CHAPTER XXVIII.
PACIFICATION.
Princess Anne had missed for several days some conspicuous citizens,
such as Daniel Custis and wife, Captain Phoebus, 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 naively 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]