The Entailed Hat Part 88

"'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up ... G.o.d requireth that which is past ... man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all is vanity.... a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?'"

When tears of pious vindictiveness had closed the reading, Colonel McLane spread his pongee handkerchief on the bare floor, and knelt in silent and comfortably a.s.sured prayer.

Black Dave had crawled into the room where Hulda partly heard these revelations, and he entered the large closet under the concealed shaft to the prison pen, where his groans and mental agony touched Hulda's commiseration. She opened the trap, and crawled there too.

"Hush, Dave!" she whispered. "What makes you so miserable?"

"Missy, I'se killed a man. Dey made me do it. I'll burn in torment. Lord save me!"

"Dave," said Hulda, "my poor father died for his offences. You can do no more; but, like him, you can repent."

"Oh, missy, I's black. Rum an' fightin' has ruined me. Dar's no way to do better. De law won't let me bear witness agin de people dat set me on. How kin I repent unless I confess my sin? De law won't let me confess."

"Confess your poor, wracked soul to me, Dave. The Lord will hear you, though you dare not turn your face to him."

"Missy, once I was in de Lord's walk. My han's was clean, my face clar, my stummick unburnt by liquor. I stood in no man's way; at de church dey put me fo'ward. My soul was happy. One day I licked a man bigger dan me. It made me proud an' sa.s.sy. I backslid, an' wan't no good to be hired out to steady people; so de taverns got me, an' den de kidnappers used me, an' now de blood of Cain an' Abel is on my forehead forever."

Hulda knelt by the murderer, and prayed with all her heart; not the self-conscious, special pleading of the prayer across the hall, but the humble prayer of the penitent on Calvary: "Lord, we, of this felon den, ask to be with thee in Paradise."

The whole of the next day was spent in preparations for flight by Patty and her son-in-law.

A boat of sufficient size, and crew to man it, had to be procured down the river, and this necessitated two journeys, one of Patty, to Cannon's Ferry, another by Joe, to Vienna and Twiford's wharf.

During their absence Cy James was equally intent on something, and Hulda saw him in the ploughed field near the old Delaware cottage, under the swooping buzzards, directing the farmer where to guide his plough, and it seemed, in a little while, that one of the horses had fallen into a pit there.

Later on Hulda observed Cy James, with a spade, digging at various places near Patty Cannon's former cottage.

"All are at work for themselves," Hulda thought, "except Levin and me.

How often have I seen Aunt Patty slip to secret places in the night, or by early dawn, when she looked every window over to see if she was watched. Her beehives were her greatest care."

A sudden thought made Hulda stand still, and cast the color from her cheeks.

"They are all going away. I shall be taken, too, or kept for worse evil here. My mother, in Florida, hates me; she has told me so. I know the marriage Allan McLane means for me--to be his white slave! Levin is poor, and his mother is poor, too; they say Patty Cannon has buried gold. Perhaps G.o.d will point it out to me."

She slipped down the Seaford road, and walked up the lane in the fields she knew so well. No person was in the hip-roofed cottage. Hulda went among the outbuildings, and began to inspect the beehives, made of sections of round trees, and the big wooden flower-pots Patty Cannon had left behind her.

She was only interrupted by a gun being fired in the ploughed field, and saw the pertinacious buzzards there fall dead from the air as they exasperated the ploughman.

"I shall have one piece of fun in Maryland before I go," Hulda heard her stepfather say, as he went past her bed to ascend the hatchway at morn, "and that is to burn the n.i.g.g.e.r who mugged me. This is his day."

Almost immediately he came, cursing, down the ladder, followed by a jeering laugh from above, and the cry, "We'll all see you hanged yit, by smoke! an' mash another egg on your countenance, n.i.g.g.e.r-buyer!"

In a moment or two a tremendous quarrel was going on below stairs between the kidnapper and his wife's mother, and Hulda believed they were murdering each other; and, peeping once to see, beheld Johnson holding Patty to the floor, and stuffing her elegant hair, which had been torn out in the scuffle, into her mouth.

"I'll be the death of you, old fence, before I go," he shouted; "the verdict would be, 'I did the county a service.'"

"Come away there!" cried Allan McLane, pushing past Hulda and between the combatants. "Shame on you, Joe! To whip your grandmother is hardly conservative. Here is an errand that will pay you well: my wench Virgie has been caught."

The kidnapper released the woman and turned to his guest.

"Good news!" he said; "ef it puts my neck in the string, I'll fetch her fur you."

His countenance had begun to a.s.sume a sensual expression, when Patty Cannon, to whom his back was turned, rushed upon him like a tornado, lifted him from his feet, and threw him through the back door into the yard and bolted him out. McLane retreated by the other door.

"Thank heaven!" reflected Hulda, looking down in terror, "no one is murdered yet, and I have another day of grace to wait for Levin."

"Cunnil McLane," said Patty Cannon, in his room that night, "what interest have you in the quadroon gal an' Huldy, too? You don't want' em both, Cunnil?"

"No, Aunt Patty. All my views are conservative. Quite so! Hulda I want to reform and model to my needs. She'll ornament me. By taking the girl Virgie from my niece Vesta, I desire to punish the latter for consenting to the degradation of our family, and marrying the forester, Milburn.

She loves this quadroon; therefore, I want to deprive her of the girl: Joe is to bring her to me, do you see?"

His face expressed the indifference he felt to Virgie's safety on the way, and the coa.r.s.e suggestion gave Patty Cannon her opportunity:

"Cunnil, there's but three in the house to-night; I am one."

"I am two, Patty."

"And three is purty Huldy, Cunnil!"

They looked at each other a few minutes in silence.

"There is two to one," said Patty Cannon, with a giggle. "We have no neighbors that air not used to noises yer."

The silence was restored while the two products of men-dealing read each other's countenances.

"I made a very conservative and liberal proposition to her, Patty, and she insulted me, yet beautifully. But I owe her a grudge for it."

"Insulted you, Cunnil? The ongrateful huzzy! Can't you insult her back?

She never dared to disobey _me_. Her pride once broke down, she'll be like other gals, I reckon."

"That's true, no doubt. But, Patty, haven't you a little remorse about it, considering she's your grandchild?"

"My mother had none fur me, honey," the old woman chuckled, familiarly.

"What is that story I have heard something of, about your origin, Patty?"

"I don't know no more about it, Cunnil, than a pore, ignorant gal would, you know. I've hearn my grandfather was a lord. A gypsy woman enticed his son and he married her. His father drove him from his door, an' his wife fetched him on her money to Canady, where she went into the smugglin' business at St. John's, half-way between Montreal and the United States."

"And he was hanged there for a.s.sa.s.sinating a friend who detected him?"