The Entailed Hat | Page 5

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 sometimes, 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 incur 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 meant 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 straight, 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 its 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 name Custis?"
"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:
"Judge Custis, I concede that you are the best bred man in Princess Anne. Where did you get authority to question another person about any decent article of his attire?"
"I stand corrected, Milburn," said the Judge. "Good feeling for you more than curiosity made me suggest it. And I may also remark to you, sir, that when you lend me money you will always do it commercially and not socially."
"Very well," remarked Meshach Milburn, "and if I ever enter your door, I will then take off my hat."
* * * * *
The next morning Meshach Milburn surprised Samson Hat by saying: "Boy, when you have another fight and make yourself a barbarian again, remember to bring back, from Nassawongo furnace, about a peck of the bog ores!"
* * * * *
The years moved on without much change in Princess Anne.