 | VI. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
6. VI.
When Pyramus and Thisbe, when Cœur de
Lion and Blondel, want speech of each other,
Wall will ever have “a cranny right and sinister”
for their whispers, will “show a chink to blink
through with their eyne.”
Breakfast was over. Voltaire was in the pantry,
clashing dish and pan for a signal. Lucy
waited her moment to dart in and get her hopes
of escape made into certainties.
“I am going up stairs, Lucy,” said her mother,
“to give Dewitt her last hints about your wedding-dress.
Come up presently and try it on.”
She went out, leaving lover and lady together.
Kerr stood before the fire in his favorite posture.
His face was red, his jacket was red. He
produced the effect of a great unmeaning daub
of scarlet in a genre — mauvais genre — picture.
The big booby grew embarrassed with himself.
The quiet presence of this young girl abashed
him. He knew that his suit was an insult to her.
He saw that she did not appreciate his feet and
inches. Neither his cheeks nor his shoulders
had been hurt, and he felt a spiteful triumph
that she was in his power.
This morning he was ashamed of himself. It
is a grievous thing that men cannot go to bed
tipsy and wake up without headaches and with
self-respect. Perhaps it will be different when
Chaos comes again.
Kerr felt disgusted with himself, and embarrassed.
He wanted to talk to cover his awkwardness.
He did not know what to say. The
complaint is not uncommon.
“I suppose she knows it 's a fine day, and
wont thank me for telling her,” he thought.
“Vaughan's trip up the river, — that 's talked
out. I made the pun about Esopus and Esop's
fables, that Rawdon got off last night, and she
did n't laugh. I wish I had Jack André's tongue.
I have half a mind to cut it out of him — the
dashed whipper-snapper — for trying to get her
to flirt with him yesterday. I suppose I ought
to be making love now. But she has never let
me come near enough to make what I call love.
Well, I must say something. Here goes! Ahem!
Lucy — Miss Lucy.”
“Sir.”
“It 's a very fine day.”
“Very.”
“A most uncommonly fine day for this doosed
climate.”
No reply.
“I 'd box the dumb thing's ears if she was
Mrs. K.,” thought the Major. “But she sha'n't
silence me. I 'll give her another chance. Ahem!
Miss Lucy! Would n't you like to stroll out and
take the air?”
“No, I thank you. Do not let me detain you.”
“I say, you know, we 're to be married to-morrow.
You need n't be so infernally distant.”
“My mother wishes me to join her with the
dressmakers.”
“Well, if you wont come, you wont,” says
Kerr, taking himself off in dudgeon.
He walked out upon the lawn. The air was
nine-oxygen azote of the purest proof. He swallowed
it boozily, as if it were six-water grog.
Lucy hied to the trysting-place, where the
arch-plotter was waiting amid pans and dishes.
“O Voltaire, tell me!” she cried. And here
tears interrupted her, and gushed as if she intended
to use the biggest pan for a lacrymatory.
“Don't cry, Miss Lucy,” the old fellow says.
“It 's good news!”
At which she only wept the more.
Without much knowledge of the chemistry of
tears, Voltaire saw that spending them relieved
and calmed the young lady. Meanwhile, to be
talking on indifferent subjects until her first
burst was over, he said, “I saw Major Scrammel
health.”
“I am obliged to him.” The name seemed
to act like a dash of cold water. These Majors
fatigued her. Scrammel Yankee, Emerick Hessian,
Kerr British, — she liked none of them.
She began to feel a disgust for the grade.
“My father!” she said, with her whole heart
in the word, “tell me of him. He has not forgotten
me. He loves me. He will save me from
this — this —” A sob drowned the epithet.
“He loves you dearly,” Voltaire responded.
“Lub,” he still pronounced the precious word.
He brought his two thick lips together to sound
the final “b,” instead of lightly touching his
upper teeth against his lower lip and breathing
out “ve” final.
This great fact of love established, with all its
sequel, by a single word, Lucy, womanlike, desired
to know that this dear new lover no longer
misunderstood her. She must be satisfied that
she stood right in his esteem before she could
take thought of her own dangers.
“You told him,” she said, eagerly, “that I
was not an unnatural daughter, — only deceived
and deluded by this cruel woman?”
Tears had started again, as she thought of the
misery he must have suffered for her disloyalty.
But indignation at her mother burned them up,
and she closed her sentence sternly.
“He sees through it all,” the old ambassador
replied.
“How did he look? Not very sad, I hope?”
she said.
Womanlike again, she must have the person
before her eyes. She must see him, a visible
being, — that she could take to her heart with
infinite love and pity and hope, — before she
could listen to his message of comfort to her.
“He looked pretty old, Miss Lucy. His hair 's
grown gray. It ought n't to. He 's a boy still, —
only a little better than forty. He could make
his life all over again yet. But he looked old
and settled down sad. He 's got a sargeant's
coat on, instead of a general's; but he looks,
into his face, as if he know'd all generals know,
and a heap more.”
“My dear father!” interjected Lucy in the
middle of Voltaire's description. And she
thought what a beloved task it would be for
her to renew and restore that ruined life.
“And now, Voltaire,” she said, “can he protect
me?”
“We talked it all over. He did n't see anything
he could do. He said he was too broken-hearted
to plan for anybody.”
Poor Lucy! all her hopes thus dashed down!
She could almost hear her own heart break.
But Voltaire continued: “He had guv” —
and I was goin' off feelin' mighty low, — mighty
low, I tell you, Miss Lucy. I started off for
the woods and sot down, lookin' for a squerril-hole
to git into, and die like a fourlegs.
Jess then, jess before I 'd found my dyin' bed,
I heerd somebody screech, `Voltaire, Voltaire!'
like mad. Fust I thought 't was the Holy
Angels. Then I thought praps 't was the Black
Debbls, prowlin'. I looked round the woods,
pretty skeered, and heerd chestnuts drap. Then
come the yell again, and your father lighted
right down on me and dragged me back like
a go-cart. I did n't know what was comin'; but
he yanked me up the bank to the old well,
afront of Squire Van Wyck's farm-house, and
there I saw —”
At this point of his eager recital Voltaire's
ancient bellow had to pause and draw breath.
“Saw!” cried Lucy equally eager, peopling
this pause with a great legion of upstart hopes,
all in buff and blue, fine old Continentals complete
from boots to queues; but strangers to
her, and therefore without faces.
“Saw Major Skerrett,” gasped Voltaire.
All that legion of hopes in Lucy's brain suddenly
condensed into a single heroic Continental
vision, with the name Skerrett for a face. She
was sure this new-comer meant Help. She
together with a chain, each link a letter of the
name Skerrett.
“Another Major!” she said, half impatiently.
There was almost a shade of coquetry in her
little protest against this stranger personage.
The woman was not dead in her yet.
“Anudder Major ob anudder stuff. De good
God, not de Debbl, — he make dis one.”
“O Voltaire, don't talk so!”
Did she object to his fact in physiology, or
to his pronunciation?
Voltaire, with bellows rested, now began to
describe the new hero with enthusiasm. His
touches were crude, but picturesque, — a charcoal
sketch.
“Major Skerrett, Miss Lucy. O my! what a
beautiful moustache he had! jess the color of
ripe chestnut-leaves, and curling down on each
side, so.”
The black forefinger described an ogee on
either black lip.
Lucy did not interrupt. She must have her
correct image of the new actor before she inquired
his rôle. She perceived already that he
was not to be a sicklied Hamlet.
Her first picture of the hero had been a figure
in a Continental uniform, with the name Skerrett
instead of a face.
Second picture: Lucy sees the mere name
vanish. Two chestnut-leaves, fine gold as October
can paint them, broad in the middle, blunt
at the but, taper toward the point, serrated
along the edges, dispose themselves to her mind's
eye in the air, and form a moustache. She
looks at her vision of this isolated feature, and
thinks, “It is much prettier than Major Emerick's.”
“A go-ahead nose,” continues Voltaire, without
pause.
Lucy inserts a go-ahead nose into the blank,
over and a little ahead of the moustache. Third
picture.
“No mumps round his cheeks and chin,” the
describer went on.
Not a mump had ever disfigured the cheeks
Lucy hereupon balanced on either side of the
nose and the chin which she had located under
the two chestnut-leaves. Picture fourth.
“Eyes blue as that saucer,” — Voltaire pointed
to a piece of delicate china, — “and they look
like the Holy Angels.”
Into their sockets Lucy inserted a pair of
orbs, saucer in color not in shape, and gave
them a holy, angelic expression. She inspected
the growing portrait with her own sweet eyes, —
they were hazel, “an excellent thing in woman,”
— and began to think the illumined face very
charming.
“Lots of tan on his bark,” resumed the
painter in words.
Lucy dipped her pencil in umber and gave
the bark of cheeks, chin, and nose a nut-brown
tint, that bravely backed the gold of the moustache.
“Yaller hair under his cocked hat.”
“Yellow! if you please, Voltaire,” she protested,
and with skilful thought she adjusted
the coiffure.
“No queue.”
An imaginary queue, tied with a tumbled
black ribbon, had been bobbing in the air near
the hero's cerebellum. Lucy docked it, and, with
a scornful gesture, sent it whirling off into the
Unseen.
“Now,” says Voltaire, “you jess stick in Troot
(Truth), Wercher (Virtue), Kerridge (Courage),
and all the other good things into that are
face: you jess clap on a smile that 'll make
a dough heart in a bosom turn into light gingerbread;
and give him a look that can make
stubbed toes want to wheel about and turn about
and dance breakdowns, and is stickin' plaster
to every scratch on an old free colored gentleman's
shins: you jess think you see a Major
what Liberty and all the Holy Angels is pullin'
caps for, and all the Debbls is shakin' huf away
from where he stands: you jess git all that
Skerrett.”
The picture was complete. Truth, Virtue,
Courage, and the sister qualities, Lucy had dimpled
into the bronzed cheeks, as a sailor pricks
an anchor, or Polly's name, into a brother tar's
arm with India ink. She had given the hero's
face a smile, yeasty, sugary, and pungent enough
to convert the dullest dough heart into light gingerbread.
She had bestowed upon her ideal a
look that would be surgery to scarred shins and
light fantasy to the weariest toes. Now she
passed her finger over the chestnut-leaf moustache
to smooth down its serrated edges. The
portrait was done. Lucy surveyed it an instant,
and blushed to think it was indeed a Major that
women and angels might pull caps for.
She blushed to herself — the simple maid —
and felt a slight shame at her longing to see if
the real man was identical with her ideal.
This child — remember she was but eighteen,
and had been kept by herself and her mother, a
complete child until just now — this child had
hitherto had no ideal of a hero except that he
must be Kerr's opposite. We know already her
verdict upon the British officers. Of Putnam's
family, Scrammel she distrusts; Radière she
would like as a friend, if he were not so Gallic,
dyspeptic, and testy; Humphreys is ridiculous,
amuses her; — voila tout!
“And can this gentleman help?” she asked
earnestly, as soon as she had his person before
her eyes.
“Help!” says Voltaire; “he can't help helping.
That 's his business under this canopy.”
The negro stated briefly the scheme for Kerr's
capture and her abduction.
Lucy comprehended the whole in a moment.
“Major Skerrett sent you a message, Miss
Lucy,” says the successful envoy, closing his
report.
“Me!” she said. She massacred a little
scruple, that Major Kerr's betrothed ought not
to be receiving messages from strange majors.
“What is it? He is very kind to think of me.”
“He said, `Tell Miss Brothertoft to be brave,
to be prudent, and to keep her room with a
headache, until we are ready to start.'”
“It makes me brave and prudent, now that I
have a strong friend to trust. But the headache
I had is all gone. I never felt so well and happy
in my life.”
“Look at him!” Voltaire rejoined, pointing
to Kerr, through the pantry window. “That
will make you ache from your head to your heels.”
She did look, and ached at once with fresh
resentment and disgust.
Kerr was leaning limp against a tree, breathing
tipsily his nine-oxygen azote. The golden
hills, the blue river, and the mountains, blue and
gold, had no charms for him. He was thinking,
“Almost time to make it seven bells. I can't
touch anything stronger than six-water grog this
morning. O my head!”
“Pretty fellow fur a lubber to my young
lady!” says Voltaire. His mispronunciation
revealed a truth.
This faithful blackamoor now proceeded to act
Othello relating his adventures. He had a tragicomic
episode to impart of his “hair-breadth
'scapes,” “of being taken by the insolent foe,”
of all “his portance in his travel's history”; and
what he suffered, shin and sole, in the “rough
quarries, rocks, and hills” back of Anthony's
Nose, while he dodged by night along the by-paths.
Lucy “gave him for his pains a world of
sighs,” and “loved him for the dangers he had
passed” in her service.
“Now,” said the loyal squire, in conclusion,
“I must set you something to do, Miss Lucy.”
“What?” she asked, trembling a little at responsibility.
“Send Dewitt and Sally Bilsby off home!
They 'll want a frolic after working so hard on
your wedding-dress. We must have the house
to ourselves to-night.”
“To-night! Lucy's heart bounded and sunk.
Yes, she must be free to-night, or to-morrow
would make her a slave.
“Miss Lucy,” whispered Voltaire, “two of
'em was here already before sunrise.”
“Not the —” She hesitated.
“Not the Major! No; old Sam Galsworthy
and Hendrecus Canady. You know 'em. They
come to see how the land lay.”
“Mother calls; I must go,” said Lucy, in a
tremor.
She gave one look through the window at
Kerr, leaning limp against a chestnut-tree.
The Skerrett-moustache-colored leaves in myriad
pairs shook over him. She seemed to see a
myriad of faces, with go-ahead noses, no mumps,
angelic blue eyes, bronzed skins, and truth and
courage in every line, looking out of the tree,
and signalizing her, “Be brave! be prudent!”
| VI. Edwin Brothertoft | |