 | VIII. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
8. VIII.
Cassandra was right. The marriage went
wrong.
It was the old, old, young, young story.
But which of those old young stories?
Ah, yes! there are so many of them. And
yet all human tragedies belong to one Trilogy.
There are but three kinds of wrongs in our lives.
The wrongs a man does to his own soul or
body, or suffers in either.
The wrongs of man against his brother man.
The wrongs between man and woman.
This is one of the old young stories of the
wrong between man and woman.
It might be made a very long and very painful
story. Chapter after chapter might describe
the gradual vanishing of illusions, the slight
divergence, the widening of estrangement, the
death of trust, the deceit on one side, the wearing
misery of doubt on the other, the dragging
march step by step, day by day, to the final
wrong, the halt on the hither edge, and the
careless, the desperate, the irremediable plunge
at last.
But the statement of the result is sad enough.
Let all these dreary chapters be condensed into
one!
A fatality preceded the wrong. It was this: —
The woman was coarse, and the man was fine.
No gentle influences had received her in the
facile days of childhood, and trained her nobler
nature to the masterhood. Her eyes had been
familiar with vulgar people and their vulgar
ways. Her ears had heard their coarse talk.
Her mind had narrowed to their ignoble methods
of judgment. Her heart's desire had been
taught to be for the cheap and mundane possessions,
money, show, titles, place, notoriety; and
not for the priceless and immortal wages of an
earnest life, Peace, Joy, and Love. She could
not comprehend a great soul unless its body
were dubbed My Lord or Sir Edwin, and wore
some gaud of a star at the breast, or a ribbon
at the knee.
Poor child! She was young enough to be
docile. But after the blind happiness of that
honeymoon at Brothertoft Manor, the old feeling
of her first interview with her lover revived
and exasperated.
“I believe he wants to make me feel ignorant
and vulgar,” she thought, “so that he
can govern me. But he shall not. I intend
to be mistress. I 'm sick of his meek suggestions.
to have it.”
And so, rebuked by contact with a delicacy she
could not understand, she resolutely coarsened
herself, sometimes for spite, sometimes for sorry
consolation. Her unsensitive nature trampled
roughly on his scruples.
“My dear Jane,” he said to her at Brothertoft,
“could you not instruct Mr. Skaats to be a little
more indulgent with the Manor tenants?”
“Mr. Skaats's business is to get the rents, for
us to spend.”
“But these people have been used to gentler
treatment.”
“Yes; they have been allowed to delay and
shirk as they pleased. My property must not be
wasted as yours was.”
“It is a hard summer for them, with this
drought.”
“It is an expensive summer for us, with these
repairs.”
Again, when they were re-established in New
York, other causes of dispute came up.
“I wish, my dear Jane,” he said, “that you
would be a little more civil with my patriot
friends from Boston.”
“I don't like people who talk through their
noses.”
“Forgive the twang for the sake of the good
sense.”
“Good sense! It seems to me tiresome grumbling.
I hate the word `Grievance.' I despise
the name Patriot.”
“Remember, my dear child, that I think with
these gentlemen!”
“Yes; and you are injuring your reputation
and your chances by it. A Brothertoft should
be conservative, and stand by his order.”
“I try to be conservative of Right. I stand
by the Order of Worth, Courage, and Loyalty to
Freedom.”
“O, there you go again into your foggy metaphysics!”
Again, he came one day, and said, with much
concern: “My dear, I was distressed to know
from Skaats that your father's estate owned a
third of the `Red Rover.'”
“Why?” she asked, with no concern.
“I was sure you did not know, or you would
be as much shocked as I am. She is in the
slave-trade!”
“Well. And I have often heard my father
call her a `tidy bit of property,' and say she had
paid for herself a dozen times.”
He could not make her comprehend his hatred
of this vile business, and his contempt, as a gentleman,
for all the base subterfuges by which
base people tried to defend it.
The Red Rover fortunately did not remain a
rose and broiled the captain and crew, —
and served them right. Then, being used only
to the navigation of dug-outs, they omitted to
pump the vessel, whereupon she sunk, and the
sharks had a festival.
With such divergences of opinion the first
year of this propitious marriage passed miserably
enough. Yet there was a time when it seemed
to the disappointed husband and the defiant wife
that their love might revive.
In 1758, Edwin Brothertoft, rich, aristocratic,
and a liberal, the pride of the Colony as its foremost
young man, was selected as the mouthpiece
of a commission to present at home a petition
and remonstrance. Such papers were flying
freely across the water at that time. Reams of
paper must be fired before the time comes for
firing lead.
So to England went the envoy with his gorgeous
wife. They were received with much
distinction, as worthy young Americans from
Benicia and elsewhere still are.
“Huzzay!” was the rapturous acclaim. “They
do not talk through rebel noses!”
“Huzzay! It is English they speak, not
Wigwamee!”
“Huzzay! The squaw is as beautiful as our
Fairest, and painted red and white by cunning
young sagamore is an Adonis. He beats Chesterfield
at a bow and Selwyn at a mot.”
Mrs. Brothertoft grew proud of her husband,
and grateful to him that he had chastened her
Billop manners.
What a brilliant visit that was!
All the liberal statesmen — Pitt, Henry Fox,
Conway, mellifluous Murray — were glad to do
the young American honor.
Rugged Dr. Sam Johnson belabored him with
sesquipedalian words, but in a friendly way and
without bullying. He could be a good old boy,
if he pleased, with good young ones.
Young Mr. Burke was gratified that his friend
from a sublime and beautiful hemisphere appreciated
the new treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful.
Young Mr. Joshua Reynolds was flattered that
the distinguished stranger consented to sit to
him, and in return tried to flatter the portrait.
Young Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, a poor Bohemian,
smattered in music and medicine, came
to inquire whether a clever man, out of place,
could find his niche in America.
Mr. Garrick, playing Ranger, quite lost his self-possession
when Mrs. Brothertoft first brought
her flashing black eyes and glowing cheeks into
the theatre, and only recovered when the audience
the lady together.
That great dilettante, Mr. Horace Walpole,
made the pair a charming déjeuner at Strawberry
Hill, upon which occasion he read aloud,
with much cadence, — as dilettante gentlemen
continue to do in our own time, — his friend Mr.
Gray's elaborate Elegy in a Country Churchyard,
just printed. After this literary treat, Mr. Horace
said: “Tell me something about that clever
young aide-de-camp, Washington, who got Iroquois
Braddock the privilege of dying in his
scalp. A brave fellow that! an honor to your
country, sir.” Mr. Gerge Selwyn, the wit, was
also a guest. He looked maliciously out of his
“demure eyes,” and said: “You forget, Horry,
that you used to name Major Washington `a fanfaron,'
and laugh at him for calling the whiz
of cannon-balls `a delightful sound.'” Whereupon
the host, a little abashed, laughed, and
said: “I wish such `fanfarons' were more
plenty in the army.” And the sparkling gossip
did not relate how he had put this nickname
in black and white in a letter to Sir Horace
Mann, in whose correspondence it may still be
read, with abundance of other second-hand jokes.
What a gay visit it was of the young pair in
that brilliant moment of England!
While Brothertoft, in the intervals of urging
sublime and beautiful things that are dreamt of
in philosophy with Mr. Burke, — while he talked
Art with Mr. Reynolds, poetry with Dr. Goldsmith,
and de omnibus rebus with Dr. Johnson,
— his wife was holding a little court of her own.
She was a new sensation, with her bold, wilful
beauty and her imperious Americanism. A new
sensation, and quite annihilated all the traditions
of Mary Wortley Montagu and her Turkish
dress, when she appeared at a masquerade as
Pocahontas, in a fringed and quilled buckskin
robe, moccasons, and otter coronet with an eagle's
plume.
“I suppose that 's a scalping-knife she 's playing
with,” said the Duke of Gurgoyle, inspecting
her in this attire. “And, by George, she
looks as if she could use it.”
Then the ugly old monster, and the other
blasé men, surrounded the Colonial beauty, and
fooled her with flattery.
Was she spoilt by this adulation?
“Dear Edwin,” she schemed, in a little visit
they made to Lincolnshire and the ruins of old
Brothertoft Manor, “let us buy back this estate
and never return to that raw America. You
can go into Parliament, make one or two of your
beautiful speeches, and presently be a Peer, with
stars and garters.”
“Does a garter straighten a leg? does a star
ennoble a heart? Listen, my love, do you not
hear Great Tom of Lincoln warning me, as he
long ago warned my ancestor, `Go home again,
Brothertoft, Liberty is in danger'?”
“No,” she rejoined, petulantly; “a loyal bell
would not utter such treasonable notes. This
is what I hear: `Come again, Brothertoft, Lord
of the old Manor!' Liberty! Liberty! You
tire me with your idle fancies. Why will you
throw away name and fame?”
“I will try to gain them, since they are precious
to you; but they must come in the way
of duty.”
There was peril in these ambitions of hers;
but the visionary husband thought, “How can I
wonder that her head is a little turned with
adulation? She merits it all, my beautiful wife!
But she will presently get the court glare out
of her eyes. When our child is born, a pledge
of our restored affection, she will recognize
deeper and tenderer duties.”
The Brothertoft embassy was a social success,
but a political failure.
The lewd old dolt of a King sulkily pooh-poohed
Remonstrance and Petition.
“You ought to have redress,” says Pitt, “but
I am hardly warm in my seat of Prime Minister.
I can only be a tacit friend at present.”
“Go home and wait,” says Ben Franklin, a
shrewd old Boston-boy, — fond of tricks with kites,
keys, and kerchiefs, — who was at that time resident
in London. “Wait awhile! I have not
been fingering thunderbolts so long, without
learning that people may pooh-pooh at the clouds,
and say the flashes are only heat-lightning; but
by and by they 'll be calling upon the cellars to
take 'em in, and the feather-beds to cover 'em.”
The Brothertofts went home. England forgot
them, and relapsed into its belief, —
That on the new continent the English colonists
could not remain even half-civilized Yengeese,
but sank to absolute Yankees, —
Whose bows were contortions, and smiles
grimaces;
Whose language was a nasal whoop of Anglo-Iroquois;
And who needed to be bolused with Stamp
Acts and drenched with Tea Duties, while Tom
Gage and Jack Burgoyne pried open their teeth
with the sword.
There was one visible, tangible, ponderable result
of the Brothertofts' visit to England.
Lucy Brothertoft, an only child, was born, —
a token of love revived, — alas! a monument of
love revived to die and be dismissed among
memories.
If the wife had been a true wife, how sweetly
for him in his new relation of father.
Here was a cradle for rendezvous. Why not clasp
hands and renew vows across it? This smiling,
sinless child, — why could it not recall to either
parent's face a smile of trust and love?
But this bliss was not to be.
Ring sadly, bells of Trinity! It is the christening
day. Alas! the chimes that welcome the
daughter to the bosom of the church are tolling
the knell of love in the household where
she will grow to womanhood.
The harmonious interlude ended. The old,
old story went on. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the
wife grew to hate her husband. Sadly, sadly,
sadly, he learned to only pity her.
The visit to England had only more completely
enamored her of worldliness. She
missed the adulation of My Lord and Sir Harry.
Her husband's love and approval ceased to be
sufficient for her. And when this is said, all is
said.
It was a refinement of cruelty in the torture
days to bind a living man to a corpse. Dead
lips on living lips. Lumpish heart at throbbing
heart. Glazed eyes so close that their stare
could be felt, not seen, by eyes set in horror.
Death grappling, and Life wrestling itself to
Death. Have we never seen this, now that the
no delicate spirit of a woman quelled by the embraces
of a brute? Have we seen no high and
gentle-hearted man bound to a coarse, base wife,
and slain by that body of death?
The world, the oyster, sulked when the young
man it had so generously gaped for quite lost his
appetite for fat things.
“Shame!” said the indignant Province.
“We had unanimously voted Edwin Brothertoft
our representative gentleman. He was ardent
and visionary, and we forgave him. He was
mellifluous, grammatical, ornamental, and we
petted him. We were a little plebeian, and
needed an utterly brave young aristocrat to
carry our oriflamme, and we thrust the staff
into his hand. Shame, Brothertoft! you have
gulled us. It is the old story, — premature blossom,
premature decay. The hare sleeps. The
tortoise swallows the prize! To the front, ye
plodders, slow, but sure! And you, broken-down
Brothertoft, retire to the back streets!
wear the old clothes! and thank your stars, if we
consent to pay you even a starvation salary!”
“Poor Jane Billop!” said Julia Peartree
Smith, who was now very intimate with that
lady. “I always said it would be so. I knew
she would come to disappointment and grief.
The Brothertofts were always weak as water.
marriage, a mere child, after an engagement of
a few weeks. No wonder she despises him. I
do, heartily. What lovely lace this is. I wonder
if she could n't give me another yard!
Heigh ho! Nobody smuggles for me!”
Brother patriots, too, had their opinion on
the subject of Brothertoft's withdrawal into obscurity.
“These delicate, poetical natures,” said our
old friend, Patroon Livingston, “feel very
keenly the blight of political enslavement.
Well may a leader droop, when his comrades
skulk! I tell you, gentlemen, that it is our
non-committal policy which has disheartened
our friend. When we dare to stand by him,
and say, `Liberty or death!' the man will be
a man again, — yes, a better man than the best
of us. I long to see his eye kindle, and hear his
voice ring again. I love a gentleman, when he
is man enough to be free.”
But whoever could have looked into this
weary heart would have read there a sadder
story than premature decay, a deadlier blight
than political enslavement, a crueller and closer
wrong than the desertion of comrades.
Wrong! it had come to that, — the final
wrong between man and woman, — the catastrophe
of the first act of the old, old tragedy.
These pages do not tolerate the details of
this bitter wrong.
The mere facts of guilt are of little value
except to the gossip and the tipstaff; but how
the wounded and the wounding soul bear themselves
after the crime, that is one of the needful
lessons of life.
| VIII. Edwin Brothertoft | |