 | IV. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
4. IV.
Major Skerrett paused on the farm-house
steps.
“Jierck Dewitt, I want,” he thought. “And
there he is on guard, looking every inch a soldier
again. My good word has quite set him up.
Mem. — A word of cheer costs little, and may
help much. Now for Sergeant Lincoln and the
negro!”
Just at the edge of the bank, in front of
the farm-house, Skerrett perceived the Sergeant
sitting.
His head was resting on his hands. The physiognomy
of his back revealed despondency. An
old well-sweep bent over him, and seemed to
long to comfort him with a douse of balm from
its bucket.
The landscape glowed, as before. The jolly
pumpkins grinned, as before. The Major's spirits
were still at bubble and boil. “Every prospect
was pleasing, and only man” — that is only
Sergeant — seemed woe-begone.
“He is feeling his wound, — the `wownd' Put
cheer him. Unhappy people are not allowed in
the Skerrett precinct.”
“Why, Orderly!” says the Major, approaching,
and laying his hand on the other's shoulder;
“you must not be down-hearted, man! What
has happened? What can I do for you?”
The Sergeant raised his head, and shook it
despairingly.
“Thank you,” said he. “Nothing! It is too
late!”
“Too late! That is a point of time my time-piece
has not learnt how to mark.”
Indeed, the Skerrett movement was too elastic
in springs, and too regular with its balance-wheel,
to strike any hour but “Just in time!”
The Sergeant thanked him, with a smile and
manner of singular grace, and repeated, sorrowfully,
“It is too late.”
“Too late is suicide,” says Peter. “We will
not cut our throats till after Indian summer.
Presently you shall tell me what is and is not
too late. First, I have a question or two to
ask. The General tells me you know this country
thoroughly.”
“I do by heart, — by sad heart.”
“I have undertaken to cut in, and cut out,
where the enemy is, twenty miles below on the
river.”
The Orderly at once seemed greatly interested.
“Twenty miles below? No one can know that
region better than I.”
“Was it there his heart was wounded?”
thought the Major.
“Ah, then! you 're just my man,” Skerrett
continued, ignoring the other's depression. “I
have volunteered on a wild-goose chase. I may
need to know every fox-track through all the
Highlands to get away safe with my goose, if
I catch him.”
Major Skerrett, surprised at a sudden air of
eager attention and almost excitement in the
older man, paused a moment.
“Go on!” said the other authoritatively, with
a voice and manner more of Commander-in-Chief
than Sergeant.
Skerrett felt, as he had done before, the peculiar
magnetism of this mysterious Orderly, who
quoted Latin and bowed like a courtier.
“I have taken upon myself,” said he, “to cut
out a British officer of distinction, now staying
at a country house twenty miles below. I may
want you of my party. General Putnam recommends
you.”
The Orderly sprang up and grasped Major
Skerrett's arm with both his hands.
“Who is the man? Name! Name!” he
gasped.
“Major Kerr,” replied Skerrett, coolly.
“Wait! wait a moment!” cried the other,
in wild excitement.
He rushed to the edge of the bank, where a
path plunged off, leading to the Highland road,
and was lost among the glowing recesses of a
wood skirting the base of the heights. He
halted there, and screamed, in a frantic voice,
“Voltaire! Voltaire!”
And neither the original destructive thinker
thus entitled, nor any American namesake of his
answering the call, the Orderly raced down the
slope, with hat gone and gray cue bobbing
against his coat-collar.
He disappeared in the grove, and the Major
could hear his feet upon the dry leaves, and his
voice still crying loudly, “Voltaire! Voltaire!”
“Has the old man gone mad?” thought Skerrett.
“Voltaire the Great is getting too ancient
to travel. It is hardly fair to disturb him. He
is a soldier `emeritus' of our Good Cause. He
waked France up. We have to thank him
largely that France has an appetite for freedom,
and sends her sons over to help us fight
for it. But he cannot hear this hullaballoo at
Ferney; Lafayette, Radière, and the others, represent
their master, with such heart and stomach
as they can.
“I must not lose sight of my runaway,” continued
him like a shot. He may have a grudge there.
Some private vendetta in the case. And yet this
mild old man always seemed to me to have entirely
merged his personality in patriotism. I
fancied that he had forgotten all his likes, dislikes,
loves, and hates, and given up all ties except
his allegiance to an idea.”
Major Skerrett walked rapidly to the edge of
the bank, where Sergeant Lincoln had first given
tongue for an absent philosopher.
As he was about to follow the path, he heard
steps again in the wood. In a moment the Orderly
reappeared, and ran up the slope, panting.
He was followed by a person who moved slower,
and blew harder, the same old wiggy negro
whom Major Skerrett had observed laying down
the law to his companion.
“So that is Voltaire!” thought the Major.
“Well, it is the first time I have ever found the
devil blacker than he is painted.”
The Orderly sank, agitated and out of breath,
on the ground.
Voltaire came up the hill, and, being hatless,
pulled hard at his gray wig, by way of salute.
The wig was rooted to the scalp. Voltaire left
it in situ, and bowed as grandly as a black
dignitary may when he is blown by a good
run.
“I was in despair just now,” said Sergeant
Lincoln. “In despair when I said it was too
late to help me. Perhaps it is not so. I trust
God sends you, Major Skerrett, to show us the
way out of our troubles.”
“This is sound Gospel,” thought Skerrett.
“This black Voltaire may be the Evangelist;
but the Gospel is unimpeachable.”
“Come, Sergeant,” continued he aloud, “tell
me what all this means, my friend. We must
despatch. My bird down the river may take
wing, if I waste time.”
“I am pained, my dear young friend,” said
the senior, rising, “to acknowledge to you an
unwilling deceit of mine. But I must do so.
You have known me always under a false name.
I am not Lincoln, but Brothertoft, — Edwin
Brothertoft.”
“My father's friend!” said Skerrett, taking
the other's hand. “Mr. Brothertoft, so missed,
so desired by the Good Cause. Why —”
Here Major Skerrett interrupted himself, and
went to rummaging in his brain for the disconnected
strips of record stamped, “Brothertofts,
The family.” The strips pasted themselves together,
and he ran his mind's eye rapidly along,
as one might read a mile or so of telegram in
cipher.
As he read with one eye introverted and galloping
a belt on a drum making a million revolutions in
a breath, he kept the other eye fixed upon Mr.
Brothertoft, alias Lincoln, before him.
This sad, worn, patient, gentle face supplied a
vivid flash of interpretation. It shed light upon
all the dusky places in Major Skerrett's knowledge
of the family. The eye looking outward
helped the eye looking inward. Instantly, by
this new method of utilizing strabismus, he saw
what he remembered faintly become distinct. He
could now understand why this quiet gentleman
had dropped his tools, — forceful mallet and keen
chisel, — and let the syllables of his unfinished
mark on the world wear out.
“I have heard and read of these blighting
hurts,” thought Peter, “and I trifled with their
existence, and was merry as before, — God forgive
me! Now I touch the wounded man, and it
chills me. I lose heart and hope. But strangely,
too, this man who first teaches me to feel the pain,
teaches me also that the sufferer needs my love.
Seems to me I am more in earnest than I was
two minutes ago. I feel older and gentler. I
wish I was his son!”
“Why?” said Edwin Brothertoft, answering
slowly and sadly, while the other's brain read
records and forged thoughts at this furious speed.
“Would you ask me why my life is what it is,
Ah, my friend, the story is long and dreary, — too
dreary to darken the heart of youth.”
Sadly as he spoke, there was no complaint in
his tone. He seemed to regard his facts a little
dreamily, as if he were mentioning some other
man's experience.
“But the past is dead,” he continued, “and
here are present troubles alive and upon me.”
“Troubles alive!” says the Major, feeling
brave, buoyant Peter Skerrett still stirring under
the buff and blue. “Those I can help floor,
perhaps. Name them!”
He looked so victorious, and the Moustache,
albeit unknown to the pages of De Chastellux,
so underscored his meaning nose, and so drew
the cartouche of a hero about his firm mouth,
that Brothertoft thrilled with admiration through
his sadness.
Everybody has seen the phantasmagoric shop-sign.
“Vinegar,” you read upon it, as you approach
down the street. You don't want Vinegar,
and you gaze reproachfully at the sign. But
what is this? As you advance, a blur crosses
your eyes. 'T was Vinegar surely! 'T is Sugar
now. And that you do want; and proceed to
purchase a barrel of crushed, a keg of powdered,
and a box of loaves wearing foolscaps of Tyrian
purple on their conical bald pates.
Edwin Brothertoft had seen only Despair
written up before him. He advanced a step, at
Skerrett's words, lifted up his eyes, and Despair
shifted to Hope.
“When you named Major Kerr,” he said,
“you named one who is devising evil to me and
mine. Capture him and the harm is stayed.
My faithful old friend Voltaire and I will try to
tell you the story between us.”
Voltaire considered this his introduction, and
bowed pompously.
“You are too juicy, Voltaire, and too shiny, and
not sardonic enough, to bear the name of the
weazened Headpiece of France,” the Major said.
“When I made my pilgrimage to Ferney, I found
that Atropos of Bigotry in a night-cap and dressing-gown,
looking as wrinkled, leathery, and
Great as one of Michael Angelo's Sibyls. I hope
you are as true to Freedom as he was, and a
more wholesome man.”
Skerrett made this talk to give the old fellow
time to blow, as well as to stir up a smile to the
surface of Brothertoft's sad face.
“Yes sir,” said the negro, bowing again.
“Voltaire, sir, omnorum gotherum of Brothertoft
Manor-House. Hannibal was my name;
but I heard Mr. Ben Franklin say that Mr. Voltaire
was the greatest man he knowed, so I married
to that name, and tuk it.”
Here he paused and grinned. His white teeth
gleamed athwart his face, as the white stocking
flashes through, when one slits a varnished boot,
too tight across the instep.
“I have been here at Fishkill some months,”
said Brothertoft. “At first I did not allow myself
to think of my family. Then neighborhood
had its effect. I communicated my whereabouts
to this trusty friend. He got my message, and
comes to give me the first news I have had
since I left home at the news of Lexington.”
“More than two years ago,” Skerrett said.
“And in those two years,” continued the
other, “my daughter has passed from child to
woman.”
“Oho!” thought Peter. “His daughter —
Radière's la plus belle — is in this business.
My years in Europe had made me almost forget
there was such a person. Is she like father,
or mother, I wonder?”
“From child to woman, sir,” says Voltaire,
“and there 's not such another young lady in
the Province, — State, I mean.”
Bravo, Voltaire! You refuse to talk “nigger.”
You still remember that Tombigbee is a
dialect taboo to you. Continue to recollect that
on these pages you are a type of a race on whose
qualities the world is asking information. Christy's
Minstrels dance out their type negro, Jim
presents hers, Uncle Tom, an exceptional saint.
Mr. Frederick Douglass introduces himself with
a courtier's bow and an orator's tongue. The
ghost of John C. Calhoun rushes forward, and
points to a stuffed Gorilla. Then souviens toi
Voltaire of thy representative position, and don't
lapse into lingo!
“When I abandoned home,” Brothertoft resumed,
“I believed that I could be of no further
use to a daughter who had disowned me. But I
have found that a man cannot cease to love his
own flesh and blood.”
“Nor his flesh and blood him,” says the negro.
“Other people may do the hating. Miss
Lucy only knows how to love.”
Fort bien Voltaire! except the pronunciation
“lub.”
“It was only a day or two before the capture
of the forts that my tardy message of good-will
reached my friend here,” said the ex-Patroon.
“And just in time,” that friend rejoined.
“I hope so,” sighed Putnam's Orderly.
“Yes sir,” the negro said, turning to Skerrett.
“It was now or never. So I left my great dinner-party.
Sir Henry Clinton and his suite were
to dine with us to-day!”
“Grand company!” the Major said, seeing
that a tribute of respect was wanted.
“Sirr Henery Clinton!” repeated the butler
with pride. “I did n't like to leave. My wife
Sappho can cook prime. My boy Plato can pass
a plate prime. But where 's the style to come
from when I 'm away? Who 's to give the signals?
`Ground dishes! Handle covers! Draw
covers! Forrud march with covers to the pantry!'
Who 's to pull the corks and pour the
Madeira so it won't blob itself dreggy?”
He paused and sighed.
Edwin Brothertoft was silent. The thought
of Red dinner-parties at the Manor was evidently
not agreeable to him.
“We are not getting on at a gallop,” thought
Skerrett. “But we are on the trail. My guides
must take their own time. They know the way
and the dangers, and I do not. The facts will
all come out within five minutes.”
“Well, Voltaire,” he said, “a bad appetite
to 'em all! Go on with your story. You make
me hungry with your dinner-parties.”
“Ha, ha!” chuckled the butler, — his vision
of himself as Ganymede, serving Sir Clinton
Tonans with hypernectareous tipple, vanishing.
“Ha, ha!” and with his triumph he lapsed for
a moment into Tombigbee: “Dey tinks, down
ter de Manor, dat I 'se lyin' sick abed wid de
colored mobbus.”
And then the old fellow proceeded to relate
away at evening, and tramped all night by by-paths
through the Highlands; how British scouts
had challenged his steps and fired at his rustle;
how stumbling-blocks had affronted his shins,
and many a stub had met his toes; and how
at last, after manifold perils, he had found his
old master under the guise of an Orderly, and
announced to him a new wrong in the house
of Brothertoft, — a new wrong, the climax of an
old tyranny.
No wonder Mr. Brothertoft had been despondent
so that even his back showed it, — so despondent,
that the well-sweep longed to douse
him with a bucket of balm. No wonder that
he sadly said, “Too late!” and could see no
better hour than that, marked by the Skerrett
timepiece.
Now then for this new wrong! It shall be
told condensed, so that indignation can have it,
a tough nut to crack with its teeth.
| IV. Edwin Brothertoft | |