 | V. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
5. V.
There were three headaches next morning at
the breakfast-table at Brothertoft Manor.
Major Kerr carried an enormous ache in his
thick skull. His was the crapulous headache.
He knew it well. Every manner of cure, except
prevention, he had experimented upon. The
soda-water-cure did not reach his malady. The
water-cure, whether applied in the form of pump
or a wet turban, was equally futile.
“It could n't have been t' other bottle that
has made me feel so queer,” Kerr soliloquized.
“Must have been Jack André's mawkish songs.
I never could stand poetry.”
So he marched down to breakfast, more Rubens
in complexion than ever, and twice as surly.
Spending tears had given Lucy her headache.
She had wept enough to fill a brace of lacrymatories.
The pangs sharpened when she saw
Adonis appear, very red and very gruff. He
seemed fairly loathsome to her now.
“Must such a beast — yes, I will say beast —
as that come near me?” thought she.
Strong language for a young lady; but appropriate.
It is well to have a few ugly epithets
in one's vocabulary. Hard words have their
virtue and their place, as well as soft ones.
Mrs. Brothertoft also had a headache.
She looked pale and ill this morning. This
will never do, Madam. Consider your beauty!
It will consume away, if you allow so much
fever in your brain.
Breakfast was more silent even than yesterday's.
No headache cared to ask sympathy of
either of the others.
Lucy said not a word. She compelled herself
to be at table. She dreaded her mother's presence;
but she dreaded her absence still more.
Lucy suffered under the uneasiness of a young
plotter. She knew that her plot was visible in
her face. She trembled at every look. And yet
she felt safer while she was facing her foes.
Poor child! if she could have wept, as she
wished, freely and alone, a dozen of lacrymatories
— magnums — would not have held her
tears.
Moody Mrs. Brothertoft is also silent.
She does not think it good policy to draw out
her son-in-law this morning. Only a wretchedly
low card, and no trump, will respond to the
attempt. T' other bottle rather drowns the power
of repartee. Major Kerr was too inarticulate
A courtly bow and a fine manner are hardly
to be expected at levée from a hero lugged to
his couchée by Plato and two clodhoppers, —
themselves a little out of line and step with
too many heeltaps. The hostess does not choose
by solicitous questions to get growls from the
future bridegroom, such as, —
Kerr loquitur. “Yes, thank you; my tea is
mere milksop; my egg an addle; my toast a
chip; my butter lard; my buckwheat cakes
dem'd flabby. Everything has a tipsy taste and
smells of corked Madeira. O, my head!”
Such talk would not make the lover more
captivating. He had better be left to himself,
to take his breakfast with what stomach he
may.
Nor does Mrs. Brothertoft think it wise to
remark upon yesterday's dinner and its distinguished
guests to her daughter. Remark brings
rejoinder. This morning, again, Lucy had no
kiss for her mother. Instead of the warm, tender
caress of other days, with warmth and tenderness
for two, Lucy's manner was grave and
distant.
Mrs. Brothertoft divines incipient rebellion in
her daughter. She does not wish to let it cultivate
itself with contradictions. If she should
propound, “It is a fine morning,” Lucy might
she suggested, “My dear, have the horses saddled,
and take Major Kerr to see the view from
Cedar Ridge,” Lucy would probably respond,
“Major Kerr is not fond of nature, and I am
afraid of marauders.” If she remarked, “What
a grand, soldierly creature Major Emerick is!
What an amusing accent! and his moustache
how terribly charming!” Lucy might curl her
pretty lip, and reply, “Grand! soldierly! the
hirsute ogre! As to his accent, — I do not
understand Hessian; and it does not amuse me
to hear good pronounced `coot,' and to have
pictures, flowers, soup, and the North River,
all classed together and complimented as `breddy.'
And as to his moustache, — no moustache
is tolerable; and if any, certainly not that great
black thing.” Nor would it do for the mother
to say, “I am sure you found Captain André an
Admirable Crichton,” and to hear from her
daughter in reply, “Don't speak of him! I am
still sick with his sentimentality of a Strephon.
He is a flippant coxcomb. I do not wonder
Miss Honora Sneyd got tired of him, with his
little smile and his little sneer.”
Such responses Lucy would probably have
made to her mother's attempts at breakfast-table
talk. Do these answers seem inconsistent with
the great sorrow and the great terror in the girl's
always en grande tenue. It is a sign that the
heart is not quite broken, when its owner has
life enough to be pettish. The popgun is the
father of the great gun. Silly skirmish and
bandying of defiance precede the great battle
for life and death.
So Mrs. Brothertoft knew, and she was not
willing to give Lucy the chance to hear herself
say, `No.' If she were once publicly compromised
as of the negative faction, she might, even
at this late hour, foster her little germ of independence.
She might wake up to-morrow with
a Will of Her Own, grown in a single night as
big as Jack's bean-stalk. She might expand her
solitary, forlorn hope of a first No into a conquering
army. No, N o, — only a letter and a
cipher, — she might add ciphers, multiply it by
successive tens and make it No,ooo,ooo,ooo, —
and so on, until she was impregnable to the
appointed spouse.
This of course must not be.
The mother did not know that Lucy had hoisted
a signal of distress, and that she was almost
ready to haul her flag up from half-mast, and fly
it at the masthead of defiance. This Mrs. Brothertoft
did not suspect of her submissive and meek
child. She knew nothing of Voltaire's errand.
But she had grown suddenly apprehensive and
self this morning. She began to quail a little
more and more before her daughter's innocence.
For all reasons, she did not desire to provoke
discussion.
A grim, mute breakfast, therefore, at Brothertoft
Manor.
Each headache looked into its tea-cup in
silence. Major Kerr crunched a bit of dry
toast, instead of feeding omnivorously.
There is no conversation of this party to report,
gay or glum.
But tableau is sometimes more dramatic than
talk.
A new-comer at the door glanced at this
unsociable trio, and deciphered the picture
pretty accurately.
It was old Voltaire, limping forward from
the kitchen.
Lucy sat with her face toward the pantry
door, and first saw him.
Flash! Lucy lightened and almost showered
tears at the rising of this black cloud, charged
with fresh electricity.
Flash back! from the whites of Voltaire's
eyes and from his teeth.
It was a brief flash, but abiding enough to
show Lucy, through her gloom, one figure
stealing to her succor. Him she was sure of,
of a black could not reveal the other recruits
to her rebel army. So they must remain latent,
with their names and faces latent, until
she can have an interview with her complotter.
But what a hot agony of hope blazed up
within her at Voltaire's look and cunning nod!
“I must not scream with joy,” she thought.
“I must not shriek out this great, wicked, triumphant
laugh I feel stirring in me. I must
not jump up and hug the dear old soul.
Thank Heaven, my tea is hot, and I can choke
myself and cry.”
Which she proceeded to do; and under cover
of her napkin got her face into mask condition
again.
She was taking lessons — this fair novice — in
what a woman's face is made for; — namely, to
look cool when the heart is fiery; to look dull,
when the wits have just suffered the whetstone;
to look blank, when the soul's hieroglyphs will
stare out if a blush is only turned on; to look
tame, when the spirit is tiger; to look peace,
when there is no peace; to look mild as new
milk, when the blood boils and explosion butts
against the wired cork of self-control. A guileful
world, guileless lady! and you must fight
your fight to-day with silence and secrecy, lest
mamma detect a flutter in your bosom, and your
pulled, if not its neck wrung.
Voltaire limped forward with a plate of buck-wheat
cakes. They were meal of the crop
which had whitened the slopes of Westchester
this summer, and purpled them this autumn.
They were round as a doubloon, or the moon at
its fullest. Their edges were sharp, and not
ragged and taggy. Their complexion was most
delicate mulatto. Their texture was bubbly as
the wake of a steamboat. Eyes never lighted on
higher art than the top cake, and even the one
next the plate utterly refused to be soggy. Indeed,
each pancake was a poem, — a madrigal
of Sappho's most simply delicate confectioning,
round as a sonnet, and subtle in flavor as an
epigram.
These pearls Voltaire cast before the party.
Nobody partook. Nobody appreciated. Nobody
noticed. The three appetites of the three headaches
were too dead to stir.
The old fellow was retiring, when Mrs. Brothertoft
addressed him roughly.
“I shall promote Plato and break you, Voltaire,
if you are taken sick at the wrong time
again.”
“Sorry, missus. Colored mobbas, missus.
No stoppin' him. Bery bad indeed!”
His appearance disarmed suspicion. He was
No one, to look at him, would have divined that
his pangs were of the motive powers, and not
the digestive, — that he suffered with the nicked
shin, the stubbed toe, and the strained calf, and
was utterly unconscious of a stomach, except as
a locality for colonizing a white lie in.
| V. Edwin Brothertoft | |