The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
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