CHAPTER XL.

HULDA BELEAGUERED.

Owen Daw brought the news of the repulse from Cowgill House and the

wounding of Captain Van Dorn.

"Where is the little tacker, Levin?" asked Patty Cannon, furiously.

"Arrested, I 'spect," cried O'Day, boldly; "Van Dorn's hit in the

throat."

"He'll not talk much, then," muttered the woman; "his time had to come.

Where will I find another lover at my age? Why, honey," she chuckled to

herself, in a looking-glass, "that son of his'n may come back. He's took

a shine to Huldy: why not to me?"

At the idea another hideous thought came to her mind: to settle Hulda's

fate in her young lover's absence, and monopolize the corrupting power

over Levin Dennis, if he ever lived to see Johnson's Cross-roads again.

As individual fugitives returned, confirming the decisive repulse of the

band, Patty Cannon's face grew dark, and her oaths low and deep; Cyrus

James heard her say:

"If I could only hang some one for this! Joe Johnson's the white-livered

sneak that would not go. I've hanged a better son-in-law."

"Aunt Patty, I love your grandchild, Huldy," Cy James ventured to say.

"The Captain's wounded and Joe's going away to Floridy. Maybe I kin git

you up another band."

Without an instant's consideration of this ambitious proposition, Mrs.

Cannon threw Cy James, by main strength, through the window of her bar,

into her kitchen, and he bawled like a baby, yet came out of his grief

muttering, "Ploughin', ploughin'! I'll make her into batter and fry her

yet."

With this reflection Mr. James hid himself for the remainder of the

afternoon in some secluded part of the Hotel Johnson.

Mrs. Cannon, however, had instantly resumed her monologue on business.

"They all think to give the old woman the go-by: a sick man's no good,

and there's that wife of Van Dorn's hopin' to git him yit. By God! she

sha'n't have him in his shroud. No; I'll recruit from young material.

Ruin 'em when they's boys, and, while you kin pet 'em, they'll do your

work! I have one nigger in the garret Joe wants to burn: he's my nigger,

and I'll let him loose to bring me more niggers. Money is what I need to

put on a bold front: Huldy must fetch it!"

With this resolution Patty Cannon mounted the stairs to a room on the

second floor, and, without knocking, pushed her way in.

A man of a voluptuous form and face, like one overfed, yet on the best,

and with stiff, military shoulders, and of colors warm in tint, yet cold

in expression, blue eyes, and rich, wine-lined cheeks and lips, that

still seemed hard and self-indulged, spoke up at once:

"Always knock, Patty! it's more conservative. My way in life is to reach

my point, but respect all the forms. What do you want?"

"When do you leave for Baltimore, Cunnil McLane?"

"As soon as Joe returns with my dear sister's property: to-morrow, I

hope."

"You can take Huldy Bruington if you pay my price for her: two thousand

dollars down. If you won't give it, she shall be married to some young

kidnapper, who will fetch twice that pile for her in niggers. They'll

all fight their weight in black wildcats to git her."

"Very, very abrupt proposition, Patty; not conservative at all. What's

the matter with you, dame, to-day. Van Dorn not lucky, heigh?"

He gave her a vitreous smile and watched her over his round paunch, on

which a crystal watch-seal hung, like a more human eye than his own. Her

color began to rise.

"I'm mad," said Patty Cannon; "don't worry me; don't Jew me! Do you

mind? Yes, Van Dorn has been whipped--by niggers, too. Will you pay my

price or not?"

"Tut, tut, good woman! What can I want with a white girl. It wouldn't

look conservative at all in Baltimore."

Patty Cannon stamped her foot.

"Don't rouse me with any of your hypocritical cant, Cunnil McLane! What

have you been teachin' that child to read an' write fur--out of your

Bible, too? What do you bring her presents fur, and hang around us when

we know you despise us all, except fur the black folks we can sell you

cheap? Haven't I been sold to men like you time and again before I was a

woman, and don't I know the sneaking pains that old men take to look

benevolent when youth an' beauty is fur sale; and how they pet it to

keep it pure fur their own selfish enjoyment? God knows I do!"

"Patty, you shock me!" the rubicund gentleman observed. "I have always

found you conservative before. Now, go and send sweet Hulda here, and,

for Heaven's sake, Patty, don't reveal this bargain to her."

"Is it a bargain, Cunnil?"

"It is, if she can be made willing to it."

"That she shall, or make her bed in the forest, where good looks are not

safe around yer."

Hulda was found at a window, looking out upon her former home, and at a

ploughman who had nearly completed the furrows in a large field, sparing

only some low places piled with brush, over one of which some buzzards

circled, lofty, yet intent as anglers watching their tackle. Hard as

that home had been to Hulda, she regretted leaving it for this men's

tavern, where her grandmother's saucy temperament found so many

incentives to bravado, and her caution, that had to be exercised in

Delaware, was quite unnecessary on the Maryland side of the line.

At the little hip-roofed white cottage Hulda had felt a sense of privacy

pleasing to her growing life, and her ability to read often charmed

Patty Cannon to a stillness that was like the hyena's sleep, and even

made her acquiescent and cordial.

But where she met men alone, unmodified by modest women's example, the

bold tendency of Patty was to out-do men, and lead them on to audacities

they would have feared to follow in but for her courage and policy; for

she could coax either young or coarse natures, as well as she could

drive.

These feats of strength and cunning, statecraft and desperation,

reminded Hulda of a book she had read about the Norman knights in

England kidnapping and robbing the poor Saxons; and one description of

King William the Conqueror suggested to Hulda that he was perhaps a

Patty Cannon in his times, as his body and legs were short and powerful,

like hers, and he could bend a bow riding on horseback that no other

knight could bend on foot with the legs planted firmly. He could not

read nor write, and was superstitious, yet cruel as the grave. All this

was true of Patty Cannon, whose feat of standing in a bushel measure and

putting three hundred pounds of grain on her shoulder has been related.

She often wrestled and bound, without assistance, strong black men

fighting for their liberties. She could ride horseback, sitting like

men, in a way to make Joan of Arc seem a maid of mere tinsel.

Hulda was dressed in her best clothes, her hair was tied in wide braids,

her fine features and large, tender, yet seeking, gray eyes, never had

been turned on Patty Cannon so directly.

Her grandmother abandoned in a moment an attempt to be complaisant, and

sternly ordered her to attend to Colonel McLane's chamber.

"I can support you no longer, huzzy," said the dark-eyed woman, her

cheeks full of blood. "Make haste to find some easy life or Joe shall

get you a husband. We are ruined. You must make money, do you hear!"

"Here is money, grandma!" said Hulda, producing some of the shillings of

1815.

At the first glance of these Patty Cannon turned pale, but, in an

instant, the hot blood rushed to her face again, and she swore a

dreadful oath and chased Hulda, with uplifted hands, into the chamber of

Allan McLane.

"Ah, Hulda, inflaming your poor grandmother again!" said that carefully

clad and game-fed gentleman. "Now, now, lovely girl, it's not

conservative. Honor thy father and mother, and grandmother, of course;

didn't I teach you that?"

"What is it to be conservative?" Hulda asked, sitting before the fire,

while the Colonel ran over her straight feet and tall, willowy figure,

and stopped, a little chilled by her clear, dewy eyes.

"Conservative? why, it's never to rush on anything; to oppose rushing;

to--to be a bulwark against innovations. To prefer something you have

tried, and know."

"Like you?" asked Hulda.

"Yes, your benefactor, instead of having some impulsive passion. Of

course, you never loved in this place?"

"It is the only place I know. To be conservative, as you call it, I

must take my life and opportunity as I find them, like something I have

tried and know."

"Ah, Hulda! I see you have a radical, perverse something in you, to

twist my meaning so close. You do not belong to this vile spot, except

by consanguinity. It would be perfectly conservative for you to look to

a better settlement."

"You have hinted that before," Hulda said, serene in his presence as a

young woman used to proposals. "I do want to change this life, but I

cannot do it and be conservative. I must fasten upon a free impulse, a

natural chance of some kind. God has kept my heart pure in this dreadful

place, where I was born. Why are you here, if you are conservative? It

is not a gentleman's resort."

He grew a little angry at this thrust, but she continued to look at him

quietly, unaware that she was impertinent.

"I often have business, Hulda, with Joe and Patty; negroes are very

high, and we must buy them where they are to be had. But a deepening

religious interest in you often attracts me here."

"Why religious as well as conservative, sir?"

"I have been afraid that the sights you see here, after the good

instructions I have given you, might make you an infidel."

"What is an infidel?"

"One who, being unable to explain certain evils in life, refuses to

believe anything. That is the case with Van Dorn, a very bad man.

Stepfather Joe is always conservative on that subject. Deviate as much

as he may, he never disbelieves. Aunt Patty, too, erratic as she is,

holds a conservative position on a Great First Cause."

Here McLane drew out his gold spectacles, and turned the leaves of his

Bible over, and pointed Hulda a place to read, beginning, "The fool hath

said in his heart, There is no God." At his command she read it, with

faith, yet observation, her mind being fully alert to the warning Van

Dorn had left her, that in his absence her great trial was to be.

McLane was wearing a gray English suit, with full round paunch, sleek

all over the body, his hair a little gray, his gold glasses dangling in

his hand, patent varnished slippers and silk stockings, and a silk scarf

and cameo pin in it, and a cameo of his deceased sister upon his

finger-ring, marking his attire; his eyes, of a pop kind, much too far

forward, and blue as old china, and yet an animal, not a spiritual

blue--the tint of washing-blue, not of distance; a hare-lip somewhere in

his talk, though the fulness of his very red lips hardly allowed place

for it; and his nose and brows stern and military, as if he had been a

pudding stamped with the die of a Roman emperor or General Jackson.

He watched her reading with censorship, yet desire, patronage, and

oiliness together.

Glancing up when she had read far enough, Hulda thought he was looking

at her as if she was some rarer kind of negress.

"Beautifully read, Hulda! I never go to such places as theatres, but you

might be, I should say, an actress. Don't think of it, however! Very

unconservative profession! I take great pride in you, my lovely girl;

suppose I take you home with me!"

He walked to her stool, and laid his warm hand on her neck, standing

behind her; she did not move nor change color.

"Something has happened to me, Colonel McLane," Hulda spoke, clear as a

bell out of a prison, "to make even Johnson's Cross Roads good and

happy. Can you guess what it is?"

She bent her head back, and looked up fearlessly at him, as if he were

the negro now.

"Not religious ecstasy?" he said. "Not camp-meeting or revival

conversion, I hope. That's vile."

"No, Colonel. It is knowing a pure young man, whose love for me is

natural and unselfish."

"Great God!" spoke McLane, removing his hand. "Not some kidnapper?"

"No," Hulda said, "no slave-dealer of any kind. They cannot make him so.

He is perfectly conservative, Colonel, as to that vileness. I believe he

is a gentleman, too."

"You must have great experience in that article," he sneered, looking

angry at her.

"I have seen you and my lover; you have the best clothes, and profess

more. He has a nature that your opportunities would bring real

refinement from. He respects me, wretched as I am; I read it in his

eyes. You are looking for a way to degrade me in my own feelings, yet to

deceive me. Can you be a gentleman?"

She was serene as if she had said nothing, though she rose up, and stood

at one side of the fireplace, opposite him; between them was a print of

General Jackson riding over the British.

In that moment Allan McLane felt that the girl was cheap at her

grandmother's figure.

He had always conceived her a flexible, peculiar child; in a few minutes

she had grown years, and become a rare and nearly stately woman, not now

to be moulded, but to be tempted with large, worldly propositions.

"May I ask who this lover is that I am so much beneath, Hulda--I, who

have taught you the accomplishments you chastise me with? I found you

sand; I made you crystal."

He drew out a large pongee handkerchief, and really dropped some tears

into it. She continued, cool and unmoved:

"My love is Levin Dennis, from Princess Anne. I am not afraid to tell

it."

"Why?"

"Because I want his danger and mine to be fully known to him, and make

him a man."

The Colonel folded his pongee, and came again to Hulda's side.

"That dissipated boy! Oh, Hulda, where is your real pride? He has

abandoned his mother. He is a poor gypsy. No, I must save you from such

a mistake. It is my duty to do it."

"I thank you for teaching me, whatever made you do it. If I could awaken

in you some unselfishness towards me and my new love, sir, it would be

the greatest gratitude I could show you. You conceal so many hard, bad

things under your word 'conservative,' that the gentle feelings, like

forgiveness, have forsaken you, I fear."

"No," the Colonel said, stiffly, his shoulders becoming more military,

"insults to my honor I never forgive. People who do not resent, have no

conservative principle."

"I forgive, as I hope to be forgiven, Joe, Aunt Patty, Van Dorn, and

you. I hope pity and mercy and sweet, unselfish love, such as I think

mine is, may grow in all of you! Oh, Colonel,"--she turned to him

earnestly, and, raising her hands to impress him, he merely noted the

elegance of her wrists and brown arms--"the buying and selling of these

human beings makes everybody unfeeling. It is stealing their souls and

bodies, whether they be bought at the court-house or kidnapped on the

roads. My dream of joy is to have a husband who will work with his own

free hands, and till his little farm, and sail his vessel, without a

slave. Above that I expect and ask nothing from the dear God who has so

long been my protector in this den of crime."

"Warm or cold, hectoring or tender, you are splendid, Hulda," McLane

said, his face fairly refulgent. "Now let me show you a conservative

picture of your real deserts. I am a bachelor. I keep an elegant house

in Baltimore. My table is supplied with the best in the market; my

servants are my slaves, and never disobey me; my paintings are

celebrated; books I never run to--they are radical things--but I can buy

them; my carriage is the best Rahway turn-out, and my horses are

Diomeds. In Frederick County I have an estate, in sight of the

mountains. As a Christian act, I will take you away from this spot, to

which you seem but half kindred, and make you my wife."

"You ask me to marry you?"

"Conservatively; that is, continue to be my pupil, and obey me. I will

bring your mind out of its ignorance, your body out of rags, your

associations out of crime. I will provide for you, as you are obedient,

while I live and after I am dead. You shall travel with me, and see

bright cities--New Orleans, Charleston, Havana. If you remain here, you

will be another Patty Cannon or go to jail. There! Look at it

conservatively: warmth, riches, pleasure, attention, change, dress to

become you, a watch and jewels, against villainy and lowness of every

kind."

"How are you to be repaid for this?"

"By your love."

"But it is not mine to give; Levin has it."

"Pooh! that's beneath you."

"But it is gone; I cannot get it back; it will not come."

"Give me yourself," McLane said, drawing her towards him; "the

refinements I do not care about. Be mine!"

The girl allowed herself to be brought nearly to his side, and, as he

bent to kiss her with his large, complacent lips, she glided from his

hands.

"I could never stoop," said Hulda, "to be even the wife of a negro

dealer."

He colored to the eyes, yet with admiration of her almost aristocratic

composure.

"You could not stoop to me?" he said "Not from your father's gallows?"

"No; he was a robber, but a bold one. You only receive the goods."

She was gone; and he stood, with evil lights in his face, but no shame.

He drank some brandy from a flask, and murmured, "Now I have an insult

to revenge, as well as a fancy to be gratified; her father must have

been a cool rogue. Well, everything has to be done by force here; Patty

Cannon shall see my gold."