The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times

George Alfred Townsend

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• Publié par: noshor
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Entailed Hat, by George Alfred Townsend

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Title: The Entailed Hat  Or, Patty Cannon's Times

Author: George Alfred Townsend

Release Date: August 30, 2006 [EBook #19146]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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THE ENTAILED HAT

OR

PATTY CANNON'S TIMES

A Romance

B Y GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND

"GATH"

NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1884

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.

TO

JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER

OF DELAWARE

AND

HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL

OF MARYLAND

LOVERS OF OLD TIMES

WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA

"Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable."—C ARLYLE :Sartor Resartus

INTRODUCTION.

Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew no place well, though his occupation had taken him to many, and that, after twenty-five years of describing localities and society, he would be identified with none.

"Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he a sked, feeling the vacant spaces in his nature: the want of all those birds, forest trees, household habits, weeds, instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of the local species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and complete the pastoral mind.

Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each attractive from some striking scene, or bold contrast, or lovely face; and wiser policy might have led his inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhap s, in wealth or literary appreciation; yet the heart began to turn, as in first love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to the little, lowly region where his short childhood was lived, and where the unknown generations of his people darkened the sand—the peninsula between the Chesapeake and the Delaware.

Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow H ill, on the border of Virginia; there the pilgrim entered the court-house, and asked to see an early book of wills, and in it he turned to the name of a maternal ancestor, of whom grand tales had been told him by an aged relative. His breath was almost taken by finding the following provisions, dated February 12, 1800:

"I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, MY BEST HAT, TO HIM AND HIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no more of my estate.

"I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my brandy still, all my hand- irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen pounds bond that he gave to my daughter, Grace Milbourn."

The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds through "the Forest," as a neighboring tract was almost too invidiously called, and through a deserted iron-furnace; village almost of the date of these wills.

Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the stranger in the land of his forefathers, to appear in the vistas, as if some odd, reverend, avoided being was wearing it down the defiles of time. Now like H ester Prynne wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his Iron Mask, this being took both sexes and different characters, as the author weighed the probabilities of its existence. At last he began to know it, and started to portray it in a little tale.

The story broke from its confines as his own family generation had broken from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, w herever the mystic Hat

proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by his mother's hand.

Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den, and her death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of that dreaded woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time, and her haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to be still living.

Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and is not only the narration of an episode, but the story of a large region compreh ending three state jurisdictions, and also of that period when modern life arose upon the ruins of old colonial caste.

CONTENTS.

I NTRO DUCTIO N . Chapter I.—T WO H AT W EARERS Chapter II.—J UDG EAND D AUG HTER Chapter III.—T HE F O RESTERS Chapter IV.—D ISCO VERYO FTHE H EIRLO O M Chapter V.—T HE B O G - O RE T RACT Chapter VI.—T HE C USTISES R UINED Chapter VII.—J ACK - O '- LANTERN I RO N Chapter VIII.—T HE H AT F INDSA R ACK Chapter IX.—H A ! HA ! THE W O O INGO N ' T Chapter X.—M ASTERINTHE K ITCHEN Chapter XI.—D YING P RIDE Chapter XII.—P RINCESS A NNE F O LKS Chapter XIII.—S HADO WO FTHE T ILE Chapter XIV.—M ESHACH ' S H O ME Chapter XV.—T HE K IDNAPPER Chapter XVI.—B ELL - CRO WN M AN Chapter XVII.—S ABBATHAND C ANO E Chapter XVIII.—U NDERAN O LD B O NNET Chapter XIX.—T HE D USKY L EVELS Chapter XX.—C ASTEWITHO UT T O NE Chapter XXI.—L O NG S EPARATIO NS Chapter XXII.—N ANTICO KE P EO PLE Chapter XXIII.—T WIFO RD ' S I SLAND Chapter XXIV.—O LD C HIMNEYS Chapter XXV.—P ATTY C ANNO N ' S Chapter XXVI.—V AN D O RN Chapter XXVII.—C ANNO N ' S F ERRY Chapter XXVIII.—P ACIFICATIO N

Chapter XXIX.—B EG INNINGO FTHE R AID Chapter XXX.—A FRICA Chapter XXXI.—P EACH B LUSH Chapter XXXII.—G ARTER - SNAKES Chapter XXXIII.—H O NEYMO O N Chapter XXXIV.—T HE O RDEAL Chapter XXXV.—C O WG ILL H O USE Chapter XXXVI.—T WO W HIG S Chapter XXXVII.—S PIRITO FTHE P AST Chapter XXXVIII.—V IRG IE ' S F LIG HT Chapter XXXIX.—V IRG IE ' S F LIG HT —Continued Chapter XL.—H ULDA B ELEAG UERED Chapter XLI.—A UNT P ATTY ' S L AST T RICK Chapter XLII.—B EAKS Chapter XLIII.—P LEASURE D RAINED Chapter XLIV.—T HE D EATHO F P ATTY C ANNO N Chapter XLV.—T HE J UDG E R EMARRIED Chapter XLVI.—T HE C URSEO FTHE H AT Chapter XLVII.—F AILUREAND R ESTITUTIO N

A picture of Joe Johnson's Kidnapper's Tavern, as i t stood in the year 1883, is given on the title-page.

THE ENTAILED HAT.

C HAPTER I.

TWO HAT WEARERS.

Princess Anne, as its royal name implies, is an old seat of justice, and gentle- minded town on the Eastern Shore. The ancient county of Somerset having been divided many years before the revolutionary war, and its courts separated, the original court-house faded from the world, and the forest pines have

concealed its site. Two new towns arose, and flourish yet, around the original records gathered into their plain brick offices, and he would be a forgetful visitor in Princess Anne who would not say it had the better society. He would get assurances of this from "the best people" living there; and yet more solemn assurances from the two venerable churches, Presbyterian and Episcopalian, whose grave-stones, upright or recumbent, or in family rows, say, in epitaphs Latinized, poetical, or pious, "Weto the society of Princess Anne." belonged That, at least, is the impression left on the visitor as he wanders amid their myrtle and creeper, or receives, on the wide, loamy streets, the bows of the lawyers and their clients.

There were but two eccentric men living in Princess Anne in the early half of our century, and both of them were identified by their hats.

The first was Jack Wonnell, a poor fellow of some remote origin who had once attended an auction, and bought a quarter gross of beaver hats. Although that happened years before our story opens, and the fashions had changed, Jack produced a new hat from the stock no oftener than w hen he had well worn its predecessor, and, at the rate of two hats a year, was very slowly extinguishing the store. Like most people who frequent auctions, he was not provident, except in hats, and presented a startling appearance in hi s patched and shrunken raiment when he mounted a bright, new tile, and took to the sidewalk. His name had become, in all grades of society, "Bell-crown."

The other eccentric citizen was the subject of a real mystery, and even more burlesque. He wore a hat, apparently more than a century old, of a tall, steeple crown, and stiff, wavy brim, and nearly twice as high as the cylinders or high hats of these days. It had been rubbed and recovere d and cleaned and straightened, until its grotesque appearance was in finitely increased. If the wearer had walked out of the court of King James I. directly into our times and presence, he could not have produced a more singular effect. He did not wear this hat on every occasion, nor every day, but alwa ys on Sabbaths and holidays, on funeral or corporate celebrations, on certain English church days, and whenever he wore the remainder of his extra sui t, which was likewise of the genteel-shabby kind, and terminated by greenish gaiters, nearly the counterpart, in color, of the hat. To daily business he wore a cheap, common broadbrim, but sometimes, for several days, on freak or unknown method, he wore this steeple hat, and strangers in the place generally got an opportunity to see it.

Meshach Milburn, or "Steeple-top," was a penurious, grasping, hardly social man of neighborhood origin, but of a family general ly unsuccessful and undistinguished, which had been said to be dying out for so many years that it seemed to be always a remnant, yet never quite gone. He alone of the Milburns had lifted himself out of the forest region of Somerset, and settled in the town, and, by silence, frugality, hard bargaining, and, finally, by money-lending, had become a person of unknown means—himself almost unk nown. He was, ostensibly, a merchant or storekeeper, and did deal in various kinds of things, keeping no clerk or attendant but a negro named Samson, who knew as little about his mind and affections as the rest of the town. Samson's business was to clean and produce the mysterious hat, which he knew to be required every time he saw his master shave.

As soon as the lather-cup and hone were agitated, S amson, without inquiry, went into a big green chest in the bedroom over the old wooden store, and drew out of a leather hat-box the steeple-crown, wh ere Meshach Milburn himself always sacredly replaced it. Then "Samson H at," as the boys called him, exercised his brush vigorously, and put the qu eer old head-gear in as formal shape as possible, and he silently attended to its rehabilitation through the medium of the village hatter, never leaving the shop until the tile had been repaired, and suffering none whatever to handle it except the mechanic. In addition to this, Samson cooked his master's food, and performed rough work around the store, but had no other known qualification for a confidential servant except his bodily power.

He was now old, probably sixty, but still a most formidable pugilist; and he had caught, running afoot, the last wild deer in the county. Though not a drinking man Samson Hat never let a year pass without having a personal battle with some young, willing, and powerful negro. His physic al and mental system seemed to require some such periodical indulgence, and he measured every negro who came to town solely in the light of his prowess. At the appearance of some Herculean or clean-chested athlete, Samson's e ye would kindle, his smile start up, and his friendly salutation would be: "You're agoodman! 'Most as good as me!" He was never whipped, rumor said, but by an inoffensive black class-leader whom he challenged and compelled to fight.

"Befo' God, man, I never see you befo'! I'se jined de church! I kint fight! I never didn't do it!"

"Can't help it, brother!" answered Samson. "You're toogooda man to go froo Somerset County. Square off or you'll ketch it!"

"Den if I must I must! de Lord forgive me!" and after a tremendous battle the class-leader came off nearly conqueror.

Whenever Samson indulged his gladiatorial propensities he disappeared into the forest whence he came, and being a free man of mental independence equal to his nerve, he merely waited in his lonely cabin until Meshach Milburn sent him word to return. Then silently the old negro resumed his place, looked contrition, took the few bitter, overbearing words of his master silently, and brushed the ancient hat.

Meshach kept him respectably dressed, but paid him no wages; the negro had what he wanted, but wanted little; on more than one occasion the court had imposed penalties on Samson's breaches of the peace , and he lay in jail, unsolicitous and proud, until Meshach Milburn paid the fine, which he did grudgingly; for money was Meshach's sole pursuit, and he spent nothing upon himself.

Without a vice, it appeared that Meshach Milburn had not an emotion, hardly a virtue. He had neither pity nor curiosity, visitors nor friends, professions nor apologies. Two or three times he had been summoned on a jury, when he put on his best suit and his steeple-crown, and formally went through his task. He attended the Episcopal worship every Sunday and gre at holiday, wearing inevitably the ancient tile, which often of itself drew audience more than the sermon. He gave a very small sum of money and took a cheap pew, and read

from his prayer-book many admonitions he did not follow.

He was not litigious, but there was no evading the perfectness of his contracts. His searching and large hazel eyes, almost proud and quite unkindly, and his Indian-like hair, were the leading elements of a face not large, but appearing so, as if the buried will of some long frivolous family had been restored and concentrated in this man and had given a bilious power to his brows and jaws and glances.

His eccentricity had no apparent harmony with anything else nor any especial sensibility about it. The boys hooted his hat, and the little girls often joined in, crying "Steeple-top! He's got it on! Meshach's loose!" But he paid no attention to anybody, until once, at court time, some carousi ng fellows hired Jack Wonnell to walk up to Meshach Milburn and ask to sw ap a new bell-crown for the old decrepit steeple-top. Looking at Wonnell sternly in the face, Meshach hissed, "You miserable vagrant! Nature meant you to go bareheaded. Beware when you speak to me again!"

"I was afraid of him," said Jack Wonnell, afterwards. "He seemed to have a loaded pistol in each eye."

No other incident, beyond indiscriminate ridicule, was recorded of this hat, except once, when a group of little children in front of Judge Custis's house began to whisper and titter, and one, bolder than the rest, the Judge's daughter, gravely walked up to the unsocial man; it was the first of May, and he was in his best suit:

"Sir," she said, "may I put a rose in your old hat?"

The harsh man looked down at the little queenly chi ld, standing straight and slender, with an expression on her face of composure and courtesy. Then he looked up and over the Judge's residence to see if any mischievous or presuming person had prompted this act. No one was in sight, and the other children had run away.

"Why do you offer me a flower?" he said, but with no tenderness.

"Because I thought such a very old hat might improve with a rose."

He hesitated a minute. The little girl, as if well-born, received his strong stare steadily. He took off the venerable old head-gear, and put it in the pretty maid's hand. She fixed a white rose to it, and then he placed the hat and rose again on his head and took a small piece of gold from his pocket.

"Will you take this?"

"My father will not let me, sir!"

Meshach Milburn replaced the coin and said nothing else, but walked down the streets, amid more than the usual simpering, and the weather-beaten door of the little rickety storehouse closed behind him.

C HAPTER II.

JUDGE AND DAUGHTER.

Judge Custis was the most important man in the county. He belonged to the oldest colonial family of distinction, the Custises of Northampton, whose fortune, beginning with King Charles II. and his tavern credits in Rotterdam, ended in endowing Colonel George Washington with a widow's mite. The Judge at Princess Anne was the most handsome man, the father of the finest family of sons and daughters, the best in estate, most various in knowledge, and the most convivial of Custises.

In that region of the Eastern Shore there is so little diversity of productions, the ocean and the loam alone contributing to man, that Judge Custis had an exaggerated reputation as a mineralogist.

He had begun to manufacture iron out of the bog ores found in the swamps and hummocks of a neighboring district, and, with the tastes of a landholding and slaveholding family, had erected around his furnace a considerable town, his own residence as proprietor conspicuous in the midst. There he spent a large part of the time, and not always in the company of his family, entertaining friends from the distant cities, enjoying the luxuries of terrapin, duck, and wines, and, as rumor said in the forest, all the pleasures of a Russian or German nobleman on a secluded estate.

He could lie down on the ground with the barefooted foresters, equal and familiar with them, and carry off their suffrages for the State Senate or the Assembly. In Princess Anne he was more discriminating, rising in that society to his family stature, and surrounded by alliances which demanded what is called "bearing." In short, he was the head of the community, and his wealth, originally considerable, had been augmented by marriage, while his credit extended to Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Not long after the occurrence of his young daughter, Vesta, placing the rose in Meshach Milburn's mysterious hat, Judge Custis said to his lady at the breakfast-table:

"That man has been allowed to shut himself in, like a dog, too long. He owes something to this community. I'll go down to his ke nnel, under pretence of wanting a loan—and I do need some money for the furnace!"

He took his cane after breakfast and passed out of his large mansion, and down the sidewalk of the level street. There were, as usually, some negroes around Milburn's small, weather-stained store, and Samson Hat, among them, shook hands with the Judge, not a particle disturbe d at the latter's condescension.

"Judge," said Samson, looking that large, portly ge ntleman over, "you'se a goodman yet. But de flesh is a little soft in yo' muscle, Judge."

"Ah! Samson," answered Custis, "there's one old fellow that is wrastling you."

"Time?" said the negro; "we can't fight him, sho! D at's a fack! But I'm good as any man in Somerset now."

"Except my daughter's boy, the class-leader from Talbot."

"Is dat boy in yo' family," exclaimed Samson, kindling up. "I'll walk dar if he'll give me another throw."

The Judge passed into the wide-open door of Meshach Milburn's store. A few negroes and poor whites were at the counter, and Meshach was measuring whiskey out to them by the cheap dram in exchange for coonskins and eggs. He looked up, just a trifle surprised at the principal man's advent, and merely said, without nodding:

"'Morning!"

Judge Custis never flinched from anybody, but his i ntelligence recognized in Meshach's eyes a kind of nature he had not yet met, though he was of universal acquaintance. It was not hostility, nor welcome, nor indifference. It was not exactly spirit. As nearly as the Judge could formul ate it, the expression was habitual self-reliance, and if not habitual suspici on, the feeling most near it, which comes from conscious unpopularity.

"Mr. Milburn," said Judge Custis, "when you are at leisure let me have a few words with you."

The storekeeper turned to the poor folks in his little area and remarked to them bluntly:

"You can come back in ten minutes."

They all went out without further command. Milburn closed the door. The Judge moved a chair and sat down.

"Milburn," he said, dropping the formal "mister," "they tell me you lend money, and that you charge well for it. I am a borrower so metimes, and I believe in keeping interest at home in our own community. Will you discount my note at legal interest?"

"Never," replied Meshach.

"Then," said the Judge, smiling, "you'll put me to some inconvenience."

"That's more than legal interest," answered Milburn, sturdily. "You'll pay the legal interest where you go, and the inconvenience of going will cost something too. If you add your expenses as liberally as you i ncur them when you go to Baltimore, to legal interest, you are always paying a good shave."

"Where you have risks," suggested the Judge, "there is some reason for a heavy discount, but my property will enrich this county and all the land you hold mortgages on."

"Bog ore!" muttered the money-lender. "I never lent money on that kind of risk. I must read upon it! They say manufacturing requires mechanical talent. How much do you want?"

"Three thousand."

"Secured upon the furnace?"

"Yes."

Meshach computed on a piece of paper, and the Judge, with easy curiosity, studied his singular face and figure.

He was rather short and chunky, not weighing more than one hundred and thirty pounds, with long, fine fingers of such tracery and separate action that every finger seemed to have a mind and function of its own. Looking at his hands only, one would have said: "There is here a pianist, a penman, a woman of definite skill, or a man of peculiar delicacy." All the fingers were well produced, as if the hand instead of the face was me ant to be the mind's exponent and reveal its portrait there.

Yet the face of Meshach Milburn, if more repellent, was uncommon.

The effects of one long diet and one climate, invariable, from generation to generation, and both low and uninvigorating, had brought to nearly aboriginal form and lines his cheek-bones, hair, and resinous brown eyes. From the cheek-bones up he looked like an Indian, and expressed a stolid power and swarthiness. Below, there dropped a large face, in proportion, with nothing noticeable about it except the nose, which was so s traight, prominent, and complete, and its nostrils so sensitive, that only the nose upon his face seemed to be good company for his hands. When he confronted one, with his head thrown back a little, his brown eyes staring inquiry, and his nose almost sentient, the effect was that of a hostile savage just burst from the woods.

That was his condition indeed.

"Look at him in the eyes," said the town-bred, "he's all forester!"

"But look at his hand," added some few observant ones.

Ah! who had ever shaken that hand?

It was now extended to the Judge and he took from i ts womanly fingers the terms of the loan. Judge Custis was surprised at the moderation of Meshach, and he looked up cheerfully into that ever sentinel face on which might have been printed "qui vive?"

"It's not the goodness of the security," said Meshach, "I make it low to you, socially!"

The Custis pride started with a flush to the Judge's eyes, to have this ostracised and hooted Shylock intimate that their relations could be more than a prince's to a pawnbroker. But the Judge was a politician, with an adaptable mind and address.

"Speaking of social things, Milburn," he said, carelessly, "our town is not so large that we don't all see each other sometimes. Why do you wear that forlorn, unsightly hat?"

"Why do you wear the nameCustis?"

"Oh, I inherited that!"

"And I inherited my hat."

There was a pause for a minute, but before the Judge could tell whether it was an angry or an awkward pause, the storekeeper said: