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."
"You are not exactly a monster," 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."
A chilliness seemed to attend this conclusion, and Vesta touched her bell. Virgie, entering, took her mistress's instructions: "Bring a tray and tea, and lights, and place Mr. Milburn's hat upon the rack!"
The girl glanced at the antique hat with a timid light in her eye, but her mistress's head was turned as if to intimate that she must take it, though it might be red-hot. Virgie obeyed, and soon brought in the tea.
"It is good tea," spoke Milburn, drinking not from the cup, but the saucer, while Vesta observed him oddly, "and it is chill this evening. Let me start your fire!"
He shivered a little as he stood up and walked across the room, and poking the charred logs into a flame; and, setting on more wood, he made the walls spring into yellow flashes, between which Vesta saw her forefathers dart cold glances at her, in their gilt frames—yet how helpless they were, with all their respectability, to take her body or her father's honor out of pawn!—and she felt for the first time the hollowness of family power, except in the ever-preserved mail of a solvent posterity. She also made a long, careful survey of her suitor, to see if there was any apology for him as a husband.
His figure was short, but with strength and elasticity in it; better clothes might fit him daintily, and Vesta re-dressed him in fancy with lavender kids upon his small hands, a ring upon his long little finger, a carnelian seal and a ribbon at his fob-pocket, and ruffles in his shirt-bosom. In place of his dull cloth suit, she would give him a buff vest and pearl buttons with eyelet rings, and white gaiters instead of those shabby green things over his feet, and put upon his head a neat silk hat with narrow brim to raise his height slenderly, and let a coat of olive or dark-blue, and trousers of the same color, relieve his ornaments. Thus transformed, Vesta could conceive a peculiar yet a passable man, whom a lady might grow considerate towards by much praying and striving, and she wondered, now, how this man had managed to soothe her already to that degree that she had voluntarily kissed him. She would be afraid to do it again, but it was as clearly on record as that she had once put a flower in his hat; and Vesta said to herself:
"He has power of some kind! That story, little as I heard of it, was told with an opinionated confidence I wish my poor father had something of. Could I ever be happy with this man, by study and piety? God might open the way, but it seems closed to me now."
"The night wears on, Miss Custis," spoke Meshach. "Its rewards are already great to me. When may I return?"
"I think we must determine what to do this night, Mr. Milburn," Vesta said, with rising determination. "Not one point nearer have we come to any solution of this obligation of my father. We have considered it up to this time as my obligation, and that may have unduly encouraged you. Sir, I can work for my living."
"You work?" repeated Milburn.
"Why not? I love my father. As other women who are left poor work for their children or a sick husband, why should not I for him! Poverty has no terrors but—but the loss of pride."
"You hazard that, whatever happens," said her suitor, "but you will not lose it by evading the lesser evil for the greater. I have heard of women who fled to poverty from dissatisfaction with a husband, but pride survived and made poverty dreadful. Pride in either case increased the discontent. You should take the step which will let pride be absorbed in duty, if not in love."
"Duty?" thought Vesta. "That is a reposeful word, better than Love. Mr. Milburn," she said aloud, "how is it my duty to do what you ask?"
"I think I perceive that you have a loyal heart, a conscientiousness that deceit cannot even approach. Something has already made you slow to marriage, else, with your wonders, I would not have had the chance to be now rejected by you. Marriage has become too formidable, perhaps, to you, by the purity of your heart, the more so because you looked upon it to be your destiny. It is your fate, but you contend against it. 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? Have you had sisters, or other ladies to woo?"
"I have seen human nature in my little shop, not, like your rare nature, refined by happy fortune and descent, but of moderate kind, and struggling downward like a wounded eagle. They have come to me at first for cheaper articles of necessity or smaller portions than other stores would sell, looking on me with contempt. At last they have sacrificed their last slave, their last pair of shoes, and, when it was too late, their false pride has surrendered to shelter under a negro's hut, or dance barefooted in my store for a cup of whiskey."
"Sir," exclaimed Vesta indignantly, rising from her rocker, "do you set this warning for me?"
As she rose Meshach Milburn thought his wealth was merely pebbles and shells to her perfection, now animated with a queen's spirit.
"Miss Vesta," he said, "pardon me, but I have just issued from many generations of forest poverty, and knowing how hard it is to break that thraldom, I would stop you from taking the first step towards it. The bloom upon your cheek, the mould you are the product of without flaw, the chaste lady's tastes and thoughts, and inborn strength and joy, are the work of God's favor to your family for generations. That favor he continues in laying those family burdens on another's shoulders, to spare you the toil and care, anxiety and slow decay, that this violent change of circumstances means. It would be a sin to relapse from this perfection to that penury."
"I cannot see that honorable poverty would make me less a woman," exclaimed Vesta.
"You do not dread poverty because you do not know it," Milburn continued. "It grows in this region like the old field-pines and little oaks over a neglected farm. Once there was a court-house settlement on Dividing Creek, where justice, eloquence, talent, wit, and heroism made the social centre of two counties, but they moved the court-house and the forest speedily choked the spot. Now not an echo lingers of that former glory. You can save your house from being swallowed up in the forest."
"By marrying the forest hero?" Vesta said, though she immediately regretted it.
"Yes," Milburn uttered stubbornly, after a pause. "I have met the house of Custis half-way. I am coming out of the woods as they are going in,
