 | X. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
10. X.
Plot and counterplot at Brothertoft Manor.
And meantime, what has counterplot without the
house been doing?
If Edwin Brothertoft and Peter Skerrett could
have travelled by daylight through the Highlands,
then this narrative, marching with them,
might have seen what fine things they saw, and
told of them. But they went cautiously by
night. They saw little but the stars overhead
and the faint traces of their shy path. They
were not distracted by grand views. Nature is a
mere impertinence to men who are filled with a
purpose. Fortunately, these intense purposes do
not last a lifetime. Minds become disengaged,
and then they go back, and make apologies to
Nature for not admiring her. And she, minding
her own business, cares as little for the compliment
as for the slight.
It is a bit of the world worth seeing, that
bossy belt of latitude between Fishkill and
Brothertoft Manor. There is a very splendid
pageant to behold there in the halcyon days of
every tree is a flame, or a blush, or a dash of
blood or deep winy crimson on the gray rocks of
the mountains. The Hudson Highlands do not
wrangle about height with the Alps; but they
content themselves with wearing a more gorgeous
autumn on their backs than any mountains
on the globe. Go and see! Frost paints as
bravely now as it did in 1777, and it is safer to
travel. Bellona has decamped from the land,
and half-way from Fishkill down the pass, Minerva,
fair-haired, contralto-voiced, and courteous,
keeps school and presides over the sixty-third
milestone from New York. Go and see
the Highlands for yourself! The business of
these pages is mainly with what hearts suffer and
become under pressure, little with what eyes
survey.
Danger is safety to the prudent. Major Skerrett
and his guide made their perilous journey
without mishap. At the chilly dawn of day, we
find them at the rendezvous in the hills behind
Peekskill, trying to believe that there was warmth
in the warm colors of the woods, and waiting for
Jierck Dewitt.
Presently he appeared, in high spirits.
“We 've come in the nick of time,” said he.
“The redcoats have done all the harm they could
about here. They 've drawed in every man, and
allow, if they set a few towns afire, that General
Gates will turn his back to Burgoyne and take
to passin' buckets.”
“Bang!” here spoke the sunrise gun at Fort
Montgomery.
“Bang! bang! bang!” the three frigates responded.
Dunderberg grumbled with loud echoes. He
was pleased to be awaked by the song of birds;
but the victorious noise of British cannon he
protested against, like a good American.
“The coast is clear for us,” resumed Jierck.
“Clear almost as if these were peace times.
Now if you 'll come along, I 'll take you to a
safe den in the woods, a mile from the Manor-House,
where you can stay all day, snug as a
chipmunk in a chestnut stump, and see how the
land lies. I 'll tell you my other news as we
go.”
They took up their guns and knapsacks and
followed. The light of morning was fair and
tender. The autumn colors were exhilarating.
White frost shone upon the slopes and glimmered
upon every leaf in the groves.
These were the Manor lands. Each spot Edwin
Brothertoft remembered as a scene of his
childhood's discoveries of facts and mysteries
in Nature. They walked on for an hour, and
his youth.
“Do you see that white shining through the
trees?” said Jierck, halting. “It 's the river.
Ten steps and you 'll see the house. Now, Major,
I 'll go and look after my boys, and come at noon
for your orders.”
Jierck turned back into the wood. Major
Skerrett stepped forward eagerly. He had an
eye for a landscape. He had also a soldier's
eye for every new bit of possible battle-field.
Ten steps brought him to the edge of the
slope. A transcendent prospect suddenly flung
out its colors before him. First was a stripe of
undulating upland thoroughly Octobered. Then
a stripe of river, bending like a belt in a flag,
that a breeze is twisting between its fingers.
Then beyond, Highlands, not so glowing as the
foreground, nor so sparkling blue as the blue
water, nor so simple as the sky, softly combined
and repeated all the elements of beauty before
him.
He turned to give and take sympathy from his
companion. Mr. Brothertoft was not beside him.
He had seated himself within cover of the wood.
“Come out, sir!” called Skerrett with enthusiasm.
“I am so bewildered with this beautiful
prospect that I need to hear another man's superlatives
to satisfy me I am not in a dream.
Come out, sir! We are quite safe.”
“My friend,” said Brothertoft. “I was hesitating
a moment before I risked the quenching
of my strange good spirits. You are looking
upon a scene that has been very dear and very
sad to me. I cannot see it, as you do, with a
stranger's eye. It is to me the scenery of tragedy.
I cannot tell yet whether I have outgrown
the wound enough to tolerate the place where
I first felt it.”
He moved forward, and took his place by the
Major's side. The two stood silent a moment.
Thus far the younger, in his robust appetite for
the beauty of Nature, had felt “no need of the
remoter charm by thought supplied.” Color and
form he took as a hungry child takes meat and
drink. Now for the first time there was history
in his picture, sorrow upon his scene. He made
his friend's sadness his own, and looked through
this melancholy mist at the gold, the sheen, and
the bloom. His mere physical elation at this intoxicating
revelry of color passed away. Beauty
left his head and went to his heart.
He turned to see how his companion was
affected.
“I find,” said Brothertoft, “that I do not hate
these dear old scenes. Indeed, the flush and the
fervor of this resplendent season enter into me.
I am cheered enough to pardon myself all my
faults, and all who have wronged me for their
again.”
For a moment there was bold light in his eyes
and vigor in his bearing. The light faded presently
and the vigor drooped. He was again the
stricken man, aged prematurely by sorrow.
“But, my son,” continued the elder, “I cannot
quite sustain myself in this cheerful mood. I
look at my forefathers' house, and think of my
daughter, and I doubt.”
Skerrett followed the direction of his eyes and
studied the Manor-House.
It stood on a small plateau, half a mile from
the river, in the midst of its broad principality.
There was not such another house then in America.
There are few enough now, town or country,
cottage or palace, over whose doors may be
seen the unmistakable cartouche of a gentleman.
The first Edwin Brothertoft built his house
after the model of the dear old dilapidated seat
in Lincolnshire. It was only one fourth the size;
but it had kept the grand features of its prototype.
Skerrett could see and admire the four
quaint gables, two front and two rear, the sturdy
stack of warm chimneys, and the corner tower
with its peaked hat, — such as towers built in
James the First's time wore. It bristled well in
the landscape.
It was a century old. That must be a very
unsociable kind of house which will not make
itself at home in the space of a century. In a
hundred years the Manor-House and buildings
and their scenery had learnt perfect harmony
with each other. Wherever trees were wanted
for shade or show, they had had time to choose
their post and grow stately. Those stalks which
know nothing but to run up lank, for plank, had
long been felled and uprooted. There were no
awkward squads of bushes, stuck about where
they could not stand at ease; but orderly little
companies of shrubbery and evergreens had nestled
wherever a shelter invited them, or wherever
a shoulder of lawn wanted an epaulet. Creepers
had chosen those panels of wall which needed
sheltering from heat or cold, and had measured
precisely how much peering into windows and
drooping over doors could be permitted. The
little Dutch bricks of the sides and the freestone
of the quoins and trimmings, their coloring revised
by the pencils of a hundred quartettes of
seasons, now were as much in tone with the
scene as the indigenous rocks of the soil. Absolute
good taste had reigned at Brothertoft
Manor for a century. Its results justified the
government thoroughly. The present proprietress
had been educated out of her gaudy fancies
by this fine example of the success of a better
repairs and additions chime with the ancient
harmony.
At this moment, too, of Peter Skerrett's inspection,
the landscape about the house wore
its wealthiest garniture. Each maple in the
grounds had crimsoned its ruddiest, or purpled
its winiest, or gilded its leaves, every one with
a film of burnished gold. The elms were all at
their gayest yellow or their warmest brown, and
stiff masculine chestnuts beside them rivalled
their tints, if they could not their grace. Here
and there was a great oak, resolute not to
adopt these new-fangled splendors of gaudy day,
and wearing still the well-kept coat of green
which had served him all summer. Younger
gentlemen of the same family, however, would
not be behind the times, and stood about their
ancestor in handsome new doublets of murrey
color. Every slash and epaulet of shrubbery
was gold on the green of the lawn, and creepers
blazed on the walls and dropped their scarlet
trailers, like flames, before the windows.
“It is a dear old dignified place,” said Peter
Skerrett, “and I wish I could go down and
make a quiet call there by daylight. I will,
by and by, after the war, unless the rebels
punish it with fire for having dined Sir Henry
Clinton.”
“It is a dear old place,” said Brothertoft,
“and I love it most dearly as the school-house
of my education in sorrow. No man is convinced
of his own immortality until his soul
has borne as murderous blows as can be struck,
and still is not murdered. I come to the place
where the hardest hitting at my peace has been
done, and I feel a new sense of power because
I find that there is something in me that is
not quite devastated. On the old battle-field,
I perceive that I am not wholly beaten, and
can never be.”
He said this in a tone of soliloquy. Peter
Skerrett was too young to thoroughly understand
his friend. Besides, he was conscious of
a frantic hunger, — an excellent thing in a hero.
“Come, sir,” said he, “shall we breakfast? I
have remarked that swallowing dawn is an appetizer.
Here goes at my knapsack, to see what
General Putnam's cook has done for us.”
The cook had done as well as a rebel larder
allowed. They did well by the viands, and
then, under cover of the wood, they wore away
the morning watchfully.
They saw boats from the frigates land men to
be drilled ashore or to forage in the village of
Peekskill. Here and there a farmer, braver
or stupider than his neighbors, was to be discerned,
ploughing and sowing for next summer
appeared creeping timidly along the country
roads. The cattle seemed to feed cautiously
and sniff about, lest Cowboys should catch them.
The whole scene wore a depressed and apprehensive
air. Brothertoft Manor was willing to
be well with both sides, and was equally uncomfortable
with both. The tenants of the
Manor were generally trying to persuade themselves
that British frigates in the river were
merely marts for their eggs and chickens. Men
that have not made up their minds are but
skulking creatures on God's earth.
“Seems to me,” said Skerrett, “that I can
tell a Tory or a Neutral as far as I can see
him.”
The day wore on, and in this pause of action
the two gentlemen opened their hearts to each
other.
It was the intercourse of father and son.
Each wanted what the other gave him.
The fatherless junior felt his mind grow deeper
with a man who had touched bottom in thought.
He was sobered and softened by the spectacle
of one so faithful to the truth that was in him,
so gentle, so indulgent, weakened perhaps by
sorrow, but never soured.
The sonless senior said. “Ah, Skerrett! you
are the young oak. If I had had you to lean upon,
Such a merry heart as yours makes the whole
world laugh, — not empty laughter, but hearty.”
At noon Jierck Dewitt came to report. He
and the boys were safely hid in his father's
barn.
“Ike mostly sleeps,” says Jierck, “Sam plays
old sledge with dummy, and Hendrecus is writin'
something in short lines all beginnin' with big
letters, poetry perhaps. He 's an awful great
scholar.”
Their plans were again discussed, and orders
issued.
“Well,” said Jierck, “at dusk I 'll have my
men, and father's runt pony for the prisoner to
straddle, down at the forks of the road waitin'
for you. Nothing can stop us now but one
thing.”
“And that?” asked the Major.
“Is Lady Brothertoft. If she suspicions anything
before we 're ready to run, it will be all
up with us, — halter round our necks and all
up among the acorns.”
So Jierck, still “stiff as the Lord Chancellor,”
and yet limber as a snake in the grass, took
his departure.
Afternoon hours went slower than the morning
hours.
“The sun always seems to me to hold back
he would tumble to bed faster. I am impatient
to make our success sure.”
“Your sturdy confidence reassures me,” returned
Brothertoft. “I am happy there is one
of us whose heart-beats will not unsteady him.
I lose hope when I think what failure means to
my daughter.”
“I must keep myself the cool outsider, with
only a knight-errant's share in this adventure,”
Peter said.
A hard task he found this! The father so
charmed him that he felt himself, for his sake,
taking a very tender fraternal interest in the
young lady. It was so easy to picture her in
her chamber, not a mile away, looking tearfully
for help toward the hills. It was so easy to
fancy her face, — her father's, with the bloom
of youth instead of the shades of sorrow; and
her character, — her father's, with all this gentleness
that perhaps weakened him, in her but
sweet womanliness. Peter Skerrett perceived to
the full the romance of the adventure. He
frequently felt the undeveloped true lover in
him grow restive. He thought that he was all
the time putting down that turbulent personage.
Perhaps he was. But it must be avowed that
he often regretted his moustache, despised his
ill-fitting coat, and only consoled himself by recalling,
see me.” As evening approached, Peter Skerrett
perceived that his desire to redeem this fair
victim from among the bad and the base was
become a passion. He also noticed that its fervor
kept him cool and steady.
Silent sunset came. The crisis drew near.
Doubts began to curdle in Edwin Brothertoft's
mind. He looked over the broad landscape, and
along the solemn horizon, and all his own past
spread before him, sad-colored and dreary.
“Ah my beautiful childhood!” he thought.
“Ah my ardent youth, my aspiring manhood,
my defeated prime! My life utterly defeated,
as the world measures defeat, — and all through
her! All through her, the woman I loved with
my whole heart! Please God we may not meet
to-night! Please Heaven we may never meet
until her dark hour comes! Please Heaven that
when the loneliness of sin comes upon her, and
the misery of a worse defeat than any I have felt
is hers, — that then at last I may be ready with
such words of pardon as she needs!”
“See!” said Skerrett, softly. “It is dark.
There is a light in your daughter's window. We
will go to her.”
“In the name of God!” said the father.
| X. Edwin Brothertoft | |