 | VI. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
6. VI.
No hag is a houri to her fille de chambre.
Mrs. Brothertoft, handsome hag, was thoroughly
comprehended by the Voltaire family.
That was no doubt part of their compensation
for being black, and below stairs.
Sweet Lucy was also well understood in the
kitchen.
Many a pitiful colloquy went on about her
between those three faithful souls.
Sappho's conundrum, “What is de most importantest
'gredient in soup?” was often propounded.
Voltaire always protested against
such vulgar remarks. Plato always guessed
“Faith!” and pretended he 'd never heard the
riddle before.
“Faith is all very well,” Voltaire would say,
in studied phrase, as a model to his son. “But
where is the Works? Where is the Works to
help Miss Lucy?”
“Jess you keep yer grip onto de Faith,” his
wife would respond, “an' de Works will jussumfy,
when de day of jussumfication comes.”
So Lucy grew up a grave, sad, lonely young
girl. Her heart was undeveloped, for she had
no one but her mother to love. She loved there,
with little response. Her mother received, and
did not repel, her love. That was enough for
this affectionate nature. As to sympathy, they
were strangers.
“She seems to me bitterly cold, when I love
her so dearly,” Lucy would say to herself; “but
how can I wonder? My father's wrong-doing
has broken her heart. Her life must be mere
endurance. Mine would be, if I were so disappointed
in one I loved. It is now.”
And the poor child's heart would sink, and
her eyes fill, and thick darkness come over her
future.
She lived a sadly lonely life. She could
never be merry as other girls. There was a
miserable sense of guilt oppressing her soul.
The supposed crimes of her father — those unknown
enormities — weighed upon her. These,
she thought, were what made many good people
a little shy of the Brothertoft household. She
could not fail to perceive a vague something in
which her mother's house was different from
other houses she was permitted slightly to know.
Why were so many odious men familiar there?
When the family were in town, she could avoid
them, day and evening, and spend long hours
She could escape to books or needlework. But
why did her mother tolerate these coarse men
from the barracks, with their Tom, Dick, and
Harry talk? To be sure these were days of war,
and Mrs. Brothertoft was loyal in her sympathies,
though non-committal, and “She may think it
right,” thought Lucy, “to show her loyalty in
the only way a woman can, by hospitality. But
I am glad she does not expect me to help her
entertain her guests. I am glad I am a child
still. I hope I shall never be a woman.”
Her life took a sombre cast. She sank into a
groove, and moved through the hours of her
days a forlorn and neglected creature.
“Queer!” Julia Peartree Smith would say
of her. “A little weak here,” and Julia touched
her forehead, just below her chestnut front.
“She is a Brothertoft, and they were always
feeble-minded folk, you know. But perhaps
it 's just as well,” — and Julia sank her voice
to a mean whisper, — “just as well she should n't
be too sharp-sighted in that house. I really believe
the silly chit loves her mother, and thinks
her as good as anybody. I tried to give her a
half-hint once, but the little fool fired up red-hot
and said, I was a shameful old gossip, —
`old,' indeed!”
So Lucy lived, utterly innocent of any dream
sadly beautiful and touching in this spectacle.
A moonlit cloud flitting over the streets of a
great wicked city, pausing above foul courts
where vice slinks and crime cowers, reflected
in the eddies of the tainted river, — the same
eddy that was cleft at solemn moonrise by a suicide,
— this weft of gentle cloud is not more unconscious
of all the sin and shame beneath it,
than Lucy of any wrong. The cloud beholds the
pure moon, and drifts along unsullied; Lucy
saw only her own white and virginal faith. It
was not a warming, cheering luminary; but it
shed over her world the gray, resigned light of
patience.
A touching sight! the more so, because we
know that the character will develop, and, when
it is ripe enough to bear maturer sorrows and to
perceive a darker shame, that the eyes will open
and the sorrow and shame will be revealed,
standing where they have so long stood unseen.
After this little glimpse of Lucy's life, monotonously
patient for the want of love, Voltaire
takes up his narration again.
Voltaire thought Mrs. Brothertoft had determined
to marry off Miss Lucy to Major Kerr as
long ago as last spring, before they left town.
She did not, however, announce her plans until
they were in the country. She probably knew
better not see too much of each other.
“I remember the day,” says the negro, “when
Miss Lucy began to mope. Roses was comin' in
strong. She used to fill the house with 'em.
Sometimes she 'd sing a little, while she was
fixin' 'em. But from that day out, she 's never
teched a flower nor sung a word. She 's just
moped.”
By and by Voltaire had discovered the reason.
It was the wreath of mock orange-flowers
dangled over Lucy's head by a false Cupid,
Anteros himself, that had taught her to hate
roses and every summer bloom. Her faint songs
were still because her heart was sick. The bridegroom
was coming, and her mother had notified
the bride to put on her prettiest smile. This
command was given in Mrs. Brothertoft's short,
despotic way. Neither side argued. Lucy prepared
to obey, just as she would have thrust a
thorn in her foot, or swallowed a coal, upon
order. She was not so very happy. She could
be a little more unhappy without an unbearable
shock. Major Kerr did not disgust her so much
as some of her mother's intimates. Still the
prospect was not charming. The summer roses
lost color to her eyes. Color left the cheeks that
once rivalled the roses. The bride did not try to
smile. Smiles are smiles only when the heart
grimace out of a forced smile, so that it may pass
for genuine.
When was the bridegroom coming? That information
the bridegroom himself, though Sir
Henry Clinton's Adjutant, could not yet precisely
give. “We are soon to make a blow at the
Highlands, — then you will see me,” — so he
wrote, and sent the message in a silver bullet.
Silver bullets, walnuts split and glued together,
and stuffed with pithy notes instead of kernels,
and all manner of treacherous tokens, passed between
Brothertoft Manor and the Red outposts.
Whether facts leaked out from leaky old Put
when glasses too many of the Brothertoft Yellow-seal
were under his belt; whatever true or false
intelligence Scrammel paid for his post on Miss
Lucy's sofa, — every such fact was presently
sneaking away southward in the pocket of young
Bilsby, or some other Tory tenant on the Manor.
“I saw Miss Lucy mopin' and mopin' worse
and worse,” says Voltaire, “but I could n't do
nothin', and there I sot in the pantry, like a
dumb hoppertoad, watchin' a child walkin' up to
a rattlesnake.”
Voltaire's Faith without Works was almost
dead.
Young Bilsby must have sneaked up to Brothertoft
Manor with the news of Clinton's expedition
that Mr. Brothertoft's announcement of his presence
at Fishkill reached Voltaire.
“I did not dare tell Miss Lucy her father was
so near,” says the major-domo, “until, all at
once, on the fourth of this month, we saw King
George's ships lying off King's Ferry; and by
and by up the hill comes Major Kerr to the
Manor-House, red as a beet.”
Upon this arrival, Lucy first fully comprehended
what misery the maternal fiat was to
bring upon her. Voltaire found her weeping
and utterly desolate. At once his Faith worked
out words. The dumb hoppertoad found voice
to croak, “Ware rattlesnake!”
“You are going to be married, Miss Lucy?”
he asked.
She wanted sympathy sadly, poor child! As
soon as he spoke, she made a tableau and a scene,
— both tragic. She laid her head on the old
fellow's shoulder, — Tableau. She burst into
tears, — Scene.
Woolly wig and black phiz bent over fair hair
and pale face. Delicate lips of a fine old Lincolnshire
stock murmured a plaint. Thick lips
of coarse old African stock muttered a vow of
devotion. A little, high-bred hand, veined with
sangre azul, yielded itself to the leathery pressure
of a brown paw. Ah, poor child! she had
color.
“To be married?” Lucy responded, when
sobs would let her speak. “Yes, Voltaire, in
three or four days.”
“Time 's short as Sappho's best pie-crust.”
“Mother says,” continued the young lady,
“that I must have a protector. The Major is
here now, and may be ordered up or down any
day. Mother says it is providential, and we
must take advantage of the opportunity, and be
married at once.”
She looked very little like a bride, with her
sad, shrinking face.
“Don't you love Major Kerr?” asked Voltaire.
“Lub” he always must pronounce this
liquid verb.
“Do I love him, Voltaire? I hope to when
we are married. Mother says I will. She says
the ceremony and the ring will make another
person of me. She says she has chosen me an
excellent match, and I must be satisfied. O
Voltaire! it seems a sin to say it, but my mother
is cold and harsh with me. Perhaps I do not
understand her. If I only had some other
friend!”
“You have,” Voltaire announced.
“You — I know,” she said, kindly.
“Closer — miles closer 'n me!”
“Who? Do you mean any one of our loyalist
neighbors?”
Lucy ran her thought over her short list of
friends. All the valued names had been expunged
by her mother's strict censorship, or
pushed back among mere acquaintance.
“Have you forgotten your father?” the butler
asked.
“Forgotten! I go every day, when no one
is by, and lift up the corner of the curtain over
the Vandyck. Our ancestor is my father himself.
I look at him, and pray God to forgive
him for being so wicked, and breaking my mother's
heart.”
“Poh!”
Lucy drew back in astonishment, as if a Paixhan
blow-gun had exploded at her side.
“Poh!” again burst out Voltaire's double-corked
indignation. “If there was a wicked
one in that pair, it was n't him. If there 's a
heart broke, it 's his.”
Lucy for a moment did not think of this as
an assault upon her mother.
“What, Voltaire!” she cried. “He is not
dead! Not a bad man! Not a rebel!”
“Rebel!” says the French radical's namesake.
“Why should n't he be a rebel for Freedom?
Bad! he ain't bad enough to marry off
his daughter only to git shet of her. Dead!
you his lub by me, if you want it.”
Love — even disguised as “Lub” — it was
such a fair angel of light, that Lucy looked up
and greeted it with a smile. But this was not
a day for smiles. Storms were come after long
gray weather. Only tears now, — bitter tears!
They must flow, sweet sister! It is the old,
old story.
“Does he really love me? Is this true? Was
he true? Was I deceived? Why did he and
my mother separate? Why did she drive him
out? Whom can I trust? Is every one a
liar? What does this mean? Answer me, Voltaire!
Answer me, or I shall die.”
Voltaire looked, and did not answer. To answer
was a terrible revelation to make to this
innocent girl. Faith was putting the old fellow
to very cruel Works.
“Speak!” said Lucy again, more passionately
than before, and her voice expressed the birth of
a new force within her. “Speak! What have
you to say of my mother? I dread some new
sorrow. Tell me what it is, or I shall die.”
Again these pages refuse to listen to the few
deplorable words of his reply. He whispered
the secret of her mother's disloyal life.
“I will not believe it,” said the horror-stricken
girl.
She did believe it.
She had touched the clew. From this moment
she knew the past and the present, — vaguely, as
a pure soul may know the mystery of sin.
For the moment she felt herself crushed to a
deeper despair than before. She recognized the
great overpowering urgency of Fate. She could
not know that this recognition marks to the soul
its first step into conscious immortality; and that
the inevitable struggle to conquer Fate must now
begin in her soul.
“What can I do?” she said; and she looked
guiltily about the chamber, as if every object in
that house were the accomplice of a sin.
“Run away with me to your father!” said
Voltaire.
She shook her head weakly. She was a great,
great way yet from any such exploit with her infant
will.
“No,” she said; “I must obey my mother.
That is my plain duty. She is pledged and I
am pledged to this marriage. I must submit.”
Tears again, poor child! The old habits are still
too strong for her.
“But suppose your father should tell you to
obey him, and not submit,” Voltaire propounded.
“Suppose he should help to run you off.”
“How can he?”
“I will steal off to-night to Fishkill, and see
him.”
“You risk your life.”
“Poh!”
“Poh!” is not a word to use to a young lady,
Mr. Voltaire. Yet perhaps nothing could express
so well as that explosive syllable how
much and how little he valued life when the
lady's happiness was at stake.
“But I did n't want Miss Lucy to be frightened,
of course,” says he to Major Skerrett, “so
I told her that I was safe enough in the Highlands,
and when I got here I did n't believe Major
Scrammel would let me be shot for a spy.”
Here he gave a monstrous sly look.
Peter Skerrett again felt his cheeks burn, and
his forehead tingle, and the stilled Muse of History
reports that “he uttered a phrase indicative
of reprehension and distrust.”
In short, he said to himself, “Scrammel! damn
the fellow!”
Certainly! Why not? But it must not be
forgotten, that it is Scrammel who suggested this
expedition. Voltaire told Scrammel of the marriage.
Scrammel, as our peep into friend Livingston's
brain informed us, would do one of his
meanest tricks to be himself the bridegroom.
And his scheme seems to be in a fair way to forbid
the banns.
And so guileless Lucy Brothertoft had consented
to her first plot. Her accomplice was to
and throw it upon her father. Meantime she
was to take her place at the great dinner-party,
and be a hypocrite for the first time. How
guilty felt that innocent heart! How she dreaded
lest some chance word or look might betray
her! What torture was the burning blush in
her cheeks as she began to comprehend the woman
she must name mother! How she trembled
lest that woman's cruel eyes should pierce
her bosom, see the secret there, and consign her,
without even the appointed delay, to the ardent
bridegroom. She knew that she should yield
and obey. Now that for the first time she was
eager to have a will of her own, she saw how
untrained and inefficient this will was. Horror
of her mother, and loathing of her betrothed,
each repelled her in turn. She seemed to see
herself praying for mercy to the woman, and she
coldly refusing to listen; then flying across the
stage, and supplicating the man to spare her,
and he, instead, triumphing with coarse fondness.
Ah, unhappy lady! with no friend except
that stout-hearted old squire, shinning by night
through the Highlands, and dodging sentries at
risk of a shot, — a shot, that startling trochee,
sharp ictus, and faint whiz.
Except for the Majors, — Scrammel to plot,
Skerrett to execute, — Voltaire's evasion would
by the news of his daughter's danger.
“What can I do?” he said to the old servant,
bitterly. “Nothing! Nothing! Is General Putnam,
just defeated, likely to march down to rescue
my daughter? These are not the days of chivalry.
Knights do not come at call, when damsels
are in distress. No; I am impotent to help
her. If she cannot help herself, her heart must
break, as mine has broken. That base woman
will crush her life, as she crushed mine. Why
did you come to me? You have brought me
news that I may love my daughter, only to make
the new love a cause of deeper misery. Why
did you tell me of this insult to her womanhood?
I had enough to endure before. Go!
What can I say to her? She will not care for a
futile message, `that I love her, but can do
nothing.' Some stronger head than mine might
devise a plan. Some stronger heart might dare.
But I have given up. I am a defeated man, — a
broken-hearted man, living from day to day,
and incompetent to vigor. I remember myself
another person. I sometimes feel the old
fire stir and go out. But I can do nothing.
My fate and my daughter's fate are one. Go,
Voltaire, and leave me to my utter sorrow and
despair!”
He had but just dismissed the negro, and
when lo! Peter Skerrett, as we saw him, comes
forth. Here comes the Captor of Captives, the
Hero of Ballads! Here come chivalry, youth,
ardor, force, confidence, success, all in a body,
— a regiment of victor traits in one man, and
on that man's lip The Moustache, the best
in the Continental army. Here comes a man
whose timepiece has never learnt to mark “Too
late.” Here he comes, and he has made it his
business to eliminate Kerr from the problem of
Brothertoft Manor; so that Kerr + Lucy = Bliss
will be for a time an impossible equation.
Take courage, then, Edwin Brothertoft, tender
of heart, sick at will, and thank Heaven that
you married your gunstock to the brainpan of
that British beggar with a baggonet at Bunker
Hill, and so saved Skerrett to help you.
Voltaire's story, with additions and improvements,
now ends, and business proceeds.
| VI. Edwin Brothertoft | |