The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

Ferry--intended for Levin, Joe Johnson, and the Captain. Van Dorn stood blushing, pulling his long mustache of flax, and resting on his cowhide whip. "Dave," he called to a powerful negro, "get down from that mule; you're too drunk to go. Jump up in his place, Owen Daw!" The widow's son gladly vaulted on the animal. "Sorden," continued Van Dorn, "you know all the roads: lead the way! Whitecar, go with him! We rendezvous at Punch Hall at eight o'clock. The order of march is in pairs, a quarter to half a mile apart. If any man acts in anything without orders, or halloos upon the road, he may get this lash or he may get my knife." "Captain, where do we feed?" asked a small, wiry mulatto. "Water at Federalsburg," answered Van Dorn; "feed at the Punch Hall." They rode off in pairs at intervals of ten minutes; Van Dorn's vehicle went last. A moment before he departed, Cy James touched the Captain's sleeve and whispered, "Huldy." Turning to see if he was unobserved, Van Dorn followed to the deep-arched chimney at the northern gable, and dismissed his guide with a look. "Captain Van Dorn," Hulda said, her large gray eyes strained in tenderness and nervous courage, "do that boy Levin no harm: I love him! God forgive all your sins, many as they are, if you disobey grandmother's wicked commands about my darling!" "Ha! wild-flower, you have been listening?" "No, I have only looked: I know Aunt Patty's petting ways when she means to ruin, and watch her black flashes of cunning between: she is no cousin of Levin; he is Joe's gentle prisoner; his very name she made him hide when she saw you coming this morning." "_Creo que si_: Hulda, let me kiss you!" "Yes, if you dare." She gave him that pure, soul-driven, child's strong look again, exerting all the influence she had ever felt she exercised over him. Nevertheless he kissed her for the first time: "To-day, _bonito_, I dare to kiss thee. Believe me, my kiss is a tender one." "Yes, sir. There is something like a father in it. Oh, my father, art thou in heaven?" "If there be such a place, wild-flower, I think he is." "Oh, thank you, Captain Van Dorn. There may you also be and find the faith I feel in my one day's love on earth. I pray for you every day." "_Ayme_, poor weakling! Pray now for thyself: if thou canst save thyself sinless a brief day or two, it may be well for thee and Levin. Thy grandmother is dreadful in her joys this night." "I can die," said Hulda, "if Levin be saved." He kissed her again, and something wet dropped down his blushes. "Eternal love!" he sighed; "I've lost it." CHAPTER XXX. AFRICA. The Captain took his place at the reins, his picturesque velvet jacket, wide hat, bright hair, and gay shirt, thighings, belt, and boots, deserving all Patty Cannon's encomiums as he made a polite adieu and threw his whip like a thunderbolt, and a cheer rose from the discarded volunteers loitering about the tavern as he drove Joe Johnson and Levin away. The road was nearly dead level for five miles, but, being the old travelled road from Laurel and the south to Easton, and pointing towards Baltimore, numerous farms and clearings were seen, and tobacco-fields alternated with the dry corn and new-ploughed wheat patches. Here and there, like a measure of gold poured upon the ground, the yellow ears lay in the gaunt corn-rows, to become the ground meal of the slave and the cattle's winter substance. Joe Johnson's popularity was everywhere apparent, and many a shout was given of, "Good luck to ye, Joe!" "Tote us a nigger back from Delaway, Joe!" "Don't be too hard on them ar black Blue Hen's chickens, Joe!" Van Dorn was too far above the comprehension of his neighbors, or, indeed, of anybody, to be familiarly addressed, but "Patty Cannon's man" was the term of injured inferiority towards him after he had passed. At Federalsburg they crossed the branch of the Nanticoke piercing to the centre of Delaware state, and saw one large brick house of colonial appearance dominating the little wooden hamlet, and here, as generally within the Maryland line, hunting negroes was the "lark" or the serious occupation of many an idle or enterprising fellow, who trained his negro scouts like a setter, or more often like a spaniel, and crossed the line on appointed nights as ardently and warily as the white trader in Africa takes to the trails of the interior for human prey. "Joe," said Van Dorn, "what is to be your disposition of the prisoners we have?" "All goes with me to Norfolk but one,--the nigger boxer; I burn him alive on Twiford's island. If the white chap is too pickle to sell, I'll throw him overboard; he ain't safe." "_Ea! sus!_ it is boyish to burn the old lad. I have had many a blow from a black, and stab, too. A dog will bite you if you lasso him." "No nigger can knock me down and git off with selling." "Then you are a bad trader. The negro's price is all the negro is; why make him your equal by hating him?" "I am a Delaware boy," Joe Johnson said, "and it's the pride with me to give no nigger a chance. In Maryland you pets 'em, like ole Colonel Ned Lloyd over yer on the Wye; he's give his nigger coachman a gole watch an' chain because he's his son! What a nimenog! Some day he'll raise a nigger that'll be makin' politikle speeches, an' then I don't want to live no more."[5] "_Chito!_ Since the Delaware lawyer sent you to the post, son-in-law, you're morose. I have had to eat with negro princes, dance with their queens, and be ceremonious as if they had been angels." "It would be the reign of Queen Dick for me! I couldn't do it, nohow." "And, by the way, Joseph, I may see your friend, the lawyer Clayton, at Dover, to-night: he may send me to the post, too; and I fear no Delaware governor will take off the cropping of my ears, as was done for you in state patriotism." "Beware of that imp of Tolobon!" Joe Johnson muttered. "How I wish you could kill him, Van Dorn. He's got to be a senator; some day he'll be chief-justice of Delaware: then, what'll niggers be wuth thar?" "I fancy, Joseph, you might be a legislator in Delaware if your inclinations ran that way?" "Easy enough, but I makes legislators. My wife, Margaretta--her first husband's sister is the wife of the chancellor." "Hola! oh! How came that great alliance?" "She was housekeeper; he was a close old bachelor and must break a leg. 'Well,' she says, 'you're a daddy; justice is your trade, and I must have it.' So, from bein' his peculiar, she becomes the madam; but she inwented the kid." "I have never been in Dover; how shall I tell where Lawyer Clayton dwells?" "It's on the green a-middle of the town, a-standin' by the state-house--a long, roughcast house in the corner, three stories high, with two doors; the door next the state-house is his office. Go past the state-house, which has a cupelo onto it, an' you see the jug an' whippin'-post. He's got 'em handy fur you." Levin listened with all his ears. The liquor was now well out of his system, and he thanked God he had refused Patty Cannon's burning dram, else he might be this night--he thought it with remorse--the reckless mate for Owen Daw, whose own mother had predicted the gallows for him. "And now, Van Dorn, I turn back," Joe Johnson said; "I have a job to do down the Peninsuly. McLane has become the owner of a gal thar, an' wants her sneaked. I takes black Dave with me, an' when I'm back, my boat will be ready an' my cargo packed. Then hey fur Floridey!" He unhaltered his horse at the tail of the wagon, mounted him, and rode back across the stream. Van Dorn touched his horses and entered the dense woods in a byway to the north. "Get up here, Master Levin, and ride by me," the Captain said, very soon, and he lifted Levin's old hat from his head and looked at his bright hair parted in the middle, his fine, large eyes, needing the light of knowledge, and his soft complexion and marks of good extraction. "Where is thy father, Levin, to let thee go so ragged, with such graceful limbs and feet as these?" "Shipwrecked," said Levin; "gone down, I 'spect, on the privateer." "A sailor, was he? Well, he should be home to clothe thee and see that thou dost not cheat. I marked how Madam Cannon's punch was tossed out of the window." "I thought you would not want me drunk beside you all night, sir, and then I might enjoy your company. I don't want to drink no more liquor." "You like my company?" "Yes, sir." The Captain blushed, and asked, "Why do you like me?" "Not fur nothin' you do, sir. I like you fur somethin' in your ways; I reckon you're a smart man." "_Si, senor_, that I am. I have gained the whole world and lost two." "Two worlds, sir?" "Yes, two immortal worlds; that is to say, two unaccountable worlds. I am no Christian." "Maybe you're Chinee or Mahometan, then, sir; I 'spect everybody's got a religion." "I was a Mahometan for business ends," Van Dorn said. "Having become a slaver, it was nothing to be a renegade. Stealing a man's soul every day, I put no value on mine. Yes, Mahomet is the prophet of God: so are you." "You have been in Afrikey, I 'spect," suggested Levin. "A few years only, but long enough to be rich and to be ruined. I know the negro coast from the Gambia to Cape Palmas, and inland to Timbo. I have had an African queen and the African fever: I went to conquer Africa and became a slave." "In Africa, I 'spect, Captain," Levin remarked, without inference, "a nigger-trader is respectable." Van Dorn shook his head. "I doubt if that trade is respectable anywhere on this globe, unless it be _here_. No, I will say for these people, too, that while they do it low lip homage, they look down on it. I was once the greatest guest in Timbo, housed with its absolute prince, attended by my suite, looking like an ambassador, and he called me 'his son' and drew me to his breast. Proclamations were made that I should be respected as such, yet every human object fled before me. As I rode out alone to see the gardens and cassava fields, the roaming goats and oxen, and the rich mountain prospects, and saw the sloe-eyed girls bathing in the brooks, the cry went round, 'Flesh-buyer is coming,' and huts were deserted, fields forsaken, the gray patriarchs and the little children ran, and I was left alone with the dumb animals, despised, abhorred." "Don't they have slavery thair, sir?" "Yes, slavery immemorial, yet the slave-buyer is no more respectable than the procurer. The coin of Africa, its only medium, was the slave. He paid the debt of war, of luxury, and of business. Yet the soul of man, in the familiar study of such universal slavery, grovels with it, and points to bright destiny no more with the head erect: I died in Africa." "Ain't you in the business now, sir?" "Now I am a mere forest thief and bushman, Levin. He who begins a base trade rises early to its fulness, and in subsequent life must be a poor wolf rejected from the pack, stealing where he can sneak in. Such is the kidnapper eking out the decayed days of the slaver; such is the ruined voluptuary, living at last on the earnings of some shameless woman; such am I: behold me!" Van Dorn's eyes turned on Levin in their cold, heartless light, and yet he blushed, as usual. "You ought to be a gentleman, Captain. What made you break the laws so and be a bad man?" "_Ayme! ayme_!" mused Van Dorn, "shall I tell you? It was Africa. I was a high-minded youth, cool and bold, and with a thread of pleasure in me. I went to sea in a manly trade, and, fortune being slow, they whispered to me, in the West Indies, that my clipper was just the thing for the slave-trade, and I made the first venture out of virtue, which is all