 | Edwin Brothertoft |  |
1. PART I.
1. I.
The Cavaliers always ran when they saw Puritan
Colonel Brothertoft and his troop of white
horses coming.
They ran from the lost battle of Horncastle, in
the days of the great rebellion, and the Colonel
chased.
North and West he chased over the heaths
and wolds of his native Lincolnshire. Every
leap took him farther away from the peaked
turrets of Brothertoft Manor-House, — his home,
midway between the towers of Lincoln Cathedral
and Boston on the Witham.
Late at night he rode wearily back to Horncastle.
He first took care that those famous
horses were fed a good feed, after their good
fight and brave chase, and then laid himself
down in his cloak to sleep beside Cromwell and
Fairfax.
Presently a youth on a white horse came galloping
the Colonel quartered, and shouted for him.
Brothertoft looked out at the window. By the
faint light he recognized young Galsworthy, son
of his richest tenant and trustiest follower.
“The King's people have attacked the Manor-House,”
cried the boy. “My lady is trying to
hold it with the servants. I come for help.”
In a moment a score of men were mounted
and dashing southward. Ten miles to go. They
knew every foot of it. The twenty white horses
galloped close, and took their leaps together
steadily, — an heroic sight to be seen in that
clear, frosty night of October!
The fire of dawn already glimmered in the
east when they began to see another fire on the
southern horizon. The Colonel's heart told him
whose towers were burning. They rode their
best; but they had miles to go, and the red
flames outran them.
Colonel Brothertoft said not a word. He
spurred on, and close at his heels came the
troop, with the fire shining on their corselets and
gleaming in the eyes of their horses.
Safe! yes; the house might go, — for his dear
wife was safe, and his dear son, his little namesake
Edwin, was safe in her arms.
The brave lady too had beaten off the marauders.
But fight fire as they would, they could
“curious new brique fabrick, four square, with
a turret at each corner, two good Courts, a fine
Library, and most romantick Wildernesse; a
pleasant noble seat, worthie to be noted by alle,”
— so it is described in an Itinerary of 1620, —
had been made to bear the penalty for its master's
faith to Freedom.
“There is no service without suffering,” he
quietly said, as he stood with the fair Lucy, his
wife, after sunrise, before the smoking ruins.
He looked west over the green uplands of his
manor, and east over his broad acres of fenny
land, billowy with rank grass, and all the beloved
scene seemed strange and unlovely to him.
Even the three beautiful towers of Lincoln
Cathedral full in view, his old companions and
monitors, now emphasized the devastation of his
home.
He could not dally with regrets. There was
still work for him and the Brothertoft horses to
do. He must leave his wife well guarded, and
gallop back.
So there was a parting and a group, — the fair
wife, the devoted soldier, the white charger, and
the child awakened to say good-bye, and scared
at his father's glinting corselet, — a group such
as a painter loves.
The Colonel bore westward to cross the line
by, as he drew nearer the three towers of Lincoln,
they began to talk to him by Great Tom,
the bell.
From his youth up, the Great Tom of Lincoln,
then in full swing and full roar, had aroused,
warned, calmed, and comforted him, singing to
him, along the west wind, pious chants, merry
refrains, graceful madrigals, stirring lyrics, more
than could be repeated, even “if all the geese
in Lincoln's fens Produced spontaneous well-made
pens,” and every pen were a writer of
poetry and music.
To-day Great Tom had but one verse to repeat,
“Westward ho! A new home across the seas.”
Colonel, saddened by the harm and cruelty of
war.
“Yes, my old oracle,” he replied, “if we fail,
if we lose Liberty here, I will obey, and seek
it in the New World.”
For a time it seemed that they had not failed.
England became a Commonwealth. Brothertoft
returned in peace to his dismantled home. Its
ancient splendors could never be restored. Three
fourths of the patriot's estate were gone. He
was too generous to require back from his party,
in its success, what he had frankly given for the
His sole extravagance was, that, as a monument
of bygone grandeur, he commissioned Sir Anthony
Vandyck to paint him, his wife, his boy,
and the white charger, as they stood grouped for
the parting the morning of the fire.
So green ivy covered the ruins, and for years
Great Tom of Lincoln never renewed its sentence
of exile.
Time passed. Kingly Oliver died. There was
no Protector blood in gentle Richard Cromwell.
He could not wield the land. “Ho for cavaliers!
hey for cavaliers!” In came the Merrie
Monarch. Out Puritans, and in Nell Gwynn!
Out crop-ears and in love-locks! Away sad
colors! only frippery is the mode. To prison
stout John Bunyan; to office slight Sam Pepys!
To your blind study, John Milton, and indite
Paradise Lost; to Whitehall, John Wilmot, Earl
of Rochester, and scribble your poem, “Nothing!”
Yes; go Bigotry, your jackboots smell
unsavory; enter Prelacy in fine linen and perfume!
Procul, O procul, Libertas! for, alas!
English knees bend to the King's mistress, and
English voices swear, “The King can do no
wrong.” Boom sullenly, Great Tom of Lincoln,
the dirge of Freedom!
Ring solemnly, Great Tom of Lincoln, to
Colonel Brothertoft the stern command revived.
of exile, —
“Westward ho! A new home across the seas!”
Every day the nation cringed baser and baser.
Every day the great bell, from its station high
above all the land, shouted more vehemently
to the lord of Brothertoft Manor to shake the
dust from his feet, and withdraw himself from
among a people grown utterly dastard. His
young hopes were perished. His old associates
were slain or silenced. He would go.
And just at this moment, when in 1665 all
freedom was dead in England, Winthrop of
Connecticut wrote to his friend at Brothertoft
Manor: “We have conquered the Province of
New Netherlands. The land is goodlie, and
there is a great brave river running through
the midst of it. Sell thy Manor, bring thy
people, and come to us. We need thee, and
the like of thee, in our new communities. We
have brawn enow, and much godlinesse and
singing of psalms; but gentlemen and gentlewomen
be few among us.”
So farewell to England, debauched and disgraced!
Great Tom of Lincoln tolled farewell, and the
beautiful tower of St. Botolph's at Boston saw
the exiles out to sea.
2. II.
Bluff is the bow and round as a pumpkin
is the stern of the Dutch brig, swinging to its
anchor in the bay of New York. It is the new
arrival from England, this sweet autumn day of
1665. The passengers land. Colonel Brothertoft
and family! Welcome, chivalric gentleman,
to this raw country! You and your class are
needed here.
And now disembark a great company of
Lincolnshire men, old tenants or old soldiers of
the Colonel's. Their names are thorough Lincolnshire.
Here come Wrangles, Swinesheads,
Timberlands, Mumbys, Bilsbys, Hogsthorpes,
Swillingores, and Galsworthys, old and young,
men and women.
These land, and stare about forlornly, after
the manner of emigrants. They sit on their
boxes, and wish they were well back in the old
country. They see the town gallows, an eminent
object on the beach, and are taught that
where man goes, crime goes also. A frowzy
Indian paddles ashore with clams to sell; at
their sinciputs. A sly Dutchman, the fatter prototype
of to-day's emigrant runner, stands before
them and says, seductively, “Bier, Schnapps!”
They shake their heads firmly, and respond,
“Nix!”
Colonel Brothertoft was received with due distinction
by Governor Nicolls and Mayor Willet.
Old Peter Stuyvesant was almost consoled that
Hollanders were sent to their Bouweries to smoke
and grow stolid, if such men as this new-comer
were to succeed them in power.
The Colonel explored that “great brave river”
which Connecticut Winthrop had celebrated in
his letter. Its beautiful valley was “all before
him where to choose.” Dutch land-patents were
plenteous in market as villa sites after a modern
panic. Crown grants were to be had from the
new proprietary, almost for the asking.
The lord of old Brothertoft Manor selected his
square leagues for the new Manor of Brothertoft
at the upper end of Westchester County, bordering
upon the Highlands of the Hudson. A few
pioneer Dutchmen — De Witts, Van Warts, and
Canadys — were already colonized there. His
Lincolnshire followers soon found their places;
but they came from the fens, and did not love
the hills, and most of them in time dispersed to
flatter country.
The new proprietor's wealth was considerable
for America. He somewhat diminished it by
reproducing, as well as colonial workmen could
do, that corner of the old manor-house untouched
by the fire. It grew up a strange exotic, this
fine mansion, in the beautiful wilderness. The
“curious fabrick” of little imported bricks, with
its peaked turret, its quaint gables, its square
bay-window, and grand porch, showed incongruously
at first, among the stumps of a clearing.
And there the exiled gentleman tried to live
an exotic life. He bestowed about him the furniture
of old Brothertoft Manor. He hung his
Vandyck on the wall. He laid his presentation
copy of Mr. John Milton's new poem, Paradise
Lost, on the table.
But the vigor and dash of the Colonel's youth
were gone. His heart was sick for the failure
of liberty at home. The rough commonplace of
pioneering wearied him. He had done his last
work in life when he uprooted from England, and
transferred his race to flourish or wither on the
new soil. He had formed the family character;
he had set the shining example. Let his son
sustain the honor of the name!
The founder of Brothertoft Manor died, and a
second Edwin, the young Astyanax of Vandyck's
picture, became the Patroon.
A third Edwin succeeded him, a fourth followed,
was born. He was an only child, like each of
his forefathers. These pages chronicle his great
joy and his great sorrow, and how he bore himself
at a crisis of his individual life. Whoever
runs may read stories like his in the broad light
of to-day. This one withdraws itself into the
chiaroscuro of a recent past.
The Brothertoft fortunes did not wax on the
new continent. Each gentle Edwin transmitted
to his heir the Manor docked of a few more
square miles, the mansion a little more dilapidated,
the furniture more worn and broken, the
name a little less significant in the pushing world
of the Province.
But each Edwin, with the sword and portrait
of the first American, handed down the still more
precious heirlooms of the family, — honor unblemished,
quick sympathies, a tender heart, a
generous hand, refinement, courtesy, — in short,
all the qualities of mind and person that go “to
grace a gentleman.”
It became the office of each to be the type
gentleman of his time.
Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps they were
purposely isolated from other offices. Nature
takes no small pains to turn out her type blackguard
a complete model of ignobility, and makes
it his exclusive business to be himself. Why
order?
The Brothertofts always married women like
themselves, the female counterparts of their mild
manhood. Each wife blended with her husband.
No new elements of character appeared in the
only child. Not one of them was a father vigorous
enough to found a sturdy clan with broad
shoulders and stiff wills, ordained to success
from the cradle.
They never held their own in the world, much
less took what was another's. Each was conscious
of a certain latent force, and left it latent.
They lived weakly, and died young, like fair
exotics. They were a mild, inefficient, ineffectual,
lovely, decaying race, strong in all the
charming qualities, feeble in all the robust ones.
And now let the procession of ancestors fade
away into shadows; and let the last shadow
lead forth the hero of this history in his proper
substance!
3. III.
Edwin Brothertoft, fifth of that name, had
been two years at Oxford, toiling at the peaceful
tasks and dreaming the fair dreams of a
young scholar.
It was the fashion of that time to send young
men of property to be educated and Anglicized
in England.
Bushwhackers and backwoodsmen the new
continent trained to perfection. Most of the
Colonists knew that two and two make four,
and could put this and that together. But
lore, classic or other, — heavy lore out of tomes,
— was not to be had short of the old country.
The Massachusetts and Connecticut mills, Harvard
and Yale, turned out a light article of domestic
lore, creditable enough considering their
inferior facilities for manufacture; the heavy
British stuff was much preferred by those who
could afford to import it.
Edwin went to be Anglicized. Destiny meant
that he shall not be. His life at Oxford came
to a sharp end.
His father wrote: “My son, I am dying the
early death of a Brothertoft. I have been foolish
enough to lose the last of our fortune.
Come home and forgive me!”
Beautiful Oxford! Fair spires and towers and
dreamy cloisters, — dusky chapels, and rich old
halls, — green gardens, overlooked by lovely
oriels, — high avenues of elms for quiet contemplation,
— companionship of earnest minds,
— a life of simple rules and struggles without
pain, — how hard it was for the young man to
leave all this!
It was mid-January, 1757, when he saw home
again.
A bleak prospect. The river was black ice.
Dunderberg and the Highlands were chilly with
snow. The beech-trees wore their dead leaves,
in forlorn protest against the winter-time. The
dilapidated Manor-House published the faded fortunes
of its tenants.
“Tenants at will,” so said the father to his
son, in the parlor where Vandyck's picture presided.
“Whose will?” Edwin asked.
“Colonel Billop's.”
“The name is new to me.”
“He is a half-pay officer and ex-army-contractor,
— a hard, cruel man. He has made a
great fortune, as such men make fortunes.”
“Will his method suit me, father? You
know I have mine to make.”
“Hardly. I am afraid you could not trade
with the Indians, — a handful of beads for a
beaver-skin, a `big drunk' for a bale of them.”
“I am afraid not.”
“I fear your conscience is too tender to let
you put off beef that once galloped under the
saddle to feed troops.”
“Yes; and I love horses too much to encourage
hippophagy.”
“Could you look up men in desperate circumstance,
and take their last penny in usury?”
“Is that his method?”
“Certainly. And to crown all, could you
seduce your friend into a promising job, make
the trustful fool responsible for the losses, and
when they came, supply him means to pay them,
receiving a ruinous mortgage as security? This
is what he has done to me. Do any of these
methods suit my son?” asked the elder, with a
gentleman's scorn.
“Meanness and avarice are new to me,” the
junior rejoined, with a gentleman's indignation.
“Can a fortune so made profit a man?”
“Billop will not enjoy it. He is dying, too.
His heirs will take possession, as mine retire.”
Edwin could not think thus coolly of his father's
death. To check tears, he went on with
his queries.
“He has heirs, then, our unenviable successor?”
“One child, heir or heiress; I do not remember
which.”
“Heir or heiress, I hope the new tenant will
keep the old place in order, until I can win it
back for you, father.”
“It cheers me greatly, my dear son,” said the
father, with a smile on his worn, desponding face,
“to find that you are not crushed by my avowal
of poverty.”
“The thought of work exhilarates me,” the
younger proudly returned.
“We Brothertofts have always needed the
goad of necessity,” said the senior, in apology
for himself and his race.
“Now, then, necessity shall make us acquainted
with success. I will win it. You
shall share it.”
“In the spirit, not in the body. But we will
not speak of that. Where will you seek your
success, here or there?”
He pointed to Vandyck's group of the Parliamentary
Colonel and his family. The forefather
looked kindly down upon his descendants. Each
of them closely resembled that mild, heroic gentleman.
“Here or in the land of our ancestors?” the
father continued. “Your generation has the
Hanoverians on the throne of England will
crowd us to revolution, as the Stuarts did the
mother country.”
“Then Westchester may need a Brothertoft,
as Lincolnshire did,” cries Edwin, ardently. His
face flushed, his eye kindled, it seemed as if the
Colonel, in the vigor of youth, had stepped down
from the canvas.
His father was thrilled. A life could not name
itself wasted which had passed to such a son.
“But let us not be visionary, my boy,” he went
on more quietly, and with weak doubts of the
wisdom of enthusiasm. “England offers a brilliant
career to one of your figure, your manners,
and your talents. Our friends there do not forget
us, as you know, for all our century of rustication
here. When I am gone, and the Manor
is gone, you will have not one single tie of property
or person in America.”
“I love England,” said Edwin, “I love Oxford;
the history, the romance, and the hope of
England are all packed into that grand old
casket of learning; but” — and he turned towards
the portrait — “the Colonel embarked us
on the continent. He would frown if we gave
up the great ship and took to the little pinnace
again.”
Clearly the young gentlemen was not Anglicized.
the big ship was freighted with pine lumber,
and manned by Indians, while the pinnace was
crammed with jewels, and had a king to steer
and peers to pull the halyards; but still he was
of a continent, Continental in all his ideas and
fancies, and could not condescend to be an
Islander.”
Then the gentlemen continued to discuss his
decision in a lively tone, and to scheme pleasantly
for the future. They knew that gravity
would bring them straightway to sadness.
Sadness must come. Both perceived that this
meeting was the first in a series of farewells.
Daily interviews of farewell slowly led the
father and the son to their hour of final parting.
How tenderly this dear paternal and filial love
deepened in those flying weeks of winter. The
dying man felt his earthly being sweetly completed
by his son's affection. His had been a
somewhat lonely life. The robust manners of
his compeers among the Patroons had repelled
him. The early death of his wife had depressed
and isolated him. No great crisis had happened
to arouse and nerve the decaying gentleman.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I should not have accepted
a merely negative life, if your mother had
been with me to ripen my brave purposes into
stout acts. Love is the impelling force of life.
than failure, a hapless ruin and defeat.”
These boding words seemed spoken with the
clairvoyance of a dying man. They were the
father's last warnings.
The first mild winds of March melted the
snow from the old graveyard of Brothertoft Manor
on a mount overlooking the river. There was
but a little drift to scrape away from the vault
door when they came to lay Edwin Brothertoft,
fourth of that name, by the side of his ancestors.
4. IV.
Four great Patroons came to honor their peer's
funeral.
These were Van Cortlandt, Phillipse with his
son-in-law Beverley Robinson, from the neighborhood,
and Livingston from above the Highlands.
They saw their old friend's coffin to its damp
shelf, and then walked up to the manor-house
for a slice of the funeral baked meats and a libation
to the memory of the defunct.
A black servant carved and uncorked for
them. He had the grand air, and wielded knife
and corkscrew with dignity. Voltaire the gentlemen
called him. He seemed proud to bear
the name of that eminent destructive.
The guests eat their fat and lean with good
appetite. Then they touched glasses, and sighed
over another of their order gone.
“The property is all eaten up with mortgages,
I hear,” says Phillipse, with an appropriate doleful
tone.
“Billop swallows the whole, the infernal
at his fellows, and then cheerfully at his
glass.
“He 's too far gone to swallow anything. The
Devil has probably got him by this time. He
was dying three days ago,” said Beverley Robinson.
“Handsome Jane Billop will be our great
heiress,” Livingston in turn remarked. “Let
your daughters look to their laurels, Phillipse!”
“My daughters, sir, do not enter the lists with
such people.”
“Come, gentlemen,” jolly Van Cortlandt interjected,
“another glass, and good luck to our
young friend here! I wish he would join us;
but I suppose the poor boy must have out his
cry alone. What can we do for him? We
must stand by our order.”
“I begin to have some faith in the order,”
says Livingston, “when it produces such `preux
chevaliers' as he. What can we do for him?
Take him for your second son-in-law, Phillipse!
The lovely Mary is still heart-whole, I believe.
Our strapping young friend from Virginia, Master
George Washington, has caracoled off, with
a tear in his eye and a flea in his ear. Slice off
twenty or thirty thousand acres from your
manor, marry these young people, and set them
up. You are too rich for our latitude and our
era.”
Mr. Adolphus Phillipse was a slow coach.
The other's banter teased him.
“Mr. Livingston,” he began, swelling and
growing red.
“Come, gentlemen,” cries Van Cortlandt, pacificator,
“I have a capital plan for young Brothertoft.”
“What?” Omnes inquire.
“He must marry Jane Billop.”
“Ay, he must marry Jane Billop,” Omnes
rejoin.
“A glass to it!” cried the proposer.
“Glasses round!” the seconders echo, with
subdued enthusiasm.
“A beauty!” says Van Cortlandt, clinking
with Phillipse.
“An heiress!” says Phillipse, clinking on.
“An orphan and only child!” says Robinson,
touching glasses with his neighbor.
“Sweet sixteen!” says Livingston, blowing a
kiss, and completing the circle of clink.
These jolly boys, old and young, were of a
tribe on its way to extinction, with the painted
sagamores of tribes before them. First came
the red nomad, striding over the continent. In
time followed the great Patroon, sprawling over
all the acres of a county. Finally arrives the
unembarrassed gentleman of our time, nomad in
youth, settler at maturity, but bound to no spot,
to move, with a brain full of wits and a pocket
full of coupons.
The four proprietors finished their libations
and sent for Edwin to say good-bye. His deep
grief made any suggestion of their marriage
scheme an impertinence.
Jolly Van Cortlandt longed to lay his hand
kindly on the young man's shoulder and say,
“Don't grieve, my boy! `Omnes moriar,' as we
used to say at school. Come, let me tell you
about a happy marriage we 've planned for
you!”
Indeed, he did arrange this little speech in
his mind, and consulted Livingston on its delivery.
“Let him alone!” said that `magister morum.'
“You know as much of love as of Latin.
The match is clearly made in heaven. It
will take care of itself. He shall have my good
word with the lady, and wherever else he wants
it. I love a gentleman.”
“So do I, naturally,” Van says, and he gave
the youth honored with this fair title a cordial
invitation to his Manor.
The others also offered their houses, hearths,
and hearts, sincerely; and then mounted and
rode off on their several prosperous and cheerful
ways.
Meanwhile, a group of the tenants of the Manor,
standing on the sunny side of the vault, had
been discussing the late lord and the prospects
of his successor. As the elders talked, their
sons and heirs played leap-frog over the tombstones,
puffed out their cheeks to rival the cherubs
over the compliments in doggerel on the
slabs, and spelled through the names of extinct
Lincolnshire families, people of slow lungs, who
had not kept up with the fast climate.
“I feel as if I 'd lost a brother,” said Squire
Jierck Dewitt, the chief personage among the
tenantry.
“A fine mahn, he was!” pronounced Isaac
Van Wart, through a warty nose. “But not
spry enough, — not spry enough!”
“Anybody could cheat him,” says lean Hendrecus
Canady, the root and Indian doctor, who
knew his fact by frequent personal experiments.
“Who 'd want to cheat a man that was everybody's
friend?” asked old Sam Galsworthy's
hearty voice.
“The boy 's a thorough Brothertoft, mild as a
lamb and brave as a lion,” Dewitt continued.
“But I don't like to think of his being flung on
the world so young.”
“He can go down to York and set up a newspaper,”
Van Wart suggested.
“If I was him, I 'd put in for Squire Billop's
doctor's plan.
“Well, if he ever wants a hundred pounds,”
says Galsworthy, — “ay, or five hundred, for
that matter, — he 's only got to put his hand
into my pocket.”
“You can't put your own hand in, without
wrastlin' a good deal,” Van Wart says.
Sam laughed, and tried. But he was too
paunchy.
“I 'm a big un,” he said; “but I was a little
un when I got back from that scalpin' trip to
Canada, when Horse-Beef Billop was Commissary.
I did n't weigh more 'n the Injun doctor
here; and he, and that boy he feeds on yaller
pills, won't balance eight stone together. It 's
bad stock, is the Billop. I hope our young man
and the Colonel's gal won't spark up to each
other.”
It was growing dusk. The dead man's R. I.
P. had been pronounced, and the youth's `Perge
puer!” The tenants, members of a class presently
to become extinguished with the Patroons,
marched off toward the smokes that signalled
their suppers. The sons dismounted from the
tombstones and followed. Each of them is his
father, in boy form. They prance off, exercising
their muscles to pull their pound, by and by, at
the progress of this history. Old Sam Galsworthy
others, on account of his back load. He carries
on his shoulders little Hendrecus Canady, a
bolus-fed fellow, his father's corpus vile to try
nostrums upon.
And Edwin Brothertoft sat alone in his lonely
home, — his home no more.
Lonely, lonely!
A blank by the fireside, where his father used
to sit. A blank in the chamber, where he lay so
many days, drifting slowly out of life. Silence
now, — silence, which those feeble words of affection,
those mild warnings, those earnest prayers,
those trailing whispers low from dying lips, would
never faintly break again. No dear hand to
press. No beloved face to watch sleeping, until
it woke into a smile. No face, no touch, no
voice; only a want and an absence in that lonely
home.
And if, in some dreamy moment, the son
seemed to see the dear form steal back to its
accustomed place and the dear face appear, the
features wore an eager, yet a disappointed look.
So much to say, that now could never be said!
How the father seemed to long to recover human
accents, and urge fresh warnings against the
passions that harm the life and gnaw the soul,
or to reveal some unknown error sadder than
a sin.
And sometimes, too, that vision of the father's
countenance, faint against a background of twilight,
was tinged with another sorrow, and the
son thought, “He died, and never knew how
thoroughly I loved him. Did I ever neglect
him? Was I ever cold or careless? That sad
face seems to mildly reproach me with some
cruel slight.”
The lonely house grew drearier and drearier.
“Colonel Billop,” wrote Mr. Skaats, his agent
and executor, “has been removed by an all-wise
Providence. Under the present circumstances,
Mr. Brothertoft, I do not wish to disturb you.
But I should be glad to take possession at the
Manor at your earliest convenience.
Everything, even the priceless portrait of the
Puritan Colonel, was covered by the mortgages.
Avarice had licked them all over with its slime,
and gaped to bolt the whole at a meal.
Edwin did not wish to see a Skervey Skaats
at work swallowing the family heirlooms. He
invited Squire Dewitt to act for him with the
new proprietor's representative.
New York, by that time, had become a thriving
little town. The silt of the stream of corn that
flowed down the Hudson was enriching it. Edwin
bread there with his brains or his hands.
While he was preparing to go, Old Sam Galsworthy
appeared with a bag of guineas and a fine
white mare of the famous Lincolnshire stock, —
such a mare as Colonel Brothertoft used to ride,
and Prince Rupert's men to run from.
“Squire Dewitt told me you were going to
trudge to York,” said Sam.
“I was,” replied the orphan; “my legs will
take me there finely.”
“It was in my lease,” said Sam, “to pay a
mare-colt every year over and above my rent,
besides a six-year-old mare for a harriet, whenever
the new heir came in.”
“Heriot, I suppose you mean, Sam.”
“We call 'em heroits when they 're horses,
and harriets when they 're mares. Well, your
father would n't take the colts since twelve year.
He said he was agin tribute, and struck the colts
and the harriets all out of my lease. So I put
the price of a colt aside for him every year, in
case hard times come. There 's twelve colts in
this buckskin bag, and this mare is the token
that I count you the rightful owner of my farm
and the whole Manor. I 've changed her name
to Harriet, bein' one. She 's a stepper, as any
man can see with half a blinker. The dollars
and the beast is yourn, Mister Edwin.”
Edwin shook his head. “You are very kind,
Sam; but I am my father's son, and against
tribute in any form.”
“I have n't loved your father forty year to
see his son go afoot. Ride the mare down, anyhow.
She don't get motion enough, now that
I 'm too heavy for her, bein' seventeen stone
three pound and a quarter with my coat off.”
Edwin's pride melted under this loyalty.
“I will ride her then, Sam, and thank you.
And give me a luck-penny out of the bag.”
“You 'll not take the whole?” pleaded Galsworthy.
No. And when the root-doctor heard this, he
stood Hendrecus Canady junior in a receptive
position, and dosed him with a bolus of wisdom,
as follows: —
“Men is divided into three factions. Them
that grabs their chances. Them that chucks
away their chances. And them that lets their
chances slide. The Brothertofts have alluz ben
of the lettin'-slide faction. This one has jined
the Chuckin'-Aways. He 'll never come to
nothin'. You just swaller that remark, my son,
and keep a digestin' of it, if you want to come
to anything yourself.”
Next morning Edwin took leave of home, and
sorrowfully rode away.
A harsh, loud March wind chased him, blowing
omens were bad.
But when, early the second morning, the orphan
crossed King's Bridge, and trod the island
of his new career, a Gulf Stream wind, smelling
of bananas and sounding of palm-leaves, met
him, breathing welcome and success.
5. V.
With youth, good looks, an English education,
the manners and heart of a gentleman, and
the Puritan Colonel's sword, Edwin Brothertoft
went to New York to open his oyster.
“Hushed in grim repose,” the world, the
oyster, lay with its lips tight locked against the
brutal oyster-knives of blackguards.
But at our young blade's first tap on the shell
the oyster gaped.
How pleasant it is to a youth when his oyster
gapes, and indolently offers him the succulent
morsel within! His oyster is always uneasy at
the hinge until it is generously open for an Edwin
Brothertoft. He was that fine rarity, a
thorough gentleman.
How rare they were then, and are now! rare
as great poets, great painters, great seers, great
doers. The fingers of my right hand seem too
many when I begin to number off the thorough
gentlemen of my own day. But were I ten
times Briareus, did another hand sprout whenever
I wanted a new tally, I never could count
So much shade does it take to make
sunshine!
The Colonial world gave attention when it
heard a young Brothertoft was about to descend
into the arena and wrestle for life.
“So that is he!” was the cry. “How
handsome! how graceful! how chivalrous! how
brilliant! what a bow he makes! his manners
disarm every antagonist! He will not take advantages,
they say. He is generous, and has
visionary notions about fair play. He thinks a
beaten foe should not be trampled on or scalped.
He thinks enemies ought to be forgiven, and
friends to be sustained, through thick and thin.
Well, well! such fancies are venial errors in a
young aristocrat.”
The city received him as kindly as it does the
same manner of youth now, when its population
has increased one hundred-fold.
The chief lawyer said, “Come into my office
and copy papers, at a pound a week, and in a
year you will be a Hortensius.”
The chief merchant said, “If you like the
smell of rum, codfish, and beaver-skins, take a
place in my counting-house, at a hundred pounds
a year, and correct the spelling of my letters.
I promise nothing; but I may want a partner
by and by.”
The Governor of the Province and Mayor of
the town, dullards, as officials are wont to be,
each took the young gentleman aside, and said,
“Here is a proclamation of mine! Now punctuate
it, and put in some fine writing, — about Greece
and Rome, you know, and Magna Charta, with
a Latin quotation or two, — and I will find you
a fat job and plenty of pickings!”
The Livingston party proposed to him to go
to the Assembly on their votes and fight the
De Lanceys. The De Lanceys, in turn, said,
“Represent us, and talk those radical Livingstons
down.”
Lord Loudon, Commander-in-Chief, swore that
Brothertoft was the only gentleman he had seen
among the dashed Provincials. “And,” says he,
“you speak Iroquois and French, and all that
sort of thing. Be my secretary, and I 'll get you
a commission in the army, — dashed if I don't!”
King's College, just established, to increase the
baker's dozen of educated men in the Colony,
offered the young Oxonian a professorship, Metaphysics,
Mathematics, Languages, Belles-Lettres,
— in fact whatever he pleased; none of the
Trustees knew them apart.
Indeed, the Provincial world prostrated itself
before this fortunate youth and prayed him, —
“Be the representative Young American!
Convince our unappreciative Mother England:
“That we do not talk through our noses;
“That our language is not lingo;
“That we are not slaves of the Almighty
Wampum;
“That we can produce the Finest Gentlemen,
as well as the Biggest Lakes, the Longest Rivers,
the Vastest Antres, and the Widest Wildernesses
in the World.”
What an oyster-bed, indeed, surrounded our
hero!
Alas for him! He presently found a Pearl.
6. VI.
Handsome Jane Billop wanted a husband.
She looked into the glass, and saw Beauty.
Into the schedules of her father's will, and saw
Heiress.
She determined to throw her handkerchief, as
soon as she could discover the right person to
pick it up.
“He must belong to a great family,” thought
the young lady. “He must promise me to be
a great man. He must love me to distraction.
I hate the name of Billop! I should look lovely
in a wedding-dress!”
She was very young, very premature, motherless,
the daughter and companion of a coarse
man who had basely made a great fortune. Rich
rogues always fancy that their children will inherit
only the wealth, and none of the sin. They
are shocked when the paternal base metal crops
out at some new vein in their progeny. Better
not embezzle and oppress, papa, if you wish
your daughters to be pure and your sons honest!
Colonel Billop did not live to know what kind
fathered.
“I must see this young Brothertoft,” Jane's
revery continued. “Poor fellow, I have got all
his property! Mr. Skaats says he is a very distinguished
young gentleman, and will be one of
the first men of the Province. Handsome too,
and knows lords and ladies in England! Let
me see! I cannot meet him anywhere so soon
after the funeral. But he might call on me,
about business. I feel so lonely and solemn!
And I do not seem to have any friends. Everybody
courts me for my money, and yet they look
down upon me too, because my father made his
own fortune.”
Colonel Billop had taken much pains to teach
his daughter business habits, and instruct her in
all the details of management of property.
She sat down at her desk, and in a bold round
hand indited the following note: —
“Mr. Skaats, Miss Billop's agent, begs that
Mr. Brothertoft will do him the favor to call at
the house in Wall Street to-morrow at eleven.
Mr. Skaats is informed that there is a picture at
the Manor-House which Mr. Brothertoft values,
and he would be pleased to make an arrangement
for the late owner's retaining it.”
Skilful Jane! to whom a Vandyck was less
worth than its length and breadth in brocade.
motto, “Per omnia ad opes,” and despatched it.
Edwin was delighted at the prospect of recovering
his ancestor. It is a mighty influence
when the portrait of a noble forefather puts its
eye on one who wears his name, and says, by the
language of an unchanging look: “I was a Radical
in my day; be thou the same in thine! I
turned my back upon the old tyrannies and
heresies, and struck for the new liberties and
beliefs; my liberty and belief are doubtless already
tyranny and heresy to thine age; strike
thou for the new! I worshipped the purest God
of my generation, — it may be that a purer God
is revealed to thine; worship him with thy whole
heart.”
Such a monitor is priceless. Edwin was in a
very grateful mood when he knocked at the door
in Wall Street.
A bank now rests upon the site of the Billop
mansion. Ponderous, grim, granite, stand the
two columns of its propylon. A swinging door
squeaks “Hail!” to the prosperous lender, and
“Avaunt!” to the borrower unindorsed. Within,
paying tellers, old and crusty, or young and
jaunty, stand, up to their elbows in gold, and
smile at the offended dignity of personages not
identified presenting checks, and in vain requiring
payment. Farther back depositors are feeding
receiving teller. Behind him, book-keepers wield
prodigious ledgers, and run up and down their
columns, agile as the lizards of Pæstum. And
in the innermost penetralia of that temple of
Plutus, the High-Priests, old Dons of Directors
worth billions, sit and fancy that they brew crisis
or credit.
So stand things now where Edwin Brothertoft
once stood contemplating a brass knocker.
The door opened, and he was presently introduced
into a parlor, upholstered to the upper-most
of its era.
But where is Mr. Skervey Skaats?
Instead of that mean and meagre agent, here
is the principal, — a singularly handsome, bold,
resolute young woman, her exuberant beauty
repressed and her carnations toned down by
mourning.
Both the young people were embarrassed for a
moment.
He was embarrassed at this unlooked-for substitution
of a beautiful girl for an ugly reptile of
a Skaats; and she to find how fair a spirit she
had conjured up. He with a sudden compunction
for the prejudice he had had against the
unknown heir, his disinheritor; and she with her
instant conviction that here was the person to
pick up her handkerchief, if he would.
Shall the talk of these children be here repeated?
It might fill a pleasant page; but this
history cannot deal with the details of their immature
lives. It only makes ready, in this First
Act, for the rapid business of a riper period.
When Edwin Brothertoft left the heiress's parlor,
after sixty minutes of delight, she seated
herself at the desk where she, under the alias
Skaats, had indited his invitation, took a fresh
sheet of paper and a virgin quill, and wrote: —
Jane Brothertoft.
Then the same in backhand, with flourishes and
without. Then she printed, in big text: —
Lady Jane Brothertoft, of Brothertoft Hall.
Then, with a conscious, defiant look, she carried
her prophetic autograph to the fire, and watched
it burn.
Over the fireplace was a mirror, districted into
three parts by gilded mullions. Above was
perched a gilt eagle, a very rampant high-flier
indeed. Two wreaths of onions, in the disguise
of pomegranates, were festooned from his beak,
and hung in alluring masses on either side of
the frame. Quite a regiment of plump little
cherubs, clad in gilding, tight as it could fit,
clung in the wreaths, and sniffed at their fragrance.
Jane looked up and saw herself in the
mirror. A blush deepened her somewhat carnal
significantly. She made a face at the merry
imps. As she did so, she caught sight of the reflection
of her father's portrait, also regarding
her. He was such a father as a child would
have been quite justified in disowning and utterly
cutting, if a stranger had asked, “Who is
that horrid person with the red face, the coarse
jowl, the permanent leer, and cruel look?” An
artist, cunning in red for the face and white for
the ruffles, had made this personage more butcherly
even than Nature intended.
Jane Billop marched up to the portrait, and
turned it with its face toward the wall.
“He need n't look at me, and tell me I am
courting Mr. Edwin Brothertoft,” she said to
herself. “I know I am, and I mean to have
him. He is lovely; but I almost hate him. He
makes me feel ignorant and coarse and mean.
I don't want to be the kind of woman he has
been talking to with that deferential address.
But I suppose this elegant manner is all put on,
and he is really just like other people. He seems
to be pretty confident of carrying the world before
him. We shall be the great people of the
Province. Here comes the distinguished Sir Edwin
Brothertoft, and Lady Jane, his magnificent
wife! People shall not pretend to look down
upon me any more, because my father knew how
got a Manor, too, Miss Mary Phillipse; and I 'm
handsomer than you, and not almost an old maid.
That little chit of a Mayor Cruger's daughter's
had better not try to patronize me again, nor
Julia Peartree Smith turn up her poor pug nose.
They 'll all want invitations to Mrs. Brothertoft's
ball on going out of mourning. How they will
envy me my Edwin! What a beautiful bow he
makes! What a beautiful voice he has! June is
a lovely month for a wedding.”
There is never joy in Wall Street now such as
filled the heart of Edwin Brothertoft on that
morning of a bygone century. The Billops of
our time live a league up town, and plot on Murray
Hill for lovers of good family.
Edwin had found his Pearl, — a glorious, flashing
Ruby rather. Its gleam exhilarated him.
His heart and his heels were so light, that he felt
as if he could easily spring to the top of the spire
of Old Trinity, which was at least a hundred feet
lower than the crocketty structure now pointing
the moral of Wall Street. He walked away from
Miss Billop's door in a maze of delight, too much
bewildered by this sudden bliss to think of analyzing
it.
So the young payee, whose papa's liberal check
for his quarter's allowance has just been cashed,
may climb from the bank on the site of the Billop
of having tin, without desiring to tinkle it.
But at the corner Edwin's heart began to speak
to him with sentiments and style quite different
from the lady's.
“How she startled me with her brilliant beauty!
How kind it was to think of my valuing the
portrait! How generously and how delicately
she offered it! And I had done her the injustice
of a prejudice! That wrong I will redress by
thinking of her henceforth all the more highly
and tenderly.
“Poor child! a lonely orphan like myself.
She showed in all our interview how much she
yearned for friendship. Mine she shall have.
My love? yes, yes, my love! But that must
stay within my secret heart, and never find a
voice until I have fully assured my future.
“And this warm consciousness of a growing
true love shall keep me strong and pure and
brave. Thank God and her for this beautiful
influence! With all the kindness I have met,
I was still lonely, still desponding. Now I am
jubilant; everything is my friend and my comrade.
Yes; ring out, gay bells of Trinity! What
is it you are ringing? A marriage? Ah, happy
husband! happy bride! I too am of the brotherhood
of Love. Ring, merry bells! Your songs
shall be of blissful omen to my heart.”
7. VII.
Such soliloquies as those of the last chapter
presently led to dialogue of the same character.
The lady continued to scribble that brief romance,
or rather that title of a romance.
“Lady Jane Brothertoft of Brothertoft Hall.”
The lover for his part was not a dunce. He
soon perceived that it was his business to supply
the situations and the talk under this title, and
help the plot to grow.
It grew with alarming rapidity.
Tulips were thrusting their green thumbs
through the ground in the Dutch gardens of the
town when the young people first met. Tulips
had flaunted their day and gone to green seed-vessels
with a little ruffle at the top, and cabbage-roses
were in young bud, when the first act of
the drama ended.
The lady was hardly as coy as Galatea in the
eclogue. The lover might have been repelled
by the large share she took in the courtship.
But he was a true, blind, eager young lover,
utterly absorbed in a fanaticism of affection.
perceived that the lady was reaching beyond
her line to beckon him, this would have seemed
another proof that she and he were both obeying
a Divine mandate. What young lover disputes
his mistress's right to share the passion?
“I knew it,” he said to her, by and by, — “I
knew from the first moment we met, that we
must love one another. We are perfect counter-parts,
— the halves of a perfect whole. But you
the nobler. I felt from the moment that pleasant
incident of the portrait had brought us together,
that we were to be united. I hardly
dared give my hope words. But I knew in my
heart that the benign powers would not let me
love so earnestly and yet desperately.”
These fine fervors seemed to her a little ridiculous,
but very pretty. She looked in the glass,
where the little Cupids in the onion-wreaths were
listening, amused with Edwin's rhapsodies, smiled
to herself, then smiled to him, and said, “Matches
are made in heaven.”
“I told you,” he said, “that I had erased the
word Perhaps from my future. Now that I am
in the way to prosperity and distinction for myself,
and that you smile, success offers itself to
me drolly. The Great Lawyer proposes to me a
quadruple salary, and quarters the time in which
I am to become a Hortensius. The Great Merchant
a certain partnership, and promises to abandon
codfish and go into more fragrant business.”
They laughed merrily over this. Small wit
wakes lovers' glee.
“I like you better in public life,” she said.
“You must be a great man immediately.”
“Love me, and I will be what you love.”
“I am so glad I am rich. Such fine things
can be done with money.”
“I should be terribly afraid of your wealth,
if I was not sure of success on my side. As it
is, we have the power of a larger usefulness.”
“Yes,” she said, carelessly.
He did not notice her indifferent manner, for
he had dashed into a declamation of his high
hopes for his country and his time. Those were
the days when ardent youths were foreseeing
Revolution and Independence.
She did not seem much interested in this
rhapsody.
“I love to hear you talk of England and the
great people you knew there,” said she. “Is
not Brothertoft Manor-House very much like an
English country-seat?”
“Yes; but if it were well kept up, there
would be no place so beautiful in England, —
none so grand by nature, I mean.”
Here followed another rhapsody from this
river and the Highlands.
She was proud of her lover's eloquence, although
she did not sympathize much in his
enthusiasms. She had heard rivers talked of as
water-power or roads for water-carriage. Mountains
had been generally abused in the Billop
establishment as ungainly squatters on good soil.
Forests were so many feet of timber. Tenants
were serfs, who could be squeezed to pay higher
rents, and ought to be the slaves of their landlords.
But she listened, and felt complimented while
Edwin painted the scenery of her new piece
of property with glowing fancy, and while he
made each of the tenants the hero of a pastoral
idyl. A manor that could be so commended
must be worth more money than she had supposed.
“I begin to long to see it,” she said, with real
interest. “And that dear old fat Sam Galsworthy,
who lent you the horse, I must thank
him.”
“Why not go up, as soon as June is fairly
begun?”
“Mr. Skaats would not know all the pretty
places.”
They looked at each other an instant, — she
bold and imperious, he still timidly tender.
“If I only dared!” he said.
“Men always dare, do they not?” she rejoined,
without flinching.
“Are you lonely here?” he asked.
“Bitterly, except when you come. Are
you?”
“Sadly, except when I am with you.”
Another exchange of looks, — she a little softened,
and oppressed with the remembrance of
the sudden, voiceless, unconscious death of her
father, — he softened too, measuring her loss by
his, tenderer for her than before, but not quite
so timid.
“Both very lonely,” he continued, with a
smile. “Two negatives make an affirmative.
Do you love me?”
“I am afraid I am already committed on that
subject.”
“Why should we not put our two solitudes
together, and make society?”
“Why not?”
“Mr. Skaats would be a poor guide to Brothertoft
Manor.”
“Mr. Skaats!” she said impatiently, as if she
were dismissing a feline intruder. “We were
not talking of him.”
“No. I was merely thinking I could recommend
you a better cicerone.”
“Who can you possibly mean?”
“Myself.”
“Ah!”
“Brothertoft Manor would be a lovely place
to spend a honeymoon in.”
“I long to see it, after your description.”
“June there is perfection.”
“June! and this is May!”
“Will you go there with me in June, my
dearest love?”
“Yes, Edwin.”
It was agreed among all the gossips of the
Province — and the gossips were right — that
this was not a mercenary match. Youth and
beauty on both sides, what could be more natural
than love and marriage? And then the
gossips went on to weigh the Brothertoft name
against the Billop fortune, and to pronounce —
for New York in those days loved blood more
than wampum — that the pounds hardly balanced
the pedigree. Both parties were in deep
mourning. Of course there could be no great
wedding. But all the female quality of the
Province crowded to Trinity Church to see the
ceremony. The little boys cheered lustily when
the Billop coach, one of the three or four in
town, brought its broadside to bear against the
church porch, and, opening its door, inscribed
with the Billop motto, “Per omnia ad opes,”
bride.
The beadle — for beadles have strutted on our
soil — quelled the boys, and ushered the happy
pair to the chancel-rail. It is pleasant to know
that the furniture of the altar, reading-desk, and
pulpit, which met their eyes, was crimson dam-ask
of the “richest and costliest kind,” and cost
in England forty-two pounds eleven shillings and
threepence.
Venerable Rector Barclay read the service,
with a slight Mohawk accent. He had been for
some years missionary among that respectable
tribe, — not, be it observed, the unworthy off-shoot
known as Mohocks and colonized in London,
— and had generally persuaded his disciples
to cut themselves down from polygamy to bigamy.
Reverend Samuel Auchmuty assisted the
Rector with occasional interjections of Amen.
The great officials of the Province could not
quit business at this hour; but the Patroons who
happened to be in town mustered strong in
honor of their order. Of pretty girls there came
galore. Pages would fail to name them and
their charms. There was the espiègle Miss Jay,
of that fine old Huguenot Protestant stock,
which still protests pertinaciously against iniquity
in Church and State. There was the sensible
Miss Schuyler, the buxom Miss Beekman,
faultless in toilette and temper, Miss Morris,
wearing the imperious nose of her family, popular
Miss Stuyvesant, that Amazonian filly Miss
Livingston, handsome Mary Phillipse with her
determined chin, Julia Peartree Smith, nez en
l' air as usual, and a score of others, equally
fair, and equally worthy of a place in a fashionable
chronicle.
“Poor Edwin Brothertoft!” said the Peartree
Smith, as the young ladies filed out after the ceremony.
“Did you hear that bold creature make
her responses, `I Jane take thee Edwin,' as if
she were hailing the organ loft. These vulgar
girls understand the policy of short engagements.
They don't wish to be found out. But company
manners will not last forever. Poor Mr. Brothertoft!
why could he not find a mature woman?”
(Julia had this virtue, perhaps, to an exaggerated
degree, and had been suspected of designs
upon the bridegroom.) “Girls as young as she
is have had no chance to correct their ideal.
She will correct it at his expense. She will presently
find out he is not perfect, and then will
fancy some other man would have suited her better.
Women should have a few years of flirtation
before they settle in life. These pantalette
marriages never turn out well. An engagement
of a few weeks to that purse-proud baby, her
He will come to disappointment and grief.”
With this, Miss Julia, striving to look Cassandra,
marches off the stage.
But Edwin Brothertoft had no misgivings. If
he had fancied any fault of temper in his betrothed,
or perceived any divergence in principle,
he had said to himself, “My faithful love shall
gently name the fault, or point the error, and
her love shall faithfully correct them.”
The Billop coach rumbled away on its little
journey down Wall Street. Parson Barclay
bagged his neat fee and glowed with good wishes.
The world buzzed admiration. The little boys
huzzaed. The bell-ringer tugged heartily at the
bell-rope. And at every tug of his, down on the
noisy earth, the musical bells, up in the serene
air, responded, “Go, happy pair! All bliss, no
bale! All bliss, no bale!”
The rumble of the “leathern conveniency,”
the applause of Young New York, and the
jubilation of the bells were so loud, that Edwin
was forced to lean very close to his wife's cheek
while he whispered: —
“We were alone, and God has given us each
a beloved companion. We are orphans; we
shall be all in all to one another. Long, long,
and always brightening years of thorough trust
and love, dearer than ever was dreamed, lie
glowing hopes! how happy in our generous ambitions!
how happy in our earnest life! Ah,
my love! how can I love you enough for the gift
of this beautiful moment, for the promise of the
fairer time to come!”
8. VIII.
Cassandra was right. The marriage went
wrong.
It was the old, old, young, young story.
But which of those old young stories?
Ah, yes! there are so many of them. And
yet all human tragedies belong to one Trilogy.
There are but three kinds of wrongs in our lives.
The wrongs a man does to his own soul or
body, or suffers in either.
The wrongs of man against his brother man.
The wrongs between man and woman.
This is one of the old young stories of the
wrong between man and woman.
It might be made a very long and very painful
story. Chapter after chapter might describe
the gradual vanishing of illusions, the slight
divergence, the widening of estrangement, the
death of trust, the deceit on one side, the wearing
misery of doubt on the other, the dragging
march step by step, day by day, to the final
wrong, the halt on the hither edge, and the
careless, the desperate, the irremediable plunge
at last.
But the statement of the result is sad enough.
Let all these dreary chapters be condensed into
one!
A fatality preceded the wrong. It was this: —
The woman was coarse, and the man was fine.
No gentle influences had received her in the
facile days of childhood, and trained her nobler
nature to the masterhood. Her eyes had been
familiar with vulgar people and their vulgar
ways. Her ears had heard their coarse talk.
Her mind had narrowed to their ignoble methods
of judgment. Her heart's desire had been
taught to be for the cheap and mundane possessions,
money, show, titles, place, notoriety; and
not for the priceless and immortal wages of an
earnest life, Peace, Joy, and Love. She could
not comprehend a great soul unless its body
were dubbed My Lord or Sir Edwin, and wore
some gaud of a star at the breast, or a ribbon
at the knee.
Poor child! She was young enough to be
docile. But after the blind happiness of that
honeymoon at Brothertoft Manor, the old feeling
of her first interview with her lover revived
and exasperated.
“I believe he wants to make me feel ignorant
and vulgar,” she thought, “so that he
can govern me. But he shall not. I intend
to be mistress. I 'm sick of his meek suggestions.
to have it.”
And so, rebuked by contact with a delicacy she
could not understand, she resolutely coarsened
herself, sometimes for spite, sometimes for sorry
consolation. Her unsensitive nature trampled
roughly on his scruples.
“My dear Jane,” he said to her at Brothertoft,
“could you not instruct Mr. Skaats to be a little
more indulgent with the Manor tenants?”
“Mr. Skaats's business is to get the rents, for
us to spend.”
“But these people have been used to gentler
treatment.”
“Yes; they have been allowed to delay and
shirk as they pleased. My property must not be
wasted as yours was.”
“It is a hard summer for them, with this
drought.”
“It is an expensive summer for us, with these
repairs.”
Again, when they were re-established in New
York, other causes of dispute came up.
“I wish, my dear Jane,” he said, “that you
would be a little more civil with my patriot
friends from Boston.”
“I don't like people who talk through their
noses.”
“Forgive the twang for the sake of the good
sense.”
“Good sense! It seems to me tiresome grumbling.
I hate the word `Grievance.' I despise
the name Patriot.”
“Remember, my dear child, that I think with
these gentlemen!”
“Yes; and you are injuring your reputation
and your chances by it. A Brothertoft should
be conservative, and stand by his order.”
“I try to be conservative of Right. I stand
by the Order of Worth, Courage, and Loyalty to
Freedom.”
“O, there you go again into your foggy metaphysics!”
Again, he came one day, and said, with much
concern: “My dear, I was distressed to know
from Skaats that your father's estate owned a
third of the `Red Rover.'”
“Why?” she asked, with no concern.
“I was sure you did not know, or you would
be as much shocked as I am. She is in the
slave-trade!”
“Well. And I have often heard my father
call her a `tidy bit of property,' and say she had
paid for herself a dozen times.”
He could not make her comprehend his hatred
of this vile business, and his contempt, as a gentleman,
for all the base subterfuges by which
base people tried to defend it.
The Red Rover fortunately did not remain a
rose and broiled the captain and crew, —
and served them right. Then, being used only
to the navigation of dug-outs, they omitted to
pump the vessel, whereupon she sunk, and the
sharks had a festival.
With such divergences of opinion the first
year of this propitious marriage passed miserably
enough. Yet there was a time when it seemed
to the disappointed husband and the defiant wife
that their love might revive.
In 1758, Edwin Brothertoft, rich, aristocratic,
and a liberal, the pride of the Colony as its foremost
young man, was selected as the mouthpiece
of a commission to present at home a petition
and remonstrance. Such papers were flying
freely across the water at that time. Reams of
paper must be fired before the time comes for
firing lead.
So to England went the envoy with his gorgeous
wife. They were received with much
distinction, as worthy young Americans from
Benicia and elsewhere still are.
“Huzzay!” was the rapturous acclaim. “They
do not talk through rebel noses!”
“Huzzay! It is English they speak, not
Wigwamee!”
“Huzzay! The squaw is as beautiful as our
Fairest, and painted red and white by cunning
young sagamore is an Adonis. He beats Chesterfield
at a bow and Selwyn at a mot.”
Mrs. Brothertoft grew proud of her husband,
and grateful to him that he had chastened her
Billop manners.
What a brilliant visit that was!
All the liberal statesmen — Pitt, Henry Fox,
Conway, mellifluous Murray — were glad to do
the young American honor.
Rugged Dr. Sam Johnson belabored him with
sesquipedalian words, but in a friendly way and
without bullying. He could be a good old boy,
if he pleased, with good young ones.
Young Mr. Burke was gratified that his friend
from a sublime and beautiful hemisphere appreciated
the new treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful.
Young Mr. Joshua Reynolds was flattered that
the distinguished stranger consented to sit to
him, and in return tried to flatter the portrait.
Young Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, a poor Bohemian,
smattered in music and medicine, came
to inquire whether a clever man, out of place,
could find his niche in America.
Mr. Garrick, playing Ranger, quite lost his self-possession
when Mrs. Brothertoft first brought
her flashing black eyes and glowing cheeks into
the theatre, and only recovered when the audience
the lady together.
That great dilettante, Mr. Horace Walpole,
made the pair a charming déjeuner at Strawberry
Hill, upon which occasion he read aloud,
with much cadence, — as dilettante gentlemen
continue to do in our own time, — his friend Mr.
Gray's elaborate Elegy in a Country Churchyard,
just printed. After this literary treat, Mr. Horace
said: “Tell me something about that clever
young aide-de-camp, Washington, who got Iroquois
Braddock the privilege of dying in his
scalp. A brave fellow that! an honor to your
country, sir.” Mr. Gerge Selwyn, the wit, was
also a guest. He looked maliciously out of his
“demure eyes,” and said: “You forget, Horry,
that you used to name Major Washington `a fanfaron,'
and laugh at him for calling the whiz
of cannon-balls `a delightful sound.'” Whereupon
the host, a little abashed, laughed, and
said: “I wish such `fanfarons' were more
plenty in the army.” And the sparkling gossip
did not relate how he had put this nickname
in black and white in a letter to Sir Horace
Mann, in whose correspondence it may still be
read, with abundance of other second-hand jokes.
What a gay visit it was of the young pair in
that brilliant moment of England!
While Brothertoft, in the intervals of urging
sublime and beautiful things that are dreamt of
in philosophy with Mr. Burke, — while he talked
Art with Mr. Reynolds, poetry with Dr. Goldsmith,
and de omnibus rebus with Dr. Johnson,
— his wife was holding a little court of her own.
She was a new sensation, with her bold, wilful
beauty and her imperious Americanism. A new
sensation, and quite annihilated all the traditions
of Mary Wortley Montagu and her Turkish
dress, when she appeared at a masquerade as
Pocahontas, in a fringed and quilled buckskin
robe, moccasons, and otter coronet with an eagle's
plume.
“I suppose that 's a scalping-knife she 's playing
with,” said the Duke of Gurgoyle, inspecting
her in this attire. “And, by George, she
looks as if she could use it.”
Then the ugly old monster, and the other
blasé men, surrounded the Colonial beauty, and
fooled her with flattery.
Was she spoilt by this adulation?
“Dear Edwin,” she schemed, in a little visit
they made to Lincolnshire and the ruins of old
Brothertoft Manor, “let us buy back this estate
and never return to that raw America. You
can go into Parliament, make one or two of your
beautiful speeches, and presently be a Peer, with
stars and garters.”
“Does a garter straighten a leg? does a star
ennoble a heart? Listen, my love, do you not
hear Great Tom of Lincoln warning me, as he
long ago warned my ancestor, `Go home again,
Brothertoft, Liberty is in danger'?”
“No,” she rejoined, petulantly; “a loyal bell
would not utter such treasonable notes. This
is what I hear: `Come again, Brothertoft, Lord
of the old Manor!' Liberty! Liberty! You
tire me with your idle fancies. Why will you
throw away name and fame?”
“I will try to gain them, since they are precious
to you; but they must come in the way
of duty.”
There was peril in these ambitions of hers;
but the visionary husband thought, “How can I
wonder that her head is a little turned with
adulation? She merits it all, my beautiful wife!
But she will presently get the court glare out
of her eyes. When our child is born, a pledge
of our restored affection, she will recognize
deeper and tenderer duties.”
The Brothertoft embassy was a social success,
but a political failure.
The lewd old dolt of a King sulkily pooh-poohed
Remonstrance and Petition.
“You ought to have redress,” says Pitt, “but
I am hardly warm in my seat of Prime Minister.
I can only be a tacit friend at present.”
“Go home and wait,” says Ben Franklin, a
shrewd old Boston-boy, — fond of tricks with kites,
keys, and kerchiefs, — who was at that time resident
in London. “Wait awhile! I have not
been fingering thunderbolts so long, without
learning that people may pooh-pooh at the clouds,
and say the flashes are only heat-lightning; but
by and by they 'll be calling upon the cellars to
take 'em in, and the feather-beds to cover 'em.”
The Brothertofts went home. England forgot
them, and relapsed into its belief, —
That on the new continent the English colonists
could not remain even half-civilized Yengeese,
but sank to absolute Yankees, —
Whose bows were contortions, and smiles
grimaces;
Whose language was a nasal whoop of Anglo-Iroquois;
And who needed to be bolused with Stamp
Acts and drenched with Tea Duties, while Tom
Gage and Jack Burgoyne pried open their teeth
with the sword.
There was one visible, tangible, ponderable result
of the Brothertofts' visit to England.
Lucy Brothertoft, an only child, was born, —
a token of love revived, — alas! a monument of
love revived to die and be dismissed among
memories.
If the wife had been a true wife, how sweetly
for him in his new relation of father.
Here was a cradle for rendezvous. Why not clasp
hands and renew vows across it? This smiling,
sinless child, — why could it not recall to either
parent's face a smile of trust and love?
But this bliss was not to be.
Ring sadly, bells of Trinity! It is the christening
day. Alas! the chimes that welcome the
daughter to the bosom of the church are tolling
the knell of love in the household where
she will grow to womanhood.
The harmonious interlude ended. The old,
old story went on. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the
wife grew to hate her husband. Sadly, sadly,
sadly, he learned to only pity her.
The visit to England had only more completely
enamored her of worldliness. She
missed the adulation of My Lord and Sir Harry.
Her husband's love and approval ceased to be
sufficient for her. And when this is said, all is
said.
It was a refinement of cruelty in the torture
days to bind a living man to a corpse. Dead
lips on living lips. Lumpish heart at throbbing
heart. Glazed eyes so close that their stare
could be felt, not seen, by eyes set in horror.
Death grappling, and Life wrestling itself to
Death. Have we never seen this, now that the
no delicate spirit of a woman quelled by the embraces
of a brute? Have we seen no high and
gentle-hearted man bound to a coarse, base wife,
and slain by that body of death?
The world, the oyster, sulked when the young
man it had so generously gaped for quite lost his
appetite for fat things.
“Shame!” said the indignant Province.
“We had unanimously voted Edwin Brothertoft
our representative gentleman. He was ardent
and visionary, and we forgave him. He was
mellifluous, grammatical, ornamental, and we
petted him. We were a little plebeian, and
needed an utterly brave young aristocrat to
carry our oriflamme, and we thrust the staff
into his hand. Shame, Brothertoft! you have
gulled us. It is the old story, — premature blossom,
premature decay. The hare sleeps. The
tortoise swallows the prize! To the front, ye
plodders, slow, but sure! And you, broken-down
Brothertoft, retire to the back streets!
wear the old clothes! and thank your stars, if we
consent to pay you even a starvation salary!”
“Poor Jane Billop!” said Julia Peartree
Smith, who was now very intimate with that
lady. “I always said it would be so. I knew
she would come to disappointment and grief.
The Brothertofts were always weak as water.
marriage, a mere child, after an engagement of
a few weeks. No wonder she despises him. I
do, heartily. What lovely lace this is. I wonder
if she could n't give me another yard!
Heigh ho! Nobody smuggles for me!”
Brother patriots, too, had their opinion on
the subject of Brothertoft's withdrawal into obscurity.
“These delicate, poetical natures,” said our
old friend, Patroon Livingston, “feel very
keenly the blight of political enslavement.
Well may a leader droop, when his comrades
skulk! I tell you, gentlemen, that it is our
non-committal policy which has disheartened
our friend. When we dare to stand by him,
and say, `Liberty or death!' the man will be
a man again, — yes, a better man than the best
of us. I long to see his eye kindle, and hear his
voice ring again. I love a gentleman, when he
is man enough to be free.”
But whoever could have looked into this
weary heart would have read there a sadder
story than premature decay, a deadlier blight
than political enslavement, a crueller and closer
wrong than the desertion of comrades.
Wrong! it had come to that, — the final
wrong between man and woman, — the catastrophe
of the first act of the old, old tragedy.
These pages do not tolerate the details of
this bitter wrong.
The mere facts of guilt are of little value
except to the gossip and the tipstaff; but how
the wounded and the wounding soul bear themselves
after the crime, that is one of the needful
lessons of life.
9. IX.
Red.
That was the color now master in Mrs. Brothertoft's
houses, town and country.
Supercilious officers, in red coats, who were
addressed as General or My Lord, insolent officers,
in red coats, hight Colonel or Sir Harry,
arranged their laced cravats at the mirror
under the rampant eagle, or lounged on the
sofas.
There were plenty of such personages now in
New York, and Mrs. Brothertoft's house made
them all welcome. Regimental talk, the dullest
and thinnest of all the shop talks talked among
men, was the staple of conversation over her
Madeira at her dinners, grand, or en famille, bien
entendu.
Now and then a nasal patriot from Down East,
or a patriot Thee-and-Thouer from Philadelphia,
knocked at the door and inquired for Mr. Brothertoft.
“Out of town, Sir,” was the reply of the wiggy
negro.
“When do you expect him back?”
“Don't know, Sir,” the porter replied, rather
sadly.
The patriot retired, and the negro closed the
door with a sigh, — the pompous sigh of an old
family servant.
“No,” muttered he, “I don't know when he'll
be back. He never would come back if he knew
about the goings on in this house. He never
would anyhow, if it was n't to look after Miss
Lucy. There she comes down stairs, I 'll ask
her. Miss Lucy!”
A gentle, graceful little girl, of the Brothertoft
type, turned at the foot of the stairs and
answered, “What, Voltaire?”
“Do you know, Miss, where your father is,
now?”
“No,” she replied, half sadly, half coldly.
“A gentleman was just asking when he would
be back.”
“He does not inform us of his motions.”
She seemed to shrink from the subject, as if
there were guilt in touching it.
Voltaire looked forlornly after her, as she
passed into the parlor. Then he shook his fist
indignantly at a great palmated pair of moose-horns,
mounted as a hat-stand in the hall. On
the right-brow antler hung a military cocked
cap was suspended.
“It 's too bad,” Voltaire began.
Black babble has become rather a bore in literature.
Voltaire, therefore, will try not to talk
Tombigbee.
“It 's too bad,” muttered the negro, in futile
protest, “to see them fellows hanging up their
hats here, and the real master — the real gentleman
— shamed out of house and home.
“It 's too bad,” he continued despondingly,
“to see Miss Lucy, as sweet a little lady as ever
stepped, taught to think her father a good-for-nothing
spendthrift and idler, if not worse. The
madam will never let her see him alone. The
poor child is one of the kind that believes what is
told to 'em. No wonder she is solemn as Sunday
all the time. I don't see anything to be done.
But I 'll go down and ask Sappho.”
Again he shook his fist at those enormous
excrescences from the brow of a bold Cervus
alces, — a moose that once walked the Highlands
near Brothertoft Manor. Then he shambled
down stairs to his wife Sappho's boudoir,
the kitchen.
Blacker than Sappho of Lesbos ever looked
when Phaon cried, Avaunt! was this namesake
of the female Sam Patch of Leucadia. But
through her eyes and mouth good-humor shone,
black furnace-doors under a boiler.
“Things goes wrong in this house, all but
your cooking department, Sappho, and my butler
department,” says Voltaire. “The master is
shamed away, and is off properogating liberty.
The mistress, — I suppose we 'd better not say
nothing about her.”
Sappho shook her head, and stirred her soup.
“But Miss Lucy is going to be a big girl pretty
soon. Her mother is making her mistrust her
father. She 's got no friends. What will come
of her?”
Sappho tasted her soup. It was savory.
“Voltaire,” says she, striving to talk a dialect
worthy of her name, and hitting half-way to
English, “Voltaire, Faith is what you wants.
You is not got the Faith of a free colored gentleman,
member of one of de oldest families in
all Westchester. You is got no more Faith than
them Mumbo Jumbo Billop niggers what immigrated
in the Red Rover. You jess let de Lord
look after Miss Lucy. She is one after de Lord's
own heart.”
“But the Devil has put his huf into this
house.”
“If you was a cook, you 'd have more Faith.
Jest you taste that soup now. How is it?”
“Prime,” says Voltaire, blowing and sipping.
“You taste it, Plato,” she repeated, dipping
another ladle from the pot, and offering to her
son, heir of his father's philosophic dignity, and
his mother's Socratic visage. “How is it?”
“Prime!” says this second connoisseur.
“Now, what you guess is the most importantest
thing in this soup?”
“Conundrums is vulgar, particular for ladies,”
says Voltaire, loftily.
“That 's because you can't guess.”
“Poh! it 's easy enough,” says he. “Beef!”
“No. You guess, Plato.”
“B'ilin' water,” cries he, sure of his solution.
Sappho shook her head.
“Turkey carcasses,” propounded Voltaire, with
excitement.
“Onions,” offered Plato, with eagerness.
“No,” says Sappho, “it 's Faith!”
“I was jest a goin' to say Faith,” Plato unblushingly
asserted.
“You see,” Sappho explained, “I takes beef,
— bery well! and b'ilin' water, — bery well! and
turkey carcasses, and onions, and heaps of things,
and puts 'em into a pot on the fire. Then I has
Faith.”
“Poh!” cried Voltaire. “'T was n't a fair
conundrum; you has the Faith into yourself.”
“Then I takes Faith,” repeated Sappho, without
noticing this interruption, “Faith, that these
de Lord's time, an dey alluz comes soup.”
“And the primest kind!” Plato interjected,
authoritatively.
“So,” continued Sappho, improving the lesson,
“soup and roast geese, and pies and pancakes
risin' over night, has taught me disyer
proverb, `Wait, and things comes out right at
last.' So it 's boun' to be with Miss Lucy.”
This logic convinced the two namesakes of
philosophers, and they carried up dinner, in a
perplexed but patient mood.
My Lord and Sir Harry were both dining there
that day.
“Do you know what has become of our hostess's
husband?” asked My Lord, as they lounged
off after dinner.
“He 's going about the Provinces, stirring up
rebellion after a feeble fashion,” said Sir Harry.
“I believe that fellow Gaine pays him a few
shillings a week for editing his `Mercury,' when
he is in New York.”
“If I was Governor Tryon I'd have that dirty
sheet stopped. He 's a new broom. He ought
to make a clean sweep of all these Freedom
Shriekers.”
Such then was the condition of things in the
Brothertoft family at the beginning of Tryon's
administration.
Edwin Brothertoft had not become an absolute
stranger to his old home, for two reasons. He
pitied his guilty wife. He loved his innocent
daughter. He could not quite give up the hope
that his wife might need his pardon, by and by,
when sin soured to her taste. He must never
totally abandon his child to the debasing influences
about her, though he had no power or influence
to rescue her now, — that disheartened
and broken-down man, contemned by the world
as a purposeless idler.
Matters had not reached this pass in one year
nor until many years, — dreary to imagine, far
too dreary to describe.
Who shall enumerate the daily miseries in that
hapless house? Who shall count the cruel little
scratches of the poniard, with which the wife
practised for her final stab? What Recording
Angel kept tally of the method she took to murder
his peace, that he might know it was murdered,
dead, dead, dead, and not exasperate her
with his patient hope that it might recover?
Her fortune gave her one weapon, — a savage
one in those vulgar hands. She used this power
insolently, as baser spirits may. She would have
been happy to believe, what she pretended, that
her husband married her for money. Often she
told him so. Often she reproached him with her
own disappointment.
“Did I marry you,” she would say, “to be inefficient
and obscure, — a mere nobody in the
world? You were to be a great man, — that
was your part of the bargain. You knew I was
ambitious. I had a right to be. You have had
everything to give you success, — everything!”
“Not quite everything,” he said sadly. “Not
Love!”
Ah miserable woman! as she grew practised
in deceit and wrong, she hated her husband more
and more.
She maddened herself against him. She
blamed him as the cause of her evil choices.
“It is his fault, not mine,” she said to herself.
“He ought to have controlled me, and then I
should not have done what makes me ashamed
to face his puny face. He ought to have said,
`You shall and you shall not,' instead of his
feeble, `Is this wise, Jane? Is this delicate? Is
this according to your nobler nature?' I don't
like to be pleaded with. A despot was what I
needed. If he was half a man, he would take a
whip to me, — yes, beat me, and kick all my
friends out of doors and be master in the house.
That I could understand.”
She maddened herself against him more and
more. She so yielded to an insolent hate, that
she was no better than a mad woman while he
was by to enrage her with his patient, crushed,
shadow of the ardent, chivalric Edwin Brothertoft
of yore.
“Why not kill the craven-spirited wretch?”
she thought, “or have him killed? He would
be better dead, than living and scorned? Once
rid of him, and I could take my beauty and my
wealth to England, and be a grand lady after all.
Lady Brothertoft of Brothertoft Hall! that was
what I had a right to expect. He could have
given it to me. The fool was capable enough.
Everybody said he might be what he pleased.
Why could he not love real things? a splendid
house, plenty of slaves, a name, a title, instead
of this ridiculous dream of Liberty. Liberty! if
he and his weak-minded friends only dared strike
a blow, — if they only would rebel, — he might be
got rid of. Then I should be free. Ah, I will
have my triumphs yet! Kings have loved women
not half so handsome!”
And with red, unblushing cheeks she looked
at herself in the mirror, and hated that obstruction,
her husband, more and more.
A mad hate, which she would gladly have
gratified with murder. The air often seemed to
her full of Furies, scourging her on to do the
deed. Furies flitted before her, proffering palpable
weapons, — weapons always of strange and
antique fashion, such as she had seen and handled
now with what pleasure she used to
play with them, while she listened quietly to
some sinister legend, and knew how the stain
came on the blade.
“Kill him!” the Furies cried to her. It was
a sound like the faint, distant cry one hears in
a benighted forest, and wonders whether the
creature be beast or man.
“Not yet,” she answered, aloud, to this hail
in the far background of her purposes.
The postponement seemed to imply a promise,
and she perceived the circle of shadowy Furies
draw a little step nearer, and shout to each
other in triumph, “`Not yet'; she says, `Not
yet.'”
So her hate grew more and more akin to a
madness, as every cruel or base passion, even
the silliest and most trifling, will, if fondled.
She found, by and by, that the cruellest stab
she could give to the man she had wronged was
through his daughter.
“Lucy is all Brothertoft, and no Billop,” Julia
Peartree Smith often said. “It 's all wrong; she
ought to take after her strong parent, not her
weak one.”
There was a kind of strength incomprehensible
to the old tabby. Nor did she know the law of
the transmission of spiritual traits, — with what
prevail over coarser and cruder forces.
Lucy was all Brothertoft. In her early days
she did not show one atom of the maternal character.
That made the mother's influence more
commanding. The child loved the mother with
a modification of the same passion that the father
had felt for a nature he deemed his nobler counterpart.
The father was so much like his daughter
that she could not comprehend him, until
she was ripe enough to comprehend herself.
Crude contrasts are earliest perceived, earliest
appreciated, and earliest admired, in character
as in art.
So without any resistance Mrs. Brothertoft
wielded Lucy. She let the child love her and
confide in her exclusively. But she hated her.
She hated Edwin Brothertoft's daughter. There
was the girl growing more and more like him,
day by day. There were the father's smile, the
father's manner, the father's voice, even the
father's very expressions of endearment, forever
reproaching the mother with old memories revived.
Ah this miserable woman! She learnt to fear
her daughter, — to dread the inevitable day when
that pure nature would recoil from hers. She
watched the gentle face covertly. When would
that look of almost lover-like admiration depart?
the mild hazel eyes perceive that the bold black
eyes could not meet them? When would the
fair cheeks burn with an agonizing blush of
shame?
“When will the girl dare to pity me, as that
poor wretch her father does?” she thought.
This gentle, yielding, timid creature became
her mother's angel of vengeance. Mrs. Brothertoft
never met her after an hour of separation
without a wild emotion of terror.
“Has she discovered? Does she know what
I am? Did some tattler whisper it to her in
the street? The winds are always uttering a
name to me. Has she heard it, too? Did she
dream last night? Has her dream told her what
her mother is? If she kisses me, I am safe.”
Yes. Sweet Lucy always had the same eager
caress ready. She so overflowed with love to
those she trusted, that she was content with her
own emotion, and did not measure the temperature
of the answering caress.
Ah this miserable mother! as false to maternal
as to marital love. It became her task to
poison the daughter against her father. If these
two should ever understand each other, if there
should ever be one little whisper of confidence
between them, if she should ever have to face
the thought of their contempt, — what then?
Agony would not let her think, “What then?”
She must prevent the understanding, make the
confidence impossible; it must be her business
to educate and aim the contempt.
How perseveringly, craftily, ably she accomplished
this! How slowly she instilled into her
child's mind the cumulative poison of distrust.
Often the innocent lips shrank from the bitter
potion. One day she might reject it. But the
next, there was the skilful poisoner, — her
mother.
“You cannot doubt me, Lucy,” the woman
would say, looking aside as she commended her
chalice. “If it distresses you to hear such
things of your father, how much bitterer must
it be for me to say them!”
These pages again refuse to tolerate the details
of this second crime. Let that too pass
behind the curtain.
Closed doors then! for the mother is at last
saying that her husband has grown baser and
baser, — so utterly lost to all sense of honor that
she must exclude him from her house, and that
her daughter must herself tell him that she will
never see him again.
Closed doors, while the innocent girl flings
herself into the guilty woman's arms, and, weeping,
promises to obey.
Closed doors, and only God to see and listen,
for her father, and pity for his desolate
and heart-weary child.
Closed doors upon the picture of this fair girl,
worn out with agony and asleep. And walking
through her dreams that grisly spectre Sin, who
haunts and harms the nights and days of those
who repel, hardly less cruelly than he haunts
and harms them who embrace him.
It was a tearful April morning of 1775, when
this final interview took place.
“Let me understand this,” said Edwin Brothertoft,
with the calmness of a practised sufferer.
“My daughter has made up her mind never to
see me again?”
“She has,” said Mrs. Brothertoft.
With what quiet, cruel exultation she spoke
these words! Exultation mixed with terror for
the thought, “I have schooled the girl. But she
may still rebel. She may spring to him, and
throw herself into his arms, and then the two
will turn upon me, and point with their fingers,
and triumph.”
“I cannot take my answer from you, madam,”
he said.
“I have no other answer to give,” said Lucy.
“None?” he asked again.
“None,” she replied.
Her coldness was the result of utter bewilderment
and exhaustion. It seemed to him irremediable
hardness and coarseness of heart.
“She is her bad mother's base daughter,” he
thought. “I will think of her no more.”
Does this seem unnatural? Remember how
easily a lesser faith is slain, when the first great
faith has perished. The person trusted with the
whole heart proves a Lie; then for a time all
persons seem liars; then for a time the deceived,
if they are selfish, go cynical; if they are generous,
they give their faith to great causes,
to great ideas, and to impersonal multitudes.
Household treachery keeps the great army of
Reform recruited.
“This girl,” thought Edwin Brothertoft, “cannot
be so blind as not to know why her mother
and I are separated. And yet she chooses her,
and discards me. I knew that the woman once
my wife could never be my wife again. I knew
that our lips could never meet, our hands never
touch. But I hoped — yes, I was weak enough
to hope — that, when sin and sorrow had taught
us their lessons, and the day for repentance and
pardon came, we might approach each other in
the person of our daughter, beloved by both
alike. I was father and my wife mother in the
honorable days gone by. Our child might teach
the father and the mother a different love, not of
I let it go. Why should I longer keep up this
feeble struggle with these base people, who have
ruined my life? I have no daughter. I never
had a wife. I forget the past. God forgive me
if I abandon a duty! God give me opportunity,
if he wills that I ever resume it again!”
As he walked up Wall Street, moodily reflecting
after this fashion, he heard a voice call
him.
“Mr. Brothertoft!”
This hail came from the nose of a hurried
person who had just turned the corner of Smith
— now William — Street, and was making for
the wife's house, when he saw the husband.
“Mr. Brothertoft!” twanged sharp after the
retreating figure. There was an odd mixture
of alarm and triumph in these nasal notes.
“Call me by some other name!” said the one
addressed, turning. “What you please, but
never that again.”
“Waal!” says the other, speaking Bostonee,
through a nose high Boston, “you might n't like
my taste in baptism, so I 'll call you Cap'n, —
that 's safe. Cap'n,” he continued in a thrilling
whisper, through that hautboy he played on,
“Cap'n, we've shed and drawed the fust blood
fur Independence. Aperel 19 wuz the day.
Lexington wuz wher we shed. Corncud wuz
poot fur Bosting, you 'll pint and poot fur a locality
wher considdable phlebotomy is ter be
expected baout these times, and wher Patriots
is wanted jest as fast as they can pile in.”
Clang out your alarums, bells of Trinity!
others may need awakening. Not he who was
named Edwin Brothertoft. He is gone already to
fight in the old, old battle — forever old, forever
new — of freedom against tyranny, of the new
thoughts against the old facts.
“So your husband 's on his way to get himself
shot or hung. And a good riddance, I suppose,
Madam B.,” said coarse Sir Harry.
“The beautiful widow will not cry her eyes
out,” said My Lord with his usual sneer.
Mrs. Brothertoft writhed a little under this
familiarity.
Like many another, who says, “Deteriora sequar,
she wished to go to the bad with a stately
step and queenly mien. That is not permitted
by the eternal laws. Ah, miserable woman! she
was taught to feel how much the gentleman
she had betrayed was above the coarse associates
she had chosen.
She missed him, now that he was gone irrevocably.
Had there been then in her heart any relics of
the old love? Had she cherished some vague
some hope of pardon?
Had her torture of her husband been only a
penance for herself? Was it the hate which is
so akin to love? Could this be a self-hatred for
a self that has wasted the power of loving, — a
hate that is forever wreaking vengeance for this
sad loss upon the object the heart most longs to
love, — the only one that can remind that heart
of its impotency? Had she been acting unconsciously
by the laws of such a passion?
And this exasperating influence banished,
would she have peace at last? Would the
Furies let her alone? Would the hints of murder
vanish and be still? Would she be a free
woman, now, to follow out her purposes?
Edwin Brothertoft had disappeared. Deserters
from the rebel army could give no news of such
a person.
Julia Peartree Smith often suggested to her
friend the welcome thought that he was dead.
Mrs. Brothertoft could not believe it. Something
whispered her that there would be another
act in the drama of her married life.
| Edwin Brothertoft | |