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 apron 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-pooped 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 passengers 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 attitude 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 apron 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 amusement 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 apron 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?"
"Rhudy--I'm Rhudy Hullin, ma'am."
"Rhoda--Rhoda Holland, I think you say."
"Yes'm, Rhudy Hullin. I live crost the Pookamuke, on the Oushin side,
out thar by Sinepuxin. I don't live in a great big town like Princess
Anne; I live in Nu Ark."
At this the girl carefully extricated her head from the Conestoga
scuttle, looked all over the bonnet with pride and anxiety, and then
carefully laid it on the top of her uncle's hat-box.
"Uncle Meshach give it to me," she said, with a sly inclination towards
the sick bed. "Misc Somers made it. Uncle, he bought all the stuff; Misc
Somers draw'd it. Did you ever see anything like it?"
"Never," said Vesta.
"Well, some folks out Sinepuxin said it was a sin and a shame--sech
extravagins; but Misc Somers she said Uncle Meshach was rich an' hadn't
but one Rhudy. It ain't quite as big as Misc Somers's bonnet, but it's
draw'd mour."
Here Rhoda gave a repetition of what Vesta had twice before observed--an
inaudible sniffle, and, being caught in it, wiped her nose on her apron.
"Take my handkerchief," Vesta said, "you are cold," and passed over her
cambric with a lace border.
"What's it fur?" Rhoda asked, looking at it superstitiously. "You don't
wipe your nuse on it, do you? Lord sakes! ain't it a piece of your neck
fixin'?"
Vesta felt in a good humor to see this weed of nature turn the
handkerchief over and hold it by the thumb and finger, as if she might
become accountable for anything that might happen to it.
"I got two of these yer," she said; "Misc Somers made 'em outen a frock.
They ain't got this starch on 'em; they're great big things. I always
forgit 'em. My nuse wipes itself."
"Now come near the fire and warm your feet," said Vesta; "for your ride
from the oceanside, this cold morning, through the forests of the
Pocomoke, must have chilled you through. Lay off your blanket shawl."
Rhoda laid the huge black and green shawl, that reached to her feet, on
the green chest, and smoothed it with evident pride.
"Uncle Meshach bought that in Wilminton," she said; "ain't it beautiful!
I never wear it but when I come over yer or go to Snow Hill. Snow Hill's
sech a proud place!"
She had a way of laughing, by merely indenting her cheeks, without a
sound, just as she expressed the sense of pain; the only difference
being in the beaming of her eyes; and Vesta thought it had something
contagious in it. She would laugh broadly and in silence, as if she had
been put on behavior in church, and there had adopted a grimace to make
the other girls laugh and save herself the suspicion.
As she pulled her skirts down to her feet, Vesta's observation was
confirmed that Rhoda had no stockings on, and she could not help
exclaiming,
"My dear child, what possessed you to ride this October morning only
half dressed? You might catch your death."
Rhoda caught her nose on the half sniffle, raised and dimpled her cheeks
in a sly laugh, and cried,
"Lord sakes! you mean my legs? Why, I ain't got but two pairs of
stockings, an' Misc Somers is a wearin' one of' em, and the ould pair's
in the wash. It's so tejus to knit stockings, and sech fun to go
barefoot, that I don't wear' em unless Misc Somers finds it out. Why,
the boys can't see me!"
She grimaced again so naturally and engagingly that Vesta had to laugh
quite aloud, and saw meantime that the young woman's oft-cobbled shoes
covered a slender foot a lady might have envied.
"Now, Rhoda," Vesta said, almost indignantly, "why did you not ask your
wealthy uncle for some good yarn stockings?"
"Him? Why, ma'am, he's got so many pore kin, if he begin to give' em all
stockings, he'd go barefoot himself."
"Has he other nieces like you?"
"No." The girl quietly grimaced, with her brown eyes full of laughter.
"There's plenty of others, but none like Rhudy; the woods is full of
them others."
"So you are the favorite? Now, what was your uncle going to do with all
his money?"
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said; "he was going to marry Miss Vesty with it.
That's what Misc Somers said."
The mocking-bird had been striking up once or twice in the conversation,
and now pealed his note loud:
"Vesta, she! she! she! she-ee-ee!"
A tingle of that superstition she had felt more than once already, in
her brief knowledge of this forest family, went through Vesta's veins
and nerves, and she silently remarked,
"How little a young girl knows of men around her--what satyrs are taking
her image to their arms! These people knew he loved me, when I knew not
that he ever saw me."
She addressed the niece again:
"Rhoda, did your uncle say he loved Miss Vesta?"
"No'm. He never said he luved nothing; but I heard Tom, the
mocking-bird, shout 'Vesty,' and saw a lady's picture yonder between
grandpar and grandmem, and told Misc Somers, and she says, 'Your Uncle
Meshach's in luve!' Oh, I was right glad of it, because he was so sad
and lonesome!"
The fountain of sympathy burst up again in Vesta's heart, and she felt
that there were compensations riches and station knew not of in humble
alliances like hers.
"Rhoda," she said, going to the young girl and putting her hand upon her
soft brown hair, "you have not noticed the new picture of a lady hanging
up here, have you?"
"No'm, not yet. Everything is so quare in this room sence I saw it last,
I hain't seen nothin' in it but you. Now I see the carpet, an' the
brass andirons, an' the chiney, an'--Lord sakes! is that a picture? Why,
I thought it was you."
"It is, Rhoda. I am Vesta; I am your new aunt."
The girl made one of her engaging, dimpled, silent laughs, as if by
stealth again, changed it into a silent cry by a revulsion as natural,
and rose to her feet and took Vesta in her arms.
"I'm so glad, I will cry a little," Rhoda simpered, her eyes all dewy;
"oh, how Misc Somers will say, 'I found it out first!'"
Tom kept up a whistling, self-gratulating little cry, as if he had his
own thoughts:
"Sweety! sweety! sweet! Vesty, see! see! see!"
Vesta felt a chain of happy thoughts arise in her mind, which she
expressed as frankly as the girl of forest product had spoken, that she
might not retard the welcome of these homely friendships:
"Yes, Rhoda, I am thankful to find a social life open to me where there
seemed no way, and brooks and playmates where everything looked dry. You
come here like a sunbeam, God bless you! I can hear you talk, and teach
you what little I know, and we will relieve each other, watching him."
She felt a slight modification of her joy at this reminder, but the bird
seemed to teach her patience, as he suggested, hopping and flying in the
air,
"Come see! come see! come see!"
"Yes," thought Vesta, "_come and see!_ It is good counsel. I begin to
feel the breaking of a new sense,--curiosity about the poor and lowly.
My education seems to have closed my observation on people of my own
race, who daily trode almost upon my skirts, and whom I never saw--whom
it was considered respectable not to see--while even my colored servants
enjoyed my whole confidence because they were my slaves. Yet, in
misfortune, to these plain white people I must have dropped; and then
Roxy and Virgie, sold to some temporary rich man, would have been above
me, slaves as they would continue! How false, how fatal, both slavery
and proud riches to the republicans we pretend to be! Compelled 'to see'
at last, I shall not close my eyes nor harden my heart."
The maid from Newark had meantime quietly inspected the rag carpet, the
cloth hangings, the fairy rocker, and all the acquisitions of her
uncle's abode, and Vesta again observed that she was of slender and
willowy shape and motion, unaffected in anything, not forward nor
excited, and with the shrewd look so near ready wit that she could make
Vesta laugh almost at will. Vesta showed her how to administer cool
drink and the sponging to the sufferer, and he saw them together with a
look of inquiry which the febrile action soon drove away.
"Are your parents living, Rhoda?"
"No'm; they're both dead. My mother was Uncle Meshach's sister, and she
married a rich man, who biled salt and had vessels an' kept tavern.
Father Hullin died of the pilmonary; mar died next. Misc Somers brought
me up whar the tavern used to be. It ain't a stand no more. Uncle
Meshach owns it."
"Is it a nice place?"
"Now it ain't as nice as it use to be, Aunt Vesty"--the girl glided
easily over what Vesta thought might be a hard word--"sence the shews
don't stop thar no mour."
"The shoes? What is that?"
"The wax figgers and glass-blowers, and the strongis' man in the world.
Did you ever see him?"
Vesta said, "No, dear."
"I saw him," Rhoda said, with a compression of her mouth and a gleam of
her eyes. "He bruke a stone with his fist and Misc Somers kep the
stone, and what do you think it was?"
"Marble?"
"No'm; chork! He jest washed the chork over with a little shell or
varnish or something, and, of course, it bruke right easy; so he wasn't
the strongest man in the world at all, and if Misc Somers ever see him,
she'll tell him so."
"Is it a little or a large house, Rhoda?"
"Oh, it's a magnificins house, twice as big as this, with the roof bent
like an elefin's back, an' three windows in it--rale dormant windows,
that looks like three eyes outen a crab, and a gabil end three rows of
windows high, and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was fit to
be a rueyal palace. Then thar's the kitchen an' colonnade built on to
it. It's the biggest house, I reckon, about Sinepuxin. That
rope-walker's a mountin-bank."
"A mountain bank? You mean a mountebank--an impostor?"
"Yes'm,"--the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. "He allowed he'd
break the rupe after he'd walked on it, and he said it wasn't stretched
tight enough, and went along a feeling of it; and Misc Somers found out
every time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or somethin'
else to rot it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. But Misc Somers's going
to tell him, if he comes agin, he's a mountin-bank. Lord sakes! she
ain't afraid."
"So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see no more
jugglers?"
"The last shew there," Rhoda said, "was the canninbils and the
missionary. The missionary had converted of 'em, and they didn't eat no
more; but he tuld how they used to eat people; and they stouled a pony
outen the stables an' run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they turned out
to be some shingle sawyers he'd just a stained up. Misc Somers is
a-waitin' for him. Lord sakes! she don't keer."
"And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old roadside stage-house
at Newark? And who is Mrs. Somers?"
"Misc Somers, she's a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She an' me live together
sence par and mar died of the pilmonary. Oh, I have a passel of beaus
that takes me over to the Oushin on Sinepuxin beach, outen the way of
the skeeters, an' thar we wades and sails, and biles salt and roasts
mammynoes. Aunt Vesty, I can cut out most any girl from her beau; but,
Lord sakes! I ain't found no man I love yet."
"I'm glad of that," said Vesta, "because you will then be satisfied with
Princess Anne. They say your uncle will be sick here several weeks, and
we can help each other to make him well. Now he is waking."
Milburn opened his eyes and sighed, and saw them together, and Rhoda
held back considerately while the young wife approached the bed. He
looked at her with a bewildered doubt.
"I thought they said you had gone forever," he murmured.
"No, I am come forever, or until you wish me gone."
"I told them so," he sighed; "I said, 'She has high principle, though
she can't love me.'"
"Uncle Meshach, give Auntie time!" cried Rhoda, with a quick divination
of something unsettled or misunderstood. "Don't you know your Rhudy?
Even I was afraid of you till I was tuke sick and you thought it was the
pilmonary and nursed me."
"You have a good niece," Vesta said, as her husband kissed the stranger;
"and we shall love each other, I hope, and improve each other."
"Yes, that will be noble," he replied. "Teach her something; I have
never had the time. Oh, I am very ill; at a time like this, too!"
"Be composed, Mr. Milburn," the bride said; "it is only Nature taking
the time you would not give her, and which she means for us to improve
our almost violent acquaintance. I shall be very happy sitting here, and
wish you would let your niece be with me; I desire it."
He tried to smile, though the strong sweat succeeding the fever broke
upon him from his hands to his face.
"She is yours," he said; "the best of my poor kin. Do not despise us!"
Vesta drew her arm around Rhoda and kissed her, that he might see it.
"What goodness!" he sighed, and the opening of his pores, as it let the
fever escape, gave him a feeling of drowsy relief which Vesta
understood.
"Now let us turn the covers under the edges, Rhoda," she said, "and put
your blanket-shawl over him, and he will get some natural sleep."
He turned once, as if to see if she was there, and closed his eyes
peacefully as a child.
"Now, Rhoda," said Vesta, in a few minutes, "I hear papa's carriage at
the door, and, while he comes up, I shall ride back to see my mother and
get a few things at home."
"Who is your poppy, Aunt Vesty?"
"Don't you know him?--Judge Custis, who lives in Princess Anne."
"Jedge Custis! Why, Lord sakes! he ain't your par, is he? Aunt Vesty,
he's one of my old beaus."
The Judge brought with him Reverend William Tilghman, and Vesta, as she
was retiring, introduced Rhoda to both of them:
"This is Miss Rhoda--Mr. Milburn's niece."
Judge Custis, a trifle blushing, took both of Rhoda's hands:
"Ha, my pretty partner and dancing pupil! How are our friends at St.
Martin's Bay and Sinepuxent? Many a sail and clam-bake we have had,
Rhoda."
"You're a deceiver," Rhoda cried, with a dimpling somewhere between glee
and accusation. "I'm goin' to plosecute you, Jedge, fur not tellin' of
me you was a married man. My heart's bruke."
"Who could remember what he was, Rhoda, sitting all that evening beside
you at--where was it?"
"The Blohemian glass-blowers," Rhoda cried; "the only ones that ever
visited the Western Himisfure. Jedge," with sudden impetuosity, "that
little one, with the copper rings in his years, wasn't a Blohemian at
all. He lived up at Cape Hinlupen, an' Misc Somers see him thar when she
was a buyin' of herring thar. She's goin' to tell him, when she catches
him at Nu-ark."
The young rector observed the flash of those bright eyes following the
pleasing dimples, and the slips of orthography seemed to him never less
culpable coming from such lips and teeth.
"William," said Vesta, "come around this afternoon, and let us have our
usual Sunday reading-circle. Mr. Milburn will be awake and appreciate
it, as he is one of your most regular parishioners. Rhoda, you can
read?"
"Oh, yes'm. Misc Somers, she's a good reader. She reads the Old
Testamins. The names thar is mos' too long for me, but I reads the
Psalms an' the Ploverbs right well."
"Very well, then, we will read verse about, so that Mr. Milburn can hear
both our voices and his favorite minister's, too. You'll come, papa?"
"Yes, if I can. We have had a love-feast at Teackle Hall this morning,
and your sister from Talbot is down, but I think I can get off."
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said, looking at Mr. Tilghman candidly; "you ain't a
minister now? Not a minister of the Gospil?"
"Unworthily so, Miss Rhoda."
"Well, I don't see how you was old enough to be convicted and learn it
all, unless you was a speretual merikle. Misc Somers see one of 'em at
Jinkotig. They called him the enfant phrenomeny. He exhorted at five
year old, and at seven give his experyins."
"Rare, Miss Rhoda," the rector said, hardly able to keep his reverence
in amusement at her impetuosity.
"Oh, he made a wild excitemins, Aunt Vesty. The women give each other
their babies to hold while they tuk turns a-shouting. 'Yer, Becky, hold
my baby while I shout!' says one. 'Now, Nancy, hold mine while I shout!'
To see that little boy up thar tellin' of his experyins was meriklus,
an' made an excitemins like the high tides on Jinkotig that drowns' em
out. But, Aunt Vesty, that little phrenomeny was a dwarf, twenty year
old, an' Misc Somers found it out and told about it."
"I'll be bound Mrs. Somers knows!" exclaimed the Judge.
"That she do," continued Rhoda, earnestly, with a slight sniffle of a
well-modelled nose and a dimpling that argued to Vesta something to
come. "Misc Somers says you held one of them babies, Jedge, to let its
mother shout, and pretended to be under a conviction; an' that you
backslid right thar and was a-whisperin' to the other mother. Lord
sakes! Misc Somers finds it all out."
"Well," said the Judge, finding the laugh against him, "I never did
better electioneering than that day. By holding that baby five minutes I
made a vote, and the mother will hold it twenty years before she will
make a vote."
"Misc Somers says, Jedge, you hold the women longer than thar babies;
but I told her you was in sech conviction you didn't know one from the
other. 'Oh,' she says, 'he's sly and safe when he gits over yer on the
Worcester side.' Misc Somers, she's dreadful plain."
William Tilghman, during the continuation of this colloquy, looked with
interest on the two young ladies: Vesta, the elder by two or three
years, and richly endowed with the lights of both beauty and
accomplishments; the maid from the ocean side, plainer, and with no
ornament within or without; but he could foresee, under Vesta's
fostering, a graceful woman, with coquetry and fascination not wholly
latent there; and, as his eyes met Rhoda's, he interpreted the look that
at a certain time of life almost every maiden casts on meeting a young
man--"Is he single?" She shot this look so archly, yet so strong, that
the arrow wounded him a very little as it glanced off. He smiled, but
the consciousness was restored a moment that he was a young man still,
as well as a priest. Love, which had closed a door like the portal of a
tomb against him, began to come forth like a glow-worm and wink its lamp
athwart the dark.
"She must come to Sunday-school," he thought, "if she stays in Princess
Anne. We will polish her."
The mocking-bird, not being satisfied with any lull in the conversation,
"pearted up," as he saw Vesta withdraw, and cried,
"'Sband! 'Sband! Meee--shack! Mee-ee-ee-shack! See me! see me! Gents!
gents! gents! genten! Sweet! sweetie! sweetie! Hoo! hoo! See! see!
Vesty, she! Ha! ha!"
He flew in the air over his stirring master, as if doubting that all was
well since the strange lady, who had been so quiet all the morning, was
gone.
"That bird almost speaks," said William Tilghman; "I have spent many an
hour teaching them, but never could make one talk like that."
"Maybe you had too much to teach to it," Rhoda Holland said; "it ain't
often they can speak, and they mustn't have much company to learn well.
Uncle Meshach haint had no company but that bird for years. I reckon
the bird got mad and lonesome, and jest hooted words at him."
"What is it saying now?" Tilghman asked. "See! it is almost convulsive
in its attempts to say something."
The gray bird, as impressive as a poor poet, seemed nearly in a state of
epilepsy to bring up some burden of oppressive sound, and, as they
watched it, almost tipsy with the intoxicant of speech, fluttering,
driving, and striking in the air, it suddenly brought out a note liquid
as gurgling snow from a bird-cote spout:
"L-l-lo-love! love! love! Ha! ha! L-l-love!"
"Well done, old bachelor!" Judge Custis remarked, in spite of his fagged
face, for good resolution and yesterday's unbracing had left him
somewhat limp and haggard still. "He brings out 'love' as if he had made
a vow against it, but the confession had to come. Many a monk would sing
the same if instinct could find a daring word in his chorals. These
mockers of Maryland were celebrated in the British magazines a hundred
years ago, and I recall some lines about them."
He then recited:
"'His breast whose plumes a cheerful white display,
His quivering wings are dressed in sober gray,
Sure all the Muses this their bird inspire,
And he alone is equal to a choir.
Oh, sweet musician! thou dost far excel
The soothing song of pleasing Philomel:
Sweet is her song, but in few notes confined,
But thine, thou mimic of the feathery kind!
Runs thro' all notes: thou only know'st them all,
At once the copy and th' original!'"
"That's magnificins!" Rhoda exclaimed, with quiet delight; "who is
'fellow Mil,' Jedge?"
"Oh, that's the British nightingale. These American mocking-birds
surpass them as one of our Eastern Shore clippers outsails all the naval
powers of Europe."
"I've hearn 'The British Nightingale,'" Rhoda said, with a flash of her
eyes; "he was a blind man with green specticklers that sang at Nu-ark,
''ome, sweet 'ome'--that's the way he plonounced it--an' it affected of
him so, he had to drink a whole tumbler of water, an' Misc Somers,
spying around to see if he was the rale nightingale, she found it was
gin in that glass, and told about it."
Rhoda made even the minister laugh, as she indented her cheeks and cast
a sheep's glance at him and the Judge. He marvelled that such forest
English could be resented so little by his mind, but he thought,
"Never mind, she may have had no more lessons than the bird, whose
difficulty is even beautiful. But see! Mr. Milburn is wide awake. My
friend, how do you feel?"
"Better, better!" murmured Milburn. "I cannot lie here any more. There
is money, _money_, gentlemen, dependent on my getting about."
He started up with the greatest resolution and confidence, and fell upon
his head before he had left the coverlets.
"No, no!" said the Judge, as he and Tilghman picked Milburn up and
arranged him as before. "Your will is matched this time, my brave
son-in-law! You are back in the hut you have consumed, among the fires
thereof, and the avenging blast of Nassawongo furnace burns in your
veins and cools you in the mill-pond alternately. Lie there and repent
for the injury you have done a spotless one!"
If Meshach heard this it was never known, but the unconscious or
impulsive utterance strengthened the impression with Tilghman and Rhoda
that Vesta's marriage was not altogether voluntary, and produced on both
a feeling of deeper sympathy and respect for her.
"Judge," the young minister said, "do good for evil, if evil there has
been! I have given him my hand sincerely; perhaps you can relieve his
mind of some business care."
"Mr. Milburn," the Judge said, when he saw the resinous eyes roll
towards him again out of that swarthy face, now pale with weakness, "I
am out of a job now, and can work cheap. Let me do any errand for you."
A look of petulance, followed by one of inquiry, came up from Milburn's
eyes, and he pressed his head between his wrists, as if to bring back
the blood that might propel his judgment. They heard him mutter,
"No business prudence--yet plausible, persuasive--might do it well."
The Judge spoke now, with some firmness:
"Milburn, there is no use of your rebelling. Here you are and here you
will lie till nature does her restoration, assisted by this medicine I
have brought you. You must undergo calomel, and this quinine must set on
its work of several weeks to break up the regularity of these chills. In
the meantime, as your interests are also Vesta's, and Vesta's are mine,
let me serve her, if not you."
The positive tone influenced the weakened system of the patient. He
looked at all three of the observers, and said to Tilghman, "William, I
might send you but for your calling; leave me with the Judge a little
while, both you and Rhoda."
Rhoda took the Conestoga bonnet from the top of the Entailed Hat box,
and arrayed herself in it, to the rector's exceeding wonder.
"Let's you and me go take a little walk," she said, putting her hand in
his arm with a quiet confidence in which was a spark of Meshach's will.
"I ain't afraid of Princess Anne people, if they are proud. Mise Somers
says King Solomons was no better than a lily outen the pond, and said so
himself."
The young man, sincere as his humility was, blushed a little at the idea
of walking through his native town with that bonnet at his side, he
being of one of the self-conscious, high-viewing families of the old
peninsula--his grand-uncle the staff-officer of Washington, and
messenger from Yorktown to Congress with the news, "Cornwallis has
fallen;" but it was his chivalric sense, and not his piety, which
immediately dispelled the last touch of coxcombry, when he felt that a
lady had requested him.
"With happiness, Miss Holland;" and he did not feel one shrinking
thought again as he ran the gantlet of the idle fellows of the town,
many of them his former vagrant playmates. Rhoda was perfectly happy. He
would have taken her to his grandmother's, with whom he kept house, but
that aristocratic old dowager might say something, he considered, to
destroy Rhoda's confidence in her elegant appearance and easy
vocabulary; and they walked past Teackle Hall, where Vesta saw them, and
opened the door and made them come in and eat a little. Rhoda at first
showed some uneasiness under this great pile of habitation, but Vesta
was so natural and gracious that the shyness wore off, and, at a fitting
moment, the bride said:
"Rhoda, my dear, there is a bonnet up-stairs I expect to wear this
winter, and I want to try it on you, whom I think it will particularly
become."
Rhoda's quiet eyes flashed as she saw the new article and heard Vesta
praise it, upon her head. The old bonnet had received a cruel blow, in
spite of Mrs. Somers.
Tilghman, too, accused himself that he felt a little relieved when he
escorted Rhoda back to Meshach's in another bonnet, and Vesta followed,
with her great shaggy dog, Turk; she not unconscious--though serene and
thoughtfully polite to all she knew--of people peering at her in wonder
and excitement from every door and window of the town. The news was
working in every household, from the servants in the kitchens to the
aged people helped to their food with bib and spoon, that the famed
daughter of Daniel Custis was the prize of the junk dealer and usurer
in "old town" by the bridge, who had enslaved a wife at last.