CHAPTER XI.
DYING PRIDE.
At the termination of Milburn's long visit, Vesta had gone to her ownroom, and read her passage in the Bible, and said her prayer, and triedto think, but the day's application had been too great to leave her mindits morning energy, when health, which is so much of decision, waselastic in her veins and brain.
She began to see her duty loom up like a prodigious thing on one side,crowding every other consideration out of the way but one--her modesty;and threatening that, which, like a little mouse, ran around and aroundher mind, timorous, but helpless, and without a hole of escape.
She would cease to be a maid within the circuit of the clock, or forsakeher family, and drive that great bloodhound of duty over the thresholdof her ruined home.
In the one case lay outward devastation--the red eyes of parents andservants who had not slept all night, and looked at her as theirobdurate hostage, and the prying constables lodged upon the premises tosee that nothing was smuggled out, the ring of the auctioneer's bell,and the fingering of boors and old gossips over the cherished things ofthe family, even to her heirlooms, jewelry, and hosiery; the vast oldhouse a hollow barn when these were done, and she and her mothervisitors at the jail where her poor father looked through the bars, andbent his head in shame!
Then the servants, one after another, mounted upon the court-houseblock, the old gray servitors mocked, the little children parted, likecalves by the butcher, and the young girls feeling the desperateapprehensions of abuse and violation, that were the other alternative toherself, with whom purity was like the whiteness of the lily, prizedmore than its beauty of form or its perfume.
She glanced in her mirror by the light that flamed in her brazen grate,and saw the blushes climb like flying virgins at the sack of towns, upthe white ramparts of her neck and temples.
The form which had altered so little from childhood, supple andstraight, and moulded to perfection, was to fall like the younghickory-tree in the August hurricane, twisted from its native grove. Thebreath of the man she was to yield her life to, irresistible and hot asthat storm, she had felt already, when he held her for a moment in hisarms in the transport of passion, and heard his fearless avowal ofdesire.
To marry any man now seemed hard; to marry this one was inexpressibleshame, and at the thought of it she could not shed a tear, suchparalysis came over her. She had read of the recent Greek revolution,where elegant ladies of Scio, and other isles of the AEgean Sea, educatedin the best seminaries of Europe, had been sold by thousands as commonslaves in the markets of Constantinople, and carried to their estates bybrutal Turks, with all the gloating anticipation of lust and tyranny.
On this vivid episode started a procession of all the ages of women whohad been the sport of conquest since their common mother, Eve, lostParadise by her simplicity: the Jewish maidens carried to Babylon, theGothic virgins dragged at the horse-tails of the Moors, the daughters ofPalestine and Byzantium consigned to Arab sensualists, and made tofollow their nomadic tents, and the almond-eyed damsels of Chinasurrendered by their parents to the wild Kalmucks, to be beaten andstarved on every cold plain of Asia, till life was laid down withneither hope nor fear.
"I am happier than millions of my sex," Vesta said; "my captor does notdespise me, at least. Perhaps he will treat me kinder than I think, andgive me time to draw towards him without this deadly pain and shame."
Then she almost repented of her hasty decision to marry this night,instead of after longer acquaintance, which Mr. Milburn, no doubt, wouldhave granted, and his words were remembered with accusation: "What willthe world say to your marriage after a single day's acquaintance withme?" "Will this haste not be repented, or become a subject of reproachto you?" Was it too late to recall her words, and ask for delay?
"No," thought Vesta, "I am to keep, at least, my mind maiden and chaste,instead of playing the unstable coquette with that. I will not let himbegin to think me weak and changeful already."
To see if there was the least glimmer of relief from this marriage Vestacrossed to her mother's room, and found Mrs. Custis with her headwrapped in handkerchiefs steeped in cologne, and a vial of laudanum inher hand, and in a condition bordering on hysteria.
"Mamma," said poor Vesta, "are you in pain?"
"Oh!" screamed Mrs. Custis, "I am just dying here of cruelty andbrutality. Your father is a villain. I'll have that rascal, Milburn,killed. Go get me ink and paper, daughter, and sit here and write me aletter to my brother, Allan McLane, in Baltimore. He shall settle withJudge Custis for this robbery, and take you and me back to Baltimore,leaving your father to go to the almshouse or the jail, I don't carewhich."
"Mother," exclaimed Vesta, "what a sin! to abuse poor father now in allhis trouble!"
"Trouble!" echoed Mrs. Custis, mockingly, "what trouble has he had, Iwould like to know? Living in the woods like a Turk among his barefootedforest concubines! Spending my money, raked and scraped by my poorfather in the sugar importation, to make puddle iron out of the swamp,and be considered a smart man! The family is broken up. We are paupers,and now 'it is save yourself.' I'll take care of you if I can, but yourfather may starve for any aid I will give him."
"Then he shall have the only aid in my power, mother," said Vesta,decisively.
"Your aid!" Mrs. Custis exclaimed. "What have you got? Your jewels, Isuppose? How long will they keep him? You had better keep your jewels,girl, for your wedding, and have it come quickly, for marriage is nowyour only salvation."
"My last jewel shall go, then," Vesta said, with a pale resolution thatdarted through her veins like ice.
"Save your jewels," Mrs. Custis continued, "and choose a husband beforethis thing is noised abroad! You have a good large list to select from.There is your cousin, Chase McLane, crazy for you, and with an estate inKent. There is that young fool Carroll, with thousands of acres on thewestern shore, and the widower Hynson of King George, Virginia, witheighty slaves and his stables full of race-horses. You can marry any ofthese Dennis boys, or take Captain Ringgold of Frederick, who lives inelegance at West Point, or be mistress of Tench Purvience's mansion onMonument Square in Baltimore. All you have to do is to write a letter,saying: 'I expect you,' or, what is better, take to-morrow's steamer forBaltimore and use your Uncle Allan's house and become engaged andmarried there."
"Mamma," Vesta spoke without rebuke, only with a sad, confirmed feelingof her destiny, "I could be capable of deceiving any of those gentlemenif I could so heartlessly leave my father."
"Deceiving!" Mrs. Custis remarked, filling her palm and brow with thecologne. "What is man's whole work with a woman but deceit? To court herfor her money, to kiss her into taking her money out of good mortgagesand putting it into bog iron ore? To tell her when past middle life thatshe has nothing to live upon, except the charity of the public, or herreluctant friends. All this for an experiment! The Custis family are allknaves or fools. Your father is a monster."
Vesta went to her mother's side and bathed her forehead.
"Dear mamma," she said, "let you and I do something for ourselves, whilepapa looks around and finds something to do. We can rent a house inPrincess Anne and open a seminary. I can teach French and music, you canbe the matron and do the correspondence and business, and if papa is ata loss for larger occupation he can lecture on history and science. Ourfriends will send their children to us, and we shall never be separated.I will give up the thought of marriage and live for you two."
Mrs. Custis made a gesture of impatience.
"And be an old maid!" she blurted. "That is insufferable. What are allthese accomplishments and charms for but a husband, and what is he forbut to provide bread and clothes. Don't be as crazy as your unprincipledfather! Try no experiments! Drop philanthropy! Money is the foundationof all respectability."
Vesta thought to herself: "Can that be so? Does it not, then, justifythe man who solicits me in his means of getting money? Mother"--Vestaspoke--"you would have me marry, then?"
"There is no would
about it," answered Mrs. Custis. "You _must_ marry!"
"Marry immediately?"
"Yes, the sooner the better, to a rich man. Have you picked out one?"
"Give me your blessing, and I will try," Vesta said; "I think I knowsuch a one."
Mrs. Custis kissed her daughter, and moaned about her poor head and lostmarriage portion, and Vesta set out to look for her father.
She found him as described, in the luxury of tears and squab, ascomfortable among his negro servants as in the state legislature or atthe head of society, and they wrapped up in his condescension andmisfortunes.
As Vesta saw the curious scene of such patriarchal democracy in the oldkitchen, she wondered if that voluptuous endowment of her father was notthe happy provision to make marriage unions tolerable, and socialrevulsions philosophical. Something of regret that she had not more ofthe animal faintly grew upon her sad smile when she considered thatwherever her father went he made welcome and warmth, as she already feltat the picture of him, after parting with her apathetic mother.
"Roxy," said Vesta, as she left the kitchen, "do you go up to my motherand stay with her all this night. Make your spread there beside her bed.Virgie, put on your hood and carry a letter for me,--I will write it inthe library."
She sat before her father, he too undecided to speak, and seeing by herfixed expression that it was no time for loquacity. She sealed theletter with wax, and, Virgie coming in, her father heard the directionshe gave with curiosity greater than his embarrassment:
"Take this to Rev. William Tilghman. Give it to him only, and see thathe reads it, Virgie, before you leave him. If he asks you any questions,tell him please to do precisely what this note says, and, as he is myfriend, not to disappoint me."
The girl's steps were hardly out of hearing when Vesta opened the drawerof the library-table and took out a package of papers tied with astring. She unloosed it, and her father recognized from where he sat hisnotes of hand and mortgages.
"Gracious God, my darling!" exclaimed Judge Custis, "how came you bythose papers?"
"They are to be mine to-night, father--in one hour. The moment theybecome mine they will be yours."
"Why, Vessy," said the Judge, "if they are yours even to keep a minute,the shortest way with them is up the chimney!"
He made a stride forward to take them from her hand. She laid them inher lap and looked at him so calmly that he stopped.
"You may burn the house, papa," she said, "it is still your own. Butthese papers you could only burn by a crime. It would be cheating anhonorable man."
"Honorable! Who?" the Judge exclaimed.
"He who is to be my husband."
"You marry Meshach Milburn!" shouted the Judge, "O curse of God!--nothim?"
"Yes, this night," answered Vesta; "I respect him. I hold theseobligations by his trust in me. They are my engagement ring."
Judge Custis raised a loud howl like a man into whom a nail is driven,and fell at his daughter's feet and clasped her knees.
"This is to torture me," he cried; "he has not dared to ask you, Vesta?"
"Yes, and my word is passed, father. Shall that word, the word of aCustis, be less than a Milburn's faith. By the love he bore me, Mr.Milburn gave me these debts for my dower--a rare faith in one soprudent. If I do not marry him, they will be given back to him thisnight."
"Then give them back, my child, and save your soul and your purity, lestI live to be cursed with the sight of my noble daughter's shame? Thismarriage will be unholy, and the censure to follow it will be thebankruptcy of more than our estate--of our simple fame and old familyrespect. We have friends left who would help us. If you marry Milburn,they will all despise and repudiate us."
"I do not believe it," said Vesta. "The sense and courage of thatgentleman--he is a gentleman, for I have seen him, and a gentleman ofmany gifts--will compel respect even where false pride and familypretension appear to put him down. Who that underrates him will make anyconsiderable sacrifice to assist us? Your sons,--will they do it? Thenby what right do they decide my marriage choice? No, father, I only domy part to support our house in its extremity, as these gentlemen andothers have done before."
She pointed to the old portraits of Custises on the wall. If any of themlooked dissatisfied, he met a countenance haughty as his own.
"Vesta," her father called, "you know you do not love this man?"
Looking back a minute at the longing in his face, which now wore thesolicitude of personal affection, she melted under it.
"No, father," she said, with a burst of tears. "I love you."
She threw her arms around him and kissed him long and fondly, bothweeping together. He went into a fit of grief that admitted of noconversation till it was partly spent, and at last lay with his grayhairs folded to her heaving bosom, where the compensation of his lovemade her sacrifice more precious.
"I feel that I am doing right, father," she said tenderly "Till now Ihave had my doubts. No other young heart is wronged by my taking thisstep; I have never been engaged, and it now seems providential, as Icould not then have gone to your assistance without injuring myself andanother; and your debts are too great for any but this man to settlethem. Your life has been one long sacrifice for me, and not a cloud hasdarkened above me till this day, giving me the first shower of sorrow,which I trust will refresh my soul, and make its humility grow. Oh,father, it would rejoice me so much if you could respond to my sacrificewith a better life!"
"God help me, I will!" he sobbed.
"That is very comforting to me. I will not enumerate your omissions,dear father, but if this important step in my life does not arrest somesad tendencies I see in you, the disappointment may break me down.Intemperance in you--a judge, a gentleman, a husband, and a father--is adeformity worse than Mr. Milburn's honest, unfashionable hat. Do you notfeel happier that my husband is not to be a drunkard?"
"He has not that vice, thank God!" admitted the Judge.
"Be his better example, father, for I hope to see you influence him tobe kind to me, and the sight of you walking downward in his view willdegrade me more than bearing his name or sharing his eccentricities. Oh,if you love me, let not your dear soul slide out of the knowledge ofGod!"
"Pray for me, dear child! My feet are slippery and my knees are weak."
"Begin from this moment to lean on Heaven," said Vesta. "It is betterthan this world's consideration. Oh, what would strengthen me now butGod's approval, though I go into a captivity I dreamed not of. Eventhere I can take my harp beneath the willows, like them in Babylon, andpraise my Maker."
She sat at her piano and sang the hymn the young consumptive, Rev. Mr.Eastburn, composed in her grandmother's house, taking it from theEpiscopal collection:
"O holy, holy, holy Lord! Bright in Thy deeds and in Thy name, Forever be Thy name adored, Thy glories let the world proclaim!
"O Jesus, Lamb once crucified To take our load of sins away, Thine be the hymn that rolls its tide Along the realms of upper day!
"O Holy Spirit from above, In streams of light and glory given, Thou source of ecstacy and love, Thy praises ring through earth and heaven!"
As her voice in almost supernatural clearness and sweetness filled thetwo large rooms, and died away in melody, she rose and kissed her fatheragain, and said, "Courage, love! we shall be happy still."
A knock at the door and there entered the young clergyman she had sentfor, a sandy-haired, large-blue-eyed, boyish person, with a fair skineasily freckled, and a look of youthful chivalry under his sincereChristian humility.
"Good-evening, William," Vesta spoke; "I did not expect to see you tillwe reached the church. But sit, and I will answer your questions.Father, you are to go with me to the church--you and Virgie. Mr.Tilghman is to marry us."
"Now, Vesta," spoke the young man, as her father left the room, "whomare you going to marry, cousin, in such haste as this?"
"Did you have the church made ready, William, as I requested?"
"I
did. The sexton is there now, lighting the fire."
"I thought you were loyal as ever, William, and depended upon you.Thanks, dear friend! I am to marry Mr. Meshach Milburn at nine o'clock."
A cloud came over the young man's serene face, though his featuresretained their habitual sweetness.
"I can marry you, cousin, even to Meshach Milburn," he said, "if that isyour wish. Why do you marry him?"
"It is not loyal in you to ask, William, but I will give you thisanswer: he has asked me. He is also devoted and rich. To avoidexcitement, possibly some opposition, though it would be vain, we are tobe married without further notice, and papa is to give me away."
Silent for a moment, the young rector exclaimed:
"Cousin Vesta, have I lived to see you a mercenary woman? Has this man'sasserted wealth found you cold enough to want it, when love has been sogenerously offered you by almost every young man of station in thisregion, and from abroad--even by me?" he said, after a pause. "The scaris on my heart yet, cousin. No, I will not believe such a thing of you.There is a reason back of the fact."
"William, if you respected me as you once said you ever would, like yoursister, you would not add this night the weight of your doubt to myother burdens, but take my hand with all the strength of yours, and liftme onward."
"I will," said the rector, swallowing a dry spot in his throat. "Thoughit was a bitter time I had when you refused me, cousin, the pain led meto my vows at the altar where I minister, and I have had the assistanceof your beautiful music there, like the angel I seem to have seenreserved for me, in place of you, sitting at your side. And I know thatthis marriage is, on your part, pure as my sister's. No further will Iinquire--what penalty you are paying for another, what mystery I cannotpierce."
He raised his hands above her head: "The peace of God that passethunderstanding, abide with you, dear sister, forever!"
He went out with his eyes filled with tears, but hers were full ofheavenly light, feeling his benediction to be righteous.