University of Virginia Library

7. VII.

Such soliloquies as those of the last chapter
presently led to dialogue of the same character.

The lady continued to scribble that brief romance,
or rather that title of a romance.

“Lady Jane Brothertoft of Brothertoft Hall.”

The lover for his part was not a dunce. He
soon perceived that it was his business to supply
the situations and the talk under this title, and
help the plot to grow.

It grew with alarming rapidity.

Tulips were thrusting their green thumbs
through the ground in the Dutch gardens of the
town when the young people first met. Tulips
had flaunted their day and gone to green seed-vessels
with a little ruffle at the top, and cabbage-roses
were in young bud, when the first act of
the drama ended.

The lady was hardly as coy as Galatea in the
eclogue. The lover might have been repelled
by the large share she took in the courtship.
But he was a true, blind, eager young lover,
utterly absorbed in a fanaticism of affection.

Indeed, if in the tumult of his own bliss he had
perceived that the lady was reaching beyond
her line to beckon him, this would have seemed
another proof that she and he were both obeying
a Divine mandate. What young lover disputes
his mistress's right to share the passion?

“I knew it,” he said to her, by and by, — “I
knew from the first moment we met, that we
must love one another. We are perfect counter-parts,
— the halves of a perfect whole. But you
the nobler. I felt from the moment that pleasant
incident of the portrait had brought us together,
that we were to be united. I hardly
dared give my hope words. But I knew in my
heart that the benign powers would not let me
love so earnestly and yet desperately.”

These fine fervors seemed to her a little ridiculous,
but very pretty. She looked in the glass,
where the little Cupids in the onion-wreaths were
listening, amused with Edwin's rhapsodies, smiled
to herself, then smiled to him, and said, “Matches
are made in heaven.”

“I told you,” he said, “that I had erased the
word Perhaps from my future. Now that I am
in the way to prosperity and distinction for myself,
and that you smile, success offers itself to
me drolly. The Great Lawyer proposes to me a
quadruple salary, and quarters the time in which
I am to become a Hortensius. The Great Merchant

offers me three hundred a year at once,
a certain partnership, and promises to abandon
codfish and go into more fragrant business.”

They laughed merrily over this. Small wit
wakes lovers' glee.

“I like you better in public life,” she said.
“You must be a great man immediately.”

“Love me, and I will be what you love.”

“I am so glad I am rich. Such fine things
can be done with money.”

“I should be terribly afraid of your wealth,
if I was not sure of success on my side. As it
is, we have the power of a larger usefulness.”

“Yes,” she said, carelessly.

He did not notice her indifferent manner, for
he had dashed into a declamation of his high
hopes for his country and his time. Those were
the days when ardent youths were foreseeing
Revolution and Independence.

She did not seem much interested in this
rhapsody.

“I love to hear you talk of England and the
great people you knew there,” said she. “Is
not Brothertoft Manor-House very much like an
English country-seat?”

“Yes; but if it were well kept up, there
would be no place so beautiful in England, —
none so grand by nature, I mean.”

Here followed another rhapsody from this

poetic youth on the Manor and its people, the
river and the Highlands.

She was proud of her lover's eloquence, although
she did not sympathize much in his
enthusiasms. She had heard rivers talked of as
water-power or roads for water-carriage. Mountains
had been generally abused in the Billop
establishment as ungainly squatters on good soil.
Forests were so many feet of timber. Tenants
were serfs, who could be squeezed to pay higher
rents, and ought to be the slaves of their landlords.

But she listened, and felt complimented while
Edwin painted the scenery of her new piece
of property with glowing fancy, and while he
made each of the tenants the hero of a pastoral
idyl. A manor that could be so commended
must be worth more money than she had supposed.

“I begin to long to see it,” she said, with real
interest. “And that dear old fat Sam Galsworthy,
who lent you the horse, I must thank
him.”

“Why not go up, as soon as June is fairly
begun?”

“Mr. Skaats would not know all the pretty
places.”

They looked at each other an instant, — she
bold and imperious, he still timidly tender.

“If I only dared!” he said.

“Men always dare, do they not?” she rejoined,
without flinching.

“Are you lonely here?” he asked.

“Bitterly, except when you come. Are
you?”

“Sadly, except when I am with you.”

Another exchange of looks, — she a little softened,
and oppressed with the remembrance of
the sudden, voiceless, unconscious death of her
father, — he softened too, measuring her loss by
his, tenderer for her than before, but not quite
so timid.

“Both very lonely,” he continued, with a
smile. “Two negatives make an affirmative.
Do you love me?”

“I am afraid I am already committed on that
subject.”

“Why should we not put our two solitudes
together, and make society?”

“Why not?”

“Mr. Skaats would be a poor guide to Brothertoft
Manor.”

“Mr. Skaats!” she said impatiently, as if she
were dismissing a feline intruder. “We were
not talking of him.”

“No. I was merely thinking I could recommend
you a better cicerone.”

“Who can you possibly mean?”

“Myself.”

“Ah!”

“Brothertoft Manor would be a lovely place
to spend a honeymoon in.”

“I long to see it, after your description.”

“June there is perfection.”

“June! and this is May!”

“Will you go there with me in June, my
dearest love?”

“Yes, Edwin.”

It was agreed among all the gossips of the
Province — and the gossips were right — that
this was not a mercenary match. Youth and
beauty on both sides, what could be more natural
than love and marriage? And then the
gossips went on to weigh the Brothertoft name
against the Billop fortune, and to pronounce —
for New York in those days loved blood more
than wampum — that the pounds hardly balanced
the pedigree. Both parties were in deep
mourning. Of course there could be no great
wedding. But all the female quality of the
Province crowded to Trinity Church to see the
ceremony. The little boys cheered lustily when
the Billop coach, one of the three or four in
town, brought its broadside to bear against the
church porch, and, opening its door, inscribed
with the Billop motto, “Per omnia ad opes,”

discharged the blushing bridegroom and his
bride.

The beadle — for beadles have strutted on our
soil — quelled the boys, and ushered the happy
pair to the chancel-rail. It is pleasant to know
that the furniture of the altar, reading-desk, and
pulpit, which met their eyes, was crimson dam-ask
of the “richest and costliest kind,” and cost
in England forty-two pounds eleven shillings and
threepence.

Venerable Rector Barclay read the service,
with a slight Mohawk accent. He had been for
some years missionary among that respectable
tribe, — not, be it observed, the unworthy off-shoot
known as Mohocks and colonized in London,
— and had generally persuaded his disciples
to cut themselves down from polygamy to bigamy.
Reverend Samuel Auchmuty assisted the
Rector with occasional interjections of Amen.

The great officials of the Province could not
quit business at this hour; but the Patroons who
happened to be in town mustered strong in
honor of their order. Of pretty girls there came
galore. Pages would fail to name them and
their charms. There was the espiègle Miss Jay,
of that fine old Huguenot Protestant stock,
which still protests pertinaciously against iniquity
in Church and State. There was the sensible
Miss Schuyler, the buxom Miss Beekman,

high-bred Miss Van Rensselaer, Miss Winthrop,
faultless in toilette and temper, Miss Morris,
wearing the imperious nose of her family, popular
Miss Stuyvesant, that Amazonian filly Miss
Livingston, handsome Mary Phillipse with her
determined chin, Julia Peartree Smith, nez en
l' air as usual, and a score of others, equally
fair, and equally worthy of a place in a fashionable
chronicle.

“Poor Edwin Brothertoft!” said the Peartree
Smith, as the young ladies filed out after the ceremony.
“Did you hear that bold creature make
her responses, `I Jane take thee Edwin,' as if
she were hailing the organ loft. These vulgar
girls understand the policy of short engagements.
They don't wish to be found out. But company
manners will not last forever. Poor Mr. Brothertoft!
why could he not find a mature woman?”
(Julia had this virtue, perhaps, to an exaggerated
degree, and had been suspected of designs
upon the bridegroom.) “Girls as young as she
is have had no chance to correct their ideal.
She will correct it at his expense. She will presently
find out he is not perfect, and then will
fancy some other man would have suited her better.
Women should have a few years of flirtation
before they settle in life. These pantalette
marriages never turn out well. An engagement
of a few weeks to that purse-proud baby, her

father's daughter! Poor Edwin Brothertoft!
He will come to disappointment and grief.”

With this, Miss Julia, striving to look Cassandra,
marches off the stage.

But Edwin Brothertoft had no misgivings. If
he had fancied any fault of temper in his betrothed,
or perceived any divergence in principle,
he had said to himself, “My faithful love shall
gently name the fault, or point the error, and
her love shall faithfully correct them.”

The Billop coach rumbled away on its little
journey down Wall Street. Parson Barclay
bagged his neat fee and glowed with good wishes.
The world buzzed admiration. The little boys
huzzaed. The bell-ringer tugged heartily at the
bell-rope. And at every tug of his, down on the
noisy earth, the musical bells, up in the serene
air, responded, “Go, happy pair! All bliss, no
bale! All bliss, no bale!”

The rumble of the “leathern conveniency,”
the applause of Young New York, and the
jubilation of the bells were so loud, that Edwin
was forced to lean very close to his wife's cheek
while he whispered: —

“We were alone, and God has given us each
a beloved companion. We are orphans; we
shall be all in all to one another. Long, long,
and always brightening years of thorough trust
and love, dearer than ever was dreamed, lie

before us. How happy we shall be in our
glowing hopes! how happy in our generous ambitions!
how happy in our earnest life! Ah,
my love! how can I love you enough for the gift
of this beautiful moment, for the promise of the
fairer time to come!”