The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
Street, walked back of the hotel, avoiding its triflers, and reached the
church in a few minutes unobserved. The long windows shed some light,
however, but as it was Saturday night, this was attributed, by the few
who noticed it, to preparations for the next Sabbath morning. Before
setting out, Samson Hat, observing his employer to shake a trifle, asked
him if a dram of whiskey would not be proper.
"No, boy; this is a wedding without wine. I shall need all my wits to
find my manners."
He entered the church, and found it warmed, and the minister already
present in his surplice, kneeling alone at the altar. Mr. Tilghman
arose, with his youthful face very pale, and tears upon his cheeks, and
seeing his neglected parishioner and the serving-man, came down the
aisle.
"Mr. Milburn," he said, extending his hand, "I hope to congratulate,
after this ceremony, a Christian-hearted bridegroom, and one who will
take the rare charge which has fallen to him, in tender keeping. My
endeavor shall be to love you, sir, if you will let me! Miss Vesta is
the priestess of Princess Anne, and if you take her from our sight and
hearing, even God's ministrations in this church will seem hollow, I
fear."
"To me they would," said Milburn, "though from no disrespect to our
pastor."
"You have been a faithful parishioner," resumed Tilghman, "during my
brief labor here, as in my boyhood, when I little dreamed I should fill
that desk. You know, perhaps, that it was from the hopeless love of my
cousin Custis, I fled to God for consolation, and he made me his humble
minister."
"I have heard so," said Milburn; "or, rather, I have seen so."
"Pardon my mentioning a subject so irrelevant to you, sir, but, though I
have surrendered every vain emotion for my cousin, her happiness is a
part of my religion, and this sudden conclusion of her marriage, about
which I have asked only one question, has urged me to throw myself upon
your sympathy."
"What do you ask, William Tilghman? No matter--your request is granted."
"How have I won your favor?" the young rector asked, somewhat surprised.
Milburn mechanically picked his hat from a pew, and held it a little way
up.
"You were the only boy in this village who never cried after this hat."
"Then it was probably overlooked by me. I was like the other boys,
mischievous, before my spirits had been depressed by unhappy love, and I
did not know I was any exception to their habits."
"It was grateful to see that exception," said Milburn; "hooted people
make fine distinctions."
"Oh, Mr. Milburn, forgive the boys! They are made for laughter, and
little causes excite it, like dogs to bark, from health and
exercise--scarcely more than that. The request I make is to let me be
your friend, because I have been your wife's! Frankness becomes my
calling, and I think you need friendly, cordial surroundings to bring
out your usefulness, and give you the freedom that will take constraint
out of your family life, and, without diminishing your good
sensibilities, dispel any morbid ones. This will open a way for Vesta to
see her domestic career, which, otherwise, might become so rapidly
contracted as to disappoint you both. You have seen her the idol of her
wide circle, free as a bird, indulged by her kind, and by Providence
also, till joy and grace, beauty and health, faith and hope live
abundant in her, and you are the beneficiary of it all. Her society
hereafter you must control. May I become your friend, and let my love
for your wife recommend me to your confidence, as you to mine and to my
prayers?"
"Have I another friend already?" exclaimed Milburn, his voice quivering.
"What wealth she brings me never known before! William, you will be ever
welcome to me."
They clasped hands upon it, and old Samson Hat, sitting back, was heard
to chuckle aloud such a warming laugh, that Meshach's response to it, in
a sudden pallid shivering, seemed slightly out of keeping. He was
recalled, however, by the entrance of Judge Custis with his daughter,
and her maid, Virgie.
Vesta was very pale, but neither shrinking nor negative. On the
contrary, she supported her father rather than received his support, and
Milburn saw the Judge's worn, helpless face, with the pride faded from
it, and pity for his daughter absorbing every other feeling of
depression.
He wore his best cloth suit, with the coat tails falling to his knees
behind, the body cut square to the hips, and the collar raised high upon
his stock of white enamelled English leather. His low-buttoned vest
exposed his shirt-buttons of crystal and gilt, and a ruffle, ironed by
Roxy's slender hands with nimble touches, parted down the middle like
sea foam on shell, and similar ruffles at the wrists were clasped by
chain buttons of pearl and silver. His vest was of figured Marseilles
stuff, and gaiters of the same material partly covered his shoes; and
his heavy seal, with his coat of arms upon it, fell from a pale ribbon
at his fob. Debtor though he was, and answering at the bar of the church
to a heavy personal and family judgment, his large and flowing lines of
body, deeply cut chin, full eyes, and natural height and grace of
stature made him a marked and noble presence anywhere.
Vesta Custis, dropping off a mantle of blue velvet at a touch of her
maid, stood in a party dress of white silk, the neck, shoulders, and
arms bare; and, as she halted a minute in the aisle, Virgie struck the
cloth sandals from her mistress's white slippers of silk, and, removing
her hood of home-embroidered cloth, a veil of white fell to her train.
The dingy light from the lamps of whale-oil gathered, like poor folks'
children's marvelling eyes, around the pair of diamonds in her
delicately moulded, but alert and generous ears. Her fine gold
watch-chain, twice dependent from her neck, disappeared in the snowy
mould of her bosom, on whose heaving drift swam a magnolia-bud and
blossom, each with a leaf. Her father's picture, in a careful miniature
set in pearls, lay higher on her breast, fastened by a pearl necklace.
Her hands were covered with white gloves, and her arms were without
ornament. Her hair, dropping in dark ringlets around her forehead and
temples, was combed upward farther back, and then gathered around a
pearl comb in high braids, and the plentiful loops drooped to her
shoulder.
Milburn glanced at the treasures of her peerless bodily charms, never
till now revealed to his sight, and their splendor almost made him
afraid.
Never had he been at a theatre, a ball, or anywhere from which he could
have foreseen a swan-like neck and bosom sculptured like these, and arms
as white as the limbs of the silver-maple, and warmed with bridal-life
and modesty.
Her lips, parted and red, her great rich eyes a goddess might have
commanded through, with their eyebrows of raven-black, like entrances to
the caves of the Cumaean sibyl, her small head borne as easily upon her
neck as a dove upon a sprig--all flashed upon Milburn's thrilled yet
flinching soul, as the revelation of a divinity.
As she stepped forward he spoke to her with that bold instinct or
ecstasy she had observed when she first addressed him in her father's
house, ten hours before.
"You have dressed yourself for me?" he said.
"Sir, such as I could command upon this necessity I thought to do you
honor with."
"For _me_, to look so beautiful! what can I say? You are very lovely!"
"It is gracious of you to praise me. Shall we wait, or are you ready?"
He gave her his hand, unable to speak again, and she was calm enough to
notice that his hand was now hot, as if he had fever. Her father, at her
side, reached out also, and took the bridegroom's other hand:
"Milburn," he said, huskily, "this is no work of mine. My daughter has
my consent only because it is her will."
"The nobler to me for that," Milburn spoke, with his countenance
strangely flushed. "What shall we do, my lady?"
"Give me your arm; not that one. This is right. Have you brought a ring,
sir?"
"Yes." He drew from his vest pocket a little, lean gold ring, worth
hardly half a dollar.
"It was my poor mother's," he said.
Without another word she walked forward, her arm drawing him on, Virgie
following, and her father bringing up the rear. Samson Hat, feeling
uneasy at being awarded no part in the ceremony, slipped up the aisle as
far as the big, stiff-aproned stove in the middle of the church, behind
which he ducked his body, but kept his head and faculties in the centre
of the events.
Mr. Tilghman had preceded them in his surplice, and taking his place at
the altar, with his countenance pale as death, he read the exordium in
an altered voice: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here, and in
the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in
holy matrimony."
"What 'company' is here?" thought Vesta. "Not alone these poor negroes
and my father; no, I feel behind me, looking on, the generations of our
pride and helpless ease, the worthy younger suitors I have been too
exacting and particular to see the consideration and merits of, the
golden hours I might have improved my mind in, with brilliant
opportunities I was not jealous of, and which will be mine no more,
because I had not trimmed my virgin lamp; and so I slept away my
girlhood, till now I awaken at the cry, 'The bridegroom cometh,' and I
behold! Yes, I have been a foolish virgin, and am surprised when my fate
is here! Perhaps my guardian angel also stands behind me, the cross
advanced that I must take, my crown concealed; but somewhere, midway of
this journey of life, she may give it to me, and say, 'Well done!'"
"This 'company,'" thought Milburn, with swimming head, "gathered to see
me marry! what company? I seem to feel, besides these negroes, my sole
spectators, the populous forest peering on, the barefoot generations,
the illiterate broods, the instinctive parents, the sandy graves. They
give forth my lost tribe, and all cry at me, 'Go, leave us, proud one!
despiser, go!' Yet there is one I see, pure as my bride, white as my
captive's bosom, her soul all in her believing eyes, and saying, 'Oh, my
son, it is a woman like me that has come into your life, and her heart
is very tender, and, by your mother's dying love! be kind to the poor
stranger you have bought.'"
He answered, "I will!" aloud, and it seemed almost a miraculous
coincidence that it was a response to the minister's question, till he
heard the corresponding inquiry put to his bride in the clergyman's low,
but gentlest, tones:
"Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him, in
sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto
him, so long as ye both shall live?"
"I will!" spoke the Judge's daughter, clear as music, and the Judge drew
a long, deep sigh, saturated with tears, as if from the deepest wells of
grief.
He could not distinctly answer, as he joined her hand to the minister's.
The minister lost his office and speech for a moment, joining her hand
to the bridegroom's. The slave-girl burst into a wail she could not
control, and only Vesta stood calm as her bridegroom, putting her cool,
moist hand in his palm of fire, and waited to repeat the Church's
deliberate language.
When both had made this solemn promise, she reached for the little ring,
and gave it to her old lover, the minister, and Virgie loosed her glove.
Mr. Tilghman, his tears silently falling upon his book, passed the ring
to Meshach, and saw its tiny circle hoop her white finger round, no
bigger than a straw, yet formidable as the martyr's chain. His prayers
were said with deep feeling, and he pronounced them man and wife. Then,
shaking Meshach's hand, he said, with his boyish countenance bright as
faith could make it:
"My friend, may I take my kiss?"