CHAPTER XX.

CASTE WITHOUT TONE.

Judge Custis was well out of town, riding to the north, when the little

reading-circle assembled, without his patronage, over the old store, and

the young minister directed it. In the warm afternoon the windows were

raised till Milburn's chill began to set in again, and they could hear

the mocking-bird, in his tree, tantalizing the great shaggy dog Turk by

whistling to him,

"Wsht! wsht! Come, sir! come, sir! Sic 'em! sic 'em! wh-i-it! sic 'em,

Turk! wsht! wh-i-i-t! Sirrah! Ha! ha!"

Turk would run a little way, run back, see nobody, watch all the windows

of the store, and finally he seemed to think the spot was haunted, or

unreliable in some way; for he would next run to the open store door,

and bark, run back, and, from a distance, watch the hollow dark within,

as if a vague enemy lived there, mocking his obedient nature and keeping

his mistress captive. Turk was a setter with mastiff mixing, worth a

little for the hunt and more for the watch, but as an ornament and

friend worth more than all; he was so impartial in his favors as to like

Aunt Hominy and Vesta about equally, and often slept in the kitchen

before the great chimney fire.

"Do we worry you, Mr. Milburn, by reading here?" Vesta asked.

"No, my darling. It is so kind of you to bring music to my poor loft."

William Tilghman opened his Bible at a place marked by a little

ribbon-backed bristol card, inscribed in Vesta's childhood by her

learning fingers, "Watch with me." He thought of his cousin, now

fluttering between her betrayal to this Pilate and her crucifixion, and

caught her eyes looking at the Bible-marker, as if saying to him and to

the forest maiden, "Watch with me."

Tilghman started the reading, Vesta followed, and Rhoda had to do her

part, also; but she required to labor hard to keep up, as the chapter

was in the Acts, descriptive of Paul's voyage towards Rome, and had

plenty of hard words and geography in it. At one verse, Rhoda's reading

was like this:

"And--when--we--had--sailed--slowl--li--many-days--and--scare--scare--skar

--skurse--I declar', Aunt Vesty, this print is blombinable!--scace--Oh,

yes, scacely--scarce--were--come--over--against--Ceni--Snide--Snid--Mr.

Tilghman, what is this crab-kine of word? Cnidus? Well, I declar'! a dog

couldn't spell that; it looks like Snyder spelled by his hired

man--against Cnidus--the--wind--not--snuffers--no, snuffering (here

Rhoda executed the double sniffle)--yes, didn't I say snuffering? I mean

suffering--suffering--us--we--sailed--under--I can't spell that nohow;

nobody kin!"

"'Sailed under Crete,' dear," assisted Vesta.

"Sailed under--Crety--over--against--Sal--Sal--Salm--oh, yes, psalms!

No: Sal Money."

"Salmone," explained the rector, not daring to look up; "we sailed under

Crete over against Salmone; and, hardly passing it, came unto a place

which is called the Fair Havens, nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea.'"

"Lord sakes!" exclaimed Rhoda, putting out her crescent foot, on which

was Vesta's worked stocking, "did they have Fair Havens in them days?

Was it this one over yer on the Wes'n Shu?"

"No," answered Tilghman; "Fair Havens was always a ready name for

sailors finding a good port in trouble."

"Thar ain't no good port out thar on the Oushin side now but Monroe's

Inlet, outen Jinkotig. The rest of 'em gits filled up, an' kadgin's the

on'y way to kadge through of 'em, Misc Somers says."

"She means warping, or pulling over a shoal inlet by a rope to an

anchor, as the water lifts the vessel."

"Yes, you know, Mr. Tilghman," Rhoda cried, delighted; "that's

kadgin'--pullin' over the bar by the anchor line. You're all agroun',

can't git nowhar, air a-bumpin' on the bar, an' the breakers is comin'

dreadful in your side: you'll break all up if you stay thar. So you git

the little anchor--the little one is better than ary too big a one--an'

put it in the yawl an' paddle acrost the bar an' sot her, an' them

aboard pulls as the billers lifts ye, and so they keep her headed in,

and, kadging, kadging, bumpety-bump, at las' you go clar of the bar an'

come home to smooth haven in Sinepuxin."

"Yes, my sisters," appended the young minister, "we need often to kedge

home, to warp over the bars of life, and Hope, in ever so little an

anchor, helps a little, if we do not lose the line. Little hopes are

often better than great ones, for o'er-great hopes swamp little vessels.

Even hope must be artfully shaped and skilfully dropped to take hold of

the unseen bottoms of opportunity. All of us have entertained burdensome

hopes, heavy anchors, and they would not hold us against the breakers;

but there may be little hopes, carried in advance of us, that will draw

us into pleasant sounds and bays."

"We owe to you, Rhoda, this comforting hope," said Vesta, "and, while

you are with us, we shall teach you to read more confidently."

Vesta then sang Charles Wesley's hymn:

"'Jesus, in us thyself reveal!

The winds are hushed, the sea is still,

If in the ship Thou art.

Oh, manifest Thy power divine;

Enter this sinking church of Thine,

And dwell in every heart.'"

The sounds of her singing reached the people, rambling curiously around

on Sunday afternoon to see the principals in the surprising marriage

they had but lately heard of, and, as she ended, Mr. Milburn called her,

saying,

"It is time for you to leave me till to-morrow."

"Is that your desire?"

"It is, kind lady. I have a servant-man, Samson, used to all my work,

and you can hear of my condition through your slave girls, going and

coming. I want you to feel free as ever, though my wife at last. I did

not seek you to cloud your morning, but to share your sunshine. Go to

Teackle Hall, and there I will come when I am stronger. At no time do I

ever wish you to sleep in this old stable."

"May I come and sit with you to-morrow, sir?"

"Oh, do so! I must see you a little day by day."

"May I take Rhoda with me?"

"Yes, if you will do it. She is a poor girl, but that is not her fault."

Vesta bent and touched his forehead with her lips, and, as she drew

back, he raised his cold hand and put a piece of paper in hers.

"Present my love to your mother," he said, in a chill; "and return her

the losses Judge Custis has named to me as her portion in Nassawongo

furnace. The amount is in this check, which I give you, although it is

Sunday, because it represents no business among any of us, but an act of

peace."

"You are an honorable man," Vesta said; "I have cost you dearly."

"It is the bumping of a few years on the bar," Meshach answered, trying

to smile; "be you my anchor out in calm water, and I will try to draw to

you some day. It is not the price I pay that troubles me; it is the

price you are paying."

"I am deeply interested in you," Vesta said; "if I should say more than

that, it would not now be true."

"Thank you for that much," Milburn said; "even your pity is a treasure,

and I thank God that I have made so much progress. Before you go, let my

bird come in, and then shut the window, to keep the night-hawks and owls

from finding him."

He managed, between his rising paroxysms of the chill, to whistle a note

or two, and Tom flew in the window and fluttered viciously around his

head, as if to be revenged for exile, and then, leaping on the old

hat-box, set up a show performance, in which were all the menagerie of

town and field, and, stopping a little while to hear the bird sing her

name again, Vesta and her friends withdrew.

Mrs. Custis was found in her bedroom, much improved in spirits, but

highly nervous.

"Oh, my poor, martyred, murdered idol!" she screamed, as Vesta came in;

"are you alive? Is the beast dead? Don't tell me he dares to live."

"Yes, mamma, here are his teeth," Vesta said, when she had kissed her

mother warmly. "He has sent you a check for all your lost money, and his

love, and me to live here with you in Teackle Hall. Liberty,

restitution, as you name it, and his affection to both of us: is he not

a gentleman now?"

Mrs. Custis eagerly took the check.

"Do you believe it is good, precious? Maybe he sent it to deceive me

while he could take advantage of your gratitude. Oh, these foresters are

devils! I wish I had the money for it."

"It is good for everything he has, mamma. Not to pay it would make him a

bankrupt. He gave it to me almost with gallantry. Indeed, he is the most

singular man I ever knew."

"That is the case with all pirates," said Mrs. Custis; "something in

the female nature attracts us to lawless men, who take what they

want--ourselves included. We were, I suppose, originally, just seized

and appropriated, and are looking out for the appropriator to this day.

But you, Vesta, with the Baltimore blood in you, do not expect to play

the Sabine bride tamely like that--to defend your spoiler and reconcile

him to your brethren?"

"I was thinking it was the Baltimore blood that made me appreciate Mr.

Milburn, mamma. The Custises were not traders."

"Pshaw! the Custises were libertines, unless history belies them; they

had else no popularity in the scamp court of Charley-over-the-water. He

thought the daughter of any gentleman in his following was made for his

mistress, and a large percentage of the said damsels thought he was

right."

"Mr. Milburn is no Cavalier, I can see that," Vesta said; "I am

attracted to him by elements of such strength and simplicity that I

fancy he is a Puritan."

"Puritan fiddlestick!" Mrs. Custis said, putting Milburn's check in her

bosom and pinning it in there, and looking vigilantly at the pin

afterwards. "Now, my great comfort, my only McLane! do not idealize this

forester as of any beginning whatsoever. It is all wrong. Thousands of

convicts were exported to Chesapeake Bay from the slums of London,

Bristol, Glasgow, and other places, and propagated here like the

pokeweed. With instincts of larceny, and, possibly, a little rebellion

in it, your man has robbed this house of your person; if he should also

take your heart, the shame would be upon us."

"Oh, mother, you are unforgiving!"

"Of course I am; I am Scotch."

"You have not one son-in-law but this who would give you back the large

amount your husband has misspent--not one who could do it but at a

sacrifice you would not permit. For you and papa, to restore your faith

in each other, I married our stranger creditor, forcing him to the altar

rather than he me; and he has already proved himself of more delicacy

than you, if I am to believe you are in your right mind. No, I am no

McLane."

"You are not, if you do not use their Scotch-Irish perseverance to get

the better of Meshach Milburn. You have obtained a marriage settlement

with him, now have it confirmed, and sue out your divorce before the

Legislature! Publicly as you have been profaned, ask the State of

Maryland for reparation. The McLanes, the Custises, and all their

connections, from the Christine River to the James, will storm

Annapolis, make your cause, if necessary, a political issue, and the

courts of this county will give you damages out of this beast's

unpopular wealth."

Vesta looked at her mother with astonishment.

"What would become of my self-respect, my maiden name, if I made that

show of my private griefs, mother?"

"Why, you would be a heroine. Every old lover, of whom there are so many

eligible ones, would feel his zeal return. A romance would attend your

name wherever the Baltimore newspapers are taken, and you would be as

great a heroine as Betty Patterson."

"That disobedient girl?" Vesta, still in astonishment, exclaimed.

"I saw her when the bride of Jerome Bonaparte. She was not half as

lovely as you! If Jerome had seen you--you were not born, then, and I

was in society--he would never have looked at Betty. But, you see, she

forced a settlement out of the Emperor, husbanded the income of it, and

she is rich, and freer to-day than if she had become a French

Bonaparte."

"Weak as they may be in many things, I am a Custis," Vesta spoke, with

pale scorn. "I would not drag my name through the tobacco-stained

lobbies of Annapolis to wear the crown of Josephine. The word I gave,

in pity of my parents, to the man who is now my husband, to become his

wife, I would not take back to my dying day, unless he first denied his

word. I believe there is such a thing as honor yet. Mother, you fret my

father by such principles."

"They are the principles of your uncle, Allan McLane."

"A man I shrink from," Vesta said, "although he is your brother. His

unfeeling respectability, his unchangeableness, his want of every

impulse but hate, his appropriation of our family honor, as if he was

our lawgiver and high-sheriff, his secretiveness, formal religion, and

mysterious prosperity, I do not appreciate, much as I have tried to be

charitable to him. I do not like Baltimore as I do the Eastern Shore; it

is fierce, hard, and suspicious."

"You shall not run down Baltimore before me," Mrs. Custis cried, hotly.

"It is a paradise to this region; and comparing Meshach Milburn to your

uncle is blasphemy."

"I have on my finger, mother, his mother's ring."

"A pretty object it is," said Mrs. Custis, taking a peep at it and

another at her check; "it requires a microscope to find it. The next

thing you will be walking through Baltimore on your bridal tour,

followed by a mob of small boys, to see Meshach's old steeple-top hat.

Then I shall feel for you, Vesta."

The cruel blow struck home. Vesta's reception, so unexpected, so

acrimonious, affected her with a sense of gross ingratitude, and with a

greater disappointment--she had failed to restore joy to her parents by

her desperate sacrifice.

She began to feel that she might have done wrong. The broad sight of her

act, looking back upon it from this momentary revulsion, seemed a

frightful flood, like the mouth of one of the little Eastern Shore

rivers that expands to a gulf in the progress of a brook. Last night she

saw in an instant the misunderstandings and ruin she could prevent by

her ready decision; now she saw the misunderstandings she never could

correct, the prejudices stronger than parental sympathy, the wide

separation her marriage had effected between two classes of her duty--to

think with her husband's affection and her mother's interests at the

same time.

It also occurred to her that her father, the darling of her thought, had

seemed slow to appreciate her marriage sacrifice, and was testy at her

willingness to loosen her heart with her vestal zone towards her

husband.

The whole day had passed with such relief, such satisfaction, that she

expected to end it in the tranquillity of Teackle Hall, like some young

eagle returned to her nest with abundant prey for the old birds there,

worn out with storm and time. In place of love and healing nature, Vesta

had found worldliness, resentment, intrigue, and aspersion, concluding

with a reference to the one object she feared and shrank from--the hat

of dark entail, the shadow upon her future life. Her eyes filled up, she

lisped aloud,

"I wish I had stayed with my husband!"

"Has he become so necessary to you already?" asked Mrs. Custis.

"He does appreciate my sacrifice," Vesta said, and her low sobs filled

the room. In a moment Virgie entered, alert to her playmate's pains, and

threw her arms around her mistress and kissed her like a child.

"Oh, missy," she spoke to Mrs. Custis, "to make her cry after what she

has done for all of us--to save your home, to save me from being sold!"

No scruples of race made Vesta reject this sympathy, precious to her

parched breast despite the quadroon taint as the golden sand in the

brooks of Africa, giving at once wealth and cooling. The slave girl's

long white arms, scarcely less pale than ivory--for she had slipped in

at the sign of sorrow, while making her simple toilet--drew Vesta into

her lap and laid her head upon the fair maiden shoulder, as if it was a

babe's. On such a shoulder, only a shadow darker, Vesta had often lain

in infancy, and sucked the milk that was sweet as Eve's--the common

fount of white and black--at the breast of Virgie's mother. That

faithful nurse was gone; the wild plum-tree grew upon her grave; but

Virgie inherited the motherly instinct and added the sisterly sympathy,

and her rich hair, half unbound, streamed down on Vesta's temples among

the dark ringlets there, while she looked into her own spirit for a word

to check those tears, and found it:

"People will say you have been crying, dear missy. The Lord knows you

did right. Don't let anybody make you lose your faith till your master,

your husband, does wrong to you; he wouldn't like to have you cry."

There was a nervous chord somewhere in the slave's throat that trembled

on the key of the heroic, and her nostrils, slightly rounded, her head,

free of carriage as the wild colt's, and a light from her soft eyes that

seemed to be reflected on their long, silken lashes, bore out a spirit

tamed by servitude, which still could kindle to everything that

concerned woman in her birthright.

Vesta kissed Virgie, and ceased to sob; she rose and kissed her mother

also.

"It was very wrong in me to say what I did not wish to say, about Uncle

Allan, mamma. I hope papa was kind to you to-day."

"Dear me!" Mrs. Custis cried; "everything is turned upside down by that

bog iron ore. A new element has come into the family to disturb it.

Nobody believes anything respectable any more. Your father is an

infidel, or a radical, or something perverse; you are defending those

wild foresters! What will become of the Christian religion and society

and good principles?"

"What did papa say before he left home?"

"He acted in the strangest manner, Vesta. He came right in and kissed

me, like a great booby, and sat down and wanted to talk about our

courting days. I thought at first he was drunk again, or that the

Methodists had got hold of him and fed him on camp-meeting straw. How do

you account for it?"

Virgie had slipped out as soon as the talk became confidential.

"He wants to do better, dear mamma. Do respond to his contrition and

affection! If we could all humble our hearts, it would be so easy to

start life better, and turn this accident to joy and comfort. I have

found new engagements and reliefs already. There is a young girl, Mr.

Milburn's niece, whom I shall bring home this evening and occupy myself

teaching her. She is an orphan, without a mother's knowledge, barely

able to read, but pretty and quaint."

"Bring a forester in here?" Mrs. Custis exclaimed, fairly shivering.

"What will Allan McLane's daughters say? Your sister from Talbot has

been here all this day, and you have scarcely given her an hour. Between

this fatal marriage and your neglect, she left, with her husband,

positively pale with horror. I do not know what is to follow this

marriage. I have posted a letter already to my brother Allan, telling

him of your betrayal by your father and this bridegroom. All our

connection will be up in arms."

Vesta's heart sank again, but she felt no fears of her husband's ability

to meet mere family opposition, secured by law and form in his rights.

She only feared hostility might rouse in him severity and defiance which

would neutralize her present influence upon him, and change his

accommodating, almost gentle, disposition as a husband.

For, blacker than any object in her future path, she saw a little,

trivial thing, like a wild boar closing her hitherto adventurous

excursion into the forest where her husband grew--the hat that had

covered his head!

Her mother's thoughtless mention of that object made it formidable to

her fears as some iron mask locked round her husband's countenance,

making day hideous and the world a dungeon to all who must walk with

him.

She discerned that his combative spirit would start to the defence of

his hat if it should become the subject of family rancor, because no man

forgives an insult to his personal appearance; and this article of wear

had ringed his brain with gangrene, and war made upon it would be met by

war, while Vesta had expected to induce forgetfulness of the rusty old

tile, to charm away the remembrance of it, and to have it laid forever

aside.

"I am not the daughter of Uncle McLane," Vesta protested. "I am,

besides, a woman, free of my minority. Mr. Milburn is hardly the man to

submit to any trespass. I warn you, mamma, to put my uncle at no

disadvantage; for my husband has already beaten papa, and he will smile

at your brother when he knows that I do not support any of his

pretensions."

"The first thing," answered Mrs. Custis, stubbornly, "is to see that he

pays this check. Oh, my dear money!"--she pressed it to her heart--"how

delightful it is to see you again. Science, love, glory, ideas: how

vulgar they are without money. With this check paid, I think I shall

never read a book again; and as for the bog ores, why, I shall scream if

there is an iron article in the house. Vesta, this house, I believe, is

yours now? I had forgotten. Well, no wonder you defend the man who took

your father's roof from over his head and gave it to you!"

"That is unkind, mamma. I value it only as a sure home for you and papa.

If I gave it to him it might be in risk again."

"But suppose you continue to defend this monster of a Milburn, he and

you may require the whole house. I am too well-bred to be converted to

any of his impious ideas. I am a Baltimorean, and stand by my colors."

"Let us speak of that no more," Vesta said, almost in despair, "but talk

of dear papa. I know he loves you."

"It is too late," Mrs. Custis remarked, solemnly, with another fondling

of her check; "he has neglected me too long. I expect his attention and

respect, and that he shall behave himself; but no lovey and no honey for

me now. Life has passed the noon and the early afternoon for him and me,

and I live to be respectable, to appreciate my security, to keep

upstarts at arm's-length, to enjoy my life in its appointed circle,

taking care of my income, and never--no, never!--giving any human being

the opportunity to make me a beggar again."

"Oh, mamma," Vesta said, "think of Judge Custis! Have you not made home

cold to him by this formalism? We must study men, and please them

according to their tastes, and therein lies our joy; else we are false

to the companionship God gave us to man for. Yield to your husband's

boyish-heartedness; fly with him, like the mate by the bird! He has

repented; welcome him to your love again, and stay his feet from truant

going, or he may dash down the precipice this sorrow has arrested him

before, of everlasting dissipation and the death of his noble soul!"

Vesta stood above her mother, deeply moved, deeply earnest. Her mother

stole another look at the bank check.

"Well, daughter, I will be humbugged by him if you desire it," she said,

but with slight answering emotion. "If I had my life to go over again I

would marry a business man, and let the aristocracy go. There is the

second knock at the front-door. I believe I will dress myself and go

down-stairs too."

There were two ladies in the parlor when Vesta went there--Grandmother

Tilghman and the Widow Dennis.

"Good-evening, Vesta," said the old lady, who was stone-blind, but

easily knew Vesta's footstep. "William thought you would not go to

evening service on account of Mr. Milburn's illness, so I came around to

sit till church was over, when he will take me home. But what is that I

hear in this parlor, like somebody sniffling?"

"It's me, Aunt Vesty," said the voice of Rhoda Holland from the

background.

"This is Mr. Milburn's niece, who has come here to stay with me," Vesta

said.

"Ah! then it is no Custis. The last sniffle I heard was at the ball to

Lafayette in the spring of 1781. The marquis had marched from Head of

Elk to the Bald Friars' ferry up the Susquehanna and inland among the

hills to Baltimore, and we gave him a ball which, at his request, was

turned into a clothing-party. He snuffed so much that he kept up a

sniffle all the evening, like--"

Here Rhoda's sniffle was heard again.

"Yes, that's a good imitation," said Grandmother Tilghman, "but I don't

like it."

"Did the gineral dance at the ball?" asked Rhoda. "What did he do with

his swurd? Did he dance with it outen his scibburd?"

"He danced like a gentleman," Mrs. Tilghman replied, as if she would

rather not, "and led me out in the first set. You danced with him,

Vesta, at the ball in '24, forty-three years afterwards. Does he sniffle

yet?"

"I don't recollect, grand-aunt. I was a little girl, and so much

flattered that I thought everything he did was perfect."

"Ah me!" exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, pulling the feather of her turban up,

and looking as much like an old belle as possible at eighty years of

age; "you danced before Lafayette with my grandson Bill. Bill hardly

remembers Lafayette at all, thinking of you that night, so wonderful in

your girl's charms. I told him Vesta would never marry him, as he was

too plain and poor. But I never thought you would marry that--"

Here Rhoda sniffled warningly.

"Yes," exclaimed the old lady, catching the sniffle; "I never thought

you would marry _that_! But Bill is as dear a fool as ever. He says now

that Meshach Milburn is a good man, too. I never thought he was above

a--"

Rhoda sniffled earnestly.

"Precisely that," exclaimed the old lady; "that was my estimate of the

stock. Bill says he is a financial genius. I don't see what is to become

of girls in this generation. Here is Ellenora, too good to marry

Phoebus, the sailor man, too poor to marry anybody else; now, if

Milburn had married her and taken her son Levin into his business, it

would have been reasonable; but to take you and pervert your happiness,

almost makes me--"

Sniffle from Rhoda.

"Yes," said the old lady, snappishly; "almost! But I never did do it

yet."

"Did you ever see Gineral Washin'ton, mem?" Rhoda asked. "I thought,

maybe, you was old enough. Misc Somers, she see him up yer to Kint River

a-crossin' to 'Napolis. He was a-swarin' at the cappen of the piriauger

and a dammin' of the Eas'n Shu, and he said they wan't no good rudes in

Marylan' nohow; that the Wes'n Shu was all red mud, an' the Eas'n Shu

yaller mud, an' the bay was jus' pizen. Misc Somers say she don't think

it was Gineral Washin'ton, caze he cuss so. She goin' to find out when

she kin git a book an' somebody to read outen it to her, caze she

dreffle smart."

"Grand-aunt Tilghman," Vesta interposed to the blank silence of the

room, "knew General Washington intimately."

"Do tell us!" cried Rhoda. "You kin be a right interestin' ole woman, I

reckon, ef you air so quar."

In the midst of a smile, in which the blind old lady herself joined, and

Mrs. Custis at the same time entered the room, Mrs. Tilghman spoke as

follows:

"I went to visit Cousin Martha Washington several years before the

Revolution, at Mount Vernon. I had seen her while she was the widow of

Cousin Custis, and we occasionally corresponded. In those days we

visited by vessel, so a schooner of Robert Morris's father set me ashore

at Mount Vernon. Colonel Washington was then having his first portrait

painted by Wilson Peale, and he was forty years old. Peale and

Washington used to pitch the bar, play quoits, and fox-hunt, while

Cousin Martha, who was only three months younger than the colonel,

knitted and cut out sewing for her colored girls, and heard her

daughter, Martha Custis, play the harpsichord. Poor Martha had the

consumption; she was dark as an Indian; Washington often carried her

along the piazza and into the beautiful woodlands near the house; but

she died, leaving him all her money--nearly twenty thousand dollars. We

Custises rather looked down on Colonel Washington in those days; he was

not of the old gentry; his poor mother could barely read and write, and

once, when we went to Fredericksburg to see her, she was riding out in

the field among her few negroes as her own overseer, wearing an old

sun-bonnet, and sunburned like a forester."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Custis. "I should think she was a great

impediment to Washington."

"I reckon that's the way her son got big," exclaimed Rhoda; "if his mar

had laid down in bed all day, he couldn't have killed King George so

easy with his swurd."

"I often said to Cousin Martha, 'What did you see in this big horse of a

man?' 'Oh,' she replied, 'he's the best overseer in Virginia. He looks

after my property as no other man could.'"

"Then," said Mrs. Custis, emphatically, "he was one man out of a

thousand."

"That's the kind of man you married, Vesta," spoke up Mrs. Dennis.

"_Her_ husband," said Mrs. Custis, "looked after her father's property,

I am sure, for he got it all."

"And returned it all," exclaimed Vesta.

Mrs. Custis remarked that Washington certainly was a blue-blooded man.

"Is thar people with blue blood comin' outen of 'em?" asked Rhoda

Holland. "Lord sakes! I should think it would make 'em cold."

"I wonder if men are ever great?" asked Vesta; "or whether it is not

great occasion and trial that project them. A crisis comes in our lives,

and, finding what we can endure, we incur greater risks, and finally

delight in such adventure."

"That is the way with my poor boy, Levin," said Mrs. Dennis, quietly, to

Vesta. She was a pretty woman, somewhat past thirty, with rosy cheeks,

blue eyes, neat but rather poor attire, and a simple, artless manner,

and might have passed for the sister of her son.

"Is Levin coming for you to-night?" Vesta asked.

"No," blushed the widow; "James Phoebus will see me home. Levin has

gone off in his boat, and I have been worried about him all day. Some

time, I am afraid, he will go and never return. Oh, Cousin Vesta, this

waiting for a husband neither alive nor dead is very trying."

Overhearing the remark, Mrs. Custis remarked, "Norah, you ought to be

ashamed to keep that faithful fellow waiting on you, when you could give

yourself a good husband and reward him so easily."

"I think you had better look out for old age," Mrs. Tilghman also said,

"while you have youth and good looks to obtain the provision. Oden

Dennis is probably dead; if not dead, he does not mean to return, for I

can think of no circumstances in this age which would forcibly detain a

man from his wife fifteen years. Even if he was in a prison, he would be

allowed to write to you. He may not be dead, Norah, but he is not coming

back. Get a father for your son; you cannot manage Levin."

"Maybe he has been stoled by Injins," exclaimed Rhoda, with great

fervor; "thar was a Injin captive in a shew at Nu-ark, that had been

kept nineteen years. He forgot his language, and whooped dreffle. Misc

Somers say he was an imploster, an' worked on the Brekwater up to

Lewistown. She's always lookin' behind the shew to find out somethin'."

(Slight sniffle.)

"Do get that girl a pocket-handkerchief, and show her how to use it,"

exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, breaking out. "Ah! girls, I have been a widow

thirty years. I never gave up the expectation of marrying again till I

lost my eyesight; and even after that, at sixty-five, I had an offer of

marriage; but I said to my gallant old beau, 'I will not take a man I

cannot compliment by seeing him and admiring him every day. I love you,

but my blindness would give you too much pain.' In our quiet towns, all

the life worth living is domestic joy. Do not lose it, Ellenora; do not

put it off too long!"

"I could love Mr. Phoebus, plain as he is," the widow spoke, "if I

could persuade myself that Oden is dead. But that I cannot do. A real

person--spirit or man--is watching over me closely. My very shoes I wear

to-night came from that mysterious agent. It is not my son; it is not

James Phoebus. No other stranger would so secretly assist me. I am

bound up in the fear and wonder that it is my husband."

"That does beat conjecture," said old Mrs. Tilghman. "Have you no friend

you might suspect?"

"None," the widow answered. "None who have not worn out their means of

giving long ago. Can I marry, with this ghostly visitation coming so

regularly? Should I not have faith in a husband's living if I receive a

wife's care from an unseen hand?"

"Oden Dennis," Mrs. Custis remarked, "was hardly a man to do charity and

not be seen. He was rather self-indulgent, demonstrative, and restless.

I cannot think of his nocturnal visits in the body. Besides, he would

not supply you in that way, Norah, if he meant to come back; and if he

cannot himself come to you, neither could he send."

Not altogether relishing Mrs. Tilghman's reproof, Rhoda was again heard

from, saying:

"Lord sakes! all the women has to talk about when they is gone is the

men. When the men comes, they talks as if they never missed of 'em. Misc

Somers, she never had no man, an' she talks mos' about the women that

has got one. I think Aunt Vesty has got the best man in Prencess Anne.

He's the richest. He's the freest. He never courted no other gal. He

ain't got no quar old women runnin' of him down--caze Misc Somers is

dreffle afraid of him!" This last remark seemed apologetic and an

afterthought.

"I am beginning to think my fortune is better than I deserve," Vesta

replied, to soften the application, as wine, tea, and cake were brought

in. "Now, dear friends, as I am Mr. Milburn's wife, let us all be

Christians this Sunday night, and drink his health and happy recovery,

and that he may never repent his marriage."

They drank with some hesitation, except the bride, Rhoda, and Mrs.

Dennis. Mrs. Tilghman needed the wine too much to wait long, and Mrs.

Custis, finding she was observed, took a sip from her glass also,

excusing herself on the ground of a recent headache from drinking

heartily.

As the conversation proceeded, now by general participation, again by

couples apart, and Vesta found herself more and more a subject of

sympathy, with no little curiosity interwoven in it, she also imagined

that an undertone of belief was abroad that she had made a mercenary

marriage.

Old Mrs. Tilghman--in her prime a most caustic belle, and worldly as

three marriages, all shrewdly contracted, could make her--seemed

determined to hold that Vesta had rejected her grandson for the

money-lender on the consideration of wealth. Vesta's own mother, too,

who should have known her well, had twice hinted the same. Even the

inoffensive Ellenora had accepted that idea, or another kin to it, and

Rhoda Holland had remembered that her uncle was the richest of

bridegrooms in Princess Anne. Vesta felt the injustice, but said to

herself:

"I must make the sacrifice complete, and incur any harsh judgment it may

bear. I see that I shall be driven for sympathy to the last place in the

world I anticipated: to my husband's heart. Yes, there is something

besides love in marriage: if I cannot love him, he can understand me."

Vesta had come to a place all come to who volunteer an act of great

sacrifice--to have it put upon a low motive from the lower plane of

sacrifice in many otherwise kind people. We give our money to an

institution of charity, and it is said that it was for notoriety, or

self-seeking, or at the expense of our kin. We lead a forlorn hope in

politics, or some other arena, to establish a cause or assist a

principle, with the certain result of defeat, and we are said to be

jealous or malignant. Perhaps we make a book to illustrate some old

region off the highways of observation, drawn to it by kindred strings

or early patterings, and the politician there regards it as an attack,

the old family fossil as an intrusion, the very youth as if it were a

queer and gratuitous thing from such an outer source. So we wince a

little, but feel that it was necessary to be misunderstood to complete

the sacrifice.

The feeling of despondency increased after the little company separated,

and Vesta went to her room and laid herself upon her still maiden bed.

She had said her prayer and asked the approval of God, but her nervous

system, under the tension of almost two days' excitement and events such

as she had never known, was alert and could not fall to slumber. Old

passages of Testament lore haunted her soul, such as: "Thy desire shall

be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee;" "A man shall leave his

father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." She began to see

that marriage was not merely the solution of a family trouble, and the

giving of her body as a hostage for a pecuniary debt, but that it was a

rendition of all her liberty, even the liberty of sympathy and of

sorrow, to the man to whom she must cleave.

In marrying him she had left friendship, father and mother, everything,

at a greater distance than she ever dreamed; and they resented the

desertion to the degree that they now confounded her with her new

interest, let go their claim upon her, and could scarce conceive of her

except in the dual relation of a woman subject to her husband, and

selfish as himself.

"I wonder if he will grow weary of me, too," she thought, with anguish,

"after his possession is established and I shall have no other source of

confidence? What did I know of this world only yesterday? Then every way

seemed clear and open for me, my friends abundant, and love profuse;

to-day I am in awful doubts, and yet I must not lose my will and drift

with every passing fear and confusion into the fickleness which makes

woman contemptible after she has given her hand. I will never give up

two persons--my father, and my husband!"

As she turned down the lamp, it being nearly midnight, a short, fierce

cry, quickly stifled, as if some wild animal had howled once in

nightmare and fallen asleep in his kennel again, seized on her ears and

chilled her blood.

Vesta started up in bed and listened. It seemed to her that there were

footsteps, but they passed away, and she listened in vain for any other

sounds, till sleep fell deep and dreamless upon her, like black Lethe

winding through a desert wedding-day.