The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
the voyage. In Africa I fell a prey to the voluptuous life a white man
leads there, to which the very missionaries are not always exceptions.
Young, pale, gentle, graceful, brave, my blushes instant as my passions,
the ceaseless intrigue of that hot climate circled around me like a
dance in the harem around the young intruder: I forgot my native land
and every obligation in it; I was enslaved by Africa to its swooning
joys; I went there like the serpent and was stung by the woman."
"Ain't they all right black and ugly in Africa, Captain?"
"The world has not the equals of Senegambia for beauty," said Van Dorn.
"The Fullah beauties are often almost white, and the black admixture is
no more than varnish on the maple-tree. And even here, my lad, where
civilization builds a wall of social fire around the slave, you often
mark the idolatry of the white head to captive Africa."
"Did you make money?"
"For some years I did, plenty of it; but degradation in the midst of
pleasure weighed down my spirits. The thing called honor had flown from
over me like the heavenly dove, and in its place a hundred painted birds
flocked joyfully, the dazzling creatures of that thoughtless world. Oh,
that I could have been born there or never have seen it! At last I
started home, but the world had adopted a new commandment, 'Thou shalt
not trade in man.' They took my ship and all its black cargo, and I came
home naked. Then my heart was broke, and I turned kidnapper."
"Home is the best place," said Levin; "I 'spect it is, even if folks is
pore. When Jimmy Phoebus give me a boat I thought I was rich as a
Jew."
"What is that name?" asked Van Dorn.
"James Phoebus: he's mother's sweetheart."
"_Ce ce ce!_" the Captain mused; "your mother lives, then?"
"Yes, sir. She's pore, but Jimmy loves her, and the ghost of father
feeds her."
"_Quedo!_ a ghost? what kind of thing is that? Aunt Patty sees them: I
never do."
"It comes an' puts sugar an' coffee in the window, an' sometimes a pair
of shoes an' a dress. Mother says it's father: I guess it is."
"_O Dios!_" lisped Van Dorn. "This Phoebus, is he a good man?"
"Brave as a lion, sir; pore as any pungy captain; the best friend I ever
had. I hoped mother would marry him, he's been a-waitin' fur her so
long. She's afraid father ain't dead."
"_O hala, hala!_ women are such waiters; but this man can wait too. Is
he strong?"
"He come mighty nigh givin' Joe Johnson a lickin' last Sunday, sir, in
Princess Anne. He hates a nigger-trader. Him an' Samson Hat, a black
feller, thinks as much of each other as two brothers."
"And he gave you a boat?"
"Yes, sir: Joe Johnson hired it of me, but I didn't know he was goin' to
run away niggers. He's got my boat an' ruined my credit, I 'spect, in
Princess Anne, an' what will mother do when I go to jail?"
"Why, this other man, Phoebus, is there to marry her or look after
her."
"Oh, Captain," sobbed Levin, putting his hands on Van Dorn's knees, and
laying his orphan head there too, "pore Jimmy's dead: Joe Johnson shot
him."
The Captain did not move or speak.
"I've been a drunkard, Captain," Levin sobbed again, in the confidence
of a child; "that's whair all our misery comes from. I've got nothin'
but my boat, an' people hires it to go gunnin' an' fishin' and
spreein', and they takes liquor with 'em, an' I drinks. God help me; I
never will agin, but die first!"
"Are you not afraid to lean on me?" lisped Van Dorn.
"No, sir."
"I have killed people, too."
"The Lord forgive you, sir; I know you won't kill _me_."
A sigh broke from the bandit's lips, in place of his usual soft lisp,
and was followed by a warm drop of water, as from the forest leaves now
bathed in night, that plashed on Levin's neck.
"O God," a soft voice said, "may I not die?"
Then Levin felt the same warm drops fall many times upon him, and his
nature opened like the plants to rain.
"I have found a friend, Captain," the boy spoke, after several minutes,
but not looking up; "I feel you cry."
"_Chito! chito!_" lisped Van Dorn; "here is Punch Hall."
Levin raised his head, and saw nothing but an old house standing in the
trees, with a little faint light streaming from the door, and heard the
low hilarity of drinking men. The whole band poured out to receive Van
Dorn's commands.
"One hour here to feed and rest!" Van Dorn exclaimed. "Let those sleep
who can. Let any straggle or riot who dare!"
CHAPTER XXXI.
PEACH BLUSH.
Judge Custis, whom we left riding out of Princess Anne on Sunday
afternoon, kept straight north, crossed the bottom of Delaware in the
early evening, and went to bed at Laurel, on Broad Creek, a few miles
south of Cannon's Ferry.
At daylight he was ahorse again, scarcely stiff from his exertion, and
feeling the rising joys of a stomach and brain becoming clearer than for
years, of all the forms of alcohol. His mind had been bathed in sleep
and temperance, the two great physicians, and wiped dry, like the feet
of the Prince of sufferers, with women's hairs. Exercise, natural to a
Virginian, awakened his flowing spirits again, and he fancied the air
grew purer as he advanced into the north, though there was hardly any
perceptible change of elevation. The country grew drier, however, as he
turned the head springs of the great cypress swamp--the counterbalance
of the Dismal Swamp of Virginia--receded from the Chesapeake waters, and
approached the tributaries of the Atlantic. At nine o'clock he entered
the court-house cluster of Georgetown, a little place of a few hundred
people, pitched nearly at the centre of the county one generation
before, or about ten years after the independence of the country.
It was a level place of shingle-boarded houses, assembled around a sandy
square, in which were both elm and Italian poplar trees; and a
double-storied wooden court-house was on the farther side, surrounded by
little cabins for the county officers, pitched here and there, and in
the rear was a jail of two stories, with family apartments below, and
the dungeon window, the debtors' room, and a family bedroom above; and
near the jail and court-house stood the whipping-post, like a dismantled
pump, with a pillory floor some feet above the ground.
Young maples, mulberry and tulip trees, and ailanthuses grew bravely to
make shade along the two streets which pierced the square, and the four
streets which were parallel to its sides--pretty lanes being inserted
between, to which the loamy gardens ran; and, as the Judge stopped at
the tavern near the court, he was told it was "returning day," and the
place would soon be filled with constituents assembling to hear how
"she'd gone"--_she_, as the Judge knew well, meaning Sussex County, and
"gone" intimating her decision expressed at the polls.
"She's gone for Adams an' Clayton, ain't she, Jonathan Torbert?" asked
the innkeeper.
"Yes," spoke a plain, religious-looking man, the teller of the bank;
"Johnny Clayton's kept Sussex and Kent in line for Adams; Jeems Bayard
and the McLanes have captured Newcastle: Clayton goes to the senate,
Louis McLane to the cabinet, the country to the alligators."
"Hurrah for Jackson!" answered the host; "he suits me ever since he
whipped the British."
At breakfast Judge Custis recognized a gentleman opposite, wearing
smallclothes, and with his hair in a queue, who spoke without other than
a passively kind expression:
"Judge."
"Ah! Chancellor!"
The Chancellor was nearly seventy years old, wearing an humble,
meditative, yet gracious look, as one whose relations to this world were
those of stewardship, and whose nearly obsolete dress was the badge, not
of worldly pride, but of perished joys and contemporaries. His
unaffected countenance seemed to say: "I wear it because it is useless
to put off what no one else will wear, when presently I shall need
nothing but a shroud."
Judge Custis looked at the meek old gentleman closely, sitting at his
plate like a lay brother in some monastery or infirmary, indifferent to
talk or news or affairs; and the remembrance of what he had been--keen,
accumulative, with youthful passions long retained, and the man buoyant
under the judge's guard--impressed the Virginian to say to himself:
"What, then, is man! At last old age asserts itself, and bends the
brazen temple of his countenance, like Samson, in almost pious remorse.
There sits twenty-five years of equity administration; behind it, thirty
years of jocund and various life. No newspaper shall ever record it,
because none are printed here; he is indifferent to that forgetfulness
and to all others, because the springs of life are dry in his body, and
he no more enjoys."
"Are you travelling north, Judge Custis?" the old man asked, for
politeness' sake.
"Yes, to Dover."
"There is a seat in my carriage; you are welcome to it."
"I will take it a part of the way, at least, to feel the privilege of
your society, Chancellor."
The old man gave a slow, sidewise shake of his head.
"Too late, too late," he said, "to flatter me. I was fond of it once. I
have been a flatterer, too."
The Chancellor's black boy was put on the Judge's horse, and the two
men, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned the
court-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard the
sheriff knock off two slaves to a purchaser, crying:
"Your property, sir, till they are twenty-five years of age."
"Ha, ha!" laughed, in a great horse laugh, a nearly chinless villager;
"say till ole Patty Cannon can git 'em!"
The purchaser gave a cunning, self-convicted smile at the passing
chancellor, whose look of resignation only deepened and grew more
humble. The Judge had some vague recollection which moved him to change
the subject.
"We see each other but little, Chancellor, though we divide the same
little heritage of land. I suppose your people are all proud of
Delaware."
"Yes," said the old man; "being such a little adventurer, a mere
foundling in the band of states, our people have the pride of their
independence. The laws are administered, some more farms are opened in
the forest every year, blossoms come, and old men die and are buried on
their farms, and their bones respected a few years. Our history is so
pastoral that we must show some temper when it is assailed, or we might
let out our ignorance of it."
They rode in silence some hours through an older settled and more open
country, with some large mill-ponds and a better class of farm
improvements, and the sense of some large water near at hand was
mystically felt.
The Judge followed the old man's eyes at one place, seeing that they
were raised with an expression of tranquil satisfaction, like aged
piety, and a beautiful landscape of soft green marsh lay under their
gaze from a slight elevation they had reached, showing cattle and sheep
roving in it, tall groves where cows and horses found midday shade, and
winding creeks, carrying sails of hidden boats, as if in a magical
cruise upon the velvet verdure. Haystacks and farm settlements stood out
in the long levels, and sailing birds speckled the air. In the far
distance lay something like more marsh, yet also like the clouds.
"It is the Delaware Bay," the Chancellor said.
They soon entered a well-built little town on a navigable creek, with a
large mill-pond, sawmills, several vessels building on the stocks, and
an air of superior vitality to anything Judge Custis had seen in
Delaware. Here the Chancellor pointed out the late home of Senator
Clayton's father, and, after the horses had been fed, they continued
still northward, passing another small town on a creek near the marshes,
and, a little beyond it, came to a venerable brick church, a little from
the road, in a grove of oaks and forest trees.