The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
single pew, and worship was unknown but once a year, when the bishop
came to read his liturgy to dust and desolation.
So, on the opposite western cape of the Chesapeake, shivered the Roman
priests of Calvert's foundation, in the waste of old St. Mary's; the
folds had left the shepherds, and fifty people only came to worship in
the kirk of the earliest Presbyterians.
Two tall, once considered elegant, stoves were nearly midway up the
cracking church-floor; and Mary, the free woman, had made a fire in one
of them, and the pine wood was roaring, and the long height of pipe was
smoking. Startled by the fire, a venerable opossum came out of one of
the pews, and waggled down the aisle, like a gray devotee who had said
his prayers, and feared no man.
Vesta was reading her prayer-book aloud near the stove to the pretty
widow and Grandmother Tilghman. In a few moments the young rector
emerged from a curious old gallery for black people, by the door,
wearing his surplice; and he read the service at the desk, plaintive and
simple, Milburn and his group responding in the room a thousand might
have worshipped in.
"Cousin Vesta," the minister said, after the service, "Miss Holland is
going to try to love me. Mr. Milburn, may I address her?"
"She is a wilful piece," Meshach said; "you must school her first. Let
my wife give my consent."
Vesta went to both, and kissed them:
"I feel so much encouraged, dear Rhoda and William, to see love
beginning all about me. Now, Norah, if you could be just to James
Phoebus, who is proving his love to you, perhaps, with his life!"
"Yes, that is a match I approve of," said Grandmother Tilghman, "but I
don't want Bill to marry. Disappointed men make rash selections."
"Oh," said Rhoda, "don't conglatulate him too soon; I haven't tuk him
yet. He's goin' teach me outen the books, and I'll teach him outen the
forest."
They walked together to the river bank, and Mrs. Dennis had the poor
woman, Mary, tell the adventures of Jimmy Phoebus to save her from
slavery. All were deeply moved.
"Now, Norah," Grandmother Tilghman said, "the moment that man comes back
you go to him and kiss him, and say, 'James, you have been the only
father to my son. Do you want me to be your wife?' This world is made
for marrying, Norah. Women have no other career. Nature does not value
the brain of Shakespeare, but keeps the seed of every vagrant plant
warm, and marries everything."
"Well," said Vesta, "Norah loves James Phoebus; don't you, Norah?"
The widow blushed.
"Take him, my pretty neighbor," said Milburn.
As they all looked at her, she suddenly cried:
"I want to, indeed. I would have done so before, but I am superstitious.
Who is it that feeds me so mysteriously?"
"Has he been coming of late?" asked Mrs. Tilghman.
"No, not since you were married, Vesta."
"Then I think it will come no more," Milburn said. "You have waited
longer than I did."
His eyes sought his wife's. He added:
"Will I ever be more than your husband?"
"Yes," said Grandmother Tilghman, with a special effort, "when you wear
a hat a young wife is not ashamed of."
All felt a cold thrill at these words from the blind woman. Milburn
said, gravely,
"How can you know about hats, when you cannot see them?"
"Oh," said Grandmother, herself a little frightened, "that hat I think I
can smell."
* * * * *
That same night, in Princess Anne, Mrs. Dennis, in her little cottage,
undressed herself by a fragment of hearth-fire that now and then flashed
upon the picture of her husband, as he had left her sixteen years
before, when Levin was a baby--a rich blonde, youthful man, dressed in
naval uniform, like Decatur, whose birthplace was so near his own.
His golden hair curled upon his forehead, his blue eyes were full of
handsome daring, and his red, pouting mouth was like a woman's; upon his
arm a corded chapeau was held, epaulettes tasselled his shoulders, his
rich blue coat was slashed with gold along the wide lappels, and stood
stiffly around his neck and fleecy stock and fan-shaped shirt-ruffles.
He seemed to be a mere boy, but of the mettle which made American
officers and privateersmen of his days the only guerdons of the
republicanism of the seas against the else universal dominion of
England.
This portrait, the last of her family possessions, was the young
sailor's parting gift to her when he sailed in the _Ida_, leaving her a
mere girl, with his son upon her breast. The picture hung above the
lowly door, the bolt whereof was never fastened in that serene society,
and seldom is to this day.
Mrs. Dennis knelt upon the bare floor, and raised her branching arms,
white as her spirit, to the lover of her youth:
"Oh, thou I have adored since God gave me to feel the beauty and
strength of man in my childhood, if I have ever looked on man but thee
with love or wavering, rebuke me now for the offence I am to do, if such
it be, in choosing another father for thy boy!"
A low wail seemed to be breathed upon the midnight from somewhere near,
and a sick man's cough seemed to break the perfect silence. The widow's
hand instinctively covered her bosom as she listened, and, deep in the
spirit of her prayer, she continued:
"Oh, Bowie, if thou livest, let me know! May I not live to see thee come
and find me in another's arms; thy look would kill me. If thou art
detained by enemies, by savage people, or by foreign love, no matter
what thy errors, I will still be true! Give me some token by the God
that has thee in his keeping, whether thou liest on the ocean's floor or
lookest from the stars. If thou art dead, love of my youth, assure me,
oh, I pray thee!"
The wail and hacking cough seemed to be repeated very near. A footstep
seemed to come.
The door flew open, and in the moonlight stood a man, pale as a ghost,
of bandit look, with Spanish-looking garments, and head and neck tied up
with cerements, like wounded people in the cockpits of ships of war.
He bent upon her the eyes of the portrait above the door. How changed!
how like! There seemed upon his throat the stain of blood.
The widow, fascinated, frozen still, let fall her arms of ivory, and, as
she gazed, her beautiful neck, strained in horror and astonishment,
received upon its snow the rapture of Diana's shine.
The effigy, so like her husband, yet so altered, reached towards her his
hand, on which a diamond caught the moon, and seemed to drink it. A
wail, like the others she had heard, broke from his lips, and said the
words:
"To lose those charms! To lose that heart! O God!"
As thus he stood, ghastly and supplicating, as if he would fall and die
upon her threshold, another hand came forward in the moonlight, and drew
the door between them. A voice she had not heard tenderly exclaimed:
"I love him as I never loved A male!"
"It is my husband's spirit," the widow breathed. "I cannot marry."
She swooned upon her floor, before the dying fire.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
VIRGIE'S FLIGHT.
Snow Hill, when Virgie looked forth upon it, almost seemed built on
snow, a white sand composing the streets, gardens, and fields, though
the humid air brought vegetation even from this, and vines clambered,
willows drooped, flowers blossomed, on winter's brink, and great
speckled sycamores, like freckled giants, and noble oaks, rose to
heights betokening rich nutrition at their roots.
Heat and moisture and salt had made the land habitable, and the wind
from a receded sea had piled up the sand long ago into mounds now
covered with verdure, which the freak or fondness of the manor owner had
called a hill, and put his own name thereto, perhaps with memories of
old Snow Hill in London.
Upon this apparent bank or hill two venerable churches stood, both of
English brick, the Episcopalian, covered with ivy, and the Presbyterian,
which had given its name to the first synod of the Kirk in the new
world, and now stood, surrounded with gravestones, where the visitor
might read Scottish names left to orphans at Worcester, as yonder at the
Episcopate graveyard, names left to English orphans in the same rolling
tide of blood; and Worcester was the name of the county, as the court
and jail might tell.
Hidden in the sand, like Benjamin's cup in the bag of flinty corn, a
golden lustre yet seemed to betray Snow Hill, as the sun rose into its
old trees, and woke the liquid-throated birds, and finally made the old
brick and older whitewashed houses gleam, and exhale a soft, blue smoke.
Virgie heard a sound as of hoofs upon a bridge, and saw, across the
lily-bordered river, the Custis carriage winding up a golden road.
"Alone!" said Virgie; "love has gone. Now I must live for freedom."
"Breakfast, Miss," spoke a neat, kind-faced, yet ready woman, of
Virgie's own size and color; "my husband is going to drive you out of
town before any of the white people are up to see you."
At the table was a mulatto man, whom the woman introduced as her
husband.
"Mrs. Hudson," Virgie said, "you are doing so much for me! may the good
Lord pay you back!"
"Oh, no," replied the woman, "I am always up at this hour. I work hard,
because I am trying to buy my mother, who is still a slave."
"How came you free?" Virgie asked, wistfully.
"I saved a sick gentleman's life, and he bought me for it, and gave me
my freedom. See, I have a pass that tells the color of my eyes and skin,
my weight, and everything. With this I can go into Delaware and the free
states. I wish you had one, Miss Virgie."
"Oh, Mrs. Hudson, I dearly wish I had. Let me read it. Why, I could
almost pass for you, from this description."
"Indeed you could," the housewife said; "we are not of the same age, but
white people don't read a pass very careful."
"How I would love anybody that could get me such a pass!"
"I have given my word of honor that I will never lend it. Much as I like
to help my color to freedom, I cannot break my word. To-morrow I have to
go into Delaware with my pass to nurse a lady."
"You attend the sick, Mrs. Hudson?"
"Yes, I have a kind of call that way, Miss Virgie. Ever since I was a
girl I pulled herbs and tried them on myself, and studied 'tendin' on
people, watchin' their minds, that is so much of sickness, and how to
wrap and rub them. My husband oysters down in the inlets. Here is his
wagon."
"The Lord remember you in need, dear Mrs. Hudson."
The old wagon, an open thing, to peddle oysters and fish, was driven
across the town to the south, and soon was in the open country, going
towards Virginia. A smell of salt bay seemed in the air; the hawks'
nests in dead trees indicated the element that subsisted everything, and
the trees in the fields were often lordly in size, though sand and small
oak and pine woods were seldom out of sight. As they turned into a lane
near a little roadside place of worship, a young white man rode by on
horseback, and, seeing Virgie, reined in and shouted,
"Purty, purty, purty as peaches and cream! Ole Virginny blood is in them
eyes, by the Ensign!"
The colored man muttered, "Go 'long, Mr. Wise!"
"By the Ensign now," continued the man, who was young, but of a
cadaverous countenance, "if 'tis a Maryland huzzy, she is marvellous.
What's the name, angel gal?"
"She's a Miss Spence. I'm a takin' her home yer," the mulatto man
interposed, hastily, and went in the gate, while the horseman, with a
shout like one intoxicated, gallopped towards the north.
"I'm sorry he seen you, sho'!" the conductor said; "that's Henry A.
Wise, the big lawyer from Accomac. Maybe he'll inquire at Snow Hill,
where he's goin' to court."
"What house is this, Mr. Hudson?" Virgie asked, seeing at the end of the
short lane a thick-set house and porch, with small farm-buildings around
it.