CHAPTER XXXIII.
HONEYMOON.
Meanwhile the steamer was taking Vesta and her husband across theChesapeake Bay in the night--that greatest, gentlest indentation in thecoast of the United States; at once river and sound, fiord and sea,smooth as the mill-pond, and full of life as the nutritious milk of themother, and on whose breast a brood of rivers lay and suckled withoutrivalry--the long Susquehanna, James, and Potomac; the short, thickChoptank, Chester, and Patapsco; and, to the flying wild-swan, itsarborage looked like a vast pine-tree, with boughs of snow, climbing twohundred miles from its roots in the land of corn and cotton into thegolden cloud of Northern grain and hay.
Upon one broken horn of this fruitful bay hung Baltimore, like aneagle's nest upon the pine, seizing the point of indentation thatbrought it nearest to the fertile upland and the valley outlets of theNorth and West, where the toil-loving Germans burnished their farms withwomen's hands, and sent their long bowed teams to market on as manyturnpikes as the Chesapeake had rivers.
At morning Vesta looked upon the fleet of little sail lying in the basinof the city, among larger ships and arks and barges, and saw FederalHill's red clay rising a hundred feet above the piers, and the spotlessmonument to Washington resting its base as high above the tide, on anearly naked bluff. The rich sunrise fell on the streaked flag of therepublic at the mast on Fort McHenry, and the garrison band was playingthe very anthem that lawyer Key had written in the elation of victory,though a prisoner in the enemy's hands. Alas! how many a prisoner inthe enemy's hands was doing tribute to that flag from cotton-field andrice-swamp, tobacco land and corn-row, pouring the poetry of his loyaltyand toil to the very emblem of his degradation!
Vesta heard, with both satisfaction and sorrow, at Barnum's Hotel thather husband was too ill to attend the funeral, and must keep his roomand fire; she needed his comfort and devotion in her sorrow, but uponher dead mother's bier seemed to stand the injunction against thatfateful hat he had brought with him; and yet she pitied him that he muststay alone, unknown, unrelated, chattering with the chill or burningwithout complaint.
"God send you sympathy from the angels like you, my darling!" Milburnsaid. "I know what it is to lose a mother."
Escorts in plenty waited on Vesta, but she wished she could find somekinsman of her husband, if ever so poor, to take his arm to the churchand burial-ground; and at the news that her uncle Allan McLane had notarrived, and would not, probably, now be present, she felt anotherblending of relief and apprehension, because her husband might notto-day be exasperated by him, yet his relations to her mother's propertywould still remain unknown,--and Vesta feared for Virgie.
In the same impulse which had made her retain Teackle Hall, to secure itagainst her father's careless business methods, she had made Virgie overto her mother, to place her, apparently, farther from danger, neversupposing that in those prudent hands the enemy might insinuate; butDeath, the deathless enemy, was filching everywhere, and though shecould not see why Virgie could be persecuted, Vesta now wished she hadset her free.
The girl belonged to her mother's estate: suppose Allan McLane was theadministrator of it? Suppose, indeed, he was the heir? Vesta's heartfell, as she considered that a woman had best let business alone.
The young bride-mourner was an object of mingled admiration and sympathyas she leaned on the arm of a kinsman and entered the Presbyterian kirk.She was considered one of the great beauties of Maryland, and the youngRobert Breckenridge, fresh from Kentucky, on a visit to his brother, thepastor, thought he had never seen Vesta's equal even in Kentucky; and,as he gazed through her mourning veil, the pastor's Delaware wife heardhim whisper, "Divinity itself!"
The clear olive skin, eyes of gray twilight, eyebrows like midnight'sown arches, and luxuriant hair, were touched by grief as if a goddesssuffered; and, in her deep mourning robes, Vesta seemed a monarch'sdaughter about to pass through some convent to her sainthood.
She had the height to give dignity to this beauty, and the grace to liftpathos above weakness.
The minister's musical tones were wrought to consonance with this noblehuman model, and he spoke of that ideal motherhood which, to every childat the bier, seems real as the dripping bucket at the fairy's well--ofmother's love, trials, weakness, and immortality; of the absence of hersympathy making the first great bereavement in life's progress; of hernature abiding in us and her spirit hovering over, while we live.
Painted in the soft hues of personal experience, prescribed to her needswith a physician's art, doing all that funeral talk can do to raise thefinal tears from among the heartstrings and pour them in oblation uponthe corpse, the pastor's consolation had the effect of some mesmerichand that weakens our systems while it sublimates our feelings, andVesta's female nature was almost broken down.
Where could she lean for the close sympathy befitting such grief? Herfather was not here, and she had none but her husband--the husband ofless than a week, but still the nearest to her need.
On him she allowed herself to rest that solemn evening after hermother's body had sought the ground. He was well again, for the time.
For the first time she was alone with him, and, as the shadows narrowedtheir chamber, and they sat with no other light than a little woodsmouldering in the grate, he came to her and began to talk of childhoodand his own mother, of the little sorrows his mother had shared withhim, of domestic disagreements and happy love-making anew; how men feelwhen the partner of life is taken away, and children know not themeaning of Death, that has done so awful a thing upon the inoffensiveone; but above all is shining, Meshach said, the star of motherhood,faintly lighting our way, mellowing our souls, and basking on thewaters.
As he continued, and she could not see him, but only hear theplaintiveness of his voice, it became comfortable to hear him speak, andshe grew more passive, a sense of resignation fell upon her heart, andof gratitude to him that could divine her loss so touchingly; and, likea child, she rested upon his side, upon his knee, and in his arms atlast. Not fond nor yet infatuated, but subsiding and consenting,accepting her destiny like a myriad of women that are neither oppressednor tender, but with reluctance, yield, she passed out of grief towifedom, like one tired and in a dream.
Visits of consolation were made by a few old friends for a day or twosucceeding. The Rev. Henry Lyon Davis, late president of the college atAnnapolis, came, bringing his handsome boy of twelve, Master HarryWinter Davis. The attorney-general of Maryland, Mr. Roger Taney, camewith Mr. George Brown, the banker. Commodore Decatur's widow sent amourning token, and the Honorable William Wirt brought Mr. RobertSmith, once the secretary of state at Washington.
These and others, looking at Meshach Milburn a little oddly, found him,on acquaintance, a man of sense; but the McLanes who called were eithersupercilious or studiously avoided the groom.
An invitation came from Arlington House to Vesta, to bring Mr. Milburnthere; and, as they proceeded out the Washington road in a privatecarriage, they observed Mr. Ross Winans's friction-wheel car, withnearly forty people in it, making its trial trip behind a horse at agallop. At the Relay House, where the horses on the railroad werechanged, Milburn remarked, gazing up the Patapsco valley:
"My wife, we are here at the birth of this little iron highway. If ourvision was great enough, we might see the mighty things that may happenupon it: servile insurrection, sectional war, great armies riding togreat battles, thousands of emigrants drawn to the West. We shall die,but generations after us this road will grow and continue, like a veinof iron, whose length and uses no man can measure."
The road to Washington was in places good, and often turned in among thepines. At Riverdale they saw the deer of Mr. George Calvert, adescendant of one of the Lords Baltimore, browsing in his park, and hisgreat four-in-hand carriage was going in the lodge-gates from a statevisit to the Custises. Passing direct to Georgetown from Bladensburg,they encountered General Jackson, taking his evening ride on horseback,and saw the chasm of the new canal being dug along the Potomac,
andthen, crossing Mason's ferry, they were set down at Arlington House anhour after dark.
The hospitable, harmless proprietor welcomed them into the huge edifice,half temple, half barn, among his elaborate daubs of pictures, andfurniture and relics of Custis and Washingtonian times. He was nearlyfifty years of age, of Indian features, but rather weak face, like onewhose only substantiality was in his ancestors, and Vesta, placing himbeside her husband, reflected that a similar inbreeding had produced asimilarity in the two men, both of a sallow and bilious attenuation; butMilburn, beside her kinsman Custis, was like a bold wolf beside avacant-visaged sheep.
Yet these men liked each other immediately, Milburn's intelligence andmoney, and real reverence for the great man who had adopted Mr. Custis,giving him admittance to the latter's fancy.
They strolled through those beautiful woods, one day to become a groveof sepulture for an army of dead, while Vesta, in the dwelling, talkedwith her cousins, and with the graceful Lieutenant Lee, who was courtingMary Custis.
It was a happy domestic life, and in the host's veins ran the blood ofthe Calverts, though not of the legitimate line.
It was suggested to go to the Capitol, and Mr. Milburn, growing dailybetter in the hill region, went also, and wore his steeple hat, greatlyto the edification of Mr. Custis, who revelled in such antiquities.Vesta heard the ladies whispering, when they returned, that a parcel ofboys and negroes had followed the hat, laughing and jeering, and hadfinally driven the party to their carriage. This, and her husband'simpatience to return to his business, hastened their departure fromArlington.
They took the steamer down the Potomac, and, as they came off the mouthof St. Mary's River, Milburn donned his Raleigh's hat again, and stoodon deck, looking at the lights about the old Priest's House, where thecapital of Lord Baltimore lay, a naked plain and a few starvelingmementoes, within the bight of a sandy point that faced the archipelagoof the Eastern Shore.
"My hat," said Milburn to himself, "is old as yonder town, and betterpreserved. The Calverts and Milburns have married into Mrs. Washington'skin. Does my wife love me?"