Chapter 46

THE CURSE OF THE HAT.

As the spring burst upon Princess Anne in cherry blossoms and dogwood flowers, in herring and shad weighting the river seines, and broods of young chickens and peach-trees pullulating, and as the time of fruit and corn and early cantaloupe followed, the life in human veins also unfolded in infant fruit, and Vesta became a mother.

The forest and the court had harmonized in the offspring, and the young boy took the name of Custis Milburn.

Healthy and comely, as if Society had made the match for Nature, the infant flourished without a day's ailing, and grew upon its parents' eyes like a miracle, having the symmetry and loveliness of the mother, and the bold, challenging countenance of the father; and to Meshach it brought the satisfaction of an improved posterity, and an heir to his success; to Vesta, compensation for the loss of worldly society.

She found more joy in Teackle Hall, with this wondrous product of her sacrifice and pain, than with the admiration of all the good families in Maryland; and a sense of warmth and gratitude sprang to her conscience towards the father of this matchless gift.

"I have not given him my whole loyalty," she reflected, with exacting piety; "I have let trifles stand before my vows."

Accordingly, when Milburn, conscience-stricken, and accusing himself of hard conditions in exacting a marriage without love, came one day, with all the magnanimity of a new parent, before his wife to make some restitution, she surprised him by arising and kissing him.

"Sir, I have been very proud and stubborn. Do forgive me!"

He pressed her to his breast, while his tears ran over her face.

"Honey," he said at length, "what a mockery my crime to you has been--to think that you could ever love me! No, I will give you freedom. Dear as your captivity is to me, your cage shall open and you shall fly."

Vesta stepped back at these strange words and waited for him to explain. He continued:

"I will send you to Italy with our child. Your father shall go, too, if you desire. Go from me and these unloved conditions, this hateful bondage and constraint"--his tears flowed fast again, but he let them fall ungrudged,--"find in your music and your noble mind forgetfulness of this unworthy marriage. I can live in the recollection of the blessing you have been to me."

"What!" said Vesta; "do you command me to leave you?"

"Yes. Let it be that. I know how conscientious you are, my darling, but it is your duty to go. A hard struggle is before me: I am deeply embarked in an untried business. Now I can spare the money. Go and find happiness in a happier land."

She went to him again and put her arms around him.

"Leave you?" she said. "What have I done to be driven away? How could I reconcile myself to let you live alone? 'For better or for worse,' I said. God has made it better and better every day."

He held her head between his palms and looked into her eyes, to see if she spoke from the heart.

"Husband," she whispered, "I love you."

* * * * *

The minds of both husband and wife, after this reconcilement, turned to the disturbing hat as the subject of their estrangement hitherto.

Said Milburn to himself: "What a sinner I have been to distress that poor child with my miserable hat! At the first opportunity she gives me, I will lay it aside forever."

Said Vesta to her father and his bride: "What a wicked heart I have kept, to oppose my husband in such a little thing as his good old hat--the badge of his reverence to his family and of his bravery to an impertinent age. I have let it discolor my married life and all the sunshine. But my baby has melted my obdurate heart. Come, unite with me, and let us show him that everything he wears we will adopt proudly."

Therefore, when Milburn next went out, his wife came with a beaming face and elastic step and put on his head his steeple hat. He looked at her grimly, but she stopped his protest with a kiss.

He thought to introduce the subject to Judge Custis, but that fond bridegroom broke in with:

"Milburn, you're a game fellow. It was impudent in me to say one word about your hat. I'll get one like it myself if I can find one. Tut, tut, man! It becomes you. Say no more about it."

Milburn undertook to make the explanation to his niece, but before he could well begin she cried:

"Uncle Meshach, Aunt Vesta is just in love with your hat! She won't hear of your wearing any other. We're all going to stand by it, uncle."

A man chooses his own verdict by a long course of behavior; austerity in the family begets fear; an affectation, whether of folly or resentment, is at last credited to nature; man is seldom allowed to escape from the trap of his own temperament.

So Meshach Milburn never obtained the opportunity to relieve himself from the affliction with which he had afflicted others. Like an impostor who has established the claim of deafness, and mankind bawls in his ear, the hatted spectre was made to feel uncomfortable when he put off his tile--his consistency was at once on trial. He was like a boy who had pricked a cross upon his hand in India ink, and, growing to be a man with taste and position, sees the indelible advertisement of his vulgarity whenever he takes a human hand.

To have put on any other hat would have subjected him to new hoots and comments, and made himself publicly smile at his own folly; he must have climbed as high as the pillory to explain the change and make apology; the society he had faced in defiance seemed all at once united to refuse him a _status_ without his Entailed Hat, and it would have taken the courage of throwing off a life-long _alias_ and living under a forgotten name, to appear in Princess Anne in a new, contemporary head-dress.

Milburn saw that he must wear his old hat for life; he bent under the servitude, and was alone the victim of it now.