"Jimmy Phœbus says the fust step is half of a journey," Levin noted.
"The blacksmith's boy looked avariciously on travellers ever after, who might possess a dollar. He took the empty shop of Patty Cannon's first husband, years after that saint died, and worked on hobbles, clevises, and chains to hold the kidnapped articles of commerce. Naturally he kidnapped, too, and, while she was yet a child,Patty's daughter became Brereton's wife, bestowed by the fond, appreciative mother. Master Levin, if you fall into his path, Brereton's daughter may be bestowed on you.Hola!behold her in Hulda."
"I can't see any of that sin in Hulda, Captain; she ain't even ashamed."
"No," affirmed Hulda, looking sincerely at Van Dorn; "it is too true to make me ashamed. I feel as if God's hand covered me like the silver dollar under my father's foot, because he let me survive such parents."
As she spoke she took one of the silver shillings of 1815 and covered it with her hand in Van Dorn's sight. Van Dorn spoke on rapidly:
"There were two brothers named Griffin from about Cambridge, in Maryland; spoiled boys who had taken to the flesh trade, and they stole men and gambled the proceeds away, and Brereton was their leader. One day a traveller came by from Carolina, hunting contraband slaves, and he was of your boastful sort, and dropped the hint that he had fifteen thousand dollars on his body to be invested. No later had he spoken than he felt his folly, from the burning eyes around him and watering mouths telling him to sleep there and slaves would be fetched; so he started in a fright for Laurel, by way of Cannon's Ferry, intending to deposit his money or make them deal with him there. The word was passed to Brereton by his wife or mother-in-law, and by Brereton to the Griffins, to mount and intercept the gold. Some say," lisped Van Dorn, "that Mistress Cannon, dressed in man's clothes, commanded the band."
A deep, chuckling interest, like the sound of a hidden brook, attended Van Dorn's recital, and he was blushing like a girl.
"At Slabtown, a nondescript spot a mile above Cannon's, the light-marching band crossed in a row-boat; they piled brush and bent down saplings in the traveller's road, where he should almost reach the brow of the hill in his buggy, and when the fleshmonger halted at the obstacle,chis, hola!they let him have it on both sides, and sent icicles to his heart. He drew a pistol, but in a dying hand. 'Away!' cried the assassins; 'he is not dead.' His horse, in fright at bursting firearms in the evening shades, leaped the brushy barriers and galloped to Laurel, and delivered there an ashy-visaged effigy, down whose beard the red dye of his life dripped audibly, as he sat stiff in death in the buggy. His name was only guessed; how happy he in that!"
"And what was the fate of the murderers?" Hulda asked, with less horror than Levin showed.
"Three of them were arrested; one of the Griffins exposed his brother and Captain Brereton; these two died on the gallows at Georgetown, young Brereton exerting himself under the noose to prevent his injudicious comrade saying too much on peerless Patty Cannon and her fair sisters, and thinking on their interests more than on this living child. Ha! HuldaBrereton?"
"The other Griffin also suffered death?" suggested Hulda, with a pale, unevasive countenance.
"Yes, your fond grandma, then in her blazing charms, drew him to her band again with the lure of Widow Brereton's hand; he killed a constable to recommend himself the better, and died on the gallows at his native Cambridge.Hala hala!she gave your mother, wild-flower Hulda, to Joe Johnson next to wife."
"It is an awful story," Levin said, "but Hulda never saw it."
"I can remember my father," said Hulda; "a large, strong man, with a slow, heavy face, but he never smiled on me."
"Well, here is the cross-roads," said Van Dorn. "What shall I do with this letter, bad wild-flower?"
"Read it, if you will, or take this English shilling and post it."
Van Dorn shrank back, rejecting the money.
"Will you not buy it back, Hulda," he whispered, "with love?"
"Never."
"You may pay for this letter this night with your life or modesty!"
"You dare not kill me," Hulda said.
"You will see," said Van Dorn.
Princess Anne had missed for several days some conspicuous citizens, such as Daniel Custis and wife, Captain Phœbus, Levin Dennis, and the free negro Samson—large components of a small town; but it had also gained what everybody admitted to be the most beautiful woman in the place except Mrs. Vesta Milburn—the brown-eyed, tall, roguish niece of Meshach Milburn, whom Vesta had made a lady of in externals, corrected some of her faults, such as the sniffle, and was daily teaching her the mysteries of grammar and address, aided by the rector of the parish, whose heart was roused to partial animation again by the young visitor.
Loyally William Tilghman had pressed his friendship on Vesta's semi-social husband, determined to like him, and finding small resistance there, and, happily, no suspicion; and this was so grateful to Vesta that she indulged the hope that her cousin and late lover would find compensation for her loss in Rhoda Holland.
Love came easily on as a topic of talk where Rhoda, with her unconventional preference for that subject, introduced it.
"Mr. William"—she had got that far towards the inevitable "William"—said Rhoda, one evening at Teackle Hall, as they sat in the library, "do preachers love jus' like other folks? Misc Somers say they is drea'fle sly-boots. She say thar was a preacher down yer to Girdle Tree Hill that preached the Meal-an-the-Yum was a-goin' to happen right off."
"Millennium," suggested Tilghman.
"Maybe so. Misc Somers call it 'the Meal-an-the-Yum,' I thought. Anyway, they was all goin' to rise, right off, an' he with 'em. Lord sakes! they had frills put on thar night-gowns to rise in. An' the night before they was a-goin' up, that ar scamp run away with a widder an' her darter, jilted the widder an' married the darter; an' they couldn't rise at Girdle Tree Hill caze the preacher wa'n't thar, an' they didn't know when."
"And I suppose Mrs. Somers tells it on him?" William Tilghman added.
"That she do. Now, was you ever in love, Mr. William?"
"I have been thinking, Rhoda, that when you are a good scholar, and grandmother and you grow to like each other, as I believe you will, I might fall in love with you."
"Lord sakes! Me loved by a preacher? Couldn't I never stay home from the preachin'? But then, to hear your own ole man a-barkin' away at the other gals, I think it would be right good!"
The subject had now gone to that length that in a few days, to Grandmother Tilghman's slight indignation, Rhoda called the rector "William," and he answered her, "Dear Rhoda."
The triple widow, however, had one lane to her consideration, up which the artful Rhoda strayed as soon as she saw the gate ajar.
"Misc Tilghman," she said one day, "I been a-lookin' at you. I 'spect you was a real beauty. If you wasn't a little quar, nobody would see you was a ole woman now."
"I was a belle," spoke the blind old lady, emphatically. "General John Eager Howard said he would rather talk with me than hear an oration from Fisher Ames. Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, proposed to me when I was old enough to be your grandmother, and after Susan Decatur, the commodore's widow, had tried in vain to get an offer from him. Said I, 'Carroll, is this another Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said I was a Spartan widow."
"Every widow I ever see was a sparkin' widow," Rhoda naïvely concluded, at which Mrs. Tilghman had to join in the laughter, and there was no evil feeling.
Jack Wonnell now held the temporary post of cook and woodchopper at Teackle Hall, and Roxy saw him every day, sewed his tattered clothing up, put the germs of self-respect in him, and caused Vesta to say to her husband, as they were sitting in his storehouse parlor one afternoon, in the intermission of his chill and sweat:
"Such rapid changes have taken place here, Mr. Milburn, that they have disturbed my judgment, and now I hardly know whether my oldest prejudice is assured, as I see that white man the happy domestic servant of my pure slave girl. She seems to have no greater affection than pity and interest for him, while he is made more of a man by his undisguised devotion to her. No man could work better than he does now."
"Love is so great, so occult," the husband said, his brown eyes searching his wife's face over, "that its combinations have centuries left to run before they shall beat every prejudice down, and prove, in spite of sin and dispersion, that of one blood are all the nations made."[4]
The raid into Delaware was all organized when Levin and Hulda were driven to Johnson's tavern, and the arrival of Van Dorn called forth cheers and yells, as that blushing worthy threw his trim, athletic figure out of the wagon and bowed to Joe Johnson, on the tavern porch:
"O hala hala!do you go, son-in-law?"
"I'll ride with ye, Captain, a split of the Maryland way, but sprat for that Delaware! I'll go in it no more. I'll stand whack with you, however, fur the madges I give you and fur my stalling ken."
"Quedito!" lisped Van Dorn; "we never leave your interests out, son-in-law. How is Aunt Patty?"
"She's made a punch fur the population, an' calls fur young Levin thar to lush with her."
"I'll take mine along," Levin cried, "an' drink it in the chill o' the night."
"No," commanded the voice of Patty Cannon; "it's a-waitin' fur you, son: a good stiff bowl of apple and sugar. Him as misses his drinks yer we sets no account on."
As Van Dorn and Levin pushed through the motley crowd on the little porch into the bar, where Mrs. Cannon administered, she set before them two fiery bowls, and cried:
"Come in yer, Colonel McLane, an' jine my nug an' my young cousin Levin."
"No, Patty," answered a voice from the next room within; "I've drunk my share. There's nothing like a conservative course."
As Patty put her head into this inner room, Levin Dennis, seeing a window open at his elbow, threw the whole of his liquor over his shoulder into the yard and smacked his lips heartily, saying,
"Good!"
"Ha!" exclaimed Van Dorn, evidently noticing Levin's deceit; "smart people are around us, Patty. Beware!"
He took from his pocket the fateful letter and glanced at its endorsement, and, as he did so, Levin heard an exclamation in the yard from a man who had received the whole of the apple brandy and sugar in his face, and was furious; but as soon as he seemed to recognize the thrower he muttered, apologetically:
"Hokey-pokey! By smoke! and Pangymonum, too!"
When Levin looked at Van Dorn again, the blush was on his face, but the letter had disappeared.
"Beware of the conservative course, Colonel," lisped Van Dorn, "except when generous Patty makes the punch; for she holds such measure of it that she does not see our infirmities."
"Honey," cried Patty Cannon to Levin, giving him an affectionate hug, "have ye swallered yer liquor so smart as that? Why, I love to see a nice boy drink."
"But no more for him now,cajela," the Captain protested; "two such will make him fall off his horse.Bebamos, Patty!Esta excelente!"—drinking.
"How purty the Captain says them things," the madam cried to the gentleman within. "Maybe he's a mockin' his ole sweetheart. Oh, Van Dorn, if I thought you could forget me I would kill you!"
Levin noticed the rapid temper and demoniac face of this not unengaging lady as she spoke, her whole nature turning its course like a wheeling bat, and from plausibility to an instant's jealousy, and then to a dark tide of awful rage, took but a thought.
"Qué disparate! hala o he!" Van Dorn lisped, sweetly, chucking the hostess under the chin; "but I do love to see thee so, thou charmer of my life. Never will I desert thee, Patty, whilst thou can suffer."
Her dark clouds slowly passed away as Levin turned from the place, but her small head and abundant raven hair showed the blood troubled to the roots, and the eyes, once rich with midnight depths, now glazing in the course of time, like old window panes, by age, searched the bandit's face with a strange fear:
"Van Dorn, time and pleasure cannot kill you: how well you look to-day. I think you are a boy, to be ruined again every time you love me, you blush so modestly. Where is that pot of color you paint your cheeks with even beforeme, whose blushes none can recollect? Why do you love me?"
"O dios!" said Van Dorn; "I love thee for these spells of splendor, dark night and noonday passion, the alternations of earth and hell that eclipse heaven altogether. I love to see thee fear, though fearing nothing here, because I see nothing that you fear beyond the grave. You hate this boy?"
"I hate him worse than wrinkles. Let him not come to me a child to-morrow; let him see ghosts long as he lives."
"How are the prisoners, Patty?"
"Why, the white nigger, dovey, is sick to-day; blood-loss and blisters have give him fever. My nigger, that I tied—ha! ha! a good job for Patty Cannon, at her age!—says t'other's a pore coaster named Jimmy Phœbus."
"Joe must be ready for a quick departure," the Captain exclaimed, "when we come back from Dover: it is a bold undertaking, and the whole of the little state will be aroused like a black snake uncoiling in one's pocket."
The woman pointed from her shoulder towards the inner room, and spoke even lower than before:
"Van Dorn, I have a customer."
"For negroes?"
"No, for Huldy. He shall have her."
As Levin Dennis stood at the cross-roads without, he saw a strange man ploughing in the farm so recently deserted by his hostess for the gayer cross-roads. The afternoon light fell on the sandy fields and struck a polish from the ploughshare, and, as the ploughman passed the brambly spot again, the buzzards slowly circled up, as if to protest that he came too near their young.
The long, lean servant, who had waited on the breakfast-table, came out to Levin and watched his eyes.
"Ploughin', ploughin'," he said. "Levin, I kin show you how to plough: I can't do it, but you're the man."
"Cyrus, Huldy don't hate you. She says you're the nighest to a friend she's got."
"Oh, I love her like sugar-cane," the lean, cymlin-headed servant said. "Tell her I'm goin' to be a great man. I'm goin' to spile the game. They lick me, but Cy Jeems has courage, Levin."
"Cyrus, tell Huldy all that's goin' on agin her. We don't know nothin'. You kin go and come an' nobody watches you. Huldy will be grateful fur it."
Putting his long arms on his knees and bending down, the scullion stared close to Levin's eyes and whispered, looking towards the field:
"Ploughin'! ploughin'!"
Then, turning partly, and gazing over the old tavern with a look of wisdom, Cy James whispered again:
"Hokey-pokey! By smoke! an' Pangymonum, too!"
"I reckon he's crazy," Levin thought, as the queer fellow turned and fled.
It was about three o'clock when the cavalcade was reviewed by Captain Van Dorn from the porch of the hotel, and it consisted of about twenty persons, white and black;some riding mules, some horses, and there was one wagon in the line—the same that had been driven to Cannon's Ferry—intended for Levin, Joe Johnson, and the Captain. Van Dorn stood blushing, pulling his long mustache of flax, and resting on his cowhide whip.
"Dave," he called to a powerful negro, "get down from that mule; you're too drunk to go. Jump up in his place, Owen Daw!"
The widow's son gladly vaulted on the animal.
"Sorden," continued Van Dorn, "you know all the roads: lead the way! Whitecar, go with him! We rendezvous at Punch Hall at eight o'clock. The order of march is in pairs, a quarter to half a mile apart. If any man acts in anything without orders, or halloos upon the road, he may get this lash or he may get my knife."
"Captain, where do we feed?" asked a small, wiry mulatto.
"Water at Federalsburg," answered Van Dorn; "feed at the Punch Hall."
They rode off in pairs at intervals of ten minutes; Van Dorn's vehicle went last. A moment before he departed, Cy James touched the Captain's sleeve and whispered, "Huldy." Turning to see if he was unobserved, Van Dorn followed to the deep-arched chimney at the northern gable, and dismissed his guide with a look.
"Captain Van Dorn," Hulda said, her large gray eyes strained in tenderness and nervous courage, "do that boy Levin no harm: I love him! God forgive all your sins, many as they are, if you disobey grandmother's wicked commands about my darling!"
"Ha! wild-flower, you have been listening?"
"No, I have only looked: I know Aunt Patty's petting ways when she means to ruin, and watch her black flashes of cunning between: she is no cousin of Levin; he is Joe's gentle prisoner; his very name she made him hide when she saw you coming this morning."
"Creo que si: Hulda, let me kiss you!"
"Yes, if you dare."
She gave him that pure, soul-driven, child's strong look again, exerting all the influence she had ever felt she exercised over him.
Nevertheless he kissed her for the first time:
"To-day,bonito, I dare to kiss thee. Believe me, my kiss is a tender one."
"Yes, sir. There is something like a father in it. Oh, my father, art thou in heaven?"
"If there be such a place, wild-flower, I think he is."
"Oh, thank you, Captain Van Dorn. There may you also be and find the faith I feel in my one day's love on earth. I pray for you every day."
"Ayme, poor weakling! Pray now for thyself: if thou canst save thyself sinless a brief day or two, it may be well for thee and Levin. Thy grandmother is dreadful in her joys this night."
"I can die," said Hulda, "if Levin be saved."
He kissed her again, and something wet dropped down his blushes.
"Eternal love!" he sighed; "I've lost it."
The Captain took his place at the reins, his picturesque velvet jacket, wide hat, bright hair, and gay shirt, thighings, belt, and boots, deserving all Patty Cannon's encomiums as he made a polite adieu and threw his whip like a thunderbolt, and a cheer rose from the discarded volunteers loitering about the tavern as he drove Joe Johnson and Levin away.
The road was nearly dead level for five miles, but, being the old travelled road from Laurel and the south to Easton, and pointing towards Baltimore, numerous farms and clearings were seen, and tobacco-fields alternated with the dry corn and new-ploughed wheat patches. Here and there, like a measure of gold poured upon the ground, the yellow ears lay in the gaunt corn-rows, to become the ground meal of the slave and the cattle's winter substance. Joe Johnson's popularity was everywhere apparent, and many a shout was given of, "Good luck to ye, Joe!" "Tote us a nigger back from Delaway, Joe!" "Don't be too hard on them ar black Blue Hen's chickens, Joe!"
Van Dorn was too far above the comprehension of his neighbors, or, indeed, of anybody, to be familiarly addressed, but "Patty Cannon's man" was the term of injured inferiority towards him after he had passed.
At Federalsburg they crossed the branch of the Nanticoke piercing to the centre of Delaware state, and saw one large brick house of colonial appearance dominating the little wooden hamlet, and here, as generally within the Maryland line, hunting negroes was the "lark" or the serious occupation of many an idle or enterprising fellow, who trained his negro scouts like a setter, or more often like a spaniel, and crossed the line on appointed nights as ardently and warily as the white trader in Africa takes to the trails of the interior for human prey.
"Joe," said Van Dorn, "what is to be your disposition of the prisoners we have?"
"All goes with me to Norfolk but one,—the nigger boxer; I burn him alive on Twiford's island. If the white chap is too pickle to sell, I'll throw him overboard; he ain't safe."
"Ea! sus!it is boyish to burn the old lad. I have had many a blow from a black, and stab, too. A dog will bite you if you lasso him."
"No nigger can knock me down and git off with selling."
"Then you are a bad trader. The negro's price is all the negro is; why make him your equal by hating him?"
"I am a Delaware boy," Joe Johnson said, "and it's the pride with me to give no nigger a chance. In Maryland you pets 'em, like ole Colonel Ned Lloyd over yer on the Wye; he's give his nigger coachman a gole watch an' chain because he's his son! What a nimenog! Some day he'll raise a nigger that'll be makin' politikle speeches, an' then I don't want to live no more."[5]
"Chito!Since the Delaware lawyer sent you to the post, son-in-law, you're morose. I have had to eat with negro princes, dance with their queens, and be ceremonious as if they had been angels."
"It would be the reign of Queen Dick for me! I couldn't do it, nohow."
"And, by the way, Joseph, I may see your friend, the lawyer Clayton, at Dover, to-night: he may send me to the post, too; and I fear no Delaware governor will take off the cropping of my ears, as was done for you in state patriotism."
"Beware of that imp of Tolobon!" Joe Johnson muttered. "How I wish you could kill him, Van Dorn. He's got to be a senator; some day he'll be chief-justice of Delaware: then, what'll niggers be wuth thar?"
"I fancy, Joseph, you might be a legislator in Delaware if your inclinations ran that way?"
"Easy enough, but I makes legislators. My wife, Margaretta—her first husband's sister is the wife of the chancellor."
"Hola! oh! How came that great alliance?"
"She was housekeeper; he was a close old bachelor and must break a leg. 'Well,' she says, 'you're a daddy; justice is your trade, and I must have it.' So, frombein' his peculiar, she becomes the madam; but she inwented the kid."
"I have never been in Dover; how shall I tell where Lawyer Clayton dwells?"
"It's on the green a-middle of the town, a-standin' by the state-house—a long, roughcast house in the corner, three stories high, with two doors; the door next the state-house is his office. Go past the state-house, which has a cupelo onto it, an' you see the jug an' whippin'-post. He's got 'em handy fur you."
Levin listened with all his ears. The liquor was now well out of his system, and he thanked God he had refused Patty Cannon's burning dram, else he might be this night—he thought it with remorse—the reckless mate for Owen Daw, whose own mother had predicted the gallows for him.
"And now, Van Dorn, I turn back," Joe Johnson said; "I have a job to do down the Peninsuly. McLane has become the owner of a gal thar, an' wants her sneaked. I takes black Dave with me, an' when I'm back, my boat will be ready an' my cargo packed. Then hey fur Floridey!"
He unhaltered his horse at the tail of the wagon, mounted him, and rode back across the stream. Van Dorn touched his horses and entered the dense woods in a byway to the north.
"Get up here, Master Levin, and ride by me," the Captain said, very soon, and he lifted Levin's old hat from his head and looked at his bright hair parted in the middle, his fine, large eyes, needing the light of knowledge, and his soft complexion and marks of good extraction.
"Where is thy father, Levin, to let thee go so ragged, with such graceful limbs and feet as these?"
"Shipwrecked," said Levin; "gone down, I 'spect, on the privateer."
"A sailor, was he? Well, he should be home to clothe thee and see that thou dost not cheat. I marked how Madam Cannon's punch was tossed out of the window."
"I thought you would not want me drunk beside you all night, sir, and then I might enjoy your company. I don't want to drink no more liquor."
"You like my company?"
"Yes, sir."
The Captain blushed, and asked,
"Why do you like me?"
"Not fur nothin' you do, sir. I like you fur somethin' in your ways; I reckon you're a smart man."
"Si, señor, that I am. I have gained the whole world and lost two."
"Two worlds, sir?"
"Yes, two immortal worlds; that is to say, two unaccountable worlds. I am no Christian."
"Maybe you're Chinee or Mahometan, then, sir; I 'spect everybody's got a religion."
"I was a Mahometan for business ends," Van Dorn said. "Having become a slaver, it was nothing to be a renegade. Stealing a man's soul every day, I put no value on mine. Yes, Mahomet is the prophet of God: so are you."
"You have been in Afrikey, I 'spect," suggested Levin.
"A few years only, but long enough to be rich and to be ruined. I know the negro coast from the Gambia to Cape Palmas, and inland to Timbo. I have had an African queen and the African fever: I went to conquer Africa and became a slave."
"In Africa, I 'spect, Captain," Levin remarked, without inference, "a nigger-trader is respectable."
Van Dorn shook his head.
"I doubt if that trade is respectable anywhere on this globe, unless it behere. No, I will say for these people, too, that while they do it low lip homage, they look downon it. I was once the greatest guest in Timbo, housed with its absolute prince, attended by my suite, looking like an ambassador, and he called me 'his son' and drew me to his breast. Proclamations were made that I should be respected as such, yet every human object fled before me. As I rode out alone to see the gardens and cassava fields, the roaming goats and oxen, and the rich mountain prospects, and saw the sloe-eyed girls bathing in the brooks, the cry went round, 'Flesh-buyer is coming,' and huts were deserted, fields forsaken, the gray patriarchs and the little children ran, and I was left alone with the dumb animals, despised, abhorred."
"Don't they have slavery thair, sir?"
"Yes, slavery immemorial, yet the slave-buyer is no more respectable than the procurer. The coin of Africa, its only medium, was the slave. He paid the debt of war, of luxury, and of business. Yet the soul of man, in the familiar study of such universal slavery, grovels with it, and points to bright destiny no more with the head erect: I died in Africa."
"Ain't you in the business now, sir?"
"Now I am a mere forest thief and bushman, Levin. He who begins a base trade rises early to its fulness, and in subsequent life must be a poor wolf rejected from the pack, stealing where he can sneak in. Such is the kidnapper eking out the decayed days of the slaver; such is the ruined voluptuary, living at last on the earnings of some shameless woman; such am I: behold me!"
Van Dorn's eyes turned on Levin in their cold, heartless light, and yet he blushed, as usual.
"You ought to be a gentleman, Captain. What made you break the laws so and be a bad man?"
"Aymè! aymè!" mused Van Dorn, "shall I tell you? It was Africa. I was a high-minded youth, cool and bold, and with a thread of pleasure in me. I went to sea in a manly trade, and, fortune being slow, they whispered tome, in the West Indies, that my clipper was just the thing for the slave-trade, and I made the first venture out of virtue, which is all the voyage. In Africa I fell a prey to the voluptuous life a white man leads there, to which the very missionaries are not always exceptions. Young, pale, gentle, graceful, brave, my blushes instant as my passions, the ceaseless intrigue of that hot climate circled around me like a dance in the harem around the young intruder: I forgot my native land and every obligation in it; I was enslaved by Africa to its swooning joys; I went there like the serpent and was stung by the woman."
"Ain't they all right black and ugly in Africa, Captain?"
"The world has not the equals of Senegambia for beauty," said Van Dorn. "The Fullah beauties are often almost white, and the black admixture is no more than varnish on the maple-tree. And even here, my lad, where civilization builds a wall of social fire around the slave, you often mark the idolatry of the white head to captive Africa."
"Did you make money?"
"For some years I did, plenty of it; but degradation in the midst of pleasure weighed down my spirits. The thing called honor had flown from over me like the heavenly dove, and in its place a hundred painted birds flocked joyfully, the dazzling creatures of that thoughtless world. Oh, that I could have been born there or never have seen it! At last I started home, but the world had adopted a new commandment, 'Thou shalt not trade in man.' They took my ship and all its black cargo, and I came home naked. Then my heart was broke, and I turned kidnapper."
"Home is the best place," said Levin; "I 'spect it is, even if folks is pore. When Jimmy Phœbus give me a boat I thought I was rich as a Jew."
"What is that name?" asked Van Dorn.
"James Phœbus: he's mother's sweetheart."
"Ce ce ce!" the Captain mused; "your mother lives, then?"
"Yes, sir. She's pore, but Jimmy loves her, and the ghost of father feeds her."
"Quedo!a ghost? what kind of thing is that? Aunt Patty sees them: I never do."
"It comes an' puts sugar an' coffee in the window, an' sometimes a pair of shoes an' a dress. Mother says it's father: I guess it is."
"O Dios!" lisped Van Dorn. "This Phœbus, is he a good man?"
"Brave as a lion, sir; pore as any pungy captain; the best friend I ever had. I hoped mother would marry him, he's been a-waitin' fur her so long. She's afraid father ain't dead."
"O hala, hala!women are such waiters; but this man can wait too. Is he strong?"
"He come mighty nigh givin' Joe Johnson a lickin' last Sunday, sir, in Princess Anne. He hates a nigger-trader. Him an' Samson Hat, a black feller, thinks as much of each other as two brothers."
"And he gave you a boat?"
"Yes, sir: Joe Johnson hired it of me, but I didn't know he was goin' to run away niggers. He's got my boat an' ruined my credit, I 'spect, in Princess Anne, an' what will mother do when I go to jail?"
"Why, this other man, Phœbus, is there to marry her or look after her."
"Oh, Captain," sobbed Levin, putting his hands on Van Dorn's knees, and laying his orphan head there too, "pore Jimmy's dead: Joe Johnson shot him."
The Captain did not move or speak.
"I've been a drunkard, Captain," Levin sobbed again, in the confidence of a child; "that's whair all our misery comes from. I've got nothin' but my boat, an' peoplehires it to go gunnin' an' fishin' and spreein', and they takes liquor with 'em, an' I drinks. God help me; I never will agin, but die first!"
"Are you not afraid to lean on me?" lisped Van Dorn.
"No, sir."
"I have killed people, too."
"The Lord forgive you, sir; I know you won't killme."
A sigh broke from the bandit's lips, in place of his usual soft lisp, and was followed by a warm drop of water, as from the forest leaves now bathed in night, that plashed on Levin's neck.
"O God," a soft voice said, "may I not die?"
Then Levin felt the same warm drops fall many times upon him, and his nature opened like the plants to rain.
"I have found a friend, Captain," the boy spoke, after several minutes, but not looking up; "I feel you cry."
"Chito! chito!" lisped Van Dorn; "here is Punch Hall."
Levin raised his head, and saw nothing but an old house standing in the trees, with a little faint light streaming from the door, and heard the low hilarity of drinking men. The whole band poured out to receive Van Dorn's commands.
"One hour here to feed and rest!" Van Dorn exclaimed. "Let those sleep who can. Let any straggle or riot who dare!"
Judge Custis, whom we left riding out of Princess Anne on Sunday afternoon, kept straight north, crossed the bottom of Delaware in the early evening, and went tobed at Laurel, on Broad Creek, a few miles south of Cannon's Ferry.
At daylight he was ahorse again, scarcely stiff from his exertion, and feeling the rising joys of a stomach and brain becoming clearer than for years, of all the forms of alcohol. His mind had been bathed in sleep and temperance, the two great physicians, and wiped dry, like the feet of the Prince of sufferers, with women's hairs. Exercise, natural to a Virginian, awakened his flowing spirits again, and he fancied the air grew purer as he advanced into the north, though there was hardly any perceptible change of elevation. The country grew drier, however, as he turned the head springs of the great cypress swamp—the counterbalance of the Dismal Swamp of Virginia—receded from the Chesapeake waters, and approached the tributaries of the Atlantic. At nine o'clock he entered the court-house cluster of Georgetown, a little place of a few hundred people, pitched nearly at the centre of the county one generation before, or about ten years after the independence of the country.
It was a level place of shingle-boarded houses, assembled around a sandy square, in which were both elm and Italian poplar trees; and a double-storied wooden court-house was on the farther side, surrounded by little cabins for the county officers, pitched here and there, and in the rear was a jail of two stories, with family apartments below, and the dungeon window, the debtors' room, and a family bedroom above; and near the jail and court-house stood the whipping-post, like a dismantled pump, with a pillory floor some feet above the ground.
Young maples, mulberry and tulip trees, and ailanthuses grew bravely to make shade along the two streets which pierced the square, and the four streets which were parallel to its sides—pretty lanes being inserted between, to which the loamy gardens ran; and, as the Judge stopped at the tavern near the court, he was told it was"returning day," and the place would soon be filled with constituents assembling to hear how "she'd gone"—she, as the Judge knew well, meaning Sussex County, and "gone" intimating her decision expressed at the polls.
"She's gone for Adams an' Clayton, ain't she, Jonathan Torbert?" asked the innkeeper.
"Yes," spoke a plain, religious-looking man, the teller of the bank; "Johnny Clayton's kept Sussex and Kent in line for Adams; Jeems Bayard and the McLanes have captured Newcastle: Clayton goes to the senate, Louis McLane to the cabinet, the country to the alligators."
"Hurrah for Jackson!" answered the host; "he suits me ever since he whipped the British."
At breakfast Judge Custis recognized a gentleman opposite, wearing smallclothes, and with his hair in a queue, who spoke without other than a passively kind expression:
"Judge."
"Ah! Chancellor!"
The Chancellor was nearly seventy years old, wearing an humble, meditative, yet gracious look, as one whose relations to this world were those of stewardship, and whose nearly obsolete dress was the badge, not of worldly pride, but of perished joys and contemporaries. His unaffected countenance seemed to say: "I wear it because it is useless to put off what no one else will wear, when presently I shall need nothing but a shroud."
Judge Custis looked at the meek old gentleman closely, sitting at his plate like a lay brother in some monastery or infirmary, indifferent to talk or news or affairs; and the remembrance of what he had been—keen, accumulative, with youthful passions long retained, and the man buoyant under the judge's guard—impressed the Virginian to say to himself:
"What, then, is man! At last old age asserts itself, and bends the brazen temple of his countenance, like Samson, in almost pious remorse. There sits twenty-five years of equity administration; behind it, thirty years of jocund and various life. No newspaper shall ever record it, because none are printed here; he is indifferent to that forgetfulness and to all others, because the springs of life are dry in his body, and he no more enjoys."
"Are you travelling north, Judge Custis?" the old man asked, for politeness' sake.
"Yes, to Dover."
"There is a seat in my carriage; you are welcome to it."
"I will take it a part of the way, at least, to feel the privilege of your society, Chancellor."
The old man gave a slow, sidewise shake of his head.
"Too late, too late," he said, "to flatter me. I was fond of it once. I have been a flatterer, too."
The Chancellor's black boy was put on the Judge's horse, and the two men, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned the court-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard the sheriff knock off two slaves to a purchaser, crying:
"Your property, sir, till they are twenty-five years of age."
"Ha, ha!" laughed, in a great horse laugh, a nearly chinless villager; "say till ole Patty Cannon can git 'em!"
The purchaser gave a cunning, self-convicted smile at the passing chancellor, whose look of resignation only deepened and grew more humble. The Judge had some vague recollection which moved him to change the subject.
"We see each other but little, Chancellor, though we divide the same little heritage of land. I suppose your people are all proud of Delaware."
"Yes," said the old man; "being such a little adventurer, a mere foundling in the band of states, our people have the pride of their independence. The laws are administered, some more farms are opened in the forest every year, blossoms come, and old men die and are buried on their farms, and their bones respected a few years. Our history is so pastoral that we must show some temper when it is assailed, or we might let out our ignorance of it."
They rode in silence some hours through an older settled and more open country, with some large mill-ponds and a better class of farm improvements, and the sense of some large water near at hand was mystically felt.
The Judge followed the old man's eyes at one place, seeing that they were raised with an expression of tranquil satisfaction, like aged piety, and a beautiful landscape of soft green marsh lay under their gaze from a slight elevation they had reached, showing cattle and sheep roving in it, tall groves where cows and horses found midday shade, and winding creeks, carrying sails of hidden boats, as if in a magical cruise upon the velvet verdure. Haystacks and farm settlements stood out in the long levels, and sailing birds speckled the air. In the far distance lay something like more marsh, yet also like the clouds.
"It is the Delaware Bay," the Chancellor said.
They soon entered a well-built little town on a navigable creek, with a large mill-pond, sawmills, several vessels building on the stocks, and an air of superior vitality to anything Judge Custis had seen in Delaware. Here the Chancellor pointed out the late home of Senator Clayton's father, and, after the horses had been fed, they continued still northward, passing another small town on a creek near the marshes, and, a little beyond it, came to a venerable brick church, a little from the road, in a grove of oaks and forest trees.
"Here is Barrett's chapel," said the Chancellor; "celebrated for the plotting of the campaign between Wesley's native and English preachers for the conquest of America as soon as the crown had lost it."
They looked up over the broad-gabled, Quakerly edifice, with its broad, low door, high roof, double stories of windows, and a higher window in the gable, trim rows of arch-bricks over door and windows, and belt masonry; and heard the tall trees hush it to sleep like a baby left to them. Nearly fifty feet square, and probably fifty years old, it looked to be good for another hundred years.
"My family in Accomac was harsh with the Methodists through a mistaken conservatism," Judge Custis said. "They are a good people; they seem to suit this peninsula like the peachtree."
A small funeral procession was turning into Barrett's chapel, and the Chancellor interrogated one of the more indifferent followers as to the dead person. Having mentioned the name, the citizen said:
"His death was mysterious. He was a Methodist and a good man, but it seems that avarice was gnawing his principles away. A slave boy, soon to become free by law, disappeared from his possession, and he gave it out that the boy had run away. But suddenly our neighbor began to drink and to display money, and they say he had the boy kidnapped. He died like one with an attack of despair."
As they turned again northward, in the genial afternoon, Judge Custis said:
"What a stigma on both sides, Chancellor, is this kidnapping!"
The old man meekly looked down and did not reply. Judge Custis, feeling that there was some sensitiveness on this and kindred subjects, yet why he could not recollect, continued, under the impulse of his feelings:
"The night before I left Princess Anne, Joe Johnson, one of your worst kidnappers, boldly came to my house for lodging. Why I let him stay there is a subject of wonder and contempt to myself. But there he was, perhaps when I came away."
"Not a prudent thing to permit," the old man groaned.
"I knew his wife was the widow of a gallows' bird, one Brereton—the name is Yankee. He was hanged for highway robbery."
A muffled sound escaped the sober old gentleman of Delaware.
"Youshould remember the murder, Chancellor. It happened in this state. This Brereton killed a slave-buyer for what he brought here upon his person to buy the kidnapped free people and apprentice-slaves. Brereton was the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, that infamous pander between Delaware and the South."
The old Chancellor looked up.
"I wish to anticipate you," he said, "in what you might further say with truth, but perhaps do not fully know. The murderer, Brereton, was the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, it is true; but he was also the brother-in-law of myself."
"Impossible!" Judge Custis said.
"Yes, sir; I married his sister."
The old Chancellor again turned his eyes to the ground.
"Great heavens!" exclaimed the Judge; "how many curious things can be in such a little state!"
It was in the middle of the afternoon that Judge Daniel Custis rode into a small town on an undulating plain, around two sides of which, at hardly half a mile distance, ran a creek through a pretty wooded valley, and a third side was bounded by a branch of the same creek, all winding through copse, splutter-dock, lotus-flower, and marsh to the Delaware Bay.
At the centre of the town, on the swell or crest of alluvial soil, of a light sandy loam foundation, an oblong public square, divided by a north and south street, contained the principal dwellings of the place, one of which was the Delaware State Capitol, a red-brick building, a little older than the American Constitution, with a bell-crowned cupola above its centre, and thence could be seen the Delaware Bay.
Near the state-house stood the whipping-post in the corner, humble as a hitching-post, and the brick jail hid out of the way there also, like an unpresentable servant ever cringing near his master's company. Various buildings, generally antique, surrounded this prim, Quakerly square, some brick, and with low portals, others smart, and remodelled to suit the times; some were mere wooden offices or huts, with long dormers falling from the roof-ridge nearly to the eaves, like a dingy feather from a hat-crown, with a jewel in the end; and one was an old steep-roofed hotel, painted yellow, with a long, lounging side.
At diagonal corners of this square, as far apart as its space would permit, two venerable doctors' homes still stood, which had given more repute to Delaware's little capital than its jurists or statesmen,—the former residence of Sykes the surgeon and Miller the pathologist and writer.
It was at the former of these houses, a many-windowed, tall, side-fronting house of plastered brick, with side office and centre door, that Judge Custis stopped and hitched his horse to a rack near the state-house adjoining. The sound of twittering birds fell from the large elms, willows, and maples on the square, and Custis could see the robins running in the grass.
From the door of the two-storied side office the sound of a violin came tenderly, and the Judge waited until the tune was done, when loud exclamations of pleasure, theclapping of hands, and the stamping of feet, showed that the fiddler was not alone.
Presenting himself at the door, Judge Custis was immediately confronted by a large, tall man, fully six feet high, with a strong countenance and sandy hair, who carried the fiddle and bow in his hand, and with the other hand seized Judge Custis almost affectionately, and drew him in, crying:
"Why, how is my old friend? Goy! how does he do? Who could have expected you on this simple occasion? Sit down there and take my own chair! Not that little one—no, the big easy-chair for my old friend! Goy!"
As Judge Custis cast his eye around, to note the company, the demonstrative host, with a flash of his gray-blue eyes, whispered,
"Who is he? who is he?"
"A Custis," whispered a person hardly the better off for his drams; "I reckon he is, by the lips and skin."
"Goy!" rapidly spoke the fiddler. "Friend Custis—I know my heart does not deceive me!—let me introduce you to the very essence of grand old little Delaware: here is Bob Frame, the ardent spirit of our bar; this is James Bayard, our misguided Democratic favorite; here is Charley Marim and Secretary Harrington, and my esteemed friend Senator Ridgely, and my cousin, Chief-justice Clayton. We are all here, and all honored by such a rare guest. Goy!"
As the Judge went through the hand-shaking process, the tall, well-fed host stooped to the convivial person again, and, with his hand to the side of his mouth, and an air of solemn cunning, whispered:
"Where from?"
"Accomac, or Somerset, I reckon," muttered the other.
"Now," exclaimed the host, taking both of Judge Custis's hands, "how do our dear friends all get along in Somerset and Accomac? Wheredoyou call home now,Friend Custis? How are our old friends Spence and Upshur, and Polk and Franklin and Harry Wise? Goy! how I love our neighbors below."
There was a strength of articulation and physical emphasis in the speaker that the Judge noted at once, and it was attended with a beaming of the eyes and a fine fortitude of the large jaws that made him nearly magnetic.
"And this is John M. Clayton?" said the Judge. "We are not so far off that we have not fully heard of you. And now, since I belong to a numerous family, let me identify myself, Clayton, as Daniel Custis, late Judge on the Eastern Shore."
"Judge Custis! Daniel Custis! Friends," looking around, "what an honor! Think of it! The eminent American manufacturer! The creator of our industries! The friend of Mr. Clay and the home policy! Bayard, you need not shake your head! Ridgely, pardon my patriotic enthusiasm! Look ata man, my friends, at last! Goy!"
As the Judge listened to various affirmations of welcome, Mr. Clayton, with one eye winked and the other resting on Lawyer Frame, the ardent spirit of the bar, made the motion with his lips:
"Cambridge?"
"No; Princess Anne."
"And dear old Princess Anne, how does she fare?"—he had again turned to the Judge—"how is the little river Wicomico—no, I mean Manokin—how does it flow? Does it flow benevolently? Does it abound in the best oysters I ever tasted? intarrapin, too? How is she now? Goy!"
"Are you on your way north, Brother Custis, or going home?" the keen, black-eyed Chief-justice asked.
"No, my journey is ended. I came to Dover to be acquainted with Mr. Clayton."
"Aunt Braner. Hyo! Come yer, Aunt Braner!" the host cried loudly, and an old colored woman came in, closely followed by some of her grandchildren, who stood, gazing, at the door. "Take this gentleman and give him the best room in my house. The best ain't good enough for him! Take him right up and give him water and make your son bresh him, and we'll send him the best julep in Kent County. Goy!"
"De bes' room was Miss Sally's, Mr. Clayton," the old woman answered.
A sudden change came over the highly prompt and sanguine face of the host; he hesitated, wandered in the eyes, and caught himself on the words:
"No, give him the Speaker Chew room: that'll suit him best."
As the Judge followed the servant out, the young Senator emptied his mouth of a large piece of tobacco into a monster spittoon that a blind man could hardly miss, and, with a face still long and silent, and much at variance with his previous spontaneity, he absently inquired:
"What can he want? what can he want?"
One of the small negro children had meantime toddled in at the door, and, with large, liquid eyes in its solemn, desirous face, laid hands on the fiddle and looked up at Mr. Clayton.
"Bless the little child!" he suddenly said. "Wants a tune? Well!"
Placing himself in a large chair, the young Senator tilted it back till his hard, squarish head rested against the mantel, and he felt along the strings almost purposelessly, till the plaintive air came forth:
"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon!How can ye bloom so fair?How can ye chant, ye little birds,And I so full of care?Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird,That sings beside thy mate;For so I sat, and so I sang,And wist not of my fate."
He closed his eyes on the strains, and a thickening at his throat, and movement of his broad, athletic chest, as he continued the air, showed that he was inwardly laboring with some strong emotion.
His cousin, the Chief-justice, made a signal with his hat, and one by one the sitters stole out into the square noiselessly, and went their ways, leaving the young man playing on, with the negro child at his knee, leaning there as if to spy out the living voice in his violin.
Other children came to the door—white children from the square, black children from the garden—and some ventured a little way in to hear the tender wooing of the sympathetic strings. He moved his bow mechanically, but the music sprang forth as if it knew its sister, Grief, was waiting on the chords. At last a bolder child than the rest came and pushed his elbow and said,
"Papa!"
"My boy, my dear boy!" the fiddler cried, as tears streamed down his cheeks, and he lifted the lad to his heart and kissed him.
Judge Custis, though no word passed upon the subject, saw the solitary canker at the Senator's heart—his wife's dead form in the old Presbyterian kirk-yard.
It was soon apparent to Judge Custis, from this and other silent things, that a light-hearted, affectionate, strong, yet womanly, engine of energy constituted the young Delaware lawyer-politician. Keen, cunning, impulsive, hopeful, his feet provincial, his head among the birds, he combined facility and earnestness in almost mercurial relations to each other, and the Judge saw that these must constitute a remarkable jury lawyer.
His face was shaven smooth; his throat and chin showed an early tendency to flesh; the poise of his head and thoughtful darting of his eyes and slight aqualinity of his nose indicated one who loved mental action and competition, yet drew that love from a great, healthy body that had to be watched lest it relapse into indolence. The loss of his wife so soon after marriage had been followed by nearly complete indifference to women, and he had made politics his only consolation and mistress, harnessing her like a young mare with his old roadster of the law, and driving them together in the slender confines of his principality, and then locking the law up among his office students to drive politics into the national arena at Washington.
"You require to be very neighborly, Clayton, in a small bailiwick like this?" the Judge inquired, as they strolled along the square in the soft evening.
"We have the best people in the world in Delaware, friend Custis: few traders, little law, scarcely any violence, and they are easy to please; but it is a high offence in this state not to be what is called 'a clever man.' You must stop, whatever be your errand, and smile and inquire of every man at his gate for every individual member of his household. The time lost in such kind, trifling intercourse is in the aggregate immense. But, Goy! I do love these people."
"It seems to me that you encourage that exaction."
"Well, I do. As an electioneerer, I can get away with any of 'em. Goy! Why, Jim Whitecar, Lord bless your dear soul!"—this addressed to a thick-set, sandy, uncertain-looking man who was about retreating into the Capitol Tavern—"what brings you to town, Jim?"
"It's a free country, I reckon," exclaimed the suspicious-looking man.
"Goy! that's so, Jimmy. We're all glad to see you in Dover behaving of yourself, Jim. Now don't give meany trouble this year, friend Jimmy. Behave yourself, and be an honor to your good parents that I think so much of. Oblige me, now!"
As they turned to cross the middle of the square, Clayton said:
"I'll have him at that whipping-post, hugging of it, one of these days."
"What is he?"
"A kidnapper down here in Sockum, and a bad one: a dangerous fellow, too. I hear he says if I ever push him to the extremity of his co-laborer, Joe Johnson—whom I sent to the post and then saved from cropping—that he'll kill me. Goy!"—Mr. Clayton looked around a trifle apprehensively—"I'm ready for him."
"Delaware kidnapping is a great institution," Custis said.
"It has an antiquity and extent you would hardly believe, friend Custis. Long before our independence, in the year 1760, the statutes of Delaware had to provide against it. Our laws have never permitted the domestic slave-trade with other states."
The little place seemed to have a good society, and the beauty of the young girls sitting at the doors or walking in the evening showed something of the florid North Europe skins, Batavian eyes, and rotund Dutch or Quaker figures.
As they returned to the public square, a room in the tavern, almost brilliantly lighted for that day of candles, displayed its windows to the gaze of Clayton, who exclaimed:
"Goy! that is surely John Randel, Junior."
"That distinguished engineer?" observed his visitor, who had been waiting all the evening to broach the subject of his errand. "I have the greatest admiration of him. Shall we call on him?"
"Why, yes, yes," answered Clayton, dubiously; "I'm not afraid of him. I—goy! I owe him nothing. He is such a litigious fellow, though; so persistent with it;barratry,champetry, mad incorrigibility: he's the wildest man of genius alive. But come on!"
Knocking at a door on the second floor, a sharp, prompt reply came out:
"Come!"
A middle-sized man, with a large head and broad shoulders, and cloth leggings, buttoned to above his knee, sat in a nearly naked, carpetless room, writing, his table surrounded by burning wax candles, and his countenance was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him and seized his hand:
"How is my friend Randel? The indefatigable litigant, the brilliant engineer, to whom ideas, goy! are like persimmons on the tree, abundant, but seldom ripe, and only good when frosted. How is he now and what is he at?"
"Stand there," spoke the engineer, "and look at me while I read the sentence I was finishing upon John Middleton Clayton of Delaware."
"Go it, Randel! Now, Custis, he'll put a wick in me and just set me afire. Goy!"
"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to let their judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or to suppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence that residue and fruit of all talents, the honest conviction of a man's bravest sagacity, perishes in lawyers' souls ere half their powers are fledged: they become the registers of other men, they think no more than wax.'"
Here Mr. Randel blew out one of the candles. The illustration was cogent. Mr. Clayton lighted it again with another candle.
"There's method in his madness, Custis," he said, witha wink. "Let me introduce my great friend to you, Randel?"
"Stop there," the engineer repeated, sternly, "till I have read my sentence. 'Seldom it is that a lawyer of useful parts, in a community as detached and pastoral as the State of Delaware, has a cause appealing to his manliness, his genius, and his avarice, like this of John Randel, Junior, civil engineer! No equal public work will probably be built in the State of Delaware during the lifetime of the said Clayton. No fee he can earn in his native state will ever have been the reward of a lawyer there like his who shall be successful with the suit of John Randel, Junior, against the Canal Company. No principle is better worth a great lawyer's vindication than that these corporations, in their infancy, shall not trample upon the private rights of a gentleman, and treat his scholarship and services like the labor of a slave.'"
"Well said and highly thought," interposed Judge Custis.
"'The said Clayton,'" continued John Randel, still reading, "'refuses the aid of his abilities to a stranger and a gentleman inhospitably treated in the State of Delaware.'"
"No, no," cried Clayton; "that is a charge against me I will not permit."
"'The said Clayton,'" read Randel, inflexibly, "'with the possibilities of light, riches, and honor for himself, and justice for a fellow-man, chooses cowardice, mediocrity—and darkness. He extinguishes my hopes and his.'"
With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his hands and waft of his breath, put out all the candles at once and left the whole room in darkness.
Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordinary illustration:
"Clayton, I believe he has a good case."
"That is not the point now," Mr. Clayton said, with rising spirit and emphasis. "The point now is, 'Am I guilty of inhospitality?' Goy! that touches me as a Delawarean, and is a high offence in this little state. It is true that this suitor is a stranger. He comes to me with an introduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Seward, of New York, who vouches for him. But the corporation he menaces is also entitled to hospitality: it is, in the main, Philadelphia capital. Girard himself, that frugal yet useful citizen, is one of its promoters. My own state, and Maryland, too, have interests in this work. Is it the part of hospitality to be taking advantage of our small interposing geography, and laying by the heels, through our local courts, a young, struggling, and, indeed, national undertaking?"
"Let the courts of your state, which are pure, decide between us," said John Randel, Junior, relighting the candles with his tinder-box.
"No lawyer ought to refuse the trial of such a public cause because of any state scruples," Judge Custis put in, in his grandest way. "That is not national; it is not Whig, Brother Clayton." The Judge here gave his entire family power to his facial energy, and expressed the Virginian and patrician in his treatment of the Delawarebourgeoisand plebeian. "Granted that this corporation is young and untried: let it be disciplined in time, that it may avoid more expensive mistakes in the future. No cause, to a true lawyer, is like a human cause; the time may come when the talent of the American bar will be the parasite of corporations and monopolists, but it is too early for that degradation for you and me, Senator Clayton. The rights of a man involve all progress; progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As a son of Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to me, I would not let this gentleman be sacrificed."
"If I were a rich man, Clayton would take my case,"the engineer said; "my poverty is my disqualification in his eyes."
He again essayed, in a dramatic way, to fan out the candles, but his breath failed him; his hands became limp, and then hastily covered his eyes, and he sank to the table with a groan, and put his head upon it convulsively.
"Gentlemen," he uttered, in a voice touching by its distress, "oh! gentlemen, professional life—my art—is, indeed, a tragedy."
The easy sensibilities of Judge Custis were at once moved. Senator Clayton, looking from one to the other in nervous indecision, seeing Custis's dewy eyes, and Randel's proud breaking down, was himself carried away, and shouted:
"I goy! This is a conspiracy. But, Randel, I'll take your case; I can't see a man cry. Goy!"
As they all arose sympathetically and shook hands, a knock came on the door, and there was a call for Mr. Clayton. He returned in a few minutes, with a rather grim countenance, and said:
"Randel, I have just declined a big round retaining-fee to defend the very suit your tears and Brother Custis's have persuaded me to prosecute. But, goy! a tear always robbed me of a dollar."
"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."