THE DUSKY LEVELS.
The new son-in-law, left alone with Judge Custis, asked to be propped up
in bed, and nothing was visible that would support his pillow but the
aged leather hat-box that Custis, with a wry face, brought to do duty.
"My illness is unfortunate," he gasped; "not only to me, but to the new
ties I have formed; to the mutual interest my wife and I have in making
up your losses on Nassawongo furnace, which we are all the poorer by to
that amount; and to a suitor whose cause I have taken up. I have bought
an interest in a great lawsuit."
"Then the day of reckoning of your enemies has come, Milburn."
"Not yet," said the sick man, with a proud flash of his eyes, "unless I
am no merchant and you are no lawyer, and the first I will not concede."
"Nor I the second," exclaimed the Judge, with some pride and temper.
"You were once a good lawyer, if visionary," resumed the money-lender,
with scant ceremony. "Had we been able to respect each other we might
have been confederated in things valuable to ourselves and to our time
and place. But that is past, and you do not possess my confidence as my
legal agent, my attorney. I wish you to get another advocate for me."
"I am willing to be useful, even without your compliments," the Judge
said, remembering his Christian resolution. "We will not quarrel, if I
can serve you."
"I do not wish to hurt your feelings, but my strength is not great
enough for unmeaning flattery. This marriage was so dear to my heart
that I have put it before a very large interest about which I have no
time to lose, and still am helpless upon this bed. I will trust you to
do my errand. Go to that chest, Judge Custis, and you will find a
package of papers in the cedar till at the end. Bring them here."
As the Judge opened the old chest a musty smell, as of mummies wrapped
in herbs, ascended into his nose, and he saw some faded clothes, as
those of poor people deceased, male and female, lying within. The
mocking-bird piped a noisy warning as he raised the lid of the till and
saw the desired papers among a parcel of spotted and striped bird-eggs:
"Come see! come see! Meshach! he! he! sweet!"
"Now open the window yonder," said Meshach, taking the papers, "and let
Tom fly out. He starts my nerves. Wh-oo-t, whi-it, Tom!"
The mocking-bird, spreading its wings and tail, and striking obstinately
towards its master a minute, as he whistled, flew out of the window and
settled in the old willow below, and had a Sunday-afternoon concert,
calling the passing dogs by name, whistling to them, and deceiving cats
and chickens with invitations they familiarly heard, to eat, to shoo, to
scat, and to roost.
"If he regulates his wife like that bird," the Judge spoke to himself,
"she will fly to heaven soon."
Milburn opened the papers, counted them, and handed them to his
father-in-law.
"The papers will be plain to you, Judge Custis, after I have made a few
words of explanation. You well know that the canal between the Delaware
and Chesapeake is finished, and vessels are now passing through it from
bay to bay. It is taking one hundred dollars a day tolls, and twenty
vessels already go past between sun and sun, though the size of the
shipping of the cities it connects has not yet been adapted to its
proportions. It has been a cheap and quick work, costing something above
two millions of dollars, taking only five years of time; and yet it has
begun its mercantile life by a cheat upon a man to whom it is indebted
as a promoter and contractor, and to whom I have advanced the means to
compel justice and damages."
"Well, well, Milburn; I must pay tribute to your enterprise. The era of
these great carrying corporations has barely begun, and you stake your
little fortune against one of them that is backed by the great city of
Philadelphia!"
"The canal passes through the state of Delaware, in which is three
quarters of its little length of only fourteen miles, and there a suit
will be free, to some extent, from the corruptions they might exercise
in Pennsylvania; and, if successful there, we can more easily attach the
tolls of the canal. I have no more faith in the Legislature of Delaware
than of any other state; kidnappers sit in its responsible seats, and it
licenses lotteries to make prizes of its own honor. But we shall try our
case before a simple jury, which will be flax in the hands of one lawyer
in that state, if we can secure him; but hitherto he has refused my
contractor, and will not take the case."
"Why," said the Judge, "you must mean Clayton, the new senator."
"That is the man," Milburn continued, stopping for strength and breath.
"He is finely educated, I hear, at the colleges and law schools, and
possesses a remarkable power over the agricultural and mixed races of
that small state, whom he thoroughly understands by sympathy and
acquaintance. I heard him once in court, at Georgetown, wither and
confound the confederated kidnapping influences of the whole peninsula,
and, against the will and intention of the jury, prevail upon their
fears and sensibilities to find a bold rogue guilty of stealing free
men; of color--a rogue who was in this room, unless it is a delusion of
my fever, this very day, and with whom I fancied I had been in collision
somewhere."
"You only knocked him down with a brick, after Samson had done it with
his fist, and then the fellow came to me for shelter, afraid you would
pursue him at law, and I suppose he did an errand for my servants to
this abode."
The Judge looked around upon the abode as if he had used the most
respectable word he could possibly apply to it.
"I will compromise with such scoundrels as that one," Milburn spoke,
"only when I am afraid of them. But, to conclude my statement; for
reasons of timidity, or doubts of success, or political
ambition--something I cannot fathom--Mr. Clayton will not hearken to my
debtor, and I have not disclosed my own interest in the suit. He is at
home from Washington, and an appointment has been made with him at his
office in Dover to-morrow. You see I am unable to keep it, and I have no
one else to send, and information reaches me that the canal company,
discovering my money in the contractor's bank account, intends to retain
Clayton forthwith. If you set out this afternoon, you can reach
Laureltown for bedtime. It is at least forty miles thence to Dover, and
you might ride it to-morrow by noon, with push, and in that case you
have a chance to beat the Philadelphia emissary several hours. I have
five thousand dollars at stake already; I believe I shall get damages of
forty times five if I can retain that man."
"I am ready to start at once," said the Judge, rising up; "I can read
these papers on the way. The saddle was my cradle, and I have a good
horse. My valise can follow me on the stage to-morrow."
"Unless you see the best reasons for it, my name is not to be mentioned
to any one as a party to this suit; I am not popular with juries."
"Then good-bye, Milburn," said the Judge, but did not extend his hand.
"As you treat my daughter, may God treat you!"
"Amen," exclaimed the money-lender, as the Judge's feet passed over the
door-sill below, and he sank back to the bed, exhausted again.
* * * * *
While the proceedings described occupied the white people, the servants,
Roxy and Virgie, in their clean Sunday suits, loitered around the bridge
behind the store, or strayed a little way up the Manokin brook, hearing
the mocking-bird rend his breast in all the ventriloquy of genius.
"Virgie," said Samson Hat, meeting them under the willow-tree, "when I
carries you off and marries you, I s'pect you'll be climbin' up in my
loft, too, makin' it comf'able fo' me."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you old, black, impertinent
servant of darkness!" Virgie said. "Indeed, when I look at a man, he
must be almost white--not all white, though, like Roxy's beau."
"Who's he, Roxy?" Samson asked.
Roxie blushed, and said she had no beau, and never wanted one.
"Roxy's beau," says Virgie, "is that poor, helpless Mr. Jack Wonnell. He
comes to see her every day. He's devotion itself. Indeed, Samson, if you
are going to marry me, and Roxy marry all those bell-crown hats, we
shall cure the town of its two greatest afflictions."
"Bad ole hats?" asks Samson.
"Roxy'll burn all the bell-crowns for her beau, and I'll bury the
steeple-hat and you that cleans it, and the people will be so glad
they'll set me free and I can go North."
"Look out, Virgie; I'll put dat high-crown hat on you like Marster
Milburn put de bell on de buzzard. He went up to dat buzzard one day
wid a little tea-bell in his hand an' says, 'Buzzard, how do ye like
music?' Says de buzzard, tickled wid de compliment, 'I'm so larnid in
dat music, I disdains to sing; I criticises de birds dat does.' 'Den,'
says Mars Milburn, 'I needn't say to ye, P'ofessor Buzzard, dat dis
little bell will be very pleasin' to yo' refine taste.' Wid dat he takes
a little piece o' wire an' fastens de tea-bell to de bird's foot an'
says, 'Buzzard, let me hear ye play!' De buzzard flew and de bell
tinkled, an' all de other buzzards hear some'in' like de cowbell on de
dead cow dey picked yisterday, an' dey says, 'Who's dat a flyin' heah?
Maybe it's a cow's ghose!' So dey up, all scart, an' cross'd de bay; an'
de buzzard wid a bell haint had no company sence, becoz he stole a
talent he didn't have, and it made everybody oncomfitable."
"I've heard about Meshach belling a buzzard," said Roxy, "but they say
he's got something on his foot, too, like a hoof--a clove foot. Did you
ever see it, Samson?"
"He never tuk his foot off," said the negro, warily, "to let me see it.
Dat bell on de buzzard, gals, is like white beauty in a colored skin; it
draws white men and black men, like quare music in de air, but it makes
de pale gal lonesome. She can't marry ary white man; she despises black
ones."
The shrewd lover had touched a chord of young pain in the hearts of both
those delicate quadroons. Both were so nearly white that the slight
corruption increased their beauty, rounded their graceful limbs,
plumpened their willowy figures, gave a softness like mild night to
their expressive eyes, and blackened the silken tassels of their elegant
long hair. No tutor had taught them how to walk,--they who moved on
health like skylarks on the air. Faithful, pure-minded, modest, natural,
they were still slaves, and their place in matrimony, which nature
would have set among the worthiest--superior in love, superior in
maternity, superior in length of days and enjoyment--was, by the freak
of man's _caste_, as doubtful as the mermaid's.
Roxy was a little the shorter and fuller of shape, the milder and more
pathetic; in Virgie the white race had left its leaner lines and greater
unrelenting. She said to Samson, with the pique her reflections
inspired,
"I never thought the first man to make love to me would be as black as
you."
"De white corn years," says Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird
gits. None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller
wouldn't suit you, Virgie."
"Why?" says Roxy, "Virgie was raised among white children; so was I. We
didn't know any difference till we grew up."
"Dat was what spiled ye," Samson said; "de colored man is de best
husban'. He ain't thinkin' 'bout business while he makin' love, like
Marster Milburn. The black man thinks his sweetheart is business enough,
long as she likes him. He works fur her, to love her, not to be makin' a
fool of her, and put his own head full of hambition, as dey calls it.
You couldn't git along wid one o' dem pale, mutterin' white men, Virgie.
Now, Roxy's white man, he's most as keerless as a nigger; he kin't do
nothin' but make love, nohow. Dat's what she likes him fur."
"He's as kind a hearted man as there is in Princess Anne," Roxy spoke
up. "I never thought about him except as a friend. I know I sha'n't look
down on him because he likes a yellow girl, for then I would be looking
down on myself."
"Virgie," said Samson, "I reckon I'm a little ole, but you kin't fine
out whar it is. Ye ought to seen me fetch dat white hickory of a feller
in de eye yisterday, and he jest outen his teens. I know it's a kine of
impedent to be a courtin' of you, Virgie, dat's purtier dan Miss Vesty
herself--"
"Nobody can be as pretty as Miss Vesta," Virgie cried, delighted with
the compliment; "she's perfection."
"As I was gwyn to say," dryly added Samson, "I never just knowed what I
was a lettin' Marster Milburn keep my wages fur, till he married Miss
Vesty, and then I sot my eyes on Miss Vesty's friend an' maid, and I
says, 'Gracious goodness! dat's de loveliest gal in de world. I'll git
my money and buy her and set her free, and maybe she'll hab me, ole as I
am.'"
"She will, too, Samson, if you do that, I believe," Roxy cried; "see how
she's a-smiling and coloring about it."
Virgie's throat was sending up its tremors to her long-lashed eyes, and
a wild, speculative something throbbed in her slender wrists and beat in
the little jacket that was moulded to her swelling form: the first sight
of freedom in the wild doe--freedom, and a mate.
"My soul!" Roxy added, "if poor Mr. Wonnell could set me free, I think I
might pity him enough to be his wife."
Samson used his opportunity to stretch out his hand and take Virgie's,
while she indulged the wild dream.
"Dis han' is too purty," he said, "to be worn by a slave. Let me make it
free."
She turned away, but the negro had been a wise lover, and his plea
pierced home, and it struck the Caucasian fatherhood of the bright
quadroon.
"Freedom is mos' all I got," the negro continued; "it's wuth everything
but love, Virgie. Dat you got. Maybe we can swap' em and let me be yo'
slave."
"Don't, don't!" pleaded Virgie, pulling her hand very gently. "I'm
afeard of you; you clean the Bad Man's hat."