The Entailed Hat Part 31

"King Custis wasn't killed, was he, Pappy Thomas?"

"It was his children's children his p-p-punishment was promised to," the island parson said, "and to the Lord a thousand y-years are but as d-days."

"The tide is fuller, Levin," Joe Johnson cried, "your keel is clear. Now pint her for Manokin. So bingavast, my benen cove, and may you chant all by yourself when I am gone!"

"G.o.d bless the boys!" the islander cried, "an' k-keep them from the f-fire everlasting that is burning in your jug. And s-s-stranger, remember the end of Eb-b-benezer Johnson, an' repent!"

The old man, barefooted, stoop-shouldered, stuttering, yet with a chord of natural rhetoric in his high fiddle-string of a windpipe, stood looking after them till they pa.s.sed down the thoroughfare under the jib-sail, and Joe Johnson did not say a word till some marsh brush intervened between them, he being apparently under a remnant of that panic which had seized him on the camp-ground.

"That's a good man," Levin Dennis said, giving the tiller to Jack Wonnell and raising the sail; "he preached to the Britishers when they sailed from Tangiers Islands to take Baltimore, and told 'em they would be beat an' their gineral killed. He's made the oystermen all round yer jine the island churches an' keep Sunday. That stutterin' leaves him when he preaches, and when he leads the shout in meetin' it's piercin'

as a horn."

"He's a b.l.o.o.d.y Romany rogue," Joe Johnson muttered, "to tell me such a tale! But, kirjalis! he cursed not me!"

"What language is that, Mr. Johnson? Is it Dutch or Porteygee?"

"It's what we call the gypsy; some calls it the Quaker. It's convenient, Levin, when you go to Philadelfey, or Washinton, or New York, or some o'

them big cities, an' wants to talk to men of enterprise without the quails a-pipin' of you. Some day I'll larn it to you if you're a good boy."

They now sailed out of the thoroughfare into the broad mouth of the Manokin, where a calm fell upon air and water for a little while, and they could hear smothered music, as of drum-fish beneath the water, beating, "thum! thum!" and crabs and alewives rose to the surface around them, chased by the tailor-fish. The cat-boat drifted into the mouth of a creek where rock and perch were running on the top of the water, and with the tongs Jack Wonnell raised half a bushel of oysters in a few dips, and opened them for the party. Along the sh.o.r.es wild haws and wild plums still adhered to the bushes, and the stiff-branched persimmon-trees bore thousands of their tomato-like fruit. The partridges were chirping in the corn, the crow blackbirds held a funeral feast around the fodder, some old-time bayside mansions stretched their long sides and speckled negro quarters along the inlets, half hidden by the nut-trees, and in the air soared the turkey-buzzard, like a voluptuary politician, taking beauty from nothing but his lofty station.

"The ole Eastern Sho'," Jack Wonnell said, with his animated vacancy, "is jess stuffed with good things, Cap'n Johnsin. You kin fall ovaboard most anywhair an' git a full meal. You kin catch a bucket of crabs with a piece of a candle befo' breakfast, an' shoot a wild-duck mos' with your eyes shet."

"This country's good for nothin'," Joe Johnson said. "Floredey is the land! Wot kin a n.i.g.g.e.r earn for yer? Corn, taters, melons: faugh!

Tobacco is a givin' out, cotton won't live yer. But Floredey is the h.e.l.l-dorader of the yearth."

"What's the h.e.l.l-dorader?" asked Levin.

"That's Spanish or Porteygee for cheap n.i.g.g.e.rs an' cotton," cried the trader. "Cotton's the bird!"

"I thought cotton was a wool," Levin said.

"No, boy, cotton is a plant, growin' like a raspberry on a bush, havin'

pushed the blossoms off an' burst the pods below 'em, an' thar it is fur n.i.g.g.e.rs to pick it. Thar's a Yankee in Georgey made a cotton-gin to gin it clean, an' now all the world wants some of it."

"Some of the gin?" asked the irrelevant Wonnell.

"No, some of the cotton, Doctor Green! They can't git enough of it.

Eurip is crazy about it, but there ain't n.i.g.g.e.rs enough to pick it all.

So I'm in the n.i.g.g.e.r trade an' tryin' to be useful to my country, an'

wot does I git fur it? I git looked down on, an' a n.i.g.g.e.r's pertected fur a-topperin' of me! But never mind, I'll be a big skull yet, an' keep my kerrige--in Floredey."

"What's Floredey good fur?" Levin asked.

"It's full of n.i.g.g.e.r Injins, Simminoles, every one of 'em goin' to be caught an' branded, an' put at cotton an' tobakker plantin', an' hog an'

cow herdin'. More n.i.g.g.e.rs will be run in from Cubey, an' all the free n.i.g.g.e.rs in Delaware and up North will be sold, an' you an' me, Levin, is gwyn to own a drove of 'em an' have a orchard of oranges an' a thousand acres of cotton in bloom. We'll hold our heads up. Your mother shall be switched to a nabob. My wife will be a shakester in diamonds. We'll dispise Cambridge an' Princess Anne, an' there sha'n't be a free n.i.g.g.e.r left on the face of the earth. We'll swig to it!"

The sick-headed yet fancy-ridden Levin drank again, and listened to the dealer's marvellous tales of golden fruit on coasts of indigo, and palms that sheltered parrots calling to the wild deer. Jack Wonnell took the helm when Levin lay down to sleep in the little cabin, still lulled by tales of wealth and lawless daring, and there he slept the deep sleep of the castaway, when the vessel grounded at dusk, in the sound of evening church-bells, at Princess Anne.

"Let him sleep," Joe Johnson spoke; "yer, Wonnell, I give you tray of his strangers to take to his mommy," handing out three gold pieces.

"Don't you forgit it! Yer's a syebuck fur you," giving Jack a sixpence.

"You an' me will part company at Prencess Anne."

CHAPTER XVIII.

UNDER AN OLD BONNET.

Vesta had been sitting half an hour beside her unconscious husband, listening to his broken speech, and thinking upon the rapidity of events once started on their course, like eaglets scarcely taught to fly before they attack and kill, when the sound of carriage-wheels, arrested at the door, called her to the window, and Tom, the mocking-bird, which had been comparatively quiet since he found his master snugly cared for, now began to hop about, fly in the air, and sing again:

"Sweet--sweet--sweetie! come see! come see!"

Vesta saw Meshach's wiry, deliberate colored man step down and turn the horses' heads, and there dropped from the carriage, without using the carriage-step, at a leap and a skip, a young female object whose head was invisible in an enormous coal-scuttle bonnet of figured blue chintz.

However quick she executed the leap, Vesta observed that the arrival had forgotten to put on her stockings.

Before Vesta could turn from the window this singular object had darted up the dark stairs of the old storehouse and thrown herself on the delirious man's bed:

"Uncle, Uncle Meshach! air you dead, uncle? Wake up and kiss your Rhudy!"

She had kissed her uncle plentifully while awaiting the same of him, and the attack a little excited him, without recalling his mind to any sustained remembrance, though Vesta heard the words "dear child," before he turned his head and chased the wild poppies again. Then the young female, ejaculating,

"Lord sakes! Uncle don't know his Rhudy!" pulled her black ap.r.o.n over her head and had a silent cry--a little convulsion of the neck and not an audible sigh besides.

"She weeps with some refinement," Vesta thought; and also observed that the visitor was a tall, long-fingered, rather sightly girl of, probably, seventeen, with clothing the mantuamaker was guiltless of, and a hoop bonnet, such as old people continued to make in remembrance of the high-decked vessels which had brought the last styles to them when their ancestors emigrated with their all, and forever, from a land of _modes_.

The bonnet was a remarkable object to Vesta, though she had seen some such at a distance, coining in upon the heads of the forest people to the Methodist church. It resembled the high-p.o.o.ped ship of Columbus, which he had built so high on purpose, the girls at the seminary said, so as to have the advantage of spying the New World first; but it also resembled the long, hollow, bow-shaped Conestoga wagons of which Vesta had seen so many going past her boarding-school at Ellicott's Mills before the late new railroad had quite reached there. As she had often peered into those vast, blue-bodied wagons to see what creatures might be pa.s.sengers in their depths, so she took the first opportunity of the blue scuttle being jolted up by the mourner to discern the face within.

It was a pretty face, with a pair of feeling and also mischievous brown eyes, set in the att.i.tude of wonder the moment they observed another woman in the room. The skin was pale, the mouth generous, the nose long, like Milburn's, but not so emphatic, and the neck, brow, and form of the face longish, and with something fine amid the wild, cow-like stare she fixed on Vesta, exclaiming, in a whisper,

"Lord sakes! a lady's yer!"

Then she threw her ap.r.o.n over the Conestoga bonnet again, and held it up there with her long fingers, and long, plump, weather-stained wrists.

Vesta looked on with the first symptoms of amus.e.m.e.nt she had felt since the morning she and her mother laughed at the steeple-crown hat, as they looked down from the windows of Teackle Hall upon the man already her husband. That morning seemed a year ago; it was but yesterday.

"Old hats and bonnets," Vesta thought, "will be no novelties to me by and by. This family of the Milburns is full of them."

Then, addressing the new arrival, Vesta said,

"This is your uncle, then? Where do you live?"

"I live at Nu _Ark_," answered the miss, taking down the black ap.r.o.n and looking from the depths of the bonnet, like a guinea-pig from his hole.

"If she had said 'the Ark' without the 'New,'" Vesta thought, "it would have seemed natural."

"Your uncle has a high fever," Vesta said, kindly; "he is not in danger, we think. It was right of you to come, however. Now take off your bonnet. What is your name?"