CHAPTER XXXVIII.
VIRGIE'S FLIGHT.
Snow Hill, when Virgie looked forth upon it, almost seemed built onsnow, a white sand composing the streets, gardens, and fields, thoughthe humid air brought vegetation even from this, and vines clambered,willows drooped, flowers blossomed, on winter's brink, and greatspeckled sycamores, like freckled giants, and noble oaks, rose toheights betokening rich nutrition at their roots.
Heat and moisture and salt had made the land habitable, and the windfrom a receded sea had piled up the sand long ago into mounds nowcovered with verdure, which the freak or fondness of the manor owner hadcalled a hill, and put his own name thereto, perhaps with memories ofold Snow Hill in London.
Upon this apparent bank or hill two venerable churches stood, both ofEnglish brick, the Episcopalian, covered with ivy, and the Presbyterian,which had given its name to the first synod of the Kirk in the newworld, and now stood, surrounded with gravestones, where the visitormight read Scottish names left to orphans at Worcester, as yonder at theEpiscopate graveyard, names left to English orphans in the same rollingtide of blood; and Worcester was the name of the county, as the courtand jail might tell.
Hidden in the sand, like Benjamin's cup in the bag of flinty corn, agolden lustre yet seemed to betray Snow Hill, as the sun rose into itsold trees, and woke the liquid-throated birds, and finally made the oldbrick and older whitewashed houses gleam, and exhale a soft, blue smoke.Virgie heard a sound as of hoofs upon a bridge, and saw, across thelily-bordered river, the Custis carriage winding up a golden road.
"Alone!" said Virgie; "love has gone. Now I must live for freedom."
"Breakfast, Miss," spoke a neat, kind-faced, yet ready woman, ofVirgie's own size and color; "my husband is going to drive you out oftown before any of the white people are up to see you."
At the table was a mulatto man, whom the woman introduced as herhusband.
"Mrs. Hudson," Virgie said, "you are doing so much for me! may the goodLord pay you back!"
"Oh, no," replied the woman, "I am always up at this hour. I work hard,because I am trying to buy my mother, who is still a slave."
"How came you free?" Virgie asked, wistfully.
"I saved a sick gentleman's life, and he bought me for it, and gave memy freedom. See, I have a pass that tells the color of my eyes and skin,my weight, and everything. With this I can go into Delaware and the freestates. I wish you had one, Miss Virgie."
"Oh, Mrs. Hudson, I dearly wish I had. Let me read it. Why, I couldalmost pass for you, from this description."
"Indeed you could," the housewife said; "we are not of the same age, butwhite people don't read a pass very careful."
"How I would love anybody that could get me such a pass!"
"I have given my word of honor that I will never lend it. Much as I liketo help my color to freedom, I cannot break my word. To-morrow I have togo into Delaware with my pass to nurse a lady."
"You attend the sick, Mrs. Hudson?"
"Yes, I have a kind of call that way, Miss Virgie. Ever since I was agirl I pulled herbs and tried them on myself, and studied 'tendin' onpeople, watchin' their minds, that is so much of sickness, and how towrap and rub them. My husband oysters down in the inlets. Here is hiswagon."
"The Lord remember you in need, dear Mrs. Hudson."
The old wagon, an open thing, to peddle oysters and fish, was drivenacross the town to the south, and soon was in the open country, goingtowards Virginia. A smell of salt bay seemed in the air; the hawks'nests in dead trees indicated the element that subsisted everything, andthe trees in the fields were often lordly in size, though sand and smalloak and pine woods were seldom out of sight. As they turned into a lanenear a little roadside place of worship, a young white man rode by onhorseback, and, seeing Virgie, reined in and shouted,
"Purty, purty, purty as peaches and cream! Ole Virginny blood is in themeyes, by the Ensign!"
The colored man muttered, "Go 'long, Mr. Wise!"
"By the Ensign now," continued the man, who was young, but of acadaverous countenance, "if 'tis a Maryland huzzy, she is marvellous.What's the name, angel gal?"
"She's a Miss Spence. I'm a takin' her home yer," the mulatto maninterposed, hastily, and went in the gate, while the horseman, with ashout like one intoxicated, gallopped towards the north.
"I'm sorry he seen you, sho'!" the conductor said; "that's Henry A.Wise, the big lawyer from Accomac. Maybe he'll inquire at Snow Hill,where he's goin' to court."
"What house is this, Mr. Hudson?" Virgie asked, seeing at the end of theshort lane a thick-set house and porch, with small farm-buildings aroundit.
"That's ole Spring Hill, built by the first of the Milburns; by the onethat made the will leavin' his hat and nothin' else to be son. It's gotbrick ends. I 'spect they had money when they come here, Virgie."
The quickened mettle of the girl noticed that he had ceased to call her"Miss."
"Now," said Hudson, "I'm goin' to leave you here with my sister till Isee about gittin' a boat. If you is tracked to Snow Hill, it'll be foundyou come out this way, now. The inlets run up along the coast yer pastthe Delaware line. I'm a goin' to sail you past Snow Hill agin an'double on 'em. Yes, Miss Virgie, I'll git you away if it costs all Ihave got together."
An excited light seemed to be in his eyes.
Virgie was put in a loft over the kitchen of the house, and left to hercontemplations. The place was nearly dark, and she was jaded for want ofsleep, the past night's excitement having shaken her nervous system, andsoon she began to doze fitfully, and dream almost awake.
She saw Meshach Milburn, who seemed to have become a little, old-facedchild, reaching up to an older person, very like himself in features,and taking a steeple hat from his hand. This older child reached back,and took a similar hat from another, still older; and then the first twovanished, and two old men were giving and receiving the hat.
Then nothing was left but the hat alone, which was a huge object withfire belching from it, and by the flame a circle of wizards went roundand round in dizzy glee, all wearing hats of similar form, but higher,higher, till they reached the sky and stars, and each was spoutingflames.
Among these riotous wizards she recognized the features of the tallkidnapper and of Judge Custis; and Vesta, too, was there, and old AuntHominy, all giving a hasty look of shame or sorrow or severity at her,till she, fearing, yet fascinated, leaped into the circle, and dancedaround and around with the rest, till her feet made a fiery path and herhead was burning hot, and finally she lost her balance, and fell intothe great hat, whose high walls, like mountains, surrounded her, andnothing could she see in the bottom of the old felt tile but a littlegrave, and peeping from it was the face of the murdered child thekidnapper had taken away.
"Come," said a voice, and Virgie awoke, with fever in her temples andhot hands, to see the head of her conductor looking into the loft as ifwith red-hot eyeballs.
She only knew that she was going again in the old wagon, and a boy wasin it, and that after a certain time, she could not tell how long, shewas helped to the ground at an old landing, where the road stopped, andwas placed on board a sort of scow, which the breeze, laden withmosquitoes, was carrying into a broad, islet-sprinkled water.
The man Hudson was sounding, and was watching the sail, while the boysteered, and Virgie was lying, sick and cold, in the middle of theskiff, covered with the man's large coat.
It seemed to her to be afternoon, and the ocean somewhere near, as sheheard low thunder, like breaking waves; and once, when she rose, in astupefied way, to look, there were familiar objects on both shores, andshe thought it was the Old Town beach near Snow Hill inlet.
A little later the man brought her oysters and some cold pork-rib, withcorn-bread, to eat, and the shores grew closer, and finally seemedalmost to meet, as the skiff, scraping the bottom, darted through anarrow strait.
Then the stars were shining over her, and the waters grew wide again,and, lying in a trance of flying lights and images, sh
e thought she felther lips kissed, and a voice say "Darling!"
Finally, she felt lifted up and carried, and, when she could realize thesituation, she found herself lying on a pile of shingles at an oldwharf, and the man, beside her, was weeping, as he watched the boatreceding down a moonlit aisle of wave.
"My boy, my poor ole woman," she heard her conductor mutter, "I nevercan come back to you no mo'!"
"Why?" spoke Virgie, hardly realizing what she said.
"Because--because--_you_ did it!" the man exclaimed, with ardent eyes,seen through his streaming tears.
"Oh, tell me where I am!" Virgie said. "Is it far to freedom now?"
She looked at the sky, all agitated with clouds and stars moving acrosseach other, and it seemed the nearest world of all.
"Is my father there?" thought Virgie, "my dear white father? Can he seeme here, sick and lonely, and hate me?"
"We're at de Shingle landing; yonder is St. Martin's," said the negro,cautiously; "there's two roads nigh whar we air, goin' to the North,dear Virgie; one is the stage-road, and t'other is the shingle-trailthrough the Cypress Swamp.
"Take the road that's the safest to Freedom," Virgie sighed.
In a few moments, walking over the ground, they came to a place wherethe cart-trail crossed a sandy road, and went beyond it, along the edgeof a small stream. The man walked a few steps up the better roadundecidedly, and suddenly drew Virgie back into the bushes, but notquick enough to be unobserved by two men coming on in an old, rattlingwagon.
"My skin!" cried the man driving, a youngish man, of sharp, but notunkindly eyes, "thar's a sniptious gal. Come out yer and show yourself!"
Virgie felt the man's eyes resting on her, but not with the coarse ardorof his companion, who wore a wide slouched hat and red shirt, and wasbandaged around the head and throat, yet from his ghastly pale face,like death, on which some blood seemed to be smeared, and to stain thebandage at his neck, lay a coarse leer, and he kissed his mouth at her,and uttered:
"_O flexuosa! esquisita!_ It is dainty, Sorden!"
"Now ef we was a going t'other way, Van Dorn," the driver said, "wecould give them a lift. Boy, what are you out fur? Where's your passes?"
"Yer they is. It's my wife an' me, gwyn to nurse a lady in Delaware."
"Let me see!" He puffed his cigar upon the paper, and exclaimed, "PrissyHudson? why, my skin! that's my wife's nurse. And that ain't the samewoman! where did you get this pass?"
"Go on, Sorden!" coughed the other man, "I'm bleeding. Let me lie down."
His eyes had lost their wanton fire, and were hollow and glazing. Thedriver caught him in his arms, and uttered the kind words,
"I love him as I never loved A male!"
"Give me back the passes!" exclaimed the mulatto man, as the wagonstarted south.
"No," shouted the driver, "I shall keep them as evidence against PrissyHudson for assisting a runaway!"
"Lost! lost!" muttered the mulatto. "Now, darling, the swamp's our onlyroad!"
He seized her in his flight, and pulled her up the cart-track along theswampy branch.
"What have you done?" cried Virgie.
"Come! come!" answered the man. "Here is no place to talk."
With fever making her strong, and heightening, yet clouding, herimpressions, so that time seemed extinct, and fear itself absorbed infrenzy, the girl followed the man into the deep sand of the track, andscarcely noted the melancholy cypress-trees rising around them out ofpools that sucked poison from the starlight, basking there beside thereptile.
Flowers, with such rich tints that night scarcely darkened them, sent uptheir musky perfumes, and vines, in silent festoons, drooped from hightips of giant trees like Babel's aspiring builders, turned back andstricken dumb. They fell all limp, and, hanging there in death, theirbeards still seemed to grow in the ghastly vitality of an immortaldream.
The sounds of restless animation, intenser in the night, as if the moonwere mistress here, and wakened every insect brain and tongue toindustry, grew prodigious in the sick girl's ears, and seemed to deadenevery word her male companion had to say, and, like enormous pendulumsof sound, the roaming crickets and amphibia swung to and fro theircontradictions, like viragos doomed to wait for eternity, and eachinsist upon the last word to say:
"You did!" "You didn't!" "You did!" "You didn't, you didn't, youdidn't!" "You did, you did!"
Thus the eternal quarrel, begun before Hector and the Greeks were born,had raged in the Cypress Swamp, and increased in loudness every night,till on the flying slave girl's ears it pealed like God and Satandisputing for her soul.
As this idea increased upon her fancy she heard the very words thesewarring powers hurled to and fro, as now the myriads of the angelscheered together, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" and, like an army ofspiders, assembled in the swamp, a deep refrain of "Hell, hell, hell!"groaned back.
"Hallelujah!" "Hell!" "Hallelujah!"
She found herself crying, as she stumbled on, "Hallelujah! hallelujah!"
The swamp increased in depth and solemnity as they drew near the rushingsluices of the Pocomoke, and kept along them, the trail being now a mereditch and chain of floating logs where no vehicle could pass, and theman himself seemed frightened as he led the way from trunk to float andpuddle to corduroy, sometimes balancing himself on a revolving log, oragain plunging nearly to his waist in vegetable muck; but thelight-footed girl behind had the footstep of a bird, and hopped as iffrom twig to twig, and seemed to slide where he would sink; and the manoften turned in terror, when he had fallen headlong from sometreacherous perch, to see her slender feet, in crescent sandals, play inthe moonlit jungle like hands upon a harp.
He stared at her in wonder, but too wistfully. The cat-briers hungacross the opening, and grapevines, like cables of sunken ships, fellmany a fathom through the crystal waves of night; but the North Starseemed to find a way to peep through everything, and Virgie heard thewords from Hudson, once, of--
"Jess over this branch a bit we is in Delaware!"
Then the crickets and tree-frogs, the bullfrogs and the whippoorwills,the owls and everything, seemed to drown his voice and halloo for hours,"We is in Delaware! we is, we is! we is in Del-a-a-ware!"
A little warming, kindly light at length began to blaze their trailalong, as if some gentle predecessor, with a golden adze, had chippedthe funereal trees and made them smile a welcome. Small fires wereburning in the vegetable mould or surface brush, and the opacity of theforest yielded to the pretty flame which danced and almost sang in ahousehold crackle, like a young girl in love humming tunes as shekindles a fire.
The mighty swamp now grew distinct, yet more inaccessible, as its inneredges seemed transparent in the line of fires, like curtains of laceagainst the midnight window-panes. The Virginia creeper, light as theflounces of a lady, went whirling upward, as if in a dance; the fallengiant trees were rich in hanging moss; laurel and jasmine appearedbeyond the bubbling surface of long, green morass, where life of somekind seemed to turn over comfortably in the rising warmth, like sleepersin bed.
Suddenly the man took Virgie up and carried her through a stream ofrunning water, brown with the tannin matter of the swamp.
"We is in Delaware," he said, soon after, as they reached a camp ofshingle sawyers, all deserted, and lighted by the fire, the golden chipsstrewn around, and the sawdust, like Indian meal, that suggested good,warm pone at Teackle Hall to Virgie.
She put her feet, soaked with swamp water, at a burning log to warm, andhardly saw a mocasson snake glide round the fire and stop, as if to dartat her, and glide away; for Virgie's mind was attributing this kindlyfire to the presence of Freedom.
"Oh, I should like to lie here and go to sleep," she said, languidly; "Iam so tired."
The man Hudson, wringing wet with the journey's difficulties, threw hisarms around her and drew her to his damp yet fiery breast.
"We will sleep here, then," he breathed into her lips; "I love you!"
The incoherence of everything yielded to t
hese sudden words, and on theyoung maid's startled nature came a reality she had not understood: herguide was drunken with passion.
She struggled in his arms with all her might, but was as a switch in amaniac's hands.
"I stole my ole woman's pass fur you," the infatuated ruffian sighed;"you said you would love the man who got you one, Virgie. You is mine!"
A suffocating sense and heat, more than animal nature, seemed to enclosethem. The girl struggled free, her lithe figure exerted with all herdying strength to preserve her modesty.
"Hudson," she cried, "I will tell your wife! God forgive you forinsulting a poor, sick, helpless girl in this wild swamp!"
"My wife is dead to me, Virgie. You is the only wife I has now. Here weshall sleep and forgit my children and my little home that was enoughfur me, gal, till your beauty come and tuk me from it."
"Stop!" the girl called, with her face blanched even in her fever,though not with fear, as her white blood rose proudly. "If you do notkeep away, I will throw myself in that deep pool and drown. I wouldrather die than cheat your good wife as you have done."
"Nothing is yer," the negro said, "but you, an' me, an' Love. I wouldnot let you drown. You are too beautiful. We will get to the free statestogether and live for each other. Kiss me!"
He darted upon her again and bent her fair head back by the fallenbraids of her silky hair.
The tall woods filled with majestic light; something roared as if thewinds had gone astray and were rushing towards them.
"Hark!" cried Virgie. "God is coming to punish you."
As she spoke the ground beside them burst into flames and black smoke.The man's arms relaxed; he looked around him and exclaimed,
"It's the underground fire. Run fur your life!"
He led the way, running to the north, as they had been going. In amoment fire, like a golden wall, rose across their path.
They turned whence they had come, and the fire there was like a lake oflava, and over it the enormous trees seemed to warm their hands, and upthe dry vines, like monkeys of flame, the forked spirits of the burningearth dodged and chased each other.
"Gal, I can't leave you to perish," the desperate man shouted; "you mustlove me or we'll die together."
He threw his wet great-coat around her head, so that she could notbreathe the smoke nor spoil her beauty, and dashed into the fire aheadof them.
* * * * *
Virgie awoke, lying upon the ground, the stars still standing in thesky, but some streaks of light in the east betokening dawn.
Her hands were full of soot, her skirts were burned, some smarting painswere in her legs and feet, but she could walk.
"Where is that poor, deluded man?" she thought.
A groan came from the ground, and there lay something nearly naked,burrowing his face in a pool of swamp water.
"Thank the Lord you are not dead," the girl said, "but have lived torepent and be a better man."
He rose up and looked at her with a face all blackened and raw andhideous to see.
"Merciful Lord!" exclaimed Virgie; "what ails you, pore man?"
"The Lord has punished me for my wickedness," he groaned. "Virgie, youmust lead me now; I am gone blind."