Vesta Custis, dressing in her chamber, heard early wheels upon the morning air, and looking through the blinds saw a double team coming up the road from Hardship.
"Mother," she said, "is that father coming, yonder? No, it is not his driver."
"Why, Vesta!" exclaimed Mrs. Custis, "that is old Milburn's man."
"Samson Hat? so it is. What is he doing with two horses?"
Here Vesta laughed aloud, and began to skip about in her long, slender, worked slippers, whose insteps would spare a mouse darting under.
"Mamma, it is Milburn himself, in a hack and span. See there; the steeple-top hat, copper buckle and all! Isn't he too funny for anything! But, dear me! he is staring right up at this window. Let us duck!"
Vesta's long, ivory-grained arms, divided from her beautiful shoulders only by a spray of lace, pulled her mother down.
"Don't be afraid, dear! he can see nothing but the blinds. Perhaps he is looking for the Judge."
Vesta rose again in her white morning-gown, like a stag rising from a snow-drift. A long, trembling movement, the result of tittering, passed down the graceful column of her back.
"He sits there like an Indian riding past in a show, mamma! Did you ever see such a hat?"
"I think it must be buggy by this time," said the mother; and both of them shook with laughter again. "Unless," added Mrs. Custis, "the bugs are starved out."
"Poor, lonely creature," said Vesta, "he can only wear such a hat from want of understanding."
"His understanding is good enough, dear. He has the green gaiters on."
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. How happy are we that it is not necessary to pry into such minds! A little refinement is the next blessing to religion."
"Your father's mind is a puzzle, too, Vesta. He has everything which these foresters lack,--education, society, standing, and comforts. But he returns to the forest, like an opossum, the moment your eye is off him. He can't be traced up like this man, by his hat. I think it's a shame on you, particularly. If he don't come home this day, I shall send for my brother and force an account of my property from Judge Custis!"
The wife sat down and began to cry.
"I'll take the carriage after breakfast, mamma, and seek him at the Furnace or wherever he may be. Those bog ores have given him a great deal of trouble."
"I wish I had never heard of bog ore," exclaimed Mrs. Custis. "When the money was in bank, there was no ore about it. He goes to the forest looking like a magistrate and a gentleman; he always comes back looking like a bog-trotter and a drunkard. There must be women in it!"
Here, in an impulse of weak rage, the poor lady got up and walked to her mirror and looked at her face. Apparently satisfied that such charms were trampled on, she dried her tears altogether, and resumed:
"Ginny, go out of the room! (to the neat mulatto lass). Vesta, my dear daughter, I would not cast a stain upon you for the world; but flesh and blood will cry out. If your father don't do better I will separate from him, and leave Princess Anne!"
"Why, mother!"
The daughter's bright eyes were large and startled now, and their steel-blue tint grew plainer under her rich black eyebrows.
"I will do it, if I die, unless he reforms!"
"Why, mother!"
Vesta stood with her lips parted, and her beautiful teeth just lacing the coral of the lip. She could say no more for a long moment. Rising as she spoke, with her head thrown back, and her mould the fuller and a pallor in her cheeks, she looked the Eve first hearing the Creator's rebuke.
"A separation in this family?" whispered Vesta. "It would scandalize all Maryland. It would break my heart."
"Darling daughter, my heart must be considered sometimes. I was something before I was a Custis. I am a woman, too."
Vesta, still pale, crossed to her mother's side and kissed her.
"Don't, don't, mamma, ever harbor a thought like that again. You, who have been so brave and patient longer than I have lived!"
"Ah, Vesta, it is the length of injury that wears us out! What if something should happen to us? None are so unfit to bear poverty as we."
"We cannot be poor," said the daughter, soothingly. "Don't you remember, mother, where it says: 'As thy day, so shall thy strength be'?".
"My child," Mrs. 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. Mrs. Custis felt uneasy before the aroused mind of her child.
"Don't look at me so, Vesta," the poor lady pleaded. "I thought you ought to know it."
"How dare you say that of my father? Of Judge Custis?"
As they were in this suspense of feeling, wheels were heard. The daughter went to the window and looked down, and then returned to her mother's ear.
"Hush, mother, it is papa. Now, wash your eyes at the toilet. Let us meet him cheerfully. Never say again that he is beyond reclamation, while we can try!"
A kiss smoothed Mrs. Custis's countenance. Vesta was dressed for breakfast in a few moments, and descended to the library and was received in her father's arms. He held her there a long while, and held her close, and by little fits renewed his embrace, but she felt that his breath was feverish and his arms trembled. Looking up at him she saw, indeed, that he was flushed, yet haggard and careworn.
"Vessy," he spoke with a feeble attempt to smile, "I want a glass of brandy. Mine gave out at the Furnace, and the morning ride has weakened me. Where is the key?"
She looked at him with a half-glance, so that he might not suspect, as if to measure his need of stimulant. Then, without a word, she led the way to the dining-room and unlocked the liquor closet, and turned her back lest he might not drink his need from sensitiveness.
"Naughty man," said Vesta, standing off and looking at him when he was done. "I was going down for you to the Furnace after breakfast. We will have no more of this truantry. Mamma and I have set our feet down! You must come back from the Furnace every night, and go again in the morning, like other business men. Be very kind to mamma this morning, sir! She feels your neglect."
Vesta had already rung for the Judge's valet, who now appeared, drew off his boots, supplied his slippers and dressing-gown, and led the way to his bath. In a quarter of an hour he reappeared, looking better, and he irresolutely turned again towards the dining-room, smiling suggestively at Vesta.
"Not that way," spoke she. "Here is mamma, and we are ready for prayers. Here is the place in the Bible."
They all went to the family room, where the dressing-maids of Vesta and her mother were waiting for the usual morning prayers. Vesta placed the open Bible on her father's knee, and he began absently and stumblingly to read. It was in the book of Samuel, and seemed to be some old Jewish mythology. He suddenly came to a verse which arrested his sensibilities by its pathos:
"'And David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, saying, Deliver me my wife Michal.... And Ish-bosheth sent, and took her from her husband, even from Phaltiel, the son of Laish. And her husband went with her along weeping behind her.... Then said Abner unto him: Go, return. And he returned.'"
Judge Custis saw at once the picture this compact history aroused. The inexorable David, perhaps, had married another's love. Occasion had arisen to embitter her kin, and they took her back and gave her in happiness to her pining lover. But, again, the man of correct habits triumphed over the sons of the king, and despatched Abner to tear his wife from her true husband's arms. Poor Phaltiel followed her weeping, until ordered to go back--and back he went, forever desolate.
The scene recalled the brutal demand of his creditor upon his child. The Judge's eyes silently o'erflowed, and he could not see.
Vesta had watched him closely, as her silent magistracy detected a great anxiety or illness in her father. Lest her mother might also notice it, she interposed in the lesson, as was her habit, by reading the Episcopal form of prayer, in which they all bent their heads. Once or twice, as she went on, she detected a suppressed sob, especially at the paragraph: "Thou who knowest the weakness and corruption of our nature, and the manifold temptations which we daily meet with, we humbly beseech thee to have compassion on our infirmities and to give us the constant assistance of thy Holy Spirit, that we may be effectually restrained from sin and excited to our duty!"
They went to the breakfast-table, and the Judge's countenance was down. He bit off some toast and filled his mouth with tea, but could not swallow. A hand softly touched his elbow, and, looking there, he saw a wine-glass full of brandy softly glide to the spot. As he looked up and saw the rich, yearning face of his dark-eyed daughter tenderly consulting his weakness, his heart burst forth; he leaned his head upon the table and cried, between drink and grief:
"Darling, we are ruined!"
Mrs. Custis at once arose, and looked frightenedly at the Judge. Vesta as quickly turned to the servants and motioned them to go.
"No, let them hear it!" raved Judge Custis, perceiving the motion. "They are interested, like us. They must be sold, too. Faithful servants! Perhaps it may warn them to escape in time!"
The servants, bred like ladies, quietly left the room.
Mrs. Custis, growing paler, exclaimed:
"Daniel Custis, have you lost everything in that furnace?"
"Everything!"
"And my money, too?"
"Yes."
"Merciful God!"
Before the weak lady could fall Vesta's arm was around her, and her finger on the table-bell. Servants entered and Mrs. Custis was carried out, her daughter following.
When Vesta returned her father was walking up and down the floor with his long silk handkerchief in both hands, weeping bitterly, and speaking broken syllables. She looked at him a moment with all the might of a daughter, first called on to act alone in a great crisis. The feeling she was wont to hold towards him, of perfect pride, had received a blow in her mother's expression: "Your father's habits have mastered him beyond reclamation."
Could this be true; that he, the grand, the kind, the gentleman, was beneath the diver's reach, the plummet's sounding, where light could not pierce, nor Hope overtake? Her father, the first gentleman in Somerset, a drunkard, going ever downward towards the gutter, and no ray of heaven to beam upon his grave!
She saw his danger now: it was written on his face, where the image of God shone dim that had once been crowned there. Hair thinner, and very gray; the rich, dark eyes intimidated, as if manly confidence was gone; the skin no more the pure scroll of regular life written in the healthy fluid of the heart, but faded, yet spotted with alcohol; on the nose and lips signs of coarser sensuality; the large skeleton bent and the nervous temperament shattered. This father had been until this moment Vesta's angel. Now, there might not be an angel in the universe to fly to his rescue. Deep, dreadful humility descended into the daughter's spirit.
"God forgive me!" she thought, "how blind and how proud and sinful I have been!"
She walked over to her father tenderly and kissed him, and then, drawing his weaker inclination by hers, brought him to a sofa, placed a pillow for him, and made him stretch his once proud form there. Procuring a bowl of water, she washed his face free of tears with a napkin, and bathed it in cologne. The voluptuous nature of the Judge yielded to the perfume and the easy position, and he sobbed himself to sleep like an exhausted child.
Sitting by the sleeping bankrupt, watching his breast rise and fall, and hearing his coarse snoring, as if fiends within were snarling in rivalry for the possession of him, Vesta felt that the life which was unconscious there was the fountain of her own, and, loving no man else, she felt her heart like a goldfish of that fountain, go around and around it throbbingly.
Then first arose the wish, often in woman's life repeated, to have been born a man and know how to help her father. That suggested that she had brothers who ought to be summoned, and confer with their father; but now it occurred to her that every one of them had leaned upon him; and, though conscious that it was wicked, Vesta felt her pride rise against the thought that any being outside of that house, even a brother, should know of its disgrace.
What could she do? She thought of all her jewels, her riding mare, her watch, her father's own gifts, and then the thought perished that these could help him.
Could she not earn something by her voice, which had sung to such praises? Alas! that voice had lost the ingredient of hope, and she feared to unclose her lips lest it might come forth in agony, crying, "God, have mercy!"
"I have nothing," said Vesta to herself; "except love for these two martyrs, my father and mother. No, nothing can be done until he awakens and tells me the worst. Meantime it would be wicked for me to increase the agitation already here, and where I must be the comforter."
