The Entailed Hat Part 53

"Yes, gal, they says so; but I don't never expect to go thar.

Margaretty, your mommy, likes it thar. Delaware's my home; some of 'em hates me yer, and the darned lawyers tries to indict me, but I'll live on the line till they shoves me over it, whar I've been c.o.c.k of the walk sence I was a gal."

As Hulda, also barefooted, but moulded like the flowers, so that her feet seemed natural as the naked roots, carried the boxes around to the gla.s.s beds encircling a chimney--dahlias, autumnal crocuses or saffrons, tri-colored chrysanthemums or gold-flowers, and the orange-colored marigolds--the elder woman, resting on her hoe, smelled the turpentine of a row of tall sunflowers and twisted one off and put it in her wide-brimmed Leghorn hat.

"When I hornpipe it on the tight rope," Levin heard her chuckle, "one of these yer big flowers must die with me."

She disappeared into the peach orchard, which tinted the garden with its pinkish boughs, and Levin improved the chance to look over the cottage and the landscape.

It was a mere farm, level as a floor, part of a larger clearing in the primeval woods, where only fire or age had preyed since man was come; and, although there seemed more land than belonged to this property, no other house could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold and tarnished form of Johnson's castle, sliding its long porch forward at the base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof which seemed suspended like the drab curtain of a theatre between the solemn chimney towers; the northern chimney broad and huge, and bottomed on an arch; the southern chimney leaner, but erect as a perpetual sentry on the King's road.

The house where Levin Dennis now looked out was a three-roomed, frame, double cabin, with beds in every room but the kitchen, and the hip-roof gave considerable bed accommodation in the attic besides, the rooms being all small, as was general in that day. Around the house extended a pretty garden, with some cherry and plum trees and wild peach along its boundaries, and the fields around contained many stumps, showing that the clearing had been made not many years before, while here and there some heaps of brush had been allowed to acc.u.mulate instead of being burned.

As Levin looked at one of those brush-heaps in a low place, a pair of buzzards slowly and clumsily circled up from it, and, flying low, went round and round as if they might be rearing their young there and hated to go far; and, for long afterwards, Levin saw them hovering high above the spot in parental mindfulness.

He drew his head in the dormer cas.e.m.e.nt, and was making ready to go down to the breakfast he smelled cooking below, when his own name was p.r.o.nounced in the garden, and he stopped and listened.

"You lie!" exclaimed the old woman's voice. "I'll mash you to the ground!"

"He said so, grandma, indeed he did."

Levin had a peep from the depths of the garret, and he saw that Mrs.

Cannon was standing with the hoe she had been using raised over Hulda's head, while a demoniac expression of rage distorted her not unpleasing features.

Levin walked at once to the window and whistled, as if to the bird in the tree. The older woman immediately dropped her hoe, and cried out to Levin:

"Heigh, son! ain't you most a-starved fur yer breakfast? It's all ready fur ye, an' Huldy's waitin' fur ye to come down."

Levin at once went down the short, winding stairs to a table spread in the kitchen end, and the old woman blew a tin horn towards Johnson's Cross-roads, as if summoning other boarders, and then she said to Levin, with a very pleasing countenance:

"Son, these yer no-count people will be askin' you questions to bother you, and I don't want no harm to come to you, Levin; so you tell everybody you see yer that Levin Cannon is your name, and they'll think you's juss one o' my people, and won't ask you no more."

Hulda slightly raised her eyes, which Levin took to mean a.s.sent, and he said:

"Cannon's good enough for a body pore as me."

"You're a-goin' with Joe to-night, ain't you?"

"Yes'm, I b'leeves so."

"That's right, cousin. You'll git rich an' keep your chariot, yit.

Captain Van Dorn's gwyn to head the party. As Levin Cannon, ole Patty's pore cousin, he'll look out fur you, son. Now have some o' my slappers, an' jowl with eggs, an' the best coffee from Cannon's Ferry. Huldy, gal, help yer Cousin Levin! He won't be your sweetheart ef you don't feed him good."

The breakfast was brought in by a white man with a face scratched and bitten, and one eye full of congested blood.

"Cy," Patty Cannon cried, "them slappers, I 'spect, you had hard work to turn with that red eye Owen Daw give you."

"I'll brown both sides of him yit, when I git the griddle ready for him," the man exclaimed, half snivelling.

"Before you raise gizzard enough for that, little Owen'll peck outen yer eyes, Cy, like a crow; he's game enough to tackle the gallows. You may git even with him thar, Cy."

The man turned his cowardly, serving countenance on Levin inquisitively, and looked sullen and ashamed at Hulda, who observed:

"Cyrus, you are not fit for the rude boys around father's tavern, who always impose on you. Please don't go there again."

"Where else kin he go?" inquired Patty Cannon, severely; "thar ain't no church left nigh yer, sence Chapel Branch went to rot for want of parsons' pay. Let him go to the tavern and learn to fight like a man, an' if the boys licks him, let him kill some of 'em. Then Joe and the Captain kin make somethin' of Cy James, an' people around yer'll respect him. Why, Captain, honey, ain't ye hungry?"

This was addressed to a man with several bruises on his forehead, and an enormous flaxen mustache, as soft in texture as a child's hair--a man wearing delicate boots with high Flemish leggings, that curled over and showed full women's hose of red, over which were buckled trousers of buff corduroy, covering his thighs only, and fastened above his hips by a belt of hide. His shirt was of blue figured stuff, and his loose, unb.u.t.toned coat was a kind of sailor's jacket of tarnished black velvet.

He hung a broad slouched hat of a yellowish-drab color, soft, like all his clothing, upon a peg in the wall, and bowed to Hulda first with a smile of welcome, to Madame Cannon cavalierly, and to Levin with a graceful reserve that attracted the boy's attention from the notorious woman at he head of the table, and held him interested during all the meal.

"Pretty Hulda, I salute you! Patty, _buenos dias!_ I hope I see you well, friend!"--the last to Levin.

As he took up his knife and fork Levin observed a ring, with a pure white diamond in it, flash upon the Captain's hand. He was a blue-eyed man, with a blush and a lisp at once, as of one shy, but at times he would look straight and bold at some one of the group, and then he seemed to lose his delicacy and become coa.r.s.e and cold. One such look he gave at Hulda, who bowed her eyes before it, and looked at him but little again.

To Levin this man had the greatest fascination, partly from his extraordinary dress--like costumes Levin had seen at the theatre in Baltimore, where the pirates on the stage wore a jacket and open shirt and belt similar in cut though not in material--and partly from his countenance, in which was something very familiar to the boy, though he racked his memory in vain for the time and place. The stranger was hardly more than forty to forty-five years of age, but the mistress of the house treated him with all the blandishments of a husband.

"Dear Captain! pore honey!" she said; "to have his beautiful yaller hair tored out by the n.i.g.g.e.r hawk! Honey, he fell onto me, and I thought a bull had b.u.t.ted me in the stummick."

"He broke no limbs, Patty," the captain lisped, feeding himself in a dainty way--and Levin observed that his fork was silver, and his knife was a clasp-knife with a silver handle, that he had taken from his pocket--"_Chis! chis!_ if he had snapped my arm, the caravan must have gone without me to-night. I am sore, though, for Senor was a valiant wrestler."

"He'll git his pay, honey, when they sot him to work in Georgey an' flog him right smart, an' we spend the price of him fur punch. He, he! lovey lad!"

"I took this from him to-day when I searched him carefully," the captain said, handing Patty Cannon a piece of silver coin.

The woman, though she looked to be little more than fifty years of age, drew out spectacles of silver from an old leather case, and putting them on, spelled out the coin:

"George--three--eighteen--eighteen hunderd-and-fifteen!"

She threw up her head so quickly that the spectacles dropped from her nose, and Hulda caught them, and then Mrs. Cannon turned on Hulda with a ferocious expression and s.n.a.t.c.hed the spectacles from her hand.

"Whar did the devil git it?" Patty Cannon asked.

"Ah! who knows?" the Captain lisped with pale nonchalance, giving one of those strong, piercing looks he sometimes afforded, right into the hostess's eyes. "It might be a coincidence: _chis! chito!_ A shilling of a certain year is no rare thing. But, Madame Cannon, it becomes slightly curious when six such shillings, all numbered with that significant year, came out of the same pocket!"

With this he pa.s.sed five shillings of the same appearance over to the hostess, and she put on her spectacles again and looked at them all, and dropped them in her lap with a weary yet frightened expression, and muttered:

"Van Dorn, who kin he be?"

"That is of less consequence, my dear, than whether we can afford to sell him."

The Captain was now looking at Hulda with the same strong intentness, but her eyes were in her plate; and, though Madame Cannon looked at her, too, with both interest and dislike, Hulda quietly ate on, unconscious of their regard.

"Shoo!" the woman said; "people kin scare theirselves every day if they mind to. We've got him, and, if he knows anything, it's all in that n.i.g.g.e.r noddle. So eat and be derned!"

"My guardian angel," the Captain remarked, with a blush and a stronger lisp, "you may not have observed that I have never ceased to eat, while you immediately lost your appet.i.te. What will you do with the shillings?"

Mrs. Cannon took them from her lap, and rose as if she meant to throw them out of the window, her angry face bearing that interpretation.

"Stop, remarkable woman," the Captain said, pulling his soft, flaxen mustache with the diamond-flashing hand, "let your fecund resources stop and counsel, for I am only looking to your happiness, that has so abundantly blessed my life and banished every superst.i.tion from my heart till I believe in neither ghosts, nor G.o.d, nor devil, while you believe in all of them, and give yourself many such unnecessary friends and intruders. _Chito! chito!_ as the Cubans say, and hear my suggestion before you throw away those shillings!"