 | XVI. Edwin Brothertoft |  |
16. XVI.
Enter through the dining-room window, Ike
Van Wart, old Sam Galsworthy, and Hendrecus
Canady.
At the same moment Mrs. Brothertoft's cry
for help rang through the house. Jierck Dewitt
in the cellar heard it. Lucy in her turret
heard it. Plato in the hall could not but hear
it, close at his ears.
Plato was still on guard, playing pantomime
with the weapons. He stood, with pistol out-stretched,
pointing at an imaginary foe. It was
a duello he was fancying. He had received the
other party's fire unscathed. Now his turn was
come. He proudly covered his invisible antagonist
with his pistol at full cock.
“Apologize, sir,” whispered Plato, “or —”
Here came his mistress's loud scream for help.
Plato was petrified.
Mrs. Brothertoft rushed into the hall.
There was the negro, standing like a statue,
holding forth a weapon to her hand. She seized
She was fearless enough, this cruel virago.
The touch of a deadly weapon made her long to
be dealing death. She heard the scuffle in the
dining-room.
“Come!” whispered her old comrades, the
Furies, closing in, and becoming again body of
her body, spirit of her spirit. “Come, take your
chance! Here are marauders, — rebels! Shoot
one of them! Practise here! Then you will
get over any scruples against blood, and can kill
the people you hate, if they ever come in your
way. Now, madam!”
Such a command ran swiftly through her
brain. She opened the dining-room door.
Her scream told the assaulting party they
were discovered. They were pinioning Major
Kerr in double-quick time. He sat in tipsy bewilderment,
mumbling vain protests and vainer
threats.
Not one of the group about the captive observed
the mistress of the house, as she softly
opened the door.
But another did.
Edwin Brothertoft, tardily following his party,
was clambering through the window.
He saw his wife at the door. She must be
kept from the danger of any chance shot or
chance blow in the scuffle. This was his impulse.
gently.
She instantly fired at the approaching figure.
He fell.
He staggered, and fell. His head struck the
claw-foot of the table, and he lay there motionless,
with face upturned and temple bleeding.
Her husband! She knew him at once.
His thin, gray hair drawn back from his mild,
dreamy face, with the old pardoning look she
remembered so well and hated so fiercely, —
there lay the man she had wronged and ruined,
dead; yes, as it seemed, dead at last by her
own hand.
“My husband!”
She said it with a strange, quiet satisfaction.
Every one paused an instant, while she stood
looking at her work, with a smile.
She had done well to wait. Those impalpable
weapons she used to see in the air had become
palpable at last. Yes; she had waited wisely.
This was self-defence, not murder. She had the
triumph without the name of crime.
“So you must come prowling about here, and
be shot,” she said to him, as if they were alone
together.
And she spurned him with her foot.
As by this indignity she touched and broke
down the last limit of womanliness, she felt a
power. Nothing could offer itself now that she
was not willing to do. Any future cruelty was a
trifle to this. Her joy in this homicide promoted
it to a murder.
She looked up. The group about Kerr were
all regarding her. She laughed triumphantly in
a dreadful bedlam tone, and flung her pistol at
Major Skerrett.
He caught the missile with his hand.
“Are you mad?” said he. “Do you know
that you have killed your husband? Take her
into the next room, men!”
“Come, madam,” said Galsworthy, gently.
“You did not know it. We are sorry it was
not one of us. We are Manor men, come to
take this Britisher prisoner, not to harm anybody
or anything here.”
“Curse you all!” she cried, and she made a
clutch at Sam's honest face. “I am not sorry, —
not I! No; glad, glad, glad! And I 'll have
you all served so, — no, hung, hung for spies!”
“Take her away, men!” repeated Skerrett.
“We must confine her. But not here with this
dead man. Gently now, as gently as you can;
remember she 's a woman!”
“Woman!” says Canady, holding her fingers
from his face. “No, by the Continental Congress!
she 's a hell-cat.”
“No hope for him with such a wound as
that,” said the Major, kneeling over Brothertoft
and examining his bloody forehead. “He seems
to be quite dead. See to him, Sappho! Stand
by Major Kerr, Van Wart, while I dispose of the
woman!”
“Sargn,” mumbled Kerr, “I 'm sashfied 't 's
all a mshtake.”
The two men dragged Mrs. Brothertoft, struggling
furiously, across into the parlor, and forced
her into an arm-chair before the fire.
Skerrett followed. Plato was in the hall, terrified
at the mischief he had caused.
“Run, Plato,” said the Major, “and have Miss
Lucy's mare out. And you, Voltaire, don't look
so frightened, man! We must make the best of
it. Bring the young lady down some back way!
She must not see her father or her mother.
Horrible, horrible, all! A dreadful end of all
this sorrow and sin!”
He passed into the parlor.
The flickering firelight gave a dim reality to
the objects there. They stirred, they advanced
and retreated. The rich old family furniture
seemed eager to take part in the tragic acts
now rehearsing.
Major Skerrett, in the dimness, marked the
Vandyck on the wall. The torn curtain had not
been repaired. It still fell away at the upper
and his white charger. A startling resemblance
the portrait bore to him now lying dead
across the hall. It might almost seem as if the
spirit of the departed, with a bitter interest in
these scenes of old sorrow and joy, and in the
personages who still moved in them, had identified
itself with the picture, and was stationed
there to watch events.
A single glance gave Major Skerrett these objects
and impressions. He turned to the mistress
of the house. She sat, baffled and glaring,
held in the arm-chair by the two men.
“Madam,” said Skerrett gravely, “I regret
that I must confine you. You have shown your
power to do harm, and threatened more. I cannot
take you with me for safety. If I left you
free, you could start pursuit, and we should be
caught and hung, as you desire. Boys, tie her
in the chair. So as not to hurt her now; but
carefully, so that she cannot stir hand or foot.
I hate to seem to maltreat a woman.”
They belted her and corded her fast in the
chair. She wrestled frantically, and cursed
them with unwomanly words, such as no woman
should know.
“There you are, ma'am, fast!” says Galsworthy,
drawing back. “You 're tied so you
won't feel it, and so you can't hurt yourself or
anybody else.”
Skerrett heaped up the fire to burn steadily
and slowly. Then, with great tenderness of
manner, he laid a shawl over Mrs. Brothertoft's
shoulders.
“Madam,” said he again, “I am sincerely
sorry that I must imprison you. I have tried
to make you as comfortable as possible. The
night is fine. This fire will burn till morning.
I must take your people all away with me, for
safety; but they shall be despatched back, as
soon as we are out of danger, to release you,
and” — here his voice grew graver — “to bury
the husband whom you have killed, and in
whose death you triumph.”
She made no answer. All the flickering of
the fire could not shake the cold look of defiance
now settled on her handsome face. The color
had faded from her cheeks. Her countenance
— rimmed with her black hair, disordered in
the struggle — was like the marble mask of a
Gorgon.
The Major paused a moment, listening if she
would speak. “It seems brutal to leave her
so,” he thought. “But what else can I do?
She will grow calm by and by, and sleep. There
are worse places to pass the night in than a
comfortable arm-chair before a good fire.”
“Good night, madam,” he said, with no trace
of a taunt in his tone.
The cold look gave place to an expression
of utter malignancy and rage, at her impotence
to do further harm.
“Move on, men,” said the Major, and followed
them.
At the door he turned to survey the scene
once more. Its tragedy terribly fascinated him.
There sat the lady, with the fire shining on
her determined profile. She was quiet now;
and, from the picture, the heads of the soldier
and his white horse as quietly regarded her.
Skerrett closed the door softly.
He listened an instant without. Would she
relent? Would he hear a sob, and then a great
outburst of penitent agony, when, left to herself,
she faced the thought of this ghastly accident,
which she had adopted as a crime?
He listened. Not a sound!
There was no time to lose, and the Major
hurried after his men.
| XVI. Edwin Brothertoft | |