 | VII. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
7. VII.
Portentous all the morning was Voltaire to
Sappho.
Now cookery, like chemistry, must have peace
to perform its experiments in.
Poor Sappho, with her husband darting into the
kitchen, looking mysterious, exploding “Hush!”
and darting off again, was as much flustered
as a nervous chemical professor when his pupils
jeer his juggles with cabbage-liquor, and turn
up rebellious noses at his olefiant gas.
Sappho's great experiment of dinner suffered.
She put sugar in her soup and salt in her pudding.
She sowed allspice for peppercorns, and
vice versa. She overdid the meat that should
have been underdone. She roasted her goose
until its skin was plate armor. She baked her
piecrust hard as Westchester shale. Yesterday's
dinner was sublime; to-day's would be
ridiculous. Conspiracy upsets domestic economy,
as it does political.
When Voltaire had deranged his wife with
dark hints, he proceeded to perplex his son.
Plato was lord of the stables. These were
times of war. Westchester was beginning to
suffer for being neutral ground for rebel and
tory to plunder. Rents came slow at Brothertoft
Manor, and when they came were short. Economy
must be consulted. That crafty counsellor
suggested that Plato's helpers in the stable
should be discharged, and he do three men's
work. He was allowed, however, Bilsby juvenissimus
and another urchin from the Manor to
“chore” for him. They were unpaid attachés.
They did free service as stable-boys, for the
honor and education of the thing, for the privilege
of chewing straws among the horses, and
for the luxury of a daily bellyful of pork and
pudding, and a nightly bed in the loft.
Voltaire went out to the stable. The six white
horses of famous Lincolnshire stock stood, three
on this side, three on that. Their long tails occasionally
switched to knock off the languid last
flies of summer.
Voltaire stopped at the coach-house door to
drive out a noisy regiment of chickens. A lumbering
old coach, of the leathern conveniency
order, was shoved away in a corner. There is
always such a vehicle in every old family stable,—
a stranded ark, that no horse-power will ever stir
again.
“Nineteen year ago,” thought the ancient
June, I drew Mister Edwin and that Billop gal,
in that conveniency, less than two hundred yards
from her house in Wall Street to Trinity Church,
to be married. I heerd the Trinity bells say,
`Edwin Brothertoft, don't marry a Billop!'
I felt it in my bones that she 'd turn out mean.
Her money brought worse luck than we 'd ever
had before. And the good luck has n't got holt
yet.”
“Plato,” says he, stepping into the great picturesque
stable, half full of sunshine, half of
shade, and half of hay, fragrant as the Fourth
of July.
“Sir!” says Plato, drawing himself up, and
giving a military salute. He had seen much
soldiering going on of late, and liked to play at
it, — a relic, perhaps, of Gorilla imitativeness.
“Them boys don't look to me in good health.”
Voltaire pointed to Bilsby and mate. They
were both chewing straws, — a pair of dull sharps,
like most young clodhoppers. They could tell a
calf from a colt with supernatural keenness; but
were of the class which gets itself well Peter-Funked
before its manhood learns the time of
day.
“Dey 's fat, ragged, and sassy as ary boys dis
chile ever seed,” rejoined Plato.
“Bery weakly dey looks,” continued the conspirator.
sich sickly boys 'n all my born days. Chestnuts
is what dey wants. Worms is de trouble. Boys
always gits worms onless dey eats suthin on to
a bushel of chestnuts in de fall.”
The two ragamuffins dropped their straws,
turned pale, and began to feel snakes wake and
crawl within them.
“Now, boys,” says Voltaire impressively, “if
you want ter perwent dem varmint, jess you
put fur de woods an' fill yourselves plum full
ob chestnuts.”
“But chestnuts has worms, too,” objected
Bilsby.
“So much de better; dey 'll eat yourn. Go
'long now. Stay hum to-night, and don't come
roun' here fore to-morrow noon. Be keerfle
now! Eat all to-day; and pick to-morrow to
keep. You don't look to me like boys who is
prepared to die.”
The pair obeyed, and departed solemnly. Nothing
but chestnuts could save them from the worm
that never dieth. There were two very grave
and earnest lads that day cracking burrs in the
groves of Brothertoft Manor.
Plato stared in consternation as he saw his
regiment disbanded.
Voltaire winked with both eyes, and chuckled
enormously.
“Don't you ask me no questions, Plato,” says
he, “an' you wont have no lies to complex yer
mind. I meant to clare de kitchen, ole fokes,
young fokes, an so I scared off dem boys, ho, ho!
Now I 's gwine to gib you a conundrum, Plato.”
Plato let go Volante's tail, which he was combing,
and pricked up his ears.
“What does a young lady do when she don't
want to marry her fust husband?”
“Marries her second,” guessed Plato, cheerfully.
“Plato! I 'se ashamed of you. Dat would
be bigamy.”
The crestfallen groom gave it up.
“You gib it up,” says the propounder.
“Well; she says to her coachman, — it 's bery
mysterious dat de coachman's name is Plato.
She says to him, Plato!”
“What?” interjected the other.
“Neber interrump de speaker!” chided Voltaire.
“She says, `Plato, you know my mare.'
Says he, `Your mare Volanty, Miss?' Says she,—
it's mysterious, but Volanty is her name, — `Now,
Plato, you jess poot anudder oat in her manger,
an groom her slick as a het griddle, and see
de girts and de bridle is right.' And says she,
`Plato, don't you complex yer mind wedder de
answer to dat conundrum ain't suthin' about
runnin' away. But jess you wait till de sebben
seal is opened.”
Here the namesake of him of Ferney gave
a wise binocular wink.
The other philosopher's namesake also eclipsed
his whites with a binocular wink. He divined
where his sire had been travelling in the past
thirty-six hours. He had nodded through the
watches of last night to let the senior in undiscovered.
He knew of the interview with Old
Sam Galsworthy and Hendrecus Canady, an hour
before sunrise. He comprehended enough of
the plot to enjoy it as a magnificent conundrum,
which he could guess at all day, sure
that the seven seals of mystery would be opened,
by and by.
Voltaire limped back to the house and his
pantry. His butler countenance fell, as he contemplated
the empty bottles of yesterday's banquet.
He could almost have wept them full,
if he had known any chemistry to change salt
tears to wine.
“How those redcoats drink!” he muttered.
“Our cellar wont last many more such campaigns.
I must get up some fresh wine for
to-day, and a little brandy to deteriorate Major
Kerr.”
Burns wrote poetry as he pleased, in Scotch,
in English, or in a United-Kingdom brogue.
Voltaire takes the same liberty, and talks now
rank Tombigbee, now severe Continental, and
inconsistent, and use one slang in the saloon
and another in the salon.
Voltaire lighted a candle, and descended into
the cellar.
“It 's resky,” thought he, “to bring a light,
without a lantern, among all this straw and
rubbish. Fire would n't let go, if it once cotched
here. But nobody ever comes except me.”
A flaring dip, very free with sparks, was certainly
dangerous in this den. Who has not
seen such a tinder-box of a place under a careless
old country-house? Capital but awesome
regions they offer for juvenile hide and seek!
How densely their black corners are populated
with Bugaboo! The hider and the seeker shudder
alike in those gloomy caverns, and are glad
enough to find each other, touch hands and
bolt for daylight.
Habit, or possibly his complexion in harmony
with dusky hues, made Voltaire independent
of the terrors of the place. He marched along,
carefully sheltering his candle with a big paw,
brown on the back and red on the palm.
Combustibles were faintly visible in the glimmer.
There were empty wine-boxes overflowing
with the straw that once swaddled their
bottles. There was a barrel of curly shavings,
a barrel of rags quite limp and out of curl, a
barrel of apples very fragrant, one of onions
very odorous, a barrel of turnips white and
shapely, and a bin of potatoes, of the earth,
earthy, and amorphous as clods. There were
the staves and hoops of a rotten old beer-cask,
leaning together, and trying to hold each other
up, like the decayed members of a dead faction.
There was a ciderless cider-cask, beginning
to gape at the seams, like a barge out
of water. Rubbish had certainly called a congress
in this cellar, and the entire rubbish interest
in all its departments had sent deputies.
Old furniture had a corner to itself, and it was
melancholy to see there the bottomless chairs
that people long dead had sat through, the
posts of old bedsteads sleeping higgledy-piggledy,
and old tables that had seen too many revels in
their day, and were tipsily trying to tumble
under themselves. Then there was a heap of
old clothes and ole clo', ghostly in their forlornness,
lifting up arms and holding forth skirts in
vain signal for the ragman. It was a gloomy,
musty, cavernous place, and Voltaire's faint
candle only shed a little shady light around.
The butler unlocked the wine-room door.
Batteries of dusty bottles in their casemates
aimed at him, with flashes of yellow-seal at
their muzzles.
“Three bottles for Major Kerr, — his last,”
he said. “One, very particular, for Major Skerrett
when he comes. One of our French Gutter
de Rosy brandy to qualify with. Ranks looks
broken here since Major Kerr come. I must
close 'em up to-morrow. Bottles likes to lie
touchin', so the wine can ripen all alike.”
The old fellow's hands were so full that he
could not lock his door conveniently. He left it
open for his next visit of reorganization.
He limped off, running the gauntlet of the
combustibles. No spark flew, no cinder fell.
That masterful plaything, fire, could not be
allowed to sport with the old rubbish.
How Voltaire proceeded to carry on his private
share of the plot by deteriorating Kerr's
allowance of Madeira with Cognac, is a secret of
the butler's pantry. It shall not be here revealed.
Why deteriorate the morals of 1860 by
recalling forgotten methods of cheating? Adulteration
is a lost art, thank Bacchus! We drink
only pure juices now. Only honest wines for
our honest dollars in this honest age.
Now from the cellar we will mount to the
room above stairs, where Penelope and her
maids — no, not Penelope, for she was loyal and
disconsolate — where Mrs. Brothertoft and her
maids are at work at the san-benito for to-morrow's
auto-da-fé.
| VII. Edwin Brothertoft | |