CHAPTER XXXII.
GARTER-SNAKES.
At Princess Anne Vesta had moved her husband to Teackle Hall, and heoccupied her father's room and seemed to be growing better, though thedoctor said that he had best be sent to the hills somewhere.
The free woman, Mary, whom Jimmy Phoebus sent to Vesta, had arrivedvery opportunely, and took Aunt Hominy's place in the kitchen, where allthe children's echoes were gone, the poor woman's own bereavementthrilling the ears of Virgie, Roxy, and Vesta herself; but, alas! hertale was not legal testimony, because she was a little black.
Jack Wonnell had found unexpected favor in Meshach Milburn's eyes, andwas appointed to sleep in the store and watch it; and there Roxy camedown in the twilights, and, with pity more than affection, heard himweave 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 andartful, bold and domestic, soft and outlawed, as the houseless Thomascat that makes highways of the fences, and wooes the demurest kittenforth by the magic of his purring.
"Roxy," said Jack, "I'm a-goin' to git you free, gal, fur I 'spectMeshach 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 samecoo, so happy they is."
"Jack," said the soft-eyed, pitying maid, "you're a pore foolish fellow,but I like to hear you talk. I reckon there is no harm in you. Virgie isin love, too, with a white man, but you mustn't breathe it."
"Never," said Jack, making solemn motions with his eyes, and cuddlingcloser in dead earnest of sympathy. "Hope I may die! Can't tell, to savemy life! Who-oop! Tell me, Roxy!"
"Pore sister Virgie, she was made to love, and, though it's hopeless, Ithink she loves Mr. Tilghman, our minister, because he loved Miss Vestyonce, and Virgie worships Miss Vesty like her sister."
* * * * *
Vesta told the story of Mary, the free woman, to her husband, wholistened closely and said:
"I know of but one thing, my darling, that will make such ignorance andcruelty fade out in the forests of this peninsula: an iron road. A newthing, called the railroad-engine, has just been made by an Englishman,one George Stephenson, and a specimen of it has been sent to New York,where I have had it examined. The errand your father went to do for me,he has done well. I shall send him to Annapolis next, to get a charterfor a railroad up this peninsula that will pass inside the line ofMaryland, and penetrate every kidnapping settlement hidden there, andlight, intercourse, and law shall exterminate such barracoons asJohnson's."
Vesta was glad to hear her father praised by her husband, and hopesrekindled of some happier family reunion, when she should feel theheartache die within her that now raged intermittently during her vestalhoneymoon. A letter came on the fourth day which dashed these hopes tothe ground, and it was as follows:
"DORCHESTER COUNTY, MD., _October--, 1829_.
"_Darling Niece_,--Idol of my heart, let me begin by entreating you to take a conservative course when I break the sad intelligence to you of the death of my dear sister, Lucy, at Cambridge, yesterday, of the heart disease. She was the star of the house of McLane. She is gone. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord, and I shall take a conservative though _consistent_ course on the parties who have inflicted this injury upon you, my dear niece, and upon your calm and collected, if stricken, uncle.
"'The Lord moves in a _mysterious_ way, his wonders to perform,' and his humble instruments require only to be _inflexible and conservative_ to do all things well. Be assured that _righteousness_ shall be done upon the adversaries of our family, and _that_ right speedily. My own grief is composed in the satisfaction I shall take, and the assurance that your sainted mother is where the wicked cease from troubling.
"The financial arrangements of my dear sister were of the most conservative and high-toned character, as was to have been expected of her.
"You may be desirous, my outraged, but, I hope, still _spirited_, idol, to hear the particulars of Lucy's death. She did not reach Cambridge till near midnight, having made the long journey from Princess Anne without fitting companions, and, in the excited state of her feelings, after she left Vienna in the evening, a depression of the spirits, accompanied by a fluttering of the heart, came on, and rapidly increased, and, by the time she arrived at our relatives', she was nearly dead with nervous apprehension and weakness. On seeing me, she revived sufficiently to make her will in the most _sisterly_ and conservative manner.
"A physician was procured, but he pronounced her system so debilitated and detoned as hardly probable to outride the shock, the nervous centres being depressed and atrophy setting in.
"She talked incessantly about the _Entailed Hat_, and said it was a permanent shadow and weight upon your heart, and made me promise to _mash_ it, if it could conservatively be done.
"I read to my dear sister from _the Book of Books_, and tried to compose her feelings, but she broke out ever and anon, 'Oh, Brother Allan! to think I have raised children to be bought and sold, and married to foresters and trash.' She was deeply sensitive as to what would be said about it in Baltimore.
"Just before she died, she said, 'Do not bury me at Princess Anne, where that fiend can come near me with his frightful Hat! Take me to Baltimore, where there are no bog-ores, nor old family chattels, to disturb the respectability of death. Apologize for my daughter, _and do her justice_.'
"And so this grand woman died, in the confidence of a blessed immortality, leaving us to vindicate her motives and continue her conservative course, and to meet at her funeral next Friday, at our church in Baltimore, where Rev. John Breckenridge will preach the funeral sermon over this murdered saint.
"With conservative, yet proud, grief, "Affectionately, your uncle, "ALLAN McLANE."
"Oh, sir!" Vesta exclaimed, turning blindly towards her husband; "motheris dead. Where can I turn?"
"Where but to me, poor soul!" Milburn replied, knowing nothing of Mrs.Custis's late feelings against him. "Your father shall be notified, andI am able to attend the funeral with you."
"It is in Baltimore," Vesta sobbed.
"Well, honey, there I am ordered by the doctor to go, and get above theline of malaria, in the hills. I can make the effort now."
Her grief and loneliness deprived her of the will to refuse him. Roxywas selected to be her mistress's maid upon the journey, and WilliamTilghman and Rhoda Holland were to take them in the family carriage downto Whitehaven landing for the evening steamer.
Jack Wonnell, in officious zeal to be useful, gathered flowers, and hungaround Teackle Hall to run errands; and, in order not to exasperateVesta's husband, appeared bareheaded as the party set off, Milburn'shat-box being one of the articles of travel, and Milburn vouchsafingthese words to Jack:
"There is a dollar for you, Mr. Wonnell. I rely upon you to watch my oldstore and conduct yourself like a man."
"I'll do it," answered Jack, grinning and blushing; "hope I may die!Good-bye, Miss Vesty. Purty Roxy, don't you forgit me 'way off thair inBalt'mer. I'll teach Tom to sing your name befo' you ever see me agin."
He waved his arms, with real tears dimming his vision, and Roxy affectedto shed some tears also, as she waved good-bye to Virgie, whose eyeswere turned with wistful pain upon the beautiful face of her mistressreceding down the vista. Vesta threw her a kiss and reclined her headupon her husband's shoulder.
That evening, an hour before the carriage was to return, Virgie and thefree woman, Mary, walked together down to Milburn's store, to see ifJack Wonnell was on the watch. As they trode in the soft grass and sandunder the old storehouse they saw the bell-crowned hat--a
new one,brought from the ancient stock that very day--shining glossily onWonnell's high, eccentric head, as he sat in the hollow window of theold storehouse and talked to the mocking-bird, which he was feeding witha clam-shell full of boiled potato and egg, and some blue haws.
"Tom, say 'Roxy,' an' I'll give ye some, Tommy! Now, boy! 'Roxy, Roxy,purty Roxy! _purty_ Roxy! Poor ole Jack! poor ole Jack!'"
The bird flew around Wonnell's head, biting at the hat which stood insuch elegant irrelevance to the remainder of his dress, and cried,"Meshach, he! he! he! Vesty, she! Vesty, Meshach! Vesty, Meshach!" butsaid nothing the village vagrant would teach it. He showed the patienceidleness can well afford, and, feeding it a little, or withholding thefood awhile, continued to plead and teach:
"'Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy! Poor, pore Jack! pore Jack!' Now, Tom, say'Roxy, Roxy, pore Jack!'"
The bird flew and struck, and sang a little, very niggardly, and so, asthe lights in the west sank and faded, the shiftless lover continued invain to seek to give the bird one note more than the magician, hismaster, had taught.
The stars modestly appeared in the soft heavens, and Princess Annegathered its roofs together like a camp of camels in the desert, and,with an occasional bleat or bark or human sound, seemed dozing out thesoft fall night, absorbed, perhaps, in the spreading news of Mrs.Custis's death and Vesta's wedding-journey, that had to be taken atlast.
"Miss Virgie," said the woman Mary--ten years her senior, but comelystill--"have you ever loved like me? Oh, I had a kind husband, and,helpless as I was, I tried to love once more. Maybe it was a sin."
"I love my mistress as if she was myself," Virgie said; "I feel as if,in heaven, before we came here, I was with her, Mary! I love her father,too, as if he was not my master, but my friend. Oh, how I love them all!But what can I do to show my love--poor naked slave that I am? They saythey will soon set me free. Mary, how do people feel when they arefree?"
"They don't appreciate it," sighed Mary. "They go and put themselves incaptivity again, like selfish things: they falls in love."
"But to love and be free!" Virgie said, her bosom glowing in the thoughttill her rich eyes seemed to shed warmth and starlight on hercompanion's face; "to give your own free love to some one and feel himgrateful for it: what a gift and what a joy is that! He might bethankful for it, and, seeing how pure it was, he might respect me."
"Who is it, Virgie?" Mary said.
"Whoever would love me like a white girl!" the ardent slave softlyexclaimed. "It must be some one who does not despise me. I hear MissVesta's beau, Master William, read the beautiful service, with hissweet, submissive face, and I think to myself, 'How freely he might havemy heart to comfort his if he would take it like a gentleman!' I wouldbe his slave to make him happy, if he could love me purely, like mymother! Oh, my mother, whose name I do not know! where is the tie thatfastens me to heaven? Did my father love me?"
"Pore Jack! pore Jack! Sing 'Roxy, Roxy, Roxy,' Tom!" coaxed Wonnellabove to the sleepy bird.
"Whoever was your father, Virgie, your mother's love for you was pure.God makes the wickedest love their children, because he is the Father toall the fatherless."
"Oh! could my own father have brought me into the world and hated me?"Virgie said. "They say I am almost beautiful. Will he who gave me lifenever call me his, and say, 'My daughter, come to my respect, rest on myheart, and take my name'?"
"Poor Virgie!" sighed Mary; "remember we are black! We hardly ever havefathers: they is for white people."
"Dog my hide!" mumbled Wonnell, above, "ef a bird ain't a perwersecritter. Purty Roxy won't think I'm smart a bit ef I can't make Tom say'Roxy, Roxy, Roxy! Pore Jack!'"
"I am almost white," Virgie continued; "I want to be all white. Whycan't I be so? The Lord knows my heart is white, and full of holy,unselfish love."
"Pore chile!" Mary said; "we shall all be washed and made white in theLamb's blood, Virgie. That's where your soul pints you to, dear younglady. I know it ain't pride and rebellion in you: it's like I'm lookingat my baby, white as snow to me and God now."
"Hush!" said Virgie, trembling, "what voice is that?"
There was an old willow-tree in a recessed spot at the end of the store,and by it were two sheds or small buildings, now disused, into one ofwhich, with a door low to the ground, Mary drew Virgie, and theylistened to a low voice saying,
"Dave, air your pops well slugged?"
"Yes, Mars Joe."
"Allan McLane pays fur the job?"
"Yes, Mars Joe."
"You can't mistake him, Dave. No shap is worn like that nowadays. Lookonly fur his headpiece, and aim well!"
"Yes, Mars Joe."
"Fur me," continued the other voice, "I'll go right to the tavern an'prove an _alibi_. My lay is to take the house gal that old Gripefist'syoung wife thinks so much of. I'll snake her out to-night. She's theproperty of Allan McLane, left him in his sister's will. They found onher body the paper giving the gal to the dead woman only two daysbefore. She's Allan's to-morrow, but to-night she's mine!"
A sensual, sucking, chuckling sound, like a kiss made upon the back ofhis own hand, followed this significant threat; and Mary, placing herhand over the sinking slave girl's mouth, held her motionless.
"Tommy, Tommy! sing 'Roxy, Roxy, Roxy! Pore Jack! Pore Jack!' Sing,Tommy, sing!"
"_There_," whispered the white man, softly, and was gone.
Mary breathed only the words to Virgie, "_Kidnappers_--come!" and theyglided from the old tenement unobserved, and entered the copse along thestream.
"Pore Jack! Pore Jack! His leetle Roxy's gone away. Pore Jack! Roxy!Roxy! Roxy!" the mourner at the window above chattered sleepily to thenodding bird.
The negro at the corner of the old warehouse, half covered by thewillow's shade, peered up with blood-shotten eyes to distinguish thecovering on the bird-tamer's head.
He saw Jack Wonnell sitting backward on the window-frame, swaying in andout, as he lazily tempted the mocking-bird to sing, and once thebell-crown hat, so singular to view, came in full relief against thegray sky.
"It's ole Meshach," said the negro, silently, with desperate eyes. "Ihoped it wasn't. Dar is de hat, sho!"
He cocked his huge horse-pistol, and took aim directly from below.
"Pore Jack! Pore Jack! I reckon Roxy won't have pore Jack, caze Tommywon't sing. Sing, Tommy, little Roxy's pet: 'Pore Jack! Pore--'"
The great horse-pistol boomed on the night, and in the smoke the negrorushed into the bush and sought the fields.
Down from his seat in the window-sill the witless villager camebackward, all bestrewn, measuring his body in the sand, where he lay,silent as the other shadows, with his arms extended in the frenzy ofdeath, and his mouth wide open and flowing blood.
Jack Wonnell had paid the penalty of being out of fashion.
The mocking-bird, aroused by the loud report, leaped into the emptywindow-sill to seek his tutor, and set up the lesson he had learned toolate:
"Poor Jack! Poor Jack! Roxy! Roxy! Roxy!" came screaming on the night,and all was still.
* * * * *
William Tilghman was driving back from Whitehaven in the melancholythoughts inspired by the departure of his cousin, whom he had at lastseen go into the great wilderness of the world the passive companion ofher husband, like the wife of Cain, driven forth with him, when thecarriage was arrested at the ancient Presbyterian church--whichoverlooked Princess Anne from the opposite bank of the little river--bya woman almost throwing herself under the wheels.
"Why, Lord sakes! it's our Virgie!" cried Rhoda Holland.
The girl, with all the energy of dread, sprang into the carriage byWilliam Tilghman's side and threw her arms around him:
"Save me! Save me!"
"What ails you, Virgie?" cried the young man, assuringly. "You are in nodanger, child!"
"I am sold," the girl gasped, with terror on her tongue and in her wildeyeballs. "Miss Vesty's sold me to her Uncle Allan. He's sent thekidnappers after
me. They're yonder, in Princess Anne. Oh, drive me tothe North, to the swamps, anywhere but there!"
"I know your mistress made you over to her mother, Virgie, for aprecaution, fearing you might not be safe in her own hands. She told meso, and asked if the death of her mother could possibly affect you."
"Oh, it has!" the girl whispered. "Mary knows the kidnapper that's comefor me. He is the same that stole Hominy and the children. He kept herchained on an island. He says he'll have me to-night, to do as hepleases. Master McLane lets him have me!"
The girl, in her terror, as the carriage had descended the hill alreadyand crossed the Manokin, seized the reins in Tilghman's hands and drewthem with such frenzy that the horses, as they came to Meshach Milburn'sstore, were pulled into the open area before it, where something intheir surprise or lying on the ground gave them immediate fright, andthey dashed at a gallop into Front Street, the wheels passing over anobject by the old storehouse that nearly upset the carriage.
The street they took for their run crossed a small arm of the Manokin,and led up to a gentleman's gate; but before this brook was crossedTilghman, an experienced horseman and driver, had reined the flyinganimals into a nearly unoccupied street, called Back Alley, parallelwith the main street of Princess Anne, but hidden from it by houses andgardens, and almost in a moment of time the whole town had been cleared,with hardly a person in it aware of such a vehicle going past.
It was a real runaway, but Tilghman, in a cool, gentle voice, like abrook's music, told the girls to sit perfectly still, as they had aclear, level road; and, seeing that he could not stop the animals by anymere exercise of strength, without danger to his harness, he waited fortheir power to wear out, or their fears to subside.
Rhoda Holland was ashamed to scream, if her pride was not too wellaroused already in the presence of the muscular young minister, sittingthere like an artillery teamster driving into battle, and his nostrilsand jaws delineated in the gray air, expressed almost the joy he hadlong put by of following the hounds in the autumn fox-hunts, where JudgeCustis said he had been the perfect pattern of a rider.
As for Virgie, she felt no fear of wild horses, since they were leavingbehind the bloody hunters of men and women, and she almost wished it washerself alone, dashing at that frightful pace to destruction, until theyoung man, mindful, perhaps, of his mistress, torn from his sight toinhabit another's arms, and feeling that this poor quadroon was dear asa sister to Vesta's heart, bent down in the midst of his apprehensionsand kissed the slave girl pityingly.
Then, with an instant's greater torrent of tears, a sense of rest andman's respect fell upon Virgie's soul, and she paid no heed to time ordangers till the carriage came to a stop in the deep forest sandsseveral miles east of Princess Anne.
"William," said Rhoda Holland, "what air we to do to save Virgie? UncleMeshach's gone. Jedge Custis is nobody knows whar, now. This yer AllanMcLane, Aunt Vesty says, is dreffle snifflin' an' severe. I think it's aconspliracy to steal Virgie when they's all away. Misc Somers would takekeer of her, but I'm afraid she'd tell somebody."
"Are you sure that you saw and heard truly?" the minister said toVirgie.
"Oh, yes. I saw the same man at Mr. Milburn's the day he was taken sick.He looked at me a low, familiar look, and muttered something evil. Maryknew him too well. Oh, do not take me back to Princess Anne. I willnever go there again."
"It may be true," Tilghman reflected. "It probably _is_ true. Vesta hasno faith in Allan McLane. She says he makes money in the negro trade,with all his religious formality. He is the trustee already of Mrs.Custis's estate; no doubt, the administrator by will. He may have sentJoe Johnson to kidnap Virgie, under color of his right, and Johnsonwould abuse anybody. Vesta will never forgive us if we let Virgie go tohim."
"But I am a slave," Virgie sobbed. "Oh, my Lord! to think I am not MissVesta's, but a strange man's, slave. How could she give me away!"
"It was an error of judgment," Tilghman replied. "She could notanticipate her mother's immediate death. Yet there, where she thoughtyou safest, you were most in peril."
They had now crossed the Dividing creek into Worcester County, andhalted to cool the horses off at the same old spring, under thegum-tree, where Meshach Milburn stopped, the evening he went to theFurnace village.
"William," Rhoda Holland spoke, "if Virgie is McLane's slave you can'tkeep him from a-takin' her. She can't go back to Prencess Anne at all."
"I don't mean that she shall, Rhoda. I know you are a brave woman, andwe will drive her to-night to Snow Hill, and leave her there with anurse, a free woman, once belonging to my family, and this nurse has ahusband who is said to be a conductor on what is called the UndergroundRoad to the free states."
"Lord sakes! a Abolitionist?"
"I hope so," Tilghman said. "I know Vesta wants to set this girl free,and there is no way to do it, and respect her womanhood, but by givingher a wild beast's chance to run."
"My, my! And you a minister of the Gospil, William!"
"Yes, of the Gospel that tells me how to be a neighbor to my neighbor."The young man's eyes flashed. "I never felt so humiliated for my clothand for my country as now. To think how many men preach the Gospel ofGod all their lives long, and have never set a living soul free. I willdo one such Christian felony, by the help of Christ."
As he spoke, the sound of a corn-stalk fiddle, and of foresters' nakedfeet dancing on the floor of the old Milburn cabin, came crooning out inthe night.
In another hour they were at the Furnace village, its blast gone out,its lines of huts deserted, no human soul to be seen; and the mill-pond,lying like a parchment under the funereal cypress-trees, seemed stainedwith the blood of the bog-ores that oozed upward from the depths likethe corpse of murdered Enterprise, suffocated in Meshach Milburn'sforeclosure.
A sense of desolation filled them all; but what was it, in either of thewhite twain, to the bursting ties of that lovely quadroon, raised like alily in the household heat of kindness and the breath of purity, to becast forth like a witch, on a moment's information, and consigned to theponds and night-damps?
The horses toiled through the sand till an open country of farms gavebetter roads, and at ten o'clock at night they crossed the Pocomoke atSnow Hill, and stopped at a gate before a neat, whitewashed, one-storyhouse, with a large stack-chimney over the centre, and two doors and asingle window in the front. It stood in a short street leading to theriver, whose splutter-docks and reeds were seen near by among the mastsof vessels and the mounds of sawdust.
Virgie kissed Rhoda good-night, and descended with Mr. Tilghman, whoopened a gate, and, going up some steps, knocked at a vine-environeddoor. A window opened and there was a parley, and the door soonafterwards unclosed softly and admitted them.
"Oh, may God let you know some night the pure bed and sleep you havebrought me to!" Virgie whispered. "God bless you for the kiss you gaveme, my dear white playmate, that you are not ashamed of! Oh, my heartis bursting: what can I say?"
"The people here will hide you, or slip you forward to-morrow night,"the young minister said. "Here is money, Virgie, to pay your way. Youcan write, and write to your young mistress wherever you go."
"Tell her," said the runaway girl, "that I loved her dearly. Oh, dearold Teackle Hall! shall I ever see you again? William, I shall get myfreedom, or die on the road to it."
"That is the spirit," the minister said; "we will buy it for you if wecan, but get it for yourself if you can do it."
He kissed her again, with the instinct of a father to a child, andhastened to his horses and the hotel.
As Tilghman and Rhoda, at the earliest dawn, started for Princess Anne,the young girl suddenly turned and kissed her minister.
"Thar!" she said, "I think you just looked magnificens last night,sittin' behine them critters, like Death on the plale horse, an' lovin'Aunt Vesty, though she's gone away an' quit you, enough to fight for herpore, bright-skinned gal. I wish somebody would love _me_ like that!"
"So you could quit him, too
, Rhoda?"
"Well, William, I likes beaus that's couragelis! You're splendida-preachin', but I like you better drivin' and showin' your excitemins."
"You are a beautiful girl," the clergyman said; "suppose you try to likeme better."
The great question, being thus opened, was not disposed of when theyreached Princess Anne, and quietly stabled the horses.