The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
the woods ever resisted his seductions and mystic influence.
"If that be true," Vesta said to herself, "there is no danger of this
vociferous pet making his escape if I put him out of the window till I
can see if his master speaks or lives."
So she raised the window, and flung the mocking-bird up into the air,
and it came down and dropped into the old willow-tree beneath, and there
set up a concert the Sabbath morning might have been proud of, when, in
the corn-fields, the free-footed Saviour went plucking the milky ears.
Vesta could but stop a minute and listen.
The liquid notes chased each other around in circles of dizzy harmony,
as if angels were at hide-and-seek on the blue branches of the air,
eluding each other in pure-heartedness, chasing each other with eager
love, sighing praise and happiness as their supernal hearts emitted
music in the glow of ecstasy, and carrying upward the loveliest emotions
of the earth in yearning sympathy for nature. No language, now, that
Vesta could identify, was woven into that maze of morning song, which
challenged, with its fulness and golden weight, the floods of sunshine,
matching light with sound, spontaneous both, and rivals for the favors
of the soft atmosphere. Singing with all its heart, outdoing all it
knew, forgetting imitation in wild improvisation, watching her window as
it danced upon the twigs and fluttered into the air, conscious of her
listening as it purled and warbled towards her, and sounded every pipe
and trumpet, virginal and clarion, hautboy and castanet, in the
orchestra of its rustic bosom, the mocking-bird's ode seemed almost
supernatural this morn to Vesta, and she thought to herself:
"Oh, what wedding music in the cathedral at Baltimore could equal that?
and this poor man receives it for his epithalamium, without cost, as
truly as if nature were greeting my coming to him in the old poet's
spirit:
"'Now all is done; bring home the bride againe;
Bring home the triumph of our victory;
Bring home with you the glory of her gaine,
With joyance bring her and with jollity:
Sing, ye sweet angels, Alleluia sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.'"
Relieved from the agitation of the mocking-bird, Vesta now gave her
whole attention to her husband; and the high heat of his brain and
circulation, and his muttering, like delirium, seemed to indicate that
he had an intense attack of intermittent fever. She heard the words
several times repeated by him: "I will come soon, darling!" and the
simplicity of his devotion to her, unloved as he was, had such flavor of
pathos in it that the tears started to Vesta's eyes.
"Poor soul!" she said, "it will be long before I can love him. _There_,
his hunger must be enduring. But my duty is not the less clear to stay
by his side and nurse him, as his wife."
At this conclusion she looked Milburn over carefully, to see if any
wound or sign of violence, whether by accident or an enemy, appeared
upon him, and finding none, and he all the time wandering in his sleep,
she climbed the ladder and peeped into the garret, to see if his servant
might be there. Samson's bed, as she supposed it was, had not been
disturbed, and so, descending, she raised the window over the larger
door she had entered by, and beckoned Virgie to come up.
"Take this tin cup," she said to the quadroon, "and go to the spring,
near here, and bring it to me full of water."
Then, as the girl tripped away, Vesta found a piece of paper, and wrote
her father a note, telling him to come to her; and to the girl, when she
returned, her mistress said:
"I want you to get a roll of new rag-carpet at Teackle Hall, and have it
brought here, to spread upon this floor. Send me, too, a pair of our
brass andirons, and pack in a basket some glass, table-ware, and linen.
Tell papa to bring one of his own night-shirts, and to take down my
picture in the sewing-room, and wrap it up, and have it sent. I must
have mamma's medicine-box and a wheelbarrow of ice; and let Hominy make
some strong tea and hot-water toast. Virgie, do not forget that this
sick gentleman is my husband, and a part of our own family!"
"The girl's face preserved its respect with difficulty as she heard the
last part of the sentence, but she replied to What she understood to be
a warning by saying:
"Miss Vessy, I never tell anybody tales."
"No, dear, you do not. I only feared you might forget the very different
view we must take of Mr. Milburn from his former life here."
Being again left alone, Vesta took the tin cup of spring-water, and,
raising the disturbed man's head, she gave him a drink, and, as he
opened his eyes to see whom it was, she heard him say, with an
articulate sigh:
"Heaven."
With the remainder of the water and her handkerchief she washed his hot
skin and kept it moist, and fitful murmurs, as "Darling!" "Angel!"
"Beautiful lady!" came from his roving brain as perception and poison
contended for his mind. The inborn sense in woman of happiness after
doing good offices and being appreciated was attended with a certain
intellectual elation, and even amusement, at having witnessed what was
altogether new to her,--the life of the meaner class of white people.
She looked at the dexterous silhouette of herself, cut, probably, from
memory, long ago, by the man, no doubt, who never knew her until
yesterday, and, guessing the companion profiles to be his mother and
father, she exclaimed, mentally:
"I cannot see anything insincere about this man's statement to me. Here
are all the proofs of his deep attachment to me long before he forced my
name upon papa with such apparent insolence. If papa could see these
proofs with a woman's interest, he would have a full apology in them.
Here, too, is the bird that sings my name. What strength of
prepossession the master must have had to make the feathered pupil
repeat the sound of 'Vesta,' and call me 'sweet!' What resources, too,
without the use of money or social aids! He knows the story of our
English beginning, while we make it an idle boast; but to him Cromwell
and Milton, Raleigh and Vane, are men of to-day. Ah!" Vesta thought, "I
think I see now one of those Puritans in my husband, of whom I have
heard as sprinkled through Virginia. We are the Cavaliers. There is the
Roundhead, even to the King James hat."
As she was led onward in these probabilities, Vesta took up the demure
old Hat and looked it over without any superstition, and reflected:
"Do we not exaggerate trifles? Why should this man be so derided because
he covers his head with an old hat? What of it? Suppose it shows some
vanity or eccentricity, why is there more merit in covering that up than
in expressing it in the dress? The styles we wear to-day are the
derision even of the current journals, and what will be thought of them
fifty years hence, when the fashion magazines show me as I look,--the
envy of my moment, the fright of my grandchildren?"
With rising color, she put the hat in the leather hat-box, and shut it
up.
Judge Custis made his way up the dark stairs in a little while, and, as
soon as he looked at Milburn, exclaimed,
"Curses come home to roost! It was only night before last that I said,
in the presence of Meshach's negro, 'May the ague strike him and the
bilious sweat from Nassawongo mill-pond!' He slept by it that night,
while I was tossing in misery. The next night it was his turn. Daughter,
he has the bilious intermittent fever, the legacy of all his fathers. He
exposed himself, I suppose, extraordinarily that night, and I hear that
he burned the old cabin in the morning. Now he will burn, in memory of
it, for the next ten weeks; for he has, I suspect, from the time of day
the burning and delirium came, what is called the double quotidian type
of the fever, with two attacks in the twenty-four hours."
"Poor man!" exclaimed Vesta.
"Now I can account for his appearance at the marriage ceremony last
night. The fever was on him, but he went through it by hard grit, and,
probably, returning here to get some relief, he just fell over on that
bed, and his head left him for some hours. The paroxysm goes away during
sleep, and returns in the morning; so, before he could get abroad
to-day, even if he could walk, to report himself at Teackle Hall,
another fever came, and a furious one, too, and he will have good luck
to survive forty days of fever, with probably eighty sweats in that
time."
"He must be doctored at once, papa."
"Well, I am good enough doctor for the bilious fever. He wants plenty of
cold lemonade, cold sponging, and ice to suck when the fever is on him.
When the chills intervene he wants blanketing, hot bottles at his feet,
and hot tea, or something stronger. In the rest between the attacks of
fever and chill, he wants calomel and Peruvian bark, and if these
delirious spells go on, he may want both bleeding and opium."
"Here are some of the things he immediately needs, then," Vesta said, as
a tall white man she had never seen before came up the stairs with
Virgie, bringing some Susquehanna ice in a blanket, and a roll of
carpet, and other articles she had sent for. The man's face wore a large
bruise that heightened his savage appearance.
"Judge," exclaimed the stranger, "I'm doin' a little work to pay fur my
board. Who's your whiffler? He'll know me when he sees me next time."
Following the stranger's eyes, Vesta and her father saw Meshach Milburn,
half raised up from the low trundle-bed, staring at Joe Johnson as if
trying to get at him. His lips moved, he partly articulated:
"Catch the--scoundre--_him_!"
"Joe," said the Judge, "slip away! He recognizes you as the assailant
yesterday. Don't hesitate: see how he glares at you!"
"Oh, it's the billy-noodle with the steeple nab-cheat, him that settled
me with the brick," said the stranger, in a low voice. "So I have piped
him. Ah! that's plumby!"
As the tall man started to go Milburn's countenance relaxed, he wandered
again in his head, and fell back upon the bed.
"I told you he was a hard hater, Mr. Johnson," the Judge remarked.
"Them shakes is the equivvy for the bruise he give me,--that is, till we
both heal up. He's painted the ensigns of all nations on my stummick,
Judge. But a blow is cured by a blow!"
With a look of admiring computation upon the girl Virgie, Joe Johnson
drew his long figure down the stairs, like a pole.
"What a brutal giant," Vesta said; "and how came he to be doing our
errands?"
"Why, Aunt Hominy hadn't nobody to bring the wheelbarrow load, and this
man said he'd come, and he would come, Miss Vesty, so I couldn't say
anything."
"He's a man of a good deal of influence," said the Judge, uneasily, "in
the upper part of our county, and in Delaware. Last night, after the
wedding, he slapped Meshach's hat, and old Samson knocked him down for
it, and he would have killed Samson, I hear, but for your bridegroom,
who felled him with a timely brick. It's a hard team to pass on a narrow
road,--Meshach and Samson; hey, Virgie?"
"I'm glad old Samson beat him, anyway," the pretty quadroon said,
showing her white teeth.
"Oh, what troubles will not that hat bring upon us!" Vesta thought; and
then spoke: "If Mr. Milburn was strong, I think he would hardly let that
man get out of the county before night."
"Well, daughter, what are you going to do with these articles he has
brought?"
"They are to make this room comfortable. See, he has my picture here,
cut by his own hands: I want to put a better one before him: help me
hang it, papa!"
In a few minutes the bright oil portrait, but recently painted by Mr.
Rembrandt Peale, was taking the sunlight upon its warm brunette cheeks,
in full sight of the bridegroom, and the thick rag carpet warmed the