University of Virginia Library

6. VI.

Handsome Jane Billop wanted a husband.

She looked into the glass, and saw Beauty.
Into the schedules of her father's will, and saw
Heiress.

She determined to throw her handkerchief, as
soon as she could discover the right person to
pick it up.

“He must belong to a great family,” thought
the young lady. “He must promise me to be
a great man. He must love me to distraction.
I hate the name of Billop! I should look lovely
in a wedding-dress!”

She was very young, very premature, motherless,
the daughter and companion of a coarse
man who had basely made a great fortune. Rich
rogues always fancy that their children will inherit
only the wealth, and none of the sin. They
are shocked when the paternal base metal crops
out at some new vein in their progeny. Better
not embezzle and oppress, papa, if you wish
your daughters to be pure and your sons honest!
Colonel Billop did not live to know what kind

of an heiress he and his merciless avarice had
fathered.

“I must see this young Brothertoft,” Jane's
revery continued. “Poor fellow, I have got all
his property! Mr. Skaats says he is a very distinguished
young gentleman, and will be one of
the first men of the Province. Handsome too,
and knows lords and ladies in England! Let
me see! I cannot meet him anywhere so soon
after the funeral. But he might call on me,
about business. I feel so lonely and solemn!
And I do not seem to have any friends. Everybody
courts me for my money, and yet they look
down upon me too, because my father made his
own fortune.”

Colonel Billop had taken much pains to teach
his daughter business habits, and instruct her in
all the details of management of property.

She sat down at her desk, and in a bold round
hand indited the following note: —

“Mr. Skaats, Miss Billop's agent, begs that
Mr. Brothertoft will do him the favor to call at
the house in Wall Street to-morrow at eleven.
Mr. Skaats is informed that there is a picture at
the Manor-House which Mr. Brothertoft values,
and he would be pleased to make an arrangement
for the late owner's retaining it.”

Skilful Jane! to whom a Vandyck was less
worth than its length and breadth in brocade.

She sealed this note with Colonel Billop's frank
motto, “Per omnia ad opes,” and despatched it.

Edwin was delighted at the prospect of recovering
his ancestor. It is a mighty influence
when the portrait of a noble forefather puts its
eye on one who wears his name, and says, by the
language of an unchanging look: “I was a Radical
in my day; be thou the same in thine! I
turned my back upon the old tyrannies and
heresies, and struck for the new liberties and
beliefs; my liberty and belief are doubtless already
tyranny and heresy to thine age; strike
thou for the new! I worshipped the purest God
of my generation, — it may be that a purer God
is revealed to thine; worship him with thy whole
heart.”

Such a monitor is priceless. Edwin was in a
very grateful mood when he knocked at the door
in Wall Street.

A bank now rests upon the site of the Billop
mansion. Ponderous, grim, granite, stand the
two columns of its propylon. A swinging door
squeaks “Hail!” to the prosperous lender, and
“Avaunt!” to the borrower unindorsed. Within,
paying tellers, old and crusty, or young and
jaunty, stand, up to their elbows in gold, and
smile at the offended dignity of personages not
identified presenting checks, and in vain requiring
payment. Farther back depositors are feeding

money, soft and hard, into the maw of the
receiving teller. Behind him, book-keepers wield
prodigious ledgers, and run up and down their
columns, agile as the lizards of Pæstum. And
in the innermost penetralia of that temple of
Plutus, the High-Priests, old Dons of Directors
worth billions, sit and fancy that they brew crisis
or credit.

So stand things now where Edwin Brothertoft
once stood contemplating a brass knocker.

The door opened, and he was presently introduced
into a parlor, upholstered to the upper-most
of its era.

But where is Mr. Skervey Skaats?

Instead of that mean and meagre agent, here
is the principal, — a singularly handsome, bold,
resolute young woman, her exuberant beauty
repressed and her carnations toned down by
mourning.

Both the young people were embarrassed for a
moment.

He was embarrassed at this unlooked-for substitution
of a beautiful girl for an ugly reptile of
a Skaats; and she to find how fair a spirit she
had conjured up. He with a sudden compunction
for the prejudice he had had against the
unknown heir, his disinheritor; and she with her
instant conviction that here was the person to
pick up her handkerchief, if he would.

Shall the talk of these children be here repeated?
It might fill a pleasant page; but this
history cannot deal with the details of their immature
lives. It only makes ready, in this First
Act, for the rapid business of a riper period.

When Edwin Brothertoft left the heiress's parlor,
after sixty minutes of delight, she seated
herself at the desk where she, under the alias
Skaats, had indited his invitation, took a fresh
sheet of paper and a virgin quill, and wrote: —

Jane Brothertoft.

Then the same in backhand, with flourishes and
without. Then she printed, in big text: —

Lady Jane Brothertoft, of Brothertoft Hall.

Then, with a conscious, defiant look, she carried
her prophetic autograph to the fire, and watched
it burn.

Over the fireplace was a mirror, districted into
three parts by gilded mullions. Above was
perched a gilt eagle, a very rampant high-flier
indeed. Two wreaths of onions, in the disguise
of pomegranates, were festooned from his beak,
and hung in alluring masses on either side of
the frame. Quite a regiment of plump little
cherubs, clad in gilding, tight as it could fit,
clung in the wreaths, and sniffed at their fragrance.
Jane looked up and saw herself in the
mirror. A blush deepened her somewhat carnal

carnations. Every cherub seemed to be laughing
significantly. She made a face at the merry
imps. As she did so, she caught sight of the reflection
of her father's portrait, also regarding
her. He was such a father as a child would
have been quite justified in disowning and utterly
cutting, if a stranger had asked, “Who is
that horrid person with the red face, the coarse
jowl, the permanent leer, and cruel look?” An
artist, cunning in red for the face and white for
the ruffles, had made this personage more butcherly
even than Nature intended.

Jane Billop marched up to the portrait, and
turned it with its face toward the wall.

“He need n't look at me, and tell me I am
courting Mr. Edwin Brothertoft,” she said to
herself. “I know I am, and I mean to have
him. He is lovely; but I almost hate him. He
makes me feel ignorant and coarse and mean.
I don't want to be the kind of woman he has
been talking to with that deferential address.
But I suppose this elegant manner is all put on,
and he is really just like other people. He seems
to be pretty confident of carrying the world before
him. We shall be the great people of the
Province. Here comes the distinguished Sir Edwin
Brothertoft, and Lady Jane, his magnificent
wife! People shall not pretend to look down
upon me any more, because my father knew how

to make money, when fools threw it away. I 've
got a Manor, too, Miss Mary Phillipse; and I 'm
handsomer than you, and not almost an old maid.
That little chit of a Mayor Cruger's daughter's
had better not try to patronize me again, nor
Julia Peartree Smith turn up her poor pug nose.
They 'll all want invitations to Mrs. Brothertoft's
ball on going out of mourning. How they will
envy me my Edwin! What a beautiful bow he
makes! What a beautiful voice he has! June is
a lovely month for a wedding.”

There is never joy in Wall Street now such as
filled the heart of Edwin Brothertoft on that
morning of a bygone century. The Billops of
our time live a league up town, and plot on Murray
Hill for lovers of good family.

Edwin had found his Pearl, — a glorious, flashing
Ruby rather. Its gleam exhilarated him.
His heart and his heels were so light, that he felt
as if he could easily spring to the top of the spire
of Old Trinity, which was at least a hundred feet
lower than the crocketty structure now pointing
the moral of Wall Street. He walked away from
Miss Billop's door in a maze of delight, too much
bewildered by this sudden bliss to think of analyzing
it.

So the young payee, whose papa's liberal check
for his quarter's allowance has just been cashed,
may climb from the bank on the site of the Billop

house, as far as Broadway, content with the joy
of having tin, without desiring to tinkle it.

But at the corner Edwin's heart began to speak
to him with sentiments and style quite different
from the lady's.

“How she startled me with her brilliant beauty!
How kind it was to think of my valuing the
portrait! How generously and how delicately
she offered it! And I had done her the injustice
of a prejudice! That wrong I will redress by
thinking of her henceforth all the more highly
and tenderly.

“Poor child! a lonely orphan like myself.
She showed in all our interview how much she
yearned for friendship. Mine she shall have.
My love? yes, yes, my love! But that must
stay within my secret heart, and never find a
voice until I have fully assured my future.

“And this warm consciousness of a growing
true love shall keep me strong and pure and
brave. Thank God and her for this beautiful
influence! With all the kindness I have met,
I was still lonely, still desponding. Now I am
jubilant; everything is my friend and my comrade.
Yes; ring out, gay bells of Trinity! What
is it you are ringing? A marriage? Ah, happy
husband! happy bride! I too am of the brotherhood
of Love. Ring, merry bells! Your songs
shall be of blissful omen to my heart.”