's rebuke.
"A separation in this family?" whispered Vesta. "It would scandalize all Maryland. It would break my heart."
"Darling daughter, my heart must be considered sometimes. I was something before I was a Custis. I am a woman, too."
Vesta, still pale, crossed to her mother's side and kissed her.
"Don't, don't, mamma, ever harbor a thought like that again. You, who have been so brave and patient longer than I have lived!"
"Ah, Vesta, it is the length of injury that wears us out! What if something should happen to us? None are so unfit to bear poverty as we."
"We cannot be poor," said the daughter, soothingly. "Don't you remember, mother, where it says: 'As thy day, so shall thy strength be'?".
"My child," Mrs. Custis replied, "your day is young. Life looks hopeful to you. I am growing old, and where is the arm on which I should be leaning? What are we but two women left? There is another passage on which I often think when we sit so often alone: 'Two women shall be grinding at the mill: the one shall be taken and the other left!' Is that you, or is it I? Listen, my child! it is time that you should feel the melancholy truth! Your father's habits have mastered him. He is beyond reclamation!"
Vesta was kneeling, and she slowly raised her head and looked at her mother, with her nostrils dilated. Mrs. Custis felt uneasy before the aroused mind of her child.
"Don't look at me so, Vesta," the poor lady pleaded. "I thought you ought to know it."
"How dare you say that of my father? Of Judge Custis?"
As they were in this suspense of feeling, wheels were heard. The daughter went to the window and looked down, and then returned to her mother's ear.
"Hush, mother, it is papa. Now, wash your eyes at the toilet. Let us meet him cheerfully. Never say again that he is beyond reclamation, while we can try!"
A kiss smoothed Mrs. Custis's countenance. Vesta was dressed for breakfast in a few moments, and descended to the library and was received in her father's arms. He held her there a long while, and held her close, and by little fits renewed his embrace, but she felt that his breath was feverish and his arms trembled. Looking up at him she saw, indeed, that he was flushed, yet haggard and careworn.
"Vessy," he spoke with a feeble attempt to smile, "I want a glass of brandy. Mine gave out at the Furnace, and the morning ride has weakened me. Where is the key?"
She looked at him with a half-glance, so that he might not suspect, as if to measure his need of stimulant. Then, without a word, she led the way to the dining-room and unlocked the liquor closet, and turned her back lest he might not drink his need from sensitiveness.
"Naughty man," said Vesta, standing off and looking at him when he was done. "I was going down for you to the Furnace after breakfast. We will have no more of this truantry. Mamma and I have set our feet down! You must come back from the Furnace every night, and go again in the morning, like other business men. Be very kind to mamma this morning, sir! She feels your neglect."
Vesta had already rung for the Judge's valet, who now appeared, drew off his boots, supplied his slippers and dressing-gown, and led the way to his bath. In a quarter of an hour he reappeared, looking better, and he irresolutely turned again towards the dining-room, smiling suggestively at Vesta.
"Not that way," spoke she. "Here is mamma, and we are ready for prayers. Here is the place in the Bible."
They all went to the family room, where the dressing-maids of Vesta and her mother were waiting for the usual morning prayers. Vesta placed the open Bible on her father's knee, and he began absently and stumblingly to read. It was in the book of Samuel, and seemed to be some old Jewish mythology. He suddenly came to a verse which arrested his sensibilities by its pathos:
"'And David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, saying, Deliver me my wife Michal.... And Ish-bosheth sent, and took her from her husband, even from Phaltiel, the son of Laish. And her husband went with her along weeping behind her.... Then said Abner unto him: Go, return. And he returned.'"
Judge Custis saw at once the picture this compact history aroused. The inexorable David, perhaps, had married another's love. Occasion had arisen to embitter her kin, and they took her back and gave her in happiness to her pining lover. But, again, the man of correct habits triumphed over the sons of the king, and despatched Abner to tear his wife from her true husband's arms. Poor Phaltiel followed her weeping, until ordered to go back—and back he went, forever desolate.
The scene recalled the brutal demand of his creditor upon his child. The Judge's eyes silently o'erflowed, and he could not see.
Vesta had watched him closely, as her silent magistracy detected a great anxiety or illness in her father. Lest her mother might also notice it, she interposed in the lesson, as was her habit, by reading the Episcopal form of prayer, in which they all bent their heads. Once or twice, as she went on, she detected a suppressed sob, especially at the paragraph: "Thou who knowest the weakness and corruption of our nature, and the manifold temptations which we daily meet with, we humbly beseech thee to have compassion on our infirmities and to give us the constant assistance of thy HolySpirit, that we may be effectually restrained from sin and excited to our duty!"
They went to the breakfast-table, and the Judge's countenance was down. He bit off some toast and filled his mouth with tea, but could not swallow. A hand softly touched his elbow, and, looking there, he saw a wine-glass full of brandy softly glide to the spot. As he looked up and saw the rich, yearning face of his dark-eyed daughter tenderly consulting his weakness, his heart burst forth; he leaned his head upon the table and cried, between drink and grief:
"Darling, we are ruined!"
Mrs. Custis at once arose, and looked frightenedly at the Judge. Vesta as quickly turned to the servants and motioned them to go.
"No, let them hear it!" raved Judge Custis, perceiving the motion. "They are interested, like us. They must be sold, too. Faithful servants! Perhaps it may warn them to escape in time!"
The servants, bred like ladies, quietly left the room.
Mrs. Custis, growing paler, exclaimed:
"Daniel Custis, have you lost everything in that furnace?"
"Everything!"
"And my money, too?"
"Yes."
"Merciful God!"
Before the weak lady could fall Vesta's arm was around her, and her finger on the table-bell. Servants entered and Mrs. Custis was carried out, her daughter following.
When Vesta returned her father was walking up and down the floor with his long silk handkerchief in both hands, weeping bitterly, and speaking broken syllables. She looked at him a moment with all the might of a daughter, first called on to act alone in a great crisis.The feeling she was wont to hold towards him, of perfect pride, had received a blow in her mother's expression: "Your father's habits have mastered him beyond reclamation."
Could this be true; that he, the grand, the kind, the gentleman, was beneath the diver's reach, the plummet's sounding, where light could not pierce, nor Hope overtake?Herfather, the first gentleman in Somerset, a drunkard, going ever downward towards the gutter, and no ray of heaven to beam upon his grave!
She saw his danger now: it was written on his face, where the image of God shone dim that had once been crowned there. Hair thinner, and very gray; the rich, dark eyes intimidated, as if manly confidence was gone; the skin no more the pure scroll of regular life written in the healthy fluid of the heart, but faded, yet spotted with alcohol; on the nose and lips signs of coarser sensuality; the large skeleton bent and the nervous temperament shattered. This father had been until this moment Vesta's angel. Now, there might not be an angel in the universe to fly to his rescue. Deep, dreadful humility descended into the daughter's spirit.
"God forgive me!" she thought, "how blind and how proud and sinful I have been!"
She walked over to her father tenderly and kissed him, and then, drawing his weaker inclination by hers, brought him to a sofa, placed a pillow for him, and made him stretch his once proud form there. Procuring a bowl of water, she washed his face free of tears with a napkin, and bathed it in cologne. The voluptuous nature of the Judge yielded to the perfume and the easy position, and he sobbed himself to sleep like an exhausted child.
Sitting by the sleeping bankrupt, watching his breast rise and fall, and hearing his coarse snoring, as if fiends within were snarling in rivalry for the possession of him, Vesta felt that the life which was unconscious there wasthe fountain of her own, and, loving no man else, she felt her heart like a goldfish of that fountain, go around and around it throbbingly.
Then first arose the wish, often in woman's life repeated, to have been born a man and know how to help her father. That suggested that she had brothers who ought to be summoned, and confer with their father; but now it occurred to her that every one of them had leaned upon him; and, though conscious that it was wicked, Vesta felt her pride rise against the thought that any being outside of that house, even a brother, should know of its disgrace.
What could she do? She thought of all her jewels, her riding mare, her watch, her father's own gifts, and then the thought perished that these could help him.
Could she not earn something by her voice, which had sung to such praises? Alas! that voice had lost the ingredient of hope, and she feared to unclose her lips lest it might come forth in agony, crying, "God, have mercy!"
"I have nothing," said Vesta to herself; "except love for these two martyrs, my father and mother. No, nothing can be done until he awakens and tells me the worst. Meantime it would be wicked for me to increase the agitation already here, and where I must be the comforter."
Mrs. Custis was in no situation to give annoyance for that day, as a sick-headache seized her and she kept her room. Infirm of will, purely social in her marriage relations, and never aiming higher than respectability, she missed the coarse mark of her husband who, with all his moral defections, probably was her moral equal, his vitalstandard higher, his tone a genial hypocrisy, and at bottom he was a democrat.
Mrs. Custis had no insight nor variability of charity; her mind, bounded by the municipal republic of Baltimore, which esteems itself the world, particularly among its mercantile aristocracy, who live like the old Venetian nobility among their flat lagoons, and do commerce chiefly with the Turk in the more torrid and instinctive Indies and South. Amiable, social, afraid of new ideas, frugal of money; if hospitable at the table, with a certain spiritedness that is seldom intellectual, but a beauty that powerfully attracts, till, by the limited sympathies beneath it, the husband from the outer world discerns how hopelessly slavery and caste sink into an old shipping society, the Baltimore that ruled the Chesapeake had no more perfected product than Mrs. Custis.
Her modesty and virtue were as natural as her prejudices; she believed that marriage was the close of female ambition, and marrying her children was the only innovation to be permitted. Certain accomplishments she thought due to woman, but none of them must become masculine in prosecution; a professional woman she shrank from as from an infidel or an abolitionist; reading was meritorious up to an orthodox point, but a passion for new books was dangerous, probably irreligious. To lose one's money was a crime; to lose another's money the unforgiven sin, because that was Baltimore public opinion, which she thought was the only opinion entitled to consideration. The old Scotch and Irish merchants there had made it the law that enterprise was only excusable by success, and that success only branded an innovator. A good standard of society, therefore, had barely permitted Judge Custis to take up the bog-ore manufacture, and, failing in it, his wife thought he was no better than a Jacobin.
On the Eastern Shore, where society was formed before Glasgow and Belfast had colonized upon the Chesapeake with their precise formulas of life, a gentler benevolence rose and descended upon the ground every day, like the evaporations of those prolific seas which manure the thin soil unfailingly. Religion and benevolence were depositions rather than dogmas there; moderate poverty was the not unwelcome expectation, wealth a subject of apprehensive scruples, kindness the law, pride the exception, and grinding avarice, like Meshach Milburn's, was the mark of the devil entering into the neighbor and the fellow-man.
Judge Custis was representative of his neighbors except in his Virginia voluptuousness; his neighbors were neither prudes nor hypocrites, and he respected them more than the arrogant race in the old land of Accomac and in the Virginia peninsulas, whose traits he had almost lost. Sometimes it seemed to him that the last of the cavalier stock was his daughter, Vesta. From him it had nearly departed, and his sense of moral shortcomings expanded his heart and made him tenderly pious to his kind, if not to God. He admired new-comers, new business modes, and Northern intruders and ideas, feeling that perhaps the last evidence of his aristocracy from nature was a chivalric resignation. The pine-trees were saying to him: "Ye shall go like the Indians, but be not inhospitable to your successors, and leave them your benediction, that the great bay and its rivers may be splendid with ships and men, though ye are perished forever." A perception of the energy of his countrymen, and a pride in it, without any mean reservation, though it might involve his personal humiliation, was Judge Custis's only remaining claim to heaven's magnanimity. Still, rich in human nature, he was beloved by his daughter with all her soul.
He awoke long after noon, in body refreshed, and a glass of milk and a plover broiled on toast were readyfor him to eat, with some sprigs of new celery from the garden to feed his nerves. He made this small meal silently, and Vesta said, as the tray was removed:
"Now, papa, before we leave this room, you are to tell me the whole injury you have suffered, and what all of us can do to assist you; for if you had succeeded the reward would have been ours, and we must divide the pains of your misfortune with you without any regret. Courage, papa! and let me understand it."
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 God."
"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 gods 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 God! 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 exasperationof the jealous gods. 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 assuringly.
"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.
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 towardsthe Furnace, with an extravagant livery team, had spread among all the circle around the principal 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 Phœbus, 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 nigger. 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 irrelevantaddendum:
"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'savem' life!".
"He's a comin', boys, whooep!" exclaimed JimmyPhœbus. "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: "tosavemy life!"
Jimmy Phœbus had the name of being descended from a Greek pirate, or patriot, who had settled on the Eastern Shore, and Phœbus 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. Phœbus. 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:
"Look out for fevernager this month, Mr. Milburn!"
Meshach bowed his head, gliding along as if bashfully anxious to pass.
"Nice weather for drivin'!" added Jack Wonnell, having also taken off his own tile of frivolity, to feel the effect; but this remark was regarded by the group as too forward, and a low chorus ran round of "Jack Wonnell can't help bein' a fool to save his life!"
Milburn said to himself, passing on: "Are those voices kinder than usually, or am I more timid? What is it in the air that makes everything so acute, and my cheeks to tingle? Am I sick, or is it Love?"
The word frightened him, and the sand under his feet seemed to crack; a woodpecker in an old tree tapped as if it was the tree's old heart quickened by something; the houses all around looked like live objects, with their windows fixed upon his walk, like married folks' eyes. As he came in sight of Judge Custis's residence, so expressive of old respect and long intentions, the money-lender almost stopped, so mild and peacefully it looked at him—so undisturbed, while he was palpitating.
"Why this pain?" thought Milburn. "Am I afraid? That house is mine. Do I fear to enter my own? And yet it does not fear me. It has been there so long that it has no fears, and every window in it faces benignant to my coming. The three gables survey yonder forest landscape like three old magistrates on the bench, administering justice to a county where never till now was there a ravisher!"
The thought produced a moment's intellectual pride in him, like lawless power's uneasy paroxysm. "It is the Forest these gentles have to fear to-day!" he thought, resentfully, then stopped, with another image his word aroused:
"What has that forest ever felt of injury or hate, with every cabin-door unlatched, no robber feared by any there, the blossoms on the negro's peachtree, the ripe persimmons on the roadside, plenteous to every forester's child, and humility and affection making all richer, without a dollar in the world, than I, the richest upstart of the forest, compelled to buy affection, like an indifferent slave!"
A large dog at Custis's home, seeing him walk so slowly, came down the path to the gate, also walking slow, and showed neither animosity nor interest, except mechanically to walk behind him towards the door.
"The dog knows me," thought the quickened heart of Meshach, "from life-long seeing of me, but never wagged his tail at me in all that time. Could I acquire the heart even of this dog, though I might buy him? My debtor's step would still be most welcome to him, and he would eat my food in strangeness and fear."
Milburn walked up the steps, and sounded the substantial brass knocker. It struck four times, loud and deep, and the stillness that followed was louder yet, like the unknown thing, after sentence has been passed. He seemed to be there a very long time with his heart quite vacant, as if the debtor's knocker had scared every chatterer out of it, and yet his temples and ears were ringing. He was thinking of sounding the knocker again, when a lady's servant, partly white, rolled back the bolt, and bowed to his question whether the Judge was in.
He entered the broad hall of that distinguished residence, and taking the Entailed Hat from his head, hung it up at last, where better head-coverings had been wont to keep equal society, on a carved mahogany rack of colonial times. The venerable object, once there, gave a common look to everything, as Meshach thought, and deepened his personal sense of unworthiness. He tried to feel angry, but apprehension was too strong for passion even to be simulated.
"O, discriminating God!" he felt, within, "is it not enough to create us so unequal that we must also cringe in spirit, and acknowledge it! I expected to feel triumphant when I lodged my despised hat in this man's house, but I feel meaner than before."
The room, whose door was opened by the lady's maid, was the library, containing three cumbrous cases of books, and several portraits in oil, with deep, gilded frames, a map of Virginia and its northeastern environs, including all the peninsula south of the Choptank river and Cape Henlopen; and near the door was a tall clock, that a giant might stand in, solemnly cogging and waving time, and giving the monotony of everlasting evening to the place, which was increased by the flickering fire of wood on the tall brass fire-irons, before which some high-backed, wide, comfortable leather chairs were drawn, all worn to luxurious attitudes, as if each had been the skin of Judge Custis and his companions, recently evacuated.
A woman's rocking-chair was disposed among them, as though every other chair deferred to it. This was the first article to arrest Milburn's attention, so different, so suggestive, almost a thing of superstition, poised, like a woman's instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, like the sphere it moved upon, traversing a greater arc than a giant's seat would fill. Purity and conquest, power and welcome, seemed to abide within it, like the empty throne in Parliament.
Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with his foot. It started so easily and so gracefully, that, when it died away, he pressed his lips to the top of it, nearest where her neck would be, and whispered aloud, with feeling, "God knows that kiss, at least, was pure!"
He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not inscribed, he guessed at them all, right or wrong, from the insight of local lore or envious interpretation.
"Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue," thought Meshach, "with wine and beef in his cheeks, and silver and harlotry in his eye, was the Irish tavern-keeper of Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against the banished princes whom Cromwell's name ever made to swear and shiver, and they paid him in a distant office in Accomac,where they might never see him and his bills again, and there they let him steal most of the revenue, and, of course, his loyalty was in proportion to his booty. Many a time, no doubt, he was procurer for both royal brothers, Charles and James, making his tavern their stew, with Betty Killigrew, or Lucy Walters, or Katy Peg, or even Anne Hyde, the mother of a queen—of her who was the Princess Anne, godmother of our worshipful town here. I have not read in vain," concluded Meshach, "because my noble townsmen drove me to my cell!"
The next portrait was clothed in military uniform, with a higher type of manhood, shrewd and vigilant, but magisterial. "That should be Major-general John Custis," thought Milburn, looking at it, "son of John the tapster, and a marrying, shifty fellow, who first began greatness as a salt-boiler on these ocean islands, till his father's friend, Charles II., in a merry mood, made Henry Bennet, the king's bastard son's father-in-law, Earl of Arlington and lessee of Virginia. All the province for forty shillings a year rent! Those were pure, economical times, indeed, around the court. So salt-boiler John flunkeyed to Arlington's overseers, named his farm 'Arlington,' hunted and informed upon the followers of the Puritan rebel Bacon, then turned and fawned upon King William, too. His grandchildren, all well provided for, spread around this bay. So much for politics in a merchant's hands!"
The tone of Meshach's comment had somewhat raised his courage, and a sense of pleasurable interest in the warm room and genial surroundings led him to pass the time, which was of considerable length, quite contentedly, till Judge Custis was ready.
Meanwhile, the steeple-top hat was giving some silent astonishment to the house-servants, assembled to gaze upon it from the foot of the hall. The neat chamber-servant, Virgie, had carried the wondrous information to the colonnade that the dreadful creditor had come, and Roxy, the table waiter, had carried it from the colonnade to the kitchen, where the common calamity immediately produced a revolution against good manners.
"Hab he got dat debbil hat on he head, chile?" inquired Aunt Hominy, laying down the club with which she was beating biscuit-dough on the block.
"Yes, aunty, he's left it on the hat-rack. I'm afraid to go past it to the do'."
Aunt Hominy threw the club on the blistered bulk of dough, and retreated towards the big black fireplace, with a face expressive of so much fright and cunning humor together that it seemed about to turn white, but only got as far as a pucker and twitches.
"De Lord a massy!" exclaimed Aunt Hominy, "chillen, le's burn dat hat in de fire! Maybe it'll liff de trouble off o' dis yer house. We got de hat jess wha' we want it, chillen. Roxy, gal, you go fotch it to Aunt Hominy!"
The girl started as if she had been asked to take up a snake: "'Deed, Aunt Hominy, I wouldn't touch it to save my life. Nobody but ole Samson ever did that!"
"Go' long, gal!" cried Aunt Hominy, "didn't Miss Vessy hole dat ar' hat one time, an' pin a white rose in it? Didn't he, dat drefful Meshach Milbun, offer Miss Vessy a gole dollar, an' she wouldn' have none of his gole? Dat she did! Virgie, you go git dat hat, chile! Poke it off de rack wid my pot-hook heah. 'Twon't hurt you, gal! I'll sprinkle ye fust wid camomile an' witch-hazel dat I keep up on de chimney-jamb."
Aunt Hominy turned towards the broadly notched chimney sides, where fifty articles of negro pharmacy were kept—bunches of herbs, dried peppers, bladders of seeds, and bottles of every mystic potency.
"Aunty," answered Virgie, "if I wasn't afraid of that Bad Man, I would be afraid to move that hat, becauseMiss Vessy would be mortified. Think of her seeing me treating a visitor's things like that. Why, I'd rather be sold!"
"Dat hat," persisted Aunt Hominy, "is de ruin ob dis family. Dat hat, gals, de debbil giv' ole Meshach, an' made him wear it fo' de gift ob gittin' all de gole in Somerset County. Don't I know when he wore it fust? Dat was when he begun to git all de gole. Fo' dat he had been po' as a lizzer, sellin' to niggers, cookin' fo' heseff, an' no' count, nohow. He sot up in de loft of his ole sto' readin' de Bible upside down to git de debbil's frenship. De debbil come in one night, and says to ole Meshach: 'Yer's my hat! Go, take it, honey, and measure land wid it, and all de land you measure is yo's, honey!' An' Meshach's measured mos' all dis county in. Jedge Custis's land is de last."
The relation affected both girls considerably, and the group of little colored boys and girls still more, who came up almost chilled with terror, to listen; but it produced the greatest effect on Aunt Hominy herself, whose imagination, widened in the effort, excited all her own fears, and gave irresistible vividness to her legend.
"How can his hat measure people's lands in, Aunty?" asked Virgie, drawing Roxy to her by the waist for their mutual protection.
"Why, chile, he measures land in by de great long shadows dat debbil's hat throws. Meshach, he sots his eyes on a good farm. Says he, 'I'll measure dat in!' So he gits out dar some sun-up or sundown, when de sun jest sots a'mos' on de groun, an' ebery tree an' fence-pos' and standin' thing goes away over de land, frowin' long crooked shadows. Dat's de time Meshach stans up, wid dat hat de debbil gib him to make him longer, jest a layin' on de fields like de shadow of a big church-steeple. He walks along de road befo' de farm, and wherever dat hat makes a mark on de ground all between it an' wherehe walks is ole Meshach's land. Dat's what he calls his mortgage!"
The children had their mouths wide open; the maids heard with faith only less than fear.
"But, Aunt Hominy," spoke Roxy, "he never measured in Judge Custis's house, and all of us in it, that is to be sold."
"Didn't I see him a doin' of it?" whispered Aunt Hominy, stooping as if to creep, in the contraction of her own fears, and looking up into their faces with her fists clinched. "He's a ben comin' along de fence on de darkest, cloudiest nights dis long a time, like a man dat was goin' to rob something, and peepin' up at Miss Vessy's window. He took de dark nights, when de streets of Prencess Anne was clar ob folks, an' de dogs was in deir cribs, an' nuffin' goin' aroun' but him an' wind an' cold an' rain. One night, while he was watchin' Miss Vessy's window like a black crow, from de shadow of de tree, I was a-watchin' of him from de kitchen window. De moon, dat had been all hid, come right from behin' de rain-clouds all at once, gals, an' scared him like. De moon was low on de woods, chillen, an' as ole Meshach turned an' walked away, his debbil's shadow swept dis house in. He measured it in dat night. It's ben his ever since."
"Well," exclaimed Roxy, after a pause, "I know I wouldn't take hold of that hat now."
"I am almost afraid to look at it," said Virgie, "but if Miss Vessy told me to go bring it to her, I would do it."
"Le's us all go together," ventured Aunt Hominy, "and take a peep at it. Maybe it won't hurt us, if we all go."
Aware that Judge Custis and his wife were not near, the little circle of servants—Aunt Hominy, Virgie, Roxy, and the four children, from five to fourteen years of age—filed softly from the kitchen through the covered colonnade, and thence along the back passage to the end of thehall, where they made a group, gazing with believing wonder at the King James tile.
* * * Vesta Custis, having changed her morning robe for a walking-suit, and slightly rearranged her toilet, and knelt speechless awhile to receive the unknown will of Heaven, came down the stairs at last, in time to catch a glimpse of half-a-dozen servants staring at a strange old hat on the hall rack. They hastily fled at her appearance, but the idea of the hat was also conveyed to her own fancy by their unwonted behavior. She looked up an instant at the queer, faded article hanging among its betters, and with a reminiscence of childhood, and of having held it in her hand, there descended along the intervening years upon the association, the odor of a rose and the impression of a pair of bold, startled eyes gazing into hers. She opened the library door, and the same eyes were looking up from her father's easy-chair.
"Mr. Milburn, I believe?" said Vesta, walking to the visitor, and extending her hand with native sweetness.
He arose and bowed, and hardly saw the hand in the earnest look he gave her, as if she had surprised him, and he did not know how to express his bashfulness. She did not withdraw the hand till he took it, and then he did not let it go. His strong, rather than bold, look, continuing, she dropped her eyes to the hand that mildly held her own, and then she observed, all calm as she was, that his hand was a gentleman's, its fingers long and almost delicate, the texture white, the palm warm, and, as it seemed to her, of something like a brotherly pressure, respectful and gentle too.
As he did not speak immediately, Vesta returned to his face, far less inviting, but peculiar—the black hair straight, the cheek-bones high, no real beard upon him anywhere, the shape of the face broad and powerful, and the chops long, while the yellowish-brown eyes, wide open and intense, answered to the open, almost observant nostrils at the end of his straight, fine nose. His complexion was dark and forester-like, seeming to show a poor, unnutritious diet. He was hardly taller than Vesta. His teeth were good, and the mouth rather small. She thought he was uncertain what to say, or confused in his mind, though no sign of fear was visible. Vesta came to his rescue, withdrawing her hand naturally.
"I have seen you many times, Mr. Milburn, but never here, I think."
"No, miss, I have never been here." He hesitated. "Nor anywhere in Princess Anne. You are the first lady here to speak to me."
His words, but not his tone, intimated an inferiority or a slight. The voice was a little stiff, appearing to be at want for some corresponding inflection, like a man who had learned a language without having had the use of it.
"Will you sit, Mr. Milburn? You owe this visit so long that you will not be in haste to-day. I hope you have not felt that we were inhospitable. But little towns often encourage narrow circles, and make people more selfish than they intend."
"You could never be selfish, miss," said Milburn, without any of the suavity of a compliment, still carrying that wild, regarding gaze, like the eyes of a startled ox.
Vesta faintly colored at the liberty he took. It was slightly embarrassing to her, too, to meet that uninterpretable look of inquiry and homage; but she felt her necessity as well as her good-breeding, and made allowance for her visitor's want of sophistication. He was like an Indian before a mirror, in a stolid excitement of apprehension and delight. The most beautiful thing he ever saw was within the compass of his full sight at last, and whether to detain it by force or persuasion he did not know.
Her dark hair, silky as the cleanest tassels of the corn, fell as naturally upon her perfect head as her teeth, white as the milky corn-rows, moved in the May cherries of herlips. The delicate arches of her brows, shaded by blackbirds' wings, enriched the clear sky of her harmonious eyes, where mercy and nobility kept company, as in heaven.
"How could you know I was unselfish, Mr. Milburn?"
"Because I have heard you sing."
"Oh, yes! You hear me in our church, I remember."
"I have heard you every Sunday that you sung there for years," said Meshach, with hardly a change of expression.
"Are you fond of music, Mr. Milburn?"
"Yes, I like all I have ever heard—birds and you."
"I will sing for you, then," said Vesta, taking the relief the talk directed her to. A piano was in another room, but, to avoid changing the scene, as well as to use a simpler accompaniment for an ignorant man's ears, she brought her guitar, and, placing it in her lap, struck the strings and the key, without waiting, to these tender words:
"Oh, for some sadly dying note,Upon this silent hour to float,Where, from the bustling world remote,The lyre might wake its melody!One feeble strain is all can swell.From mine almost deserted shell,In mournful accents yet to tellThat slumbers not its minstrelsy."There is an hour of deep repose,That yet upon my heart shall close,When all that nature dreads and knowsShall burst upon me wondrously;Oh, may I then awake, forever,My harp to rapture's high endeavor;And, as from earth's vain scene I sever,Be lost in Immortality."
Vesta ceased a few minutes, and, her visitor saying nothing, she remarked, with emotion.
"Those lines were written at my grandfather's house,in Accomac County, by a young clergyman from New York, who was grandfather's rector, Rev. James Eastburn. He was only twenty-two years old when he died, at sea, of consumption. His is the only poetry I have ever heard of, Mr. Milburn, written in our beautiful old country here."
"I wondered if I should ever hear you sing for me," spoke Milburn, after hesitation. "Now it is realized, I feel sceptical about it. You are there, Miss Custis, are you not?"
Vesta was puzzled. Under other circumstances she would have been amused, since her humor could flow freely as her music. It faintly seemed to her that the little odd man might be cracked in the head.
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Milburn. If it were a dream, I should have no expression all this day but song. I think I never felt so sad to sing as just now. Father is ill. Mamma is ill. I have become the business agent of the family, and have heard within this hour that papa is deeply involved. You are his creditor, are you not?"
Meshach Milburn bowed.
"What is the sum of papa's notes and mortgages? Is it more than he can pay by the sacrifice of everything?"
"Yes. He has nothing to sell at forced sale which will bring anything, but the household servants here; these maids in the family are marketable immediately. You would not like to sell them?"
"Sell Virgie! She was brought up with me; what right have I to sell her any more than she has to sell me?"
"None," said Milburn, bluntly, "but there is law for it."
"To sell Roxy, too, and old Aunt Hominy, and the young children! how could I ever pray again if they were sold? Oh! Mr. Milburn, where was your heart, to let papa waste his plentiful substance in such a hopeless experiment? If my singing in the church has given you happiness, why could it not move you to mercy? Think of the despair of this family, my father's helpless generosity, my mother's marriage settlement gone, too, and every other son and daughter parted from them!"
"I never encouraged one moment Judge Custis's expenditure," said Meshach, "though I lent him money. The first time he came to me to borrow, my mind was in a liberal disposition, for you had just entered it with your innocent attentions. I supposed he wanted a temporary accommodation, and I gave it to him at the lowest rate one Christian would charge another."
"You say that I influenced you to lend my father money? Why, sir, I was a child. He has been borrowing from you since my earliest recollections."
The creditor took from his breast-pocket a large leather wallet, and, arising, laid its contents on the table. He opened a piece of folded paper, and drew from it two objects; one a lock of blue-black hair like his own, and the other a pressed and faded rose.
"This flower," said Milburn, with reverence, "Judge Custis's daughter fastened in my derided hat. I kept it till it was dead, and laid it away with my mother's hair, the two religious objects of my life. That faded rose made me your father's creditor, Miss Custis."
Vesta took the rose, and looked at him with surprise and inquiry.
"Oh, why did not this flower speak for us?" she said; "to open your lips after that, to save my father? Then you informed yourself, and knew that he was hurrying to destruction, but still you gave him money at higher interest."
Milburn looked at her with diminished courage, but sincerity, and answered: "Your voice sang between us, Miss Custis, every time he came. I did not admit to myself what it was, but the feeling that I was beingdrawn near you still opened my purse to your father, till he has drained me of the profits of years, which I gave him with a lavish fatality, though grasping every cent from every source but that. I did know, then, he could not probably repay me, but every Sabbath at the church you sang, and that seemed some compensation. I was bewitched; indistinct visions of gratitude and recognition from you filled the preaching with concourses of angels, all bearing your image, and hovering above me. The price I paid for that unuttered and ever-repelled hope has been princely, but never grudged, and it has been pure, I believe, or Heaven would have punished me. The more I ruined myself for your father, the more successful my ventures were in all other places; if you were my temptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of the God in whose temple it was born."
Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit.
"Do I understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open under their startled lashes. "My father has spoken of a degrading condition? Is it to love you?"
For the first time Meshach Milburn dropped his eyes.
"I never supposed it possible for you to love me," he said, bitterly. "I thought God might permit me some day to love you."
"Do you know what love is?" asked Vesta, with astonishment.
"No."
"How came you, then, to be interpreting my good acts so basely, carrying even my childhood about in your evil imagination, and cursing my father's sorrow with the threat of his daughter's slavery?"
Milburn heard with perfect humility these hard imputations.
"You have not loved, I think, Miss Custis?" he said, with a slight flush. "I have believed you never did."
He raised his eyes again to her face.
"I loved my father above everything," faltered Vesta. "I saw no man, besides, admiring my father."
"Then I displaced no man's right, coveting your image. Sometimes it seemed you were being kept free so long to reward my silent worship. I do not know what love is, but I know the gifts of God, as they bloom in nature, repel no man's devotion. The flowers, the birds, and the forest, delighted my childhood; my youth was spent in the study of myself and man; at last a beautiful child appeared to me, spoke her way to my soul, and it could never expel her glorious presence. All things became subordinate to her, even avarice and success. She kept me a Christian, or I should have become utterly selfish; she kept me humble, for what was my wealth when I could not enter her father's house! I am here by a destiny now; the power that called you to this room, so unexpectedly to me, has borne us onward to the secret I dreaded to speak to you. Dare I go further?"
She was trying to keep down her insulted feelings, and not say something that should forever exasperate her father's creditor, but the possibility of marrying him was too tremendous to reply.
"This moment is a great one," continued Milburn, firmly, "for I feel that it is to terminate my visions of happiness, and of kindness as well. You have expressed yourself so indignantly, that I see no thought of me has ever lodged in your mind. Why should it have ever done so? Though I almost dreamed it had, because you filled my life so many years with your rich image, I thought you might have felt me, like an apparition, stealing around this dwelling often in the dark and rain, content with the ray of light your window threw upon the deserted street. Now I see that I was a weak dunce, whose passion nature lent no nerve of hers to convey even to your notice. Better for me that I had huggedthe debasing reality of my gold, and lost my eyes to everything but its comfort!"
He looked towards the door. Vesta sat down in the fairy rocker, and detained him.