The Entailed Hat Part 62

"Not fur nothin' you do, sir. I like you fur somethin' in your ways; I reckon you're a smart man."

"_Si, senor_, that I am. I have gained the whole world and lost two."

"Two worlds, sir?"

"Yes, two immortal worlds; that is to say, two unaccountable worlds. I am no Christian."

"Maybe you're Chinee or Mahometan, then, sir; I 'spect everybody's got a religion."

"I was a Mahometan for business ends," Van Dorn said. "Having become a slaver, it was nothing to be a renegade. Stealing a man's soul every day, I put no value on mine. Yes, Mahomet is the prophet of G.o.d: so are you."

"You have been in Afrikey, I 'spect," suggested Levin.

"A few years only, but long enough to be rich and to be ruined. I know the negro coast from the Gambia to Cape Palmas, and inland to Timbo. I have had an African queen and the African fever: I went to conquer Africa and became a slave."

"In Africa, I 'spect, Captain," Levin remarked, without inference, "a n.i.g.g.e.r-trader is respectable."

Van Dorn shook his head.

"I doubt if that trade is respectable anywhere on this globe, unless it be _here_. No, I will say for these people, too, that while they do it low lip homage, they look down on it. I was once the greatest guest in Timbo, housed with its absolute prince, attended by my suite, looking like an amba.s.sador, and he called me 'his son' and drew me to his breast. Proclamations were made that I should be respected as such, yet every human object fled before me. As I rode out alone to see the gardens and ca.s.sava fields, the roaming goats and oxen, and the rich mountain prospects, and saw the sloe-eyed girls bathing in the brooks, the cry went round, 'Flesh-buyer is coming,' and huts were deserted, fields forsaken, the gray patriarchs and the little children ran, and I was left alone with the dumb animals, despised, abhorred."

"Don't they have slavery thair, sir?"

"Yes, slavery immemorial, yet the slave-buyer is no more respectable than the procurer. The coin of Africa, its only medium, was the slave.

He paid the debt of war, of luxury, and of business. Yet the soul of man, in the familiar study of such universal slavery, grovels with it, and points to bright destiny no more with the head erect: I died in Africa."

"Ain't you in the business now, sir?"

"Now I am a mere forest thief and bushman, Levin. He who begins a base trade rises early to its fulness, and in subsequent life must be a poor wolf rejected from the pack, stealing where he can sneak in. Such is the kidnapper eking out the decayed days of the slaver; such is the ruined voluptuary, living at last on the earnings of some shameless woman; such am I: behold me!"

Van Dorn's eyes turned on Levin in their cold, heartless light, and yet he blushed, as usual.

"You ought to be a gentleman, Captain. What made you break the laws so and be a bad man?"

"_Ayme! ayme_!" mused Van Dorn, "shall I tell you? It was Africa. I was a high-minded youth, cool and bold, and with a thread of pleasure in me.

I went to sea in a manly trade, and, fortune being slow, they whispered to me, in the West Indies, that my clipper was just the thing for the slave-trade, and I made the first venture out of virtue, which is all the voyage. In Africa I fell a prey to the voluptuous life a white man leads there, to which the very missionaries are not always exceptions.

Young, pale, gentle, graceful, brave, my blushes instant as my pa.s.sions, the ceaseless intrigue of that hot climate circled around me like a dance in the harem around the young intruder: I forgot my native land and every obligation in it; I was enslaved by Africa to its swooning joys; I went there like the serpent and was stung by the woman."

"Ain't they all right black and ugly in Africa, Captain?"

"The world has not the equals of Senegambia for beauty," said Van Dorn.

"The Fullah beauties are often almost white, and the black admixture is no more than varnish on the maple-tree. And even here, my lad, where civilization builds a wall of social fire around the slave, you often mark the idolatry of the white head to captive Africa."

"Did you make money?"

"For some years I did, plenty of it; but degradation in the midst of pleasure weighed down my spirits. The thing called honor had flown from over me like the heavenly dove, and in its place a hundred painted birds flocked joyfully, the dazzling creatures of that thoughtless world. Oh, that I could have been born there or never have seen it! At last I started home, but the world had adopted a new commandment, 'Thou shalt not trade in man.' They took my s.h.i.+p and all its black cargo, and I came home naked. Then my heart was broke, and I turned kidnapper."

"Home is the best place," said Levin; "I 'spect it is, even if folks is pore. When Jimmy Phoebus give me a boat I thought I was rich as a Jew."

"What is that name?" asked Van Dorn.

"James Phoebus: he's mother's sweetheart."

"_Ce ce ce!_" the Captain mused; "your mother lives, then?"

"Yes, sir. She's pore, but Jimmy loves her, and the ghost of father feeds her."

"_Quedo!_ a ghost? what kind of thing is that? Aunt Patty sees them: I never do."

"It comes an' puts sugar an' coffee in the window, an' sometimes a pair of shoes an' a dress. Mother says it's father: I guess it is."

"_O Dios!_" lisped Van Dorn. "This Phoebus, is he a good man?"

"Brave as a lion, sir; pore as any pungy captain; the best friend I ever had. I hoped mother would marry him, he's been a-waitin' fur her so long. She's afraid father ain't dead."

"_O hala, hala!_ women are such waiters; but this man can wait too. Is he strong?"

"He come mighty nigh givin' Joe Johnson a lickin' last Sunday, sir, in Princess Anne. He hates a n.i.g.g.e.r-trader. Him an' Samson Hat, a black feller, thinks as much of each other as two brothers."

"And he gave you a boat?"

"Yes, sir: Joe Johnson hired it of me, but I didn't know he was goin' to run away n.i.g.g.e.rs. He's got my boat an' ruined my credit, I 'spect, in Princess Anne, an' what will mother do when I go to jail?"

"Why, this other man, Phoebus, is there to marry her or look after her."

"Oh, Captain," sobbed Levin, putting his hands on Van Dorn's knees, and laying his orphan head there too, "pore Jimmy's dead: Joe Johnson shot him."

The Captain did not move or speak.

"I've been a drunkard, Captain," Levin sobbed again, in the confidence of a child; "that's whair all our misery comes from. I've got nothin'

but my boat, an' people hires it to go gunnin' an' fis.h.i.+n' and spreein', and they takes liquor with 'em, an' I drinks. G.o.d help me; I never will agin, but die first!"

"Are you not afraid to lean on me?" lisped Van Dorn.

"No, sir."

"I have killed people, too."

"The Lord forgive you, sir; I know you won't kill _me_."

A sigh broke from the bandit's lips, in place of his usual soft lisp, and was followed by a warm drop of water, as from the forest leaves now bathed in night, that plashed on Levin's neck.

"O G.o.d," a soft voice said, "may I not die?"

Then Levin felt the same warm drops fall many times upon him, and his nature opened like the plants to rain.

"I have found a friend, Captain," the boy spoke, after several minutes, but not looking up; "I feel you cry."