George Alfred Townsend

“ Meshach!" rang the half-human cry, "Hoo! hoo! Vesty! Vesty! Sweet! sweet! sweet! Ha, ha! See me! See me! Meshach, he! Vesty, she! She! she! she! Hoot! hoot! ha!"
Rapidly changing her view, with her ears no less than her heart tingling at the use of her own name, Vesta saw on the dusty wooden mantel a common bird of a gray color, with dashes of brown and black upon his wings, and a whitish breast, and he was greatly agitated, as if he meant to fly upon her or upon some other intruder she could not see.
His eyes, of black pupils upon yellowish eyeballs, sparkled with nervous activity. ”

“ Custis replied, "your day is young. Life looks hopeful to you. I am growing old, and where is the arm on which I should be leaning? What are we but two women left? There is another passage on which I often think when we sit so often alone: 'Two women shall be grinding at the mill: the one shall be taken and the other left!' Is that you, or is it I? Listen, my child! it is time that you should feel the melancholy truth! Your father's habits have mastered him. He is beyond reclamation!"
Vesta was kneeling, and she slowly raised her head and looked at her mother, with her nostrils dilated. ”

“ I love you, too, with the ardor of a lover, stronger than all, because I must possess you to possess myself; because you kindle flame in me, and my humanity of pity is trampled down by my humanity of desire; I cannot hear your appeal to escape! I am deaf to sentiments of honor and courtesy, if they let you slip me! Give yourself to me, and these better angels may prevail, being perhaps accessory to the mighty instinct I obey at the command of the Creator!"
As he proceeded, Vesta saw shine in Meshach Milburn's face the very ecstacy of love. ”

“ Hulda took the silver pieces and looked at them a moment with girlish delight:
"Oh, grandma, how kind you are! Why do you speak so mad at me when you give me these pretty things? They seem almost warm in my bosom as I put them there, like things with life. Let me kiss you for them!"
She rose from the chair and approached the mistress of the house, who sat in a strange terror, not forbidding the embrace, yet almost shuddering as Hulda stooped and pressed her pure young lips to the blanched and dissipated face of Patty Cannon. ”

“ But what can I do to show my love—poor naked slave that I am? They say they will soon set me free. Mary, how do people feel when they are free?"
"They don't appreciate it," sighed Mary. "They go and put themselves in captivity again, like selfish things: they falls in love."
"But to love and be free!" Virgie said, her bosom glowing in the thought till her rich eyes seemed to shed warmth and starlight on her companion's face; "to give your own free love to some one and feel him grateful for it: what a gift and what a joy is that! ”

“ Vesta said, "although he is your brother. His unfeeling respectability, his unchangeableness, his want of every impulse but hate, his appropriation of our family honor, as if he was our lawgiver and high-sheriff, his secretiveness, formal religion, and mysterious prosperity, I do not appreciate, much as I have tried to be charitable to him. I do not like Baltimore as I do the Eastern Shore; it is fierce, hard, and suspicious."
"You shall not run down Baltimore before me," Mrs. Custis cried, hotly. "It is a paradise to this region; and comparing Meshach Milburn to your uncle is blasphemy." ”

“ That faithful nurse was gone; the wild plum-tree grew upon her grave; but Virgie inherited the motherly instinct and added the sisterly sympathy, and her rich hair, half unbound, streamed down on Vesta's temples among the dark ringlets there, while she looked into her own spirit for a word to check those tears, and found it:
"People will say you have been crying, dear missy. The Lord knows you did right. Don't let anybody make you lose your faith till your master, your husband, does wrong to you; he wouldn't like to have you cry." ”

“ No, Virgie and I will both remain, and you conciliate mamma. All is going well. Really, I am happy and grateful to my Heavenly Father that he is smoothing the way so gently, that I thought would be so hard."
"Oh, the conditions of this disease are repulsive, my child. You are a lady."
"No, I am a woman," said Vesta; "that man and I must see one or the other die. You do not know how easy it is for a woman to nurse a man. Though love might make the task more grateful, yet gratitude will do much to sweeten it. He has loved me and taken the shadow from your old age for me. ”

“ Vesta remarked, with natural compassion, "and you compliment me so warmly that it relieves the strain of this encounter a little. Do not draw a woman's attention to your defects, as she might otherwise be charmed by your voice."
"That also is a part of my sacrifice," said Meshach, "like the money which I have accumulated. Without a teacher, but love and hope, I have educated myself to be fit to talk to you. It is all crude now, like a crow that I have taught to speak, but encouragement will make me confident and saucy, and you will forget my sable raiment—even my hat." ”

“ Her dark clouds slowly passed away as Levin turned from the place, but her small head and abundant raven hair showed the blood troubled to the roots, and the eyes, once rich with midnight depths, now glazing in the course of time, like old window panes, by age, searched the bandit's face with a strange fear:
"Van Dorn, time and pleasure cannot kill you: how well you look to-day. I think you are a boy, to be ruined again every time you love me, you blush so modestly. Where is that pot of color you paint your cheeks with even before me, whose blushes none can recollect? Why do you love me?" ”

“ It must be some one who does not despise me. I hear Miss Vesta's beau, Master William, read the beautiful service, with his sweet, submissive face, and I think to myself, 'How freely he might have my heart to comfort his if he would take it like a gentleman!' I would be his slave to make him happy, if he could love me purely, like my mother! ”

“ What would Van Dorn do in Levin's place?
The words of Van Dorn, not a quarter of an hour old, spoke aloud in Levin's echoing consciousness: "Think nothing of me. Refer every act to some faithful man and go and do the same!"
Levin looked up, and the very clouds, now swollen dark in spite of starshine, seemed hurrying on Dover. The night-birds were crying "Mercy! mercy!" the lizards and tree-frogs seemed to cross each other's voices, piping "Time! time! time!"
"Huldy!" Levin whispered, and let the reins fall loose, and his animal darted through Camden town to the north. ”

“ Vesta sat down in the fairy rocker, and detained him.
"You have told me the feeling you think you had, Mr. Milburn. Poor as we Custises are now, it will not do to be proud. How did you ever think that feeling could be returned by me? My youth, my connections, everything, would forbid me, without haughtiness, to see a suitor in you. Then, you took no means to turn my attention towards you. You could have been neighborly, had you desired. You did not even wear the commonest emblems of a lover—"
She paused. Milburn said to himself:
"Ah! that accursed Hat." ”

“ And you have been sold and run away in nearly every slave state? Politely, sir, are they not kidnapping white men, too? Who is this Morgan that was stolen last year in the State of New York?"
"Oh, that's a renegade Free Mason, Mr. Ransom. As much fuss is made over him as if we did not steal a hundred free people every day. It only shows that kidnapping of all sorts is getting to be unpopular. If a new political party can be made on stealing one white Morgan, don't you think another party will some day rise on stealing several millions of black Morgans?" ”

“ Out yonder beyond Dividing Creek, in the thickets of small oak and low pines, many a little farm, scratched from the devouring forest, speckling the plains and wastes with huts and with little barns of logs, once bore the name of Milburn through all the localities of the Pocomoke to and beyond the great Cypress Swamp. They are dying, but never dead. The few who live expect no recognition from me, and, happy in their poverty, envy me nothing I have accumulated. ”

“ But the beautiful river, with frequent bluffs of sand and woods, flowing two hundred yards wide in stately tide, and bearing up to Cannon's Ferry fish-boats and pungies, Yankee schooners and woodscows, and the signs of life, however lowly, that floated in blue smoke from many hearths, or sounded in oars, rigging, and lading, seemed to Hulda human joy and power, and she cried to Levin:
"Levin, oh, look! Did you ever see as big a place as this? Yonder is the road to Seaford, just as far as we have come! The big ships are taking corn for West Indies, and bringing sugar and molasses. ”

“ Custis into your confidence before this marriage?"
She looked at him with the entreaty of one in doubt, who would be resolved. "Advise me," she said. "I want to do the best for all, and spare all bitter words, which rankle so long. Is it necessary to tell my mother?"
"No. You are a free woman. I know your age—though I shall forget it by and by." This first gleam of humor rather became his strange face. "If you tell your father, it is enough."
"I hope I am doing right," Vesta said, "and now I shall take my hour to my soul and my Saviour. Sir, do you ever pray?"
Milburn recoiled a little. ”

“ Custis remarked, filling her palm and brow with the cologne. "What is man's whole work with a woman but deceit? To court her for her money, to kiss her into taking her money out of good mortgages and putting it into bog iron ore? To tell her when past middle life that she has nothing to live upon, except the charity of the public, or her reluctant friends. All this for an experiment! The Custis family are all knaves or fools. Your father is a monster."
Vesta went to her mother's side and bathed her forehead. ”

“ Vesta searched her mind, thinking she must alight upon some such example there, but none suited the case. Meshach took advantage of her silence:
"The gifts of a lover are everywhere steps to love, as I have understood. He makes his impression with them; they are expected. Nothing creates happiness like a gift, and it is an old saying that blessings await him who gives, and also her who takes, and that to seek and ask and knock are praiseworthy."
"Oh," said Vesta, "but to be bought, Mr. Milburn? To be weighed against a father's debts—is it not degrading?" ”

“ Vesta Custis often saw the odd little man come into church while she was singing, and she fancied that his large, coarse ears were turned to receive the music she was making, and she faintly remembered that once she had held in her hands that wonderful hat with its copper buckle in the band, and stiff, wide brim, flowing in a wave. More than that she knew nothing, except that the wearer was an humble-born, grasping creature—a forester without social propensities, or, indeed, any human attachments. ”

“ Look upon it, then, as a duty, such as you expect in others—in your slave maid, for instance."
"Alas!" Vesta said, "she may marry freely. I am the slave."
"No, Miss Vesta, she has been free, but, sold among strangers with your father's effects, will feel so perishing for sympathy and protection that love, in whatever ugly form it comes, will be God's blessing to her poor heart. What you repel in the revulsion of fortune—the yoke of a husband—millions of women have bent to as if it was the very rainbow of promise set in heaven."
"How do you know so much of women's trials, Mr. Milburn? ”

“ Ruth was poor kin, but she turned from the harvest stubble that made her beautiful feet bleed, to crawl to the feet of old Boaz and find wifely rest, and her wisdom of choice we sing in the psalms of King David, and hear in the proverbs of King Solomon, sons of her sons."
"I am not thinking of myself, God knows!" said Vesta. "Gladly could I teach a little school, or be a governess somewhere, or, like our connection, the mother of Washington, ride afield in my sun-bonnet and straw hat and oversee the laborers." ”

“ Little hopes are often better than great ones, for o'er-great hopes swamp little vessels. Even hope must be artfully shaped and skilfully dropped to take hold of the unseen bottoms of opportunity. All of us have entertained burdensome hopes, heavy anchors, and they would not hold us against the breakers; but there may be little hopes, carried in advance of us, that will draw us into pleasant sounds and bays."
"We owe to you, Rhoda, this comforting hope," said Vesta, "and, while you are with us, we shall teach you to read more confidently." ”

“ They laughed again, and Vesta's hair, shaken down by her merriment, fell nearly to her slipper, like the skin of some coal-black beast, that had sprung down a poplar's trunk.
"Ah! well," exclaimed Vesta, as her maid entered and proceeded to wind up this satin cordage on her crown, "what men are in their minds, can woman know? Old ladies, not unfrequently, wear their old coal-scuttle bonnets long past the fashion, but it is from want. This man is his own master and not poor. His companion is a negro, and his taste a mouldy hat, old as America. ”

“ We get gold to equalize nobility in women; beauty is luxurious, and demands adornment and a rich setting; the richest man in Princess Anne is not good enough for you, and the mere boys your mind has been filled with are more unworthy of being your husband than the humble creditor of your father. Such a creation as Miss Vesta required a special sacrifice and success in the character of her husband. The annual life of this peninsula could not match you, and a monster had to be raised to carry you away. ”