Chapter 13

SHADOW OF THE TILE.

As Vesta and her father stepped over the sill of Teackle Hall, it seemed very dear, yet somewhat dread to them, being reclaimed again, but at the penalty of a new member of the family and he an intruder. To the library Vesta and her father went, and he threw some wood upon the low fire, and lighted the lamp and candles; then turning, he took his daughter in his arms and sobbed bitterly, repeating over the words: "What shall I do! O what shall I do!" She also yielded to the luxury of grief, but was speechless till he said:

"My darling, I have dreamed of your wedding-day many a time, but it was not like this. Music and joy, free-heartedness, a handsome, youthful bridegroom, our whole connection gathered here from the army and navy, from South, West, and North, and all happy except poor Daniel Custis, about to lose his child!"

"Your child is not to go," Vesta whispered; "is not that a comfort?"

"I do not know. Is it my pure, poor child? Had I seen you waste with consumption, day by day, like a dying lilac-tree, with its clusters fewer every year till it deadened to the root, I could have wept in heavenly sympathy, and learned from you the way I have not walked. But, in your flower to be a forester's plucking, stripped from my stem and trodden in the sand, your pride reduced, your tastes unheeded, your heart dragged into the wigwam of a savage and made to consult his maudlin will---- Oh, what shall I do!"

"I do not fear my husband like that," Vesta said, opening his arms. "My mind, I think, he will rather raise to serious things, for which I have some desire, though, I fear, no talent. Papa, something tells me that this old life we have led, easy and happy, comfortable and independent, is passing away. Our family race must learn the new lessons of the age if we would not see it retired and obscure. Is that not so?"

"I fear it is God's truth, my darling. The life we have led is only a remnant of colonial, or, rather, of provincial dignity, to which the nature of this republican government is hostile. Tobacco, which was once our money, is disappearing from this shore, and wheat and corn we cannot grow like the rich young West, which is pouring them out through the canal the late Governor Clinton lived to open. Money is becoming a thing and not merely a name, and it captures every other thing--land, distinction, talent, family, even beauty and purity. The man you married understands the art of money and we do not."

"Then are we not impostors, papa, if we assume to be so much better than our real superiors? Surely we must persevere in those things the age demands, and excel in them, to sustain our pride."

"Yes, if the breed is gamecock it will accept any challenge, not only war and politics, but mechanics, shop-keeping, cattle-herding, anything!"

"Papa, if you can see these things that are to be, so clearly, why can you not take the wise steps to plant your family on the safe side?"

"Ah! we Virginians were always the best statesmen, but we died poor. Having no manual craft, slight bookkeeping, and unlimited capacity for office, we foresaw everything but the humiliation of ourselves, and that we hardly admitted when it had come, so much were we flattered by our philosophic intellects. Our newest amusement is to expound the constitution to them who are doing too well under it, although our fathers, who made it, like Jefferson and Madison, died only yesterday, overwhelmed with debts, and poor Mr. Monroe is run away to New York, they say, to dodge the Virginia bailiffs."

"Well, papa, I have saved you from that fear. Here are your notes to Mr. Milburn and others. Sit down and look them over carefully and see if they are all here!"

He took them up, with volatile relief laughing on his yet tear-marked face, and said:

"We'll burn them, Vessy."

"Nay, sir, not till you have seen them all. A single note missing would give you the same perplexity, and there is no daughter left to settle it."

He looked at her with a smile, yet annoyance.

"You are not going to make a Meshach Milburn of me?"

"Stop, sir!" Vesta said. "You might do worse than learn from my husband."

Something strange in her expression baffled the Judge.

"Ha!" he interjected, "have I a rival already, daughter? Is his conquest as complete as that?"

"I promised to honor him a few moments ago, and I believe I can, papa. All that you tell me adds to my respect for a man who seems to be only what he is."

"Perhaps you can love him, too?" the Judge said, watching her with an apprehension a little like wonder, a little like jealousy.

"Oh, I wish I could, papa! That also I promised to do, and I will try. But my work will all be a failure if you do not become reconciled to Mr. Milburn. It was for you I married him, and to save your name, your peace, your independence, and the upbraiding we expected from mamma at the loss of her dower. He is now your son-in-law, still in the prime of life, with the business training you lament that you do not possess. Begin this moment, papa, and learn his habits. Count and identify those notes!"

Judge Custis looked them over separately, ran the number of notes he had given over in his mind, and said:

"Yes, he has made fair restitution. There are none missing."

"Restitution implies that he has robbed you, papa. A just man did not speak there! Every penny in those debts is stamped with Mr. Milburn's injuries and coined by his sacrifices. Have you spent his money remembering that?"

"No, my child, I suppose not."

"Give me the notes, papa."

She took them and sat thinking a few moments silently.

"If I were a man, papa," she said at length, "I would try to learn business sense. It must be so respectable to live with one's mind able to help one's security and one's friends, and prepare for age or sickness while strong and healthy. Now, I think I will not let you burn these notes till you have paid the price of them! Please write a transfer of this house, servants, and your manor to me, Vesta----yes, Vesta Milburn!"

She blushed as she spoke for the first time her new-worn name.

"Alas!" sighed her father, "Vesta Custis no more. I begin to feel it. Well, Mrs. Milburn--I will give you the title--for what must I make over these old properties to you?"

"In consideration of my repayment of the sum of my mother's estate to you for her, for which you have given her no security whatever. It is not provided for by these notes. I have only Mr. Meshach Milburn's promise that he will pay her this money, risked and lost by you, father, I fear very heedlessly. Is it restitution, also, for Mr. Milburn to strip himself to pay your debts to mother?"

"No," said the Judge, guiltily, "that he pays on account of his passion for you. He may cheat you there."

"I do not believe it, because he has been faithful to me so many years before I knew he loved me. A man who keeps himself pure for a woman he has no vows to, will pay her father's debts of honor when he has promised."

Judge Custis found the issue quite too warm for his convenience, and blushing as much as Vesta, he sat down and drew up a conveyance of his property to Vesta Milburn, in her own right, and in consideration of twenty-five thousand dollars, paid to Mrs. Lucy Custis on account of judgment confessed to her by Daniel Custis.

"There, my dear," he said, passing it over, "what do you want with it? Are you not sure of a home here as long as you live, even with me as the proprietor?"

"No. The tragedy nearly finished here may be repeated, papa, and all of us be homeless if you can go in debt again. I shall not do that--not even for my husband, and here will stand Teackle Hall to protect you all from the cold if bad times ever come again."

"You have paid a greater price for it, my child, than it is worth, and you are entitled to it."

"Besides, dear father, if Mr. Milburn needs any reminder of his promise to repay mamma's dowry, this will give it. He intended his gift to be my marriage dower, and were I to convey it to you I should first ask his consent; not in law, perhaps, but in delicacy."

"Oh, yes," the Judge said carelessly, "I am glad you have such good reasons. Yet, my beautiful, my last child,--pride of my race! I hate to see you so ready for this business--this calculation and foresight. It is not like the Custises. I fear this man, Milburn, in a single day has thrown his net around your nature, and annexed you to his sordid existence. At this moment the redeeming thing about you is that you cannot love him."

"Dear father, thoughts like that beset me, too--the pride of aristocracy, the remembrance of what has been; but I want to be honest and not to cheat my heart or any person. We have fallen from our height; he has raised himself from his condition; and there is no deception in my conduct. He knows I do not love him. Instead of standing upon an obdurate heart, I pray God to melt my nature and mould it to his affection!"

Regarding her a moment with increasing interest, Judge Custis came forward and kissed her forehead.

"Amen, then!" he said. "May you love your husband! I will do all I can to love him, too."

"That is spoken like a true man," Vesta said. "And now, father, good-night! Be ready here for Mr. Milburn's arrival. Ring for a decanter and some cake. It will not hurt you, after your fast, to drink a glass of sherry with the bridegroom."

He kissed her and felt her trembling in his arms. As she started to go, she returned and clung to him again. Her face was pale with fear.

"Oh, dreadful God!" he muttered, "to visit my many sins upon this spotless angel! Where shall I fly?"

A step was upon the porch, and Vesta flashed up the stairway.

Judge Custis went to his door apprehensive and in tears. A strange man stood there, with his eye bruised and blood dripping down to his coarse, rope-like beard. He was in liquor, but so pale that it was apparent by the starlight.

"Good-evening," said the man; "you don't know me, Judge Custis? No matter, I'm Joe Johnson."

The Judge, whose tears had taken him far from things of trivial memory, looked at the man and repeated "_Joe_ Johnson. Not Joe Johnson of Dorchester?"

"Yes, Judge, Joe Johnson, the slave-dealer. I've bought many a nigger from a Custis when it was impolite to sell 'em, Judge, so they let me run' em off, and cussed me for it to the public. An' that's made me onpopular, Judge Custis, and that's my fix to-night."

"You have been fighting, Johnson, I think," said the Judge, with suppressed dislike.

"I've been knocked down by a nigger," said the man, with a glare of ferocity, removing his hand from the wounded eye, as if it inflamed his recollection of the blow to see the drops of blood drip from his beard to the porch. "This town is too nice to abide a dealer in the constitutional article, and so they set on me, when I was a little jingle-brained with lush, an' while the nigger klemmed me in the peep, a little white villain with a steeple bonnet hit me in the bread-bag with a stone. I've come yer, Judge, to lie up in the kitchen, an' sleep warm over Sunday, for the cops threaten to take me, if they catch me before midnight."

"I suppose you know, Johnson, that I am a magistrate, and the proper harborage I give to breakers of the peace is the jail."

"I'm not afraid of that limbo, Judge Custis, when I come to you. Old Patty Cannon has done you many a good turn with Joe Johnson's gang about election times in the upper destreeks of Somerset. Patty always said Judge Custis was a game gentleman that returned a favor."

The Judge's countenance, an instant blank, lighted up with all a vote-getter's smile, and he said:

"Joe, you're a terrible fellow, but dear old Aunt Patty did always take my part! I suspect, Joe, that you have run afoul of Samson, the hired man of Meshach Milburn, who is a boxer, though I wonder that he could get away with your youth and size. Of course, I won't let you come to harm. You haven't been playing your tricks on anybody's negroes, Joe?"

"No, upon my word, Judge! You see, I took a load of Egypt down the Nanticoke to Norfolk, and shipped 'em to Orleens. Says I: 'I'll go back Eastern Shore way, and see if there's any niggers to git.' So I tramped it from Somers's Cove to Princess Anne, an' sluiced my gob at Kingston and the Trappe till I felt noddy with the booze, and lay down in the churchyard to snooze it off. Bein' awaked before my nod was out, I felt evil an' chiveyish, and the tavern blokes, an' the nigger, an' the feller with the steeple shap, all clecked me at once."

"Well, Joe, for Aunt Patty's sake, I'll take care of you. Go to the kitchen door, and I'll step through the house and tell our Aunt Hominy to give you supper and breakfast, and a place to get some sleep. But you must keep out of the way, and slip off quietly on Sunday, for we have had a wedding in the family to-day, Joe, and though I cannot understand your peculiar slang, I suspect the bridegroom to be the man who knocked the breath out of you with the stone."

The stranger lifted his hand from his bloody eye again, and counted the red drops splashing down from his beard. Judge Custis marked his scowl.

"Tut, tut!" said the Judge, "you will never get your revenge out of that man. He is too strong. I don't wonder that he disabled you, and don't you ever get into his clutches, Joe; for if he knows you are here, I shall be forced to send you to jail this very night. Keep out of the hands of Meshach Milburn! He has knocked the breath out of you, Mr. Johnson, but there are some whose hearts he has twisted out of their bodies."

"I'll meet him somewhere," Joe Johnson muttered, "but not in Princess Anne;" and he pulled down his slouched hat to cover his eyes, and stalked away to find the kitchen.

"Oh, what a day can bring forth," Judge Custis thought, raising his hands to the October stars: "Meshach of the ominous hat the host in my parlor: Joe Johnson, the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, the guest of my kitchen!"