The Entailed Hat Part 67

"They don't appreciate it," sighed Mary. "They go and put themselves in captivity again, like selfish things: they falls in love."

"But to love and be free!" Virgie said, her bosom glowing in the thought till her rich eyes seemed to shed warmth and starlight on her companion's face; "to give your own free love to some one and feel him grateful for it: what a gift and what a joy is that! He might be thankful for it, and, seeing how pure it was, he might respect me."

"Who is it, Virgie?" Mary said.

"Whoever would love me like a white girl!" the ardent slave softly exclaimed. "It must be some one who does not despise me. I hear Miss Vesta's beau, Master William, read the beautiful service, with his sweet, submissive face, and I think to myself, 'How freely he might have my heart to comfort his if he would take it like a gentleman!' I would be his slave to make him happy, if he could love me purely, like my mother! Oh, my mother, whose name I do not know! where is the tie that fastens me to heaven? Did my father love me?"

"Pore Jack! pore Jack! Sing 'Roxy, Roxy, Roxy,' Tom!" coaxed Wonnell above to the sleepy bird.

"Whoever was your father, Virgie, your mother's love for you was pure.

G.o.d makes the wickedest love their children, because he is the Father to all the fatherless."

"Oh! could my own father have brought me into the world and hated me?"

Virgie said. "They say I am almost beautiful. Will he who gave me life never call me his, and say, 'My daughter, come to my respect, rest on my heart, and take my name'?"

"Poor Virgie!" sighed Mary; "remember we are black! We hardly ever have fathers: they is for white people."

"Dog my hide!" mumbled Wonnell, above, "ef a bird ain't a perwerse critter. Purty Roxy won't think I'm smart a bit ef I can't make Tom say 'Roxy, Roxy, Roxy! Pore Jack!'"

"I am almost white," Virgie continued; "I want to be all white. Why can't I be so? The Lord knows my heart is white, and full of holy, unselfish love."

"Pore chile!" Mary said; "we shall all be washed and made white in the Lamb's blood, Virgie. That's where your soul pints you to, dear young lady. I know it ain't pride and rebellion in you: it's like I'm looking at my baby, white as snow to me and G.o.d now."

"Hush!" said Virgie, trembling, "what voice is that?"

There was an old willow-tree in a recessed spot at the end of the store, and by it were two sheds or small buildings, now disused, into one of which, with a door low to the ground, Mary drew Virgie, and they listened to a low voice saying,

"Dave, air your pops well slugged?"

"Yes, Mars Joe."

"Allan McLane pays fur the job?"

"Yes, Mars Joe."

"You can't mistake him, Dave. No shap is worn like that nowadays. Look only fur his headpiece, and aim well!"

"Yes, Mars Joe."

"Fur me," continued the other voice, "I'll go right to the tavern an'

prove an _alibi_. My lay is to take the house gal that old Gripefist's young wife thinks so much of. I'll snake her out to-night. She's the property of Allan McLane, left him in his sister's will. They found on her body the paper giving the gal to the dead woman only two days before. She's Allan's to-morrow, but to-night she's mine!"

A sensual, sucking, chuckling sound, like a kiss made upon the back of his own hand, followed this significant threat; and Mary, placing her hand over the sinking slave girl's mouth, held her motionless.

"Tommy, Tommy! sing 'Roxy, Roxy, Roxy! Pore Jack! Pore Jack!' Sing, Tommy, sing!"

"_There_," whispered the white man, softly, and was gone.

Mary breathed only the words to Virgie, "_Kidnappers_--come!" and they glided from the old tenement un.o.bserved, and entered the copse along the stream.

"Pore Jack! Pore Jack! His leetle Roxy's gone away. Pore Jack! Roxy!

Roxy! Roxy!" the mourner at the window above chattered sleepily to the nodding bird.

The negro at the corner of the old warehouse, half covered by the willow's shade, peered up with blood-shotten eyes to distinguish the covering on the bird-tamer's head.

He saw Jack Wonnell sitting backward on the window-frame, swaying in and out, as he lazily tempted the mocking-bird to sing, and once the bell-crown hat, so singular to view, came in full relief against the gray sky.

"It's ole Meshach," said the negro, silently, with desperate eyes. "I hoped it wasn't. Dar is de hat, sho!"

He c.o.c.ked his huge horse-pistol, and took aim directly from below.

"Pore Jack! Pore Jack! I reckon Roxy won't have pore Jack, caze Tommy won't sing. Sing, Tommy, little Roxy's pet: 'Pore Jack! Pore--'"

The great horse-pistol boomed on the night, and in the smoke the negro rushed into the bush and sought the fields.

Down from his seat in the window-sill the witless villager came backward, all bestrewn, measuring his body in the sand, where he lay, silent as the other shadows, with his arms extended in the frenzy of death, and his mouth wide open and flowing blood.

Jack Wonnell had paid the penalty of being out of fashion.

The mocking-bird, aroused by the loud report, leaped into the empty window-sill to seek his tutor, and set up the lesson he had learned too late:

"Poor Jack! Poor Jack! Roxy! Roxy! Roxy!" came screaming on the night, and all was still.

William Tilghman was driving back from Whitehaven in the melancholy thoughts inspired by the departure of his cousin, whom he had at last seen go into the great wilderness of the world the pa.s.sive companion of her husband, like the wife of Cain, driven forth with him, when the carriage was arrested at the ancient Presbyterian church--which overlooked Princess Anne from the opposite bank of the little river--by a woman almost throwing herself under the wheels.

"Why, Lord sakes! it's our Virgie!" cried Rhoda Holland.

The girl, with all the energy of dread, sprang into the carriage by William Tilghman's side and threw her arms around him:

"Save me! Save me!"

"What ails you, Virgie?" cried the young man, a.s.suringly. "You are in no danger, child!"

"I am sold," the girl gasped, with terror on her tongue and in her wild eyeb.a.l.l.s. "Miss Vesty's sold me to her Uncle Allan. He's sent the kidnappers after me. They're yonder, in Princess Anne. Oh, drive me to the North, to the swamps, anywhere but there!"

"I know your mistress made you over to her mother, Virgie, for a precaution, fearing you might not be safe in her own hands. She told me so, and asked if the death of her mother could possibly affect you."

"Oh, it has!" the girl whispered. "Mary knows the kidnapper that's come for me. He is the same that stole Hominy and the children. He kept her chained on an island. He says he'll have me to-night, to do as he pleases. Master McLane lets him have me!"

The girl, in her terror, as the carriage had descended the hill already and crossed the Manokin, seized the reins in Tilghman's hands and drew them with such frenzy that the horses, as they came to Meshach Milburn's store, were pulled into the open area before it, where something in their surprise or lying on the ground gave them immediate fright, and they dashed at a gallop into Front Street, the wheels pa.s.sing over an object by the old storehouse that nearly upset the carriage.

The street they took for their run crossed a small arm of the Manokin, and led up to a gentleman's gate; but before this brook was crossed Tilghman, an experienced horseman and driver, had reined the flying animals into a nearly unoccupied street, called Back Alley, parallel with the main street of Princess Anne, but hidden from it by houses and gardens, and almost in a moment of time the whole town had been cleared, with hardly a person in it aware of such a vehicle going past.

It was a real runaway, but Tilghman, in a cool, gentle voice, like a brook's music, told the girls to sit perfectly still, as they had a clear, level road; and, seeing that he could not stop the animals by any mere exercise of strength, without danger to his harness, he waited for their power to wear out, or their fears to subside.

Rhoda Holland was ashamed to scream, if her pride was not too well aroused already in the presence of the muscular young minister, sitting there like an artillery teamster driving into battle, and his nostrils and jaws delineated in the gray air, expressed almost the joy he had long put by of following the hounds in the autumn fox-hunts, where Judge Custis said he had been the perfect pattern of a rider.