CHAPTER XLIII.
PLEASURE DRAINED.
The dawn had not broken when that fleet traveller, Joseph Johnson,anticipating his enemies by hours, noiselessly tied his horses at thetavern he had erected, and nearly fell into the arms of Owen Daw.
"Joe," said that scapegrace, "thar's queer people hanging around yer.They say a blue chist has been dug outen the field yonder, an' bones init. I 'spect they're a-lookin' fur you, Joe."
"I'll give you a job, Owen," said Johnson, quick on his feet as the boy."Run these horses into my wagon thar while I git some duds togetherbefore I hop the twig."
Slipping to the rear of the house, he entered, and looked in Patty'sroom--she was not there; a slight smell of gunpowder seemed to be in thehall. Passing rapidly up the stairs, Johnson saw a light shine inMcLane's room, and he kicked the door wide open, exclaiming,
"Bad luck everywhere; the gal's stone dead; the beaks are round us. Wakeup, McLane!"
"Joe!" said a voice, and Patty Cannon threw her arms around him.
"To burning fire with you!" bellowed the filial son. "Take your armsaway!"
"Let us make up, Joe! Everybody has run away from us. Huldy is gone,too. McLane is dead."
"Dead? Dead where?"
"There"--she pointed to a feather-bed lying upon the floor, the outlinesof which seemed unusually pointed and stiff for feathers, though it wassown up in its own blankets and quilts. Joe Johnson touched it with hisfoot and bounded back.
"Hell-cat!" he cried, "is this one of your tricks?"
"I did it fur you, Josie. He brought it on hisself. There's hisportmanteau full of money to pay our travelling expenses. He's sewed upbeautiful, and in the bay you can drop him to the bottom."
Joe Johnson's face became almost livid pale, and, rushing upon PattyCannon with both hands raised, he struck her to the floor and put hisboot upon her.
"If I had time, I'd have your life," he hissed. "But it would lose theuptucker a job. To-night I leave you forever. Margaretta, your daughter,wishes never to see you again. Take this crib and the blood you stillmust shed to keep your old heart warm, and take my curse to choke you onthe gallows!"
He rushed away and gave a low whistle at the window; Daw and Joe'sbrother, Ebenezer, a lower set and more sinister being, bounded up thestairs and loosened and drove before them the little band of captives.
"One word from you, white nigger, in all this journey to-day, scattersyour brains in the woods!"
Joe Johnson drew a pistol as he spoke, and Jimmy Phoebus saw hisnervous determination too clearly to provoke it.
"Now, put this dab upon the wagon," Johnson said, referring to the bed,and it was carried down by the brothers, and the dead man's portmanteauthrown in beside it.
"Joe! Joe!" came the voice of Patty Cannon, from the guest's room, "takethe poor old woman that's raised you along."
"Stow yer wid!" he answered; "we go to be gentlemen in a land where youwould spot us black. Cross cove and mollisher no more; raise another JoeJohnson, if you can, to make this old hulk lush with business: I give itto you."
He was gone in the vague dawn. She fell upon her face across the littlebar and moaned,
"A pore, pore, pore old woman!"
How long she had been leaning there she did not know, till familiarsounds fell on her ears, and, looking up with a cry of recognition, sheshouted,
"Van Dorn! God bless you, Van Dorn! Is you alive again?"
The Captain was supported in the arms of another person, who took him,ghastly pale, into the little bar and laid him upon her pallet,muttering,
"I loved him as I never loved A male."
* * * * *
The morning was well advanced, and the sun made the gaunt and steep oldtavern rise like a mammoth from the level lands, and filled its upperfront rooms with golden wine of light, as Patty Cannon sat in one ofthem by a window near the piazza, and talked to Van Dorn, whom she hadtenderly washed and re-dressed, and placed him in her own comfortablerocking-chair of rushes, with his feet raised, as all unaffectedAmericans like, and blanketed, upon a second chair.
Her woes and his relief made Patty social, yet tender, and the instinctsof her sex had returned, to be petted and beloved.
"Oh, Captain," she said, fondly, "how clean and sweet you look, like mygood man again. Don't be cross to me, Van Dorn! My heart is sad."
"_Chito_, Patty! _chito_! Fie! _you_ sad? I like to see you saucy anddefiant. Let us not repent! So Joe has left you?"
"With cruel curses. My daughter hates me, he says, and means to be alady where I can't disgrace her. Oh, honey! to raise a child and have ithate an' despise you goes hard, even if I have been bad. There's nothingleft me now but you, Van Dorn; oh, do not die!"
He coughed carefully, as if coughing was a luxury to be very mildlyexerted, and wiped a little blood from his tongue and lip.
"I'll try not to die till I comfort you some, _Marta delicioso_! Theball is at my windpipe, and, when the blood trickles in, it makes mecough, and I must beware of emotions, the surgeon says, lest it dropinto my lung and break a blood-vessel by some very spasmodic cough. Sodo not be too beautiful or I might perish."
He stroked his long yellow mustache with the diamond-fingered hand, anddrew his velvet smoking-cap tight upon his silken curls, but he was toopale to blush as formerly, though he lisped as much, like a modest boy.
"Captain," the woman said, pleased to crimson, "you are so much smarterthan me I'm afeard of you. Am I beautiful a little yet? Do I please you?I know you mock me."
"_O hala hala!_" sighed Van Dorn. "You are the star of my life. All thatI am, you have made me. Patty, I worship you. When you are gone, humannature will breathe and wonder. Do you remember when first we met?"
"A little, Captain. Tell it to me again. Praise me if you kin. I'malmost desolate."
Her lip trembled, and she glanced at the fields across the way, she hadso long inhabited, where, as it seemed to her, more life than ever wasvisible to-day, though she did not look carefully.
"How many years it has been, Patty, we will not tell. I was coming homefrom Africa with an emigrant, a Briton, my capturer, indeed--thatofficer in the blockading squadron on that coast who seized myprivateer, the _Ida_, with all her complement of Guinea slaves. His namewas all I took from him--you got the rest--_Van Dorn_!"
She stole a startled look at him out of her listening eyes, as if thismight be unpleasant talk, but he parried it with a compliment.
"_Chis! Dios!_ What a family of beauties you were! Betty, with herhoyden air, and Jane, with her wealth of charms, and Patty, with herbold, rich eyes and conquering will. We sailed into the Nanticoke bymistake for the Manokin. My friend had pitied my misfortunes and likedmy company, and, when he broke me up as a slaver--having already beenbroken as a privateer--had said: 'Dennis, that country you praise sowell has infatuated me; I'll resign my commission and buy a littlevessel, and settle in America with you for the sake of my dear littledaughter, Hulda Van Dorn.' _Ayme!_ that poor little wild-flower:where did she spend the chill night yesterday, Patty, can you tell?"
He coughed again, very carefully, and his eye, the brighter for hisfretted lungs, never left his hostess, as though he feared she mightoverlook some pleasing feature of his story. She trotted her foot andmuttered:
"You made me jealous of her: I got to hate an' fear her, lovey."
"Voluptuous as two young widowers were after a long cruise, we tarriedamong you sirens, myself almost at the threshold of my home, where mywife believed me dead, yet waited longingly and waits this morn, dearPatty. _Dios da fe!_ My friend, entasselled with bright Betty, soonerfelt remorse at the spectacle of his little child so ill-caressed, andbeckoned me away; but he had shown his gold, and could better be sparedthan reckless I. You know the cool, deep game, dear Pat. _Hala ha!_ Iwas made to buy the poison you sisters gave Van Dorn, and seem theaccomplice in his death: never till this week has that murder given up atestimony--the portion of the dead man's coin your mother stole and hid,w
hich Hulda inherited at last. _Verdad es verde!_ I became afraid toleave you: I am here at the death with you, my old enchantress."
A crack ran through the empty wooden house, which made her rise; VanDorn, as he was called, enjoyed her uneasiness, like a pallid maskpainted with a smile.
"Captain," she said, "how many people I see out yonder in the fields!Maybe thar's to be a fox-chase."
"Sit, Patty! Let me drink, in my last days of life, the wine lees ofyour memory. You are so dear to me! Turn in the golden sun, that I maylinger on that face which autumn's ashes fall upon, though through thedead leaves I see the russet colors smoulder yet! How daring was yourgirlhood: the poor blacksmith farmer, whose name you will transmitforever, fretted you with his sickness and his scruples, and, _he aqui!_you stilled him with the same cup you mixed for Betty's husband. Hisdaughter you gave to wife to his apprentice, a strong, stolid man,capable of heroism, Patty, for he died for you, his dear misleader, onthe shameful scaffold, though all the crowd knew who his instigator was;but, like a man, he died and never told."
"Van Dorn, you hurt me," Patty broke out; "I cannot laugh to-day, andthese tales depress me, honey. Where shall we go when you are well?"
"_La gente pone, y Dios dispone!_ Stay yet, and chat awhile. I wouldnot, for the world, see you discouraged,--you, unfathomable angel! who,in this mangy corner of the globe, looked abroad over the land likeCatherine, from her sterile throne, over the mighty steppes, and leviedwar upon the hopes of man. How you did trouble Uncle Sam, great Patty,robbing his mails for years between Baltimore and the Brandywine! YoungNichols still serves his term for that shrewd trick you taught him, ofcutting the mail-bags open as he sat, with the corrupted drivers, on thecrowded stage, stealthily throwing the valuable letters in the road, tobe gathered by a following horseman.[10] _Es admirable!_ Young PerryHutton, reared by you to kidnap, then to drive the mail and filch itsletters--a Delaware boy, too--perished on the gallows for killing amail-driver more scrupulous than himself, who detected him under hismask.[11] Young Moore--was he your connection, darling?--stopping themail-stage at the Gunpowder Forge, fell under the driver's buckshot.[12]And Hare--"
"Captain," called Patty, "I see men and boys all over the fields yonder,running and digging and dragging away the bresh. Is them ole buryins ofmine suspected?"
"Pshaw! darling, 'tis your warm imagination, and Joe's unkindness. Iwould make you happy with the memory of your daring acts. _Quemaravilla!_ In your little pets you stamped a life out, when anotherwoman would only stamp her foot. There was that morning when your firewould not burn, and a little black child bawled with the cold andangered you; if its body is ever dug up where it was laid, the skullcracked with the billet of wood will tell the tale. You once suspectedme of truantry from your charms--_Quedo, quedo!_ exacting dame--and thepale offspring of poor Hagar you threw upon the blazing backlog, andgrimly watched it burn. The pursued children whose cries you could notstill, that yet are stilled till hell shall have a voice, not even youcan number. Evangelists, O Patty, dipping their pens in blood of saintsto write your crimes, would make the next age infidel, where you willseem impossible, and all of us mythology!"
"Be still!" the woman cried, rising and walking, in her rolling gait, towatch things without that stirred her mind more than her lover'srecitation; "what good kin these tales do you, Captain? My God! theroads is full of people, and they are all looking yer. Is it at me, VanDorn?"
He coughed painfully, still watching her, however, and answered:
"Only a quarter-race, I guess, dear Pat! What! are you _fearing_, atyour time of life?"
"No," cried Patty Cannon, defiantly, taking something from her bosom;"here is the same dose I gave my husband, if the worst comes."
"Bravo, Patty! you only tarnish into age, like an old bronze, that isharder by time and oxidizing. I was a gentleman, and yet you masteredme. How strange to see us together beleaguered here, myself by death,and you by the law! Why, we have defied them both! Let them come on! Doyou believe in everlasting fire?--that every injury is a live coal toroast the soul? I know you do; and, if you do, how beautiful your rosygrate will be, tough charmer, with boys spoiled in the bud, and husbandsin the blossom, with families of freemen torn apart, and children, bornfree as the flag of their country, sent to perpetual bondage and thewhip. _Poca barba, poca vergueenza!_[13] Who but a woman could have putit into William Bouser's head, when she had kidnapped him and thirtynegroes more, and sold them all to Austin Woolfolk, in Baltimore, torise at sea on Woolfolk's vessel, and massacre the officers, only to behanged at last, and all to make Woolfolk a better customer!"[14]
"There are people all round the house, Van Dorn. I hear them on thestairs and in the rooms. Have mercy!"
"Devils, or men, Patty? Both are your courtiers, remember, and perhapsthey crowd each other. What do we care? _Que contento estoy!_ Perhaps Iam indifferent because no blood is on my hands, vile slaver though I am!Joe Johnson and his low-browed brother you could teach to kill; me,nothing worse than to steal and fondle you. Patty, you believe in hell.I am a believer, too; for I believe in heaven."
"O Van Dorn; how you do talk!"
"Since you entrapped my son, young Levin Dennis--_chito! quedito!_ donot start, fair fiend--to have his father make another Johnson of him, Ihave discovered, through the little girl, the beauteous damsel now,Hulda Van Dorn, the sin you meant to spot me with; and, listen, Patty!it was my son, rich with his mother's loyalty and love--dear guardianwife, that never shall learn of my ruin here, nor see me more!--it wasmy Levin, set free by me, who gave the news at Dover and beat us back."
He had partly risen as he spoke, and the exertion seemed to choke him.The woman sat in dreadful silence, watching his veins rise upon his paleand wilful face. He caught at his throat with his fingers, and for atime could speak no more.
"Patty," said he, at last, between his coughing spells, "I believeagain, for I have seen my wife, true as an angel, beauteous as a child,in prayer for me. An honest man waits my death to love her better, andbe the father of my son. _Hala o hala!_ I have had the daughter of mymurdered friend to kiss and bless me, and to love my son. My son hasgiven me his confidence, unknowing whom I was, and shown to me a brave,pure heart. _Yo soy amado!_ Their prayers may knock for me at theeternal door. But thou, the murderer of my youth, no heart will prayfor. Believe in hell, and die; _ha! hala! ho!_"
He pointed his white finger at her in an ecstasy, with a mocking smilein his blue eyes, like fading stars at dawn, and then the rosy morningflowed all round his mouth, as the bullet, detached in his emotion, felltowards the lung, and wakened hemorrhage, and to the last of hisstrength he pointed at her, and then fell back, in crimson linen,smiling yet in death.
Terrified at the unwonted scene of a natural decease in that abode ofviolence, the mistress only sat, the image of paralysis, till her doorslowly opened, and there entered, hand in hand, young Levin Dennis andHulda Van Dorn.
"Levin," the young girl said, composed as one to whom reputable life andobsequies were familiar, "I have heard the dying sentences of thismisled, strong, disappointed man. Let us kneel down, dear friend, andsay a prayer. He was our father, Levin; not Van Dorn--_that_ is my name,the daughter of his friend--but Captain Oden Dennis, of the _Ida_privateer."
As they knelt, with closed eyes, the room slowly filled, and PattyCannon's arms were seized by two constables, and the warrant read toher. She heard it with humility, making no answer but this:
"Once I had money an' friends a plenty; my money is gone, and so is myfriends; there's no fight now in pore ole Patty Cannon."