Judge Custis was in his bedroom, in the second story of the large, inn-like mansion at the middle of the village, and he was just recovering from the effects of a long wassail. In his peculiar nervous condition he started at the sound of wheels, and, drawing his curtains, looked out upon the long shadow of an advancing figure crowned with a steeple hat.
This human shadow strengthened and faded in the alternating light, until it was defined against his storehouse, his warehouse, his cabins, and the plain, and it seemed also against the wall of dense forest pines. Then footsteps ascended the stairs. His door opened and Meshach Milburn, with his holiday hat on his head, stood on the threshold; his eyes vigilant and bold as ever, and all his Indian nature to the front.
"My God, Milburn!" exclaimed the Judge, "odd as it is to see you here, I am relieved. Old Nick, I thought, was coming."
"Shall I come in?" asked Milburn.
"Yes; I'm sleeping off a little care and business. Let your man stay outside on the porch. Draw up a chair. It's money, I suppose, that brings you here?"
The money-lender carefully put his formidable hat upon a table, took a distant chair, pushed his gaitered feet out in front, and laid a large wallet or pocket-book on his lap. Then, addressing his whole attention to the host, he appeared never to wink while he remained.
"Judge Custis," he said, straightforwardly, "the first time you came to borrow money from me, you said that Nassawongo furnace would enrich this county and raise the value of my land."
"Yes, Milburn. It was a slow enterprise, but it's coming all right. I shipped a thousand tons last year."
"Judge Custis," continued the money-lender, "I told you, when you made the first loan, that I would investigate this ore. I did so years ago. Specimens were sent by me to Baltimore and tested there. Not content with that, I have studied the manufacture of iron for myself--the society of Princess Anne not grudging me plenty of solitude!--and I know that every ton of iron you make costs more than you get for it. The bog ore is easy to smelt; but it is corrupted by phosphate of iron and is barely marketable."
The Judge was sitting with eyes wide open, and paler than before.
"You have found that out?" he whispered. "I did not know it myself until within this year--so help me God!"
"I knew it before I made you the second loan."
"Why did you not tell me?"
"Because you forbade our relations to be anything but commercial. I was not bound to betray my knowledge."
"Why did you, then, from a commercial view, lend me large sums of money again and again?"
"Because," said the money-lender, coolly, "you had other security. You have a daughter!"
Judge Custis broke from the bed-covers and rushed upon Meshach Milburn.
"Heathen and devil!" he shouted, taking the money-lender by the throat, "do you dare to mention her as part of your mortgage?"
They struggled together until a powerful pair of hands pinioned the Judge, and bore him back to his bed. Samson Hat was the man.
"Judge!" he exclaimed, gentle, but firm, "you is a good man, but not as good as me. Cool off, Judge!"
"I expected this scene," said Meshach Milburn. "It could not have been avoided. I was bound in conscience and in common-sense to make you the only proposition which could save you from ruin. For, Judge Custis, you are a ruined man!"
Overcome with excitement and suspended stimulation, the old Judge fell back on his pillow and began to sob.
"Give him brandy," said Meshach Milburn, "here is the bottle! He needs it now."
The wretched gentleman eagerly drank the proffered draught from the negro's hands. His fury did not revive, and he covered his face with his palms and moaned piteously.
"Judge Custis," remarked Meshach Milburn, "if the apparent social distance between us could be lessened by any argument, I might make one. For the difference is in appearance only. The healthy flesh which gives you and yours stature and beauty is a matter of food alone. My stock has survived five generations of such diet as has bent the spines of the forest pigs and stunted the oxen. Money and family joy will give me children comely again. My life has been hard but pure."
The old Judge felt the last unconscious reflection.
"Yes," he uttered, solemnly, "no doubt Heaven marked me for some such degradation as this, when I yielded to low propensities, and sought my pleasure and companions in the huts of the forest!"
"You claim descent from the Stuart Restoration: I know the tale. A creditor of the two exiled royal brothers for sundry tavern loans and tipples drew for his obligation an office in far-off Virginia. Seizures, confiscations, the slave-trade, marriages--in short, the long game of advantage--built up the fortunes of the Custises, until they expired in a certain Judge, whose notes of hand a hard man, forest-born, held over the Judge's head on what seemed hard conditions, but conditions in which was every quality of mercy, except consideration for your pride."
The Judge made a laugh like a howl.
"Mercy?" he exclaimed, "you do not know what it is! To ensnare my innocent daughter in the damned meshes of your principal and interest! Call it malignity--the visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and an angel; but not mercy!"
"Then we will call it compensation," continued Meshach Milburn: "for twenty years I have denied myself everything; you denied yourself nothing. Your substance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of my thrift. It was not with an evil design that I made myself your creditor, although, as the years have rolled onward and solitude chilled my heart, that has always pined for human friendship, I could not but see the kindling glory of your daughter's beauty. Like the schoolboys, the married husbands--yes, like the slaves--I had to admire her. Then, unknowing how deeply you were involved, I found offered to me for sale the paper you had negotiated in Baltimore--paper, Judge Custis, dishonorably negotiated!"
The money-lender rose and walked to the sad man's bed, and held the hand, full of these notes, boldly over him.
"It was despair, Milburn!" moaned the Judge.
"And so was my resolution. Said I: 'This lofty gentleman would cheat me, his neighbor, who have suffered all the contumely of this good society, and on starveling opportunity have slowly recovered independence. Now he shall take my place in the forest, or I will wear my hat at the head of his family table.'"
"A dreadful revenge!" whispered Custis, with a shudder. "Such a hat is worse than a cloven foot. In God's name! whence came that ominous hat?"
Milburn took up the hat and held it before the lamplight, so that its shadow stood gigantic against the wall.
"Who would think," he said, sarcastically, "that a mere head-covering, elegant in its day, could make more hostility than an idle head? I will tell you the silly secret of it. When I came from the obscurity of the forest, sensitive, and anxious to make my way, and slowly gathered capital and knowledge, a person in New York directed a letter of inquiry to me. It told how a certain Milburn, a Puritan or English Commonwealth man, had risen to great distinction in that province, and had revolutionized its government and suffered the penalty of high-treason."
"True enough," said Judge Custis, pouring a second glass of brandy; "Milburn and Leisler were executed in New York during the lifetime of the first Custis. They anticipated the expulsion of James II., and were entrapped by their provincial enemies and made political martyrs."
"The inquirer," said Meshach, "who had obtained my address in the course of business, related, that after Milburn's death his brethren and their families had sailed to the Chesapeake, where the Protestants had successfully revolutionized for King William, and, making choice of poor lands, they had become obscure. He asked me if the court-house records made any registry of their wills."
"Of course you found them?"
"Yes. It was a revelation to me, and gave me the honorable sense of some origin and quality. I traced myself back to the earliest folios, at the close of the seventeenth century."
"Any property, Milburn?" asked the Judge, voluptuous and reanimated again.
"My great-grandfather had left his son nothing but a Hat."
"Not uncommon!" exclaimed Judge Custis. "Our early wills contain little but legacies of wearing apparel, household articles, bedding, pots and kettles, and the elements of civilization."
"The will on record said: 'I give to my eldest son, Meshach Milburn, my best Hat, and no more of my estate.'"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Judge, loudly. "Genteel to the last! A hat of fashion, no doubt, made in London; quite too ceremonious and topgallant for these colonies. He left it to his eldest son, en-tiledit, we may say. Ho! ho!"
"When my indignation was over, I took the same view you do, Judge Custis, that it was a bequest of dignity, not of burlesque; and I made some inquiries for that best Hat. It was a legend among my forest kin, had been seen by very old people, was celebrated in its day, and worn by my grandfather thankfully. He left it to my father, still a hat of reputation--"
"Still en-tiled to the oldest son! Ha, ha! Milburn."
"My father sold the hat to Charles Wilson Peale, who was native to our peninsula, and knew the ancient things existing here that would help him to form Peale's Museum during the last century. I found the hat in that museum, covering the mock-figure of Guy Fawkes!"
"Conspirator's hat; bravo!" exclaimed the Judge.
"It had been used for the heads of George Calvert and Shakespeare, but in time of religious excitements was proclaimed to be the true hat of Guy Fawkes. I reclaimed it, and brought it to Princess Anne, and in a vain moment put it on my head and walked into the street. It was assailed with halloos and ribaldry."
"It was another Shirt of Nessus, Milburn; it poisoned your life, eh?"
"Perhaps so," replied Milburn, with intensity. "They say what is one man's drink is another man's poison. You will accept that hat on the head of your son-in-law, or no more drink out of the Custis property!"
