CHAPTER XV.
THE KIDNAPPER.
It seemed to Judge Daniel Custis as he walked abroad into the Sundaysunshine, that he had never seen a more perfect day. The leaves wereturning on the great sycamore-trees, and the maples along the rise inthe road wore their most delicate garments of nankeen, while some younghickories, loaded with nuts, and a high gum-tree, splendid in finery,beckoned him out their way, across the Manokin bridge to the oppositehill, where the Presbyterian church overlooked the town.
The Judge, whose eyes were filled with happy tears, partly at the realrelief to his circumstances accomplished by Vesta's great sacrifice, andpartly by the scene just closed, of her natural honor and fidelity tothe man who had forced her wedding vows from her, took the northerncourse and crossed the little bridge, and as he went up the hill theenvirons of the town and the town itself spread out behind him in thestillness of the Sabbath, and the quails and fall birds piped andcackled low in the corn and the grain stubble. Some wild-geese in thesouth flew over the low gray woods towards the bay; a pack of houndssomewhere bayed like distant music; he heard the turkeys gobble, at oneof the adjacent farms on the swells in the marshy landscape, whereabundance, not otherwise denoted, showed in the fat poultry that roostedin the trees like living fruit and spoke apoplectically.
While he drank in the wine of autumn on the air, that had a bare tasteof frost, like the first acid in the sweet cider, he saw a carriage ortwo come over the level roads towards Princess Anne, and the church-belltold their errand as it dropped into the serenity its fruity twang, likea pippin rolling from the bough. So easily, so musically, so regularlyit rang, like the voice of something pure, that was steady even in itsjoys, that the Judge took off his broad white fur hat, as if to a lady,and listened with something between courtesy and piety.
As the bell continued other carriages came towards town, and some passedhim, their inmates all bowing, and often stealing a look back to seeJudge Custis again, the first man in the county.
They looked upon an humbled heart, a gladdened soul, which the sharphand of affliction had made to bleed, while an unforeseen Providence inhis darling child had kissed the wound to sleep and sucked the poisonfrom it.
Raising his brow towards the bright blue sky, as if he could not raiseit high enough to feel more of that heavenly rest encinctured there, theJudge sighed forth a happy wish, like the kiss of love after a quarrel,when doubt is all dispelled or wrong forgiven:
"O make me as a little child! Wash out my stains! Lead me in the path mychild has walked, or I shall never see her in the life to come!"
His lips trembled and his breast heaved convulsively. In that idea ofbeing unfit to enter where his child would go, in the more abundant lifebeyond the present, he received a distinct sermon from the long-emptypulpit of nature and conscience, and revelations from within clearerthan Holy Scriptures; for he felt the justice of the final separation ofthe impure from the pure, and the faith of perseverance in good to drawonward towards holiness itself, and perseverance in sensuality andselfishness to detain the spirit in its husk of swine. His agonyincreased.
"Where shall I drift if I go on," he said, "playing the sleek magistrateand family head, and loving to slip away in the dark, like negroeshunting coons by night? What is escaping discovery to the increasingdegradation of my own sanctuary, my created spirit? Can I find the way Ihave wandered down and retrace my steps? There is but little of lifeleft me to do it in, but by God's help I will try! Yes, this goldenSabbath I will do something to begin. What shall it be?"
He put on his hat, and said to himself: "I will go to the Methodistmeeting-house: they work directly upon the conscience, deepen the senseof sin, and preach a quick cleansing as by light shining in. There I maygrovel in the sight of men and women and arise redeemed. But, no. It isthe Sabbath my daughter's marriage is to be announced in our own church,and it would be cowardly, not to say unseemly, to fly from one worshipto another now. If I go to church this morning it must be to our own. Isthere any excuse but cowardice for not going?"
He looked into his debtor nature, to see what he owed to anybody, thatmight be owned and settled this day.
Slowly and almost to his dislike there arose an obligation to hiswife--the obligation of love he was defrauding her of, if, indeed, heloved her at all with the ardor of old times.
She had fretted his passion away in little sticklings for littleproprieties, and narrowing understanding, and subservience to effeminatesocial traditions. She jarred upon the health of his intellect with herunsympathetic refinements and pitiful uncharities, and fear of allcatholicity. She was gentility itself, without the spark of nature, andbelieving that she inhabited the castle towers of exclusiveness andsocial righteousness, she had made his home the donjon-keep of hisknighthood, at once the loftiest domestic apartment and the prison.
Nevertheless, she was his wife, and something of her nature must be inVesta, though the Judge had not found it. He reflected that hiswaywardness might have sharpened her peculiarities and spread thedistance between their minds, till, deprived of a husband's guidance,her fluttered woman's nature had quit the pasturage of the fields andair, and perched upon her nest and vegetated there.
"I have gone away from her," he said, "and complain that she has notgrown. I have myself abounded in village dignity and pretension, and sether the example of respecting nothing else. I have been a fraud, andwonder that she is not wordly-wise."
He found his infirm will very obdurate against making love to his wifeagain, but the request he had just made of Heaven, to lead him into theright steps, prevailed upon him to make his worship at home thismorning.
"Yes," he said, "I will start right. She is sick and alone, and Vestataken from her. I will send a note to the rector to announce themarriage, as Vesta requested, and do my worship at Teackle Hall thisday."
The Manokin, spreading wider as it flowed farther from the town, andwidening from a brook to a creek, till it moistened fringes of marsh andcut low bluffs into the fields, never seemed to invite him so much towander along its sluices as this morn.
"If my wife would only walk with me into the country," he said,restlessly, "how more companionable we would have been to each other!But she cannot walk at all; all masculine intercourse ceased between usyears ago, and the dull, small range of household talk, and the dynasticgossip of the good families, wear down my spirits. But I have been atruant husband, and my tongue is parched by dusty rovings in prodigalways. Let me woo her again with all my might!"
He walked through Princess Anne, worship now having commenced in all thechurches, and saw nobody upon the street except a divided group beforethe tavern. There he heard Jimmy Phoebus speak to Levin Dennissharply:
"Levin, what you doin' with that nigger buyer? Ain't you got no Dennispride left in you?"
The Judge saw that Joe Johnson, safe from civil process on Sunday, evenif his enemy had not been helpless in bed, was washing Levin Dennis'sbrandy-sickened head under the street pump, plying the pump-handle andshampooing him with alternate hands.
"Jimmy," answered Levin, when he was free from the spout, "thisgentleman's give me a job. I'm goin' to take him out for tarrapin on theSound. He's goin' to pay me for it."
"Tarrapin-catchin' on a Sunday ain't no respectable job for a Dennis,nohow," cried Jimmy Phoebus, bluntly; "an' doin' it with a niggerbuyer is a fine splurge fur you, by smoke! I can't see where your prideis, Levin, to save my life."
Jack Wonnell, wearing a bell-crown, looked on with timid enjoyment ofthis plain talk, opening his mouth to grin, shutting it to shudder.
The big stranger, dropping Levin Dennis, strode in his long jack-boots,in which his coarse trousers were stuffed, right to the front of JimmyPhoebus, and glared at him through his inflamed and unsightly eye.Jimmy met his scowl with a mildness almost amounting to contempt.
"Hark ye!" spoke the stranger, "you have been a picking a quarrel withme all yisterday, an' to-day air a beginnin' of it agin. Do you want tofight?"
"No," said J
immy, whittling a stick; "I ain't fond of fighting, and Inever do it of a Sunday. I wouldn't be guilty of fightin' you, bysmoke!"
"I have tuk a bigger nug than you and nicked his kicks into the bottomof his gizzard till his liver-lights fell into my mauleys. So it's nishor knife betwixt us, my bene cove!"
He put his hand upon his hip, where he carried a sheath-knife.
"Raise that hand," said Jimmy Phoebus, with a quick pass of hiswhittling knife to the giant's throat. "Raise it or, by smoke! yer goesyer jugler."
As Phoebus spoke he lifted one foot, of a prodigious size, as deftlyas an elephant hoisting his trunk, and kicked the man's hand from thehip pocket without moving either his own body or countenance. It wasdone so automatically that the other turned fiercely to see who kickedhim, and his sheath-knife, partly raised, was flung by the force of thekick several yards away.
"Pick up his knife, Levin," Jimmy said, "or he'll hurt hisself with it."
At this moment Judge Custis came up and pushed the two powerful menapart.
"Fighting on Sunday in our public street," he exclaimed; "Phoebus, Iwouldn't have thought it of you!"
"This yer bully, Judge," Jimmy said coolly, "started to take PrencessAnne the fust day, an' ole Meshach's Samson knocked him a sprawlin', an'Meshach hisself finished him. To-day he starts in to lead off yon poorimbecile, Levin Dennis, and, as I expresses my opinion of it, he drawshis knife on me; so I takes my foot, Judge, that you have seen me untiea knot with, and I spiles his wrist with it. Take care of his knife,Levin,--he's a pore creetur without it."
"We'll have this out, nope for nope, or may I take the morning-drop!"growled the strange man.
"That kind of language ain't understood in honest company," JimmyPhoebus said; "I s'pose it's thieves' lingo, used among your friends,or, maybe, big words you bully strangers with, when you want to cut asplurge. Now, as you've been licked by a nigger and kicked by a whiteman, maybe you can understand my language! Hark you, too, nigger buyer!Do you know where I saw you first?"
For the first time a flash of fire came from the pungy captain's blackcherries of eyes, and his huge broad face of swarthy color expressed itsfull Oriental character:
"The last time I saw you, Joe Johnson, was not a-lurking in JudgeCustis's kitchen fur no good, nor a-insultin' of the Judge's t'othervisitor, Milburn of the steeple-top: it was a-huggin' the whippin'-poston the public green of Georgetown, State of Delaware, an' the sheriffa-layin' of it over your back; an' after he sot you up in the pillory Itook the rottenest egg I could git, an' I bust it right on the eye wherethat nigger bruised you yisterday!"
The oppressive silence, as Joe Johnson slunk back, desperate with rage,yet unable to deny, was broken by Jack Wonnell's unthinkinginterjection:
"Whoop, Jimmy! Hooraw for Prencess Anne!"
"An' why did I git that egg an' make you smell it, Joe Johnson? Because,by smoke! you was a stinkin' kidnapper, robbing of the pore freeniggers of their liberty, knowin' that they didn't carry no arms andcouldn't make no good defense! That's your trade, an' it's the meanestan' most cowardly in the world. It's doin' what the Algerynes does infair fighting. You're a fine American citizen, ain't you? I know yourgang, and a bloody one it is, but you can't look a white man in the eye,because you're a thief and a coward!"
The Hellenic nature of the bay captain had never displayed itself to theJudge with this fulness, and he felt some natural admiration as he tookPhoebus by the arm.
"Well, well!" said the Judge, "let him go now, Phoebus! Mr. Johnson,don't let me see you in Princess Anne again to-day. Continue yourjourney and disturb us no more, or I shall put criminal process uponyou, and you see we have stout constables in Somerset."
As he led Phoebus around the corner of the bank, the Judge said:
"James, my wife is so sick that I must keep house with her this morning,and I want a little note left at the church for Mr. Tilghman. Will youtake it?"
"Why, with pleasure, Judge," the nonchalant villager replied. "I don'tlook very handsome in the 'piscopal church, but I'll do a' arrand."
As the Judge wrote the note with his gold pencil on a leaf of hismemorandum book, he said:
"James, did you identify that man yesterday?"
"Yes, I knowed him as soon as he come to the tavern. This mornin',seein' of him around town, I was afear'd Samson Hat would stumble onhim, and the nigger buyer would kill him for yisterday's blow. Thinks I:'Samson is too white a nigger to be killed that way, by smoke!' but theprejudice agin a nigger hittin' a white man is sich in this state thatJoe Johnson, bloody as he is, would never have stretched hemp for SamsonHat; so I picked a quarrel with the nigger buyer to take the fight outof him before Samson should come. He won't fight nobody now in thistown. _His_ hokey-pokey is done _yer_."
"You took a great risk, Phoebus. He is such an evil fellow in hisresentments, that I let him hide and eat in my quarters for fear of someill requital if I refused. That gang of Patty Cannon's is the curse ofthe Eastern Shore."
"And if you'll pardon a younger and a porer man, Judge, it's jest sichgentlemen as you that lets it go on. You politicians give them people'munity, an' let 'em alone because they fight fur you in 'lection timesan' air popular with foresters an' pore trash, because they persecutesniggers an' treats to liquor. You know the laws is agin their actions onboth sides of the Delaware line, but in Maryland they're a dead letter."
"You speak plain truth, James Phoebus, brave as your conduct. But thepoor men must make a sentiment against these kidnappers, because amongthe ignorant poor they find their defenders and equals."
"Judge," the pungy captain said, "they'se a-makin' a pangymonum of allthe destreak about Patty Cannon's. By smoke! it's a shame to liberty. Inopen day they lead free niggers, men, wimmin, an' little children, too,to be sold, who's free as my mommy and your daughter."
Judge Custis thought painfully of the scant freedom his daughter nowenjoyed. Jimmy Phoebus continued:
"Now yer, we're raising hokey-pokey about the Algerynes and theTrypollytins capturin' of a few Christian people an' sellin' of 'em toTurkey, an' about the Turkey people makin' slaves of the Christian Greekfolks. Henry Clay is cuttin' a big splurge about it. Money is bein'raised all over the country to send it to 'em. Commodo' Decatur was abig man for a-breakin' of it up. By smoke! they're sellin' more freepeople to death and hell along Mason and Dixon's line, than up the wholebuzzum of the Mediterranean Sea."
The brown-skinned speaker was more excited now than he had been duringall the collision with Joe Johnson.
"Indeed, Phoebus, they have kidnapped several thousand people, thePhiladelphia abolitionists say, but the reports must be exaggerated. Thedemand for negroes is so great, since the cotton-gin and the foreignmarkets have made cotton a great staple, and the direct importation ofslaves from Africa has been stopped, that there is a great run forborder-state negroes, and free colored people seldom are righted whenthey have been pulled across the line."
"They never are righted, Judge Custis! I'm ashamed of my native state.Only a few years ago, when I was a boy, people around yer was a-freein'of their niggers, and it was understood that slavery would a-die out,an' everybody said, 'Let the evil thing go.' But niggers began to go uphigh; they got to be wuth eight hunderd dollars whair they wasn't wuthtwo hunderd; and all the politicians begun to say: 'Niggers is not fitto be free. Niggers is the bulrush, or the bulwork, or bull-something ofour nation.' And then kidnapping of free niggers started, and the nextthing they'll kidnap free American citizens!"
"Tut! tut! James! it will never go that far."
"Won't it? What did Joe Johnson say to me last night before theWashington Tavern? He said: 'I've sold whiter niggers than you, myself.I kin run you to market an' git my price for you!'"
The bay sailor took off his hat.
"Look at me!" he continued; "by smoke! look on my brown skin and blackeyes an' coal black hair. Whair did they come from? They come fromGreece, whair Leonidas an' Marky Bozarris and all them fellers camefrom: that's what my daddy said. He know'd
better than me. I'm nothin'but a pore Eastern Shore man sailing my little vessel, but I'm afree-born man, and I tell you, Judge, it's a dangerous time when nothingbut his shade of color protects a free man."
"James Phoebus," the Judge said, gravely, "I hope you believe me whenI say that I think all these things outrages, and they grow out of thegreater outrage of slavery itself. We are being governed by new states,hatched in the Southwest from the alligator eggs of old slavery, thathad grown into political and moral disrepute with us in Maryland andVirginia."
"There's no nigger in me," Phoebus said, putting on his hat, "but Ihave taken these hints about my looking like a nigger to heart, and I'lltake a nigger's part when he is imposed on, as if he was some of thebody and blood of my Lord Jesus. Now you hear it!"
"And brave enough you are to mean it, my honest fellow. So do my errand,and good-morning, James."