The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
"Like dis, I reckon." He modelled the crown into a bell form with his
finger.
Joe Johnson and McLane looked at each other a minute with mutual
accusation and confusion, and the former unceremoniously knocked the
negro down with his great fist.
"No gold of mine for this job, Joe Johnson," said Allan McLane; "in your
conservatism to save your own skin, you have let your tool kill an
innocent man."
He waved his hand, with all his strong will, towards the door, and shut
it in the kidnapper's face. Then, in haughty emotion, not like fear, but
disappointed pride and revenge, McLane sat down, glanced around him as
if to determine the next movement, and instinctively reached his hand
towards his Bible, which he opened at a marked page, and softly read,
till tears of baffled vindictiveness and counterfeited humility stopped
his voice, as follows:
"'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the
heaven: A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time
to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a
time to break down, and a time to build up ... God requireth that which
is past ... man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all is
vanity.... a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his
portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?'"
When tears of pious vindictiveness had closed the reading, Colonel
McLane spread his pongee handkerchief on the bare floor, and knelt in
silent and comfortably assured prayer.
* * * * *
Black Dave had crawled into the room where Hulda partly heard these
revelations, and he entered the large closet under the concealed shaft
to the prison pen, where his groans and mental agony touched Hulda's
commiseration. She opened the trap, and crawled there too.
"Hush, Dave!" she whispered. "What makes you so miserable?"
"Missy, I'se killed a man. Dey made me do it. I'll burn in torment. Lord
save me!"
"Dave," said Hulda, "my poor father died for his offences. You can do no
more; but, like him, you can repent."
"Oh, missy, I's black. Rum an' fightin' has ruined me. Dar's no way to
do better. De law won't let me bear witness agin de people dat set me
on. How kin I repent unless I confess my sin? De law won't let me
confess."
"Confess your poor, wracked soul to me, Dave. The Lord will hear you,
though you dare not turn your face to him."
"Missy, once I was in de Lord's walk. My han's was clean, my face clar,
my stummick unburnt by liquor. I stood in no man's way; at de church
dey put me fo'ward. My soul was happy. One day I licked a man bigger dan
me. It made me proud an' sassy. I backslid, an' wan't no good to be
hired out to steady people; so de taverns got me, an' den de kidnappers
used me, an' now de blood of Cain an' Abel is on my forehead forever."
Hulda knelt by the murderer, and prayed with all her heart; not the
self-conscious, special pleading of the prayer across the hall, but the
humble prayer of the penitent on Calvary: "Lord, we, of this felon den,
ask to be with thee in Paradise."
* * * * *
The whole of the next day was spent in preparations for flight by Patty
and her son-in-law.
A boat of sufficient size, and crew to man it, had to be procured down
the river, and this necessitated two journeys, one of Patty, to Cannon's
Ferry, another by Joe, to Vienna and Twiford's wharf.
During their absence Cy James was equally intent on something, and Hulda
saw him in the ploughed field near the old Delaware cottage, under the
swooping buzzards, directing the farmer where to guide his plough, and
it seemed, in a little while, that one of the horses had fallen into a
pit there.
Later on Hulda observed Cy James, with a spade, digging at various
places near Patty Cannon's former cottage.
"All are at work for themselves," Hulda thought, "except Levin and me.
How often have I seen Aunt Patty slip to secret places in the night, or
by early dawn, when she looked every window over to see if she was
watched. Her beehives were her greatest care."
A sudden thought made Hulda stand still, and cast the color from her
cheeks.
"They are all going away. I shall be taken, too, or kept for worse evil
here. My mother, in Florida, hates me; she has told me so. I know the
marriage Allan McLane means for me--to be his white slave! Levin is
poor, and his mother is poor, too; they say Patty Cannon has buried
gold. Perhaps God will point it out to me."
She slipped down the Seaford road, and walked up the lane in the fields
she knew so well. No person was in the hip-roofed cottage. Hulda went
among the outbuildings, and began to inspect the beehives, made of
sections of round trees, and the big wooden flower-pots Patty Cannon had
left behind her.
She was only interrupted by a gun being fired in the ploughed field, and
saw the pertinacious buzzards there fall dead from the air as they
exasperated the ploughman.
* * * * *
"I shall have one piece of fun in Maryland before I go," Hulda heard her
stepfather say, as he went past her bed to ascend the hatchway at morn,
"and that is to burn the nigger who mugged me. This is his day."
Almost immediately he came, cursing, down the ladder, followed by a
jeering laugh from above, and the cry, "We'll all see you hanged yit, by
smoke! an' mash another egg on your countenance, nigger-buyer!"
In a moment or two a tremendous quarrel was going on below stairs
between the kidnapper and his wife's mother, and Hulda believed they
were murdering each other; and, peeping once to see, beheld Johnson
holding Patty to the floor, and stuffing her elegant hair, which had
been torn out in the scuffle, into her mouth.
"I'll be the death of you, old fence, before I go," he shouted; "the
verdict would be, 'I did the county a service.'"
"Come away there!" cried Allan McLane, pushing past Hulda and between
the combatants. "Shame on you, Joe! To whip your grandmother is hardly
conservative. Here is an errand that will pay you well: my wench Virgie
has been caught."
The kidnapper released the woman and turned to his guest.
"Good news!" he said; "ef it puts my neck in the string, I'll fetch her
fur you."
His countenance had begun to assume a sensual expression, when Patty
Cannon, to whom his back was turned, rushed upon him like a tornado,
lifted him from his feet, and threw him through the back door into the
yard and bolted him out. McLane retreated by the other door.
"Thank heaven!" reflected Hulda, looking down in terror, "no one is
murdered yet, and I have another day of grace to wait for Levin."
* * * * *
"Cunnil McLane," said Patty Cannon, in his room that night, "what
interest have you in the quadroon gal an' Huldy, too? You don't want' em
both, Cunnil?"
"No, Aunt Patty. All my views are conservative. Quite so! Hulda I want
to reform and model to my needs. She'll ornament me. By taking the girl
Virgie from my niece Vesta, I desire to punish the latter for consenting
to the degradation of our family, and marrying the forester, Milburn.
She loves this quadroon; therefore, I want to deprive her of the girl:
Joe is to bring her to me, do you see?"
His face expressed the indifference he felt to Virgie's safety on the
way, and the coarse suggestion gave Patty Cannon her opportunity:
"Cunnil, there's but three in the house to-night; I am one."
"I am two, Patty."
"And three is purty Huldy, Cunnil!"
They looked at each other a few minutes in silence.
"There is two to one," said Patty Cannon, with a giggle. "We have no
neighbors that air not used to noises yer."
The silence was restored while the two products of men-dealing read each
other's countenances.
"I made a very conservative and liberal proposition to her, Patty, and
she insulted me, yet beautifully. But I owe her a grudge for it."
"Insulted you, Cunnil? The ongrateful huzzy! Can't you insult her back?
She never dared to disobey _me_. Her pride once broke down, she'll be
like other gals, I reckon."
"That's true, no doubt. But, Patty, haven't you a little remorse about
it, considering she's your grandchild?"
"My mother had none fur me, honey," the old woman chuckled, familiarly.
"What is that story I have heard something of, about your origin,
Patty?"
"I don't know no more about it, Cunnil, than a pore, ignorant gal would,
you know. I've hearn my grandfather was a lord. A gypsy woman enticed
his son and he married her. His father drove him from his door, an' his
wife fetched him on her money to Canady, where she went into the
smugglin' business at St. John's, half-way between Montreal and the
United States."
"And he was hanged there for assassinating a friend who detected him?"
"They says so, honey. Anyhow, he was hanged. We gals was beautiful. Says
mother: 'It's a hard world, but don't let it beat you, gals! Marry ef
you kin. Anyway, you must live, and you can't live off of women.' I
married a Delaware man, and so I quit bein' Martha Hanley and became
Patty Cannon."[7]
"And what a career you have led, Aunt Patty! Lived anywhere but in this
old pocket between the bays, you would have had the reputation of
Captain Kidd. Tell me now, conservatively, was not your own helpless
childhood the cause of your mistakes, and does it never make you feel
for other sparrow-birds like Hulda?"
The black-haired woman, with a certain evil-thinking, like one reflected
upon harshly, finally clapped her bold black eyes on McLane's, and
replied, chuckling:
"I don't know as it do, Cunnil. Before my mother pinted the way, I loved
the men. I loved 'em to be bad. Mommy tuk us as we drifted. An' as fur
Huldy yer, her mother throws her onto me; she's not like the Cannons an'
Johnsons; she's full of pride, and," with an oath, "let it be tuk out of
her! Will you pay my price?"
He hesitated.
"It's not the price, Patty; it's the way. Isn't it cowardly?"
"Yes," said Patty, saucily, "it's kidnappin'. That's the trade yer. Pay
down the money, Cunnil, an' this bare room will brighten to be your
wedding chamber. Pah! are you a man!"
Her words aroused the visions self-love can reluctantly repulse, and
which, entertained but an instant, grow irresistible.
The limber, maturing, rounding form of Hulda stepped on the footstool of
his mind, touched his knee, and exhaled the aroma of her youth like a
subtile musk, till he leaned back languidly, as if he smoked a pipe and
on its bowl her bust was painted, and all her modesties dissolved into
the intoxication. Brutality itself grew natural to this vision, as a
fiercer joy and substitute for the deceit he could no longer practice.
The child had flown from her in the instant of his grasping it, like a
pale butterfly, but there remained where it had floated, a silken and
nubile essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts and
sweet respect, the profanation of which would be as rare a game as
Satan's struggle with the soul of Eve.
Her innocence and spirit, self-respect and awakened womanly
consciousness, weakness and sensibility, mettle and beauty, presented
themselves by turns; and the cold, woodeny room, the neglected tavern,
the autumn night wind coming down the chimney and starting the fire, all
seemed instinctive, like him, with mischief, as if Patty Cannon's soul
flew astraddle of a broom and led a hundred witches.
McLane was fifty; his family was a stiff commercial one, that had
generally kept demure, yet grasping, and practised the conservatism he
also boasted of, but had departed from: he was the outlaw of the house,
yet elevating its tenets into an aggressive shibboleth, the more so that
he prospered by anti-progress.