CHAPTER XIV.

MESHACH'S HOME.

Vesta had slept she hardly knew how long, but it was day, and slowly her

eyes turned towards the remainder of her bed to see if it was occupied.

The bridegroom was not there.

She reached her foot into her slipper at the bedside, and at one swift

step passed before her mirror, whispering:

"I have dreamed it all!"

The fresh, flushing skin, and radiant contrasts of hair and eyes seemed

so welcome to her in their perfect assurance of health, that she

whispered again:

"Have I dreamed it? He is not here. Oh, am I free?"

Then a feeling of reproval came to her as the minutest memory of that

wonderful yesterday rose to her mind, and the vow she had made to honor

and obey seemed to have been too easily repented. She looked upon her

hand, and the little, thin, pathetic thread of gold reaffirmed her

memory of the wedding-ring, and at the next suggestion a blush coursed

through her being like a redbird in the apple-blossoms: perhaps he had

stolen from her chamber stealthily as he came, while she, drowned in

deep slumber, wotted not.

A glance into the mirror again revealed those blushes repeating each

other, like the Aurora in the northern dawn, till, with a searching

consciousness, and her voice raised above the whisper, she said,

"Be still, silly _girl_!"

Opening the door, she found Virgie lying on the rug without, warmly

wrapped in her mistress's blanket-shawl, but wide awake.

"Virgie, no one has passed?" asked Vesta.

"No, Miss Vessy. Nobody could have stepped over me, for my mind has been

too awake, if I did sleep a little. Maybe _he_ ain't a-coming, Miss

Vessy. Maybe he's ashamed!"

"Hush, Virgie," Vesta said, "you are speaking of your master."

Throwing her morning-robe around her shoulders, the maiden bride tripped

noiselessly to her mother's apartment; the door was open, the night

taper floating in its vase, and Mrs. Custis lay asleep with her

bank-book under her pillow.

"Shall I awake her?" Vesta thought. "Yes, if I do not need her

experience, I do want her confidence, and not to give her mine would

seem deceit now."

Vesta kissed her mother softly, and placed her cheek beside that lady's

thin, respectable profile as she awoke, and said:

"Daughter, mercy! why, what has become of you? It seems to me I have

seen nobody for days, and I wanted to express my indignation even in my

dreams. Where have you been?"

"Oh, mamma," Vesta said, taking Mrs. Custis's head in her arms, "I have

been finding your lost fortune, which troubled us all so much. It is to

be given back to you, dearest--my husband has promised to do so."

"Your husband? Whom have you selected, that he is so free with his

money? How could you hear from Baltimore so soon? Now, don't tell me a

parcel of stuff, thinking to comfort me. Your father is a villain, and

my connections shall know it."

Mrs. Custis drew her bank-book from under her head, and began to cry, as

she took a single look at its former total.

"Darling mamma," Vesta said, "seeing you so miserable yesterday on

account of papa's failure, and your portion gone with it, I accepted an

offer of marriage, and have a rich man's promise that, first of all,

your part shall be paid to you. This house, and our manor, and

everything as it is--the servants, the stable, and the movables--belong

to me, in my own name, paid for in papa's notes, and by him transferred

to me to be our home forever, so that a revulsion like yesterday may not

again cross the sill of our door. Does not that deserve a kiss, mamma?"

"I don't believe a word of it," said Mrs. Custis. "This is another trick

to deceive me. I don't accuse you of it, Vesta, but you are the victim

of somebody and your father. Now, who can this man be, so free with his

ready money? It's not the style in Baltimore to promise so liberally as

all that. Have you accepted young Carroll?"

"No, nor thought of him, mamma."

"Then it must be that widower fool, Hynson, ready to sell his negroes

for a second wife like you."

"He has neither been here in body or mind," Vesta said; "never in my

mind."

"That would be a marriage to make a talk: it wouldn't be like you to

bestow so much beauty on a widower. I think there is a certain vulgarity

about an elegant girl marrying a widower. She is so refined, and he is

generally so sleek and sensual. Did you hear from Charles McLane?"

"Nothing, mamma; let me ease your mind by telling you that my husband

lives here in Princess Anne. He was father's creditor, Mr. Meshach

Milburn. He has loved me unknown for years. I saw a way to stop all

scandal and recrimination by marrying him at once, that the society we

know would have but one, and not two, subjects of curiosity. Papa saw me

married last night to Mr. Milburn, and I bear his name this Sabbath

day."

"His wife? Meshach Milburn? The vulgarian in the play-actor's hat? That

man! Daughter, you play with my poor head. It is going again. Oh-h-h!"

"Mother, it is true. I am Mrs. Milburn. My husband is your benefactor."

It was unnecessary to say more, for Mrs. Custis had really fainted.

"Poor mother!" thought Vesta, "I am confirmed in my fear that, if she

had been told of my purpose, she would have opposed it bitterly."

Roxy was summoned to assist Vesta, and after Mrs. Custis had become

conscious, and sighed and cried hysterically, her daughter, sitting in

her lady's rocker, spoke out plainly:

"Mother, I appreciate your disappointment in my marriage, though I

should be the one to make complaint and receive sympathy, instead of

discouragement; but I do not desire it; indeed, I will not permit any

person to disparage my husband, or draw odious comparisons between my

poverty and his exertions. If there are in my body, or my society, any

merits to please a man, they have fallen to him under the law of

Providence, that he that hath shall receive. I pity your illness, dear

mamma, but I fear Mr. Milburn is ill, too, for he has not been here all

night, though he left me at the church-gate."

"I hope the viper is dead!" Mrs. Custis said, with great clearness, and

energized it by sitting up in bed. Roxy left the room.

"I hope he has been murdered," said Mrs. Custis, "and that the murderer

will never be discovered. If there is any spirit of the McLanes left in

my brothers and nephews, they will wipe out, in blood, the insult of

this marriage between my daughter and the man who set a trap upon the

honor of a respectable family."

Vesta arose with a pale, troubled face, yet with some of her mother's

prejudice flashing back.

"He can defend himself, mamma. I shall go to seek him now, since he is

so much hated for me."

She returned to her room, and put on a walking-suit, and made her

toilet. In the library Vesta found her father dozing in a large chair,

with his feet upon a leather sofa, and a silk handkerchief drawn across

his crown, under which were the dry beds of tears that had coursed down

his cheeks. She saw, with a touch of joy, that the sherry in the

decanter was untouched, and the two glasses were still clean: he had not

relapsed into his habits, even while making an all-night vigil to wait

for the unwelcome son-in-law. He started as she entered, and then stared

at her between his dazed wits and a mute inquiry that she could

understand.

"He has not come, papa. And mamma--oh! she is severe."

Vesta, trembling at the throat a moment, rushed into her father's

wide-open arms, and buried the sob in his breast.

"Poor soul! Poor lamb! Poor thing!" he said, over and over, while his

temper slowly rose, that seldom rose of recent years, since pleasure and

carelessness had taken its masculine sting away, but Vesta felt his

tones change while he petted her, and at last heard him say, hoarsely:

"By God!"

"Sh--h!" she whispered, raising her hand to his mouth.

"I will kill somebody," he went on, finishing his sentence, and as she

drew away he strode across the room and back again, a noble exhibition

of passion that had a noble origin, in fatherly pity.

"Don't lose your true pride, papa, after you have persevered so long,"

Vesta said. "It is Sunday. Do you think he will come? What can have

happened?"

"He will either come or fight me," Judge Custis remarked. "I have tried

to be a peaceable man and Christian magistrate, albeit a poor hypocrite

in some, things, but I am pushed too far. My wife's smallness is worse

than insanity and wickedness put together. Between her and this

money-broking fiend, and my neglected child entrapped into such a

marriage, by God! I will clean my old duelling arms, and appeal to

injustice itself to set me even."

If he had been fine-looking in his sincere grief, he was thrice more

attractive in his sincere high spirit. Vesta, admiring him in spite of

her cares, did not like to see him in this unnatural recklessness.

"Dear father," she said, soothingly, "you have no cause of quarrel."

"I have every cause," he cried; "the proposal to marry you was an

insult, for which I should have challenged him, and shot him if he

declined. Now he has married you and absconded, using you and the Custis

honor with contempt. In my day I was the best shot in Eastern Virginia.

I can kill a man in this cause as easily as I have broken either of a

man's arms, at choice, in my courting days. Public opinion will clear me

under this provocation, and I can acquit my own conscience, abhorrent

as duelling is to me. My sons-in-law would leap to take the quarrel up,

and rid the world of Meshach Milburn."

"That is mamma's idea, to kill the debtor who has been specially kind to

her. She says she will send for Uncle Allan McLane, and is more

unreasonable than ever. Papa, your feelings are unjust. Something we do

not know of has happened to Mr. Milburn. He was not himself all the

while at the church. Now that I recollect, he was not ardent for the

marriage to be so soon. It was I who hastened the hour. Let us be right

in everything, having progressed so far with the recovery of our

fortunes, and let us await the fulfilment of events hopefully."

"Milburn was drunk at the ceremony, I saw that," Judge Custis said, "but

it was no excuse. In fact, what good can come of this violent alliance?

It seems to me that we have leaped from the frying-pan into the fire. I

feel ugly, my daughter, and there is no concealing it."

"Then you are in the mood to talk to mother this morning," Vesta said,

"while you have some unusual will and spirit. This resentful sullenness

she is showing I fear more than your passing emotion, papa. Be firm, yet

kind, with her, and I will go to find my husband. Yes, that is my place.

He may be more justly complaining of my absence now, than we of his

neglect."

"You don't mean that you are going to visit him at his den?"

"I shall go there first. It would have been my home last night if he had

required it. To tell the truth," Vesta said, blushing, "the poor man was

so kind to me yesterday, in spite of his object, and so quaint, and, as

it seemed, dependent on me, that my charity is enlisted for him, and I

could almost have married him from pity."

The Judge's temper fell a little in the study of his daughter's

blushing.

"Wonderful! wonderful!" he thought to himself; "that poor corn-bred

fellow has already made more impression on this girl's pride than a

hundred cavalier gallants. Truly, we are a republic, Vesta," he

continued aloud, "and you lay down the Custis character as easily as our

old connection, Lord Fairfax, accepted the democracy of his hired

surveyor, Mr. Washington, before he died."

"I laid down the Custis name yesterday," Vesta said, "though not their

better character, I hope. Papa, there is only one law of marriage; it is

where the wife follows the husband."

She looked a little archly at him, wiping her eyes of recent tears, and

though she may not have meant it, he was reminded of his own fear of his

wife.

Aunt Hominy now came in, having been told by Virgie to prepare coffee,

and she followed Roxy, who brought it into the library. The old cook had

a strange look, as of one who had been up all night at a fire, or a

"protracted meeting," and she poked her head in as if afraid to come

farther, till Vesta went out and kissed her kindly.

"Poor Aunty Hominy! did you think I was sold, or abused, because I had

been married? Dear old aunty, I shall never leave you!"

Aunt Hominy had a countenance of profound, almost vacant, melancholy,

mixed with a fear that, the Judge remarked, "he had seen on the faces of

niggers that had stolen something."

"Miss Vessy," she stammered, at last, "is you measured in by ole

Meshach? Is he got you, honey? Dat he has, chile! He's gwyn to bury you

under dat pizen hat. Po' little girl! Po' Miss Vessy!"

"Oh, Aunt Hominy," Vesta said, "he will be a kind master in spite of his

queer hat, and take good care of you and all the children; for he is my

husband, and will love you all for me."

A dumb, terrified look adhered to the old black woman's face.

"No, he won't be kind to nobody," she gasped. "You has gwyn been lost,

Miss Vessy. You is measured in. De good Lord try an' bress you! Hominy

ain't measured in yit. Hominy's kivered herseff wid cammermile, an'

drunk biled lizzer tea. Hominy's gone an' got Quaker."

"What's _Quaker_, Aunt Hominy?"

"Quaker," the old woman repeated, backing out and looking down,

"Quaker's what keeps him from a measurin' of me in!"

Then, as Vesta drew on her bonnet and shawl, having taken her coffee and

toast, the old servant, gliding back in the depths of Teackle Hall,

raised a wild African croon, as over the dead, giving her voice a

musical inflection like the jingle of Juba rhyme:

"Good-bye, Miss Vessy! Good-bye, Aunt Hominy's baby! Good-bye, dear

young missis! Good-bye, my darlin' chile, furever, furever, an' O

furever, little Vessy Custis, O chile, farewell!"

The tears raining upon her cheeks, her wild, wringing hands and upflung

arms and shape convulsed, Vesta remembered long, and thought, as she

left Teackle Hall with Virgie, that some African superstition had, by

the aid of dreams, drawn into a passing excitement the faithful

servant's brain.

At the corner of old Front Street, and extending almost out upon the

little Manokin bridge, stood Meshach Milburn's two-story house and

store, with a door upon both streets. Though planted low, in a hollow,

it stood forward like Milburn's challenging countenance, unsupported by

any neighbors.

"Don't it look like a witch's, Missy?" Virgie said, as Vesta took in its

not unpicturesque outlines and crude plank carpentry, the weather-rotted

roof, the decrepit chimney at the far end, the one garret window in the

sharp gable, the scant little windows above stairs, and the doors low to

the sand.

"It may have been the pride of the town fifty years ago, Virgie. I have

passed it many a day, looking with mischievous curiosity for the

steeple-hat, to show that to some city friend, little thinking I must

ever enter the house. But hear that wilful bird singing so loud! Where

is it?"

"I can't tell to save my life. It ain't in the tree yonder. It's the

first bird up this mornin', Miss Vessy, sho'!"

"Is not that larger door standing ajar, the one with the four panels in

it?" Vesta asked. "Yes, it is unfastened and partly open."

The blood left Vesta's heart a moment, as the thought ran through her

mind: "He has been watched, followed home, and murdered!"

The idea seemed to explain his absence on his marriage night, and, like

a sudden flame first seen upon a burning ship, lighting up the wide

ocean with its bright terrors, Vesta saw the infinite relations of such

a crime: her almost secret marriage, her custody of her father's notes,

the record of them upon her husband's books, his last word at the church

gate: "I will come soon, darling," and now, this silent abode, with its

door ajar on Sunday dawn, before the town was up--they might bear the

suspicion of a dreadful crime by the ruined debtor house of Custis

against their friendless creditor.

This thought, personal to her father, was immediately dismissed in the

feeling for a possibly murdered husband. If the idea barely touched her

sense of self, that her tremendous sacrifice had been arrested by

Heaven, and her purity saved between the altar and the nuptials by the

bloodshed of her purchaser at the hands of some meaner avenger, though

not until she had redeemed her father from Milburn's clutch, this idea

never passed beyond the portal of her mind; she repulsed it, entering,

and began to think of the easy prey her husband might have been, hated

by so many, defended by none, known to be very rich, no loss to the

community, as it might think, in its financial ignorance, and his only

guard a stalwart negro notorious for fighting.

Believing Milburn to deserve better than his present fame, Vesta

advanced towards the door of the old wooden store with a spirit of

commiseration and awe, and still the wild bird from somewhere poured out

a shriek, a chuckle, a hurrah, enough to turn her blood to ice.

As Vesta pushed open the old, seasoned door it dragged along the floor,

and the loose iron bar and padlock, dropping down, made a ring that

brought an echo like a tomb's out of the hollow interior.

"'Deed, Miss Vessy, I'm 'fraid to go in there," Virgie said.

"You are not to come in till I call you. But hear that bird rioting in

song! Does Mr. Milburn keep birds?"

"I can't tell, Miss Vessy. That bird's a Mocker. It must be in there

somewhere. Oh, don't go in, Miss Vessy; something will catch you, dear

Missy, sho'."

But Vesta was already gone, following the piercing sound of the native

bird, that seemed to be in the loft.

She saw a little counter of pine, and a pine desk built into it, and

bundles of skins, some cord-wood, a pile of lumber and boxes, a few

barrels of oil or spirits, and dust and cobwebs thick on everything; and

a little way in from the door the light and darkness made weird effects

upon each other, increasing the apparent distances, and changing the

forms; and the sun, now risen, made turning cylinders of gold-dust at

certain knot-holes in the eastern gable, across whose film she saw two

lean mice stand upon the floor unalarmed, and tamely watch her come.

The screaming of the bird was conveyed through the thin floor from above

with loud distinctness, and every note of singing things seemed to be

imitated by it, from the hawk's gloating cry to the swallow's twittering

alarm, with the most rapid versatility, and even hurry, as if the

creature was trying over every bird language, with the hope of finding

one mankind could understand. It was idle to expect to be heard amid

such clamor, and Vesta, having pounded on the floor a few times, made

her way to a sort of cupboard, that might turn out to be a stairway,

and, sure enough, a door opened on its dark side, and light from above

flickered down.

At this moment the bird's notes abruptly ceased, and a voice, unlike

anything she had ever heard in her life, yet human, spoke in response to

a more natural human voice, both issuing from above.

The second voice seemed to be Milburn's; the first voice was something

like it, yet not like anything from the throat of man, and the

superstition she had been rebuking in her servant came with a thrilling

influence upon her entire nature. She was about to fly, but called out

one word as she arrested herself:

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!"

The loud, unclassifiable voice above immediately answered:

"Gent! Gent-gent-gent-en! t-chee, t-chee! Gents, tss-tss-tss! Ha! ha!

Gentlemen!"

"May I come up?" Vesta cried.

"Come, p-chee! Come chee! come tsee! See me! see me! see me! Come

p-chee! come see! come see me!"

The last accentuation, in spite of the bird's interference, was

sufficiently distinct to amount to an invitation, and with a raising of

her eyelids once dependently to heaven, Vesta went up the stairs.

She put her head into a large, long room, which took up the whole

contents of the second story, and was lighted on three sides by the

small windows she had seen without. It had no carpet or floor-covering

of any kind; the fire was gone out upon the chimney-hearth in the end,

and the atmosphere, a little chill, was melting before the sunshine

which now streamed in at both sides of the fireplace and clearly

revealed every object in the apartment,--some clothes-pegs, a wooden

table with a blue plate, a blue cup and saucer and a saucepan upon it,

and a coarse knife and fork; a large green chest, and a leather hat-box;

an old hair trunk fifty years old, and nearly falling to pieces; black

silhouettes, in little round ebony frames, of a woman and a man hung

over the mantel, and between them a silhouette of a face she had no

difficulty in recognizing to be intended for her own.

Stretched upon a low child's bed, of the sort called trundle-bed in

those days, which could be wheeled under the high-legged bed of the

parents, lay the bridegroom, in his wedding-dress and gaitered shoes,

with his steeple-crowned hat upon the faded calico quilt beside him, and

his face as red as burning fever could make it.

Vesta only verified the particulars of the inventory of Milburn's lodge

afterwards, her instant attention being drawn to the motionless form of

her husband, whose flushed face seemed to indicate a death by

strangulation or apoplexy. She went forward and put her hand upon him.

"Mr. Milburn!" she spoke.

"Milburn!" echoed a voice of piercing strength, though ill articulated.

She looked around in astonishment, and saw nobody.

"Husband!" Vesta spoke, louder, stooping over him.

"S'band! s'band! See! see!" shouted the wanton voice, almost at her

elbow.

Vesta, with one hand on the helpless man's brow, turned again, almost

indignantly, for the tone seemed to address some sense of neglect or

shame in her, which she had not been guilty of. Still, nothing was to be

seen.

At the far corner of the room was a step-ladder leading to a hole in the

loft above; but this was not the place of the interruption, for she

heard the voice now come as from the chimney at the opposite end of the

room, nearer the bed, and accompanied with a fluttering and scratching,

as if some spirit of evil, with the talons of a rat or a bat, was trying

to break in where the prostrate man lay on the bed of oblivion.

"Meshach! Meshach!" rang the half-human cry, "Hoo! hoo! Vesty! Vesty!

Sweet! sweet! sweet! Ha, ha! See me! See me! Meshach, he! Vesty, she!

She! she! she! Hoot! hoot! ha!"

Rapidly changing her view, with her ears no less than her heart tingling

at the use of her own name, Vesta saw on the dusty wooden mantel a

common bird of a gray color, with dashes of brown and black upon his

wings, and a whitish breast, and he was greatly agitated, as if he meant

to fly upon her or upon some other intruder she could not see.

His eyes, of black pupils upon yellowish eyeballs, sparkled with nervous

activity. He flung himself into the air above her head, uttering sounds

of such mellow richness and such infinite fecundity of modulation, that

the old hovel almost burst with intoxicated song, combining gladness,

welcome, fear, defiance, superstition, horror, and epithalamium all

together, like Orpheus gone mad, and losing the continuity of his golden

notes.

The bird's upper bill was beaked like a hawk's, his lower was sharp as a

lance, and between them issued that infuriated melody and cadence and

epithet that old Patrick Henry's spirit might have migrated into from

his grave in the Virginia woods. He suddenly flung himself from his

vortex of song upon the bed of the sick man, with a twitching hop and

rapid opening and shutting of the tail, like the fan of a disturbed

beauty, and thence perched upon Milburn's peaked hat, and with a

convulsive struggle of his throat and body, as if he were in superhuman

labor, brought out, distinct as man could speak, the words,

"'Sband! 'sband! Vesty! Vesty! Sweet! sweet! Come see! come see!"

Vesta, by a quick, expert movement, grasped the bird, and smoothed it

against her bosom, and soothed its excitement.

She had heard verified what Audubon avowed, and had but recently

published in the beautiful edition of his works her father was a

subscriber to, that some said the American mocking-bird could imitate

the human voice, though the naturalist remarked that he himself had

never heard the bird do it.

The present verification, Vesta thought, of the mocking-bird's supremest

power, might have issued from its excitement at the silent and helpless

condition of its master--that master who had told Vesta that no bird in

the woods ever resisted his seductions and mystic influence.

"If that be true," Vesta said to herself, "there is no danger of this

vociferous pet making his escape if I put him out of the window till I

can see if his master speaks or lives."

So she raised the window, and flung the mocking-bird up into the air,

and it came down and dropped into the old willow-tree beneath, and there

set up a concert the Sabbath morning might have been proud of, when, in

the corn-fields, the free-footed Saviour went plucking the milky ears.

Vesta could but stop a minute and listen.

The liquid notes chased each other around in circles of dizzy harmony,

as if angels were at hide-and-seek on the blue branches of the air,

eluding each other in pure-heartedness, chasing each other with eager

love, sighing praise and happiness as their supernal hearts emitted

music in the glow of ecstasy, and carrying upward the loveliest emotions

of the earth in yearning sympathy for nature. No language, now, that

Vesta could identify, was woven into that maze of morning song, which

challenged, with its fulness and golden weight, the floods of sunshine,

matching light with sound, spontaneous both, and rivals for the favors

of the soft atmosphere. Singing with all its heart, outdoing all it

knew, forgetting imitation in wild improvisation, watching her window as

it danced upon the twigs and fluttered into the air, conscious of her

listening as it purled and warbled towards her, and sounded every pipe

and trumpet, virginal and clarion, hautboy and castanet, in the

orchestra of its rustic bosom, the mocking-bird's ode seemed almost

supernatural this morn to Vesta, and she thought to herself:

"Oh, what wedding music in the cathedral at Baltimore could equal that?

and this poor man receives it for his epithalamium, without cost, as

truly as if nature were greeting my coming to him in the old poet's

spirit:

"'Now all is done; bring home the bride againe;

Bring home the triumph of our victory;

Bring home with you the glory of her gaine,

With joyance bring her and with jollity:

Sing, ye sweet angels, Alleluia sing,

That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.'"

Relieved from the agitation of the mocking-bird, Vesta now gave her

whole attention to her husband; and the high heat of his brain and

circulation, and his muttering, like delirium, seemed to indicate that

he had an intense attack of intermittent fever. She heard the words

several times repeated by him: "I will come soon, darling!" and the

simplicity of his devotion to her, unloved as he was, had such flavor of

pathos in it that the tears started to Vesta's eyes.

"Poor soul!" she said, "it will be long before I can love him. _There_,

his hunger must be enduring. But my duty is not the less clear to stay

by his side and nurse him, as his wife."

At this conclusion she looked Milburn over carefully, to see if any

wound or sign of violence, whether by accident or an enemy, appeared

upon him, and finding none, and he all the time wandering in his sleep,

she climbed the ladder and peeped into the garret, to see if his servant

might be there. Samson's bed, as she supposed it was, had not been

disturbed, and so, descending, she raised the window over the larger

door she had entered by, and beckoned Virgie to come up.

"Take this tin cup," she said to the quadroon, "and go to the spring,

near here, and bring it to me full of water."

Then, as the girl tripped away, Vesta found a piece of paper, and wrote

her father a note, telling him to come to her; and to the girl, when she

returned, her mistress said:

"I want you to get a roll of new rag-carpet at Teackle Hall, and have it

brought here, to spread upon this floor. Send me, too, a pair of our

brass andirons, and pack in a basket some glass, table-ware, and linen.

Tell papa to bring one of his own night-shirts, and to take down my

picture in the sewing-room, and wrap it up, and have it sent. I must

have mamma's medicine-box and a wheelbarrow of ice; and let Hominy make

some strong tea and hot-water toast. Virgie, do not forget that this

sick gentleman is my husband, and a part of our own family!"

"The girl's face preserved its respect with difficulty as she heard the

last part of the sentence, but she replied to What she understood to be

a warning by saying:

"Miss Vessy, I never tell anybody tales."

"No, dear, you do not. I only feared you might forget the very different

view we must take of Mr. Milburn from his former life here."

Being again left alone, Vesta took the tin cup of spring-water, and,

raising the disturbed man's head, she gave him a drink, and, as he

opened his eyes to see whom it was, she heard him say, with an

articulate sigh:

"Heaven."

With the remainder of the water and her handkerchief she washed his hot

skin and kept it moist, and fitful murmurs, as "Darling!" "Angel!"

"Beautiful lady!" came from his roving brain as perception and poison

contended for his mind. The inborn sense in woman of happiness after

doing good offices and being appreciated was attended with a certain

intellectual elation, and even amusement, at having witnessed what was

altogether new to her,--the life of the meaner class of white people.

She looked at the dexterous silhouette of herself, cut, probably, from

memory, long ago, by the man, no doubt, who never knew her until

yesterday, and, guessing the companion profiles to be his mother and

father, she exclaimed, mentally:

"I cannot see anything insincere about this man's statement to me. Here

are all the proofs of his deep attachment to me long before he forced my

name upon papa with such apparent insolence. If papa could see these

proofs with a woman's interest, he would have a full apology in them.

Here, too, is the bird that sings my name. What strength of

prepossession the master must have had to make the feathered pupil

repeat the sound of 'Vesta,' and call me 'sweet!' What resources, too,

without the use of money or social aids! He knows the story of our

English beginning, while we make it an idle boast; but to him Cromwell

and Milton, Raleigh and Vane, are men of to-day. Ah!" Vesta thought, "I

think I see now one of those Puritans in my husband, of whom I have

heard as sprinkled through Virginia. We are the Cavaliers. There is the

Roundhead, even to the King James hat."

As she was led onward in these probabilities, Vesta took up the demure

old Hat and looked it over without any superstition, and reflected:

"Do we not exaggerate trifles? Why should this man be so derided because

he covers his head with an old hat? What of it? Suppose it shows some

vanity or eccentricity, why is there more merit in covering that up than

in expressing it in the dress? The styles we wear to-day are the

derision even of the current journals, and what will be thought of them

fifty years hence, when the fashion magazines show me as I look,--the

envy of my moment, the fright of my grandchildren?"

With rising color, she put the hat in the leather hat-box, and shut it

up.

Judge Custis made his way up the dark stairs in a little while, and, as

soon as he looked at Milburn, exclaimed,

"Curses come home to roost! It was only night before last that I said,

in the presence of Meshach's negro, 'May the ague strike him and the

bilious sweat from Nassawongo mill-pond!' He slept by it that night,

while I was tossing in misery. The next night it was his turn. Daughter,

he has the bilious intermittent fever, the legacy of all his fathers. He

exposed himself, I suppose, extraordinarily that night, and I hear that

he burned the old cabin in the morning. Now he will burn, in memory of

it, for the next ten weeks; for he has, I suspect, from the time of day

the burning and delirium came, what is called the double quotidian type

of the fever, with two attacks in the twenty-four hours."

"Poor man!" exclaimed Vesta.

"Now I can account for his appearance at the marriage ceremony last

night. The fever was on him, but he went through it by hard grit, and,

probably, returning here to get some relief, he just fell over on that

bed, and his head left him for some hours. The paroxysm goes away during

sleep, and returns in the morning; so, before he could get abroad

to-day, even if he could walk, to report himself at Teackle Hall,

another fever came, and a furious one, too, and he will have good luck

to survive forty days of fever, with probably eighty sweats in that

time."

"He must be doctored at once, papa."

"Well, I am good enough doctor for the bilious fever. He wants plenty of

cold lemonade, cold sponging, and ice to suck when the fever is on him.

When the chills intervene he wants blanketing, hot bottles at his feet,

and hot tea, or something stronger. In the rest between the attacks of

fever and chill, he wants calomel and Peruvian bark, and if these

delirious spells go on, he may want both bleeding and opium."

"Here are some of the things he immediately needs, then," Vesta said, as

a tall white man she had never seen before came up the stairs with

Virgie, bringing some Susquehanna ice in a blanket, and a roll of

carpet, and other articles she had sent for. The man's face wore a large

bruise that heightened his savage appearance.

"Judge," exclaimed the stranger, "I'm doin' a little work to pay fur my

board. Who's your whiffler? He'll know me when he sees me next time."

Following the stranger's eyes, Vesta and her father saw Meshach Milburn,

half raised up from the low trundle-bed, staring at Joe Johnson as if

trying to get at him. His lips moved, he partly articulated:

"Catch the--scoundre--_him_!"

"Joe," said the Judge, "slip away! He recognizes you as the assailant

yesterday. Don't hesitate: see how he glares at you!"

"Oh, it's the billy-noodle with the steeple nab-cheat, him that settled

me with the brick," said the stranger, in a low voice. "So I have piped

him. Ah! that's plumby!"

As the tall man started to go Milburn's countenance relaxed, he wandered

again in his head, and fell back upon the bed.

"I told you he was a hard hater, Mr. Johnson," the Judge remarked.

"Them shakes is the equivvy for the bruise he give me,--that is, till we

both heal up. He's painted the ensigns of all nations on my stummick,

Judge. But a blow is cured by a blow!"

With a look of admiring computation upon the girl Virgie, Joe Johnson

drew his long figure down the stairs, like a pole.

"What a brutal giant," Vesta said; "and how came he to be doing our

errands?"

"Why, Aunt Hominy hadn't nobody to bring the wheelbarrow load, and this

man said he'd come, and he would come, Miss Vesty, so I couldn't say

anything."

"He's a man of a good deal of influence," said the Judge, uneasily, "in

the upper part of our county, and in Delaware. Last night, after the

wedding, he slapped Meshach's hat, and old Samson knocked him down for

it, and he would have killed Samson, I hear, but for your bridegroom,

who felled him with a timely brick. It's a hard team to pass on a narrow

road,--Meshach and Samson; hey, Virgie?"

"I'm glad old Samson beat him, anyway," the pretty quadroon said,

showing her white teeth.

"Oh, what troubles will not that hat bring upon us!" Vesta thought; and

then spoke: "If Mr. Milburn was strong, I think he would hardly let that

man get out of the county before night."

"Well, daughter, what are you going to do with these articles he has

brought?"

"They are to make this room comfortable. See, he has my picture here,

cut by his own hands: I want to put a better one before him: help me

hang it, papa!"

In a few minutes the bright oil portrait, but recently painted by Mr.

Rembrandt Peale, was taking the sunlight upon its warm brunette cheeks,

in full sight of the bridegroom, and the thick rag carpet warmed the

floor, and Virgie had made a second errand to Teackle Hall, and brought

back the lady's rocking-chair that Milburn so much affected, and toilet

articles, and some dark cloth to hide the bare boards in places, and the

old loft soon wore a reasonable appearance of habitable life. Virgie

made up the fire, and the brass andirons took the cheerful flame upon

them, while Vesta sweetened the lemonade after her father had cut and

squeezed the lemons, and added some magnesia to make the drink foam.

"Really," said Judge Custis, "this miserable den takes the rudimentary

form of a home. I suppose there are now more comforts in his sight than

Meshach's whole race ever collected. What is your next move, Vesta?"

"To stay right here, darling papa, till it is safe and convenient to

carry Mr. Milburn home."

"Oh, folly! it will excite scandal, and be repulsive to my feelings.

This loft over a former groggery is no place for you: the news will

spread from Chincoteague to Arlington. Every Custis that lives will

censure me and outlaw you."

"I think you had best see Mr. Tilghman before the service, papa, and

have the marriage announced from the desk this morning: that will settle

the excitement before night. As for staying here, my home, you know, is

where he needs me. At his will I should have to stay here altogether.

But I wish to do this, dear father. It is of the greatest necessity to

my nature to improve my intercourse with my husband while he is sick,

that the hasty marriage we made may still have its period of

acquaintance and good understanding. I want to sound the possibilities

of my happiness. He will be less my master now than in his strength and

possession. Perhaps--" Vesta's voice fell, and she turned to gaze upon

the bridegroom, whose fever still consumed his wits--"perhaps I can

influence his dress,--his appearance."

"You mean the steeple top!" Judge Custis exclaimed, petulantly.

At the loud sound of this familiar word, the feverish man's ears were

pierced as through some ever-open ventricle, like an old wound.

"Steeple-top! Who cried 'steeple-top'?" he muttered. "Oh, can't you see

I'm married. _She_ hears it. Oh, spare and pity her!"

He wandered into the miasmatic world again, leaving them all touched,

yet oppressed.

"How the very flint-stone will wear away before the water-drop," Judge

Custis finally said; "his obdurate heart has been bruised by that

nickname. In public he never appeared to flinch before it; but you see

it inflicted a never-healing wound. Who has not his vulture?"

"And how unjust to pursue this man with such frivolous inhospitality so

many years," Vesta exclaimed, her splendid eyes flashing. "No account

has been made of his private reasons, his family piety, or his stern

taste, perhaps; for he must have a reason for his wardrobe, that being,

it would seem, the only thing there can be no independence about. Did

you hear, papa, his feeling for me but this moment? Strangely enough, my

own mind was thinking of that hat. It seems to be bigger than the very

steeples of the churches: it rises between the people and worship, yes,

between us and Charity, and Faith,--I had almost said Hope, too."

"The colored people all say that hat he has to wear, because the devil

makes him," the trim, fawn-footed Virgie said; "Aunt Hominy says the Bad

Man wouldn't let him make no mo' money if he didn't go to church in that

hat. Some of the white people says so, too."

"You don't believe such foolish tales as that, Virgie?" Vesta asked.

"'Deed, I don't believe anything you say is a story, Miss Vessy. Hominy

believes it. She's 'most scared out of her life about Mr. Milburn coming

to the house, an' she's got all the little ones a' most crazy with

fear."

"Poor, dark, ignorant soul!" Vesta said; "she is, however, more

excusable than these grown men, whose prejudices against an article of

dress are as heathen in character as her fetish superstition."

"If he is a good man to you, Miss Vessy," the slave girl said, "I'll

think the Bad Man hasn't got anything to do with him. If he treats you

bad, I'll think the Bad Man has."

"Sometimes I feel as if men ought to have been left wild, like the

animals," the Judge said, rinsing out Milburn's mouth with a piece of

ice, "for the obstacles to liberty raised by fashion and civilization

are Asiatic in their despotism. Think of the taxes we pay to fashion

when we refused less to kings. Think of the aristocracy based upon

dress, after we have formally extirpated it by statute! Think of the

influence the boot-makers and mantua-makers of Europe, proceeding from

the courts we have renounced, exert upon our Presidents and Senators,

and, through the women of this country, upon all the men in the land! A

million women who do not know that there are two houses of Congress,

know just what bonnet the Duchess d'Angouleme is wearing, and how

Charles X. in Paris ties his cravat. So the devil always gets a worm in

every apple. The French Revolution abolished feudality, titles, great

landed property, and only omitted to abolish fashion, and that worm--a

silkworm it is--is devastating republican government everywhere, using

the women to infect us."

"Yet, in the nature of woman," said Vesta, "is the love of dress as

strongly as the love of woman is in man. Some righteous purpose is in

it, papa,--to ornament ourselves like the birds, and let art be born."

"God knows his own mysteries," Judge Custis said. "But Vesta, go home

with me to your own comfortable home, and let Virgie stay here to keep

watch."

"Master, I'm afraid to stay here," the girl exclaimed, sidling towards

her young mistress.

"Then I will stay, and be nurse," the Judge said. "Fear not! I will give

him only wholesome medicine, whatever poison he has given me and mine.

You stay in Teackle Hall, my precious child! Indeed, I must command it."

Vesta smiled sadly and pointed to her husband.

"He commands me now, papa. You were too indulgent a master, and spoiled

me. No, Virgie and I will both remain, and you conciliate mamma. All is

going well. Really, I am happy and grateful to my Heavenly Father that

he is smoothing the way so gently, that I thought would be so hard."

"Oh, the conditions of this disease are repulsive, my child. You are a

lady."

"No, I am a woman," said Vesta; "that man and I must see one or the

other die. You do not know how easy it is for a woman to nurse a man.

Though love might make the task more grateful, yet gratitude will do

much to sweeten it. He has loved me and taken the shadow from your old

age for me. Shall I leave him here to feel that I despise him? No."

She kissed her father, and gave him his cane.

"Come back this afternoon, my love," she said to him.

"Nothing on earth is like you!" exclaimed the old man. "I fear you are

not mine."

"Yes," Vesta said, "you are full of good, wherever you may have

strayed."

As the sound of his feet passed from the doorway below, the sick man,

with a sigh as from burning fire, opened his eyes and looked around.

They fell upon her picture.

"What is that?" he murmured; "I dreamed nothing like that, just now."

"It is my picture. I am here," Vesta said, bending over him. "Don't you

know me?"

"Who are you, dear lady?" he breathed, with fever-weakened eye-sockets,

and mind struggling up to his distended orbs, "do I know you?"

"Yes, I am Vesta--Vesta Custis, I was. I am your wife."

His eyes opened wide, as if hearing some wonderful news.

"Wife? what is that? My wife? No."

"Yes, I am Vesta Milburn, your wife."

He seemed to remember, and, with compassion for him, she stooped and

kissed him.

"God bless you!" he sighed, and passed away into the Upas shades again.

At that minute the mocking-bird flew in the open window and fluttered

above the lowly bed, and perched upon the headboard and began to sing:

"'Sband! 'sband! see! see! Vesty, sweet! Vesty, sweet! Ha, ha! hurrah!"