The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
philosophic intellects. Our newest amusement is to expound the
constitution to them who are doing too well under it, although our
fathers, who made it, like Jefferson and Madison, died only yesterday,
overwhelmed with debts, and poor Mr. Monroe is run away to New York,
they say, to dodge the Virginia bailiffs."
"Well, papa, I have saved you from that fear. Here are your notes to Mr.
Milburn and others. Sit down and look them over carefully and see if
they are all here!"
He took them up, with volatile relief laughing on his yet tear-marked
face, and said:
"We'll burn them, Vessy."
"Nay, sir, not till you have seen them all. A single note missing would
give you the same perplexity, and there is no daughter left to settle
it."
He looked at her with a smile, yet annoyance.
"You are not going to make a Meshach Milburn of me?"
"Stop, sir!" Vesta said. "You might do worse than learn from my
husband."
Something strange in her expression baffled the Judge.
"Ha!" he interjected, "have I a rival already, daughter? Is his conquest
as complete as that?"
"I promised to honor him a few moments ago, and I believe I can, papa.
All that you tell me adds to my respect for a man who seems to be only
what he is."
"Perhaps you can love him, too?" the Judge said, watching her with an
apprehension a little like wonder, a little like jealousy.
"Oh, I wish I could, papa! That also I promised to do, and I will try.
But my work will all be a failure if you do not become reconciled to Mr.
Milburn. It was for you I married him, and to save your name, your
peace, your independence, and the upbraiding we expected from mamma at
the loss of her dower. He is now your son-in-law, still in the prime of
life, with the business training you lament that you do not possess.
Begin this moment, papa, and learn his habits. Count and identify those
notes!"
Judge Custis looked them over separately, ran the number of notes he had
given over in his mind, and said:
"Yes, he has made fair restitution. There are none missing."
"Restitution implies that he has robbed you, papa. A just man did not
speak there! Every penny in those debts is stamped with Mr. Milburn's
injuries and coined by his sacrifices. Have you spent his money
remembering that?"
"No, my child, I suppose not."
"Give me the notes, papa."
She took them and sat thinking a few moments silently.
"If I were a man, papa," she said at length, "I would try to learn
business sense. It must be so respectable to live with one's mind able
to help one's security and one's friends, and prepare for age or
sickness while strong and healthy. Now, I think I will not let you burn
these notes till you have paid the price of them! Please write a
transfer of this house, servants, and your manor to me, Vesta----yes,
Vesta Milburn!"
She blushed as she spoke for the first time her new-worn name.
"Alas!" sighed her father, "Vesta Custis no more. I begin to feel it.
Well, Mrs. Milburn--I will give you the title--for what must I make over
these old properties to you?"
"In consideration of my repayment of the sum of my mother's estate to
you for her, for which you have given her no security whatever. It is
not provided for by these notes. I have only Mr. Meshach Milburn's
promise that he will pay her this money, risked and lost by you, father,
I fear very heedlessly. Is it restitution, also, for Mr. Milburn to
strip himself to pay your debts to mother?"
"No," said the Judge, guiltily, "that he pays on account of his passion
for you. He may cheat you there."
"I do not believe it, because he has been faithful to me so many years
before I knew he loved me. A man who keeps himself pure for a woman he
has no vows to, will pay her father's debts of honor when he has
promised."
Judge Custis found the issue quite too warm for his convenience, and
blushing as much as Vesta, he sat down and drew up a conveyance of his
property to Vesta Milburn, in her own right, and in consideration of
twenty-five thousand dollars, paid to Mrs. Lucy Custis on account of
judgment confessed to her by Daniel Custis.
"There, my dear," he said, passing it over, "what do you want with it?
Are you not sure of a home here as long as you live, even with me as the
proprietor?"
"No. The tragedy nearly finished here may be repeated, papa, and all of
us be homeless if you can go in debt again. I shall not do that--not
even for my husband, and here will stand Teackle Hall to protect you
all from the cold if bad times ever come again."
"You have paid a greater price for it, my child, than it is worth, and
you are entitled to it."
"Besides, dear father, if Mr. Milburn needs any reminder of his promise
to repay mamma's dowry, this will give it. He intended his gift to be my
marriage dower, and were I to convey it to you I should first ask his
consent; not in law, perhaps, but in delicacy."
"Oh, yes," the Judge said carelessly, "I am glad you have such good
reasons. Yet, my beautiful, my last child,--pride of my race! I hate to
see you so ready for this business--this calculation and foresight. It
is not like the Custises. I fear this man, Milburn, in a single day has
thrown his net around your nature, and annexed you to his sordid
existence. At this moment the redeeming thing about you is that you
cannot love him."
"Dear father, thoughts like that beset me, too--the pride of
aristocracy, the remembrance of what has been; but I want to be honest
and not to cheat my heart or any person. We have fallen from our height;
he has raised himself from his condition; and there is no deception in
my conduct. He knows I do not love him. Instead of standing upon an
obdurate heart, I pray God to melt my nature and mould it to his
affection!"
Regarding her a moment with increasing interest, Judge Custis came
forward and kissed her forehead.
"Amen, then!" he said. "May you love your husband! I will do all I can
to love him, too."
"That is spoken like a true man," Vesta said. "And now, father,
good-night! Be ready here for Mr. Milburn's arrival. Ring for a decanter
and some cake. It will not hurt you, after your fast, to drink a glass
of sherry with the bridegroom."
He kissed her and felt her trembling in his arms. As she started to go,
she returned and clung to him again. Her face was pale with fear.
"Oh, dreadful God!" he muttered, "to visit my many sins upon this
spotless angel! Where shall I fly?"
A step was upon the porch, and Vesta flashed up the stairway.
Judge Custis went to his door apprehensive and in tears. A strange man
stood there, with his eye bruised and blood dripping down to his coarse,
rope-like beard. He was in liquor, but so pale that it was apparent by
the starlight.
"Good-evening," said the man; "you don't know me, Judge Custis? No
matter, I'm Joe Johnson."
The Judge, whose tears had taken him far from things of trivial memory,
looked at the man and repeated "_Joe_ Johnson. Not Joe Johnson of
Dorchester?"
"Yes, Judge, Joe Johnson, the slave-dealer. I've bought many a nigger
from a Custis when it was impolite to sell 'em, Judge, so they let me
run' em off, and cussed me for it to the public. An' that's made me
onpopular, Judge Custis, and that's my fix to-night."
"You have been fighting, Johnson, I think," said the Judge, with
suppressed dislike.
"I've been knocked down by a nigger," said the man, with a glare of
ferocity, removing his hand from the wounded eye, as if it inflamed his
recollection of the blow to see the drops of blood drip from his beard
to the porch. "This town is too nice to abide a dealer in the
constitutional article, and so they set on me, when I was a little
jingle-brained with lush, an' while the nigger klemmed me in the peep, a
little white villain with a steeple bonnet hit me in the bread-bag with
a stone. I've come yer, Judge, to lie up in the kitchen, an' sleep warm
over Sunday, for the cops threaten to take me, if they catch me before
midnight."
"I suppose you know, Johnson, that I am a magistrate, and the proper
harborage I give to breakers of the peace is the jail."
"I'm not afraid of that limbo, Judge Custis, when I come to you. Old
Patty Cannon has done you many a good turn with Joe Johnson's gang about
election times in the upper destreeks of Somerset. Patty always said
Judge Custis was a game gentleman that returned a favor."
The Judge's countenance, an instant blank, lighted up with all a
vote-getter's smile, and he said:
"Joe, you're a terrible fellow, but dear old Aunt Patty did always take
my part! I suspect, Joe, that you have run afoul of Samson, the hired
man of Meshach Milburn, who is a boxer, though I wonder that he could
get away with your youth and size. Of course, I won't let you come to
harm. You haven't been playing your tricks on anybody's negroes, Joe?"
"No, upon my word, Judge! You see, I took a load of Egypt down the
Nanticoke to Norfolk, and shipped 'em to Orleens. Says I: 'I'll go back
Eastern Shore way, and see if there's any niggers to git.' So I tramped
it from Somers's Cove to Princess Anne, an' sluiced my gob at Kingston
and the Trappe till I felt noddy with the booze, and lay down in the
churchyard to snooze it off. Bein' awaked before my nod was out, I felt
evil an' chiveyish, and the tavern blokes, an' the nigger, an' the
feller with the steeple shap, all clecked me at once."
"Well, Joe, for Aunt Patty's sake, I'll take care of you. Go to the
kitchen door, and I'll step through the house and tell our Aunt Hominy
to give you supper and breakfast, and a place to get some sleep. But you
must keep out of the way, and slip off quietly on Sunday, for we have
had a wedding in the family to-day, Joe, and though I cannot understand
your peculiar slang, I suspect the bridegroom to be the man who knocked
the breath out of you with the stone."
The stranger lifted his hand from his bloody eye again, and counted the
red drops splashing down from his beard. Judge Custis marked his scowl.
"Tut, tut!" said the Judge, "you will never get your revenge out of that
man. He is too strong. I don't wonder that he disabled you, and don't
you ever get into his clutches, Joe; for if he knows you are here, I
shall be forced to send you to jail this very night. Keep out of the
hands of Meshach Milburn! He has knocked the breath out of you, Mr.
Johnson, but there are some whose hearts he has twisted out of their
bodies."
"I'll meet him somewhere," Joe Johnson muttered, "but not in Princess
Anne;" and he pulled down his slouched hat to cover his eyes, and
stalked away to find the kitchen.
"Oh, what a day can bring forth," Judge Custis thought, raising his
hands to the October stars: "Meshach of the ominous hat the host in my
parlor: Joe Johnson, the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, the guest of my
kitchen!"
CHAPTER XIV.
MESHACH'S HOME.
Vesta had slept she hardly knew how long, but it was day, and slowly her
eyes turned towards the remainder of her bed to see if it was occupied.
The bridegroom was not there.
She reached her foot into her slipper at the bedside, and at one swift
step passed before her mirror, whispering:
"I have dreamed it all!"
The fresh, flushing skin, and radiant contrasts of hair and eyes seemed
so welcome to her in their perfect assurance of health, that she
whispered again:
"Have I dreamed it? He is not here. Oh, am I free?"
Then a feeling of reproval came to her as the minutest memory of that
wonderful yesterday rose to her mind, and the vow she had made to honor
and obey seemed to have been too easily repented. She looked upon her
hand, and the little, thin, pathetic thread of gold reaffirmed her
memory of the wedding-ring, and at the next suggestion a blush coursed
through her being like a redbird in the apple-blossoms: perhaps he had