 | II. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
2. II.
Lucy left the room immediately after breakfast.
“My pretty Lucy seems to have the megrims,”
said Major Kerr. “Is that on the cards for a
blushing bride?”
“She sighs for the hour when Adonis shall
name her his,” replied the mother, with a half-sneer.
“Confound it, Madam! I believe you are
laughing at me,” the blowsy Adonis grumbled.
He lifted himself from the table, and swaggered
off to the fire, with a gorged movement. He
probably had never seen a turkey-buzzard lounging
away from carrion; but he unconsciously
imitated that unattractive fowl.
The débris of his meal, the husks of what he
did eat, remained in an unpleasant huddle on
the table, proving that a great, gross feeder had
been there.
He stood before the fire, a big red object, the
type of many Englishmen who were sent over in
the Revolution to disenchant us with monarchy.
an Englishman's being a gentleman. Our mother
country seemed to have carefully decimated
her civil and military service of its brutes, to do
the dirty work of flogging the Continentals.
Kerr stood before the fire, making a picture of
himself.
A handsomish animal! Other women might
call him le bel homme without Mrs. Brothertoft's
tone of contempt. He had evidently given
the artists of the alcoholic school — Brandy
and that brotherhood — frequent sittings. They
paint rubicund, and had not been chary of carnations
in his case. His red uniform-jacket
gave him the air of an overgrown boy. But not
a frank, merry one; nor even an oafish, well-meaning
dolt of a chap. This great boy is a
bully. Smaller urchins would suffer under his
thumb. He would crush a butterfly, or, indeed,
anything gentle and tender, without much ceremony.
So Mrs. Brothertoft seemed to think, as she
surveyed him, posed there for inspection.
She smiled to herself, and thought, “This
sensual tyrant will presently give Miss Lucy
something else to do than insult me with her
prudish airs.”
“Dash it, Ma'am!” Kerr repeated, — his caste,
in his time, dashed freely, — “do you mean to
hint the girl is not fond of me?”
“Fond! she adores you. See how jealous she
is! She cannot leave you one moment.”
“I 'd have you to know, Madam, with your
sneers, that better blood than your daughter
have been fond of me.”
“Why did n't Adonis stay in the home market,
then, instead of putting himself in the Provincial?”
“You know why! I don't make any secret
of my debts and my peccadillos. You know as
much about me as I do about you, my mother-in-law.”
She winced a little at this coarse familiarity.
It was part of her inevitable punishment to be so
treated. Ah! how bitterly she remembered, at
such words, the reverent courtesy of her husband!
how bitterly, his pitying tenderness, even
when she had dishonored him, so far as his honor
was in her power! But she hardened herself
against these memories, and her vindictiveness
against that daughter of his grew more cruel.
“You must allow,” continued Kerr, “that
you get me dem cheap.”
“Cheap!” she rejoined. “Cheap with the
debts and the peccadillos! Cheap, white feather
and all!”
“Who says I ever showed the white feather?”
roared Kerr. “That 's one of that muscadin,
Jack André's lies. He wants my place as Adjutant
rhyme-writing milksop! he 'd better keep
his Swiss jaws shut, and not slander a British
nobleman!”
“Nobleman!” says his hostess, evidently taking
pleasure in galling her conspirator; “I
thought you were only a peer's third son.”
“There are but three lives between me and
the earldom, — an old gouty life, Tom's jockey
life, and Dick's drunken one. Your daughter
will be Countess of Bendigh one of these days,
and you 'd both better be careful how you treat
me.”
“How could I treat you better?” I give you
the prettiest girl in the Province, with the prettiest
portion.”
“Have I got to tell you again, that not every
man would take your daughter? You need n't
look so fierce about it.”
She did look fierce. She looked — la belle
sauvage — as if she could handle a scalping-knife.
And no wonder! This was not very pretty
talk on either side.
It was not very pretty work they had plotted.
Hate must have become very bitter in the mother's
heart before she chose this brute and booby
for her daughter's husband. She did not even
perceive the dull spark of a better nature, not
utterly quenched in him, — gross, dissolute, over-bearing,
rid of Lucy Brothertoft, — this was the first
thing. If, besides, she got an ally on the royalist
side, and a son-in-law who could help her to a
place in society in England, it was clear gain.
But enough of this conspiracy!
Will the father and that young rebel sans
moustache be bold and speedy enough to defeat
it?
| II. Edwin Brothertoft | |