 | II. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
2. II.
It was in the Skerrett blood to come out red
at a pinch.
“Things do look a little dusky for the good
cause,” thought Skerrett, as, wearing his buff
and blue coat, — far too dull a coat for so bright
a fellow, — he stood drinking October next morning,
as we have seen him, before Mrs. Birdsell's
cottage.
“The Liberty-tree is a little nipped,” he continued.
“I suppose all the worm-eaten people
will drop off now. Let 'em go! and be food for
pigs! We sound chestnuts will stick to the
boughs, and wear our burrs till Thanksgiving.
“Fine figure that! quite poetic! Who would
n't be a poet in such a poem of a morning? O
Lucullus, you base old glutton, with your feasts
and your emetics! see here, how I breathe and
blow, breathe and blow, — that 's a dodge you
were not up to!
“Hooray! now I 'm full of gold air and go-ahead
spirits.”
He marched off, — the gallant, buoyant young
Continental soil unhung. On his nut-brown
face his blonde moustache lay lovingly curling.
The Marquis de Chastellux, the chief, if not
the only, authority on the Revolutionary moustache,
does not specify Skerrett's in his “Travels
in America.” The distinction might have
been invidious. But it was understood that,
take it “by and large,” color and curl, Skerrett's
was the Moustache (with a big M) of its
era. Many brother officers shaved in despair
when they beheld it. Hence, perhaps, the number
of shorn lips in the portraits of our heroes
of that time.
“Something is going to happen to-day,”
thought the Major. “I bubble. I shall boil
over, and make a fool of myself before night.
I am in that ridiculous mood when a man loves
his neighbor as himself, believes in success, wants
to tilt at windmills. O October! you have intoxicated
me! I challenge the world. Hold
me, somebody, or I shall jump over the Highlands
and take Sir Henry Clinton by the hair,
then up to Saratoga and pick up Jack Burgoyne,
knock their pates together, and fling them
over the Atlantic.”
A man's legs gallop when his blood and spirits
are boiling after such a fashion. It did not take
the Major any considerable portion of eternity
between Fishkill village and Putnam's head-quarters.
In fact, he had need to despatch. He had
slept late after his journey. The Council would
be assembled, and already muddling their brains
over the situation.
The Van Wyck farm-house stood, and still
stands, with its flank to the road and its front to
the Highlands.
“Not much clank and pomp and pageantry
in this army of Israel Putnam,” thought Skerrett.
“No tents! Men are barracked in barns,
I suppose, or sleep under corn-stalks, with pumpkins
for pillows. No sentinels! But probably
every man keeps his eyes peeled and his ears
pricked up for the tramp of British brogans or
Hessian boots on the soil.”
There was, however, a sentry standing at the
unhinged gate in the decimated paling of the
farm-yard.
He turned his back, and paced to the end of
his beat, as Major Skerrett approached.
“Aha!” thought the latter, “Jierck Dewitt
is as quick-sighted as ever. He wants to dodge
me. Poor fellow! Bottle has got him again, I
fear. Why can't man be satisfied with atmosphere,
and cut alcohol?”
Skerrett entered the gate, and hailed, “Jierck!”
The sentinel turned and saluted.
A clear case of Bottle! The Colony of Jamaica
was a more important ally to Great
Britain in the Revolution than is generally
known. Ah! if people would only take their
rum latent in its molasses, and pour out their
undistilled toddies on their buckwheat cakes!
“Jierck,” said the Major kindly, “you promised
me you would not touch it.”
“So I did,” says the man, inflicting on himself
the capital punishment of hanging his head;
“and I kep stiff as the Lord Chancellor, till I
got back home to Peekskill below here. There
I found my wife had gone wrong.”
The poor fellow choked. A bad wife is a
black dose.
“We grew up together, sir, on the Brothertoft
Manor lands. She was a Bilsby, one of the old
families, — as brisk and bright a gal as ever
stepped. We were married, and travelled just
right, she alongside of me, and I alongside of
her, pullin' well and keepin' everything drawin'.
Well, when I shouldered arms, Lady Brothertoft
— that's the Patroon's widow — got my wife
to go down to York and be her maid. It was
lettin' down for Squire Dewitt's son's wife to
eat in anybody's kitchen. But that 's nothing.
The harm is that Lady Brothertoft's house
is unlucky. Women don't go into it and stay
straight. There 's too much red in the parlors, —
the Patroon cleared out, and got himself killed,
if he is killed. That 's what spoilt my wife.”
Skerrett's supernatural spirits sank a little at
this. There was an undeveloped true lover in
the young man, — developed enough to show him
what misery may come from such a wrong as
Jierck's.
“That 's why I took to rum,” continued the
man, dismally. “When my company was ordered
to join Old Put at Peekskill, and I saw all
the old places where my wife and I used to do
our courtin', and saw my sister Kate smilin' at
her sweetheart and makin' comforters for him, I
could n't stand it. They all told me to keep
away from the woman. But I did n't quite believe
it, you know. So I went down to the
Manor-House and saw her. She did n't dare to
look me in the face. That had to be drownded
somehow. I drownded it in rum. I can't get
drunk like a beast, — that is n't into me, — but I
have n't been sober one hour since until we
came up here to Fishkill.”
“Stop it now, Jierck, and try to forget.”
“What 's the use?”
“The use is this. We were all proud of you,
as a crack man. We cannot spare you. You
know as well as I do what we are fighting for.
The Cause cannot spare you. Stand to your
Old Jamaica.”
The sentinel was manned by these hearty
words and tones.
“I 'll try,” said he, “to please you, Major
Skerrett.”
Up went his head and his courage.
“That 's right,” says the Major; “and we 'll
have a fling at the enemy together before I go,
and spike a gun for him.”
“I must take another sip of October, after
that,” thought Skerrett, as he walked on toward
the farm-house.
He halted on the steps, and inspected the
scene.
October was quite as gorgeous to see, as it was
glorious to tipple. It was in the Skerrett blood
to love color.
“Color! O blazes, what a conflagration of a
landscape!” thought the Major; “O rainbows,
what delicious blending! V. I. B. G. Y. O. R.
Violet hills far away, indigo zenith, blue sky on
the hill-tops, green pastures, yellow elms, chest-nuts,
and ashes, orange pumpkins, red maples!
Flames! Rainbows! Splendors! Take my blood,
O my dear country! and cheap, too, for such a
pageant!”
There were two parts to the scene he was regarding
with this exhilaration, — a flat part and
of fertile plain, gerrymandered into farms. Half
a mile away in front, the sudden mountains set
up their backs to show their many-colored gaberdines,
crimson, purple, and gold at the bottom
flounce, belted with different shades of the same
in regular gradation above, and sprigged all over
with pines and cedars, green as May.
The morning sun winked at the Major over
the summits, saying, as plain as a wink can speak,
“Beat this, my Skerrett, in any clime, on any
continent, if you can!”
The Major, with both his eyes, blinked back
ecstatically, “It can't be beat! O Sol! It can't
be beat!”
When he opened his dazzled eyes, and glanced
again about him, he seemed to see thousands of
little suns rollicking over the fields, and congeries
of suns piling themselves like golden bombs here
and there. They were not suns, but pumpkins,
rollicking in the furrows, and every congeries was
a heap of the same, putting their plump cheeks
together and playing “sugar my neighbor.”
“We must keep war out of this,” thought the
Major. “Nerve my good right arm, O Liberty,
to protect this pie-patch!”
His earnest prayer was disturbed by the sound
of voices close at hand.
Immediately Sergeant Lincoln appeared at the
accompanied him.
“Make way for the Lord Chancellor!” says
Skerrett to himself, as this gray-headed, dusky
dignitary loomed up. “If I am ever elected
Judge, I shall take that old fellow's scalp for a
wig. And his manners, too! He seems to be
laying down the law to the Sergeant, so flat that
it will never stir again. Mysterious fellow, this
orderly who quotes Latin! I 'd like to solve him,
and offer him sympathy, if he has had the `wownd'
old Put talks of. I owe him a cure for saving
me from a kill.”
The two passed by, in eager conversation.
Skerrett turned, and entered the farm-house,
where the officers of Putnam's army were sighing
over blunders past, and elaborating schemes
for the future.
Peter's seedy coat was freshness and elegance
compared to the scarecrow uniforms it now
encountered. Our Revolutionary officers were
braves at heart, but mostly Guys in costume.
| II. Edwin Brothertoft | |