CHAPTER VIII.

THE HAT FINDS A RACK.

Meshach Milburn had locked the store after writing some letters, and had

taken the broad street for Judge Custis's gate. The news of his

disappearance towards the Furnace, with an extravagant livery team, had

spread among all the circle around the principal tavern, and they were

discussing the motive and probabilities of the act, with that deep inner

ignorance so characteristic of an instinctive society. Old Jimmy

Phoebus, a huge man, with a broad face and small forehead, was called

upon for his view.

"It's nothin' but a splurge," said Jimmy; "sooner or later everybody

splurges--shows off! Meshach's jest spilin' with money and he must have

a splurge--two hosses and a nigger. If it ain't a splurge I can't tell

what ails him to save my life."

A general chorus went up of "Dogged if I kin tell to save my life!"

Levin Dennis, the terrapin-buyer, made a wild guess, as follows:

"Meshach, I reckon, is a goin' into the hoss business. He's a ben in

everything else, and has tuk to hosses. If it tain't hosses, I can't

tell to save my life!"

All the lesser intellects of the party executed a low chuckle, spun

around half-way on their boot-heels and back again, and muttered: "Not

to save my life!"

Jack Wonnell, wearing one of the new bell-crowns, and barefooted, and

looking like a vagrant who had tried on a militia grenadier's imposing

bearskin hat, let off this irrelevant _addendum_:

"Ole Milbun's gwyn to see a gal. Fust time a man changes his regler

course wilently, it's a gal. I went into my bell-crowns to git a gal.

Milbun's gwyn get a gal out yonda in forest. If that ain't it, can't

tell to save m' life!"

The smaller fry, not being trained to suggestion, grinned, held their

mouths agape, executed the revolution upon; one heel, and echoed:

"Dogged ef a kin tell t' _save_ m' life!".

"He's a comin', boys, whooep!" exclaimed Jimmy Phoebus. "Now we'll

all take off our hats an' do it polite, for, by smoke! thar's goin' to

be hokey-pokey of some kind or nuther in Prencess Anne!"

The smallish man in the Guy Fawkes hat and the old, ultra-genteel,

greenish gaiters, walked towards them with his resinous bold eyes to the

front, his nose informing him of what was in the air like any silken

terrier's, and yet with a pallor of the skin as of a sick person's, and

less than his daily expression of hostility to Princess Anne.

"He's got the ager," remarked Levin Dennis, "them's the shakes, comin'

on him by to-morrey, ef I know tarrapin bubbles!"

The latter end only of the nearest approach to profanity current in that

land was again heard, fluttering around: "to _save_ my life!"

Jimmy Phoebus had the name of being descended from a Greek pirate, or

patriot, who had settled on the Eastern Shore, and Phoebus looked it

yet, with his rich brown complexion, broad head, and Mediterranean eyes.

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Milburn!" spoke Jimmy, loud and careless.

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Phoebus. Gentlemen, good-afternoon!"

As he responded, with a voice hardly genial but placating, Milburn

lifted his ancient and formidable hat, and in an instant seemed to come

a century nearer to his neighbors. His stature was reduced, his

unsociableness seemed modified; he now looked to be a smallish,

friendless person, as if some ownerless dog had darted through the

street, and heard a kind chirp at the tavern door, where his reception

had been stones. His voice, with a little tremor in it, emboldened Levin

Dennis also to speak:

"Look out for fevernager this month, Mr. Milburn!"

Meshach bowed his head, gliding along as if bashfully anxious to pass.

"Nice weather for drivin'!" added Jack Wonnell, having also taken off

his own tile of frivolity, to feel the effect; but this remark was

regarded by the group as too forward, and a low chorus ran round of

"Jack Wonnell can't help bein' a fool to save his life!"

Milburn said to himself, passing on: "Are those voices kinder than

usually, or am I more timid? What is it in the air that makes everything

so acute, and my cheeks to tingle? Am I sick, or is it Love?"

The word frightened him, and the sand under his feet seemed to crack; a

woodpecker in an old tree tapped as if it was the tree's old heart

quickened by something; the houses all around looked like live objects,

with their windows fixed upon his walk, like married folks' eyes. As he

came in sight of Judge Custis's residence, so expressive of old respect

and long intentions, the money-lender almost stopped, so mild and

peacefully it looked at him--so undisturbed, while he was palpitating.

"Why this pain?" thought Milburn. "Am I afraid? That house is mine. Do I

fear to enter my own? And yet it does not fear me. It has been there so

long that it has no fears, and every window in it faces benignant to my

coming. The three gables survey yonder forest landscape like three old

magistrates on the bench, administering justice to a county where never

till now was there a ravisher!"

The thought produced a moment's intellectual pride in him, like lawless

power's uneasy paroxysm. "It is the Forest these gentles have to fear

to-day!" he thought, resentfully, then stopped, with another image his

word aroused:

"What has that forest ever felt of injury or hate, with every cabin-door

unlatched, no robber feared by any there, the blossoms on the negro's

peachtree, the ripe persimmons on the roadside, plenteous to every

forester's child, and humility and affection making all richer, without

a dollar in the world, than I, the richest upstart of the forest,

compelled to buy affection, like an indifferent slave!"

A large dog at Custis's home, seeing him walk so slowly, came down the

path to the gate, also walking slow, and showed neither animosity nor

interest, except mechanically to walk behind him towards the door.

"The dog knows me," thought the quickened heart of Meshach, "from

life-long seeing of me, but never wagged his tail at me in all that

time. Could I acquire the heart even of this dog, though I might buy

him? My debtor's step would still be most welcome to him, and he would

eat my food in strangeness and fear."

Milburn walked up the steps, and sounded the substantial brass knocker.

It struck four times, loud and deep, and the stillness that followed was

louder yet, like the unknown thing, after sentence has been passed. He

seemed to be there a very long time with his heart quite vacant, as if

the debtor's knocker had scared every chatterer out of it, and yet his

temples and ears were ringing. He was thinking of sounding the knocker

again, when a lady's servant, partly white, rolled back the bolt, and

bowed to his question whether the Judge was in.

He entered the broad hall of that distinguished residence, and taking

the Entailed Hat from his head, hung it up at last, where better

head-coverings had been wont to keep equal society, on a carved mahogany

rack of colonial times. The venerable object, once there, gave a common

look to everything, as Meshach thought, and deepened his personal sense

of unworthiness. He tried to feel angry, but apprehension was too strong

for passion even to be simulated.

"O, discriminating God!" he felt, within, "is it not enough to create us

so unequal that we must also cringe in spirit, and acknowledge it! I

expected to feel triumphant when I lodged my despised hat in this man's

house, but I feel meaner than before."

The room, whose door was opened by the lady's maid, was the library,

containing three cumbrous cases of books, and several portraits in oil,

with deep, gilded frames, a map of Virginia and its northeastern

environs, including all the peninsula south of the Choptank river and

Cape Henlopen; and near the door was a tall clock, that a giant might

stand in, solemnly cogging and waving time, and giving the monotony of

everlasting evening to the place, which was increased by the flickering

fire of wood on the tall brass fire-irons, before which some

high-backed, wide, comfortable leather chairs were drawn, all worn to

luxurious attitudes, as if each had been the skin of Judge Custis and

his companions, recently evacuated.

A woman's rocking-chair was disposed among them, as though every other

chair deferred to it. This was the first article to arrest Milburn's

attention, so different, so suggestive, almost a thing of superstition,

poised, like a woman's instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, like

the sphere it moved upon, traversing a greater arc than a giant's seat

would fill. Purity and conquest, power and welcome, seemed to abide

within it, like the empty throne in Parliament.

Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with his foot. It

started so easily and so gracefully, that, when it died away, he pressed

his lips to the top of it, nearest where her neck would be, and

whispered aloud, with feeling, "God knows that kiss, at least, was

pure!"

He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not inscribed, he

guessed at them all, right or wrong, from the insight of local lore or

envious interpretation.

"Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue," thought Meshach, "with wine

and beef in his cheeks, and silver and harlotry in his eye, was the

Irish tavern-keeper of Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against the

banished princes whom Cromwell's name ever made to swear and shiver, and

they paid him in a distant office in Accomac, where they might never

see him and his bills again, and there they let him steal most of the

revenue, and, of course, his loyalty was in proportion to his booty.

Many a time, no doubt, he was procurer for both royal brothers, Charles

and James, making his tavern their stew, with Betty Killigrew, or Lucy

Walters, or Katy Peg, or even Anne Hyde, the mother of a queen--of her

who was the Princess Anne, godmother of our worshipful town here. I have

not read in vain," concluded Meshach, "because my noble townsmen drove

me to my cell!"

The next portrait was clothed in military uniform, with a higher type of

manhood, shrewd and vigilant, but magisterial. "That should be

Major-general John Custis," thought Milburn, looking at it, "son of John

the tapster, and a marrying, shifty fellow, who first began greatness as

a salt-boiler on these ocean islands, till his father's friend, Charles

II., in a merry mood, made Henry Bennet, the king's bastard son's

father-in-law, Earl of Arlington and lessee of Virginia. All the

province for forty shillings a year rent! Those were pure, economical

times, indeed, around the court. So salt-boiler John flunkeyed to

Arlington's overseers, named his farm 'Arlington,' hunted and informed

upon the followers of the Puritan rebel Bacon, then turned and fawned

upon King William, too. His grandchildren, all well provided for, spread

around this bay. So much for politics in a merchant's hands!"

The tone of Meshach's comment had somewhat raised his courage, and a

sense of pleasurable interest in the warm room and genial surroundings

led him to pass the time, which was of considerable length, quite

contentedly, till Judge Custis was ready.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the steeple-top hat was giving some silent astonishment to

the house-servants, assembled to gaze upon it from the foot of the hall.

The neat chamber-servant, Virgie, had carried the wondrous information

to the colonnade that the dreadful creditor had come, and Roxy, the

table waiter, had carried it from the colonnade to the kitchen, where

the common calamity immediately produced a revolution against good

manners.

"Hab he got dat debbil hat on he head, chile?" inquired Aunt Hominy,

laying down the club with which she was beating biscuit-dough on the

block.

"Yes, aunty, he's left it on the hat-rack. I'm afraid to go past it to

the do'."

Aunt Hominy threw the club on the blistered bulk of dough, and retreated

towards the big black fireplace, with a face expressive of so much

fright and cunning humor together that it seemed about to turn white,

but only got as far as a pucker and twitches.

"De Lord a massy!" exclaimed Aunt Hominy, "chillen, le's burn dat hat in

de fire! Maybe it'll liff de trouble off o' dis yer house. We got de hat

jess wha' we want it, chillen. Roxy, gal, you go fotch it to Aunt

Hominy!"

The girl started as if she had been asked to take up a snake: "'Deed,

Aunt Hominy, I wouldn't touch it to save my life. Nobody but ole Samson

ever did that!"

"Go' long, gal!" cried Aunt Hominy, "didn't Miss Vessy hole dat ar' hat

one time, an' pin a white rose in it? Didn't he, dat drefful Meshach

Milbun, offer Miss Vessy a gole dollar, an' she wouldn' have none of his

gole? Dat she did! Virgie, you go git dat hat, chile! Poke it off de

rack wid my pot-hook heah. 'Twon't hurt you, gal! I'll sprinkle ye fust

wid camomile an' witch-hazel dat I keep up on de chimney-jamb."

Aunt Hominy turned towards the broadly notched chimney sides, where

fifty articles of negro pharmacy were kept--bunches of herbs, dried

peppers, bladders of seeds, and bottles of every mystic potency.

"Aunty," answered Virgie, "if I wasn't afraid of that Bad Man, I would

be afraid to move that hat, because Miss Vessy would be mortified.

Think of her seeing me treating a visitor's things like that. Why, I'd

rather be sold!"

"Dat hat," persisted Aunt Hominy, "is de ruin ob dis family. Dat hat,

gals, de debbil giv' ole Meshach, an' made him wear it fo' de gift ob

gittin' all de gole in Somerset County. Don't I know when he wore it

fust? Dat was when he begun to git all de gole. Fo' dat he had been po'

as a lizzer, sellin' to niggers, cookin' fo' heseff, an' no' count,

nohow. He sot up in de loft of his ole sto' readin' de Bible upside down

to git de debbil's frenship. De debbil come in one night, and says to

ole Meshach: 'Yer's my hat! Go, take it, honey, and measure land wid it,

and all de land you measure is yo's, honey!' An' Meshach's measured mos'

all dis county in. Jedge Custis's land is de last."

The relation affected both girls considerably, and the group of little

colored boys and girls still more, who came up almost chilled with

terror, to listen; but it produced the greatest effect on Aunt Hominy

herself, whose imagination, widened in the effort, excited all her own

fears, and gave irresistible vividness to her legend.

"How can his hat measure people's lands in, Aunty?" asked Virgie,

drawing Roxy to her by the waist for their mutual protection.

"Why, chile, he measures land in by de great long shadows dat debbil's

hat throws. Meshach, he sots his eyes on a good farm. Says he, 'I'll

measure dat in!' So he gits out dar some sun-up or sundown, when de sun

jest sots a'mos' on de groun, an' ebery tree an' fence-pos' and standin'

thing goes away over de land, frowin' long crooked shadows. Dat's de

time Meshach stans up, wid dat hat de debbil gib him to make him longer,

jest a layin' on de fields like de shadow of a big church-steeple. He

walks along de road befo' de farm, and wherever dat hat makes a mark on

de ground all between it an' where he walks is ole Meshach's land.

Dat's what he calls his mortgage!"

The children had their mouths wide open; the maids heard with faith only

less than fear.

"But, Aunt Hominy," spoke Roxy, "he never measured in Judge Custis's

house, and all of us in it, that is to be sold."

"Didn't I see him a doin' of it?" whispered Aunt Hominy, stooping as if

to creep, in the contraction of her own fears, and looking up into their

faces with her fists clinched. "He's a ben comin' along de fence on de

darkest, cloudiest nights dis long a time, like a man dat was goin' to

rob something, and peepin' up at Miss Vessy's window. He took de dark

nights, when de streets of Prencess Anne was clar ob folks, an' de dogs

was in deir cribs, an' nuffin' goin' aroun' but him an' wind an' cold

an' rain. One night, while he was watchin' Miss Vessy's window like a

black crow, from de shadow of de tree, I was a-watchin' of him from de

kitchen window. De moon, dat had been all hid, come right from behin' de

rain-clouds all at once, gals, an' scared him like. De moon was low on

de woods, chillen, an' as ole Meshach turned an' walked away, his

debbil's shadow swept dis house in. He measured it in dat night. It's

ben his ever since."

"Well," exclaimed Roxy, after a pause, "I know I wouldn't take hold of

that hat now."

"I am almost afraid to look at it," said Virgie, "but if Miss Vessy told

me to go bring it to her, I would do it."

"Le's us all go together," ventured Aunt Hominy, "and take a peep at it.

Maybe it won't hurt us, if we all go."

Aware that Judge Custis and his wife were not near, the little circle of

servants--Aunt Hominy, Virgie, Roxy, and the four children, from five to

fourteen years of age--filed softly from the kitchen through the covered

colonnade, and thence along the back passage to the end of the hall,

where they made a group, gazing with believing wonder at the King James

tile.

* * * Vesta Custis, having changed her morning robe for a walking-suit,

and slightly rearranged her toilet, and knelt speechless awhile to

receive the unknown will of Heaven, came down the stairs at last, in

time to catch a glimpse of half-a-dozen servants staring at a strange

old hat on the hall rack. They hastily fled at her appearance, but the

idea of the hat was also conveyed to her own fancy by their unwonted

behavior. She looked up an instant at the queer, faded article hanging

among its betters, and with a reminiscence of childhood, and of having

held it in her hand, there descended along the intervening years upon

the association, the odor of a rose and the impression of a pair of

bold, startled eyes gazing into hers. She opened the library door, and

the same eyes were looking up from her father's easy-chair.

"Mr. Milburn, I believe?" said Vesta, walking to the visitor, and

extending her hand with native sweetness.

He arose and bowed, and hardly saw the hand in the earnest look he gave

her, as if she had surprised him, and he did not know how to express his

bashfulness. She did not withdraw the hand till he took it, and then he

did not let it go. His strong, rather than bold, look, continuing, she

dropped her eyes to the hand that mildly held her own, and then she

observed, all calm as she was, that his hand was a gentleman's, its

fingers long and almost delicate, the texture white, the palm warm, and,

as it seemed to her, of something like a brotherly pressure, respectful

and gentle too.

As he did not speak immediately, Vesta returned to his face, far less

inviting, but peculiar--the black hair straight, the cheek-bones high,

no real beard upon him anywhere, the shape of the face broad and

powerful, and the chops long, while the yellowish-brown eyes, wide open

and intense, answered to the open, almost observant nostrils at the end

of his straight, fine nose. His complexion was dark and forester-like,

seeming to show a poor, unnutritious diet. He was hardly taller than

Vesta. His teeth were good, and the mouth rather small. She thought he

was uncertain what to say, or confused in his mind, though no sign of

fear was visible. Vesta came to his rescue, withdrawing her hand

naturally.

"I have seen you many times, Mr. Milburn, but never here, I think."

"No, miss, I have never been here." He hesitated. "Nor anywhere in

Princess Anne. You are the first lady here to speak to me."

His words, but not his tone, intimated an inferiority or a slight. The

voice was a little stiff, appearing to be at want for some corresponding

inflection, like a man who had learned a language without having had the

use of it.

"Will you sit, Mr. Milburn? You owe this visit so long that you will not

be in haste to-day. I hope you have not felt that we were inhospitable.

But little towns often encourage narrow circles, and make people more

selfish than they intend."

"You could never be selfish, miss," said Milburn, without any of the

suavity of a compliment, still carrying that wild, regarding gaze, like

the eyes of a startled ox.

Vesta faintly colored at the liberty he took. It was slightly

embarrassing to her, too, to meet that uninterpretable look of inquiry

and homage; but she felt her necessity as well as her good-breeding, and

made allowance for her visitor's want of sophistication. He was like an

Indian before a mirror, in a stolid excitement of apprehension and

delight. The most beautiful thing he ever saw was within the compass of

his full sight at last, and whether to detain it by force or persuasion

he did not know.

Her dark hair, silky as the cleanest tassels of the corn, fell as

naturally upon her perfect head as her teeth, white as the milky

corn-rows, moved in the May cherries of her lips. The delicate arches

of her brows, shaded by blackbirds' wings, enriched the clear sky of her

harmonious eyes, where mercy and nobility kept company, as in heaven.

"How could you know I was unselfish, Mr. Milburn?"

"Because I have heard you sing."

"Oh, yes! You hear me in our church, I remember."

"I have heard you every Sunday that you sung there for years," said

Meshach, with hardly a change of expression.

"Are you fond of music, Mr. Milburn?"

"Yes, I like all I have ever heard--birds and you."

"I will sing for you, then," said Vesta, taking the relief the talk

directed her to. A piano was in another room, but, to avoid changing the

scene, as well as to use a simpler accompaniment for an ignorant man's

ears, she brought her guitar, and, placing it in her lap, struck the

strings and the key, without waiting, to these tender words:

"Oh, for some sadly dying note,

Upon this silent hour to float,

Where, from the bustling world remote,

The lyre might wake its melody!

One feeble strain is all can swell.

From mine almost deserted shell,

In mournful accents yet to tell

That slumbers not its minstrelsy.

"There is an hour of deep repose,

That yet upon my heart shall close,

When all that nature dreads and knows

Shall burst upon me wondrously;

Oh, may I then awake, forever,

My harp to rapture's high endeavor;

And, as from earth's vain scene I sever,

Be lost in Immortality."

Vesta ceased a few minutes, and, her visitor saying nothing, she

remarked, with emotion.

"Those lines were written at my grandfather's house, in Accomac County,

by a young clergyman from New York, who was grandfather's rector, Rev.

James Eastburn. He was only twenty-two years old when he died, at sea,

of consumption. His is the only poetry I have ever heard of, Mr.

Milburn, written in our beautiful old country here."

"I wondered if I should ever hear you sing for me," spoke Milburn, after

hesitation. "Now it is realized, I feel sceptical about it. You are

there, Miss Custis, are you not?"

Vesta was puzzled. Under other circumstances she would have been amused,

since her humor could flow freely as her music. It faintly seemed to her

that the little odd man might be cracked in the head.

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Milburn. If it were a dream, I should have no

expression all this day but song. I think I never felt so sad to sing as

just now. Father is ill. Mamma is ill. I have become the business agent

of the family, and have heard within this hour that papa is deeply

involved. You are his creditor, are you not?"

Meshach Milburn bowed.

"What is the sum of papa's notes and mortgages? Is it more than he can

pay by the sacrifice of everything?"

"Yes. He has nothing to sell at forced sale which will bring anything,

but the household servants here; these maids in the family are

marketable immediately. You would not like to sell them?"

"Sell Virgie! She was brought up with me; what right have I to sell her

any more than she has to sell me?"

"None," said Milburn, bluntly, "but there is law for it."

"To sell Roxy, too, and old Aunt Hominy, and the young children! how

could I ever pray again if they were sold? Oh! Mr. Milburn, where was

your heart, to let papa waste his plentiful substance in such a

hopeless experiment? If my singing in the church has given you

happiness, why could it not move you to mercy? Think of the despair of

this family, my father's helpless generosity, my mother's marriage

settlement gone, too, and every other son and daughter parted from

them!"

"I never encouraged one moment Judge Custis's expenditure," said

Meshach, "though I lent him money. The first time he came to me to

borrow, my mind was in a liberal disposition, for you had just entered

it with your innocent attentions. I supposed he wanted a temporary

accommodation, and I gave it to him at the lowest rate one Christian

would charge another."

"You say that I influenced you to lend my father money? Why, sir, I was

a child. He has been borrowing from you since my earliest

recollections."

The creditor took from his breast-pocket a large leather wallet, and,

arising, laid its contents on the table. He opened a piece of folded

paper, and drew from it two objects; one a lock of blue-black hair like

his own, and the other a pressed and faded rose.

"This flower," said Milburn, with reverence, "Judge Custis's daughter

fastened in my derided hat. I kept it till it was dead, and laid it away

with my mother's hair, the two religious objects of my life. That faded

rose made me your father's creditor, Miss Custis."

Vesta took the rose, and looked at him with surprise and inquiry.

"Oh, why did not this flower speak for us?" she said; "to open your lips

after that, to save my father? Then you informed yourself, and knew that

he was hurrying to destruction, but still you gave him money at higher

interest."

Milburn looked at her with diminished courage, but sincerity, and

answered: "Your voice sang between us, Miss Custis, every time he came.

I did not admit to myself what it was, but the feeling that I was being

drawn near you still opened my purse to your father, till he has drained

me of the profits of years, which I gave him with a lavish fatality,

though grasping every cent from every source but that. I did know, then,

he could not probably repay me, but every Sabbath at the church you

sang, and that seemed some compensation. I was bewitched; indistinct

visions of gratitude and recognition from you filled the preaching with

concourses of angels, all bearing your image, and hovering above me. The

price I paid for that unuttered and ever-repelled hope has been

princely, but never grudged, and it has been pure, I believe, or Heaven

would have punished me. The more I ruined myself for your father, the

more successful my ventures were in all other places; if you were my

temptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of the God in whose temple

it was born."

Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit.

"Do I understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open under

their startled lashes. "My father has spoken of a degrading condition?

Is it to love you?"

For the first time Meshach Milburn dropped his eyes.

"I never supposed it possible for you to love me," he said, bitterly. "I

thought God might permit me some day to love you."

"Do you know what love is?" asked Vesta, with astonishment.

"No."

"How came you, then, to be interpreting my good acts so basely, carrying

even my childhood about in your evil imagination, and cursing my

father's sorrow with the threat of his daughter's slavery?"

Milburn heard with perfect humility these hard imputations.

"You have not loved, I think, Miss Custis?" he said, with a slight

flush. "I have believed you never did."

He raised his eyes again to her face.

"I loved my father above everything," faltered Vesta. "I saw no man,

besides, admiring my father."

"Then I displaced no man's right, coveting your image. Sometimes it

seemed you were being kept free so long to reward my silent worship. I

do not know what love is, but I know the gifts of God, as they bloom in

nature, repel no man's devotion. The flowers, the birds, and the forest,

delighted my childhood; my youth was spent in the study of myself and

man; at last a beautiful child appeared to me, spoke her way to my soul,

and it could never expel her glorious presence. All things became

subordinate to her, even avarice and success. She kept me a Christian,

or I should have become utterly selfish; she kept me humble, for what

was my wealth when I could not enter her father's house! I am here by a

destiny now; the power that called you to this room, so unexpectedly to

me, has borne us onward to the secret I dreaded to speak to you. Dare I

go further?"

She was trying to keep down her insulted feelings, and not say something

that should forever exasperate her father's creditor, but the

possibility of marrying him was too tremendous to reply.

"This moment is a great one," continued Milburn, firmly, "for I feel

that it is to terminate my visions of happiness, and of kindness as

well. You have expressed yourself so indignantly, that I see no thought

of me has ever lodged in your mind. Why should it have ever done so?

Though I almost dreamed it had, because you filled my life so many years

with your rich image, I thought you might have felt me, like an

apparition, stealing around this dwelling often in the dark and rain,

content with the ray of light your window threw upon the deserted

street. Now I see that I was a weak dunce, whose passion nature lent no

nerve of hers to convey even to your notice. Better for me that I had

hugged the debasing reality of my gold, and lost my eyes to everything

but its comfort!"

He looked towards the door. Vesta sat down in the fairy rocker, and

detained him.

"You have told me the feeling you think you had, Mr. Milburn. Poor as we

Custises are now, it will not do to be proud. How did you ever think

that feeling could be returned by me? My youth, my connections,

everything, would forbid me, without haughtiness, to see a suitor in

you. Then, you took no means to turn my attention towards you. You could

have been neighborly, had you desired. You did not even wear the

commonest emblems of a lover--"

She paused. Milburn said to himself:

"Ah! that accursed Hat."

The interruption ruffled his temper:

"I have had reasons, also proud, Miss Custis, to be consistent with my

perpetual self here. I will put the substantial merits of my case to

you, since I see that I am not likely to make myself otherwise

attractive. This house is already mine. The law will, in a few weeks,

put me in possession of your father's entire property. I shall change

outward circumstances with him in Princess Anne. He is too old to adopt

my sacrifices, and recover his situation; he may find some shifting

refuge with his sons and daughters, but, even if his spirit could brook

that dependence, it would be very unnecessary, when, by marrying his

creditor, you can retain everything he now has to make his family

respectable. I offer you his estate as your marriage portion!"

He took up from the table the notes her father had negotiated, and laid

them in her lap.

Vesta sat rocking slowly, and deeply agitated. She had in her mouth the

comfort and honor of her parents, which she could confer in a single

word. It was a responsibility so mighty that it made her tremble.

"Oh! what shall I say?" she thought. "It will be a sin to say 'Yes.' To

say 'No' would be a crime."

"You shall retain every feature of your home--your servants, your

mother, and her undiminished portion; your liberty in the fullest sense.

I will contribute to send your father to the legislature or to congress,

to sustain his pride, and keep him well occupied. The Furnace he may

appear to have sold to me, and I will accept the unpopularity of closing

it. I ask only to serve you, and inhabit your daily life, like one of

these negroes you are kind to, and if I am ever harsh to you, Miss

Vesta, I swear to surrender you to your family, and depart forever."

Vesta shook her head.

"There is no separation but one," she said, "when Heaven has been called

down to the marriage solemnity. It is before that act that we must

consider everything. How could I make you happy? My own happiness I will

dismiss. Yours must then comprehend mine. Kindness might make me

grateful, but gratitude will not satisfy your love."

"Yes," exclaimed Milburn, chasing up his advantage with tremulous ardor;

"the long famine of my heart will be thankful for a dry crust and a cup

of ice. Here at the fireside let me sit and warm, and hear the rustle of

your dress, and grow in heavenly sensibility. You will redeem a savage,

you will save a soul!"

"It is not the price I must pay to do this, I would have you consider,

sir," Vesta replied, with her attention somewhat arrested by his

intensity; "it is the price you are paying--your self-respect,

perhaps--by the terms on which you obtain me. It may never be known out

of this family that I married you for the sake of my father and mother.

But how am I to prevent you from remembering it, especially when you say

that I am the sum of your purest wishes? If your interest would consume

after you obtained me, we might, at least, be indifferent; but if it

grew into real love, would you not often accuse yourself?"

Meshach Milburn sat down, cast his large brown eyes upon the floor, and

listened in painful reflection.

"You cannot conceive I have had any real love for you?" he exclaimed,

dubiously.

"You have seen me, and desired me for your wife; that is all," said

Vesta, "that I can imagine. Lawless power could do that anywhere. To be

an obedient wife is the lot of woman; but love, such as you have some

glimmering of, is a mystic instinct so mutual, so gladdening, yet so

free, that the captivity you set me in to make me sing to you will

divide us like the wires of a cage."

"There is no bird I ever caught," said Meshach Milburn, "that did not

learn to trust me. Your comparison does not, therefore, discourage me.

And you have already sung for me, the saddest day of your life!"

A slight touch of nature in this revelation of her strange suitor called

Vesta's attention to the study of him again. With her intelligence and

sense of higher worth coming to her rescue, she thought: "Let me see all

that is of this Tartar, for, perhaps, there may be another way to his

mercy."

As she recovered composure, however, she grew more beautiful in his

sight, her dark, peerless charms filling the room, her kindling eyes

conveying love, her skin like the wild plum's, and her raven brows and

crown of luxuriant hair rising upon a queenly presence worthy of an

empress's throne. Such beauty almost made Milburn afraid, but the

energies of his character were all concentrated to secure it.

"Who _are_ you?" she asked, with a calm, searching look, cast from her

highest self-respect and alert intelligence. "Have you any relations or

connections fit to bring here--to this house, to me?"

"Not one that I know," said the forester. "I am nothing but myself, and

what you will make of me."

"Where were you born and reared?"

"The house does not stand which witnessed that misery," spoke Milburn,

with a flush of obdurate pride; "it was burned last night, not far from

the furnace which swallowed your father's substance."

"Why, I would be afraid of you, Mr. Milburn, if your errand here was not

so practical. Omens and wonders surround you. Birds forget their natural

life for you. Iron ceases to be occult when you take it up. Your

birthplace in this world disappears by fire the night before you

foreclose a mortgage upon a gentleman's daughter. Is all this sorcery

inseparable from that necromancer's Hat you wear in Princess Anne?"

She had touched the sensitive topic by a skilful approach, yet he

changed color, as if the allusion piqued him.

"Nature never rebuked my hat, Miss Vesta, and you are so like nature, it

will not occupy your thoughts. I recollect the day you decorated my old

hat; said I: 'perhaps this vagrant head-covering, after all its injuries

and wanderings, may some day find a peg beneath my own roof, and the

kind welcome of a lady like that little miss.' That was several years

ago, and to-day, for the first time, my hat is on the rack of your hall.

The long wish of the heart is not often denied. We are not responsible

for it. The only conspiracy I have plotted here, was that I did not

oppose most natural occurrences, all drawing towards this scene. My

magic was hope and humility. I dared to wear my ancestor's hat in the

face of a contemptuous and impertinent provincial public, and it gave me

the pride to persevere till I should bring it home to honors and to

noble shelter. If you despise my hat, you will despise me."

"Oh, no; Mr. Milburn! I try never to despise anything. If you wore your

family hat from some filial respect, it was, in part, piety. But was

that, indeed, your motive in being so eccentric?"

Milburn felt uneasy again. He hesitated, and said:

"In perfect truth, I fear not. There may have been something of revenge

in my mind. I had been grossly insulted."

"Is it not something of that revenge which instigates you here--even in

this profession of love?" exclaimed Vesta, judicially.

Meshach looked up, and the shadows cleared from his face.

"I can answer that truthfully, lady. Towards you, not an indignant

thought has ever harbored in my brain. It has been the opposite:

protection, worship, tender sensibility."

"Has that exceptional charity extended to my father?"

"No."

Vesta would have been exasperated, but for his candor.

"My father never insulted you, sir?"

"No, he patronized me. He meant no harm, but that old hat has worn a

deep place in my brain through carrying it so long, and it is a subject

that galls me to mention it. Yet, I must be consistent with my only

eccentricity. Wherever I may go, there goes my hat; it makes my

identity, my inflexibility; it achieves my promise to myself, that men

shall respect my hat before I die."

"Pardon me," said Vesta, not uninterested in his character, "I can

understand an eccentricity founded on family respect. We were

Virginians, and that is next to religion there. The negroes of our

family share it with us. You had a family, then?"

Milburn shook his head.

"No; not a family in the sense you mean. Generations of obscurity, a

parentage only virtuous; no tombstone anywhere, no crest nor motto, not

even a self-deluding lie of some former gentility, shaped from hand to

hand till it commits a larceny on history, and is brazen on a carriage

panel! We were foresters. We came forth and existed and perished, like

the families of ants upon the ant-hills of sand. We migrated no more

than the woodpeckers in your sycamore trees, and made no sound in events

more than their insectivorous tapping. Out yonder beyond Dividing Creek,

in the thickets of small oak and low pines, many a little farm,

scratched from the devouring forest, speckling the plains and wastes

with huts and with little barns of logs, once bore the name of Milburn

through all the localities of the Pocomoke to and beyond the great

Cypress Swamp. They are dying, but never dead. The few who live expect

no recognition from me, and, happy in their poverty, envy me nothing I

have accumulated. My name has grown hard to them, my hat is the subject

of their superstitions, my ambition and success have lost me their

sympathy without giving me any other social compensation. You behold a

desperate man, a merciless creditor, a tussock of ore from the bogs of

Nassawongo, yet one whose only crimes have been to adore you, and to

wear his forefathers' hat."

"Is this pride, then, wholly insulted sensibility, Mr. Milburn?"

"I cannot say, Miss Custis. You may smile, but I think it is

aristocracy."

"I think so, too," exclaimed Vesta reflectively; "you are a proud man.

My father, who has had reason to be proud, is less an aristocrat, sir,

than you."

Milburn's flush came and stayed a considerable while. He was not

displeased at Vesta's compliment, though it bore the nature of an

accusation.

"You are aristocratic," explained Vesta, "because you adopted the

obsolete hat of your people. Whatever vanity led you to do it, it was

the satisfaction of some origin, I think."

She checked herself, seeing that she was entering into his affairs with

too much freedom.

"I suppose that somewhere, some time," spoke the strange visitor, "some

person of my race has been influential and prosperous. Indeed, I have

been told so. He was elevated to both the magistracy and the scaffold,

but my hat had even an older origin."

"Tell me about that ancestor," said Vesta, the heartache from his

greater errand instigating her to defer it, while she was yet barely

conscious that the man was original, if not interesting.

He told a singular tale, tracing his hat to Raleigh's times and through

Sir Henry Vane to America, till it became the property of Jacob

Milborne, the popular martyr who was executed in New York, and his

brethren driven into Maryland, bringing with them the harmless hat as

their only patrimony.[1]

Before he began, Milburn drew up his compact little figure and opened

the door to the hall. The wind or air from some of the large, cold

apartments of the long house, coming in by some crack or open sash, gave

almost a shriek, and scattered the fire in the chimney.

Vesta felt her blood chill a moment as her visitor re-entered with the

antediluvian hat, and placed it upon the table beneath the lamp.

It had that look of gentility victorious over decay, which suggested the

mummy of some Pharaoh, brought into a drawing-room on a learned

society's night. Vesta repressed a smile, rising through her pain, at

the gravity of the forester guest, who was about to demonstrate his

aristocracy through this old hat. It seemed to her, also, that the

portraits of the Custises, on the wall, carried indignant noses in the

air at their apparently conscious knowledge of the presence of some

unburied pretender, as if, in Westminster Abbey, the effigies of the

Norman kings had slightly aroused to feel Oliver Cromwell lying among

them in state.

The hat, Vesta perceived, was Flemish, such as was popular in England

while the Netherlands was her ally against the house of Spain, and,

stripped of its ornaments, was lengthened into the hat of the Puritans.

Vesta attempted to exert her liberality and perceive some beauty in this

hat, but the utmost she could admit was the tyranny of fashion over the

mind--it seemed, over the soul itself, for this old hat, inoffensive as

it was, weighed down her spirits like a diving-bell.

The man, without his hat, had somewhat redeemed himself from low

conversation and ideas, but now, that he brought this hat in and

associated his person with it, she shrank from him as if he had been a

triple-hatted Jew, peddling around the premises.

The obnoxious hat also exercised some exciting influence over Meshach

Milburn, if his changed manner could be ascribed to that article, for he

resumed his strong, wild-man's stare, deepened and lowered his voice,

and without waiting for any query or expression of his listener, told

the tale.