CHAPTER XLI.
AUNT PATTY'S LAST TRICK.
Opposite McLane's room was the vestibule to the slave-pen in the garret,a room Van Dorn usually slept in. With her emotions profoundly excited,though she had not revealed them--her modesty having received a stabthat now brought bitter tears to her eyes, and blushes, unseen except bythe angels, whose white wings had hidden them from her tempter--Vestafled into this room to deliberate upon her dire extremity.
Three persons only were now in the house, each one an interested partyin her ruin; the man she had left, and Cy James, who was full ofcowardly passion for her, and Patty Cannon, who, in her present frame ofmind, would gloat to see Hulda's virtue sacrificed as somethinginconsequential and merry and heartless.
"Perhaps I can fly to our old house across the State Line, and takerefuge with the new tenant there," Hulda thought. "Oh! I wish Van Dornwas here; he is so brave; and when he left me his kiss was like myfather's."
Chains clanked, and the drone of low hymns came down the hatchway fromthe slave-pen.
"There is a white man up there," Hulda reflected; "dare I go up to see?"
She unlocked the padlock, and stepped up the ladder. At the pen door shepeeped, but could not make out anything in the blackness. Then shepulled the peg out of the staple, and walked into the sickly odor of thejail.
"How many are here?" Hulda asked. "I hear you, but cannot see."
"Three men, one old woman, and some little things, makes the presentcontents of Pangymonum," spoke up a rough, cheery voice, "an', by smoke!it's jess enough."
"Is it the white man that talks?"
"He says he's white, but they think it's goin' to be easy hokey-pokey topass him off for a nigger."
Her eyes soon recognized the speaker as he said, "By smoke! miss, you'renot much like a Johnson. I reckon you're Huldy."
"Yes, and you, sir?"
"I was Jimmy Phoebus before I was a nigger."
The girl went rapidly up to him, and put her arms around him.
"Thank God!" she said, "you are not dead. Levin Dennis, my dear friend,wept to think you were at the river bottom. But, quick, sir; I may becaught here. Are you all true to each other?"
"Yes, the traitor's cut his wizzen. Speak out, Huldy!"
"I heard Patty Cannon mutter that she was going to set her black manfree to kidnap for her. Hark! I must fly."
Hulda descended the ladder in time to surprise Cy James coming up. Hebent his goose neck down as he leaned his hands upon his knees, and,looking up into her face, ejaculated,
"Hokey-pokey! By smoke! And Pangymonum, too."
* * * * *
"Samson," said Jimmy Phoebus, as soon as Hulda disappeared, "gitready to be a first-class liar; I want you to take up Patty Cannon'soffer."
"An' leave you yer alone, Jimmy? I can't do it."
"Don't be a fool, Samson. Ironed here, we can't help nobody. Make yourway to Seaford and Georgetown, and go round the Cypress Swamp toPrencess Anne. Alarm the pungy captains; fur Johnson'll try to run us bysail, I reckon, down the bay to Norfolk. I've got a file thatcymlin-headed feller give me, an' I reckon I'll git out of my ironsabout the time you git to Judge Custis's. There! ole Patty's coming."
"Go, Samson," spoke the Delaware colored man. "I'm younger than you, andI'll fight as heartily under Mr. Phoebus's orders."
Aunt Hominy's voice came in blank monologue out of the background:
"He tuk dat debbil's hat, chillen, an' measured us in wid little Vessy."
* * * * *
That evening there was a long, free conference between Samson and PattyCannon, in her kitchen, next to the bar, where Hulda heard laughing andinvitations to drink, and all the sounds of perfect equality, thenegro's piquant sayings and _bonhommie_ seeming to disarm and please thedesigning woman, whose familiarity was at once her influence and herweakness, and she lavished her sociable nature on blacks and whites.Samson was so fearless and observing that he betrayed no interest inescaping, and came slowly into the range of her temperament; but, asHulda peeped, towards midnight, into the kitchen, she saw old Samsonkindly patting juba, while Patty was executing a drunken dance.
As the latter dropped upon a pallet bed she had there, and fell into adoze, the colored man quietly raised the latch and walked off the tavernporch.
* * * * *
In the morning dawn horses and voices were heard by Hulda, and sherecognized Joe Johnson's steps in the house. He shook Patty Cannon, butcould not awaken her; then looked into Van Dorn's room, and found Hulda,apparently sound asleep, and heard his name called by Allan McLaneacross the hall:
"Joe! not so loud. Be conservative. Come in; I'm waiting for you. Is alldone and fetched?"
"The bloke with the steeple felt will never snickle," spoke the ruffian.
"Good, good, Joe! Vengeance is mine, and it's a conservative saying. Mydear sister is at peace."
"The two yaller pullets have slipped you; the abigail mizzled to thefuneral with your niece, and t'other dell must have smelt us, and hoppedthe twig."
"Not tasteful language at all, Joe. I don't understand you. Where arethe two bright wenches, Virgie and Roxy?"
"Roxie's in Baltimore; Virgie's run away."
"Run? Where? Don't trifle with me, Joe Johnson! Conservative as I am, Idon't like it, sir. Where could she have run?"
"There's no way for her to slip us but by water or through the CypressSwamp, Colonel. She ain't safe this side of Cantwell's bridge. Word hasgone out, and every road is watched."
"But Van Dorn is beaten back; he hasn't made a single capture; theniggers drove him out of Dover with firearms, and he is woundedsomewhere."
The tall kidnapper turned pale, and then consigned Van Dorn's shade toeternal torment.
"Don't swear before me, sir!" McLane, also irritated, exclaimed. "It'snot conservative, and I won't permit it. How do I know Meshach Milburnis dead? who did it?"
"Black Dave fired the barker, and saw him settled."
"Send him here!"
The negro came in, red-eyed, and hoarse with diseased lungs, and stood,the wreck of a once gigantic and regular man.
"Gi' me a drink," he muttered; "I'm mos' dead wi' misery an cold."
"Tell this man what you did," Joe Johnson spoke; "you waited till yousaw the hat at the window, and fired, and fetched hat an' man to theground?"
Swallowing a thimbleful of McLane's brandy, the negro grunted "Blood!"and looked tremblingly at his hands.
"What shape of hat was it?" McLane asked, shaking the negro savagely;"was it like this?" shaping his own soft slouched hat to a point.
Black Dave looked, and shook his head.
"Not like that? Damnation!"
"No swearing, Colonel, before us conservatives," ventured Joe Johnson;"what was the hat like, Dave? You're drunk."
"Like dis, I reckon." He modelled the crown into a bell form with hisfinger.
Joe Johnson and McLane looked at each other a minute with mutualaccusation and confusion, and the former unceremoniously knocked thenegro down with his great fist.
"No gold of mine for this job, Joe Johnson," said Allan McLane; "in yourconservatism to save your own skin, you have let your tool kill aninnocent man."
He waved his hand, with all his strong will, towards the door, and shutit in the kidnapper's face. Then, in haughty emotion, not like fear, butdisappointed pride and revenge, McLane sat down, glanced around him asif to determine the next movement, and instinctively reached his handtowards his Bible, which he opened at a marked page, and softly read,till tears of baffled vindictiveness and counterfeited humility stoppedhis voice, as follows:
"'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under theheaven: A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a timeto pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; atime to break down, and a time to build up ... God requireth that whichis past ... man hath no pre-eminence above a b
east, for all isvanity.... a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is hisportion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?'"
When tears of pious vindictiveness had closed the reading, ColonelMcLane spread his pongee handkerchief on the bare floor, and knelt insilent and comfortably assured prayer.
* * * * *
Black Dave had crawled into the room where Hulda partly heard theserevelations, and he entered the large closet under the concealed shaftto the prison pen, where his groans and mental agony touched Hulda'scommiseration. She opened the trap, and crawled there too.
"Hush, Dave!" she whispered. "What makes you so miserable?"
"Missy, I'se killed a man. Dey made me do it. I'll burn in torment. Lordsave me!"
"Dave," said Hulda, "my poor father died for his offences. You can do nomore; but, like him, you can repent."
"Oh, missy, I's black. Rum an' fightin' has ruined me. Dar's no way todo better. De law won't let me bear witness agin de people dat set meon. How kin I repent unless I confess my sin? De law won't let meconfess."
"Confess your poor, wracked soul to me, Dave. The Lord will hear you,though you dare not turn your face to him."
"Missy, once I was in de Lord's walk. My han's was clean, my face clar,my stummick unburnt by liquor. I stood in no man's way; at de churchdey put me fo'ward. My soul was happy. One day I licked a man bigger danme. It made me proud an' sassy. I backslid, an' wan't no good to behired out to steady people; so de taverns got me, an' den de kidnappersused me, an' now de blood of Cain an' Abel is on my forehead forever."
Hulda knelt by the murderer, and prayed with all her heart; not theself-conscious, special pleading of the prayer across the hall, but thehumble prayer of the penitent on Calvary: "Lord, we, of this felon den,ask to be with thee in Paradise."
* * * * *
The whole of the next day was spent in preparations for flight by Pattyand her son-in-law.
A boat of sufficient size, and crew to man it, had to be procured downthe river, and this necessitated two journeys, one of Patty, to Cannon'sFerry, another by Joe, to Vienna and Twiford's wharf.
During their absence Cy James was equally intent on something, and Huldasaw him in the ploughed field near the old Delaware cottage, under theswooping buzzards, directing the farmer where to guide his plough, andit seemed, in a little while, that one of the horses had fallen into apit there.
Later on Hulda observed Cy James, with a spade, digging at variousplaces near Patty Cannon's former cottage.
"All are at work for themselves," Hulda thought, "except Levin and me.How often have I seen Aunt Patty slip to secret places in the night, orby early dawn, when she looked every window over to see if she waswatched. Her beehives were her greatest care."
A sudden thought made Hulda stand still, and cast the color from hercheeks.
"They are all going away. I shall be taken, too, or kept for worse evilhere. My mother, in Florida, hates me; she has told me so. I know themarriage Allan McLane means for me--to be his white slave! Levin ispoor, and his mother is poor, too; they say Patty Cannon has buriedgold. Perhaps God will point it out to me."
She slipped down the Seaford road, and walked up the lane in the fieldsshe knew so well. No person was in the hip-roofed cottage. Hulda wentamong the outbuildings, and began to inspect the beehives, made ofsections of round trees, and the big wooden flower-pots Patty Cannon hadleft behind her.
She was only interrupted by a gun being fired in the ploughed field, andsaw the pertinacious buzzards there fall dead from the air as theyexasperated the ploughman.
* * * * *
"I shall have one piece of fun in Maryland before I go," Hulda heard herstepfather say, as he went past her bed to ascend the hatchway at morn,"and that is to burn the nigger who mugged me. This is his day."
Almost immediately he came, cursing, down the ladder, followed by ajeering laugh from above, and the cry, "We'll all see you hanged yit, bysmoke! an' mash another egg on your countenance, nigger-buyer!"
In a moment or two a tremendous quarrel was going on below stairsbetween the kidnapper and his wife's mother, and Hulda believed theywere murdering each other; and, peeping once to see, beheld Johnsonholding Patty to the floor, and stuffing her elegant hair, which hadbeen torn out in the scuffle, into her mouth.
"I'll be the death of you, old fence, before I go," he shouted; "theverdict would be, 'I did the county a service.'"
"Come away there!" cried Allan McLane, pushing past Hulda and betweenthe combatants. "Shame on you, Joe! To whip your grandmother is hardlyconservative. Here is an errand that will pay you well: my wench Virgiehas been caught."
The kidnapper released the woman and turned to his guest.
"Good news!" he said; "ef it puts my neck in the string, I'll fetch herfur you."
His countenance had begun to assume a sensual expression, when PattyCannon, to whom his back was turned, rushed upon him like a tornado,lifted him from his feet, and threw him through the back door into theyard and bolted him out. McLane retreated by the other door.
"Thank heaven!" reflected Hulda, looking down in terror, "no one ismurdered yet, and I have another day of grace to wait for Levin."
* * * * *
"Cunnil McLane," said Patty Cannon, in his room that night, "whatinterest have you in the quadroon gal an' Huldy, too? You don't want' emboth, Cunnil?"
"No, Aunt Patty. All my views are conservative. Quite so! Hulda I wantto reform and model to my needs. She'll ornament me. By taking the girlVirgie from my niece Vesta, I desire to punish the latter for consentingto the degradation of our family, and marrying the forester, Milburn.She loves this quadroon; therefore, I want to deprive her of the girl:Joe is to bring her to me, do you see?"
His face expressed the indifference he felt to Virgie's safety on theway, and the coarse suggestion gave Patty Cannon her opportunity:
"Cunnil, there's but three in the house to-night; I am one."
"I am two, Patty."
"And three is purty Huldy, Cunnil!"
They looked at each other a few minutes in silence.
"There is two to one," said Patty Cannon, with a giggle. "We have noneighbors that air not used to noises yer."
The silence was restored while the two products of men-dealing read eachother's countenances.
"I made a very conservative and liberal proposition to her, Patty, andshe insulted me, yet beautifully. But I owe her a grudge for it."
"Insulted you, Cunnil? The ongrateful huzzy! Can't you insult her back?She never dared to disobey _me_. Her pride once broke down, she'll belike other gals, I reckon."
"That's true, no doubt. But, Patty, haven't you a little remorse aboutit, considering she's your grandchild?"
"My mother had none fur me, honey," the old woman chuckled, familiarly.
"What is that story I have heard something of, about your origin,Patty?"
"I don't know no more about it, Cunnil, than a pore, ignorant gal would,you know. I've hearn my grandfather was a lord. A gypsy woman enticedhis son and he married her. His father drove him from his door, an' hiswife fetched him on her money to Canady, where she went into thesmugglin' business at St. John's, half-way between Montreal and theUnited States."
"And he was hanged there for assassinating a friend who detected him?"
"They says so, honey. Anyhow, he was hanged. We gals was beautiful. Saysmother: 'It's a hard world, but don't let it beat you, gals! Marry efyou kin. Anyway, you must live, and you can't live off of women.' Imarried a Delaware man, and so I quit bein' Martha Hanley and becamePatty Cannon."[7]
"And what a career you have led, Aunt Patty! Lived anywhere but in thisold pocket between the bays, you would have had the reputation ofCaptain Kidd. Tell me now, conservatively, was not your own helplesschildhood the cause of your mistakes, and does it never make you feelfor other sparrow-birds like Hulda?"
The bl
ack-haired woman, with a certain evil-thinking, like one reflectedupon harshly, finally clapped her bold black eyes on McLane's, andreplied, chuckling:
"I don't know as it do, Cunnil. Before my mother pinted the way, I lovedthe men. I loved 'em to be bad. Mommy tuk us as we drifted. An' as furHuldy yer, her mother throws her onto me; she's not like the Cannons an'Johnsons; she's full of pride, and," with an oath, "let it be tuk out ofher! Will you pay my price?"
He hesitated.
"It's not the price, Patty; it's the way. Isn't it cowardly?"
"Yes," said Patty, saucily, "it's kidnappin'. That's the trade yer. Paydown the money, Cunnil, an' this bare room will brighten to be yourwedding chamber. Pah! are you a man!"
Her words aroused the visions self-love can reluctantly repulse, andwhich, entertained but an instant, grow irresistible.
The limber, maturing, rounding form of Hulda stepped on the footstool ofhis mind, touched his knee, and exhaled the aroma of her youth like asubtile musk, till he leaned back languidly, as if he smoked a pipe andon its bowl her bust was painted, and all her modesties dissolved intothe intoxication. Brutality itself grew natural to this vision, as afiercer joy and substitute for the deceit he could no longer practice.The child had flown from her in the instant of his grasping it, like apale butterfly, but there remained where it had floated, a silken andnubile essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts andsweet respect, the profanation of which would be as rare a game asSatan's struggle with the soul of Eve.
Her innocence and spirit, self-respect and awakened womanlyconsciousness, weakness and sensibility, mettle and beauty, presentedthemselves by turns; and the cold, woodeny room, the neglected tavern,the autumn night wind coming down the chimney and starting the fire, allseemed instinctive, like him, with mischief, as if Patty Cannon's soulflew astraddle of a broom and led a hundred witches.
McLane was fifty; his family was a stiff commercial one, that hadgenerally kept demure, yet grasping, and practised the conservatism healso boasted of, but had departed from: he was the outlaw of the house,yet elevating its tenets into an aggressive shibboleth, the more so thathe prospered by anti-progress.
He was a backer of domestic slave-dealers, and put his money into formsof gain men hesitated at; not only at the curbstone, for usury, butbehind pawnbrokers and sporting men, in lottery companies andliquor-houses, and, it was said, in the open slave-trade, too, clippersfor which occasionally stole out of the Chesapeake on affected tradingerrands to the East Indies, and came home with nothing but West Indiafruits.
He strove to maintain his credit by ostentatious abhorrence of noveltiesand heterodoxies, and of all liberal agitations, and had the sublimehardihood to carry his Bible into every sink of shame, as if it was thenatural baggage of a gentleman, and expected with him; and he wouldrebuke "blasphemy" while bidding at the slave auction or sitting in abar-room full of kidnappers, among many of whom he passed for areligious standard.
No portion of that Bible gave him any delight or occupation, however,except the Old Testament, with its thoroughgoing codes of servitude,concubinage, and an-eye-for-an-eye. He knew the Jewish laws better thanthe Scribes and Pharisees in the time of Herod and John, and hadpersuaded himself that the mental endorsement and, wherever possible,the practice of these, constituted a firm believer. Revenge,intolerance, formality, and self-sleekness had become so much his theorythat he did not know himself whether he was capable of doing evilprovided he wanted anything.
Not particularly courageous, he was so destitute of sensibility that hefelt no fear anywhere; and, generally going among his low whiteinferiors, he was in the habit of being looked up to, and ratherpreferred their society. On everything he had an opinion, and permittedno stranger in Baltimore to entertain any. The riot spirit, so early andso frequent in that town, reposed upon such vulturous and self-conscioussocial pests as he, ever claiming to be the public tone of Maryland.
"Patty," said Allan McLane, in his hare-lip and bland, yet hard, voice,like mush eaten with a bowie-knife, "I may pay you this money and youmay fail to deliver the property. Will she be tractable?"
"Cunnil, I'll scare her most to death. She'll hide from me yer by yourfire, and my voice outside the door will keep her in yer till day."
McLane went to his portmanteau and unlocked it, and took out rolls ofnotes and a buckskin bag of gold.
The yellow lustre seemed to flash in Patty Cannon's rich black eyes,like the moon overhead upon a well.
"How beautiful it do shine, Cunnil!" she said. "Nothing is like it fur afriend. Youth an' beauty has to go together to be strong, but, by God!gold kin go it alone."
He counted out two piles, one of notes and one of gold, using his goldspectacles upon his hawk nose to do so, and said:
"Patty, I've bought many a grandchild _with_ the old woman, but this isthe first child I have bought _from_ the grandmother. Now fulfil yourcontract and earn your money!"
He put his spectacles in his pocket, stretched his gaitered slippersbefore the fire, looked at his watch and let the crystal seal drop onhis sleek abdomen, and his vitreous, blue-green eyes filled with colorlike twin vases in a druggist's window. He was ready and anxious tosubstitute the ruffian for the tempter.
Patty Cannon, glancing at the money on the table, and bearing a lamp,started at once through the house, calling "Huldy! Huldy!"
Nothing responded to the name.
She searched from room to room, peering everywhere, and made the circuittwice, and, taking a lantern, went into the windy night and round thebounds of the old tavern.
The house was easily explored, having no cellar nor outbuildings, andthe trap to the slave-pen was locked fast. The girl's shawl and hat werealso gone.
"She's heard us, I reckon," the old woman muttered; "she's run away an'ruined me. Joe's cruel to me; Van Dorn is gone; without gold I go to thepoor-house. McLane is pitiless--"
She dwelt upon the sentence, and, with only an instant's hesitation,turned into the tavern again and buttoned the outer door.
Beneath her feather bed she reached her hand and drew out a largeobject, took a horn from the mantel and sprinkled it with somethingcontained there, and then, in a bold, masculine walk, stamping hard wentin the dark up the open stairs again, talking, as she advanced, loudly,complaisantly, or sternly, as if to some truant she was coaxing orforcing. Finally, at McLane's chamber, she knocked hard, crying:
"Open, Cunnil! Here's the bashful creatur! She daren't disobey no mo'.Step out and kiss her, Cunnil!"
"Ha!" said McLane, throwing open his door, out of which the full lightof fire and candles gleamed, "conservative, is she? Well, let herenter!"
As he made one step to penetrate the darkness with his dazzled eyes,Patty Cannon silently thrust against his heart a huge horse-pistol andpulled the trigger: a flash of fire from the sharp flint against thefresh powder in the pan lit up the hall an instant, and the heavy bodyof the guest fell backward before his chair, and over him leaned thewoman a moment, still as death, with the heavy pistol clubbed, ready tostrike if he should stir.
He did not move, but only bled at the large lips, ghastly andunprotesting, and the cold blue eyes looked as natural as life.
Patty Cannon took the chair and counted the money.