CHAPTER IV.
DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM.
Judge Custis was in his bedroom, in the second story of the large,inn-like mansion at the middle of the village, and he was justrecovering from the effects of a long wassail. In his peculiar nervouscondition he started at the sound of wheels, and, drawing his curtains,looked out upon the long shadow of an advancing figure crowned with asteeple hat.
This human shadow strengthened and faded in the alternating light, untilit was defined against his storehouse, his warehouse, his cabins, andthe plain, and it seemed also against the wall of dense forest pines.Then footsteps ascended the stairs. His door opened and Meshach Milburn,with his holiday hat on his head, stood on the threshold; his eyesvigilant and bold as ever, and all his Indian nature to the front.
"My God, Milburn!" exclaimed the Judge, "odd as it is to see you here, Iam relieved. Old Nick, I thought, was coming."
"Shall I come in?" asked Milburn.
"Yes; I'm sleeping off a little care and business. Let your man stayoutside on the porch. Draw up a chair. It's money, I suppose, thatbrings you here?"
The money-lender carefully put his formidable hat upon a table, took adistant chair, pushed his gaitered feet out in front, and laid a largewallet or pocket-book on his lap. Then, addressing his whole attentionto the host, he appeared never to wink while he remained.
"Judge Custis," he said, straightforwardly, "the first time you came toborrow money from me, you said that Nassawongo furnace would enrich thiscounty and raise the value of my land."
"Yes, Milburn. It was a slow enterprise, but it's coming all right. Ishipped a thousand tons last year."
"Judge Custis," continued the money-lender, "I told you, when you madethe first loan, that I would investigate this ore. I did so years ago.Specimens were sent by me to Baltimore and tested there. Not contentwith that, I have studied the manufacture of iron for myself--thesociety of Princess Anne not grudging me plenty of solitude!--and I knowthat every ton of iron you make costs more than you get for it. The bogore is easy to smelt; but it is corrupted by phosphate of iron and isbarely marketable."
The Judge was sitting with eyes wide open, and paler than before.
"You have found that out?" he whispered. "I did not know it myself untilwithin this year--so help me God!"
"I knew it before I made you the second loan."
"Why did you not tell me?"
"Because you forbade our relations to be anything but commercial. I wasnot bound to betray my knowledge."
"Why did you, then, from a commercial view, lend me large sums of moneyagain and again?"
"Because," said the money-lender, coolly, "you had other security. Youhave a daughter!"
Judge Custis broke from the bed-covers and rushed upon Meshach Milburn.
"Heathen and devil!" he shouted, taking the money-lender by the throat,"do you dare to mention her as part of your mortgage?"
They struggled together until a powerful pair of hands pinioned theJudge, and bore him back to his bed. Samson Hat was the man.
"Judge!" he exclaimed, gentle, but firm, "you is a _good_ man, butnot as good as me. Cool off, Judge!"
"I expected this scene," said Meshach Milburn. "It could not have beenavoided. I was bound in conscience and in common-sense to make you theonly proposition which could save you from ruin. For, Judge Custis, youare a ruined man!"
Overcome with excitement and suspended stimulation, the old Judge fellback on his pillow and began to sob.
"Give him brandy," said Meshach Milburn, "here is the bottle! He needsit now."
The wretched gentleman eagerly drank the proffered draught from thenegro's hands. His fury did not revive, and he covered his face with hispalms and moaned piteously.
"Judge Custis," remarked Meshach Milburn, "if the apparent socialdistance between us could be lessened by any argument, I might make one.For the difference is in appearance only. The healthy flesh which givesyou and yours stature and beauty is a matter of food alone. My stock hassurvived five generations of such diet as has bent the spines of theforest pigs and stunted the oxen. Money and family joy will give mechildren comely again. My life has been hard but pure."
The old Judge felt the last unconscious reflection.
"Yes," he uttered, solemnly, "no doubt Heaven marked me for some suchdegradation as this, when I yielded to low propensities, and sought mypleasure and companions in the huts of the forest!"
"You claim descent from the Stuart Restoration: I know the tale. Acreditor of the two exiled royal brothers for sundry tavern loans andtipples drew for his obligation an office in far-off Virginia. Seizures,confiscations, the slave-trade, marriages--in short, the long game ofadvantage--built up the fortunes of the Custises, until they expired ina certain Judge, whose notes of hand a hard man, forest-born, held overthe Judge's head on what seemed hard conditions, but conditions in whichwas every quality of mercy, except consideration for your pride."
The Judge made a laugh like a howl.
"_Mercy?_" he exclaimed, "you do not know what it is! To ensnare myinnocent daughter in the damned meshes of your principal and interest!Call it malignity--the visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and anangel; but not mercy!"
"Then we will call it compensation," continued Meshach Milburn: "fortwenty years I have denied myself everything; you denied yourselfnothing. Your substance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of mythrift. It was not with an evil design that I made myself your creditor,although, as the years have rolled onward and solitude chilled my heart,that has always pined for human friendship, I could not but see thekindling glory of your daughter's beauty. Like the schoolboys, themarried husbands--yes, like the slaves--I had to admire her. Then,unknowing how deeply you were involved, I found offered to me for salethe paper you had negotiated in Baltimore--paper, Judge Custis,dishonorably negotiated!"
The money-lender rose and walked to the sad man's bed, and held thehand, full of these notes, boldly over him.
"It was despair, Milburn!" moaned the Judge.
"And so was my resolution. Said I: 'This lofty gentleman would cheat me,his neighbor, who have suffered all the contumely of this _goodsociety_, and on starveling opportunity have slowly recoveredindependence. Now he shall take my place in the forest, or I will wearmy hat at the head of his family table.'"
"A dreadful revenge!" whispered Custis, with a shudder. "Such a hat isworse than a cloven foot. In God's name! whence came that ominous hat?"
Milburn took up the hat and held it before the lamplight, so that itsshadow stood gigantic against the wall.
"Who would think," he said, sarcastically, "that a mere head-covering,elegant in its day, could make more hostility than an idle head? I willtell you the silly secret of it. When I came from the obscurity of theforest, sensitive, and anxious to make my way, and slowly gatheredcapital and knowledge, a person in New York directed a letter of inquiryto me. It told how a certain Milburn, a Puritan or English Commonwealthman, had risen to great distinction in that province, and hadrevolutionized its government and suffered the penalty of high-treason."
"True enough," said Judge Custis, pouring a second glass of brandy;"Milburn and Leisler were executed in New York during the lifetime ofthe first Custis. They anticipated the expulsion of James II., and wereentrapped by their provincial enemies and made political martyrs."
"The inquirer," said Meshach, "who had obtained my address in the courseof business, related, that after Milburn's death his brethren and theirfamilies had sailed to the Chesapeake, where the Protestants hadsuccessfully revolutionized for King William, and, making choice of poorlands, they had become obscure. He asked me if the court-house recordsmade any registry of their wills."
"Of course you found them?"
"Yes. It was a revelation to me, and gave me the honorable sense of someorigin and quality. I traced myself back to the earliest folios, at theclose of the seventeenth century."
"Any property, Milburn?" asked the Judge, voluptuous and reanimatedagain.
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"My great-grandfather had left his son nothing but a Hat."
"Not uncommon!" exclaimed Judge Custis. "Our early wills contain littlebut legacies of wearing apparel, household articles, bedding, pots andkettles, and the elements of civilization."
"The will on record said: '_I give to my eldest son, Meshach Milburn, mybest Hat, and no more of my estate._'"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Judge, loudly. "Genteel to the last! A hat offashion, no doubt, made in London; quite too ceremonious and topgallantfor these colonies. He left it to his eldest son, en-_tiled_it, we maysay. Ho! ho!"
"When my indignation was over, I took the same view you do, JudgeCustis, that it was a bequest of dignity, not of burlesque; and I madesome inquiries for that best Hat. It was a legend among my forest kin,had been seen by very old people, was celebrated in its day, and worn bymy grandfather thankfully. He left it to my father, still a hat ofreputation--"
"Still en-_tiled_ to the oldest son! Ha, ha! Milburn."
"My father sold the hat to Charles Wilson Peale, who was native to ourpeninsula, and knew the ancient things existing here that would help himto form Peale's Museum during the last century. I found the hat in thatmuseum, covering the mock-figure of Guy Fawkes!"
"Conspirator's hat; bravo!" exclaimed the Judge.
"It had been used for the heads of George Calvert and Shakespeare, butin time of religious excitements was proclaimed to be the true hat ofGuy Fawkes. I reclaimed it, and brought it to Princess Anne, and in avain moment put it on my head and walked into the street. It wasassailed with halloos and ribaldry."
"It was another Shirt of Nessus, Milburn; it poisoned your life, eh?"
"Perhaps so," replied Milburn, with intensity. "They say what is oneman's drink is another man's poison. You will accept that hat on thehead of your son-in-law, or no more _drink_ out of the Custis property!"