CHAPTER XXXVII.
SPIRITS OF THE PAST.
"What do they say, William, about Jack Wonnell's being found shot dead?"
"It is generally said that he was killed by the negroes for gallantriesto their color. Some talk of arresting little Roxy Custis."
"What do you say, William Tilghman?"
"I can say nothing. The night I drove Virgie to Snow Hill I drove overpoor Wonnell's body. A strange negro was seen here--an enemy of yourservant, Samson. The new cook at Teackle Hall thinks he fired the shot."
The young rector felt the searching look of those resinous forester'seyes staring him through.
"That shot was meant for me, William Tilghman."
"Perhaps so."
"It was the shot of a hired murderer, who mistook Wonnell's unusualhats for mine, that was not well described to him, or the description ofwhich his drunken and excited memory did not retain."
"Mr. Milburn, please save Vesta this suspicion."
"Oh! that pure soul could not know it," Milburn continued, with amoment's gentleness; "but some of her proud kin, to whom I am less thana dog, did send the assassin. I think I guess the man."
"Do not rush to a conclusion! Remember, Vesta has suffered so much forothers' errors."
"He was killed in this room, where Wonnell never came before. The woundshows the shot to have come from a point below, where nothing butWonnell's hat, and not his features, could be seen. The mistake ofbell-crown for steeple-top shows that it was a stranger's job: the poorfool died for me. Now where did the bungler who killed me by proxy comefrom?"
"I will be frank with you, sir. Joe Johnson, the kidnapper, was alsohere: Mary says so. To save Virgie from him, I helped her away."
"Now," said Milburn, "what enemy of mine delegated the kidnapper toprocure a murderer?"
He waited a moment without response, and answered, in a low tone ofvoice, his own question:
"The man is at Johnson's Cross Roads: letters from Cambridge tell me so.It was the deceased Mrs. Custis's brother, Allan McLane."
"Again I ask you to think of Vesta and her many sacrifices!"
"I do. I have promised her that she shall never receive a cruel wordfrom me. But I shall not spare my assassins. To them I shall be as onethey have killed, and whose blood smokes, for vengeance. I possess theonly warrant that can drive them from Maryland."
He laid a roll of bank-notes on the table suggestively.
"No wealth is accumulated in vain," said Meshach Milburn, his delicatenostrils distended and his fine hand pointing to the bank-bills. "Now,_war_ on Johnson's Cross Roads!"
He crossed the old room over the store, and, opening the green chest,brought out the Entailed Hat, and took it in his hand with a grim smile.
"Here is something I thought to lay aside on my wife's account," hespoke. "Her people compel me to wear it! I thought all malice to thispoor hat would be done with my social triumph here. But I am not a manto be frightened. Let them kill me, but it shall be under my ancestralbrim."
"Oh! hear your mocking-bird sing again as it did:'Vesta--Meshach--Love!' Where is the bird?"
Meshach Milburn shook his head and put the Entailed Hat upon it. "Tomleft me," he said, "when they began to fire bullets at my Hat."
* * * * *
Vesta's female instinct had already found the explanation of Wonnell'sdeath.
From the moment of knowing her husband, his fatal hat had been theshadow across her life's path. His person had never been offensive toher, and something attractive or modifying in him had led her, when achild, to offer a flower to his hat, to give it consonance with himself,that seemed to deserve less evil.
A fancied insult to his hat had made him quarrel with her father, aquarrel which involved her conquest, not by wooing, but by the treaty ofwar. The same hat had inspired the superstition which led her kitchenservants to leave their comfortable home, and had been the insuperableobstacle to her mother's consent to her marriage. It had caused the onlybitter words that ever passed between her and her father. At last it hadspilled blood, and her uncle, she well knew, from his implacablenature, had set the ruffians on, and she knew as well that her husbandhad found him out.
His intelligence, which would have been otherwise a matter of pride toher, became a subject of fear, involved with his hat.
Then, the loss of Virgie was hardly less severe to Vesta than her ownmother's.
It was true that Roxy, pretty and loving, now poured all her devotion ather mistress's feet, but there had been something in Virgie that Roxycould never rise to--a dignity and self-reliance hardly less than awhite woman's. Vesta shed bitter tears at the news of that dearcomforter's flight, and on her knees, praying for the delicate youngwanderer, she felt God's conviction of the sins of slavery. Alas!thousands felt the same who would not admit the conviction, and gaveexcuses that welded into one nation, at last, the sensitive millions whocould not agree to a lesser sacrifice, but were willing to give war.
A little note from Snow Hill told Vesta that her maid had alreadydeparted, and would only write again from free soil.
So the upbraided hat was worn more often than before, and Vesta had tosuffer much humiliation for it. Her husband now moved actively toorganize his railroad, and visited the Maryland towns of the peninsula,taking her along, and wearing on the journey his King James tile, nowswathed in mourning crape.
At Cambridge, which basked upon the waters like an English Venice, heapplied the sinews of war to a listless public sentiment, and the countypress began to call for Joe Johnson's expulsion, and Patty Cannon'srendition to the State of Delaware. At Easton, lying between the waterson her treasures of marl, like a pearl oyster, the people turned out tosee the little man in the peaked hat, with the beautiful lady at hisside; and Vesta was more pained for her husband than herself, to feelthat his _outre_ dress was prejudicing his railroad, as business, noless than beauty, revolts from any outward affectation. At the oldaristocratic homes on the Wye River, more scowls than smiles werebestowed on the eccentric _parvenu_; and at Chestertown, whereoriginated the Peales who drew this hat into their museum, the boysburned tar-barrels on the market space, and marched, in hats of brownloaf-sugar wrappers, like Meshach's, before the dwelling of Vesta'shost.
The greater the opposition, the more indomitable Milburn grew to live itdown. He wrote to her father to go to Annapolis and work for a railroadcharter and state aid, and began grading for his line in the vicinity ofhis old store at Princess Anne, throwing the first shovelful of earthhimself, with the immemorial hat upon his sconce. This time there wereno shouts, and he almost regretted it, seeming to feel that jeers carryno deep malice, while silence is hate.
Loyal to her least of vows, and wishing to love and obey him in spiritfully, Vesta felt that his own good-nature was being darkened again byhis obstinacy upon this single point of an obsolete hat.
He looked, in their evening circle at Teackle Hall, like a younger andknightlier person, in a modern suit of clothes, and slippers of Vesta'sgift. His delicate hand well became the ring she put upon it, and, whenhe talked high enthusiasm and sense, and stood ready to back them withcourage and money, Vesta thought her husband lacked but one thing tomake him the equal of his supposititious kinsman, the democratic martyrin the seventeenth century, and that was another head-dress. She almostfeared to broach the subject, knowing that an old sore is ever the mostsensitive, and being too direct and frank to insinuate or practise anyarts upon him.
She was embroidering an evening-cap of velvet for him one day when Mrs.Tilghman sent a hat-box, and in it was a fine new hat of the currentstyle. He answered her letter politely, and put the new hat upon therack of Teackle Hall, and never touched it again.
Next, Rhoda Holland, his niece, procuring, from some country beau, abeaver-skin--and beavers were growing scarce and dear in thatpeninsula--had him an elegant cap made of it for the cold weather nowcoming; but he only kissed her and put it on the rack, and there ittempted the moth.
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p; His chills and fever continued at broken times, but more regular becamethe dislike and opposition of the old class of society as he undertookto become the promoter of his region. They regarded it as audacity worsethan crime: he had outstripped them in wealth, and now was underminingtheir importance. Many avowed that they would never ride on a railroadbuilt by such a man; others hoped it would break him; some took openground against his work, and wrote letters to Annapolis to prejudice himwith the Legislature, where the Baltimore interest was already cryingloudly that an Eastern Shore railroad meant to take Maryland trade andmoney to Philadelphia. Meshach fiercely responded that, unless therailway took the line of the Maryland counties, Delaware state wouldbuild it and carry it off to Newcastle instead of to Elkton, whereMeshach meant to unite with a projected Baltimore system. Prudentlyestimating the sparseness of his fortune to execute a hundred miles ofembankment and railroad, Milburn yet kept up a display of surveyors andgraders in several counties, and his local patriotism had at least theappreciation of Vesta's little circle.
In the meantime the continued absence of Samson surprised him, and JudgeCustis's letters were irregular and long coming as he went farthernorth, while two letters received by the Widow Dennis were as mysticalas they were assuring: one, in a female hand, told her that her sonLevin was being tenderly watched, and another, in man's writing,enclosed some money, and said her son would soon be home. Mrs. Denniswas far from happy in this indefinite state of mind, and her heart toldher, also, that the absence of James Phoebus was a different strain.She loved that absentee already too well to forgive his silence.
One day, before November, Vesta said to her husband:
"The air and sky are warm and sparkling yet, and the roses are out. Youwork too hard between your canal case and your railroad. Let us fill thetwo carriages and drive to old Rehoboth, and eat our dinner there."
He consented, and they took with them Grandmother Tilghman and William,Rhoda Holland, Roxy, and Mrs. Dennis, and also the poor free woman,Mary, whom Jimmy Phoebus had released from her chains.
The road passed in sight of the birthplace of the lion of independencein Maryland, Samuel Chase, who forced that hesitating state, bythreatenings and even riots, to declare for permanent separation fromEngland, as Henry Winter Davis, by the same means, eighty-five yearsafterwards, forced her rebels against the Union to show their hands.
Near Chase's birthplace, on the glebe, rose the old Washington Academy,out in a field, raised in that early republican day when a generousfever for education, following the act of tolerance, made some nobleschool-houses that the growth of towns ultimately discouraged. With fourgreat chimneys above its conical roof, and pediments and cupola, and twowide stories, and high basement, all made in staid, dark brick, theacademy yet had a mournful and neglected look, as if, like man, it wasruminating upon the more brutalized times and lessening enlightenmentfalse systems ever require.
"Ah!" said Vesta's husband, "how many a poor boy thou hast sent fromyonder mutilated for life, honey, like the lovers of the queen bee."
"How is that?" Vesta inquired.
"You never heard of the queen bee? Women, when they die, may turn tobees, and reverse their hard conditions in this life. The queen bee hasno rival in the hive; all other females there are immature, and all themales are dying for the queen. She has five hundred lovers, so lovesickfor her that they never work, and forty times as many maids, likePenelope's, all embroidering comb and wax."
"How was that proved?"
"By putting the bees in a glass house and watching them. To God allmankind may be in a glass hive, too, and every buzzer's secret biographybe kept."
"And the queen bee's honeymoon?"
"From her that word is taken. She flies high into the air and meets alover by chance; she has so many that one is sure to be met; she kisseshim in that crystal eddy of sunshine, and, in the transport, he iswounded to the heart. How many young drones from the academy have seenthee once and swooned for life!"
"But the queen bee also has a fate some time, sir?"
"Yes. She leaves the ancient hive at last, and settles on an unsightlyforest-tree somewhere, and all that love her follow: the long-neglectedherb becomes busy with music and sweetness, and the flashing of silverwings, till into some gum-tree cone the farmer gathers the swarm, and itis their home."
Vesta looked up at the poetical illustration, and saw her husband'sconical hat, into which she had been hived, and her eyes fell to hermourning weeds.
"Oh, my father!" she thought; "has he kept his good resolutions! It isall I have left to hope for."
They travelled down the aisles of the level forest, sometimes theholly-trees, in their green leafage and red fruit, sometimes the cleanlypine-tree's green, enriching the brown concavity of oaks; and at thescattered settlement of Kingston, the Jackson candidate for governor,Mr. Carroll, bowed from his door. Crossing Morumsco Creek, they bore tothe east, and soon saw, on a plain, the still animate ecclesiasticalhamlet of Rehoboth, extending its two ancient churches across thevision.
The road ran to the bank of the River Pocomoke, where a ferry was stillmaintained to the opposite shore and the Virginia land of Accomac, andthe cold tide, without a sail, went winding to an oystery estuary of thebay, where the mud at the bottom was so soft that vessels aground in itcould still continue sailing, as on the muggy globe that Noah came toshore in.
Close by were oyster-shells high as a natural bluff, made by the Indiangourmands before John Smith's voyage of navigation.
Vesta was set out at the great, ruined Episcopal church that, like acastle of brick, made the gateway of Rehoboth; while William Tilghmanand Rhoda strolled into the open door of the brick Presbyterian churchfarther on, and Milburn put up the horses at the tavern.
"William," Rhoda asked, "was this the first Presbyterian church evermade yer?"
"The first in America, Rhoda. This was Rev. Francis Makemie's church. Helived in Virginia, not far from here, where no other worship waspermitted but ours, so he came over the Pocomoke and reared a church oflogs at this point, and this is the third or fourth church-building uponthe spot. Rehoboth then came to be such a point for worship that theEstablished Church put up yonder noble old edifice, as if to overawethis Calvinistic one, in 1735."
"It's a quare old house," said Rhoda. "The little doors that opens fromthe vestiblulete into the side galleries sent a draught right down thepreacher's back at the fur end, and when he give out the hymn, 'Blow yethe trumpet, blow,' he always blowed his nose twice. So they boarded upthe galleries and let the ceiling down flat, and if we go up thar we cansee the other old round ceiling, William."
So they went up the narrow stairs from the door, and came into the tubesof galleries all closed from the congregation, and there, sitting downin the obscurity, the preacher passed his arm around Rhoda's waist.
"Take keer," she said; "maybe you was predestined to be lost yer. I'mskeered to be up yer half in the dark, even with a good man."
Nevertheless, she came a little closer to him, and looked into his eyeswith her arch, demure ones. The young rector suddenly kissed her.
"You've brought it on yourself, Rhoda, by looking so pretty in thisstern old place of creeds and catechisms. Could you love me if I askedyou?"
"You couldn't love me true, William. Your heart is in t'other old churchamong the bats and foxes, where Aunt Vesty sits this minute."
"No, my sorrow is there, Rhoda. I am trying to build a nest for myheart. We all must love."
"William, I don't think a young man in love can remember so much historywhen he's sittin' in the dark by his gal."
"Love among the ruins is always melancholy, Rhoda."
"Yes, William, and your love comes out of 'em: the ruins of your oldfirst love. I couldn't make you happy."
"Try," said William; "my fancy wavers towards you. You are a beautifulgirl."
"Yes," said Rhoda, practically, "it's time I was gittin' married. Ithink I'll take you on trial, and watch Aunt Vesty to see if she isjealous of me."
/> All differences of education passed away, when, standing for a momentwith this tall, willowy girl in his arms, her ardent nature in the blushof uncertainty, her very coquetry languishing, like health takingreligion captive, the rector of Princess Anne felt that there is nomedicine for love but love.
They walked together around the square old edifice, among the graves ofTilghmans, Drydens, Revells, and Beauchamps, and saw the round-cappedwindows and double doors in arched brick, and, passing back along theroad, entered the enclosure of the grand old Episcopal church, which wasnearly eighty feet long, and presented its broadside of blackish brick,and double tier of spacious windows, to the absolute desertion of thisforest place.
The churchyard was a copse of gum-tree and poplar suckers, and berrybushes, with apple-trees and cedars and wild cherry-trees next above,and higher still the damp sycamores and maples, growing out of myrtlenearly knee-deep upon the waves of old graves.
In beautiful carpentry, the thirteen windows on this massive side upheldin their hand-worked sashes more than four hundred panes of dim glass,and two great windows in the gable had fifty panes each, and stood firm,though the wall between them, fifty feet in width, had fallen in, andbeen replaced with poorer workmanship. In the opposite gable was anotherdoor that had been forced open, and, as they stepped across the sill, acrack, like ice first stepped upon, went splitting the long and loftyvacancy with warning rumbles.
Now the whole interior, in fine perspective, stood exposed, at leastseventy-five by fifty feet, like a majestic hall unbroken by anyside-galleries, and with double stories of windows shedding a hazylight, and, at the distant end, a low pulpit, with spacious altar. Thewalls of this neglected temple were two feet thick, and its high ceilingwas kept from falling down by ten rude wooden props of recent roughcarpentry; the pews were stately, high-fenced things, numbered in whiteletters on a black ground, and each four-sided, to contain ten persons;the rotting damask cushions in many of them told of a formeraristocracy, while now all the congregation could be assembled in asingle pew, and worship was unknown but once a year, when the bishopcame to read his liturgy to dust and desolation.
So, on the opposite western cape of the Chesapeake, shivered the Romanpriests of Calvert's foundation, in the waste of old St. Mary's; thefolds had left the shepherds, and fifty people only came to worship inthe kirk of the earliest Presbyterians.
Two tall, once considered elegant, stoves were nearly midway up thecracking church-floor; and Mary, the free woman, had made a fire in oneof them, and the pine wood was roaring, and the long height of pipe wassmoking. Startled by the fire, a venerable opossum came out of one ofthe pews, and waggled down the aisle, like a gray devotee who had saidhis prayers, and feared no man.
Vesta was reading her prayer-book aloud near the stove to the prettywidow and Grandmother Tilghman. In a few moments the young rectoremerged from a curious old gallery for black people, by the door,wearing his surplice; and he read the service at the desk, plaintive andsimple, Milburn and his group responding in the room a thousand mighthave worshipped in.
"Cousin Vesta," the minister said, after the service, "Miss Holland isgoing to try to love me. Mr. Milburn, may I address her?"
"She is a wilful piece," Meshach said; "you must school her first. Letmy wife give my consent."
Vesta went to both, and kissed them:
"I feel so much encouraged, dear Rhoda and William, to see lovebeginning all about me. Now, Norah, if you could be just to JamesPhoebus, who is proving his love to you, perhaps, with his life!"
"Yes, that is a match I approve of," said Grandmother Tilghman, "but Idon't want Bill to marry. Disappointed men make rash selections."
"Oh," said Rhoda, "don't conglatulate him too soon; I haven't tuk himyet. He's goin' teach me outen the books, and I'll teach him outen theforest."
They walked together to the river bank, and Mrs. Dennis had the poorwoman, Mary, tell the adventures of Jimmy Phoebus to save her fromslavery. All were deeply moved.
"Now, Norah," Grandmother Tilghman said, "the moment that man comes backyou go to him and kiss him, and say, 'James, you have been the onlyfather to my son. Do you want me to be your wife?' This world is madefor marrying, Norah. Women have no other career. Nature does not valuethe brain of Shakespeare, but keeps the seed of every vagrant plantwarm, 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 waitedlonger 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 weara hat a young wife is not ashamed of."
All felt a cold thrill at these words from the blind woman. Milburnsaid, gravely,
"How can you know about hats, when you cannot see them?"
"Oh," said Grandmother, herself a little frightened, "that hat I think Ican 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 flashedupon the picture of her husband, as he had left her sixteen yearsbefore, when Levin was a baby--a rich blonde, youthful man, dressed innaval uniform, like Decatur, whose birthplace was so near his own.
His golden hair curled upon his forehead, his blue eyes were full ofhandsome daring, and his red, pouting mouth was like a woman's; upon hisarm a corded chapeau was held, epaulettes tasselled his shoulders, hisrich blue coat was slashed with gold along the wide lappels, and stoodstiffly around his neck and fleecy stock and fan-shaped shirt-ruffles.He seemed to be a mere boy, but of the mettle which made Americanofficers and privateersmen of his days the only guerdons of therepublicanism of the seas against the else universal dominion ofEngland.
This portrait, the last of her family possessions, was the youngsailor's parting gift to her when he sailed in the _Ida_, leaving her amere girl, with his son upon her breast. The picture hung above thelowly 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 andstrength of man in my childhood, if I have ever looked on man but theewith love or wavering, rebuke me now for the offence I am to do, if suchit 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'shand instinctively covered her bosom as she listened, and, deep in thespirit of her prayer, she continued:
"Oh, Bowie, if thou livest, let me know! May I not live to see thee comeand find me in another's arms; thy look would kill me. If thou artdetained by enemies, by savage people, or by foreign love, no matterwhat thy errors, I will still be true! Give me some token by the Godthat has thee in his keeping, whether thou liest on the ocean's floor orlookest 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 footstepseemed 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 upwith 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 stil
l, let fall her arms of ivory, and, asshe 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 hishand, on which a diamond caught the moon, and seemed to drink it. Awail, like the others she had heard, broke from his lips, and said thewords:
"To lose those charms! To lose that heart! O God!"
As thus he stood, ghastly and supplicating, as if he would fall and dieupon her threshold, another hand came forward in the moonlight, and drewthe 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.