The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
combined facility and earnestness in almost mercurial relations to each
other, and the Judge saw that these must constitute a remarkable jury
lawyer.
His face was shaven smooth; his throat and chin showed an early tendency
to flesh; the poise of his head and thoughtful darting of his eyes and
slight aqualinity of his nose indicated one who loved mental action and
competition, yet drew that love from a great, healthy body that had to
be watched lest it relapse into indolence. The loss of his wife so soon
after marriage had been followed by nearly complete indifference to
women, and he had made politics his only consolation and mistress,
harnessing her like a young mare with his old roadster of the law, and
driving them together in the slender confines of his principality, and
then locking the law up among his office students to drive politics into
the national arena at Washington.
"You require to be very neighborly, Clayton, in a small bailiwick like
this?" the Judge inquired, as they strolled along the square in the soft
evening.
"We have the best people in the world in Delaware, friend Custis: few
traders, little law, scarcely any violence, and they are easy to please;
but it is a high offence in this state not to be what is called 'a
clever man.' You must stop, whatever be your errand, and smile and
inquire of every man at his gate for every individual member of his
household. The time lost in such kind, trifling intercourse is in the
aggregate immense. But, Goy! I do love these people."
"It seems to me that you encourage that exaction."
"Well, I do. As an electioneerer, I can get away with any of 'em. Goy!
Why, Jim Whitecar, Lord bless your dear soul!"--this addressed to a
thick-set, sandy, uncertain-looking man who was about retreating into
the Capitol Tavern--"what brings you to town, Jim?"
"It's a free country, I reckon," exclaimed the suspicious-looking man.
"Goy! that's so, Jimmy. We're all glad to see you in Dover behaving of
yourself, Jim. Now don't give me any trouble this year, friend Jimmy.
Behave yourself, and be an honor to your good parents that I think so
much of. Oblige me, now!"
As they turned to cross the middle of the square, Clayton said:
"I'll have him at that whipping-post, hugging of it, one of these days."
"What is he?"
"A kidnapper down here in Sockum, and a bad one: a dangerous fellow,
too. I hear he says if I ever push him to the extremity of his
co-laborer, Joe Johnson--whom I sent to the post and then saved from
cropping--that he'll kill me. Goy!"--Mr. Clayton looked around a trifle
apprehensively--"I'm ready for him."
"Delaware kidnapping is a great institution," Custis said.
"It has an antiquity and extent you would hardly believe, friend Custis.
Long before our independence, in the year 1760, the statutes of Delaware
had to provide against it. Our laws have never permitted the domestic
slave-trade with other states."
The little place seemed to have a good society, and the beauty of the
young girls sitting at the doors or walking in the evening showed
something of the florid North Europe skins, Batavian eyes, and rotund
Dutch or Quaker figures.
As they returned to the public square, a room in the tavern, almost
brilliantly lighted for that day of candles, displayed its windows to
the gaze of Clayton, who exclaimed:
"Goy! that is surely John Randel, Junior."
"That distinguished engineer?" observed his visitor, who had been
waiting all the evening to broach the subject of his errand. "I have the
greatest admiration of him. Shall we call on him?"
"Why, yes, yes," answered Clayton, dubiously; "I'm not afraid of him.
I--goy! I owe him nothing. He is such a litigious fellow, though; so
persistent with it; _barratry_, _champetry_, mad incorrigibility:
he's the wildest man of genius alive. But come on!"
Knocking at a door on the second floor, a sharp, prompt reply came out:
"Come!"
A middle-sized man, with a large head and broad shoulders, and cloth
leggings, buttoned to above his knee, sat in a nearly naked, carpetless
room, writing, his table surrounded by burning wax candles, and his
countenance was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him and
seized his hand:
"How is my friend Randel? The indefatigable litigant, the brilliant
engineer, to whom ideas, goy! are like persimmons on the tree, abundant,
but seldom ripe, and only good when frosted. How is he now and what is
he at?"
"Stand there," spoke the engineer, "and look at me while I read the
sentence I was finishing upon John Middleton Clayton of Delaware."
"Go it, Randel! Now, Custis, he'll put a wick in me and just set me
afire. Goy!"
"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to let
their judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or to
suppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence that
residue and fruit of all talents, the honest conviction of a man's
bravest sagacity, perishes in lawyers' souls ere half their powers are
fledged: they become the registers of other men, they think no more than
wax.'"
Here Mr. Randel blew out one of the candles. The illustration was
cogent. Mr. Clayton lighted it again with another candle.
"There's method in his madness, Custis," he said, with a wink. "Let me
introduce my great friend to you, Randel?"
"Stop there," the engineer repeated, sternly, "till I have read my
sentence. 'Seldom it is that a lawyer of useful parts, in a community as
detached and pastoral as the State of Delaware, has a cause appealing to
his manliness, his genius, and his avarice, like this of John Randel,
Junior, civil engineer! No equal public work will probably be built in
the State of Delaware during the lifetime of the said Clayton. No fee he
can earn in his native state will ever have been the reward of a lawyer
there like his who shall be successful with the suit of John Randel,
Junior, against the Canal Company. No principle is better worth a great
lawyer's vindication than that these corporations, in their infancy,
shall not trample upon the private rights of a gentleman, and treat his
scholarship and services like the labor of a slave.'"
"Well said and highly thought," interposed Judge Custis.
"'The said Clayton,'" continued John Randel, still reading, "'refuses
the aid of his abilities to a stranger and a gentleman inhospitably
treated in the State of Delaware.'"
"No, no," cried Clayton; "that is a charge against me I will not
permit."
"'The said Clayton,'" read Randel, inflexibly, "'with the possibilities
of light, riches, and honor for himself, and justice for a fellow-man,
chooses cowardice, mediocrity--and darkness. He extinguishes my hopes
and his.'"
With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his hands and waft of
his breath, put out all the candles at once and left the whole room in
darkness.
Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordinary
illustration:
"Clayton, I believe he has a good case."
"That is not the point now," Mr. Clayton said, with rising spirit and
emphasis. "The point now is, 'Am I guilty of inhospitality?' Goy! that
touches me as a Delawarean, and is a high offence in this little state.
It is true that this suitor is a stranger. He comes to me with an
introduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Seward, of New York,
who vouches for him. But the corporation he menaces is also entitled to
hospitality: it is, in the main, Philadelphia capital. Girard himself,
that frugal yet useful citizen, is one of its promoters. My own state,
and Maryland, too, have interests in this work. Is it the part of
hospitality to be taking advantage of our small interposing geography,
and laying by the heels, through our local courts, a young, struggling,
and, indeed, national undertaking?"
"Let the courts of your state, which are pure, decide between us," said
John Randel, Junior, relighting the candles with his tinder-box.
"No lawyer ought to refuse the trial of such a public cause because of
any state scruples," Judge Custis put in, in his grandest way. "That is
not national; it is not Whig, Brother Clayton." The Judge here gave his
entire family power to his facial energy, and expressed the Virginian
and patrician in his treatment of the Delaware _bourgeois_ and plebeian.
"Granted that this corporation is young and untried: let it be
disciplined in time, that it may avoid more expensive mistakes in the
future. No cause, to a true lawyer, is like a human cause; the time may
come when the talent of the American bar will be the parasite of
corporations and monopolists, but it is too early for that degradation
for you and me, Senator Clayton. The rights of a man involve all
progress; progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As a son
of Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to me, I would not let
this gentleman be sacrificed."
"If I were a rich man, Clayton would take my case," the engineer said;
"my poverty is my disqualification in his eyes."
He again essayed, in a dramatic way, to fan out the candles, but his
breath failed him; his hands became limp, and then hastily covered his
eyes, and he sank to the table with a groan, and put his head upon it
convulsively.
"Gentlemen," he uttered, in a voice touching by its distress, "oh!
gentlemen, professional life--my art--is, indeed, a tragedy."
The easy sensibilities of Judge Custis were at once moved. Senator
Clayton, looking from one to the other in nervous indecision, seeing
Custis's dewy eyes, and Randel's proud breaking down, was himself
carried away, and shouted:
"I goy! This is a conspiracy. But, Randel, I'll take your case; I can't
see a man cry. Goy!"
As they all arose sympathetically and shook hands, a knock came on the
door, and there was a call for Mr. Clayton. He returned in a few
minutes, with a rather grim countenance, and said:
"Randel, I have just declined a big round retaining-fee to defend the
very suit your tears and Brother Custis's have persuaded me to
prosecute. But, goy! a tear always robbed me of a dollar."
"This sympathy to-day will make you an independent man for life,"
exclaimed the engineer.
"I have done Milburn's first errand right," Judge Custis thought; "five
minutes' delay would have been fatal."
CHAPTER XXXII.
GARTER-SNAKES.
At Princess Anne Vesta had moved her husband to Teackle Hall, and he
occupied her father's room and seemed to be growing better, though the
doctor said that he had best be sent to the hills somewhere.
The free woman, Mary, whom Jimmy Phoebus sent to Vesta, had arrived
very opportunely, and took Aunt Hominy's place in the kitchen, where all
the children's echoes were gone, the poor woman's own bereavement
thrilling the ears of Virgie, Roxy, and Vesta herself; but, alas! her
tale was not legal testimony, because she was a little black.
Jack Wonnell had found unexpected favor in Meshach Milburn's eyes, and
was appointed to sleep in the store and watch it; and there Roxy came
down in the twilights, and, with pity more than affection, heard him
weave the illusion of his love for her, willing to be amused by it,
because it was so sincere with him; for Jack was all lover, and meek and
artful, bold and domestic, soft and outlawed, as the houseless Thomas
cat that makes highways of the fences, and wooes the demurest kitten
forth by the magic of his purring.
"Roxy," said Jack, "I'm a-goin' to git you free, gal, fur I 'spect
Meshach Milburn will give me a pile o' money fur a-watchin' of the sto'.
Then we'll go to Canaday, whar, I hearn tell, color ain't no pizen, an'
we'll love like the white doves an' the brown, that both makes the same
coo, so happy they is."
"Jack," said the soft-eyed, pitying maid, "you're a pore foolish fellow,