Edwin Brothertoft
page: Advertisement (TitlePage) [View Page Advertisement (TitlePage) ]BY THE SAME AUTOR. CECIL DREEME. s Twldfth Edition. With a Memoir of the Autho'i by GEORGE WM. CURTIS. S One volume. 16mo. Price, $1.00. , JOHN BRENT. S Eighth Edition. Ivol. 16mo. Price, $1.00. TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers. ' EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. BY THEODORE WINTHROP, AUTHOR, OF L CECIL DREEME A AND "L JOHN BRENT." BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1862. page: 0[View Page 0] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: WELCH, BIIGELOW, AND COMPANY, PRIlNERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. PART I. page: 0[View Page 0] EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. I. THE Cavaliers always ran when they saw Puri- tan 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 .tle peaked turrets of Brothertoft Manor-House, -his home, midway between the towers of Lincoln Cathe- dral and Boston on the Witham. Late at night he rode wearily back to Horn- castle. 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 gallop- page: 8-9[View Page 8-9] 8 ^ EDWIN BROT1HERTOFT. ing into fle town, up to the quaint house where 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 Ito 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 name- sake Edwin, was safe in her arms. The brave lady too had beaten off the maraud- ers. But fight fire as they would, they could EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. 9 rescue only one angle of the mansion. That "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 mas- ter'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 wifei the devoted soldier, the white charger, and thie child awakened to say good-bye, and scared at his father's glinting corselet,--a group such is a painter loves. The Colonel bore westward to cross the line 1 , page: 10-11[View Page 10-11] 10 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. of march of the Parliamentary army, and by and by, as he drew nearer the three towers of Lin- coin, 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. I To-day Great Tom had but one verse to repeat, "Westward ho! A new home across the seas." This was its stern command to the Puritan 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 en returned in peace to his dismantled home. Its X 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 3 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 1 nation's weal. He lived quietly and sparingly. His sole extravagance was, that, as a monument of bygone grandeur, he commissioned Sir An- thony 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 sen- tence of exile. Time passed. Kingly Oliver died. There was no Protector blood in gentle Richard Cromwell. He could not wield the land. "Ho for cava- liers! 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, '"Noth- ing!"Yes; go Bigotry, your jackboots smell unsavory; enter Prelacy in fine linen and per- fume! 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. page: 12-13[View Page 12-13] 12 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. ?? Syllable again along the west wind the sen- teunce 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 sliake 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 Ellgland, 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 gentle- women be few among us." So farewell to England, debauched and dis- graced! Great Tom of Lincoln tolled farewell, and the beautiful tower of St. Botolph's at loston saw the exiles out to sea. 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 Brother- toft 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 Lin- colnshire. 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 emi- nent object on the beach, and are taught that where man goes, crime goes also. A frowzy Indian paddles ashore with clams to sell; at page: 14-15[View Page 14-15] " EDWIN' BROTHERTOFT. this vision, their dismayed scalps tremble. on their sinciputs. A sly Dutchman, the fatter pro- totype 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 dis- tinction 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, border- ing 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, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 15 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 finee 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 incongru- ously at first, among the stumps of a clearing. And there the exiled gentleman tried to live an exotic life. He bestowed about him the fur- niture 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 fol- page: 16-17[View Page 16-17] 16 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. lowed, and in 1736 the fifth Edwin Br3othertoft was born. He was al only child, like each of his forefathers. These pages chronicle his great joy and his great sorrow, and how he bore him- self 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 dilapi- dated, 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 un- blemished, 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 black- guard a complete model of ignobility, and makes it his exclusive business to be himself. Why EDWIN BROTH'rERTOFT. 17 should she not be as careful with the antago- nistic 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 vigor- ous 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 con- scious of a certain latent force, and left it latent. They lived weakly, and died young, like fair exotics. They were a mild, inefficient, ineffect- ual, 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! page: 18-19[View Page 18-19] "I. EDWIN BROT'HETOFT, fifth of that name, had been two years at Oxford, toiling at the peace- ful 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, Har- vard and Yale, turned out a light article of do- mestic 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. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 19 His father wrote: "My son, I am dying the early death of a Brothertoft. I have been fool- ish 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 con- templation,-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 for- tunes of its tenants. '( Tenants at will," so said the father to his son, in the parlor where Vandyck's picture pre- sided. "Whose will?"Edwin asked. "Colonel Billop's." "The name is new to me." "He is a half-pay officer and ex-army-con- tractor,--a hard, cruel man. He has made a great fortune, as such men make fortunes." page: 20-21[View Page 20-21] 20 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. " 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 encour- age hippophagy." : "Could you look up mnen in desperate circum- stance, 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 fa- ther's death. To check tears, he went on with his queries. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 21 "He has heirs, then, our unenviable suc- cessor?" "One child, heir or heiress; I do not remem- ber 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 ac- quainted 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 Parlia- mentary Colonel and his family. The forefather looked kindly down upon his descendants. Each of them closely resembled that mild, heroic gen- tieman. "Here or in the land of our ancestors?" the father continued. "Your generation has' the page: 22-23[View Page 22-23] 22 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. choice. No other will. These dull, deboshdcl 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 banvas. His fatl er 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 bril- liant career to one of your figure, your manners, and your talents. Our friends there do not for- get us, as you know, for all our century of rusti- cation here. When I am gone, and the Manor is gone, you will have not one single tie of prop- erty or person in America." "I love England," said Edwin, "I love Ox- ford; the history, the romance, and the hope of England are all packed into that grand old casket of learning; but" - and he turned to- wards 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 Angli- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 23 cized. He went on gayly to say, " that he knew 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 pleas- anltly for the fuiture. They- knew tllat gravity would bring them straiglltway to sadness. Sadness must come. Both perceived that tlis 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 week's of winter. The dyillg man felt his earthly being sweetly com- pleted 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 ariouse and nerve the decaying gentleman. "Perhaps," he said, " I should, not have ac- cepted 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. page: 24-25[View Page 24-25] 24 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Love wisely, my son lest your career be worse 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 Brother- toft, fourth of that name, by the side of his an- cestors. 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 neigh. borhood, and Livingston from above the High- lands. 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 liba- tion 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 gen- tlemen called him. He seemed proud o bear the name of that e inent 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 dole- ful tone. "Billop swallows the whole, the infernal 2 page: 26-27[View Page 26-27] 26 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. usurer!"Van Cortlandt rejoined, looking lugu- briously at his fellows, and then cheerfully at his glass. "ITe's too far gone to swallow anything. The Devil has probably got him by this time. , He was dying three days ago," said Beverley Rob- inson. "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 in- terjected, " 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, Mas- ter 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.") EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. 27 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, pa- cificator, "I have a capital plan for young Broth- ertoft." "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, page: 28-29[View Page 28-29] 28 ' EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. and cribbed in no habitation; and always packed to move, with a brain f11ll of wits and a pocket full of coupons. I The four proprietors finishedo 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 de- livery. "Let him alone!" said that ' magister mo- rum.' You know as much of love as of Lat- in. 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. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 29 Meanwhile, a group of the tenants of the Ma- nor, 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 tomb- stones, puffed out their cheeks to rival the cher- ubs 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!" pronouned Isaac Van Wart, through a warty nose. 'But not spry enough,--not spry enoh!" "Anybody could cheat him," says lean Hen- drecus Canady, the root and Indian doctor, who knew his fact by frequent personal experiments. "- Who 'd want to cheat a man that was every- body'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 news- paper," Van Wart suggested. "If I was him, I'd put in for Squire Billop's / page: 30-31[View Page 30-31] 30 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. gal, and have easy times." This was the root 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 Commis- sary. I did n't weigh more 'n the Illjun 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 pres- ently 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 Galswor- EDWIN BROThESTOFT. 31 thy junior has hard work to keep up with the 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 affec- tion, 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. page: 32-33[View Page 32-33] 32 EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. And sometimes, too, that vision of the father's countenance, faint against a background of twi- light, 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. "Respectfully, &c., "SKERVEY SKAATS." 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. Ed- EDWIN BROTHE!TOFT. 38 win had brave hopes of making at least his daily bread there with his brains or his hands. While he was preparing to go, Old Sam Gals- worthy 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,'3 said Sam, "to pay a mare-colt every year over and above my rent, besides a six-year-old mare for a harriet, when- ever the new heir came in." "Heriot, I suppose you mean, Sam." "We call 'em heriots 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." 2* c page: 34-35[View Page 34-35] 34 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 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, any- how. 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 Gals- worthy. 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, blow- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 35 ing Harriet Heriot's tail between her legs. The omens were bad. But when, early the second morning, the or- phan 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. page: 36-37[View Page 36-37] v. i WITH youth, good looks, an. English educa- tion, 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 X 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 Ed- win 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 i doers.. The fingers of my right hand seem too a many when I begin to number off the thorough : gentlemen of my own day. But were I tenll times Briareus, did another hand sprout when- X: ever I wanted a new tally, I never could count EDWIN BROTHERKTOFT. 37 he thorough blackguards among my contempo- aries. So much shade does it take to make unshine! The Colonial world gave attention when it eard a young Brothertoft was about to descend ito the arena and wrestle for life. "So that is he!" was the cry. "How andsome! how graceful! how chivalrous! how rilliant! what a bow he makes! his manners isarm every antagonist! He will not take ad- antages, they say. He is generous, and has isionary notions about fair play. He thinks a eaten foe should not be trampled on or scalped. [e thinks enemies ought to be forgiven, and ,iends to be sustained, through thick and thin. iell, well! such fancies are venial errors in a oung aristocrat." The city received him as kindly as it does the ime manner of youth now, when its population as increased one hundred-fold. The chief lawyer said, "Come into my office nd copy papers, at a pound a week, and in a ear you will be a Hortensius." The chief merchant said, "If you like the nell of rum, codfish, and beaver-skins, take a lace in my counting-house, at a hundred pounds year, and correct the spelling of my letters. -promise nothing; but I may want a partner y and by." page: 38-39[View Page 38-39] 38 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 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 Living- stons down." Lord Loudon, Commander-in-Chief, swore that Brothertoft was the only gentleman he had seen among the dashed Provincials. "And,l' says he, "you speak Iroquois and French, anQ 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, Meta- physics, 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: EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 39 "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. page: 40-41[View Page 40-41] TI. 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, mother. less, the daughter and companion of a coarse man who had basely made a great fortune. Rich rogues always fancy that their children will in- herit 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 EDWIN BROTHEiTOFT. 41 of an heiress he and his merciless avarice had 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 dis- tinguished 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 meetl 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. Every- body 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 arrange- ment for the late owner's retaining it." Skilful Jane! to whom a Vandyck was less worth than its length and breadth in brocade. page: 42-43[View Page 42-43] 42 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. She sealed this note with Colonel Billop's frank motto, "Per omnia ad opes," and despatched it. Edwin was delighted at the prospect of re- covering 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 Radi- cal 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 al- ready 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 gratefill 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 requir- ing payment. Farther back depositors are feed- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 48 ing money, soft and hard, into the maw of the receiving teller. Behind him, book-keepers wield prodigious ledgers, and run up and down their columns, agile as the, lizards of Paestum. 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 intro- duced 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 sub- stitution 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 compunc- tion 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. page: 44-45[View Page 44-45] " EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Shall the talk of these children be here re- peated? It might fill a pleasant page; but this history cannot deal with the details of their im- mature lives. It only makes ready, in this First Act, for the rapid business of a riper period. T When Edwin Brothertoft left the heiress's par- lor, 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:- "ADY JANE BROTHERTOFT, OF BROTHERTOFT HALLT. 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 in- to 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 fra- grance. Jane looked up and saw herself in the mirror. A blush deepened her somewhat carnal EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 45 carnations. Every cherub seemed to be laugh- ing significantly. She made a face at the merry imps. As she did so, she caught sight of the re- flection of her father's portrait, also regarding her. He was such a father as a child would have been quite justified in disowning and ut- terly 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 butch- erly 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 aim. He is lovely; but I almost hate him. He makes me feel ignorant and coarse and mean. [ don't want to be the kind of woman he has been talking to with thati deferential address. But I suppose this elegant manner is all put on, mnd he is really just like other people. He seems ;o be pretty confident of carrying the world be- !ore him. We shall be the great people of the Province. Here comes: the distinguished Sir Ed- win Brothertoft, and Lady Jane, his magnificent wife! People shall not pretend to look down apon me any more, because my father knew how \ page: 46-47[View Page 46-47] " EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. to make money, when fools threw it away. I 've 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 Mur- ray Hill for lovers of good family. Edwin had found his Pearl,- a glorious, flash- ing 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 ana- lyzing 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 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 47 house, as far as Broadway, content with the joy 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 beau- ty! 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 com- rade. 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 brother- hood of Love. Ring, merry bells! Your songs shall be of blissful omen to my heart." page: 48-49[View Page 48-49] VII. SUCa soliloquies as those of the last chapter presently led to dialogue of the same character. The lady continued to scribble that brief ro- mance, 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. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 49 Indeed, if in the tumult of his own bliss he had 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 pleas- ant incident of the portrait had brought us to- gether, 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 ridic- ulous, 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 my- self, 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 Mer- 3 D 3^ . page: 50-51[View Page 50-51] 50 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. chant offers me three hundred a year at once, 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 muchl 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 pllace so beautiful in England,- none so grand by nature, I mean." Here followed another rhapsody from this a, I EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 51 poetic youth on the Manor and its people, the river and the Highlands. She was proud of her lover's eloquence, al- though she did not sympathize much in his enthusiasms. She had heard rivers talked of as water-power or roads for water-carriage. Moun- tains 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 land- lords. But she liste ed, 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 sup- posed. "I begin to long to see it," she said, with real interest. "And that dear old fat Sam Gals" worthy, 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, lie still timidly tender. page: 52-53[View Page 52-53] 52 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "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 soft- ened, 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 Broth- ertoft 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 recom- mend you a better cicerone." "Who can you possibly mean?" EDWIN BROT}HETOFT. 53 "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 nat- ural 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 bal- anced 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 thel Billop motto, "Per omnia ad opes," r page: 54-55[View Page 54-55] 54 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. discharged the blushing bridegroom and his 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 costhest kind," and cost in England forty-two pounds eleven shillings and threepence. Venerable Rector Barclay read the service, witlh 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 Lon- don, --and had generally persuaded his disciples to cut themselves down from polygamy to biga- my. 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 espiegle Miss Jay, of that fine old Huguenot Protestant stock, which still protests pertinaciously against ini- quity in Church and State. There was the sen- sible Miss Schuyler, the buxom Miss, Beekman, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 55 high-bred Miss Van Rensselaer, Miss Winthrop, faultless in toilette and temper, Miss Morris, wearing the imperious nose of her family, popu- lar 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 scre of others, equally fair, and equally worthy of a place in a fashion- able chronicle. "Poor Edwin Brothertoft!" said the Peartree Smith, as the young ladies filed out after the cer- emony. "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. Brother- toft! why could he not find a mature woman? (Julia had this virtue, perhaps, to, an exagger- ated degree, and had been suspected of designs upon the bridegroom.) "Girls as 3young as she is have had no chance to correct their ideal. She will correct it at his expense. She will pres- ently find out he is, not perfect, and then will fancy some other man would have suited her bet- ter. Women should have a few years of flirta- tion before they settle in life. These pantalette marriages never turn out well. An engagement of a few weeks to that purse-proud baby, her page: 56-57[View Page 56-57] 56 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. father's daughter! Poor Edwin Brothertoft! He will come to disappointment and grief." With this, Miss Julia, striving to look Cassan- dra, marches off the stage. But Edwin Brothertoft had no misgivings. If he had fancied any fault of temper in his be- trothed, 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 coa6h 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 tle 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 EDWIN BROT 'ERTOFT. 57 before us. How happy we shall be in our glowing hopes! how happy in our generous am- bitions! how happy in our earnest life! Ah, my love! how can I lore you enough for the gift of this beautiful moment, for the promise of the fairer time to come!' I 3* page: 58-59[View Page 58-59] 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 manll 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 pain- ful story. Chapter after chapter might describe the gradual vanishing of illusions, the slight divergence, the widening of estrangement, the death of tr st, the deceit on one side, the wear- ing- misery f 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. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 59 But the statement of the result is sad enough. Let all these dreary chapters be condensed into onlle! 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. Hier mind had narrowed to their ignoble meth- ods of judgment. Her heart's desire had been taught to be for the cheap and mundane posses- sions, 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 feel- ing of her first interview with her lover re- vived and exasperated. "I believe he wants to make me feel igno- rant 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 sugges- page: 60-61[View Page 60-61] EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 4 tions. No sir; my way is my way, and I mean 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 grum- bling. 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." "O0 there you go again into your foggy meta- physics 1" 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 al 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 gene tleman, for all the base subterfuges by which base people tried to defend it. The Red Rover fortunately did not remain a' page: 62-63[View Page 62-63] 62 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. subject of discussion. On that very trip the Ne- groes rose and broiled the captaln 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 dolony as its fore- most 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 gor- geous 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 i EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 63 Nature, not daubed with ochres. Huzzay! the young sagamore is an Adonis. He beats Ches- terfield at a bow and Selwyn at a mot." I 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 appre- ciated the new treatise on the Sublime and Beau- tifulo Young Mr. Joshua Reynolds was flattered that the distinguished stranger consented to sit t6 him, and in return tried to flatter the portrait. Young Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, a poor Bohe- mian, 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. Brotlertoft first brought her flashing black eyes and glowing cheeks into the theatres and only recovered when the audi- page: 64-65[View Page 64-65] " EDWIN BROTHEEITOFT. ence perceived the emotion and cheered it and the lady together. That great dilettante, Mr. Horace Walpole, made the pair a charming dejeuner at Straw- berry Hill, upon which occasion he read aloud, with much cadence,--as dilettante gqntlemen continue to do in our own time, -his fri nd Mr. ' Gray's elaborate Elegy in a Country Chuichyard, just printed. After this literary treat, Mr. Hor- ace said: "Tell me something about that clever young aide-de-camp, Washington, who got Iro- quois 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 fan- faron,' and laugh at him for calling the whiz of cannon-balls I a delightful sound.'"Where- upon 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 \ EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 65 his Petition and Remonstrance, discussed all the sublime and beautiful things that are dreamt of in philosophy with Mr. Burke, - while he talked Art with Mr. Reynolds, poetry with Dr. Gold- smith, 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 tradi- tions 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 play- ing with," said the Duke of Gurgoyle, inspect- ing her in this attire. "And, by George, she looks as if she could use it." Then the ugly old monster, and the other blasd 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." E page: 66-67[View Page 66-67] " EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "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'?" o No," she rejoined, petulantly; " a loyal bell would not utter such treasonable notes. This is what I hear: I 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 pre- cious 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-pooh- ed Remonstrance and Petition. "You ought to have redress," says Pitt, "but I am hardly warm in my seat of Prime Minister. I canl only be a tacit friend at present." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 67' "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 resi- dent 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 colo- nists could not remain even half-civilized Yen- geese, but sank to absolute Yankees,- Whose bows were contortions, and smiled 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 re- sult of the Brothertofts' visit to England. Lucy Brothertoft, an only child, was born,- a token of love revived,--alas! a monumen'-of love revived" to die and be dismissed among memories., If the wife had been a true wife, how sweetly page: 68-69[View Page 68-69] 68 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. her affection for her husband would have re- doubled 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 chris- tening day. Alas! the chimes that welcome the daughter to the bosom of the church are toll- ing 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 com- pletely 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 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 69 days of bodily torture are over? Have we seen no delicate spirit of a woman quelled by the em- braces 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 mall it had so generously gaped for quite lost his appetite for fat things. I'Shame!" said the indignant Province. 4"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 blos. som, 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. Thei Brothertofts were always weak as water. page: 70-71[View Page 70-71] 70 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. And this mercenary fellow hurried her into a marriage, a mere child, after' all engagement of a few weeks. No wonder she despises him. I do, heartily. What lovely lace this is. I won- der if she could n't give me another yard! Heigh ho! Nobody smuggles for me!" Brother patriots, too, hado their opinion on the subject of Brothertoft's withdrawal into ob- scurity. "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 lovq 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 catas- trophe of the first act of the old, old tragedy. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 71 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 them- selves after the crime, that is one of the needful lessons of life. page: 72-73[View Page 72-73] IX. RED. That was the color now master in Mrs. Broth- ertoft's houses, town and country. Supercilious officers, in red coats, who were addressed as General or My Lord, insolent of- ficers, in red coats, hight Colonel or Sir Har- ry, 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 enfamnille, bien entendu. Now and then a nasal patriot from Down East, or a patriot Thee-a d-Thouer from Philadelphia, knocked at the door and inquired for Mr. Broth- ertoft. "Out of town, Sir," was the reply of the wiggy negro. EDWI14 BROTHERTOFT. 73 "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 wasn't to look after Miss Lucy. There she comes down stairs, I'll ask her. Miss Lucy!" A gentle, graceful little girl, of the Brother- toft 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 4 page: 74-75[View Page 74-75] 74 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. hat. On the left bezantler, a pert little fatigue cap was suspended. "It 's too bad," Voltaire began. Black babble has become rather a bore in liter- ature. Voltaire, therefore, will try not to talk Tombighee. ,c 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 gentle- man - 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 High- lands near Brothertoft Manor. Then he shalm-, bled 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, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 75 as the jolly fire shines through the chinks of the black furnace-doors under a boiler. '"Things goes wrong in this house, all but your cooking department, Sappho, and my but- ler 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 gen- tleman, member of one of de oldest families in all Westchester. You is got no more Faith than them Mumbo Jumbo Billop niggers what immi- grated 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. page: 76-77[View Page 76-77] 76 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "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 important- est 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 un- blushingly 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!") icried Voltaire. "'T was n't a fair conundrum you has the Faith into yourself." "Then I takes Faith," repeated Sappho, with- out noticing this interruption, "Faith, that these EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. " 'gredients which is not soup is comin' soup in de Lord's timet an dey alluz comes sdup." "And the primest kind!"Plato interjected, authoritatively. "So," continued Sappho, improving the les- son, " soup and roast geese, and pies and pan- cakes 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 host- ess'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. page: 78-79[View Page 78-79] 78 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 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 influ- ences about her, though he had no power or in- ' fluence 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 mur- der his peace, that he might know it was mur- dered, 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. EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. 79 "Did I marry you," she would say, " to be in- efficient 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 everytlhing," 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 doin'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 Shouse. 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, page: 80-81[View Page 80-81] 80 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. and yet always courteous demeanor,- a sorrow- ful shadow of the ardent, chivalric Edwin Broth- ertoft 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 wo- men not half so handsome!" And with red, unblushing cheeks she looked at herself in the mirror, and :hated that obstruc- tion, 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 pal- pable weapons, - weapons always of strange and antique fashion, such as slke had seen and han- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. died in old museums in England. She re- membered 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 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 4* page: 82-83[View Page 82-83] 82 * EDWIN' BROTHERTOFT. i fine subtlety they get themselves propagated, and prevail over coarser and cruder forces. Lucy was all Brothertoft. In her early days she did not show one atom of the maternal char- acter. 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 coun- terpart. The father was so much like his daugh- ter 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. Brothertofti 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 re- vived. 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? EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 83 When would disgust be visible? When would 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 shamlne? "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. Brother- toft 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 tempera- ture of the answering caress. Ah this miserable mother! as false to mater- nal 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? page: 84-85[View Page 84-85] 84 EDWIN BROTRHETOFT. 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. I How perseveringly, craftily, ably she accom- plished 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 mne to say them!" These pages again refuse to tolerate the de- tails 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, weep- ing, -promises to obey. Closed doors, and only God to see and listen, EDWIN BROThfiETOFT. 85 while Lucy, alone in her chamber, prays forgive- ness 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 Broth- ertoft, 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. page: 86-87[View Page 86-87] 86 EDWIN BROTHEkTOFT. Her coldness was the result of utter bewilder- ment and exhaustion. It seemed to him irreme- diable 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 gen- erous, 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, ' can- not 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 ? \ . \ v EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 87 the flesh, but of the spirit. This was my hope. 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 re- flecting after this fashion, he heard a voice call him. 4"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." 4"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,- thlat's safe. Cap'n," he continued in a thrilling whisper, through that hauthoy 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 page: 88-89[View Page 88-89] 88 EDWIN BROTHE'ITOFT. wher we drawed. Naow, if you'll jest pint and poot fur Bosting, you 'll pint and poot fur a lo- cality 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 se- quar," 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! shee was taught to feel how much the gentleman! she had betrayed was above the coarse asso-a ciates she had chosen. She missed him, now that he was gone irrevo-O cably. Had there been then in her heart any relics of the old love? Had she cherished some vague 1Sf EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 89 purpose of repentance, some thought of tears, 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 uncon- sciously by the laws of such a passion? And this exasperating influence banished, would she have peace at last? Would the Futries let her alone? Would the hints of mur- der 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. Some- thing whispered her that there would be another act in the drama of her married life, page: 90-91[View Page 90-91] PART II. page: 92-93[View Page 92-93] I. BUFF and Blue. Dear, faithful old colors! They never appeared more brave and trusty than in Major Skerrett's coat,- a coat of 1777. "White at the seams of the blue, soiled at the edges of the buff," said the Major, inspecting himself in a triangular bit of looking-glass. -"I must have a new one, if I can find a tailor who will take an order on the Goddess of Liberty in pay. Good morning, Mrs. Birdsell." This salutation he gave as he passed out of the little house in Fishkill where he had been quar- tered last night. "Good mornin' Sir," returned Mrs. Birdsell, rushing out of her kitchen, with a rolling-pin in hand, and leaving her pie-crust flat on its back, all dotted with dabs of butter, as an ermine cape is with little black tails. She looked after him, as he stepped out into the village street. Her first emotion was feminine admiration, -her second, feminine curiosity. page: 94-95[View Page 94-95] " EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "What a beautiful young man!" she said to her respectable self. "Sech legs! Sech hair, -jest the color of ripe chesnut burrs, - only I don't like that streak of it on his upper lip. I've' olluz understood from Deacons that the baird of a man cum in with Adam's fall and waz to be shaved off. Naow I'd give a hul pie to know what Gineral Washington's sent him on here for. It's the greatest kind of a pity he did n't come a few days before. That old granny, Gineral Putnam, would nit hev let Sirr Henery Clinton grab them forts down to the Highlands, if he'd hed sech a young man as this to look arter him and spry him up." Before he continued his walk, Major Skerrett paused a moment for a long hearty draught of new October,-new American, a finer tipple than old English October. Finer and cheaper! In-fact it was on free tap. No cask to bore. No spigot Ito turn. No pewter pot to fill. Major Skerrett had but to open his mouth and breathe. He inhaled, and he had swallowed Science knows how many quarts of that mellow golden nectar, the air of an American October morning. It was the per- fection of potables,--as much so then in 1777, as it is now in 1860. "I have seen the lands of many men, and drained their taps," soliloquized the Major, paro- EDWIN BROTuIERTOFT. dying the Odyssey; "but never, in the bottle or out of the bottle, tasted I such divine stuff as this. O lilies and roses, what a bouquet! O peaches and pippins, what a flavor! O hickory- nuts and chinkapins, what an aroma! More, Hebe, more! Let me swig! --forgive the word! But one drinks pints; and I want gallons, pun- cheons." While he is indulging in this harmless de- bauch, let Mrs. Birdsell's question, "What did General Washington send him on for?" be answered. "Peter," said Washington familiarly to Major Skerrett, his aide-de-camp, "I have written pe- remptorily several times to General Putnam to send me reinforcements. They do not come. The chief was evidently somewhat in the dumps there at his camp, near Pennibecker's Mill, on the Perkiomy Creek, twenty miles from Phila- delphia, at the end of September, 1777. "I suppose," the Major suggested, " that Put- nam cannot get out of his head his idle scheme for the recapture of New York, - that ' suicidal parade,' as Aleck Hamilton calls it." "I must have the men. Our miserable busi- ness of the Brandywine must be done over." "Yes; Sir William Howe is bored enough in Philadelphia by this time. Everybody always is there. It would be only the courtesy of war page: 96-97[View Page 96-97] 96 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. to challenge him out, and then beat him away to jollier quarters." "I do not like to challenge him unless I have a couple of thousand more men. You must take a little ride, Major, up to Old Put at Peeks- kill, and see that they start." "The soldier obeys. But he sighs that he may miss a battle or an adventure." "Adventures sprout under the heels of knights- errant like you, Peter. Peekskill is not many miles away from the spot of one of my young romances." The noble old boy paused an instant, senti- mental with the recollection of handsome Mary Phillipse and nineteen years ago. "The men will come like drawing teeth," he resumed. "Old Put is -what was that Latin phrase you used about him to Lafayette the other day?" "Tenax propositi," Skerrett replied. "Anglice, obstinate as a mule. Ah, Skerrett! we poor land-surveyors, that had to lug levels and compasses through the woods, know little Latin and less Greek. But there was more of your quotation, to express the valuable side of Putnam's character." "Nec vultus instantis tyranni, Mente quatit solida," quoted the Major; and then translated impromptu, "Never a scowl, o'er tyrant's jowl, His stiff old heart can shake." EDWIN BROrlHETOFT. 97 Washington laughed. Skerrett laughed loud- er. He was at that ebullient age when life is letting off its overcharge of laughter. Young fellows at that period are a bore or an exhilara- tion;- a bore, to say the least, if their animal spirits are brutal spirits,-no bore, even if not quite the ripest company, provided their glee does not degenerate into uproar. "I don't know what I should do, Peter, in these dark times, without your irrepressible good spir- its," said the chief. "My boys - you and Hamil- ton and Lafayette and Harry Lee - keep me up. I get tired to- death of the despondencies and prejudices and jealousies of some of these old wo- men in breeches who wear swords or cast votes." "Perhaps you cannot spare me then to go to Peekskill," the Major said, slyly. His Country's Father smiled. "Be off, my boy; but don't stay too long. Your head will be worth more to Old Put than a regiment. He's growing old. He shows the effects of tough campaigning in his youth. Besides, keep- ing a tavern was not the best business for a man of his convivial habits." "We youngsters found that out at the siege of Boston, when you, General, were keeping your head cool on baked apples and milk." "I ate'erm because I liked'em, my boy. My head keeps itself cool. By the way, you will be 5 G page: 98-99[View Page 98-99] 98 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. able to help General Putnam with that hot-tem- pered La Radiare. The old gentleman never can forget how the Frenchmen and their Indians mangled him in Canada in '58." "He never can let anybody else forget it. I would give odds that he'll offer to tell that story before I 've been with him fifteen minutes." "Well, good bye! Hurry on the regulars! Let him call in the militia in their places! Tell him he must hold the Highlands! If he cannot keep Sir Henry Clinton back until Gates takes Jack Burgoyne, you and I, Peter, will have to paint ourselves vermilion and join the Tusca- roras." After such a talk with our chief,--who was not the stilted prik that modern muffs have made him,--Major Skeirett departed on his mission. He left head-quarters a few days before that hit- and-miss battle of Germantown. Skerrett was young and a hard rider. He lamed his horse the first day. He lost time in getting another. It was the evening of October eighth, when, as he approached the North River to cross to Peekskill, the country people warned him back with the news that on the sixth Sir Henry Clinton had taken the Highland forts, and Putilam had run away to Fishkill. "Black1 news!" thought Skerrett. "General Washington will turn Tuscarora now, if ever." EDWIN BRO'THETOFT. 99 Skerrett made a circuit northward, crossed the Hudson at Newhurgh, and reported to General Putnam, October 9, sunset, at the Van Wyck farm-house, on the plain, half a mile north of the Fishkill Mountains. The heights rose in front, a rampart a thousand feet high. Old Put- limped out to meet Washington's aide-de-camp. He was a battered veteran, lame with a fractured thigh, stiff with coming paraly- sis and now despondent after recent blunders. "Dusky times, Skerrett," says he, forlornly. "I suppose the Chief sent you for men. He's a cannibal after human flesh. But don't worry me to-night. To-morrow we're to have a Coun- cil of War, and I'll see what can be done. I suppose you know what's happened." "Yes,- generally." "Well; it's all clear for Clinton to go up and join that mountebank, Jack Burgoyne' I might just as well go home, and set up tahvern again to Pomfret for anything I can do here. God save the King is going to make Yankee Doodle sing small from yesterday on. It was all the fault of that cursed fog,--we had a fog, thick as mush, all day on the sixth., I believe them British ships brought it with 'em in bags, from the Chan- nel. They cheocked up the river with their fog, and while I was waitin' for 'em over to Peekskill, they crep across and took the forts. Darn it all!" page: 100-101[View Page 100-101] 100 EDWIN BROTH-ETOFT. Putnam paused to take an indignant breath. Skerrett smiled at the old hero's manner. When he was excited, the Yankeeisms of his youth came back to him. His lisp also grew more decided. Nobody knows whether the lisp was natural, or artificial, and caused by a jaw-breaker with the butt of a musket he got from an uncivil Gaul at Fort Ti in-'58. His Yankeeisms, his lisp, his drollery, his muddy schemes, made the jolly old boy the chief comic character of our early Revolutionary days. "How Jack Burgoyne will stick out that great under-lip of his,- the ugly pelican!" continued old Put, "lwhen he hears of this. He 'll stop fightin', while he goes at his proper trade, and writes ,a farce with a Yankee inl it, who 'll1 never say anything but,' I veouw! By dollars, we 're chawed up!'"' "Don't you remember, General," says Sker- rett, "how Bunker Hill interrupted the acting of a farce of his? Perhaps Gates till make him pout his lip, as he did when he saw you pointing the old mortar Congress at him and Boston from Prospect Hill. Don't you recollect? We saw him with a spy-glass, and you said he looked like a pelican with a mullet in his pouch. By the way, where did you ever see pelicans?" "When I was down to take Cuba in '62, and we didn't take it. I'll tell you the story when EDWIN BROT'HElTOFT. 101 I feel brighter. We were wrecked, and had not a thing but pelicans to eat for two' days,--and fishy grub they are!" "Well, we must not despair," says Skerrett, cheerily, seeing that the old brave began to brighten. "Dethpair?" lisped Putnam, "who's a goin' to despair? I tell you, my boy, you'll eat a Connecticut punkin-pie with me, yet, in peace and Pomfret. I wish we had one now, for supper." "There's raw material enough about," Sker- rett said, glancing at the piles of that pomaceous berry which wallowed among the corn shocks and smiled at the sugary sunset. "Yes; but this is York State, and punkin- pies off their native Connecticut soil are always a mushy mess, or else tough as buckskin. Never mind, my boy, we 'll sit every man under his own corn-stalk, on his own squash, and whistle Yan- kee Doodle and call it macaroni, yet. It don't look half so dark to me now as it did in the Ti- conderogy times. Did I ever tell you the story how the Frenchmen and their cussed Indians mauled me there?" "It's coming. I knew it would," thought Peter, at the beginning of this sentence, " and I did not bring any cotton to plug my ears!" "Well," continued Put, without waiting for page: 102-103[View Page 102-103] 102 EDWIN BROTHErTOFT. his companion's answer, "I shall have to tell my tale another time, for here comes my orderly, with papers to sign. You remember Sergeant Lincoln, don't you, Skerrett?" "I should not remember much in this world, if he had not saved my life and my memory for me. Shall I tell youmy s,;ory, short? Scene I. Bunker Hill. A British beggar with a baggonet makes a point at Peter Skerrett's rebel buttons on his left breast. Rebel Sergeant Lincoln twigs, describes a circle with a musket's butt. Scene II. Bunker Hill. A British beggar on his back sees stars and points upward with his baggonet at those brass buttons on the blue sky. In the distance two pairs of heels are seen,--these," says Peter, Jlifting his own, " and yours, Sergeant Lincoln. And that's what I call a model story." "Ne quid nimis, certainly. Not a word to spare, Sir," says the Sergeant, taking Peter's proffered hand. He was a slender, quiet, elderly man. Per- haps prematurely aged by care or campaigning or a wound, rather than old. He handed his papers to the General, and withdrew. "I guess I 've got the only orderly in the Con- tinental Army that can talk Latin," says Put, proud as if this possession made a Julius Caesar of himself. "Lincoln must have been a school- master before he 'listed." ! EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 103 "There 's no flavor of birch about him," Sker- rett rejoined. "Perhaps he stepped out of a pulpit to take the sword." "He don't handle the sword very kindly. He 's brave enough." "But not bloody,' interjected Peter. "No. There 's men enough that can squint along a barrel, and drop a redcoat, and sing out, 'Hooray! another bully gone!'- but not many, like my orderly, that can tell you why a redcoat has got to be a bully, and why we're doing our duty to God and man by a droppin' on 'ema I tell you, he in the ranks to keep up the men's sperits is wuth more than generals I could name with big appleettes on their backs." "Is that the reason why lie stays in the ranks, and does not ask for epaulettes?" "He might have had them long ago; but he's shy of standing up for himself. I guess he 's some time or other ben wownded in his mind, and all the impudence has run out at the wownd." "Liberty, preserve me from such phleboto- my!P" devoutly ejaculated Peter. '"But has the Sergeant been with you all this time?" "With my division. But I did not have him with me in Westchester. I stationed him here to look after the stores, and put recruits through the motions. Now, Major, I must look at these papers. Come to the Council of War to-morrow, page: 104-105[View Page 104-105] 104 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. and give us a good word. We shall want all we can get. The news gets worse and worse. This, very morning General Tryon--spiteful dog- has been marauding this side of Peekskill, and burning up a poor devil of a village at the lower edge of the Highlands." "Arson is shabby warfare," said Peter, taking leave. l II. IT was in the Skerrett blood to come out rld at a pinch. "Things do look a little dusky for the good cause," thought Skerrett, as, wearing his buff and blue coat,- far too dull a coat for so bright a fellow, -he stood drinking October next morn-, ing, as we have seen him, before Mrs. Birdsell's cottage. "The Liberty-tree is a little nipped," he con- tinued. "I suppose all the worm-eaten people will drop off now. Let 'em go! and be food for pigs! We sound chestnuts will stick to the boughs, and wear our burrs till Thanksgiving. "Fine figure that! quite poetic! Who would n't be a poet in such a poem of a morning? 0 Lucullus, you base old glutton, with your feasts and your emetics! see here, how I breathe and blow, breathe and blow, - that 's a dodge you were not up to! "Hooray! now I'm full of gold air and go- ahead spirits." He marched off, the gallant, buoyant young 5* page: 106-107[View Page 106-107] 106 EDWIN BROTHErTOFT. brave, No finer figure of a Rebel walked the Continental soil unhung. On his nut-brown face his blonde moustache lay lovingly curling. The Marquis de Chastellux, the chief, if not the only, authority on the Revolutionary mous- tache, does not specify Skerrett's in his "Trav- els in America." The distinction might have been invidious. But it was understood that, take- it "'by and large," color and curl, Sker- rett's was the Moustache (with a big M) of its era. Many brother officers shaved in despair when they beheld it. Hence, perhaps, the num- ber of shorn lips in the portraits of our heroes of that time. "Something is going to happen to-day," thought the Major. "I bubble. I shall boil over, and make a fool of myself before night. I am in that ridiculous mood when a man loves his neighbor as himself, believes in success, wants to tilt at windmills. O October! you have in- toxicated me! I challenge the world. 'Hold me, somebody, or I shall jump over the High- lands and take Sir Henry Clinton by the hair, then up to Saratoga and pick up Jack Bur- goyne, knock their pates together, and fling them over the Atlantic." A man's legs gallop when his blood and spirits are boiling after such a fashion. It did not take the Major any considerable portion of eternity EDWIN BROTglElUTOFT. ) 107 to measure off the furlongs of cultivated plain between Fishkill village and Putnam's head-quar- ters. In fact, he had need to despatch. He had slept late after his journey. The Council would be assembled, and already muddling their brains over the situation. The Van Wyck farm-house stood, and still stands, with its flank to the road and its front to the Highlands. "Not much clank and pomp and pageantry in this army of Israel Putnam," thought Sker- rett. "No tents! Men are barracked in barns, I suppose, or sleep under corn-stalks, with pump- kins for pillows. No sentinels! But probably every man keeps his eyes peeled and his ears pricked up for the tramp of British brogans or Hessian boots on the soil." There was, however, a sentry standing at the unhinged gate in the decimated paling of the farm-yard. He turned his back, and paced to the end of his beat, as Major Skerrett approached. ("Aha!" thought the latter, "Jierck Dewitt is as quick-sighted as ever. He wants to dodge me. Poor fellow! Bottle has got him again, I fear. Why can't man be satisfied-with atmos- phere, and cut alcohol?" Skerrett entered the gate, and hailed, "Jierck!" The sentinel turned and saluted. page: 108-109[View Page 108-109] 108 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. A clear case of Bottle! The Colony of Ja- maica was a more important ally to Great Britain in the Revolution than is generally known. Ah! if people would only take their rum latent in its molasses, and pour out their undistilled toddies on their buckwheat cakes! "Jierck," said the Major kindly, " you prom- ised me you would not touich it." "So I did," says the man, inflicting on him- self the capital punishment of hanging his head; "and I kep stiff as the Lord Chancellor, till I got back home to Peekskill below here. There I found my wife had gone wrong." The poor fellow choked. A bad wife is a black dose. "We grew up together, sir, on the Brothertoft Manor lands. She was a Bilsby, one of the old families,-as brisk and bright a gal as ever stepped. We were married, and travelled just right, she alongside of me, and I alongside of her, pullin' well and keepin' everything drawin'. Well, when I shouldered arms, Lady Brother- toft- that's the Patroon's widow - got my wife to go down to York and be her maid. It was lettin' down for Squire Dewitt's son's wife to eat in anybody's kitchen. But that's noth- ing. The harm is that Lady Brothertoft's house is unlucky. Women don't go into it and stay straight. There's too much red in the parlors, - EDWIN BROTHERLTOFT. 109 too many redcoats round. They say that's why the Patroon cleared out, and got himself killed, if he is killed. That's what spoilt my wife." Skerrett's supernatural spirits sank a little at this. There was an undeveloped true lover in the young man,--developed enough to show him what misery may come from such a wrong as Jierck's. ' That's why I took to rum," continued the man, dismally. "When my company was or- dered to join Old Put at Peekskill, and I saw all the old, places where my wife and I used to do our courtin', and saw my sister Kate smilin' at her sweetheart and makin' comforters for him, I couldn't stand it. They all told me to keep away from the woman. But I did n't quite be- lieve it, you know. So I went down to the Manor-House and saw her. She did n't dare to look me in the face. That had to be drownded somehow. I drownded it in rum. I can't get drunk like a beast,--that is n't into me, - but I haven't been sober one hour since until we came up here to Fishkill.' "Stop it now, Jierck, and try to forget." "What's the use?"- "The use is this. We were all proud of you, as a crack man. We cannot spare you. You know as well as I do what we are fighting for. The Cause cannot spare you. Stand to your page: 110-111[View Page 110-111] "O EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. guns now, like a man, against King George and Old Jamaica." The sentinel was manned by these hearty words and ltones. "I'll try," said he, " to please you, Major Skerrett." ' Up went his head and his courage. "That's right," says the Major; " and we'll have a fling at the enemy together before I go, and spike a gun for him." "I must take another sip of October, after that," thought Skerrett, as he walked on toward the farm-house. He halted on the steps, and inspected the scenie. October was quite as gorgeous to see, as it was glorious to tipple. It was in the Skerrett blood to love color. "Color! O blazes, what a conflagration of a landscape!" thought the Major; "O rainbows, what delicious blending! V. I. B. G. Y. O. R. Violet hills far away, indigo zenith, blue sky on the hill-tops-,-green pastures, ,yellow elms, chest- nuts, and ashes, orange pumpkins, red maples! Flames! Rainbows! Splendors! Take my blood, O my dear country! and cheap, too, for such a pageant!" There were two parts to the scene he was re- garding with this exhilaration,--a flat part and EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 11l an upright part. All around was a great scope of fertile plain, gerrymandered into farms. Half a mile away in front, the sudden mountains set up their backs to show their many-colored gaber- dines, crimson, purple, and gold at the bottom flounce, belted with different shades of the same in regular gradation above, and sprigged all over with pines and cedars, green as May. The morning sun winked at the Major over the summits, saying, as plain as a wink can speak, "Beat this, my Skerrett, in any clime, on any continent, if you can!" The Major, with both his eyes, blinked back ecstatically ' It can't be beat! O Sol! It can't be beat!" When he opened his dazzled eyes, and glanced again about him, he seemed to see thousands of little suns rollicking over the fields, and congeries of suns piling themselves like golden bombs here and there. They were not suns, but pumpkins, rollicking in the furrows, and every congeries was a heap of the same, putting their plump cheeks together and playing " sugar my neighbor." "We must keep war out of this," thought the Major. "Nerve my good right arm, O Liberty, to protect this pie-patch!" His earnest prayer was disturbed by the sound of voices close at hand. Immediately Sergeant Lincoln appeared at the A page: 112-113[View Page 112-113] "2 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. corner of the house. A wondrously, wiggy negro accompanied him. "Make way for-the Lord Chancellor!" says Skerrett to himself, as this gray-headed, dusky dignitary loomed up. "If I am ever elected Judge, I shall take that old fellow's scalp for a wig. And his manners, too! / He seems to be laying down the law to the Sergeant, so flat that it will never stir again. Mysterious fellow, this orderly who quotes Latin! I'd like to solve him, and offer him sympathy, if he has had the ' wownd' old Put talks of. I owe him a cure for saving me from a kill." The two passed by, in eager conversation. Skerrett turned, and entered the farm-house, where the officers of Putnam's army were sigh- ing over blunders past, and elaborating schemes for the future. Peter's seedy coat was freshness and elegance compared to the scarecrow uniforms it now encountered. Our Revolutionary officers were braves at heart, but mostly Guys, in costume. ; \ "I. "Ah mon camarade! ma belle Moustache! My Petare!" cried Colonel La Radiere, as Sker- rett entered. "Soyez le bienvenu!" The ardent Parisian officer of engineers rushed forward, and embraced his young friend with ef- fusion. "Glad to see you, Peter!" says Captain Liv- ingston, a dry fellow, son of the Patroon. "Now, Radiere, there's a second man who talks French, to fire back your sacrebleus. Moi et Anthony's Nose sommes fatigugs d vous faire echo." "Come, boys," says old Put, "talk Continen- tal!" The other officers -in turn made Skerrett welcome, and the business of brewing blunders went on. Does any one want a historic account of that Council of War, and what it did not do? The want is easily supplied. Rap for the spirit of Colonel Humphreys, then late of Derby, Con- necticut, late of Yale College, late tutor at Phil- lipse-Manor. He was Putnam's aide, and wrote E page: 114-115[View Page 114-115] "4 EDWIN BROT'HERTOFT. his biography. He was an inexorable poetaster. He was afterwards pompous gold-stick to Mr. \ President Washington. He went as Plenipo to Madrid, returned, became a model of deportment, and was known to his countrymen as the Ambas- sador from Derby. (Raps are heard. Enter the Ghost of Hum- phreys. "Now then, Ghost, talk short and sharp, not, as you used to,--to borrow two favorite words of yours,- sesquipedalian and stentorop onic! Tell us what was done at that council, and be spry about it!" "Young Sir, I shall report your impertinence to George Washington and Christopher Columbqs in Elysium. Christopher will say, ' Founder tie continent!' George will say, 'Perish the cou- try!' if its youth have drawn in and absorbed their bump of reverence." "O, belay that, old boy! Tell us what you did at the Council!" "Nothing, your nineteenth-centuryship!" re- sponds Ghost, quelled and humble. "We pon- dered, and propounded, and finally concluded to do nothing, and let the enemy make the next move." "Which he proceeded to do by sending up General Vaughan to burn Kingston. That's enough! Avaunt, Ghost!" ; A \ EDWIN BROT'lERTOFT. 115 Exit Humphreys to tell Chris and George that America is going to the dogs.) "Well," said Putnam at last, " we've discussed and discussed, and I don't see that there's any way of getting a crack at the enemy, unless one of you boys wants to swim down the river, with a torch in his teeth, and set one of those frigates below the Highlands on fire. Who speaks?" "Cold weather for swimming!" says Living- ston. "W Well, boys, you must contrive something to keep our spirits up," Putnam resumed. "When I was up to Fort Ti in '58, and fighting was dull, we used to go out alone and bushwhack for a private particular Indian." "Perhaps I can offer a suggestiorn," said Major Scrammel, Putnam's other aide, re-entering the room after a brief absence. Scrammel was a handsomish man with a bad- dish face. A man with his cut of jib and shape of beak hardly ever weathers the lee shore of perdition. For want of a moustache to twirl, he had a trick of pulling his nose. Perhaps he was training that feature for tweaks to come. "Blaze away, Scrammel!" said his General; "you always have some ambush or other in your head." "Lady Brothertoft's nigger, the butler, is up here with the latest news from below. I have just been out to speak to him." page: 116-117[View Page 116-117] "6 ' EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "What, Scrammel!" says Livingston, sotto voce. "A billet-doux from the fair Lucy?" "La plus belle personne en Amerique!"Ra- diere slghs. "You don't except the mother?"Living- ston inquired; "that mature, magnificent Ama- zon!" \ "No," replied the Frenchman, laboriously building, brick by brick, a Gallo-American sen- tence. "The mother of the daughtare is too much in the Ladie Ma quebeth. I figure to my- self a poniard, enormous sharpe, in her fine ouhite hand, and at my heart. I seem to see her poot ze-pardon! the poison in the basin -- the bowl--the gobbelit. I say, 'Radidre, care thyself! It is a dame who knows to stab.' Mais, Mees Lucie! Ah, c'est autre chose!" "Come, Scrammel!" Putnam said, impa- tiently; "we are waiting for your news." "The nigger stole away on some business of his own, which he -is mysterious about; but he tells me that his mistress consoled herself at once for our retirement from Peekskill after we lost the forts. She had some of her friends from the British ships and Clinton's army at her \ house as soon as we were gone." "I believe she is as dangerous a Tory as lives in all Westchester," said the General. "She ought to be put in security." \ EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "T "What! after all those dinners of hers we have eaten, General?" says Livingston. "I wish the dinners were out of me, and had never been in me," Old Put rejoined, sheepishy. "I 'm afraid we used to talk too much after her Madeira." The Council was evidently of that opinion, as a look whisking about the circle testified. A very significant look, with a great basis of facts behind it. Suppose we dig into the brain of one of these officers,--say that keen Living- ston's,-and unearth a few facts about Mrs. Brothertoft, as she is at the beginning of Part II. of this history. Now, then, off with Livingston's scalp, and the top of his skull! and here we go rummaging among the convolutions of his brain for impres- sions branded, "BROTHERTOFT, MRS." We strike a lead. We find a pocket. HoW compact this brain stows its thoughts! It must, for it has the millions on millions of a lifetime to contain. We have read of a thousand leagues of lace packed into a nut-shell. We have seen the Dec- laration of Independence photographed within the periphery of a picayune. Here 's closer stowage,-- a packet of' thoughts of actual mate- rial dimensions, but so infinitesimal that we shall have to bring a microscope to bear before we can apply the micrometer. Come, Sirius, near- page: 118-119[View Page 118-119] "8 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. est neighbor among the suns of eternity, pour i thy beams through our lens and magnify this i record! Thanks, Sirius! Quite plain now! AI That little black point has taken length -and breadth, and here 's the whole damnation in I large pica, -Heaven save us from the like! Livingston Junior on Mrs. Brothertoft. Ab- stract of Record: I "By scalps and tomahawks, what a splendid l virago! She must be, this summer of 1777, -I some thirty-five or thirty-six, and in her primest prime. Heart's as black as her hair, some say. Crushed her husband's spirit, and he took him- self off to kingdom come. Ambitious? I should think so. Tory, and peaches to the enemy? Of course. She, uses her womanhood as a blind, and her beauty as a snare. Very well for her to say, 'My business is to protect my property, and establish my daughter. Women don't under- stand politics, and hate bloodshed.' Bah! she understands her kind of politics, like a Catherine I de' Medici. Bloodshed! She could stab a man and see him writhe. But she gives capital din- I ners,-more like England than any others in America. Poor old Put, honest, frank', simple- hearted fellow! look at him on the sofa there with her, and a pint too much of her Madeira under his belt! She knows just how near to let his blue sleeve and buff cuff come to that shoul- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 119 der of hers. He 'll tell all his plans to her, she 'll whisper 'em to a little bird, and pounce! one of these fine days the redcoats will be upon us. Upon us and on her sofa! Yes, and a good many inches nearer than Old Put is allowed to sit. For they do whisper scandal about Mad- am. When she dropped Julia Peartree Smith, the old tabby talked as old cats always talk about their ex-friends. Scandal! Yes, by the acre; but it's splendid to see how she walks right over it. And several of us fine fellows will not hear or speak scandal of a house where that lovely Lucy lives,-the sweet, pure, innocent angel. They say the mother means to trade her off to a redcoat as soon as she can find one to suit. Mamma wants a son-in-law who will give her, scandal and all, a footing among stars and gar- ters in England, when she has seen her. estates safe through the war. It's too bad. I 'd go down and kidnap that guileless, -trustful victim myself, if I was n't so desperately lazy. There's Scrammel too, -he would play one of his mean- est tricks to get her. Scrammel was almost the onlly one of us boys in buff and blue that was not taboo from Miss' Lucy's side. Mamma was not over cordial to-our color unless it was but- toned over breasts that held secrets. Her black eyes very likely saw scoundrel in Scrammel's face, and used him. Poor Lucy! It looks dark , page: 120-121[View Page 120-121] 120 EDWIN BROTHlEETOFT. for her. And yet her love will never let her see what her mother is." Enough, Livingston.! Thanks for this bit of character! Here's your dot of a record, labelled "Brothertoft, Mrs."! Now trepan your self with your own skull, clap your scalp back again on your sinciput, and listen to what Scrammel is saying! "The old nigger tells me," he was saying, "that Sir Henry Clinton and his Adjutant spent the night after Forts Clinton and Montgomery were taken quietly at Brothertoft Manor-House." "Well," said the General, " then they had a better night than we had, running away through the Highlands. We can't protect our friends. If the enemy have only made themselves wel- come at the Manor-House, instead of burning it for its hospitality to us, Madam is lucky." "'She seems to have made her new guests welcome. The nigger thinks she knew they were coming." "By George!--by Congress! I mean," says Put, wincing, " if I ever get back to Peekskill- " "She seems to think, according to her butler's story, that you are never to come back," Scram- mel struck in. "If that is all the news you have to tell, by way of keeping our spirits up, you might as well have been silent, sir!" growls Putnam. EDWIN BROT'HERTOFT. 121. "It 's not all," Scrammel resumed. "The niggei thinks they are getting up some new expedition. But whether they do or not, the adjutant don't go. He is to stay some days at the Manor." "Lord Rawdon, is n't it?"Put asked. "Well, he is a gentleman and a fine fellow, -not one of those arrogant, insolent dogs that rile us so." "Not Rawdon. He was to be. But Major Kerr got the appointment by family influence." "Kurr! c'est chien, n'est ce pas?" whispered Radiere to Livingston. "Yes," returned the Captain; " and this Kerr is a sad dog. He bit Scrammel once badly at cards in New York, before the war. Scrammel don't forgive. He hates Kerr, and means to bite back. Hear him snarl now!" "The Honorable Major Kerr," Scrammel con- tinued, "third son of the Earl of Bendigh, Ad- jutant-General to Clinton's forces, a fellow who hates us and abuses us and maltreats our prison- ers, but an officer of importance, is staying and to stay several days, the only guest, at Brother. toft Manor-House. Let me see; it can't be more than twenty miles away." He marked his words, and glanced about the circle. His eyes rested upon Livingston last. "Oho,!" says that gentleman. "I begin to comprehend. You mean to use the Brother- 6 page: 122-123[View Page 122-123] 122 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. toft majordomo as Colonel Barton did his man Prince at Newport. Woolly-head's skull is to butt through Kerr's bedroom door, at dead of night. Then, enter Scrammel, puts a pistol to his captive's temple and marches him off to Fish- kill. Bravo! Belle ided, n'est ce pas, mon Colonel?" "Magnifique!" rejoined Radire. "I felicit thee of it, my Scaramelle." "Now, boys!!" says Put, "this begins to sound like business. We need some important fellow, like Kerr, taken prisoner and brought here, to keep our spirits up. The thing 's easy enough and safe enough. If I was twenty years younger, general or no general, I'd make a dash to cut him out. Who volunteers to captured the Adjutant?" "I remember myself," said Radidre, gravely, "of a billet, very short, very sharp, which our Chief wrote to Sir Clinton, lately.. It was ,of one Edmund Palmer, taken- so this billet said- as one espy, condemned as one espy, and hang- ged as espy. Sir Clinton waits to answer that ' little billet. But I do not wish to read in his i response the name of one of my young friends, taken as espy and hang-ged." 3 "Why does not Scrammel execute Scrammel's plan?" asked Livingston. : 'I cannot be spared," the aide-de-camp re- A sponded. i EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 123 "O yes! never mind me!" cried the General. "Skerrett, here, can fill your place. Or Hum- phreys can stop writing doggerel and do double duty." ', Scrammel evidently was not eager to leave a vacancy, or to gag his brother aide-de-camp's muse. "Why don't you volunteer yourself, Living- ston?" he said. "You know the country and the house, and seemed to be well up in the method of Prescott's capture at Newport." "I have not my reputation to make," said the other, haughtily. Indeed, his reckless pluck was well known. '"But I'm desperately lazy," which was equally a notorious fact. No other spoke, and presently all eyes were making focus upon that blonde Moustache, which the Marquis de Chastellux does not, and these pages do, endow with a big M, and make his- toric. It was only the other day that the wearer of ;hat decoration had become the hero of a famous )allad, beginning,- "'T was night, rain poured; when British blades, In number twelve or more, As they sat tippling apple-jack, Heard some one at the door. "' Arise,' he cried, -'t was Skerrett spoke, - 'And trudge, or will or nill, Twelve miles to General Washington, At Pennibecker's Mill." page: 124-125[View Page 124-125] 124 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Then the ballad went on to state, in stanzas many and melodious, how it happened that the "blades" of his Majesty's great knife, the Army, were sheathed i; a carouse, at an outpost near Philadelphia, without sentries. Apple-jack, too, -why they con descended to apple-jack,--that required explanation: "And apple-jack, that tip- ple base, Why did these heroes drain? O, where were nobler taps that night, - Port, sherry, and champagne?"Then the forced march of the un- lucky captives was depicted: "It rained. The red coats on their backs Their skins did purple, blue; The powder on their heads grew paste; Each toe its boot wore through." The poem closed with Washington's verdict on the exploit: "Skerre t, my lad, thou art a Trump, The ace of all the p ck; Come into Pennibecker's Mill, And share my apple-jack!" Hero once, hero always! When a man has fairly compromised himself to heroism, there is no let-up for him. The world looks to him at once, when it wants its " deus ex machina." In the present quandary, all eyes turned to Peter Skerrett, Captor of Captives and Washing- ton's Ace of Trumps. "General," said he, "I seem to be the only unattached officer present. Nothing can be done now about my mission. I do not love to be idle. Allow me to volunteer in this service, if you think it important." . w EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 125 Old Put began to look grave. "You risk your life. If they catch you in their lines, it is hang- ing business." "I knew this morning," thought the Major, "that I should make a fool of myself before night. I have!" "No danger, General!" he said aloud. "I've got the knack of this work. I like it better than the decapitation part of my trade." "Ah, Skerrett!" Livingston says, " that bal- lad will be the death of you. You will be adding Fitte after Fitte, until you get yourself discom- fitted at last. Pun!" Mark this! It was the Continental Pun at its point of development reached one year after the Declaration of Independence. O let us be joy- ful! Let us cry aloud with joy at our progress since. Puns like the above are now deemed senile, and tolerated only in the weekly news- papers. No doggerel had been written about Scram- nel. No lyric named him hero. Your friend seems to have a taste for the office of kidnapper," ie caitiffly sneered to Livingston, under cover of "s own hand, which tweaked the Scrammel nose ts he spoke. "He has a taste for doing what no one else tares," rejoined the other. "Your nose is safe rom him, even if he overhears you. I say, page: 126-127[View Page 126-127] 126 EDWIN BROTLHETOFT. Skerrett, I don't feel so lazy as I did. 'Fake me with you. I know this country by leagues and by inches." "No, Harry; General Putnam cannot spare his Punster. One officer is enough. I shall take Jierck Dewitt for my aide-de-camp. He knows the Brothertoft-Manor country." "Empty Jierck of rum, cork him and green- seal him, mouth and nose, and there cannot be a better man." "Since you will go, you must," says Put. "By the way, if you want a stanch, steady man, take Sergeant Lincoln. He somehow knows this courtry as if he had crept over it from the cradle. Where is that negro of Lady Brother- toft's, Scrammel?" "I left him talking to Lincoln. Major Sker- rett will easily find him." "He was my wiggy friend," thought Skerrett. "Don't fail to bag Kerr," says Livingston. ' He wants a Yankee education, --so does all England." "Yes," says Radire, "'we must have these Kurr at school. We must teach to them civility through our noses of rebels. We must flogge them with roddes from the LibertY-Tree. They shall partake our pork and bean. Yankee Doodle shall play itself to them on our two X whistles and a tambour. Go, my Skerrett! EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 127 Liberty despatch thee! Be the good, lucky boy!" All the officers gave him Good speed! and Humphreys, Poetaster-General, began to bang the two lobes of his brain together, like a pair of cymbals, to strike out rhymes in advance for a paean on the conquering hero's return. "You won't stay to dinner," cries Put. "There 's corned beef and apple-sauce, and a York State buckskin pumpkin-pie,-I wish it was a Connecticut one!" "Yes," says Livingston, " and I watched the cook this morning coursing that dumb rooster of yours, General, until he breathed his last." "Ah, my Skerrett!" sighed Radiere. "Will posterity appreciate our sacrifices? Will they re- member themselves--these oblivious posterity -of the Frenchmen who. abandoned the cui- sines of Paris to feed upon the swine and the bean d discretion, to swallow the mush sans melasse, to drink the Appel Jacque? Will they build the marble mausoleum, inscribed, ' CI- GIT LA RADIERE, COLONEL. HE WAS A GOOD HEART AND A BAD STOMACH, AND HE SHED HS i DIGESTION FOR LIBERTY?"' Skerrett laughed. "I will mention it to pos- terity, Colonel," he said,--and this page re- deems his promise. l Then, lest weeds might sprout under his feet, page: 128-129[View Page 128-129] 128 EDWIN BROTH1'ETOFT. the Major turned his back upon dinner,-that moment announced,-- and launched himself upon the current of his new adventure. "Down!" he soliloquized; " down, my long- ings for buckskin pie, and for rooster dead of congestion of the lungs from over coursing! Tempt me not, ye banquets of Sybaris, until my train is laid and waiting for the fusee." IV. MAJOR SKERRETT paused on the farm-house steps. "Jierck Dewitt, I want," he thought. "And there he is on guard, looking every inch a soldier again. My good word has quite set him up. Mem.--A word of cheer costs little, and may help much. Now for Sergeant Lincoln and the negro!" Just at the edge of the bank, in' front- of- the farm-house, Skerrett perceived the Sergeant sitting. His head was resting on his hands. The physi- ognomy of his back revealed despondency. An old well-sweep bent over him, and seemed to long to comfort him with a douse of balm from its bucket. The landscape glowed, as before. The jolly pumpkins grinned, as before. The Major's spirits were still at bubble and boil. "Every prospect was pleasing, and only man'?* that is dnly' Sergeant--seemed woe-begone. "He is feeling his wound, - the 'wownd 'Put 6* I page: 130-131[View Page 130-131] 130 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. talked of,--I fear," thought Skerrett. "I must cheer him. Unhappy people are not allowed in the Skerrett precinct." "Why, Orderly! ' says the Major, approach- ing, and laying his hand on the other's shoulder; "you must not be down-hearted, man! What has happened? What can I do for you?" The Sergeant raised his head, and shook it despairingly. X "Thank you," said he. "I Nothing! It is too late!" "Too late! That is a point of time my time- piece. has not learnt how to mark." Indeed, the Skerrett movement was too elastic in springs, and too regular with its balance-wheel, to strike any hour but "Just in time!" The Sergeant thanked him, with a smile and manner of singular grace, and repeated, sorrow- fully, "It is-too late." "Too late is suicide," says Peter. "We will not cut our throats till after Indian summer. Presently you shall tell me what is and is not too late. First, I have a question or two to ask. The General tells me you know this coun- try thoroughly." "I do by heart,--by sad heart." "I have undertaken to cut in, and cut out, where the enemy is, twenty miles below on the river." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 131 The Orderly at once seemed greatly interested. "Twenty miles below? No one can know that region better than I." "Was it there his heart was wounded?" thought the Major. "Ah, then! you 're just my man," Skerrett continued, ignoring the other's depression. "I have volunteered on a wild-goose chase. Imay need to know; every fox-track through all the Highlands to get away safe with my goose, if I catch him." Major Skerrett, surprised at a sudden air of eager attention and almost excitement in the older man, paused a moment. "Go on!" said the other authoritatively, with a voice and manner more of Commahnder-in- Chief than Sergeant. Skerrett felt, as he had done before, the pecu- liar magnetism of this mysterious Orderly, who quoted Latin and bowed like a courtier. "I have taken upon myself," said he, " to cut out a British officer of distinction, now staying at a country house twenty miles below. I may want you of my party. General Putnam rec- ommends you." The Orderly sprang up and grasped Major Skerrett's arm with both his hands. "Who is the man? Name! Name!" he gasped. page: 132-133[View Page 132-133] 132 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Major Kerr," replied Skerrett, coolly. "Wait! wait a moment!" cried the other, in wild excitement. He rushed to the edge of the bank, where a path plunged off, leading to the Highland road, and was lost among the glowing recesses of a wood skirting the base of the heights. He halted there, and screamed, in a frantic voice, "Voltaire! Voltaire!" And neither the original destructive thinker thus entitled, nor any American namesake of his answering the call, tiie Orderly raced down the slope, with hat gone and gray cue bobbing against his coat-collar. He disappearedain the grove, and the Major could hear his feet upon the dry leaves, and his voice still crying loudly, "Voltaire! Voltaire!" "Has the old man gone mad?" thought Sker- rett. "Voltaire the Great is getting too ancient to travel. It is hardly fair to disturb him. He is a soldier emeritus' of our Good Cause. He waked France up. We have. to thank him largely that France has an appetite for free- dom, and sends her sons over to help us fight for it. But he cannot hear this hullaballoo at Ferney; Lafayette, R diere, and the others, rep- resent their master, with such heart and -stom- ach as they can. "I must not lose sight of my runaway," con- co n- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 133 tinued he to himself. "The name of Kerr struck him like a shot. He may have a grudge there. Some private vendetta in the case. And yet this mild old man always seemed to me to have en- tirely merged his personality in patriotism. I fancied that he had forgotten all his likes, dis- likes, loves, and -hates, and given up all ties ex- cept his allegiance to an idea." Major Skerrett walked rapidly to the edge of the bank, where Sergeant Lincoln had first given tongue for an absent philosopher. As he was about to follow the path, he heard steps again in the wood. In a moment the Or- derly reappeared, and ran up the slope, panting. He was followed by a person who moved slower, and blew harder, the same old wiggy negro whom Major Skerrett had observed laying down the law to his companion. "So that is Voltaire!" thought the Major. "Well, it is the first time -I have ever found the devil blacker than he is painted." The Orderly sank, agitated and out of breath, on the ground. Voltaire came up the hill, and, being hatless, pulled hard at his gray wig, by way of salute. The wig was rooted to the scalp. Voltaire left it in sitt, and bowed as grandly as a black dignitary may when he is blown by a good run. page: 134-135[View Page 134-135] 134 EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. "I was in despair just now," said Sergeant Lincoln. "In despair when I said it was too late to help me. Perhaps it is not so. I trust God sends you, Major Skerrett, to show us the way out of our troubles." "This is sound Gospel," thought Skerrett. "This black Voltaire may be the Evangelist; but the Gospel is unimpeachable." "Come, Sergeant," continued he aloud, " tell me what all this means, my friend. We must despatch. My bird down the river may take wing, if I waste time." "I am pained, my dear young friend," said the senior, rising, "to acknowledge to you an unwilling deceit of mine. But I must do so. You have known me always under a false name. i I am not Lincoln, but Brothertoft,-Edwin Brothertoft." , "My father's friend!" said Skerrett, taking the other's hand. "Mr. Brothertoft, so missed, i so desired by the Good Cause. Why " Here Major Skerrett interrupted himself, and went to rummaging in his brain for the discon- nected strips of record stamped, "Brothertofts, The family." The strips pasted themselves to- gether, and he ran his mind's eye rapidly along, as one might read a mile or so of telegram in cipher. As he read with one eye introverted and gal- EDWIN BROTRERTOFT. 135 loping over the record, while it whirled by like a belt on a drum making a million revolutions in a breath, he kept the other eye fixed upon Mr. Brothertoft, alias Lincoln, before him.- This sad, worn, patient, gentle face supplied a vivid flash of interpretation. It shed light upon all the dusky places in Major Skerrett's knowl- edge of the family. The eye looking outward helped the eye looking inward. Instantly, by this new method of utilizing strabismus, he saw what he remembered faintly become distinct. He could now understand why this quiet gentleman had dropped his tools,-forceful mallet and keen chisel,-- and let the syllables of his unfinished mark on the world wear out. "I have heard and read of these blighting hurts," thought Peter, "and I trifled with their existence, and was merry as before,- God forgive me! Now I touch the wounded man, and it chills me. I lose heart and-hope. But strangely, too, this man who first teaches me to feel the pain, teaches me also that the sufferer needs my love. Seems to me I am more in earnest than I was two minutes ago. I feel older and gentler. I wish I was his son!" "Why?" said Edwin Brothertoft, answering slowly and sadly, while the other's brain read records and forged thoughts at this furious speed. "Would you ask me why my life is what it is, page: 136-137[View Page 136-137] 136 EDWIN BROTIMRTOFT. and not what men would say it might have been? Ah, my friend, the story is long and dreary,-too dreary to darken the heart of youth." Sadly as he spoke, there was no complaint in his tone. He seemed to regard his facts a little i dreamily, as if he were mentioning some other ; man's experience. "But the past is dead," he continued, and here are present troubles alive and upon me." "Troubles alive!" says the Major, feeling brave, buoyant Peter Skerrett still stirring under L the buff and blue. -"Those I can help floor, perhaps. Name them!" \ He looked so victorious, and the Moustache, ; albeit unknown to the pages of De Chastellux, i so underscored his meaning nose, and so drew the cartouche of a hero about his firm mouth, that Brothertoft thrilled with admiration through l his sadness. '1 Everybody has seen the phantasmagoric shop- sign. "VINEGAR," you read upon it, as you ap- proach down the street. You don't want Vinegar, :: and you gaze reproachfully at the sign. But what is this? As you advance, a blur crosses your eyes. 'T was Vinegar surely! 'T is SUGAR now. And that you do want; and proceed to purchase a barrel of crushed, a keg of powdered, and a box of loaves wearing foolscaps of Tyrian purple on their conical bald pates. EDWIN BROT'HElTOFT. 137 Edwin Brothertoft had seen only DESPAIR written up before him. He advanced a step, at Skerrett's words, lifted up his eyes, and Despair shifted to HOPE. "When you named Major Kerr," he said, "you named one who is devising evil to me and mine. Capture him and the harm is stayed. My faithful old friend Voltaire and I will try to tell you the story between us." Voltaire considered this his introduction, and bowed pompously. "You are too juicy, Voltaire, and too shiny, and not sardonic enough, to bear the name of the weazened Headpiece of France," the Major said. "When I made my pilgrimage to Ferney, I found that Atropos of Bigotry in a night-cap and dress- ing-gown, looking as wrinkled, leathery, and Great as one of Michael Angelo's Sibyls. I hope you are as true to Freedom as he was, and a more wholesome man." Skerrett made this talk to give the old fellow time to blow, as well as to stir up a smile to the surface of Brothertoft's sad face. "Yes sir," said the negro, bowing again. "Voltaire, sir, omnorum gotherum of Brother- toft Manor-House. Hannibal was my name; but I heard Mr. Ben Franklin say that Mr. Vol- taire was the greatest man he knowed, so I mar- ried to that name, and tuk it." page: 138-139[View Page 138-139] 138 EDWIN BROT HERTOFT. Here he paused and grinned. His white teeth gleamed athwart his face, as the white stocking flashes through, when one slits a varnished boot, too tight across the instep. "I have been here at Fishkill some months," said Brothertoft. "At first I did not allow my- self to think of my family. Then neighborhood had its effect. I communicated my whereabouts to this trusty friend. He got my message, and comes to give me the first news I have had since I left home at the news of Lexington." "More than two years ago,"' Skerrett said. i "And in those two years," continued the other, "my daughter has passed from child to woman." "Oho!" thought Peter. "His daughter- Radidre's la plus belle--is in this business. My years in Europe had made me almost for- get there was such a person. Is she like father, or mother, I wonder?" "From child to woman, sir," says Voltaire, "and there 's not such another young lady in the Province,-State, I mean." Bravo, Voltaire! You refuse to talk " nig- ger." You still remember that Tombighee is a dialect taboo to you. Continue to recollect that on these pages you are a type of a race on whose qualities the world is asking information. Chris- ty's Minstrels dance out their type negro, Jim EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. 139 Crow, an impossible buffoon. La Beecher Stowe presents hers, Uncle Tom, an exceptional saint. Mr. Frederick Douglass introduces himself with a courtier's bow and an orator's tongue. The ghost of John C. Calhoun rushes forward, and points to a stuffed Gorilla. Then souviens toi Voltaire of thy representative position, and don't lapse into lingo! "When I abandoned home," Brothertoft re- sumed, "I believed that I could be of no further use to a daughter who had disowned me.- But I have found that a man cannot cease to love his own flesh and blood." "Nor his flesh and blood him," says the ne- gro. "Other people may do the hating. Miss Lucy only knows how to love." Fort bien Voltaire! except the pronunciation "Iub." "It was only a day or two before the capture of the forts that my tardy message of good-will reached my friend here," said the ex-Patroon. "And just in time," that friend rejoined. "I hope so," sighed Putnam's Orderly. "Yes sir," the negro said, turning to Skerrett. "It was now or never. So I left my great din- ner-party. Sir Henry Clinton and his suite were to dine with us to-day!" "Grand company!" the Major said, seeing that a tribute of respect was wanted. page: 140-141[View Page 140-141] "O EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. t Sirr Henery Clinton!" repeated the butler with pride. "I did n't like to leave. My wife Sappho can cook prime. My boy Plato can pass a plate prime. But where 's the style to come from when I'm away? Who's to give the sig- nals? 'Ground dishes! Handle covers! Draw J covers! Forrud march with covers to the pan- a try!' Who 's to pull the corks and pour the Madeira so it won't blob itself dreggy?" He paused and sighed. , Edwin Brothertoft was silent. The thouglt i of Red dinner-parties at the Manor was evi- j dently not agreeable to him. 1 "We are not getting on at a gallop," thought . Skerrett. "But we are on the trail. My guides must take their, own time. They know the way i and the dangers, and I do not. The facts will i all come out within five minutes," "Well, Voltaire," he said, "a bad appetite to 'em all! Go on with your story. You make me hungry with your dinner-parties." "Ha, ha!" chuckled the butler,-his vision of himself as Ganymede, serving Sir\ Clinton Tonans with hypernectareous tipple, vanishing. '"Ha, ha!" and with his triumph he lapsed for a moment into Tombighee: "Dey tinks, down ter de Manor, dat I 'se lyin' sick abed wid de colored mobbus." And then the old fellow proceeded to relate EDWIN BROTHE'BKTOFT. 141 how he had shammed sick yesterday, dodged away at evening, and tramped all night by by- paths through the Highlands; how British scouts had challenged his steps and fired at his rustle; how stumbling-blocks had affronted his shins, and many a stub had met his toes; and how at last, after manifold perils, he had found his old master under the guise of an Orderly, and announced to him a new wrong in the house of Brothertoft, a new wrong, the climax of an old tyranny.- No wonder Mr. Brothertoft had been despond- ent so that even his back showed it,- so de- spondent, that the well-sweep longed to douse him with a bucket of balm. No wonder that he sadly said, "Too late!" and could see no better hour than that, marked by the Skerrett timepiece. Now then for this new wrong! It shall be told condensed, so that indignation can have it, a tough nut to crack with its teeth. page: 142-143[View Page 142-143] a . "N short," says Voltaire, winding up his ,story, "Madame Brothertoft is going to marry off Miss Lucy to Major Kerr, day after to-morrow evening." "To marry off! Then it is nilly the lady!" Skerrett said. "Nilly, sir! Yes, the nilliest kind!" There, Sir Peter, is a tough nut for your In- dignation to bite on! Peter was an undeveloped True Lover. The "vital spark of heavenly flame" was in him; but it lay latent under his uniform, as fire lurks in a quartz pebble, until the destined little boy strikes another quartz pebble against it. Now there is a little boy of Destiny whose trade it is to go about knocking hearts together and striking Love, that pretty pink flash, that rosy flash, which makes cheeks blush sweeter and eyes gleam brighter than they knew how to blush and, gleam before, - that potent flash which takes hold of proper hearts and carbo- EDWIN BROTlHETOFT. 143 nizes them into diamonds of gleam unquench- able, with myriad facets and a smile on every one,-that keen flash which commands bad hearts to burn away into ugly little heaps of gray ashes. There is such an urchin, and Cupid, alias Eros, is his name. He had tapped Peter Skerrett's heart several times with hearts labelled, "Anna's heart," "Belinda's heart," "Clara's heart," "Delia's heart," and so /on down the alphabet. No perceptible love had answered these taps. Perhaps the urchin made the female heart impinge upon the male, instead of clash- ing them together in mutual impact.- Or per- haps he did not do his tapping in a dark place, --for shadow is needful to show light,-love wants sorrow for a background. However this might be, Peter Skerrett was still an undeveloped true lover. He had made no mistakes in love, he had had no disappointments. His illusions were not gone. He still believed love was the one condition of marriage. Mar- riage without it this innocent youth deemed an outrage. The latent love in his heart cried, "Shame!" when he heard Voltaire's story. Indignant blood rushed to his cheeks, to his eyes indignant fire, and, curl indignant to his moustache. He dis- charged a drop of ire by skimming a flat stone at a chattering chipmunk, enthroned on a pump- * * ' ' l page: 144-145[View Page 144-145] "4 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. kin hard by. Then he began to put in trenchant queries. "You are sure, Mr. Brothertoft, that your daughter does not love Kerr." "Sure. I have her word for it." "( Does he love her?" "He wants her." "Why?" "She is a beauty and an heiress,- those are the patent charms." "Ah! But-does she know that Kerr is a fan- faron and a rake,--selfish, certainly, probably base, and very likely cruel?" "She knows only what her mother tells her. Friends are taboo in that house." "But does she divine nothing? Nothing to base a refusal on? Pardon me if my tone seems to express a doubt of this young lady, but-" "But you have seen so many captivated by rank and a red coat. My friend, I have done her greater injustice than any you can imagine. I believed my own 'child spoiled by bad influences. We could not understand each other. An evil- omened figure held a black curtain between us. I was too sick at heart to see the truth. I had lost my faith. I thought that my daughter had taken in poison with her mother's milk. I fancied that she was a willing pupil when her mother taught her to hate and despise me. I t EDWIN BROTtHERTOFT. 145 abandoned her. Miserable error, --miserable! And punished now! punished most cruelly! My spleen, my haste, my intemperate despair, are bitterly punished by my daughter's danger. How fatally I misjudged her in my sore-wounded heart! I know her better at last. Better now, when I fear it is too late to save her. I know her at last through this faithful servant and friend. He stood by her when I forsook her. God forgive me! God forgive me!" He poured out this confession with passion growing as he spoke. Then he turned and grasped Major Skerrett by the shoulder. "What is to be done?" he cried. "Much!" said Skerrett, quietly, command- ing his' own eagerness roused by the Other's agony. "Remember that this wedding is not to be before day after to-morrow. I have vol- unteered to present the intended bridegroom to General Putnam here, by that time. Do you sup- pose I intend to break my engagement, whether it' forbids his banns or not?" He assumed more confidence than he felt. The enterprise was growing complicated. While there was merely question of taking or not tak- ing a prisoner, Skerrett could look at the matter coolly. e Success was only another laurel in his corona triumphalis! Failure was but a bay the less. If he bagged his man, another canto of 7 j page: 146-147[View Page 146-147] "6 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. doggerel. No bag, no poem. The attempt even would keep Put and his paladins amused until their general decadence of tail was corrected, and their bosoms swelled with valor again, and that was enough. But here was a new character behind the scenes. The hero's pulse began to gallop and his heart to prance. A woman's happiness at stake! iAh!" reflected the Major, ' I was cool enough so long as I thought I was merely enter- taining a circle of downcast braves, bushwhack- ing to steal an exchangeable Adjutant, and giv- ing the enemy an unexpected dig in the ribs. But the new portion of the adventure makes me shaky. If I fail, I lose my laurel, all the same, and a lady has to be bonneted with a wreath bf orange-flowers against her will. If I don't bag, Beauty goes to the Kerrs; I miss my canto and the poem of her life becomes a dirge. I must not think of it, or I shall lose my spirits." ," Prying into a maiden's heart is new business to me," he resumed to the father, who stood watching him anxiously. "I cannot quite com- prehend this matter. She does not love this man. Her dislike has brought about a reconcili- ation between you. Where is her No? I have heard that women carry such a weapon,--bran-. dish it, too, and strike on much less provocation than she has." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 147 "She is not a free agent," replied Brothertoft. "Her mother dominates her. She forced her to disown me. She will force her to this marriage. Lucy has been quelled all her life. I hope and believe that if she were released, or even support- ed for one moment in rebellion, her character might find it had vigor. But she is still wil- low in her mother's hands. If the mother, for whatever reasons, has made up her mind to this marriage, she will crowd her daughter into it." "Wha-t reasons are sufficient for such tyran- ny?" "I divine metaphysical reasons, that I cannot speak of. It pains me greatly, my dear young friend, to talk harshy of my daughter's mother. Perhaps after all she may mean kindly now. She may be mistaken in Kerr." "No," said Peter. "No woman of the world can mistake such a fellow." "Still, he is a strong friend to have on the other side." "Yes; and this is a moment when the other side is up and we are down. I can see how, with these great estates, a Patrooness may be willing to save herself a confiscation. She can pretend to be neutral, withl a leaning to Liberty, and leave her son-in-law to rescue the acres if Liberty goes to the gallows." "Such considerations have brought matters to page: 148-149[View Page 148-149] "8 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. a crisis. Kerr is there on the spot. Clinton is victor. So the poor child is hurried off without giving her time to consider." "We must make time for her. I will go ati my plans presently. But I should like to hear a little more of Voltaire's story." "You are very kind to take this interest in the welfare of a desolate and disheartened man, and those who are dear to him." Peter's cheeks were too brown to show blushes, and his cocked hat covered his white forehead; but he noticed that his heart was brewing a crim- son blush, whether it burst through the valves and came to the surface or not. In fact he be- gan to feel a lively sympathy for this weak girl, into whose orbit he was presently to fling him- self, like a yellow-haired comet, with spoil-sport intent. The more he tried to cork in his blush, the more it would n't be corked. And presently bang it came to the surface. His white forehead tingled at every pore, asthe surface of a glass of Clicquot may tingle with its own bursting bub- bles. No such rosy flash had ever showed on his countenance, when Anna's or Belinda's or Clara's or Delia's cheeks challenged him to kindle up. But the mere thought of a name much lower down in the alphabet now made his heart eager to do its share in striking fire and lighting this sorrowful scene about the Lucy in question. *P EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. 149 The sad father was not in the way to observe blushes; nor was Voltaire, who now proceeded to finish his story. For fear the worthy fellow might lapse into brogue,--whereupon the ghost of John C. Cal- houn would hurroo with triumph, and ventrilo- quize derisive niggerisms through the larynx of his type negro, the stuffed Gorilla, -Voltaire's tale shall be transposed into the third person. Then the hiatuses can be filled up, and we shall be able to peer a little into Lucy Brothertoft's heart, and see whether the Heavenly Powers have guarded her, as Sappho the cook long ago prophesied they would. page: 150-151[View Page 150-151] VI. No hag is a houri to her fille de chambre. Mrs. Brothertoft, handsome hag, was thor- oughly comprehended by the Voltaire family. That was no doubt -part of their compensation for being black, and below stairs. Sweet Lucy was also well understood in the kitchen. Many a pitiful colloquy went on about her between those three faithful souls. Sappho's conundrum, "What is de most im- portantest 'gredient in soup?" was often pro- pounded. Voltaire always protested against such vulgar remarks. Plato always guessed "Faith!" and pretended he 'd never heard the riddle before. "Faith is all very well," Voltaire would say, in studied phrase, as a model to his son. "But where is the Works? Where is the Works to help Miss Lucy?" "Jess you keep yer grip onto de Faith," his wife would respond, "an' de Works will jus- sumfy, when de day of jussumfication comes." EDWIN BROTuHEITOFT. 151 So Lucy grew up a grave, sad, lonely young girl. Her heart was undeveloped, for she had' no one but her mother to love. She loved there, with little response. Her mother received, and did not repel, her love. That was enough for this affectionate nature. As to sympathy, they were strangers. "She seems to me bitterly cold, when I love her so dearly," Lucy would say to herself; " but how can I wonder? My father's wrong-doing has broken her heart. Her life must be mere endurance. Mine would- be, if I were so disap- pointed in one I loved. It is now." And the poor child's heart would sink, and her eyes fill, and thick darkness come over her future; She lived a sadly lonely life. She could never be merry as other girls. There was a miserable sense of guilt oppressing her soul. The supposed crimes of her father-those un- known enormities -weighed upon her. These, she thought, were what made many good people a little shy of the Brothertoft household. She could not fail to perceive a vague something in which her mother's house was different from other houses she was permitted slightly to know. Why were so many odious men familiar there? When the family were in town, she could avoid them, day and evening, and spend long hours r page: 152-153[View Page 152-153] 152 EDWIN BROT-HERETOFT. unnoticed and forgotten in her own chamber. She could escape to books or needlework. But why did her mother tolerate these coarse men from the barracks, with their Tom, Dick, and Harry talk? To be sure these were days of war, and Mrs. Brothertoft was loyal in her sympathies, though non-committal, and '"She may think it right," thought Lucy, " to show her loyalty in the only way a woman can, by hospitality. But I am glad she does not expect me to help her entertain her guests. I am glad I am a child still. I hope I shall never be a woman." Her life took a sombre cast. She sank inth a groove, and moved through the hours of her days a forlorn and neglected creature. "Queer!"Julia Peartree Smith would say of her. "A little weak here," and Julia touched her forehead, just below her chestnut front. "She is a Brothertoft, and they were always feeble-minded folk, you know. But perhaps it 's just as well," - and Julia sank her voice to a mean whisper,--" just as well she should n't be too sharp-sighted in that house. I really be- lieve the silly chit loves her mother, and thinks her as good as, anybody. I tried to give her a half-hint once, but the little fool fired up red- hot and said, I was a shameful old gossip,- 'old,' indeed!" So Lucy lived, utterly innocent of any dream EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 153 of the evil she was escaping. There is something sadly beautiful and touching in this spectacle. A moonlit cloud flitting over the streets of a great wicked city, pausing above foul courts where vice slinks and crime cowers, reflected in the eddies of the tainted river,- the same eddy that was cleft at solemn moonrise by a sui- cide, - this weft of gentle cloud is not more un- conscious of all the sin and shame beneath it,- than Lucy of any wrong. The cloud beholds the pure moon, and drifts along unsullied; Lucy saw only her own white and virginal faith. It was not a warming, cheering luminary; but it shed over her world the gray, resigned light of patience. A touching sight! the more so, because we know that the character will develop, and, when it is ripe enough to bear maturer sorrows and to perceive a darker shame, that the eyes will open and the sorrow and shame will be revealed, standing where, they have so long stood unseen. After this little glimpse of Lucy's life, monot- onously patient for the want of love, Voltaire takes up his narration again. Voltaire thought Mrs. Brothertoft had deter- mined to marry off Miss Lucy to Major Kerr as long ago as last spring, before they left town. She did not, however, announce her plans until they were in the country. She probably knew 7 page: 154-155[View Page 154-155] 154 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. that this was a case where the betrothed had better not see too much of each other. c' I remember the day," says the negro, ' when Miss Lucy began to mope. Roses was comin' in strong. She used to fill the house with 'em. Sometimes she 'd sing a little, while she was fixin' 'em. But from that day out, she's never teched a flower nor sung a word. She 's just moped." By and by Voltaire had discovered the reason. It was fihe wreath of mock orange-flowers dangled over Lucy's head by a false Cupid, Anteros himself, that had taught her to hate roses and every -summer bloom. Her faint songs were still because her heart was sick. i The bride- groom was coming, and her mother had notified the bride to put on her prettiest smile. This command was given in Mrs. Brothertoft's short, despotic way. Neither side argued. Lucy pre- pared to obey, just as she would have thrust a thorn in her foot, or' swallowed a coal, upon order. She was not so very happy. She could be a little more unhappy without an unbearable shock. Major Kerr did not disgust her so much as some of her mother's intimates. Still the prospect was not charming. The surimer roses lost color to her eyes. Color left the cheeks that once rivalled the roses. The bride did not try to smile. Smiles are smiles only when the heart EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 155 pulls the wires. It takes practice to work the grimace out of a forced smile, so that it may pass for genuine. When was the bridegroom coming? That in- foriation the bridegroom himself, though Sir Henry Clinton's Adjutant, could not yet precisely give. "We are soon to make a blow at the Highlands,--then you will see me,"-so he wrote, and sent the message in a silver bullet. Silver bullets, walnuts split and glued together, and stuffed with pithy notes instead of kernels, and all manner of treacherous tokens, passed be- tween Brothertoft Manor and the Red outposts. Whether facts leaked out from leaky old Put when glasses too many of the Brothertoft Yellow- seal were under his belt; whatever true or false intelligence Scrammel paid for his post on Miss Lucy's sofa,- every such fact was presently sneaking away southward in the pocket of young Bilsby, or some other Tory tenant on the Manor. '"I saw Miss Lucy mopin' and mopin' worse and worse," says Voltaire, " but I could n't do nothin', and there I sot in the pantry, like a dumb hoppertoad, watchin' a child walkin' up to a rattlesnake." Voltaire's Faith without Works was almost dead. Young Bilsby must have sneaked up to Broth- ertoft Manor with the news of Clinton's expedi- page: 156-157[View Page 156-157] EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. tion to the relief of Burgoyne, just at the time that Mr. Brothertoft's announcement of his pres- ence at Fishkill reached Voltaire. " I did not dare tell Miss Lucy her father was so near," says the major-domo, "until, all at once, on the fourth of this month, we saw King George's ships lying off King's Ferry; and by and by up the hill comes Major Kerr to the Manor-House, red as a beet." Upon this arrival, Lucy first fully compre- hended what misery-the maternal fiat was to bring upon her. Voltaire found her weeping and utterly desolate. At once his Faith worked out words. The dumb hoppertoad found voice to croak, " Ware rattlesnake " "You are going to be married, Miss Lucy ?" he asked. She wanted sympathy sadly, poor child! As soon as he spoke, she made a tableau and a scene, --both tragic. She laid her head on the old fellow's shoulder,-Tableau. She burst into tears, - Scene. Woolly wig and black phiz bent over fair hair and pale face. Delicate lips of a fine old Lin- colnshire stock murmured a plaint. Thick lips of coarse old African stock muttered a vow of devotion. A little, high-bred hand, veined with sangre azul, yielded itself to the leathery pres- sure of a brown paw. Ah, poor child ! she had -J * d .f | i r 14' 's, ,;S it need of a friend, and was not critical as to color. "To be married ?" Lucy responded, when sobs would let her speak. "Yes, Voltaire, in three or four days." "Time 's short as Sappho's best pie-crust." "Mother' says," continued the young lady, "that I must have -a protector. The Major is here now, and may be ordered up or down any day. Mother says it is providential, and we must take advantage of the opportunity, and be married at once." She looked very little like a bride, with her sad, shrinking face. "Don't you love Major Kerr?" asked Vol- taire. "Lub" he always must pronounce this liquid verb. "Do I love him, Voltaire ? I hope to when we are married. Mother says I will. She says the ceremony and the ring will make another person of me. She says she has chosen me an excellent match, and I must be satisfied. 0 Voltaire! it seems a sin to say it, but my mother is cold and harsh with me. Perhaps I do not understand her. If I only had some other friend" " " You have," Voltaire announced. "You- I know," she said, kindly. "Closer - miles closer 'n me " page: 158-159[View Page 158-159] 158 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Who? Do you mean any one of our loyal- ist neighbors?" Lucy ran her thought over her short list of friends. All the valued names had been ex- punged by her mother's strict censorship, or pushed back among mere acquaintance. "Have you forgotten your father?" the but- ler asked. "Forgotten! I go every day, when no one is by, and lift up the corner of the curtain over the Vandyck. Our ancestor is my father him- self. I look at him, ind pray God to forgive him for being so wicked, and breaking my moth- er's heart." "Poh!" Lucy drew back in astonishment, as if a Paix- han blow-gun had exploded at her side. "Poh!" again burst out Voltaire's double- corked indignation. "If there was a wicked one in that pair, it was n't him. If there 's a heart broke, it 's his." Lucy for a moment did not think of this as an assault upon her mother. "What, Voltaire!" she cried. "He is not dead! Not a bad man! Not a rebel!" "Rebel!" says the French radical's name- sake. "Why should n't he be a rebel for Free- dom? Bad! he ain't bad enough to marry off his daughter only to git shet of her. Dead! EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. - 59 No, Miss Lucy; he 's up to Fishkill, and sends you his lub by me, if you want it." Love - even disguised as "Lub - it was such a fair angel of light, that Lucy looked up and greeted it with a smile. But this was not. a day for smiles. Storms were come after long gray weather. Only tears now, -bitter tears! They must flow, sweet sister! It is the old, old story. "Does he really love me? Is this true? Was he true? Was I deceived? Why did he and my mother separate? Why did she drive him out? Whom can I trust? Is every one a liar? What does this-mean? Answer me, Vol- taire! Answer me, or I shall die." Voltaire looked, and did not answer.: .To an- swer was a terrible revelation to make to this innocent girl. Faith was putting the old fellow to very cruel Works. "Speak!" said Lucy again, more passionately than before, and her voice expressed the birth of a new force within her. "Speak! What have you to say of my mother? I dread some new sorrow. Tell me what it is, or I shall die." Again these pages refuse to listen to the few deplorable words of his reply. He whispered the secret of her mother's disloyal life. "I will not believe it," said the horror-stricken girl. , F page: 160-161[View Page 160-161] 160 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. She did believe it. She had touched the clew. From this- moment she knew the past and the present, -vaguely, as a pure soul may know the mystery of sin. , For the moment she felt herself crushed to a deeper despair than before. She recognized the great overpowering urgency of Fate. She could not know that this recognition marks to the soul its first step into conscious immortality; and that the inevitable struggle to conquer Fate must now begin in her soul. "What can I do?" she said; and she looked guiltily about the chamber, as if every object in that house were the accomplice of a sin. "Run away with me to your father!" said Voltaire. She shook her head weakly. She was a great, great way yet from any such exploit with her in- fant will. "No," she said; "I must obey my'mother. That is my plain duty. She is pledged and I am pledged to this marriage. I must submit." Tears again, pbor child! The old habits are still too strong for her. "But suppose your father should tell you to obey him, and not submit," Voltaire propounded. "Suppose he should help to run you off." "How can he?" "I will steal off to-night to Fishkill, and see hilm." EDWIN BROTHEIRTOFT. 161 'C You risk your life." 'Pohl!" "Poh!" is not a word to use to a young lady, Mr. Voltaire. Yet perhaps nothing could ex- press so well as that explosive syllable how much and how little he valued life when the lady's happiness was at stake. "But I did n't want Miss Lucy to be fright- ened, of course," says he to Major Skerrett, " so I told her that I was safe enough in the High- lands, and when I got here I did n't believe Major Scrammel would let me be shot for a spy." Here he gave a monstrous sly look. Peter Skerrett again felt his cheeks burn, and his forehead tingle, and the stilled Muse of His- tory reports that " he uttered a phrase indicative of reprehension and distrust." In short, he said to himself, "Scrammel! damn the fellow!" Certainly! Why not? But it must not be forgotten, that it is Scrammel who suggested this expedition. Voltaire told Scrammel of the mar- riage. Scrammel, as our peep into friend Liv- ingston's brain informed us, would do one of his meanest tricks to be himself the bridegroom. And his scheme seems to be in a fair way to for- bid the banns. And so guileless Lucy Brothertoft had con- sented to her first plot. Her accomplice was to K page: 162-163[View Page 162-163] 162 EDWIN BROTERbTOFT. shift the burden of weakness from her shoulders, and throw it upon her father. Meantime she was to take her place at the! great dinner-party, and be a hypocrite for the first time. How guilty felt that innocent heart! iHow she dread- ed lest some chance word or look might betray her! What torture was the burning blush in her cheeks as she began to comprehend the wo- man she must name mother! How she trem- bled lest that woman's cruel eyes should pierce her bosom, see the secret there, and consign her, without even the appointed delay, to the ardent bridegroom. She knew that she should yield and obey. Now that for the first time she was eager to have a will of her own, she saw how untrained and inefficient this will was. Horror of her mother, and loathing of her betrothed, each repelled her in turn. She seemed to see herself praying for mercy to the woman, and she -coldly refusing to listen; then flying across the stage, and supplicating the man to spare her, and he, instead, triumphing with coarse fond- ness. Ah, unhappy lady! with no friend except that stout-hearted old squire, shinning by night through the Highlands, and dodging sentries at risk of a shot,--a shot, that startling trochee, sharp ictus, and faint whiz. Except for the Majors,--Scrammel to plot, Skerrett to execute, -Voltaire's evasion would EDWIN BROTHEIKTOFT. 163 have been in vain. Edwin Brothertoft was par- alyzed by the news of his daughter's danger. "What can I do?" he said to the old servant, bitterly. "Nothing! Nothing! Is General Put- nam, just defeated, likely to march down to rescue my daughter? These are not the days of chiv- alry. Knights do not come at call, when dam- sels are in distress. No; I am impotent to help her. If she cannot help herself, her heart must break, as mine has broken. That base woman will crush her life, as she crushed mine. Why did you come to me? You have brought me news that I may love ]my daughter, only to make the new love a cause of deeper misery. Why did you tell me of this insult to her woman- hood? I had enough to endure before. Go! What can I say to her? She will not care for a futile message, 'that I love her, but can do nothing.' Some stronger head than mine might devise a plan. Some stronger heart might dare. But I have given up. I am a defeated man, -a broken-hearted man, living from day to day, and incompetent to vigor. I remember my- self another person. I sometimes feel the old fire stir and go out. But I can do nothing. My fate and my daughter's fate are one. Go, Voltaire, and leave me to my utter sorrow and despair!" tHe had but just dismissed the negro, and page: 164-165[View Page 164-165] 164 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. turned a despondent back upon the world,-- when lo! Peter Skerrett, as we saw him, comes forth. Here comes the Captor of Captives, the Hero of Ballads! Here come chivalry, youth, ardor, force, confidence, success, all in a body, -a regiment of victor traits in one man, and on that man's lip THE MOUSTACHE, the best in the Continental army. Here comes a man whose timepiece has never learnt to mark "Too late." Here he comes, and; he has made it his business to eliminate Kerr from the problem of Brothertoft Manor; so that Kerr + Lucy = Bliss will be for a time an impossible equation. Take courage, then, Edwin Brothertoft, tender of heart, sick at will, and thank Heaven that you married your gunstock to the brainpan of that British beggar with 'a baggonet at Bunker Hill, and so saved Skerrett to help you. Voltaire's story, with additions and improve- ments, now ends, and business proceeds. VII. "A'FTE this history, I want a little topog- raphy," said Skerrett. "Can you sketch me a ground plan of the house?" That skeleton, Brothertoft could draw with- out much feeling. The house, as it stood, com- plete in the background of memory, he would not allow himself to recall. Its walls and fur- niture were to him the unshifted scenes and properties of a tragedy. If he painted them before his mind's eye, an evil-omened figure of a woman would step from behind the curtain, threatening some final horror, to close the drama of their lives. "This wing to the right," Skerrett said, " seems an addition." ( It was built on by the present proprietress," coldly rejoined the former heir. "Stables here!" continued the Major, tracing the plan. "Dining-room windows open toward them. Shrubbery here, not too far off for an ambush. Now, Voltaire, if we could get Major Kerr alone in that dining-room in the dusk page: 166-167[View Page 166-167] 166 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. of the evening to-morrow, I could walk him pff easily." , "Ho!" exclaims the butler. "That 's a" settled beforehand." "Kerr sometimes makes late sittings theie, then? I fancied I knew his habits." "He 's a poor hand at courtin'," says Vol- taire, with contempt. "Ladies likes dewotion,- that 's my 'sperience. He 's only dewoted to fillin.' hisself full of wine." "A two-bottle man?? "Every day, when-the ladies leave table, he rubs his hands," - Voltaire imitates, - " nd says, 'Now then, old boy, fresh bottle! Yellow-seal! Don't shake him!' He drinks that pretty slow, and gives me a glass and says, 'Woolly-head, we 'll drink my pretty Lucy. Lucky Kerr's pretty bride!'" Peter Skerrett here looked ferocious. "Then,?' continued the old fellow, " he drops off asleep at the table till four o'clock. TlThen he wakes up, sour, and sings out," - Voltaire imi- tates, -" ' Hullo, you dam nigger! Look sharp! Another bottle! If you shake him, I 'll cut your black heart out.' He drinks him, and then byme-by he says, 'Ole fel! Shmore wide, ole fel. Tuther boddle dow! I ashkitspussonle favor, ole fell' Then he sings a little, and gets generally accelerated." EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. 167 "I would rather have him slowed, than ac- celerated," says Peter. "Oho!" grinned the butler, and whispered to himself, "If the Major thinks he ought to be stupid-tipsy for the good of the cause and Miss Lucy, I can deteriorate him, into his Ma- deira, with a little drop of our French Gutter de Rosy brandy. That will take the starch out of his legs, and make him easy to handle. But that is my business. I won't tell nobody my secrets. The pantry and I must keep dark." "I cannot help a grain of compunction in this matter," Skerrett said. "A gentleman does not like to interfere in another man's courtship." "Do you call this plot of a coarse man with an unmotherly woman by the fair name of court- ship?"Brothertoft said. "No. And fortunately the lady has no illu- sions. I should not like to be the one to tell Beauty she had loved Beast. But this Beauty, it seems, has kept her heart too pure to have lost her fine maidenly instinct of aversion to a blackguard. Well, no more metaphysics! Scru- ples be hanged. Kerr don't deserve to be treated like a gentleman. England should have kept such fellows at home, if she wanted us to believe good manners were possible under a monarchy. Now, then, Mr. Brothertoft, suppose I do not page: 168-169[View Page 168-169] 168 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. get myself 'hanged as one espy,' and take my prisoner, - does his capture protect your daugh- ter enough?" "I could wish, if it were possible, to have her with me henceforth." "We must make it possible, though it com- plicates matters. I could rush in, snatch Kerr, and be off. The blow would be struck, the enemy annoyed, our people amused; but in a fortnight Clinton would offer some Yankee major and a brace of captains to boot for his Adjutant, the Honorable, &c. 'Then he would go down and play Beast to Beauty again." "Save my daughter, once for all; if it can be done." "I'll try. Now, Voltaire, listen!" Which he opened his mouth to do. "What people, besides the two ladies and Major Kerr, will be at your house to-morrow evening, the servants, I mean? "Oh! we live small at the Manor, now,-- ridiculous small. It 's war times now. Rents is n't paid. When we want a proper lot of ser- vants, we takes clodhoppers." "Lucky for my plans you do live small," Skerrett said. "Never mind your family pride! i Name the household!" "Me and Sappho and Plato, all patriots; Jierck Dewitt's wife and her sister, Sally Bilsby, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT; 169 both Tories, - that is,; gals that likes redcoats more' than is good for 'em." "Could you manage to have the girls out of the way to-morrow evening?" "Easy enough. They'l be glad to get away for a frolic." - "Any horses in your stable, Voltaire?" "Six, - all out of that Harriet Heriot mare stock. You remember, Master Edwin." Edwin Brothertoft did sadly remember the late old Sam Galsworthy's generous offer. He re- membered sadly that ride, so many years ago, and how the sweet south winds, laden with the rustle of tropic palms, met him with fair omen, -ah! long ago, when Faith was blind and Hope was young! "Six white horses," Voltaire continued; "the four carriage-horses, Madam's horse, and Miss Lucy's mare, -you ought to see Miss Lucy on her!" "Perhaps I shall. Tell Plato to give the mare another oat to-morrow! Her mistress may want a canter in the evening, - eh, Voltaire?" . Grin in response. "Tell Miss Brothertoft, with her father's best love," Skerrett resumed, "that he will be on the lawn by the dining-room window to-morrow evening at nine o'clock, waiting for her to ride with him to Fishkill. Tell her to be brave, pru- 8 page: 170-171[View Page 170-171] 170 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. dent, and keep out of sight with a headache, until she is called to start. And you, Voltaire, as you love her, be cautious, be secret and be wide awake!" At " be cautious," the old fellow winked elab- orately. At "be secret," he locked all four eyelids tight. At "be wide awake,"-snap! eyelids flung open, and white of eye enough appeared to dazzle a sharpshooter. "Now, listen, Voltaire!" Mouth agape, again, as if he had a tympanum at each tonsil. "Look at me, carefully!" continues Peter. Pan shut and eyes d la saucer. "' Do you think you would know me disguised in a red coat?" Pan opened to explode, "Certain sure, sir!" "And without my moustache?" the major asked. He gave that feature a tender twirl. His fingers wrapped the fair tendrils lovingly around them. "Must it go?" he sighed. "O Chivalry! O Liberty! O my Country! what sacrifices you demand!" Voltaire was sure that he would know t!le Hero, even with an emasculated lip. "Well; about eight to-morrow evening, when Major Kerr is 'accelerated' with his second * X EDWIN BROTiEKTOFT. 171 bottle, I shall knock at your loyal door, - mous- tache off, and red coat on -and ask a night's lodging for a benighted British sergeant." "You shall have it," says the major-domo, with a grand-seigneur manner. "Nothng but apple-jack or Jersey cham- pagne has passed these lips, since we lost the Brandywine. You will naturally give me my bottle of Yellow-seal, and my bite of supper, in the dining-room with the Major." "Oh!"' cried Voltaire with sudden panic. "Don't risk it! Major Kerr's got a sword awful long and awful sharp, and two pistols with gold handles, plum full of bullets. Every day, when he drinks, he puts 'em on the sideboard, an' he say, 4Lookerheeyar, ole darkey! spose dam reb- ble cum, I stick him, so; an' I shoot him, so.' Don't resk it, Mas'r Skerrett! (Ancient servitor, suppress thy terror and thy Tombighee together!) "Slip off with the weapons, and hide 'em in your bed," says the Major. "In my bed?" says Voltaire, in good Conti- nental again. "In our feather bed? Suppose Sappho goes to lie down, and touches cold iron, wont she take on scollops, high?" "The poetess must not be taught to strike a jangling lyre. Give the tools to Plato. Set him on guard at the dining-room door when page: 172-173[View Page 172-173] 172 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. I come. Tell him he is serving a model Re- public, - such as his ancient namesake never dreamed." Brothertoft smiled at these classical allusions. Lively talk was encouraging him, as his junior meant it should. X Neither foresaw what a ghastly mischief w s to follow tills arming of Plato. VIII. "Now, Voltaire, the sooner you are on your way back, to warn and comfort your young lady, the better," said Skerrett. "I 'm sorry for your shins among the Highlands by night." "Never mind my shins," Voltaire replied with a martyr air. "They belong to my coun- try and Miss Lucy." He passed his hand teilderly along their curvi- linear edges, as if he were feeling a scymitar, before a blow. They were sadly nicked, poor things! They would be lacerated anew, as he brandished them at the lbriers, and smote with them the stumps along his twenty-mile ana- basis. "Farewell, my trump of trumps," said the Major. "Remember; be cautious, be secret, be wide awake!" Same pantomime as before in reply. '"If Mrs. Brothertoft suspects anything, there will be tragedy," Peter continued. So all three knew, and shuddered to think. ' I will walk a little way with my friend," page: 174-175[View Page 174-175] 174 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. said Brothertoft, "I have a more hopeful mes- sage now to send to my dear child." Peter watched the two contrasted figures until they disappeared in the glow of the many-col- ored forest. "Lovely old gentleman!" he thought. "Yes; 'lovely' is the word. My first encounter with a broken heart. It has stopped my glee for a long time to come. I have felt tears in my eyes, all the while, and only kept them down by talking low comedy with the serio-comic black personage. Can a broken heart be mended? That is always woman's work, I suppose. In this case, too, woman broke, woman must re- pair. The daughter must make over what the wife spoilt. She shall be saved for his sake and her own, even if I come out of the business an amputated torso. I don't quite comprehend people that cannot help themselves. -But here I see the fact,- there are such. And I sup- pose exuberant chaps, like myself, are put in the world to help them. I wonder whether any woman will break my heart! I wonder whether Miss Lucy liked any of our fellows, and had a hero in her eye to make Kerr look more caitiff than he is. Could not be Scram- mel,-he is a sneak. Could not be Radidre,-- he is too dyspeptic. Nor Humphreys, - too pom- pous. Nor Livingston,--he is not sentimental EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 175 enough. Nor Skerrett,--him she has never seen and will see with his moustache off. Ah! the Chief was right when he told me I should put my foot into some adventure up here. And now the thing is started, I must set it moving." He walked toward Jierck Dewitt, still on guard at the gate. His relief was just coming up, and the sentry was at liberty. , "Did you know those two men I was talking with, by the well, Jierck?"Peter asked. I' Yes, sir; Sergeant Lincoln and Lady Broth- ertoft's factotum. I 'd like to know what old Voltaire wanted here." ! '"He does not recognize the ex-Patroon," Sker- rett thought. "Then no one will. Jierck's eyes always saw a little lighter in the dark, and a little steadier in a glare, than the next man's. Sorrow must have clapped a thick mask on my friend's face." "I suppose you know the Brothertoft Manor country and the Manor-House thoroughly, Jierck," the Major said. "Know the Manor, sir! I should think so. I began with chasing tumble-bugs and crickets over it, and studied it inch by inch. Then I trailed black-snakes and ran rabbits, and got to know it rod by rod. I 've fished in every brook, and clumb every nut-tree, and poked into every woodcock swamp or patridge brush from end page: 176-177[View Page 176-177] 176 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. I to end of it. I know it, woodland and clearing, side-hill and swale, fields that grow stun and fields that grow corn. I 've run horses over it, where horses is to be run, -and that 's not much, for its awful humpy country, and boul- ders won't stay put anywheres. Deer, too,-- there ain't many pieces of woods on it where I have n't routed out deers, and when they legged for the Highlands, I legged too, and come to know the Highlands just as well. I used to love, when I was a boy, to go along on the heights above the river, and pick out places where I was going to live; but I sha'n't live in any -of 'em now. What does a man care about home, or living at all, when his woman is n't true?" Major Skerrett did not interrupt this burst of - remembrances. "Jierck suffers as much in his way," he thought, " as the ex-Patroon." "And the house," he said, "you know that as thor- oughly? "Ay, from garret to cellar. hMy father, Squire Dewitt, has been in England, and he says it 's more like an English house than any he knows, in small. From garret to cellar, says I. The cellar I ought to know pretty well. I dodged in there once, when I was a boy, hangin' round the house; and got into the wine-room, and drank stuff that came near spoilin' my taste for rum fore ver, - I wish it had. They caught EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 1" me, and the Madam had me whipped till the blood come. Mr. Brothertoft tried to beg off for me. She 'd got not to make much of him by that time, and the more he begged, the harder she had 'em lay it on me. But I 'm talkin' off, stiddy as the North River, and you've got some- thing to say to me, Major, I know, by the way you look. What 's up about Brothertoft Ma- "or?" "There 's a British officer staying there, who has never tasted pork and beans. I've prom- ised General Putnam to bring him up here to dinner.." '"Hooray! that's right. Give these militia something to think about, or they get to believe war 's like general trainin'-day, and they can cut for home when they 're tired. You want volun- teers. I 'm one." "I counted on you for my lieutenant. Ser- geant Lincoln also goes. Now I want three men more, and you shall choose them. Each man must have the grit of a hundred; and they must know the country as well as they know the way to breakfast. Name three, Jierck!" "That I'll do, bang. There's Ike Van Wart, for one. His junto, him and Jack Paulding and Dave Williams, would just make the three. But Jack's nabbed, and down to York in a prison- ship. And Dave 's off on furlough, sowing his 8* - L page: 178-179[View Page 178-179] 178 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. father's winter wheat for the Cowhoys to tromp next summer." Only Isaac Van Wart, therefore, of that fa- mous trio, whom the Muse of Tradition shall fondly nickname MAJOR AINDRE'S BOOTACK, joined Skerrett on his perilous service. "Ike for one," continued Dewitt. ' Well, Galsworthy, old Sam Galsworthy, for two. And for three, I don't, believe a better man lives than Hendrecus Canady, the root-doctor's son. They 're all Brothertoft-Manor boys, built of the best cast-steel, and strung with the wiriest kind of wire. Shoot bullets into 'em, stick bag- -gonets into 'em; they don'tsmind the bullets any more than spit-balls at school, nor the baggonets more than witches do pins." "Well, Jierck, have them here in an hour. I will join you, and talk the trip over, and we will be ready to start at sunset." Skerrett found himself a horse, trotted back to Fishkill, wrote a farewell to his step-brother and his mother, and scratched a few irrepres- sible lines to Washington, such as the hero loved to get from his boys, and'valued much more than lumbering despatches marked Official. The de- spatches only announced facts, good or bad. The brisk, galla t notes revealed spirits which black EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 179 facts could not darken, nor heavy facts depress. "So long as I have lads like Peter Skerrett," thought Our George, by the grace of God Pater Patrive, when he received this note, a fortnight after that culp-lip-and-slip battle of Germantown, " while I have such lads with me, I can leave my red paint in my saddle-bags with my Tuscarora grammar." "Now," thought Peter, "I have made my will and written my despatch, I must proceed to change myself into a redcoat." He unpacked a British sergeant's uniform, which he had carried, if .disguise should be needed in his late solitary journey. "There is a garment," said he, holding up the coat with an air of respect, " whose pockets have felt the King's shilling. But thy pockets, old buff and blue "-he stripped off his own coat, --"never knew bullion, though often stuffed with Continental paper at a pistareen the pound avoirdupois." His weather-beaten scarlets were much too small for the tall champion. By spasm and pause, and spasm again, however, he managed to squeeze into them at last. iThen he took Mrs. Birdsell's little equilateral triangle of mirror, three inches to a side, and, holding it off at arm's length, surveyed himself by sections. page: 180-181[View Page 180-181] 180 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "The color don't suit my complexion," -he said, viewing his head and neck. ' The coat will not button over my manly chest, and I shall have to make it fast with a lanyard,"--here he took a view of the rib-region. "The tails are simply ridiculous," -he twisted about to bring the glass to bear upon them. "In short,"-and he ran the bit of mirror up and down, - "I am a scarecrow, cap a pie. Liberty herself would not know me. Pretty costume to go and see a lady in! Confound- women! Why will wives break husband's hearts? Why will girls grow up beauties and heiresses, and become baits for brutes? Ah, Miss Lucy Brothertoft! You do not know what an inglorious rig Peter Skerrett is submitting to for your sake. And the worst is to come. Alas! the worst must come!" He hoisted the looking-glass and gazed for a moment irresolutely at his face. There, in its accustomed place, sat The Mous- tache, blonde in color, heroic in curl, under- scoring his firm nose, pointing and adorning the handsome visage. Skerrett gazed, sighed, and was silent. Nerve him, Liberty! Steel him, Chivalry! A hard look crept over his countenance. He clutched a short blade, pointless; but with an edge trenchant as wit. It was a razor. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 181 Slasli! And one wing of The Moustache was swept from the field. Behold him, trophy in hand and miserable that he has won it! Will resolution carry him through a second assault? Or will he go one-sided; under one' nostril a golden wreath, under the other, bristles, for a six-month? Slash! The assassination is complete., His lip is scalped.* All is bald between his nose and mouth. The emphasis is subtracted from, his countenance. His upper lip, no longer kept in place by its appropriate back-load, now flies up and becomes seamed with wrinkles. And there on the table lay The Moustache! There they lay,- the right flank and the left flank, side by side in 'their old posture,--the mere exuviae of a diminished hero. Peter turned away weakly as a Samson shorn. "Ah, Liberty! Ah, Chivalry!" he moaned. "Will the good time to come make a sacred relic of these yellow tufts?" ' Tradition reports that his hostess found them, and buried them, in an old tinder-box, in the Fishkill village graveyard, where they sleep among other exuviae, arms, legs, torsos, and bodies of the heroes of that time. And now it may be divined why De Chastel page: 182-183[View Page 182-183] 182 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. lux does not immortalize the Skerrett Mous- tache. Perhaps Peter kept-his lip in mourning until after the surrender of Cornwallis. Per- haps, alas! they never grew again. "-It will take gallons on gallons of this Octo- ber to put me in good spirits again," says the Major, as he rode away. The mellow air, all sweetness, all sparkle, and all perfume, flowed up to his lips, generously. He breathed, and breathed, and breathed again of that free tap, and-by the time he reached the rendezvous was buoyant as ever. The Orderly, Brothertoft, was awaiting him, and sat patient, but no longer despondent, look- ing through the bulky Highlands, as if they were the mountains of a dream. Jierck Dewitt and his Three were skylarking in a pumpkin patch. Twenty years ago we saw the same three, straddling and spurring tombstones in the Brothertoft Manor graveyard, the day of the last Patroon's funeral, - the day when Old Van Courtlandt made a Delphic Apollo of him, and foretold, amid general clink of glasses, that marriage of white promise and black performance. "The child is father of the man "; and the four boys have grown up as their fathers' chil- dren should. Jierck Dewitt has already shown himself, and EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 183 related why he is not fully up to his mark of manliness. When he caught sight of Major Skerrett, he dropped a yellow bomb, charged with possible pumpkin-pies, which he was about to toss at the head of one of his men, and marched the file up to be reviewed by its leader. "Number One is Ike Van Wart, Major," says Jierck. "His eyes are peeled, if there 's any eyes got their bark off in the whole Thirteen." Ike touched his cocked hat- it was his' only bit of uniform- and squared shoulders to be' looked at. He was a lank personage, of shrewd, but rather sanctimonious visage. War made thim a scout. Fate appointed him one prong of Major Andr4's Bootjack. But Elder and Chorister were writ- ten on his face; and he died Elder and Choris- ter of the First Presbyterian Church of Green- burgh, in Westchester. "Right about face, Ike!" says Jierck. "For- rud march, Old Sam Galsworthy! He 's grit, if grit grows. His only fault is he 's too good- natured to live." Old Sam stood forward, and laughed. As he laughed, the last button flew off his uniform coat. It was much too lean a coat for one of his increasing diameter, and the exit of that - final button had long been merely a question page: 184-185[View Page 184-185] i 184 EDWIN BROTh':ETOFT. :of time. Hearty Old Sam may be best de- scribed by pointing to his descendants, who in our day are the identical Sam, repeated. Under thirty, they drive high-stepping bays in the wag- ons of the great Express Companies. They wear ruddy cheeks, chinny beards, natty clothes, blue caps with a gilt button; and rattle their drags through from Flatten Barrack, up Broad- way and back, at 2 P. M., without hitting a hub or cursing a carter. Everybody says Old Sam is too 'good-natured to live! But he does live and thrive, and puts flesh on his flesh, and dollars on his pile. Over thirty, he marries, as becomes a Galsworthy, buys acres up the river, raises red-cheeked apples and children, breeds high-stepping bays, and when he takes hs annual nag to the Bull's Head for sale, the knowing mhen there make bets, and win them, that Old Squire Sam weighs at least two hundred and forty pounds with his coat off. "Right about face, Sam!" says the fugleman. "Forrud march, Hendrecus Canady! He looks peakMd, Major. His father 's a root and Injun doctor, and he never had much but pills to eat, until he ran off and joined the army. But I stump the whole Thirteen to show me a wirier boy, or a longer head. He 'll be in Congress be- fore he says ' Die' through that nose of his'n." Hendrecus Canady in turn toed, the mark for EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 185 inspection. He had a sallow, potticary face. A meagre yellow down on his cheeks grew to a point at his chin. But he is neatly dressed in half-uniform. He has a keen look, which will say, ' Stand and deliver your fact!" to every phenomenon. He will, indeed, talk through his nose, until his spirit passes by that exit to climes where there are no noses to twang by. But wiry, men must be had when states need bracing. And the root-doctor's runaway son- was M. C. long before his beak intoned his Nunc dimittis. "Now, boys," said Skerrett, '"I like your looks, and I like what Captain Jierck says of you. You know what we 've got to do, and know it must be done. You'll travel, scattering, according to Jierck's orders, and rendezvous before moon-rise at his father's barn on the Manor. Sergeant Lincoln goes with me. Jierck will name a place where he'll meet me at sunrise. We shall have all day to-morrow to see how the land lies, and the night to do our job in. Now, then, shake hands round, and go ahead!" page: 186-187[View Page 186-187] PART III. page: 188-189[View Page 188-189] I. FOR the first time in her life Lucy Brothertoft failed to kiss her mother on the morning of the dinner to Sir Henry Clinton. A great pang went to the guilty woman's heart. She perceived that her daughter knew her at last.. Ah, miserable woman! She did not dare turn her great black eyes reproachfully upon Lucy, and demand the omitted caress. She did not dare say tenderly, "What, my daughter, are you forgetting me?" She did not dare go forward and press her own unworthy lips to those virgin lips. For one instant a great tumult of love and remorse stirred within her. She longed to fling herself on her knees before her daughter, to bury her face in Lucy's lap, and there, with tears and agony, cry out:- "O my child! pity me, do not hate me, for the lie I have been. Ah! you do not know the misery of wearing an undetected falsehood in page: 190-191[View Page 190-191] 190 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. the heart! You do not know the o torture of hypocrisy. You do not know how miserably base it is to be loved for what you are not,- to be trusted as a true and loyal heart, when every moment of such false pretence is another film of falsehood over the deep-seated lie. You cannot know how we tacit ,liars long for be- trayal, while we shrink and' shudder when it approaches! "And you, my gentle daughter, have been my vengeance. Listen to me now! The old pride breaks. The old lhorror passes. I confess. Be- fore you, the very image of my husband in his young and hopeful days, I confess my shameful sin. I have been a foul wife and a false mother. Do not scorn me, Lucy. I have suffered, and shall suffer till I die. "Ah! thank Heaven, my child, that you do not feel and cannot divine half my degradation. My agony you see,- -let it be the lesson of your life! Here I hide my face, and dare to recall that brave and noble lover, your father. So gentle he was, so tender, so utterly trustful! And I was mean enough to think he triumphed over me because his soul was fine, and mine was coarse. So I took my coarse revenge. "O fool, fool! that I could not comprehend that pure and lofty nature. O base! that I must grovel and rank myself with the base.\ 0 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 191 cruel! that I must trample upon him. O das- tardly! for the unwomanly sneers, for the stud- ied insults, by which I bore him down, and broke at last that high, chivalric heart. It seems to me that I was not sane, but mad all those misera- ble years. "But now, my daughter, see me weep! I repent. My soul repents and loathes this guilty woman here. I have spoken, I have told you fully what I am. I look up. I see your father's patient, pitying glance upon your face. Speak, with his voice, and say I may be slowly pardoned, if my penitence endures. And kiss me, Lucy! not my tainted lips; but kiss my forehead with a kiss of peace!" Such a wild agony of love and remorse stirred within this wretched woman's heart. But she battled it down, down, down. The virago in her struck the woman to the earth, and throttled her. No yielding. No tears. No repentance. She scorned the medi- cine of shame. Lucy's presence cowed her. She did not dare look at that gentle, earnest face, except covertly, and as an assassin looks. The Furies, her old companions, thickened about her, like a mist pregnant with forms. There was a whispering in the air. Did others see those shadowy images? Did others hear page: 192-193[View Page 192-193] 192 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. their words? To her they were loud anid emphatic. "Stab the meek-faced girl! Be rid i of this spy! Shall she sit there ajd shame you?"--so the Furies whispered and shouted. And the woman replied within herself: "Am I not stabbing her? See, here is my hired bravo, my future son-in-law, the very Honor- able Major Kerr, - le bel homme! He will give the puny thing troubles of her own to mind. We will see whether she is always to stay so meek and patient. We will see whether these, Brothertofts are so much better than other people. She has learnt to suspect me at last. I knew the time would come, and I have made ready for it. Day after to-morrow- they are to be married, and then I shall be rid of Miss Monitress." With such passions at work, breakfast at Brothertoft, on the morning of Putnam's Coun- cil, and the diiner to Clinton, was not a very cheerful meal. Mother and daughter were silent. Kerr took his cue, and played knife and fork. \ I II. Lucy left the room immediately after break- fast. "My pretty Lucy seems to have the megrims," said Major Kerr. "Is that on the cards for a blushing bride?" "She sighs for the hour when Adonis shall name her his," replied the mother, with a half- sneer. "Confound it, Madam! I believe you are laughing at me," the blowsy Adonis grumbled. He lifted himself from the table, and swaggered off to the fire, with a gorged movement. He probably had, never seen a turkey-buzzard loun- ging away from carrion; but he unconsciously imitated that unattractive fowl. i The debris of his meal, the husks of what he did eat, remained in an unpleasant huddle on the table, proving that a great, gross feeder had been there. i He stood before the fire, a big red object, the type of many Englishmen who were sent over in the Revolution to disenchant us with monarchy. 9 page: 194-195[View Page 194-195] 194 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. The chances are nearly ten to one in favor of an Englishman's being a gentleman.-. Our moth- er country seeled to have carefully decimated her civil and military service of its brutes, to do the dirty work of flogging the Continentals. Kerr stood before the fire, making a picture of himself. A handsomish animal! Other women might call him le bel homme without Mrs. Brother- toft's tone of contempt. He had evidently giv- en the artists of the alcoholic school- Brandy and that brotherhood - frequent sittings. They paint rubicund, and had not been chary of car- nations in his case. His red uniform-jacket gave him the air of an overgrown boy. But not a frank, merry one; nor even an oafish, well- meaning dolt of a 'chap. This great boy is a bully. Smaller urchins would suffer under his thumb. He would crush a butterfly, or, indeed, anything gentle and tender, without much cere- mony. So Mrs. Brothertoft seemed to think, as she surveyed him, posed there for inspection. She smiled to herself, and thought, This sensual tyrant will presently give Miss Lucy something else to do than insult me with her prudish airs." "Dash it, Ma'am!"Kerr repeated, - his caste, inl his time, dashed freely,-" do you mean to hint the girl is not fond of me?" EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 195 "Fond! she adores you. See how jealous she is! She cannot leave you one moment." "I'd have you to know, Madam, with your sneers, that better blood than your daughter have been fond of me." a ' Why did n't Adonis stay in the home market, then, instead of putting himself in the Provin- cial?" "You know why! I don't make any secret of my debts and my peccadillos. You know as, much about me as I do about you, my mother- in-law." She winced a little at this coarse familiarity. It was part of her inevitable punishment to be so treated. Ah! how bitterly she remembered, at such words, the reverent courtesy of; her hus- band! how bitterly, his pitying tenderness, even when she had dishonored him, so far as his honor was inl her power! But she hardened herself against these memories, and her vindictiveness against that daughter of his grew more cruel. "You must allow," continued Kerr, " that you get me dem cheap." "Cheap!" she rejoined. "Cheap with the debts and the peccadillos! Cheap, white feather and all!" "Who says I ever showed the white feather? roared Kerr. ' That's one of that muscadin, Jack Andr4's lies. He wants my place as Adju- page: 196-197[View Page 196-197] 196 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. tant to Sir Henry. Bah! the shop-keeping, play- acting, rhyme-writing milksop! he'd better keep his Swiss jaws shut, and not slander a British nobleman!" "Nobleman!" says his hostess, evidently tak- ing pleasure in galling her conspirator; "I thought you were only a peer's third son." "There are but three, lives between me and the earldom, - an old gouty life, Tom's jockey life, and Dick's drunken one. Your daughter will be Countessof Bendigh one of these days, and you'd both better be careful how you treat me." "How could I treat you better?" I give you the prettiest girl in the Province, with the pret- tiest portion." *"Have I got to tell you again, that not every man would take your daughter? You needn't look so fierce about it." She did look fierce. She looked-la belle sauvage - as if she could handle a scalping-knife. And no wonder! This was not very pretty talk on either side. It was not very pretty work they had plotted. Hate must have become very bitter in the moth- er's heart before she chose this brute and booby for her daughter's husband. She did not even perceive the dull spark of a better nature, not utterly quenched in him,- gross, dissolute, over- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 197 bearing, heavy, that he was. She wished to be rid of Lucy Brothertoft, -this was the first thing. If, besides, she got an ally on the royalist side, and a son-in-law who could help her to a place in society in England, it was clear gain. But enough of this conspiracy! Will the father and that young rebel sans- moustache be bold and speedy enough to de- feat it? page: 198-199[View Page 198-199] "I. PLaCE aux he'ros! To-day the lady of Brothertoft Manor dines Sir Henry Clinton and suite. If General Putnam should ever march back, and blame her that she gave aid and comfort to the enemy, she will say that she was forced to protect herself by a little sham hospitality. It may be sham, but it is liberal. Sappho contributes her most faithful soup. The river gives a noble sturgeon,--and "Albany beef," treated as turbot, with sauce blanche, is fish for anybody's fork. The brooks supply trouts by the bushel. The Highlands have provided special venison for this festival. The Manor kills its fatted calf, its sweetest mutton, its spright- liest young turkey, fed on honeydew grasshop- pers. There is a plium-pudding big as a pumpkin. Alas that no patriot palate will vibrate to the passing love-taps of these substantial good things! All is ready, and Lady Brothertoft--so she loves to be called--awaits her distinguished guests, in her grandest attire. , I EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 199 But, calm and stately as she sits, there is now miserable panic and now cruel hate in her heart; for all the time she is whispering to herself. "Lucy did not kiss me. It is the first time in all her life. Edwin Brothertoft's daughter hlas discovered at last what I am. Did he come in a dream and tell her?" Then she would raise her eyes as far as those fair hands lying in her daughter's lap,-no higher, no higher, or the daughter would face her,-and think of the wedding-ring that her plot is presently to force upon one of thoseo locked fingers. She could hardly keep back a scream of wild triumph at the thought. So the mother sits, and holds her peace, such as it is. The daughter waits, in a strange dream of patience. Major Kerr swaggers about, admires his legs, feels embarrassed before his mute be- trothed, looks at his watch and grumbles, "It's half past two. Dinner 's three, sharp. The soup will be spoiled if they don't show pres- ently." They begin to show now upon the quarter- decks of the three frigates in the river. Thle guests, in fall bloom of scarlet and gold, come up from cabin and ward-room of the Tartar, the Preston, and the Mercury. Jack on the fore- castle has his joke, as each new figure struts forth, dodging whatever would stain or flavor page: 200-201[View Page 200-201] 200 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. him tarry. The belated men call to their ser- vants, "Bear a hand there, you lubber, with the flour for my hair-powder! How the devil did that spot come on my coat-sleeve! Why the devil did n't you have these ruffles starched?" The last man now struggles into his tightest Hessians. The last man draws on his silk stock- ings. The last mans his pumps. Sir Henry Clinton comes out with Commodore Hotham. The captain's gig has been swinging half an hour in the shade of the frigate's hull. Pre- sent arms, sentry' at the gangway! Here they come, down the black side of the ship. Fire and feathers, how splendid! Take care of your sword, Sir Henry, or you'll trip and get a ducking instead of a dinner! They scuttle into the stern-sheets. The oarsmen, in their neatest holiday rig, scoff in their hearts, and name these great personages "lobsters" and "land- lubbers." The caitain's coxswain, the prettiest man of the wholeI ship's company, gives the word, "Shove off!' Boat-hook shoves, Jack on deck peers through the port-holes. A topman, aloft, accidentally drops a tarry bit of spunyarn and hits Sir Henry on his biggish nose. "Back starboard," the pretty coxswain orders. "Pull port!" "Give way all!" And so we go to dinner! And so from men-of-war in our time heroes go to dinners ashore. D EDWIN-BROTHERTOFT 201 And now the gay party 'enters the dining- room at Brothertoft Manor. How bright the sunbeams of the October after- noon, ricochetting from the smooth Hudson into the windows, gleam on the epaulets and but- tons of a dozen gorgeous officers! One special ray is clearly detailed to signalize that star on Sir Henry Clinton's left breast. The room is aflame with scarlet. Certainly these flamboya/nt heroes will presently consume away every ves- tige of a rebel army. Surely, after a parry or two against these dress swords, the champions of freedom will drop their points and yield their necks to the halter. Each elaborate fine gen- tlemaln, too, of all this bandboxy company, is crowned with victor bays. They plucked them only t' other day across the river on the ram- parts of Forts Clinton and Montgomery. When Jack Burgoyne sends down his bunch of laurel frorn Saratoga, the whole are to be tied up in one big bouquet, and despatched to tickle the nose and the heart of Farmer George at Wind- sor Castle. Sir Henry Clinton-no less-- Cesar ipse-- hands in the grand hostess, and takes his seat at her right. How jolly he looks, the fat little man! How liis round face shines, and his pro- tuberant nose begins to glow with inhaling the steam of the feast! 9* page: 202-203[View Page 202-203] 202 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "I must have you on my left, Admiral," says the hostess, to a hearty gentleman in naval uni- form. "Thank you for my promotion, Madam," re- joins Commodore Hotham, dropping into his place. At the head of her table, then, sits Lady Brothertoft, proud and handsome, flanked by the two chiefs. And down on either side the guests dispose themselves in belaurelled vista. Major Kerr takes the foot of the table. He carves well for everybody, and best for himself. Two spoonsful of sauce blanche float his choice portion of the Albany beef. The liver of the turkey he accepts as carver's perquisites. And when he comes to cut the saddle of venison, plenty-of delicate little scraps, quite too small to offer to others, find their way to his plate. Lucy is at his right. What? in high spirits? in -gay colors? Has she so soon become a hypo- crite and conspiratress? Why, the little dissem- bler laughs merrily, and flirts audaciously! Laughs merrily! Ah! there are bitter tears just beneath that laugh! If you call toler- ating compliments from that young Captain at her right flirting, then she is flirting, and so con- ceals her disgust of her betrothed. And who is that young Captain? He stole into the chair at Lucy's right, and began to talk EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. 203 sentiment before he had had his soup. Who is this fine gentleman of twenty-six, with the oval face, the regular features, the slighlltly supercil- ious mouth, the dimpled chin, the hair so care- fully powdered- and' queued? Who is this ele- gant petit maitre? With what studied gesture he airs his ruffles! How fluently he rattles! How easily he improvises jingle! He quotes French, as if it were his mother-tongue. He smiles and sighs like an accomplished lady-killer. Who is he? Major Emerick, of the Hessian Chasseurs, looks across the table at this gay rattle, and then whispers to his own neighbor, Lord Rawdon, "Zee dat dab maggaroni, Chack Antre; how he bake lubb to de breddy Lucie! Bajor Gurr will bide off his 'ead breddy sood." "Kerr may glower and look like a cannibal," Rawdon returned, in a whisper, "but he will not eat Jack Andrd's heed so long as there's any of that venison left.' "I dinked Chack was id Bedsylvadia or Cher- zey," says Emerick, wiping that enormous mous- tache of his, --a coarse Hessian article, planted like a bushy abattis before his mouth. "He was," replied Rawdon, "and I don't see how he has been able to get here so soon, unless that is his eidolon, his wraith, and moves like the ghost in Hamlet. I suppose he heard that Kerr page: 204-205[View Page 204-205] iU4 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. was going to marry the heiress, and there would be an Adjutancy looking for an Adjutant, and has posted up to offer himself. He didn't know I was to have it. Jack is in too much hurry to be a great man. His vanity will get lirn into a scrape some of these days." So this sentimental Captain is Jack Andre. A pretty face; but there is gallows in it. A pretty laced cravat; but the tie has slipped ominously round under the left ear. Ah! Jack, Rawdon is right; thy vanity will be the death of thee. Suppose thou hast been jilted by the pretty Mrs. R. L. Edgeworth, nee Sneyd, do not be over hasty to gain name and famre, that she may be- sorry she loved the respectable Richard, and not thee, flippant Jack. Sink thy shop- keeping days; nobody remembers them against thee. Do not try by unsoldierly tricks of brib- ery and treachery, and a correspondence after the bagman model, to get for thyself the rank of Brigadier and the title Sir John. And, Jack, take warning that the latitude of Brothertoft Manor is unhealthy for thee in the autumn. Never come here again, or thy bootjack will draw thy boots and find death in them! Swing- ing by the neck is a sorry exit for a petit maitre, and it must be annoying to know that, in punish- ment for a single shabby act, one's fame is stand- ing forever in the pillory in Westminster Abbey. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 205 Captain Andr4 whispered soft nothings to Lucy. And though Kerr glowered truculently, she lis- tened, much to' the amusement of Emerick and Rawdon. Lucky, perhaps, for the daughter, that mamma, at the head of the table, did not detect this by-play! She might have scented revolt, and hastened the marriage. An hour would have brought the Tartar's chaplain; five minutes would have clothed him in his limp surplice, and in five more, Lucy, still quelled by the old tyran- ny, would have stammered, "love, honor, and obey," - and " die." She was not always very attentive to her but- terfly companion. Sometimes she bent forward, and looked at her mother, sitting in all her glory between Army and Navy, and the daughter's cheeks burned with shame. She longed to fly away from all this splendor, somewhither where she could dwell innocently and weep away the infinite sorrow in her gentle heart. If she had not been too be- wildered by her throng of battling hopes and fears within, by the clatter of the feast, and Jack Andrd's mischianza of gossip and compliment, her notions of right and wrong, of crime and punishment, would have become sadly confused. Questions did indeed drift across her miind,-- 'How can she sit there so proud and hand- some? How can she be so calm and hard? page: 206-207[View Page 206-207] 206 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. How can she bear the brunt of all these eyes, and lead the talk so vigorously? She wields and manages every one about her. They ap- plaud her wit. They listen to her suggestions. She seems to comprehend these political mat- ters better than any of them. Hear Sir Henry Clinton, 'Madam, if you were Queen of Eng- land, these rebel Colonies would soon be taught subjection.' It is half compliment of guest to hostess; but more than half truth. For she is an imperious, potent woman. And has evil in her soul given her this power and this knowledge? Must women sin to be strong? How can she sit there, knowing what she knows of herself, knowing what is known of her? She seems to triumph. Triumph! alas! why is she not away in silence and solitude, with a veil over her bad beauty, praying to God to forgive her for the harm she has done, and for the sin she is? Is such hypocrisy possible? Or am I deceived? May not she perhaps, perhaps, be worthy? May she not be wise and good? Is it not I who am the hypocrite? May she not mean kindly in providing me a man of rank and power as a protector in these rude timnes? Are not my sus- picions the ignorance of a child,--my plots the wicked struggles of a rebellious heart against duty? O God, pity and guide me!" Lucy felt tears starting to her eyes at these EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 207 new and cruel thoughts, and forced herself again to listen to Jack Andr4's small-talk. Jack was telling a clever story of a raid he and some brother officers had made from New York on the poultry-yards of Staten Island. An old lady with a broomstick had endeavored to defend the Clove Road against these turkey- snatchers, and he gave her drawl to the life. "Then," says Jack, "out came Captain Ram- bullet, with the rusty matchlock of Rambouillet his Huguenot ancestor, and interposed a smell of cornstalk whiskey between us and his hen-roost." This scene, too, Jack gave with twang and drawl to the life, amid roars of laughter, and cries of "Coot! coot!" from Major Emerick. Lucy did not laugh. She had all at once discovered that her sympathies were with these rebels, nasal twang and all. "My father is one of them," she thought. "If I am to be saved from marrying this coarse glutton, it must be by a rebel. Putnam and his officers were not so showy as these men; but they seemed more in earnest." I do not succeed in entertaining you, fair lady," says Andr4, sotto voce. "Your thoughts are all for that happy fellow beside you,"- and he looked with a little sneer towards Kerr, who was applying to Bottle for the boon of wit. A feeling of utter despair came over poor page: 208-209[View Page 208-209] 208 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Lucy, as she turned involuntarily, and also glanced at the animal. Then she drew away indignantly from the mani who had put this little stab into her heart. "Are there no gentlemen in the world?" she thought. "Do men dare to speak so and look so at other young ladies?" "Loog ad de breddy Meess," says Emerick, holding a wine-glass before his bushy abattis, as a cover. '"Zhe is nod habbie wid Chack, nor wid Gurr!" - "A dozen fellows," Rawdon rejoined, behind his glass, " of better blood than Jack, and better hearts than Kerr, would have cut in there long ago. The daughter is as sweet and pure as a lily. But who dares marry such a mother- in-law?" -and he shrugged his shoulders ex- pressively toward the hostess. Do we talk so at dinner-tables in 1860? eh, nous autres? The hostess now rose, and beckoned her daugh- ter. "I leave you, geftlemen, to your toasts," she said. "Major Kerrwill be my representative." She moved o the door. Army and Navy, Albion and Hesse, all sprang to open for her. A murmur of admiration for her beauty and bearing applauded the exit. Lady Brothertoft seemed to be at her climax. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 209 Kerr of course did not let the toasts lag. "The King, gentlemen!" Cheers'! Drank cyathis plenis. Sir Henry Clinton rises, gleaming star, red nose, and all, and proposes, ' Our hostess!" Bumpers and uproar! Then they load and fire, fast and furious. Bottle can hardly gallop fast enought to supply ammunition. "The Army!" 'Hooray, hooray! Speech. from Lord Rawdon!" "The Navy!" "Three cheers for Commo- dore Hotham!" "The captured forts!" Drank in silence to the memory of Colonel Campbell and Count Grabowski, killed there. "Luck to Jack Burgoyne!" "Pouting Jack," Andr6 suggests. "May he be a spiler 'to Schuyler, and fling Gates over the hedge into the ditch!" Laughter and cheers, and im- mense rattling of glasses on the table. "Here 's to General Vaughan and his trip up the river to-morrow! -Xay he add a moral to the Esopus fables!" "The Brandywine! and here's hoping Mr. Washington may have another taste of the same cup!" Are modern toasts and dinner-table wit of this same calibre? .. N page: 210-211[View Page 210-211] 210 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Kerr rose and endeavored to offer the famous sentiment known as The Four Rules of Arith- metic. He was muddled by this time, and the toast got itself transposed. He gravely pro- posed, in a -thick voice, and in words with no syllables,-"Addition to the Whigs! Subtrac- tion to the Tories! Multiplication to the King's foes! Division to his friends!" And added Kerr, out of his own head,-"Cuffush'n t' ev'ryborry!" Ironical cheers from Jack Andr6. Where- upon good-natured Emerick, to cover the gen- eral serio-comic dismay, rose and said, - "Shet- tlemen, I kiv Bajor Gurr and his breddy bride." Double bumpers. "Hoorayryrayryray! Rattle everybody, with glasses, forks, and nut-crackers. One enthusiast flung his glass over his head, and then blundered out a call for Captain Andr6's song, "The Lover's Lament." Lord Rawdon was the only one to perceive the bad omen. So Jack, without more solicitation, began, in a pretty voice, - "Return, enraptured hours, When Delia's heart was mine," - and so on through a dozen stanzas of Strephon- ics, -a most moving ditty, the words and music his own. Everybody felt a little maudlin when this Jack of all airs and graces closed his lay with a dulcet EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 2" quaver. There was a momentary pause in the revel. In such pauses young gentlemen who love flirtation more than potation dodge off and join the ladies. Let us follow this good example. A revel, with Major Kerr for its master, may easily grow to an orgie; and meanwhile the mother and daughter are sitting in the parlor alone. page: 212-213[View Page 212-213] IV. THE sun of October had gone down below the golden forests on the golden hills. It was dusk, and the two ladies sat in the parlor, dimly lit by a glimmering fire. a They were alone; unless the spirit of the first Edwin Brothertoft was looking at them from Vandyck's portrait on the wall. That wonderful picture hung in its old place. More than a century, now, it had been silently watching the fortunes of the family. No Provincial daubs had ventured within sight of this masterpiece. Each successive Brothertoft was always proud to know that his face, at its best, was his ancestor's repeated. Each de- scendant said, "Vandyck painted us, once for all, in the person of our forefather. When there is another Colonel Brothertoft, or a second Van- dyck, it will be time to give the picture a com- panion." So one perfect work had vetoed a whole gal- lery of wooden visages. The present Mrs. Brothertoft had always dis- X EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 213 liked the picture. She had used it as a pre- text for first summoning her husband to her side. When she brought shame into the house, she began to dread its tacit reproach. Tile eyes of the Colonel, sad and stern, seemed forever to follow her. His wife's gentle face grew mer- ciless. Even the innocent child on the canvas read her secret heart. By and by, to escape this inspection, she had the portrait covered with a crimson silk curtain. "A Vandyck," she said, " is too rare and too precious to be given up to flies." For many years the ancestors had been left to blush behind a screen of crimson silk. To-day, before dinner, her guests had asked to see this famous work of the famous master. Y-o one could detect the tremor in her heart at. this request. No one could see how white her face grew as she fumbled with the cords, nor how suddenly scarlet as she drew aside the cur- tain. Every one exclaimed in -genuine or conven- tional admiration. The picture represented that meeting at Old Brothertoft Manor, after the battle of Horn- castle, in the time of the Great Rebellion. The Colonel was-in his corslet, buff and jackboots of a trooper. His plumed hat, caught by a cord, had fallen upon his shoulder. He wore his hair page: 214-215[View Page 214-215] 214 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. long, and parted in the middle, like a Cavalier, not like a crop-eared Roundhead. On one arm rested the bridle of the grand white charger be- side him. With the other he held his fair boy, now pacified from his Astyanax fright, and smiling at his father's nodding crest and glinting breast- plate. The wife, the first Lucy Brothertoft, stood by, regarding the two shealoved best with tender solicitude. It was, indeed, a sweet do- mestic group, and the gentleman's armor, his impatient war-horse, and that hint in' the back- ground of the Manor-House, smoking and in ruins, gave it a dramatic element of doubt and danger,- a picture full of grace, heroism, and affection,--one to dignify a house, to ennoble and refine a household. Lucy looked at her mother as the curtain parted and revealed the three figures. To the guests they were Art; to the ladies they were mute personages in a tragedy. Lucy saw her. mother's glance, quick and covert, at these faces she had so long evaded. The daughter could understand now why, as Mrs. Brothertoft looked, her countenance seemed resolutely to harden, and grow more beautifully Gorgon than ever. "Quite a chef-d'aeuvre!" says Sir Henry Clinton, looking through his hand, with a knotw- ing air.--"What color! what chiar' oscuro! what drapery!"Jack Andr6 exclaimed.-"No EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 215 one has ever painted high-bred people as Van- dyck," said Lord Rawdon.-"Breddy bicksher!" was Major Emerick's verdict. -"You must be proud, Madam," said honest Commodore Hot- ham, ignorant of scandal, " to bear this honored and historic name." While these murmurs of approval were going on, Plato announced dinner. The guests filed out, leaving the picture uncovered. It still re- mained so, now that the mother and daughter sat in the dusky room, after dinner. The flash- ing and fading fire gave its figures movement and unreal life. Lucy glanced at her mother's face, now dim and far away, and now, as the fire blazed up, leaping forth from its lair of darkness. "Certainly," she thought, "' my mother was never so terribly handsome."' It was true. She was an imperial woman, face, form, and bearing. How majestic her strong, straight nose, her full chin, her vigorous color, her daring eyes, her brow of command, and her black hair dressed, after a mode of the day, in a tower, and falling in masses on the neck! More flesh and more color would have made her coarse. Is it possible that the excite- ment of a bad conscience has refined her beauty? Must the coarse take the poison of sin, as the fine take the medicine of sorrow, to kill the , page: 216-217[View Page 216-217] 216 EDWIN BROTIhEiCOFT. carnal element in their natures? Is it needful for some to wear, through life, a harsh dishonor next the skin? "How can this be?" thought Lucy. "Should not the heart have peace, that the face may wear beauty, the emblem of peace? Can there be peace in her heart?" Peace! As if in answer, at a flash of firelight, the mother's face glared out fierce and cruel. Sternness, but no peace there! Lucy turned, and took refuge with the person- ages of the picture. "You," she addressed them in ,mute appeal, "are a world nearer my heart than this unmoth- erly woman beside me. O chivalric gentleman! O benign lady! encourage and sustain me! My heart will break with these doubts and plots and perils." The two ladies sat silent by the firelight. The guests were noisy, two doors off.\ They were laughing and applauding Kerr's tipsy toasts, Andrd's song, Emerick's Hessian butch- ery of the King's English. At a louder burst of revelry Lucy started, shrank, and glanced at her mother's impassive face,-a loyal' mask to its mistress. Mrs. Brothertoft also looked up, and caught Lucy's eye. For an instant the two gazed at one another. There wRs an instant's spiritual * X ED\VIN BROTHEKTOFT. 217 struggle,--the fine nature against the coarse, the tainted being against the pure. Their two souls stood at their eyes, and battled for a breath, while the fire flashed like a waving of torches. The flash sunk, the room was dark again. But before the light was gone the guilty eyes wavered, the guilty spirit cowered. Mrs. Broth- ertoft looked away, seeking refuge from her daughter, against whose innocent heart she was devising an infamy. As she turned, she caught sight of the picture. It was steadily regarding her,--a judge, remote, unsympathetic, Rhadamanthine. At this sight, the perpetual inner battle in her evil heart stormed to the surface. Her coun- tenance was no longer an impassive mask. Lucy suddenly saw a bedlam look leap out upon those beautiful features. It seemed to Mrs. Brothertoft that the Furies, whose companionship and hints she had so long encouraged, now closed in upon her, and became body of her body, soul of her soul. She rose, and strode up to the uncovered por- trait. She stood a moment, surveying it in silence,- herself a picture in the fire-lit obscure. How beautiful her white shoulders, her white bosom above the dark silk, cut low and square in front, after a fashion of the time! How won- 10 O page: 218-219[View Page 218-219] 218 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT, drously modelled her perfect arms! The dia- mond at her throat trembled like the unwinking eye of a serpent. She raised her white right arm, and pointed at the figure of the Parliamentary Colonel. By the firelight, it seemed as if he, thus sum- moned, still holding his eager white horse by the bridle, stepped out before the canvas, ready for this colloquy. Lucy was terrified by her mother's wild ex- pression and gesture. The gentleman in the portrait had taken more than ever the semblance of her father's very self. But he wore a sterner look than she remembered on that desolate face. The daughter shuddered at this strange meet- ing of her parents, --one in the flesh, one in the spirit. "Sir!" said Mrs. Brothertoft, still pointing at the picture. There was scorn, veiling dread, in her voice. Lucy could not co trol herself. She burst into tears. At the sound of her first sob, the mother came to herself. Bedlam tore itself out of her face with a spasm. She let fall her round, white arm. A tremor and a chill shook her. With these, the Furies seemed to glide forth from her being. They stood for an instanlt, dim and rus- tling forms in the glimmer. Then they van- EDWIN BROT'I'HETOFT. 219 ished to their place of call. Mrs. Brothertoft dashed the curtain over the picture and moved away. She did not perceive--for she looked thither no more--that by her violent movement she had broken the cord, and let down one fall of the curtain, at the top, so that there was space for the heads of the soldier and his white horse to appear. There those heads wait, as if at a window. There they seem, horse and man, to watch for their moment to spring into that dusky room, lit by the flashes of a dying fi e. Mrs. Brothertoft turned, and laid her hand on her sobbing daughter's shoulder. "You' seem agitated and hysterical, my dear," she said, almost gently. "Perhaps you had?bet- ter hide your tears in your pillow. We shall not see our noisy friends for some time." Again their eyes met for an instant. But the mother mistook Lucy's pleading expression. She had lost her power of deciphering an in- nocent face. She fancied she read contempt and triumph, where there was only pity and love longing to revive. She turned away, and, yielding to a brutal emotion, resumed, - Yes, go, Lucy, and keep out of sight for the evening! We must not have red eyes and swollen cheeks when Adonis comes from dinner with pretty speeches for his fair bride." page: 220-221[View Page 220-221] 220 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Lucy rose, disappointed and indignant, and left the parlor without "Good night." Given two weeks instead of two days before marriage, and this gentle spirit might emancipate itself. But obedience is still a piety with Lucy. Mute mental protests against injustice do not train the will. It must win strength by strug- gles. Her will has sunk into chronic inertia. She suffers now for; her weakness, as if it were a crime. She fled by the noisy dining-room and up to her chamber in the tower at the northwest cor- ner of the house. In the mild, clear, star-lit night she could see yellow autumn among the woods around the mansion. Beyond, the white river belted the world. The lights of the Brit- ish frigates sparkled like jewels in this silver cincture. Dunderberg, large and vague, hid the spaces westward, where night was overflowing twilight. Northward, the Highlands closed the view, dim as Lucy's hope. Ah! why was there no clairvoyante Sister Anne to cry that she saw " somebody coming,"- to tell the desolate girl, staring from her window into the unfriendly night, that succor was afoot, and hastening in- three detachments southward, as fast as the boulder, the bog, and the forest would permit. But there was no Sister Anne, no friend EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 221 within or without the house. And so, closed doors! Weep, sob, pray, poor child. Suffer, suf- fer, young heart! Suffer and be strong! Closed doors at last, and quiet at the Manor. Songs silent. Revelry over. The guests have gone, walking as men walk after too many bumpers. Sentinels here and there have re- ceived the inarticulate countersign. The boats' crews, chilly and sulky with long waiting, have pulled the "lobsters" off to the frigates, and boosted them up the sides. They have tumbled into their berths in ward-room or cabin,-- one, alas! with his Hessians on! They must quickly sleep off wassail, and be ready to stir with dawn, for at sunrise General Vaughan starts with his flotilla up the river. And most of the diners- out, whether their morning headaches like it or not, must go with the General to commit arson upon Esopus, alias Kingston, a most pestilent nest of rebels. Quiet then aboard the Tartar, the Preston, and the Mercury, swinging to their anchors in the calm river! Quiet at the Manor-House! but not peaceful repose, -for in their dreams the spirits of the motler and the daughter battle, and both are worn and weary with that miserable war. page: 222-223[View Page 222-223] V. THERE were three headaches next morning at the breakfast-table at Brothertoft Manor. Major Kerr carried an enormous ache in his thick skull. His was the crapulous headache. He knew it well. Every manner of cure, except prevention, he had experimented upon. The soda-water-cure did not reach his malady. The water-cure, whether applied in the form of pump or a wet turban, was equally futile. "It couldn't have been t'other bottle that has made me feel so queer," Kerr soliloquized. "Must have been Jack Andr4's mawkish songs. I never could stand poetry." So he marched down to breakfast, more Rubens in complexion than ever, and twice as surly. Spending tears had given Lucy her headache. She had wept enough to fill a brace of lacry- matories. The pangs sharpened when she saw Adonis appear, very red and very gruff. He seemed fairly loathsome to her now. "Must such a beast -yes, I will say beast- as that come near me?" thought she. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 223 Strong language for a young lady; but appro- priate. It is well to have a few ugly epithets in one's vocabulary. Hard words have their virtue and their place, as well as soft ones. Mrs. Brothertoft also had a headache. She looked pale and ill this morning. This will never do, Madam. Consider your beauty! It will consume away, if you allow so much fever in your brain. Breakfast was more silent even than yester- day's. No headache cared to ask sympathy of either of the others. Lucy said not a word. She compelled herself to be at table. She dreaded her mother's pres- ence; but she dreaded her absence still more. Lucy suffered under the uneasiness of a young plotter. She knew that her plot was visible in lier face. She trembled at every look. And yet she felt safer while she was facing her foes. Poor child! if she could have wept, as she wished, freely and alone, a dozen of lacryma- tories-magnums-- would not have held- her tears. Moody Mrs. Brothertoft is also silent. She does not think it good policy to draw out her son-in-law this morning. Only a wretchedly low card, and no trump, will respond to the attempt. T' other bottle rather drowns the power of repartee. Major Kerr was too inarticulate page: 224-225[View Page 224-225] 224 EDWIN BROTIIEI/TOFT. last night to be very coherent this morning. A courtly bow and a fine manner are hardly, to be expected at levee from a hero lugged to his couchde by Plato and two clodhoppers,-- themselves a little out of line and step with too many heeltaps. The hostess does not choose by solicitous questions to get growls from the future bridegroom, such as,-- Kerr loquitur. "Yes, thank you; my tea is mere milksop; my egg an addle; my toast a chip; my butter lard; my buckwheat cakes dem'd flabby. Everything has a tipsy taste and smells of corked Madeira. O, my head!" Such talk would not make the lover more captivating. He had better be left to himself, to take his breakfast with what stomach he may. Nor does Mrs. Brothertoft think it wise to remark upon yesterday's dinner and its distin- guished guests to her daughter. Remark brings rejoinder. This morning, again, Lucy had no kiss for her mother. Instead of the warm, ten- der caress of other days, with warmth and ten- derness for two, Lucy's manner was grave and distant. Mrs, Brothertoft divines incipient rebellion in her daughter. She does not wish to let it cul- tivate itself with contradictions. If she should propound, "It is a fine morning," Lucy might EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 225 say, "It seems to me cold as Greenland." If she suggested, "My dear, have the horses sad- dled, and take Major Kerr to see the view from Cedar Ridge," Lucy would probably respond, ' Major Kerr is not fond of nature, and I am afraid of marauders." If she remarked, "What a grand, soldierly creature Major Emerick is! What an amusing'accent! and his moustache low terribly charming!"Lucy might curl her pretty lip, and reply, "Grand! soldierly! the lirsute ogre! As to his accent, - I do- not inderstand Hessian; and it does not amuse me ;o hear good pronounced 'coot,' and to have pictures, flowers, soup, and the North River, ill classed together and complimented as 'bred- ly.' And as to his moustache, --no moustache s tolerable; and if any, certainly not that great )lack thing." Nor would it do for the mother ;o say, "I am sure you found Captain Andrd an Admirable Crichton," and to hear from her laughter in reply, "Don't speak of him! I am till sick with his sentimentality of a Strephon. Ie is a flippant coxcomb. I do not wonder qiss Honora Sneyd got tired of him, with his ittle smile and his little sneer." Such responses Lucy would probably have nade to her mother's attempts at breakfast-table alk. Do these answers seem inconsistent with he great sorrow and the great terror in the girl's 10* Q page: 226-227[View Page 226-227] 226 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. heart? Our passions, like our persons, are not always en grande tenue. It is a sign that the heart is not quite broken, when its owner has life enough to be pettish. The popgun is the father of the great gun. Silly skirmish and bandying of defiance precede the great battle for life and death. So Mrs. Brothertoft knew, and she was not willing to give Lucy the chance to hear herself say, 'No.' If she were once publicly compro- mised as of the negative faction, she might, even at this late hour foster her little germ of inde- pendence. She Fight wake up to-morrow with a Will of Her Ol0n, grown in a single night as big as Jack's bean-stalk. She might expand her solitary, forlorn hope of a first No into a con- quering army. No, No,-only a letter and a cipher, -she might add ciphers, multiply it by successive tens and make it No,ooo,ooo,ooo,-- and so on, until she was impregnable to the appointed spouse. This of course must not be. The mother did not know that Lucy had hoist- ed a signlal of distress, and that she was almost ready to Paul her flag up from half-mast, and fly it at the masthead of defiance. This Mrs. Broth- ertoft did not suspect of her submissive and meek child. She knew nothing of Voltaire's errand. But she had grown suddenly apprehensive and EDWIN BROTHEiTOFT. 227 timorous, and hardly recognized her old intrepid self this morning. She began to quail a little more and more before her daughter's innocence. For all reasons, she did not desire to provoke discussion. A grim, mute breakfast, therefore, at Brother- toft Manor. Each headache looked into its tea-cup in silence. Major Kerr crunched a bit of dry toast, instead of feeding omnivorously. There is no conversation of this party to re- port, gay or glum. But tableau is sometimes more dramatic than talk. A new-comer at the door glanced at this unsociable trio, and deciphered the picture pretty accurately. It was old Voltaire, limping forward from the kitchen. Lucy sat with her face toward the pantry door, and first saw him. Flash! Lucy lightened and almost showered tears at the rising of this black cloud, charged with fresh electricity. Flash back! from the whites of Voltaire's eyes and from his teeth. It was a brief flash, but abiding enough to show Lucy, through her gloom, one figure stealing to her succor. Him she was sure of, page: 228-229[View Page 228-229] 228 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. --her father. But one gleam from the whites of a black could not reveal the other recruits to her rebel army. So they must remain la- tent, with their names and faces latent, until she can have :an interview with her complotter. But what a hot agony of hope blazed up within her at Voltaire's look and cunning nod! "I must not scream with joy," she thought. "I must not shriek out this great, wicked, tri- umphant laugh I feel stirring in me. I must not jump up and hug the dear old, soul. Thank Heaven, my tea is hot, and I can choke myself and cry." Which she proceeded to do; and under cover of her napkin got her face into mask condition again. She was taking lessons - this fair novice - in what a woman's face is made for;-- namely, to look cool when the heart is fiery; to look dull, when the wits have just suffered the whetstone; to look blank, when the soul's hieroglyphs will stare out if a blush is only turned on; to look tame, Jwhen the spirit is tiger; to look peace, when there is no peace; to look mild as new milk, when the blood boils and explosion butts against the wired corlk of self-control. A guile- ful world, guileless lady! and you must fight your fight to-day with silence and secrecy, lest mamma detect a flutter in your bosom, and your EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 229 fledgling purpose of flight get its pin-feathers pulled, if not its neck wrung. Voltaire limped forward with a plate of buck- wheat cakes. They, were meal of the crop -., which had whitened the slopes of Westchester this summer, and purpled them this autumn. They were round as a doubloon, or the moon at its fullest. Their edges were sharp, and not ragged and taggy. Their complexion was most delicate mulatto. Their texture was bubbly as the wake of a steamboat. Eyes never lighted on higher art than the top cake, and even the one next the plate utterly refused to be soggy. In- deed, each pancake was a poem,-a madrigal of Sappho's most simply delicate confectioning, round as a sonnet, and subtle in flavor as an epigram. These pearls Voltaire cast before the party. Nobody partook. Nobody appreciated. Nobody noticed. The three appetites of the three head- aches were too dead to stir. The old fellow was retiring, when Mrs. Broth- ertoft addressed him roughly. "I shall promote Plato and break you, Vol- taire, if you are taken sick at the wrong time again." ' Sorry, missu's. Colored mobbas, missus. No stoppin' him. Bery bad indeed!" His appearance disarmed suspicion. He was page: 230-231[View Page 230-231] 230 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. a weary and dismal object after his journey. No one, to look at him, would have divined that his pangs were of the motive powers, and not the digestive,--that he suffered with the nicked shin, the stubbed toe, and the strained calf, and was utterly unconscious of a stomach, except as a locality for colonizing a white lie in. VI. WHEN Pyramus and Thisbe, when Coeur de Lion and Blondel, want speech of each other, Wall will ever have " a cranny right and sinister " for their whispers, will "u show a chink to blink' through with their eyne." Breakfast was over. Voltaire was in the pan- try, clashing dish and pan for a signal. Lucy waited her moment to dart in and get her hopes of escape made into certainties. "I am going up stairs, Lucy," said her mother, "to give Dewitt her last hints about your wed- ding-dress. Come up presently and try it on." She went out, leaving lover and lady together. Kerr stood before the fire in his favorite pos- ture. His face was red, his jacket was red. He produced the effect of a great unmeaning daub of scarlet in a genre - mauvais genre - picture. The big booby grew embarrassed with himself. The quiet presence of this young girl abashed him. He knew that his suit was an insult to her. He saw that she did not appreciate his feet and inches. Neither his cheeks nor his shoulders page: 232-233[View Page 232-233] 232 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. nor his calves touched her heart. His vanity had been hurt, and he felt a spiteful- triumph that she was in his power. This morning he was ashamed of himself. It is a grievous thing that men cannot go to bed tipsy and wake up without headaches and with self-respect. Perhaps it will be different when Chaos comes again. Kerr felt disgusted with himself, and embar- rassed. He wanted to talk to cover his awk- wardness. He did not know what to say. The complaint is not uncommon. "I suppose she knows it's a fine day, and wont thank me for telling her," he thought. "Vaughan's trip up the river,-that's talked out. I made the pun abbut Esopus and Esop's fables, that Rawdon got 4ff last night, and she did n't laugh. I wish I had Jack Andrd's tongue. I have half a mind to cut it out of him the dashed whipper-snapper--for trying to get her to flirt with him yesterday. I suppose I ought to be making love now. But she has never let me come near enough to make what I call love. Well, I must say something. Here goes! Ahem! Lucy - Miss Lucy." "Sir." ' It's a very fine day." i "Very." ," A most uncommonly fine day for this doosed climate." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 233 , I No reply. i "I'd box the dumb thing's ears if she was Mrs. K.," thought the Major. "But she sha'n't silence me. I'll give her another chance. Ahem! Miss Lucy! Would n't you like to stroll out and take the air?"? "No, I thank you. Do not let me detain you." "I say, you know, we're to be married to- morrow. You need n't be so infernally distant." c' My mother wishes me to join her with the dressmakers." "Well, if you wont come, you wont," says Kerr, taking himself off in dudgeon. He walked out upon the lawn. The air was nine-oxygen azote of the purest proof. He swal- lowed it boozily, as if it were six-water grog. Lucy hied to the trysting-place, where the arch-plotter was waiting amid pans and dishes. "O Voltaire, tell me!" she cried. And here tears interrupted her, and gushed as if she in- tended to luse the biggest pan for a lacrymatory. "Don't cry, Miss Lucy," the old fellow says. "It's good news!" At which she only wept the more. Without much knowledge of the chemistry of tears, Voltaire saw that spending them relieved and calmed the young lady. Meanwhile, to be talking on indifferent subjects until her first burst was over, he said, "I saw Major Scrammel page: 234-235[View Page 234-235] 234 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. at Fishkill, Miss Lucy. He asked after your health."' "I am obliged to him." The name seemed to act like a dash of cold water. These Majors fatigued, her. Scrammel Yankee, Emerick Hes- sian, Kerr British,--she liked none of them. She began to feel a disgust for the grade. "My father!" she said, with her whole heart in the word, " tell me of him. He has not for- gotten me. He loves me. He will save me from this - this--" A sob drowned the epithet. "He loves you dearly," Voltaire responded. "Lub," he still pronounced the precious word. He brought his two thick lips together to sound the final "b," instead of lightly touching his upper teeth against his lower lip and breathing out " ve " final. This great fact of love established, with all its sequel, by a single word, Lucy, womanlike, de- sired to know that this dear new lover no longer misunderstood her. She must be satisfied that she stood right in his esteem before she could take thought of her own dangers. "You told him," she said, eagerly, " that I was not an unnatural daughter, -only deceived and' deluded by this cruel woman?" Tears had started again, as she thought of the misery he must have suffered for her disloyalty. But indignation at her mother burned them up, and she closed her sentence sternly. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 235 "He sees through it all,' the old ambassador replied. "How did he look? Not very sad, I hopell?" she said. Womanlike again, she must have the person before her eyes. She must see him, a visible being,-that she could take to her heart with infinite love and pity and hope,-- before she could listen to his message of comfort to her. "He looked pretty old, Miss Lucy. His hair's grown gray. It ought n't to. He's a boy still,- only a little better than for y. He could make his life all over again yet. But he looked old and settled down sad. He 's got a sargeant's coat on, instead of a general's; but he looks, into his face, as if he know'i all generals know, and a heap more." "My dear father!" interjected Lucy in the middle of Voltaire's description. And she thought what a beloved task it would be for her to renew and restore that ruined life. "And now, Voltaire," she said, " can he pro- tect me?" "We talked it all over. He did n't see any- thing he could do. He said he was too broken- hearted to plan for anybody." Poor Lucy! all her hopes thus dashed down! She could almost hear her own heart break. But Voltaire continued: "He had guv"-- page: 236-237[View Page 236-237] 236 EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. (no Tombighee, old boy!)-" given it all up, and I was goin' off feelin' mighty low, - mighty low, I tell you, Miss Lucy. I started off for the woods and sot down, lookin' for a squer- ril-hole to git into, and die like a fourlegs. Jess then, jess before I 'd found my dyin' bed, I heerd somebody screech, ' Voltaire, Voltaire!' like mad. Fust I thought 't was the Holy Angels. Then I thought praps 't was the Black Debbls, prowlin'. I looked round the woods, pretty skeered, and heerd chestnuts drap. Then come the yell again, and your father lighted right down on me and dragged me back like a go-cart. I did n't know what was comin'; but he yanked me up the bank to the old well afront of Squire Van Wyck's farm-house, and there I saw--" / / At this point of his eager recital Voltaire's ancient bellow had to pause and draw breath. "Saw!" cried Lucy equally eager, peopling this pause with a great legion of upstart hopes, all in buff and blue, fine old Continentals com- plete from boots to queues; but strangers to her, and therefore without faces. " Saw Major Skerrett," gasped Voltaire. All that legion of hopes in Lucy's brain sud- denly condensed into a single heroic Continental vision, with the name Skerrett for a face. She was sure this new-comer meant HFTLP. She EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. 237 could feel her just now breaking heart tie itself together with a chain, each link a letter of the name Skerrett. "Another Major!" she said, half impatiently. There was almost a shade of coquetry in her little protest against this stranger personage. The woman was not dead in her yet. "Anudder Major ob atudder stuff. De good God, not de Debbl,-he make dis one." "O Voltaire, don't talk so! ' Did she object to his fact in physiology, or to his pronunciation? Voltaire, with bellows rested, now began to describe the new hero with enthusiasm. His touches were crude, but picturesque, - a char- coal sketch. "Major Skerrett, Miss Lucy. O my! what a beautiful moustache he had! jess the color of ripe chestnut-leaves, and curling down on each side, so." The black forefinger described an ogee on either black lip. Lucy did not interrupt. She must have her correct image of the new actor before she in- quired his rdle. She perceived already that he was not to be a sicklied Hamlet. Her first picture of the hero had been a figure in a Continental uniform, with the name Sker- rett instead of a face. page: 238-239[View Page 238-239] 238 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Second picture: Lucy sees the mere name vanish. Two chestnut-leaves, fine gold as Octo- ber c n paint them, broad in the middle, blunt at the but, taper toward the point, serrated along the edges, dispose themselves to her mind's eye in the air, and form a moustache. She looks at her vision of this isolated feature, and thinks, "It is much prettier than Major Eme- rick's." "A go-ahead nose," continues Voltaire, with- out pause. Lucy inserts a go-ahead nose into the blank, over and a little ahead of the moustache. Third picture. "No mumps round his cheeks and chin," the [ describer went on. I Not a mump had ever disfigured the cheeks Lucy hereupon balanced on either side of the nose and the chin which she had located under the two chestnut-leaves. Picture fourth. "Eyes blue as that saucer,"-Voltaire pointed to a piece of delicate china, - " and they look like the Holy Angels." Into their sockets Lucy inserted a pair of orbs, saucer in color not in shape, and gave them a holy, angelic expression. She inspected the growing portrait with her own sweet eyes,- they were hazel, " an excellent thing in woman," -and began to think the illumined face very charming. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 239 "Lots of tan on his bark," resumed the painter in words. Lucy dipped her pencil in umber and gave the bark of cheeks, chin, and nose a nut-brown tint, that bravely backed the gold of the mous- tache. "Yaller hair under his cocked hat." "Yellow! if you please, Voltaire," she pro- tested, and with skilful thought' she adjusted the coiffure. "No queue." AL imaginary queue, tied with a tumbled black ribbon, had been bobbing in the air near the hero's cerebellum. Lucy docked it, and, with a scornful gesture, sent it whirling off into the Unseen. "Now," says Voltaire, " you jess stick inl Troot (Truth), Wercher (Virtue), Kerridge (Cour- age), and all the other good things into that are face: you jess clap on a smile that 'll make a dough heart in a bosom turn into light gini- gerbread; and give him a look that can make stubbed toes want to wheel about and turn about and dance breakdowns, and is stickin' plaster to every scratch on an old free colored gentle- man's shins: you jess think you see a Major what Liberty and all the Holy Angels is pullin9 I caps for, and all the Debbls is shakin' huf away from where he stands: you jess git all that page: 240-241[View Page 240-241] 240 EDWIN BROTHEIBTOFT. in your eye, Miss Lucy, and you 've got Major Skerrett." The picture was complete. Truth, Virtue, Courage, and the sister qualities, Lucy had dim- pled into the bronzed cheeks, as a sailor pricks an anchor, or Polly's name, into a brother tar's arm with India ink. She had given the hero's face a smile, yeasty, sugary, and pungent enough to convert the dullest dough heart into light gin- gerbread. She had bestowed upon her ideal a look that would be surgery to scarred shins and light fantasy to the weariest toes. Now she passed her finger over the chestnut-leaf mous- tache to smooth down its serrated edges. Tilhe portrait was done. Lucy surveyed it an instant, and blushed to think it was indeed a Major that women and angels might pull caps for. She blushed to herself--the simple maid- and felt a slight shame at her longing to see if the real man was identical with her ideal. This child-remember she was but eighteen, and had been kept, by herself and her mother, a complete child until just now -this child had hitherto had no ideal of a hero except that he must be Kerr's opposite. We know already her verdict upon the British officers. Of Putnam's family, Scrammel she distrusts; Radidre she would like as a friend, if he were not so Gallic, dyspeptic, and testy; Humphreys is ridiculous, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 241 with his grand airs and his prosy poetasms; Liv- ingston amuses her; - voila tout! "And can this gentleman help?" she asked earnestly, as soon as she had his person before her eyes. "Help!" says Voltaire; " he chi't help help- ing. That's Ilis business under this canopy." The negro stated briefly the scheme for Kerr's capture and her abduction. Lucy comprehended the whole in a moment. "Major Skerrett sent you a message, Miss Lucy," says the successful envoy, closing his report. "Me!" she said. She massacred a little scruple, that Major Kerr's betrothed ought not to be receiving messages from strange majors. "What is it? He is very kind to think of me.", "He said, Tell Miss Brothertoft to be brave, to be prudent, and to keep her room with a headache, until we are ready to start.'" "It makes me brave and prudent, now that I have a strong friend, to trust. But the headache I had is all gone. I never felt so well and happy in my life." "Look at him!"Voltaire rejoined, pointing to Kerr, through the pantry window. "That will make you ache from your head to your heels." She did look, and ached at once with fresh resentment and disgust. " P page: 242-243[View Page 242-243] 24.2 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Kerr was leaning limp against a tree, breath- ing tipsily his nine-oxygen azote. The golden hills, the blue river, and the mountains, blue and gold, had no charms for him. He was thinking, "Almost time to make it seven bells. I can't touch anything stronger than six-water grog this morning. O my head!" "Pretty fellow fur a lubber to my young lady!" says Voltaire. His mispronunciation revealed a truth. This faithful blackamoor now proceeded to act Othello relating his adventures. He had a tragi- comic episode to impart of his "hair-3readth 'scapes," ' of being taken by the insolent foe," of all "' his portance in his travels history "; and what he suffered, shin and sole, in the "rough quarries, rocks, and hills" back of Anthony's Nose, while he dodged by night along the by- paths. Lucy "gave him for his pains a world of sighs," and " loved him for the dangers he had passed " in her service. "Now," said the loyal, squire, in conclusion, "I must set you something to do, Miss Lucy." ' What?" she asked, trembling a little at re- sponsibility. "Send Dewitt and Sally Bilsby off home! They'll want a frolic after working so hard on your wedding-dress. . We must have the house to ourselves to-night." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 243 "To-night! Lucy's heart bounded and sunk. Yes, she must be free to-night, or to-morrow would make her a slave. "Miss Lucy," whispered Voltaire, "two of 'em was here already before sunrise." "Not the -- " She hesitated. "Not the Major! No; old Sam Galsworthy and Hendrecus Canady. You know 'emn. They come to see how the land lay." '"Mother calls; I must go," said Lucy, in a tremor. She gave one look throughv the window at Kerr, leaning limp against' a chestnut-tree. The Skerrett-moustache-colored leaves in myriad pairs shook over him. She seemed to see a myriad of faces, with go-ahead noses, no mumps, angelic blue eyes, bronzed skins, and truth and courage in every line, looking out of the tree, and signalizing her, "Be brave! be prudent!" page: 244-245[View Page 244-245] VII. PORTENTOUS all the morning was Voltaire to Sappho. Now cookery, like chemistry, must have peace to perform its experiments ill. Poor Sappho, witl her husband darting into the kitchen, looking nlmyterious, exploding "Hush!" and darting off again, was as much flustered as a nervous chemical professor when his pupils jeer his juggles with cabbage-liquor, qand turn up rebellious noses at his olefiant gas. Sappho's great experiment of dinner suffered. She put sugar in her soup and salt in her pud- ding. She sowed allspice for peppercorns, and vice versa. She overdid the meat that should have been underdone. She roasted her goose until its skin was plate armor. She baked her piecrust hard as Westchester shale. Yester- day's dinner was sublime; to-day's would be ridiculous. Conspiracy upsets domestic econo- my, as it does political. When Voltaire had deranged his wife with dark hints, he proceeded to perplex his son. \ *' 'EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 245 Plato was lord of the stables. These were times of war. Westchester was beginning to\ suffer for being neutral ground for rebel and tory to plunder. Rents came slow at Brothertoft l[anor, and when they came were short. Econo- my must be consulted. That crafty counsellor suggested that Plato's helpers in the stable should be discharged, and he do three men's work. He was allowed, however, Bilsby juve- nissimus and another urchin from the Manor to "chore" for him. They were unpaid attaches. They did free service as stable-boys, for the honor and education of the thing, for the, priv- ilege of chewing straws among the horses, and for the luxury of a daily bellyful of pork and pudding, and a nightly bed in the 1oft. Voltaire went out to the stable. The six white horses of famous Lincolnshire stock stood, three on this side, three on that. Their long tails oc- casionally switched to knock off the languid last flies of summer. Voltaire stopped at the coach-house door to drive out a noisy regiment of chickens. A lum- bering old coach, of the leathern conveniency order, was shoved away in a corner. There is always such a vehicle in every old family stable,- a stranded ark, that no horse-power will-ever stir again. "Nineteen year ago," thought the ancient page: 246-247[View Page 246-247] 246 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Brothertoft retainer, "nineteen year ago last June, I drew Mister Edwin and that Billop gal, in that conveniency, less than two hundred yards from her house in Wall Street to Trinity Church, to be married. I heerd the Trinity bells say, (Edwin Brothertoft, don't marry a Billop!' I felt it in my bones that she'd turn out mean. Her money brought worse luck than we'd ever had before. And the good luck has n't got holt yet." "Plato," says he, stepping into the great pic- turesque stable, half full of sunshine, half of shade, and half of hay, fragrant as the Fourth of July. "Sir!" says Plato, drawing himself up, and giving a military salute. He had seen much soldiering going on of late, and liked to play at it,--a relic, perhaps, of Gorilla imitativeness. "Themn boys don't look to me in good health." Voltaire pointed to Bilsby and mate. They were both chewing straws,--a pair of dull sharps, like most young clodhoppers. They could tell a calf from a colt with supernatural keenness; but were of the class which gets itself well Peter- Funked before its manhood learns the time of day. "Dey's fat, ragged, and sassy as ary boys dis chile ever seed," rejoined Plato. "Bery weakly dey looks," continued the con- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 247 spirator. " Fallin' away horrible! Neber see sich sickly boys 'n all my born days. Chestnuts is what dey wants. Worms is de trouble. Boys always gits worms onless dey eats suthin on to a bushel of chestnuts in de fall." The two ragamuffins dropped their straws, turned pale, and began to feel snakes wake and crawl within them. "Now, boys," says Voltaire impressively, "if you want ter perwent dem varmint, jess you put fur de woods an' fill yourselves plum full ob chestnuts." "But chestnuts has worms, too," objected Bilsby. "So much de better; dey'll eat yourn. Go 'long now. Stay hum to-night, and don't come roun' here fore to-morrow noon. Be keerfle now! Eat all to-day; and pick to-morrow to keep. You don't look to me like boys who is prepared to die." The pair obeyed, and departed solemnly. Noth- ing but chestnuts could save them from the worm that never dieth. There were two very grave and earnest lads that day cracking burrs in the groves of Brothertoft Manor. Plato stared in consternation as he saw his regiment disbanded. Voltaire winked with both eyes, and chuckled enormously. page: 248-249[View Page 248-249] 248 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Don't you ask me no questions, Plato," says he, "an' you wont have no lies to complex yer mind. I meant to clare de kitchen, ole fokes, young fokes, an so I scared off dem boys, he, ho! Now I's gwine to gib you a conundrum, Plato." Plato let go Volatnte's tail, which he was comb- ing, and pricked up his ears. "What does a young lady do when she don't want to marry her flst husband?" "Marries her second," guessed Plato, cheer- fully. "Plato! I 'se ashamed of you. Dat would be bigamy." The crestfallen groom gave it up. "You gib it up," says the propounder. "Well; she says to her coachman, - it 's bery mysterous dat de coachman's name is Plato. She says to him, Plato!" "What?" interjected the other. "Neber interrump de speaker!" chided Vol- taire. "She says, 'Plato, you know my mare.' Says he, Your mare Volanty, Miss?' Says she,- it's mysterous, but Volanty is her name, -' Now, Plato, you jess poot anudder oat in her manger, an groom her slick as a het griddle, and see de girts and de bridle is right.' And says she, 'Plato, don't you complex yer mind wedder de answer to dat conundrum ain't suthin' about runnin' away. But jess you wait till de seblen seal is opened." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 249 Here the namesake of him of Ferney gave a wise binocular wink. The other philosopher's namesake also eclipsed his whites with a binocular wink. He divined where his sire had been travelling in the past thirty-six hours. He had nodded through the watches of last night to let the senior in un- discovered. He knew of the interview with Old Sam Gal sworthy and Hendrecus Canady, an hour before sunrise. He comprehended enough of the plot to enjoy it as a magnificent conun- drum, which he could guess at all day, sure that the seven seals of mystery would be opened, by and by. Voltaire limped back to the house and his pantry. His butler countenance fell, as he con- templated the empty bottles of yesterday's ban- quet. He could almost have wept them full, if he had known any chemistry to change salt tears to wine. "How those redcoats drink!" he muttered. "Our cellar wont last many more such cam- paigns. I must get up some fresh wine for to-day, and a little brandy to deteriorate Major Kerr." Burns wrote poetry as he pleased, in Scotch, in English, or in a United-Kingdom brogue. Voltaire takes the same liberty, and talks now rank Tombighee, now severe Continental, and "* page: 250-251[View Page 250-251] 250 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. now a lingo of his own. Most men are equally inconsistent, and use one slang in the saloon and another in the salon. Voltaire lighted a candle, and descended into the cellar. "It 's resky," thought he, " to bring a light, without a lantern, among all this straw and rubbish. Fire would n't let go, if it once cotclied here. But nobody ever comes except me." A flaring dip, very free with sparks, was cer- tainly dangerous in this den. Who has not seen such a tinder-box of a place under a care- less old counltry-house? Capital but awesome regions they offer for juvenile hide and seek! How densely their black corners are populated with Bugaboo! The hider and the seeker shud- der alike in those gloomy caverns, and are glad enough to find each other, touch hands and bolt for daylight. Habit, or possibly his complexion in harmony with dusky hues, made Voltaire, independent of the terrors of the place. He marched along, carefilly sheltering his candle with a big paw, brown on the back and red on the palm. Combustibles were faintly visible in the glim- mer. There were empty wine-boxes overflow- ing with the straw that once swaddled their bottles. There was a barrel of curly shavings, a barrel of rags quite limp and out of curl, a EDWIN-- BROTHERTOFT.. 251 barrel of fine flour from the Phillipse Mills, a barrel of apples very fragrant, one of onions very odorous, a barrel of turnips white and shapely, and a bin of potatoes, of the earth, earthy, and amorphous as clods. There were the' staves and hoops of a rotten old beer-cask, leaning together, and trying to hold each other up, like the decayed members of a dead fac- tion., There was a ciderless cider-cask, begin- ning to gape at the seams, like a barge out of water. Rubbish had certainly called a con- gress in this cellar, and the entire rubbish in- terest in all its departments had sent deputies. Old furniture had 'a corner to itself, and it was melancholy to see there the bottomless chairs that people long dead had sat through, the posts of old bedsteads sleeping higgledy-piggledy, and old tables that had seen too many revels in their day, and were tipsily trying to tumble under themselves. Then there was a heap of old clothes and ole clo', ghostly in their forlorn- ness, lifting up arms and holding forth skirts in vain signal for the ragman. It was a gloomy, musty, cavernous place, and Voltaire's faint candle only shed a little shady light around. The butler unlocked the wine-room door. Batteries of dusty bottles in their casemates aimed at him, with flashes of yellow-seal at their muzzles. & page: 252-253[View Page 252-253] 252 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Three bottles for Major Kerr,--his last," he said. "One, very particular, for Major Sker- rett when he comes. One of our French Gutter de Rosy brandy to qualify with. Ranks looks broken here since Major Kerr come. I must close 'em up to-morrow. Bottles likes to lie touchin', so the wine can ripen all alike." The old fellow's hands were so full that he could not lock his door conveniently. He left it open for his next visit of reorganization. He limped off, running the gauntlet of the combustibles. No spark flew, no cinder fell. That masterful plaything, fire, could not be allowed to sport with the old rubbish. How Voltaire proceeded to carry on his pri- vate share of the plot by deteriorating Kerr's allowance of Madeira with Cognac, is a secret of the butler's pantry. It shall not be here re- vealed. Why deteriorate the morals of 1860 by recalling forgotten methods of cheating? Adul- teration is a lost art, thank Bacchus! We drink only pure juices now. Only honest wines for our honest dollars in this honest age. Now from the cellar we will mount to the room above stairs, where Penelope and her maids - no, not Penelope, for she was loyal and disconsolate--where Mrs. Brothertoft and her maids are at work at the san-benito for to- morrow's auto-da-fe. VIII. IF there was a Dieden in 1777, she has gone with the braves who lived before Agamemnon, and like them is forgotten. If there had been a Dieden in little New York of those days, she would not have been called in to make Miss Brothertoft's san-benito, her wed- ding-dress. The resources of the Manor were sufficient. Mrs. Brothertoft could plan the robe. Mrs. De- witt could execute it. Sally Bilsby also lent a 'prentice hand. The silk, white, stiff, and with a distinct bridal rustle, had been bought to order by Bilsby junior, on one of his traitorous trips to New York. Lucy, leaving Voltaire in the pantry, as was described, ran up stairs and faced her wedding- dress without flinching. It is not generally a sight to blanch the cheeks of a young lady. Indeed, one may fancy that a rose finer than roses might bud in the heart, and bloom from neck to forehead, when a bride first beheld the lily-white drapery of her hour of immolation. page: 254-255[View Page 254-255] 254 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Lucy neither blanched nor blushed. "Be brave! be prudent!" the warning of her unseen protector was ringing in her ears. She saw it, inscribed on a label, and hanging from the lips of her vision of his face. The brave do not blanch. The prudent do not blush. So she quietly joined the busy circle, took a needle and stabbed the wedding-dress without mercy. It was a monstrous relief thus to kill time. She did herself, for the hour, " her quietus make with a bare bodkin" and the other weapons of a modiste. - "Stitch, stitch, stitch! Seam, and gusset, and band!" Ah!" she thought, " what a blessing is this distraction of labor! I have shed my tears. If I were to sit inactive, I might brood myself into despair. If I were to think over my wrong, I might flame out too soon. If I look at my mother, I begin to dread her again. I know she could master me still. O my God! sustain me through these last hours of my peril! I never knew how great it was until now. I foresaw a misery; but the degradation of giving myself up to this man, I never even dreamed of. I am ashamed, ashamed to recall that there have been instants when I tolerated him, when I thought that he was not so very gross and coarse. 1 pray God that the sacredness of my soul is not spoilt." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 255 A great agony stirred in her maidenly bosom at this thought. She bent closer to her work. She knew that her mother's eyes were upon her. She heard, without marking, the tattle of the maids. "Fly, little needle!!" she said to herself. "Measure off this pause in my life! Every stitch is a second. Sixty are a minute. Mill- utes make hours, and hours wear out the weary day. Evening must come. If I can but be brave and prudent, I shall see my father and his noble friend, and be safe." Her needle galloped at the excitement of the thought. Mrs. Brothertoft looked at her, and said to her heart, with a sneer, - "Pretty creature! she con- soles herself, it seems. Our boozy, rubicund bridegroom begins to look quite pale and inter- esting, seen through a bridal veil. The touch of white silk cures her scruples easily. Ah! the blushing bride will be resigned to her bliss. Bah! that H-I should dread such a pretty, silly trifler! What a fool I was to think her different from other simpering girls! So, this is the meaning of all her coy little wiles and her headaches. Headaches! she may have as many as she pleases now, in her pensive bower. Ah! I comprehend thee now, fair hypocrite. The slender fingers are impatient for the ring. Fly, page: 256-257[View Page 256-257] 256 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. little bird, to the bosom of thy spouse. Perhaps he will not quite crush thy poor, silly heart. And I have been afraid of her! She is so tickled with her wedding favors, that she will presently be kissing me again for gratitude with more fervor thin ever. But I am sick of her sim- plicity. i am tired of her ' Dearest mammas!' I should strangle her, I dare say, if she were not taken ofif. She grows more like that Edwin Brothertoft lately." "Your dress is ready to try on, Miss Lucy," said Mrs. Jierck Dewitt. So there was a- mighty rustle, and a headless, armless torso of stiff white silk rose up and stood on its skirt. It did Dewitt great credit. Ah! if her character had only been equal to her skill! But she was a brazen hussy, and Sally, her sister, no better. Tel maitre, tel valet. One positively bad woman spoils many negatively bad ones. It would not seem at all unfair if Destiny took ad- vantage of the harm done Jierck Dewitt's wife in punishing the lady of the Manor through her means. Lucy still faced her wedding-dress without flinching. She may even have thought that, if the worst came, it was better to go to the guil- lotine in becoming array. It is perhaps woman to say, "My heart is broken; but my bodice fits without a fold." I , . ..\ EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 257 It is woman, no doubt, but there are women and Women. Lucy could safely admire the robe, and tranquilly criticise it, because she knew that she and it were not to see marriage together. 6"Now shall I unlace you, Miss Lucy?" says the abigail. Yes, abigail; as soon as these masculine eyes, whose business is with the young lady's soul, not with her toilette, can take themselves dec- orously out of the room. page: 258-259[View Page 258-259] IX. NOMBRR de Dieden! what a fit! Unlacing and relacing concluded, these mas- culine eyes, again admitted to'the maiden s bower, are dazzled with unexpected loveliness. There stands the lady, within the perfect dress!!! beautiful to three points of admiration. Sweet eighteen can bear low neck by broad day- light. The struggle in her heart with all her wild emotions of terror and hope was as great a beautifier as the presence of critical wedding- guests, the rustle of a surplice, the electric touch of a gay gold ring, and the first clasp of the hand of a husband. And you, O Peter Skerrett! you have shaved off your moustache and donned a coat much too small, -you have made a guy of yourself for your first interview with this angel! Shall the personal impression she may already have made be here revised and corrected? No; for this is not real sunshine upon her. If she is ever photographed, it shall be in her bright, not EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. I59 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 259 in her dark day. Let her wait till fuller ma- turity for description! It is easy to see the Brothertoft in her. She blends the tender grace of the lady in Vandyck's picture with the quiet dignity of the gentleman. But is there not kin- dling in her face the vigor of another race, her mother's? Perhaps a portrait now would belie her final look. "You are like an angel, Miss Lucy," said Mrs. Dewitt. She was. She stood there in bridal robe, veil, and wreath. Her hands were clasped firm to control her insurgent heart. Her lips were parted, and she was whispering to herself, "Be brave! Be prudent!" Her eyes overlooked the present, and saw hope in the blue sky above the golden Highlands through her window. Yes; like an angel. There was a hush for a moment. The three bad women - the pert hoyden, the false wife, and ' the proud mistress of the Manor - were silenced and abashed. Again the old pang stirred in the mother's bosom. Again she longed to throw herself at her daugh- ter's feet and pray forgiveness. But again she gained that defeat of a victory over her woman- liness. She trampled down the weakness of re- pentance. The bedlam look flickered over her features, and she hardly restrained her furious page: 260-261[View Page 260-261] 260 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. . impulse to leap forward and rend the innocent face and the maiden bosom that so shamed her. "You do look just like an angel, Miss Lucy," Abby Dewitt asseverated, with the air of a con- naisseuse in the article. "Don't she, Sally?" The two thereupon gave tongue to voluble flatteries. "Your work does you great credit, Dewitt," Lucy said. "Mamma, cannot we spare; Abby and Sally to go home to the farm to-night? They deserve a holiday after this long confine- ment. And to-morrow will be a busy day again." "Of course, my dear, if they wish it." Mrs. Brothertoft was glad to put her daughter under obligation. The women again gave tongue with thanks. They were always, as Voltaire had said, ready to get away for a frolic. Lucy smiled to herself at the easy success of her stratagem. She had packed off baggage and baggage, without sus- picion. "What a conspirator I am becoming!" she thought. "Ah! silly Lucy, the child, the thing, to be flung away! She too can help baffle the evil schemes against herself. When these coarse women are gone, there will be not a soul but friends within a mile of the house." Dinner was tardy to-day, after the late break- fast following the revel. l EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 261 : Nine-oxygen azote by the lung-full had given tone to Major Kerr's system. His appetite for meat and drink were in full force again, all the stouter for this morning's respite. "What a lucky dog I am," he said, "to dodge that expedition of Vaughan's! I 'm 'the soldier tired of war's alarms,' Miss Lucy." "You do not care about laurels any more," Mrs. Brothertoft said, with her half-sneer. "Not when I can get roses." His look with this brought bfire into Lucy's cheeks. "No," resumed he; "I should be glad enough to help burn the dashed repels' houses over their heads, and them, too, in their beds. Here's con- fusion to 'em, and luck to Jack Burgoyne! I hate the vulgar ' varmint.' But I don't want to leave a good dinner to see bonfires. I know where I'm well off, and going to be better. Eh, Miss Lucy?" Her heart began to throb and her head to ache at once. "This goose has got a bark on thick as an oak-tree," continued the valiant trencherman, making an incision. "Give me another cut of beef, --the red, with plenty of fat and plenty of gravy, if you please, my mamma that shall be. I need support when the parson opens his bat- teries to-morrow. Eh, Miss Lucy? ' With this page: 262-263[View Page 262-263] 262 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. ring thee I wed, and with all my worldly -' Hain't got any goods. I 'll endow you with all my worldly debts, and tell the Jews to shift the security. Haw, haw!" He laughed boisterously., This coarse paean stirred up echoes of repul- sion in Lucy's heart. How she longed to fling defiance at him! Patience, - she almost bit the word in two, with her teeth set hard upon it. One rash expres- sion would be ruin; but great red-hot shot of scorn burned within her. She discovered that there was strong language in her vocabulary. It grew significant to her now. She was begin- ning to half understand herself at last.' When the boiler grows hot, the water feels its latent steam. "Am I the same being?" she thought. "Am I the meek Consent I have pitied and wept with so long? No, I have ceased to be a spiritless no- body. I am almost sorry that help from without is coming to me. I should like to stand up now and say, ' Madam, of you as a woman I will not speak,-as a mother, you are a tyrant, and I defy you. I defy you and this brute, not half so base as you, whom you have dared to name by the sacred name of lover, whom you have called in to aid you in dishonoring your child.' Yes; I could almost say that to her now. Is it pos- t , e EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 263 sible? Is it possible that a woman can so hate a woman? I never felt what the sanctity of my womanhood was until now,- now that I per- ceive this miserable plot against it." This defiant mood was strong within her. But presently, as she looked at Kerr, growing redder with too much dinner and too much wine, laughing at his own coarse jokes and throwing at her with great vulgar compliments; and when all at once, in contrast, rose the figure of the other Major as she had painted him,- disgust so mastered her that she sprang up, pleaded a headache, and fled to her chamber, to wait and hope and doubt and pray alone. "Megrims again," said the lover, sulkily, as she disappeared. "I don't like it. She didn't run away from Jack Andre yesterday." "O, let her amuse herself with headaches, if she pleases," said the Lady of the Manor. "I understand the child. I saw her this morning over her wedding-dress. She is as eager for the happy moment as any lover could wish." "So you think she shams coy?" "Yes," said Mrs. Brothertoft; and she was 'willing to believe it. "Well, good night, pretty creature! Let it go up stairs and think how sweet it will look to-morrow in its silks and laces! What, are you going too, my mamma?" page: 264-265[View Page 264-265] 264 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Yes. Take your glass of wine quietly. We will have supper late. I am going to doze a little in the parlor. I dreamed troublesome dreams last night." "By George!" said Kerr, as she closed the door. ." Splendid woman! Twice as handsome as the Duchess of Gurgoyle! I suppose she thinks the Kerrs will take her up when she goes to England. No, ma'am! We can't quite stand that. You've got all you can expect out of me when you've married off your daughter on me. Now, then, it's going to be solemn busi- ness, drinking alone." ---.-. .. X. PLOT and counterplot at Brothertoft Manor, And meantime, what has counterplot without the house been doing? If Edwin Brothertoft and, Peter Skerrett could have travelled by daylight through the High- lands, then this narrative, marching with them, might have seen what fine things they saw, and told of them. But they went cautiously by night. They saw little but the stars overhead and the faint traces of their shy path. They were not distracted by grand views. Nature is a mere impertinence to men who are filled with a purpose. Fortunately, these intense purposes do not last a lifetime. Minds become disengaged, Iand then they go back, and make apologies to Nature for not admiring her. And she, minding her own business, cares as little for the compli- ment as for the slight. It is a bit of the world worth seeing, that bossy belt of latitude i between Fishkill and Brothertoft Manor. There is a very splendid pageant to behold there in the halcyon days of 12 page: 266-267[View Page 266-267] 266 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. October, the ruddy, the purple, the golden, when every tree is a flame, or a blush, or a dash of blood or deep winy crimson on the gray rocks of the mountains. The Hudson Highlands do not wrangle about height with the Alps; but they content themselves with wearing a more gor- geous autumn on their backs than any mountains on the globe. Go and see! Frost paints as bravely now as it did in 1777, and it is safer to travel. Bellona has decamped from the land, and half-way from Fishkill down the pass, Mi- nerva, fair-haired, contralto-voiced, and cour- teous, keeps school and presides over the sixty- third milestone from New York. Go and see the Highlands for yourself! The business of these pages is mainly with what hearts suffer and become under pressure, little with what eyes survey. Danger is safety to the prudent. Major Sker- rett and his guide made their perilous journey without mishap. At the chilly dawn of day, we find them at the rendezvous in the hills behind Peekskill, trying to believe that there was warmth in the warm colors of the woods, and waiting for Jierck Dewitt. Presently he appeared, in high spirits. "We've come in the nick of time," said he. "The redcoats have done all the harm they could about here. They've drawed in every man, and EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 267 are off at sunrise up river for Kingston. They allow, if they set a few towns afire, that General Gates will turn his back to Burgoyne and take to passin' buckets." "Bang!" here spoke the sunrise gun at Fort Montgomery. "Bang! bang! bang!" the three frigates re- sponded. Dunderberg grumbled with loud echoes. He was pleased to be awaked by the song of birds; but the victorious noise of -British cannon he protested against, like a good American. "The coast is clear for us," resumed Jierck. "' Clear almost as if these were peace times. Now if you'll come along, I'll take you to a safe dell in the woods, a mile from the Manor- House, where you can, stay all day, snug as a chipmunk in a chestnut stump, and see how the land lies. I 'll tell you my other news as we go." They took up their guns and knapsacks and followed. The light of morning was fair and tender. The autumn colors were exhilarating. White frost shone upon the slopes and glim- mered upon every leaf in the groves, These were the Manor lands. Each spot Ed- will Brothertoft remembered as a scene of his childhood's discoveries of facts and mysteries in Nature. They walked on for an hour, and page: 268-269[View Page 268-269] 268 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. Brothertoft grew almost gay with memories of his youth. "Do you see that white, shining through the trees?" said Jierck, halting. "It's the river. Tell steps and you'll see the house. Now,\Major, I'll go and look after my boys, and come at noon for your orders." Jierck turned back into the wood. Major Skerrett stepped forward eagerly. He had an eye for a landscape. He had also a soldier's eye for every new bit of possible battle-field. Ten'steps brought him to the edge of the slope. A transcendent prospect suddenly flung out its colors before him.. First was a stripe of undulating upland thoroughly Octobered. Then a stripe of river, bending like a belt in a flag, that a breeze is twisting between its fingers. Then beyond, Highlands, not so glowing as the foreground, nor so sparkling blue as the blue water, nor so simple as the sky, softly combined and repeated all the elements of beauty before him. He turned to give and take sympathy from his companion. Mr. Brothertoft was not beside him. He had seated himself within cover of the wood. "Come out, sir!" called Skerrett with enthu- siasm. "I am so bewildered with this beautiful prospect that I need to hear another man's su- perlatives to satisfy me I am not in a dream. Come; out, sir! We are quite safe." EDWIN BROTHElSTOFT. 269 " My friend," said Brothertoft. ' I was hesi- tating a moment before I risked the quenching of my strange good spirits. You are looking upon a scene that has been very dear and very sad to me. I cannot see it, as you do, with a stranger's eye. It is to me the scenery of trage- dy. I cannot tell yet whether I have outgrown the wound enough to tolerate the place where I first felt it." He moved forward, and took his place by the Major's side. The two stood silent a moment. Thus far the younger, in his robust appetite for the beauty of Nature, had felt " no need of the remoter charm by thought supplied." Color and form he took as a hungry child takes meat and drink. Now for the first time there was history in his picture, sorrow upon his scene. He made his friend's sadness his own, and looked through this melancholy mist at the gold, the sheen, and the bloom. His mere physical elation at this in- toxicating revelry of color passed away. Beauty left his head and went to his heart. He turned to see how his companion was affected. "I find," said Brothertoft," that I do not hate these dear old scenes. Indeed, the flush and the fervor of this resplendent season enter into me. I am cheered enough to pardon myself all my faults, and all who have wronged me for their page: 270-271[View Page 270-271] 270 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. a wrongs. It is grand to feel so young and brave again." t For a moment there was bold light in his eyes and vigor in his bearing. The light faded pres- ently and the vigor drooped. He was again the stricken man, aged prematurely by sorrow. "But, my son," continued the elder, "I cannot quite sustain myself in this cheerful mood. I look at my forefathers' house, and think of my daughter, and I doubt." Skerrett followed the direction of his eyes and studied the Manor-House. It stood on a small plateau, half a mile from the river, in the midst of its broad principality. There was not such another house then in Amer- ica. There are few enough now, town or coun- try, cottage or palace, over whose doors may be seen the unmistakable cartouche of a gentle- Iman. The first Edwin Brothertoft built his house after the model of the dear old dilapidated seat in Lincolnshire. It was only one fourth the size; but it had kept the grand features of its proto- type. Skerrett could see and admire the four quaint gables, two front and two rear, the sturdy stack of warm chimneys, and the corner tower with its peaked hat,-such as towers built in James the First's time wore. It bristled well in the landscape. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 271 It was a century old. That must be a very unsociable kind of house which will not make itself at home in the space of a century. In a hundred years the Manor-House and buildings and their scenery had learnt perfect harmony with each other. Wherever trees were wanted for shade or show, they had had time to -choose their post and grow stately. Those stalks which -know nothing but to run up lank, for plank, had long been felled and uprooted. There were no awkward squads of bushes, stuck about where they could not stand at ease; but orderly little companies of shrubbery and evergreens had nes- tled wherever a shelter invited them, or wherever a shoulder of lawn wanted an epaulet. Creep- ers had chosen those panels of wall which needed sheltering from heat or cold, and had measured precisely how much peering into windows and drooping over doorsI could be permitted. The little Dutch bricks of the sides and the freestone of the quoins and trimmings, their coloring re- vised by the pencils of a hundred quartettes of seasons, now were as much in tone with the scene as the indigenous rocks of the soil. Ab- solute good taste had reigned at Brothertoft Manor for a century. Its results justified the government thoroughly. The present proprie- tress had been educated out of her gaudy fancies by this fine example of the success of a better page: 272-273[View Page 272-273] 272 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. method. She had altered nothing, and made her repairs and additions chime with the ancient harmony. At this moment, too, of Peter Skerrett's in- spection, the landscape about the house wore its wealthiest garniture. Each maple in the grounds had crimsoned its ruddiest, or purpled its winiest, or gilded its leaves, every one witlh a film of burnished gold. The elms were all at their gayest yellow or their warmest brown, and stiff masculine chestnuts beside them rivalled their tints, if they -could not their grace. Here and there was a great oak, resolute not to adopt these new-fangled splendors of gaudy day, and wearing still the well-kept coat of green which had served him all summer. Younger gentlemen of the same family, however, would not be behind the times, and stood about their ancestor in handsome new doublets of murrey color. Every slash and epaulet of shrubbery was gold on the green of the lawn, and creep- ers blazed on the walls and dropped their scarlet trailers, like flames, before the windows. "It is a dear old dignified place," said Peter Skerrett, "and I wish I could go down and make a quiet call there by daylight. I will, by and by, after the war, unless the rebels punish it with fire for having dined Sir Henry Clinton." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 273 "It is a dear old place," said Brothertoft, "and I love it most dearly as the school-house of my education in sorrow. No man is con- vinced of his own immortality until his soul has borne as murderous blows as can be struck, and still is not murdered. I come to the place where the hardest hitting at my peace has been done, and I feel a new sense of power because I find that there is something in me that is not quite devastated. On the old battle-field, I perceive that I am not wholly beaten, and can never be." He said this in a tone of soliloquy. Peter Skerrett was too young to thoroughly under- stand his friend. Besides, he was conscious of a frantic hunger, - an excellent thing in a hero. "Come, sir," said he, " shall we breakfast? I have remarked that swallowing dawn is an ap- petizer. Here goes at my knapsack, to see what General Putnam's cook has done for us." The cook had done as well as a rebel larder allowed. They did well by the viands, and then, under cover of the wood, they wore away the morning watchfully. They saw boats from the frigates land men to be drilled ashore or to forage in the village of Peekskill. Here and there a farmer, braver or stupider than his neighbors, was to be dis- cerned, ploughing and sowing for next summer 12* a page: 274-275[View Page 274-275] 274 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. as if war were a hundred miles away. Carts appeared creeping timidly along the country roads. The cattle seemed to feed cautiously and sniff about, lest Cowhoys should catch them. The whole scene wore a depressed and appre- hensive air. Brothertoft Manor was willing to be well with both sides, and was equally un- comfortable with both. The tenants of the Manor were generally trying to persuade them- selves that British frigates in the river were merely marts for their eggs and chickens. Men that have not made up their minds are but skulking creatures on God's earth. "Seems to me," said Skerrett, "that I can tell a Tory or a Neutral as far as I can see 'him." The day wore on, and in this pause of action the two gentlemen opened their hearts to each other. ' It was the intercourse of father and son. Each wanted what the other gave him. ; The fatherless junior felt his mind grow deeper with a man who had touched bottom in thought. He was sobered and softened by the spectacle of one so faithful to the truth that was in him, so gentle, so indulgent, weakened perhaps by sorrow, but never soured. The sonless senior said. "Ah, Skerrett! you are the young oak. If I had had you to lean upon, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 275 I should not have lost force to climb and bloom. Such a merry heart as yours makes the whole world laugh,- not empty laughter, but hearty." At noon Jierck Dewitt came to report. He and the boys were safely hid in his father's barn. "Ike mostly sleeps," says Jierck, 1"Sam plays old sledge with dummy, and Hendrecus is writin' something inl short lines all beginnin' with big letters, poetry perhaps. He 's an awful great scholar." Their plans were again discussed, and orders issued. "Well," said Jierck, ' at dusk I 'll have my men, and father's runt pony for the prisoner to straddle, down at the forks of the road waitin' for you. Nothing can stop us now but one thing." "And that?" asked the Major. "Is Lady Brothertoft.! If she suspicions any- thing before we 're ready to run, it will be all up with us,-halter round our necks and all up among the acorns." So Jierck, still " stiff as the Lord Chancellor," and yet limber as a snake in the grass, took his departure. Afternoon hours went slower than the morn- ing hours. "The sun always seems to me to hold back page: 276-277[View Page 276-277] 276 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. in going down hill," Skerrett said. ,' I wish he would tumble to bed faster. . I am impatient to make our success sure." "Your sturdy confidence reassures me," re- turned Brothertoft. "I am happy there is one of us whose heart-beats will not unsteady him. I lose hope when I think what failure means ito my daughter." X "I must keep myself the cool outsider, wiih only a knight-errant's share in this adventure," Peter said. A hard task h6 found this! The father so charmed him that he felt himself, for his sake,1 taking a very tender fraternal interest in the young lady. It was so easy to picture her in her chamber, not a mile away, looking tearfully for help toward the hills. It was so easy to fancy her face,--her father's, with the bloom of youth instead of the shades of sorrow; and her character,- her father's, with all this gen- tleness that perhaps weakened him, in her but sweet womanliness. Peter Skerrett perceived to the full the romance of the adventure. He frequently felt the undeveloped true lover in him grow restive. He thought that he was all the time putting down that turbulent personage. Perhaps he was. But it must be avowed that he often regretted his moustache, despised his ill-fitting coat, and only consoled himself by re- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 2" calling, "It will be night, and she will only half see me." As evening approached, Peter Skerrett perceived that his desire to redeem this fair victim from among the bad and the base was become a passion. He also noticed that its fervor kept him cool and steady. Silent sunset came. The crisis drew near. Doubts began to curdle in Edwin Brothertoft's mind. He looked over the broad landscape, and along the solemn horizon, and all his own past spread before him, sad-colored and dreary. Ah my beautiful childhood!" he thought. "Ah my ardent youth, my aspiring manhood, my defeated prime! My life utterly defeated, as the world measures defeat, -and all through her! All through her, the woman I loved with my whole heart! Please God we may not meet to-night! Please Heaven we may never meet until her dark hour comes'! Please Heaven that when the loneliness of sin comes upon her, and the misery of a worse defeat than any I have felt is hers, - that then at last I may be ready with such words of pardon as she needs!" "See!" said Skerrett, softly. "It is dark. There is a light in your daughter's window. We will go to her." "In the name of God!" said the father. / page: 278-279[View Page 278-279] XI. SCENE, 1he interior of Squire Dewitt's barn. Hay at lthe sides, hay at the back, and great mountains of hay rise into the dusky regions of the loft. In the centre stands Jierck Dewitt, just re- turned from his noon interview with Major Sker- rett. At the left sits Ike Van Wart, asleep, with his mouth open. Perhaps, like Voltaire, he hears partially with his tonsils. On the right, old Sam Galsworthy is killing time with old sledge for a weapon. His right hand has just beaten his left and won the stakes, - viz.: twelve oats. Hendrecus Canady stealthily approaches the gaping sleeper on the left. He holds a head of timothy-grass,--in these .times of war we perceive that it is a good model for a cannon sponge. Hendrecus introduces timothy's head into Van Wart's mouth, and begins to tickle the tonsils and palate, so rosy. To these enters pretty Katy Dewitt, blushing EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 279 and smiling. Fragrance comes with her; and well it may, for she bears dinner, - a deep yel- low dish of pork and beans and a pumpkin-pie exquisitely varnished. Tender-hearted Jierck Dewitt at once remem- bered the wife who in happier days crisped his pork and sweetened his pie. Hendrecus dropped his tickler into Van Wart, and sprang up to help his sweetheart. Her pretty smiles stirred happy smiles on his face,-- a bright and good-humored one, though still of pill-fed complexion. His lover-like attentions brought out a blush on her cheeks. That fair color seemed to make the old barn glow and all the hay-mow bloom with fresh heads of pink clover. Poor Jierck Dewitt recalled how there were once smiles as gay and blushes as tender between him and a damsel as buxom. Poor fellow! his dinner did him no good. He grew moodier and moodier. The little scene be- tween his sister and Hendrecus had made him miserable. He could not sleep like Van Wart, nor play cards with Galsworthy, nor skylark with Hendrecus. He sat brooding over his sorrow. His powers of self-control were weakened. He could not throw off this weight of an old bitter- ness. A great vague misery oppressed him. He began to fear his wits were going. page: 280-281[View Page 280-281] 280 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "If I could only get these ugly feelings into shape," he thought, "I could grapple with them and choke them down. I must do something, or I shall go mad. I believe I'll steal round through the woods to where I can see old Bils- by's house and the chestnut-tree where Abby first said she'd have me. Looking at the places may help me to drag this grief out of myself and put it on them." Now that the British troops were withdrawn for Vaughan's expedition, Jierck felt quite secure in dodging'about thie woods of the Manor. He left his companions in the barn, and stole off toward his father-in-law's old red farm-house. He felt as if he were his own ghost, compelled to haunt a spot where he had been murdered. It was quiet sunset. The golden light of evening was among the golden woods. The forest showered golden leaves upon the ground, and melted away in golden motes across the level sunbeams. Jierck stole along until he came to a little glade, crossed by a pathway. A great chestnut- tree had made the glade its own. Lesser plants were easily thrust back by its stout overshadow- ing branches, and its brethren of the forest had willingly given place to see what their brother would do with its chance of greatness. It had done nobly. It was an example to trees and the EDWIN BROTHERtTOFT. 281 world, of the wisdom of standing by one's roots, expanding to one's sunshine, and letting one's self grow like a fine old vegetable. This had been Jierck's trysting-tree in the times when the pastoral poem of his life was writing itself, a canto a day. Under this chest- nut, one summer's eve, when the whole tree was a great bouquet of flowery tassels, Jierck had suddenly ventured to pop his shy question. Full- throated robins up in those very branches had shouted his sweetheart's Yes," for all the birds and breezes to repeat. Jierck, hidden in the thicket, looked kindly at the old tree. He smiled to recall the meetings there when he was a timid, clumsy lover. For a moment recollections, half comic and all pleas- ant, banished his agony of a man betrayed by a disloyal woman. But presently he hleard sounds that were not the light clash of falling leaf with fallen leaf. Footsteps and voices were coming. Jierck with- drew a little and Watched. Two women- appeared up the pathway, following their long shadows. They came out into the glade. It was his wife and her sister, furloughed for the evening, and onl their way homeward. Jierck beheld the woman's story written on her face, -the tablet where all stories of lives are written for decipherers to read. He saw page: 282-283[View Page 282-283] 282 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. no wish there to expunge or revise the later chapters. His wife was still an insolent, brazen womalln, the counterpart of her mistress on a lower plane. Poor Jierck! he had been drawn to this spot, so he felt, to see his murderess and be stabbed over again. The exceeding weight of his agony came crushing down upon him. He shivered. It seemed to him that snow must suddenly have fallen with sunset. A moment ago itlwas not spring, nor summer, but very tolerable autumn; now winter hat come, chilly and dreary. A friendless place to him this traitor world! Jierck felt smitten with degradation. fie was utterly miserable, and the old chestnut-tree insulted him with memories of his dead hopes of happiness. "I must have comfort," thought Jierck. When sorrow is too sharp to be borne, and comfort must be had at once, men go to the' anodynes and stimulants. Kosmos provides these in great variety. The four of most uni- versal application are, Tobacco, Alcohol, Marriage, Death. Poor Jierck Dewitt wanted comfort at once. A whiff of smoke from his pipe was not con- centrated enough, and he could not wait to try what virtue there was in bigamy. "Rum or this!" he said wildly. The. alter- native "this" seemed to attract him for an EDWIN BROT1HERTOFT. 283 instant. He drew his knife from his belt, and felt along thecold edge. Was he about to taste that mighty narcotic, Death? Death! He touched his knife-blade. Gloom alighted upon the landscape.- The golden woods grew lurid. Silence, deeper than he had ever known, deepened and deepened, until he fancied that Nature was hushed and listening for his death-moan. An, imagined picture grew before his eyes: - Time, morning. Scene, this glade of the big chestnut. A man lies under the tree. The first sunbeams melt the frost that dabbles his hair. He must be a sound sleeper, for a chip- munk has picked his pockets of their crumbs, and now stands on his forehead, chuckling over his breakfast. Mrs. Jierck Dewitt enters the glade. SIe sees the sleeper. She starts, and approaches cautiously. She stares, and then looks up with a great, bold smile of relief and scorn. For the sleeper is her husband. He lies dead, with a knife in his breast. "No!" hissed Jierck, dashing away. this pic- ture from his eyes. "I'll not kill myself to please her." "Rum! I must have rum, or I shall go mad. The old man's jug will be in the old place in the kitchen cupboard," he continued. He skulked along rapidly through the woods, page: 284-285[View Page 284-285] 284 ] EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. like a beast of prey. \ The great dull agony in his heart paused a nFoment. He could keep it down from maddening him, while he thought of his sorry consolation to come. It was growing dusk now, and he was reck- less. He stopped by the kitchen window of his father's house and peered in. The family were at supper. These were the early years of the Revolution, and war had not yet utterly desolated this region. Squire De- witt's was still a prosperous household, and he, a fine old patriarch, presided at a liberal board. Opposite him sat the mild mother of the. house. The harmony of a lifetime of love and com- panion thinking on companion cares had made her expression almost identical with her hus- band's. Pretty Kate, a daughter of ler parents' old age, bustled the meal along, and hoped her Hendrecus was not getting hungry. Jierck's other sister, a widow, was making two smiles grow in the place of one, on her boy Tommy's round face, by cutting his gingerbread fatter than usual. The cat, from a dresser, watched every morsel and every sip, with a feline" look, which is a thief look. x This homely scene, instead of soothing poor Jierck, was double bitterness to him. "Curse the woman I made my wife!" he thought. "She has spoilt my chance of home EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 285 and fireside, of a happy age and children to love and reverence me. Curse her for making me hate my life!" He turned away, half mean, half fierce, and stole in by the back-door to the cupboard. Those were times, remember, before the demi- john and'the spinning-wleel had given way to Webster's Unabridged and the melodeon. Ill every farmer's pantry stood a Dutch-bellied stone jug. It was corked with a corn cob, and looked arrogantly through the window at the old oaken bucket. Was there molasses in that jug? Not so; but rum fitzmolasses. The well- sweep grew stiff for want of exercise, moss covered the dry-rotten bucket, green slime' in the stagnant well was only broken by the plunges of lonely old "Rigdumbonnimi'ddikai- mo "; but the rum-jug was always alert and jolly, and never had time to look vacuous before it was a plenum again. It is hard to imagine those ages; for we have changed our manners now. Our brandy is dried 'up, our rum has run away, and this is not a land flowing with Monongahela. Jierck stole, like a thiefi into the pantry. There sat the great jug, as of yore. It was of gray stone-ware with blue splashes. Its spout was fashioned into a face on the broad grin. "Comfort here " the grinning mask seemed to - page: 286-287[View Page 286-287] 286 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. wink, and did not reveal how short-lived and bastard was the comfort it promised. Jierck heaved up its clumsy heft, balanced it upon his lips, and swigged. Yes,-not to be squeamish in terms,-this Patriot of the Revolution swigged.' This was not patriotic, nor under the circumstances hon- orable, nor in any way wise or prudent. And 'of course, as his provocation is unknown to our time, we cannot appreciate his reckless despair. If he had only stopped when he had enough! At the present day we never take too much of our anodynes and our stimulants. One weed, one toddy, one wife, one million, one Presiden- tial term,-whenever wisdom whispers, Satis, we pause and echo, "Satis 't is." Wisdom was younger in Jierck's time. If her childish voice did at all admonish him, the gurgle in his throat made him leaf to the warning at his tympanum. He tAok too much, poor fellow! Pardon him, and remember that an ill-omened she-wolf had just crossed his path. There is a sage and honorable law that limits the robbing of orchards,--"Eat your fill; but don't fill your pockets." Jierck was rash enough to violate this also. He pocketed a pint of his sorry comforter. He found an empty bottle labelled Hair-Oil. There were nameless un- guents before Macassar, and this bottle had held EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 287 one of them. Jierck filled it from the jug, and made for the barn, just in time to evade pretty Kate carrying supper to the others and her Hendrecus. Supper was done. Dusk was come. Jierck set out with his party for the rendezvous. The peril was considerable. Hanging was the pen- alty for being caught. So they sharpened their eyes, pricked up their ears, trod softly, and tried to persuade the runt pony to do the same. Jierck brought up the rear, it a state of sullen contempt. At the cross-roads Major Skerrett and his companion met them. It was night now in the woods. A red belt of day behind Dunder- berg stared watchfully at the party. "I will go down to the house alone, as we ar- ranged," whispered the Major. "The negro will admit me to the dining-room'. Do you be ready on the lawn by the window at half past eight! It will be dark enough for safety by that time. When I open the window and whistle, jump in and take our man. That is my plan. If any- thing goes wrong, I will alter it. But nothing will go wrong. Good-bye!" He moved away through the darkness. The party waited in the woods, listening to the sounds of evening. It grew chilly. Jierck- Dewitt retired again and again, and sipped from page: 288-289[View Page 288-289] 288 EDWIN BROT1HEITOFT. his bottle, labelled Hair-Oil. He was ashamed of himself for violating his pledge to the Major. But he soliloquized, "I am only taking just enough to keep my spirits up,-just enough to make a man of me after my making a baby of myself at sight of that woman." Just enough! It is not pleasant to'betray the errors of the past; but it is a truth grave in this history that the unhappy fellow had much more than enough when, at half past eight, he halted his party under cover of the shrubbery on the lawn at Brothertoft Manor-House. . XII. EIGHT o'clock, and Major Kerr sat sipping Ma- deira in the dining-room at Brothertoft Manor. "What's the use of eight candles?" he said to Voltaire. "Only four, sir," says the butler, depositing two branches on the table. "I see eight, -no, sixteen. Well, let 'em burn! Economy be hanged! I say, nigger! "What, sir?" Voltaire perceived that his deteriorating process had been effectual. Kerr saw double and spoke thick. "I'm tired of sitting here alone. Can't you sing me a song?" "I used to sing like a boblink, sir; but since I lost my front tooth the music all leaks out in dribbles. There's a redcoat sargeant just come into the kitchen. He looks like a most a mighty powerful singer. Shall I bring him in?" "Yes. I ain't proud. A Kerr can associate with anybody." As Voltaire left the room, he picked up the Major's sword and pistols from the sideboard. 13 s page: 290-291[View Page 290-291] 290 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT., Plato was in the hall, stationed to Watch the door of the parlor where the lady of the Manor was sitting solitary. His father handed him the arms. The seven seals of mystery had been opened, and Plato was deep in the plot. "Take 'em, boy," says Voltaire, " and be ready!" Ready for what? Neithbr divined. But Plato took the weapons with dignity, and became a generalissimo in his own estimation. He bran- dished the sword, and made a lunge at some imaginary antagonist. Then he lifted a cocked pistol, and took aim. It was comic in the dim hall to see him going through his silent panto- mime. He thrust, he parried, he dropped his point, he bowed like an accomplished master of fence. He raised a pistol, bowed graciously, as if to say, "Apres vous, Monsieur," touched trig- ger, assumed a look half triumph, half con- cern, then laid his hand upon his heart and smiled the smile of one whose wounded honor is avenged. All this was done without so much as a chuckle. While Plato was at his noiseless gymnastics, Voltaire, through the pantry, had conducted the Sergeant into Major Kerr's presence. Skerrett, with his moustache off, and in a dis- guise a world too shrunk for his shanks and shoulders, looked much less the hero than when EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 291 he first stepped forth upon these pages. Indeed, at this moment he did not feel very heroic. He was sailing under false colors. He was acting a lie. He did not like the business, whatever the motive was. He took his seat vis-a-mis the rival Major, and thought, "If fair play is a jewel, I must give the effect of paste set in pinchbeck at this moment." "Glad to see you, Sargeant," says Kerr, speak- ing thick. "That's right," - to Voltaire. "Give him some wine! Fine stuff they have in this house. Better than regulation grog, Sargeant." The new-comer nodded, and went at his supper vigorously. "Goshshave th' King, Sargn! Buppers!" says Kerr, holding up his glass aslant and spilling a little. "Bumpers!" respondpd the other. "Frustrate their politics. Confound their knavish tricks," chanted Kerr. "Rebblstricksh, I mean, Sargn.' Cuffoud'em. Buppers!" "Bumpers!"Skerrett rejoined, still feeling great compunction at the part he was playing. 1"Sargeant," says Kerr, ' I'm going to tell you something." Skerrett looked attention. "I'm going to be married to-morrow,"- spoken confidentially. "Ah!" - / page: 292-293[View Page 292-293] 292 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Don't say, 'Ah!' Sargeant. Ah expreshes doubtsh. Say, Oh! Sargeant. iI askitshpussonle- faver, Sargn. Say, Oh!" "Oh!" "That's right. Oh is congratulation." He made muddy work with the last word. "Yes, Sargeant, doocid pretty girl, doocid pretty prop- erty. Want to see her, Sargeant?" ! "No, I thank you." "Yes, you do, Sargeant. Don't tell me! I'm a lucky fellow, Sargeant. Always was with women. I q1 have her down in the parlor, by and by, and you can look through the crack of the door and see her. She loves me so much, Sargeant, that she's gone up stairs to look at her wedding-dress and wish for to-morrow." This discourse, spoken thick, and the leer that emphasized it, quite dissipated all Major Sker- rett's scruples. "Faugh!" thought he. "Everything is fair play against such a beast. I never comprehend- ed before what a horror to a delicate woman must be marriage with suc[ a creature. Life would drag on one long indignity, and every day fresh misery and fresh disgust. Faugh! sitting here and hearing him talk gives me qualms,--me, a man of the world, who have certainly had time to outgrow my squeamish- ness. I could not tolerate the thought of giving EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 293 up any woman, even one with heart deflowered, to the degradation of this fellow's society. He shall not have Mr. Brothertoft's gentle daughter. No, not if I have to shoot him where he sits. No, not if I have to stab the lady." Peter looked at his watch. Time was not up. He was compelled to bottle his indignation and listen civilly. Kerr grew more and more confidential in his cups. Faugh! the jokes he made! the staves he trolled! the winks he winked! the imbecile laughs he roared! the conquests he recounted in love and war! Faugh, that such brutes have sometimes dragged the pure and the gentle down to their level! Faugh, that they still grovel on our earth, so that the artist, compelled by the conditions of his work to paint such a Silenus, finds his unpleasant models thick about him, and paints under the sharp spur of personal disgust and personal harm! The two Majors in the dining-room, the Lady of the Manor in a drowsy revery over the parlor fire, Lucy eager and trembling in her cham- ber,-for Voltaire has whispered that the hero has come,--Volante saddled, Plato gesticulat- ing with sword and pistols; ;--now let us see what the plotters without the Manor-House are doing. page: 294-295[View Page 294-295] XIII. WHAT are the plotters without the Manor- House doing? All, except Jierck Dewitt, are standing at ease, and waiting for their commander's signal. Old Sam Galsworthy has his hand on the muzzle of the runt pony, and at the faintest symptom of a whinny in reply to Volante's whinnies in the stable, Sam plugs the pony's nostrils with his thumbs and holds his jaws together with iron hand. Ike Van Wart leans on his gun, and looks dull. Hendrecus Canady stands to his gun, and looks sharp. Sergeant Lincoln- Brothertoft keeps himself in a mazed-for to think would be to doubt of success, and to doubt is to fail. This of course is the moment when Jierck Dewitt should be "stiff as the Lord Chancel- lor," limber as the Lord Chief Acrobate, steady as a steeple, and silent as a sexton. But Jierck is at present a tipsy man, in happy- go-lucky mood. He begins to grow impatient waiting in the cold and shamming sober. A I ' EDWIN. BROTHERTOFT. 295 thought strikes him. He can do something more amusing than stand and handle a chilly trigger. "I'm going to take a turn about the house to see all 's safe, Orderly," whispered he to Lincoln-Brothertoft. "I leave you in charge of the party. Keep a sharp look-out. I will be back in half a jiff." Jierck stole off into the darkness. Recollections of former exploits hereabouts had revived in his muddled brain. "Hair-oil 's all gone," he thought. "Now if I could only get into the cellar of the old house, I should have my choice of liquors, just as I did ten years ago, when Lady Brothertoft had me caught and licked for breaking in. By Congress, it's worth a try! The cellar window-bars used to be loose enough. It won't do any harm to give 'em a pull all round. If one gives, I can tumble in, get a drink to keep my spirits up, and be back long before the Major calls." His fancy was hardly so coherent as this, but he obeyed it. He crept about the house and fumbled at the bars of the nearest window. The windows opened on a level with the ground. "No go," said he; " try another!" He did, and another. At the third window the solder was loose page: 296-297[View Page 296-297] 296 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. and a bar shaky. IJierck dug at the solder with his knife and worked the bar about. It' still resisted, and he admonished it in a drunken whisper, "I 'm ashamed of you, you dum bit of rusty iron, keepin' a patriot away from Tory property. Give in now, like a good feller, before I git mad and do something rash." At this the bar joined the patriots, and gave in. It came away in Jierck's hand. He laid the cold iron on the frosty grass. He could now take out the stone into which the bar had been set. He did so. That released the foot of the next bar. He bent this aside. There was room for him to squeeze through. He carefully backed into the cellar. It was drunkard's luck. A sober man would not have tried it. Moral: do not be too sober in your head or your heart, if you would pluck success among the nettles. Jierck took B step forward in the Cimme- rian darkness of the cellar. He fell plump into a heap of that rubbish which Voltaire's flaring dip revealed to us in the morning. "This noise won't do," he thought. "One tumble will pass for rats. Another may bring Lady B. down stairs. I should n't like to see her standing here with a candle in one hand and a knife in the other. She 'd stick me, like pork. No; I must strike a light. A flash will do, to show me the way." EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 297 Hie unplugged his powder-horn with his teeth and poured a charge on the stone floor. s"Old Brindle did n't know how many red- coats that horn of his was to be the means of boring through," thought Jierck. "Powder 's an istooshn." In the dark his flint and steel tinkled to- gether. A spark flew. Fizz. Fiat lux! The powder flashed. Cirnmerian corners, barrels of curly shavings and rags out of curl, casks gone to hoops and staves, shattered furniture, all the rubbishy properties of a cellar scene, " started into light and made the lighter start." Light gave them a knowing look and was out again. The scenery scuffled back into darkness. Jierck afterward found that he had marked every object in that black hole, as they flung forward at the flash. He had marked the scene, and it was to haunt him always. At present, he was thinking of nothing but the wine-room. His fireworks had shown him the way clear to it. He saw also that the door was ajar, as Voltaire had left it in the morning. He moved forward now without stumble or tumble. He felt his way into the wine-room. He touched the rough dusty backs of a battery of recumbent bottles. He grasped one by the 13 page: 298-299[View Page 298-299] 298 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. neck. With a skilful blow against the shelf, he knocked off the yellow-sealed muzzle. "Fire away!" said he, presenting the weapon at his lips. Gurgle. He stopped to take breath. He felt like a boy again. The wine tasted as it did ten years ago, when he first stole into the cellar, and was punished for it. "She can't have me whaled this time," he muttered. "Here goes again! What stuff it is!" Gurgle a second time, and the cellar seems to listen. But while that amber stream was flowing between the white stalactites in Jierck's upper jaw, and the white stalagmites in his lower, and rippling against that pink stalactite his palate, before it leaped farther down the grotto,- suddenly: - A scream above, a rush, a shot, a scuffle. For an instant Jierck was paralyzed. He stood listening. The bottle, for which he had deserted his post, slipped through his alarmed fingers and crashed on the floor. The sound half recalled him to himself. He turned and sprang for that dim parallelo- gram of lighter darkness,--the window where he had entered. EDWIN BROTHERSTOFT. 299 Awkwardly, drunkenly, trembling with haste and shame, he clambered up upon the sill and began to back out between the bars. His coat caught against the bent iron. As he stopped to disengage it, he peered suspiciously back into the cellar. A little spot of red glow in the midst of the blackness caught his eye. "Aha!" he thought, "my powder lighted something tindery in that heap of rubbish. It will soon eat what it 's got, and go out on the stone floor. And if it don't go out, let it burn! Blast the old house! it 's a nest of Tories. Blast it! the mistress had me thrashed like a dog. Blast the house! my wife was spoilt here, and that spoilt me. Blast it! let it burn, and show us the way out of the country!" Jierck tore his coat from the bar, backed out, picked up his gun and skulked tipsily off to join his party. page: 300-301[View Page 300-301] XIV. iJIERCK DEWITT'S companions waited, at first silently, then anxiously, for his return. Moments passed, and lhe was still gone. ( I hope he hain't played us a trick," whispered Van Wart. "Not he!" says honest'Sam Galsworthy. "I 'll tell you what it is, boys," whispers the root-doctor's son. Jierck has got liquor aboard. Taint mutiny to say so, no/w he 's gone. I heard him walk tipsy when we came from the barn. When we got here, I saw he stood too ramrod for a sober man. You know how it is. Since his wife went bad, he 's lived on rum for stiddy victuals. He swore off to Major Skerrett. But he did n't swear strong enough, or else some- thin' strange has drawed his cork." If that is so," said Lincoln-Brothertoft, "I must follow, and see that he does not risk him- self or us. Watch, men,!for your lives!" "They may call that man Orderly Lincoln," says Hendrecus Canady, as the other disappeared about the house, "but I believe he's Tommy EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 301 Jefferson or some other Congressman in dis- guise. He talks powerful dictionary. And how did he come to know this country like a hawk and like a hoppertoad both?" It seemed sad and sorry business to Edwin Brothertoft to go prowling like a burglar about the home of his forefathers. He followed Jierck around the rear of the house. All the familiar objects wore an un- kindly, alienated look. Thle walls were grim, the windows were dark, the whole building said to him, "You are, an exile and an intruder." But he had no time for sentimental regrets. He turned the northern side of the house. A bright light burned in Lucy's chamber in the tower. He could see a shadowy figure moving behind the curtain. "My child! in a few moments we shall meet," he thought. Nothing to be seen of Jierck Dewitt! The sight of his daughter's form revived his anxiety. Peering into the dark, he passed about the corner of the turret. l He stopped opposite the parlor windows on the front. A shutter stood open. A faint light, as from a flickering wood-fire within, gleamed out into the hazy night. The window-sill was breast high to a man. page: 302-303[View Page 302-303] 302 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "There we used to sit," he murmured, " my wife and I. There by the fire, in the eveninggs of autumns long passed, I have watched her love dying, and all my hopeful vigor dying,- dying into ashes." The mighty despotism of an old love mastered him for a moment. There was little bitterness in his heart. These scenes, once so dear, be- came dear to him again. He pardoned them for their unconscious share in the tragedy of his life. "I must have one glance into that room," he thought. "My memory of it will be a trouble- some ghost in my brain, until I have laid the ghost with a sight of the reality." He stole forward softly over the crisp, frosty grass, and looked cautiously in at the window. Mrs. Brothertoft was seated alone before the fire. Guilt must sit alone and dwell alone. Loneliness is the necessity and the punishment of guilty hearts. No friends are faithful -but the noble and the pure, and them guilt dreads and rejects. Mrs. Brothertoft was sitting alone in the fire-lit room. It was an instant before her husband's eyes could distinguish objects within. He drew close to the window. He perceived her. A thrill of pity and pardon killed all his old rancors. He felt that, though he must war against her for his daughter's sake, he fought, reserving an infinite tenderness for his foe. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 303 And she within, --had she heard that stealthy step of his upon the stiffened grass and the dry leaves? Had his faint sigh penetrated to her, as she sat silent and moody? Did she feel the magnetism of human presence,-- the spiritual touch of a spirit wounded by her wrong? Or was it merely that in these days of alarm and violence she kept her senses trained and alert? He saw her cruel face turn suddenly, stare into the night, and mark an intruder. For one breath he stood motionless. Then, as she sprang forward to the window and shouted for help, he turned and ran around the rear of the house to the spot where -he had left his comrades. page: 304-305[View Page 304-305] XV. HALF past eight, and the two majors still sat vis-d-vis in the dining-room. "I am tired of this," thought Skerrett. "I have had enough of swallowing bumpers to this fellow's 'buppers.' I have heard enough of his foulness, his boasts, and his drivel. I could never have been patient so long except for the lady's sake. Every word and look of his is an imperative command to me to make sure of her safety. Yes, yes, Voltaire! You need n't nod and wink that she is ready and anxious. Ten minutes more, to be positive that my men are come, - and then, Major, please the Goddess of Liberty, I'll forbid your banns, and walk off with your person. I'm sorry for you, brute as you are. And you will not like your wineless quarters with Old Put." Monstrous long minutes, those final ten! At the rate of a thousand a minute, shades of doubt drifted across Peter's mind. Who has not known suspense and its mis- eries? - something hanging over him by a hair, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 305 or he hanging by a hair over nothing. Patience, Peter Skerrett! The pendulum ticks. It checks off the minutes, surely. And while those minutes pass, tipsy Jierck Dewitt is at work in the cellar, trying to drown the misery that this guilty house has caused him. The tenll were almost ended, when Brothertoft started to search for the stray leader, that other victim of a woman's disloyalty. It was in the very last of the ten that Mrs. Brothertoft turned suddenly and saw an un- known face staring in at her, as she sat in the dusky parlor. Time was up. Major Skerrett walked quietly to the window, threw up the sash, opened the shutters, and whistled in his men. Three only came leaping in at the summons. page: 306-307[View Page 306-307] XVI. ENTER through the dining-room window, Ike Van Wart, old Sam Galsworthy, and Hendrecus Canady. At the same qmoment Mrs. Brothertoft's cry for help rang through the house. Jierck De- witt 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 antag- onist 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 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 807 it. Her sudden fright reacted into a sharp fury. 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 agains. 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 openled 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 be- wilderment, mumbling vain protests and vainer threats. Not one of the group about the captive ob- served 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 im- page: 308-309[View Page 308-309] 308 . EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. pulse. He sprang forward to put her away 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 motion- less, 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 husbands " She said it with a strange, quiet satisfaction. Every one paused an instant, while she stood looking at her work, withi a smile. She had done well to wa't. 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 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 309 great exulting thrill of liberty, a mad sense of 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. 'c 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 Con- gress! she's a hell-cat." page: 310-311[View Page 310-311] 310 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "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 womanll!" "Sargn," mumbled Kerr, "I 'm sashfied 't's all a mshtake." The two men dragged Mrs. Brothertoft, strug- gling furiously, across into the parlor, and forced her into an arm-chair before the fire. Skerrett followed. Plato was in the hall, terri- fied 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 ends 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 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 8" corner, revealing the heads of Colonel Brother- toft and his white charger. A startling resem- blance 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 iden- tified itself with the picture, and was stationed there to watch events. A single glance gave Major Skerrett these ob- jects and impressions. He turned to the mis- tress 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 can- not 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 wo- man should know. "There you are, ma'am, fast!" says Gals- worthy, drawing back. "You 're tied so you won't feel it, and so you can't hurt yourself or anybody else."' page: 312-313[View Page 312-313] 3812 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 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 hle 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 vbice 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 an'd 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. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. , 813 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 fol- lowed 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. S ie 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 outhurst 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. " page: 314-315[View Page 314-315] XVII. 'ALL this while Lucy had been waiting anx- iously in her chamber in the turret. As twilight faded, she took her farewell of river, slopes, groves, and mountains. 'With dy- ing day, all that beloved scene sank deeper into her memory. At last Voltaire came and whispered: "They are come. Be ready when I call!" She was ready; and now, in these few mo- ments, before she blew out her light and de- parted, she studied the familar objects about her with new affection. It seemed to her as if all the observation of her past life had been half-conscious and dreamy. The sudden ripening of her character, by this struggle with evil, gave all her faculties force. Commonplace objects were no longer common- place. Everything in her room became invested with a spiritual significance. "Good bye, my dear old mirror!" she thought. "You have given me much dumb sympathy when I smiled or wept. You could not answer EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 315 my tearful questions, why my innocent life must be so dreary. I begin to comprehend at last the Myself you have helped me to study. Good bye, my bedside! I had no mother's lap to rest my head on when I prayed. But your cool, white cushion never repelled Ime, whether I knelt in doubt or in agony. Good bye, my pillow,! thanks for many a night of oblivion! thanks for many an awakening with hope renewed! Good bye, kind, sheltering walls of my refuge! The child you have known so long is a woman. Girlhood ends sharply here. The woman says, Good bye." As she stood waiting for the signal of flight, suddenly her mother's cry of alarm broke the silence. At that ill-omened voice, Lucy trembled, and for one moment despaired. Then came the sharp crack of the pistol-shot. The shock startled her into courage. This note of battle joined awaked all the combatant in her. "I cannot hide here," she thought, " while they are in danger for my sake. I cannot fight, but I may help, if any one is hurt." One more glance about her chamber, and then she closed the door, and shut herself out into the wide world. At the top of the staircase, the sound of a struggle below met her. She paused, and shud- page: 316-317[View Page 316-317] 816 EDWIN BROTHEITOFT. dered. Not for fear. Timidity seemed to be expunged from the list of hlr possible emotions. She shuddered for horror. She recognized her mother's voice. She heard those bedlam cries and curses. These were the tones of a woman who had ejected the woman, and was a wild beast. Feminine re- serve had dropped at last, and the creature appeared what her bad life had slowly made her. "What final horror has done this?" thought Lucy. She leaned cautiously over the banisters, and beheld the scene in the hall. A sickening sight for a daughter to see! A strange scene in that proud and orderly house! Outward decorum, at least, had always reigned there. Evil had now, at last, undergone its natural development into violence. Pale and shivering with excitement, but con- scious of a new-born sense of justice and an in- exorable hardness of heart against guilt, Lucy leaned forward, and saw her mother struggling with the two men. She saw the alarmed ne- groes. She saw the gentleman, whom she iden- tified at a glance as the expected hero, and heard his grave voice as he ordered Plato to make her horse ready and Voltaire to seek herself. "A dreadful end of all this sorrow and sin!" she heard him say. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 317 Lucy repeated these words to herself in a whisper. "A dreadful end! What does he mean? I do not see my father. Can it be? Did she fire the shot? Has she murdered the body, as she has done her best to kill the soul?" Lucy sprang down the stairs, by Voltaire, and into the dining-room. There sat Major Kerr, drivelling entreaties to his impassive sentry. And on the floor, with a stream of blood flow- ing over his temple and clotting his gray hair, lay a man, -her father! Sappho was moaning over him. 1 Lucy flung her aside, almost fiercely. She crushed her own great cry of anguish. She knelt by him and lifted the reverend head with her arms. And so it happened that when Edwin Brother- toft, stunned by;a sharp blow from a glanced bullet and by his heavy fall, in a moment came to himself and unclosed his eyes, he saw his daughter's face hanging over him, and felt her arms about his neck. Her tender arms em- bracing him,- her lips at his. All, moment of dear delight! when life re- newed perceived that love was there to welcome it and to baptize its birth with happy tears! Here Jierck Dewitt reappeared upon the scene. Alarm had fallen upon him, like water on a page: 318-319[View Page 318-319] 318 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. tipsy pate under a pump. He was sober enoujgll to perceive that he must justify his outsidersflip and make his, desertion forgotten. He looked through the window, took his cue, and then bus- tled forward officiously. He spoke, to be sure, with a burr, and trod as if the floor were undu- lating gayly beneath him; but why may not haste and eagerness make tongue and feet trip? "Hooray, Ike!" cries lie; "I've made all right outside. Plato 's just bringing out your horse, Miss. Thank you for looking after the Sergeant, Miss,' continued Jierck, blundering down on his knees beside Mr. Brothertoft. "How do you find yourself, Sergeant? O, you'll do. Only a little love-tap the ball gave you. A drop of rum, - caital thing rum, al- ways, - a drop on a bit of brown paper, stuck on the scratch, and you're all right. Feel a little sick with the jar, don't you? Yes. Well, we must get you outside illto the air. Now, then, make a lift. Thank you, Miss. Now, again. Why, Sergeant, you're almost as steady on your pins as I am. Now, Miss, you hold him on that side, and here I am on this, stiff as' the Lord Chancellor. Think you can step over the win- dow-sill, Sargeant? Well done! And here we are, out in the fresh air! And here's the boy with the horse. All right! All right, Major; here we are, waiting for you!" EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 319 The last was said to Major Skerrett, who came hurrying out after them. "You are not badly hurt, thank God!" he said, grasping his friend's hand. "No," replied the other, still feeble with the shock, "Heaven does not permit such horror. What have you done with her?" '"I have left her confined in the parlor. i We bound her there, as tenderly as might be. She cannot suffer in person at all." "I suppose I had better take your word for it." "You must. We must not dally a moment. Some straggler may have heard the pistol-shot and be on our track. Now, boys, mount the Major on his pony." a' My daughter, Skerrett; you will give her your hand for good-will," said the father. In the hazy night she could but faintly see her paladin, and he her. There was no time for thanks and compliments. No time for Lucy to search for the one look with all the woman in it, and the one word with all the spirit in it, that might express her vast passion of gratitude. She gave him her hand, containing at least one lobe of her heart. He pressed it hastily, and as certainly a portion of his heart also was in his palm, there may have been an exchange of lobes in the hurry. page: 320-321[View Page 320-321] 320 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Hoist away, Sam!" said Hendrecus Canady, buckling to one of Major Kerr's limp legs. "Ay, ay!" rejoined Galsworthy, on his side boosting bravely at the lubberly carcass of the prisoner, while Ike Van Wart held the runt pony's head. "Seems to me these Britishers get drunker when they're drunk than we do." "We 're so full of the spirit of '76," r joined the root-doctor's son, "that no other kind of spirit can please us." "Cooducher take summuddy elsh, now, boysh?" boosily entreated poor Kerr ;"Shrenry Clidn wantsh me." Ah, Major! Sir Henry must continue to want you.\ Nobody listens to your deteriorated King's English and no more of it shall be here re- peated. ' I "We have not a moment to lose," said Major Skerrett. "We must not, let our success grow cold. I have my prisoner, Mr. Brothertoft, and your daughter is with you. Each of us will take care of his own. For the first ten miles we had better separate, I, with our friend the Major, will make a dash along the straight road, and you will take to the by-paths and the back country, as we agreed. If there is any chase, it will be after us, and we can all fight. I will give you charge of all the non-combatants. Vol- taire, you and your family will travel with yoi master." i, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 321 "Yes, sir," says Voltaire, " we never want to see this house again, so long as she's there. The women will come in the morning, and they can cut her loose." "Well, your master will settle that. Until Miss Lucy is out of danger you must all stay by her. Where's Jierck Dewitt?" "Here, sir," says Jierck, from behind Volante. "You 've deceived me, and been drinking, Jierck." "I have, Major," the repentant man replied. "I saw my wife going by, and everything grew so black that I had to fire up a little, or I should have stuck a knife into me. But I'm all right now. Trust me once more!" "I must! Go with the lady! Bring her safe through, and I will forget that you have forgotten yourself." The two parties separated with "Good bye! God speed!" Major Kerr made an attempt at "Au revoir, MBiss Lucy." But his vinous consonants could not find their places among his vinous vowels, and his civility was inarticulate. Skerrett halted, and watched Volante among the yellow trees, until there was not even a whisk of her tail to be seen across the luminous haze of the cool starlit night of October. "Noble horse! lovely lady!" he thought. "* U T page: 322-323[View Page 322-323] 322 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. ' It is a sacrifice not to accompany and protect her; but she will be safe, and my duty is with my prisoner. Now, ought I not to go back and tell the wife that she did not kill her husband? Time is precious. She would only curse and say she was sorry she missed. No; I cannot bear again to see a woman so dewomanized. I cannot bear to think of that cruel virago as the mother of this delicate girl. No; let her stay there alone, and think of herself as a murderess! Perhaps remorse may visit her in the dead of night, - perhaps repentance in the holy stillness of- dawn." Peter took his last look at the mansion.- It stood dim and unsubstantial in the mist, and silent as a cenotaph. He overtook his men, and pushed rapidly and safely along. But still a vague uneasiness beset him, lest, in these days of violence, some disaster might befall that deserted house and its helpless tenant. Long after he was involved in the dusky defiles of the Highlands, he found himself paus- ing and looking southward. Every sound in the silent night seemed a cry for help from that beautiful Fury he had left before the glimmer- ing fire, with the portrait watching her, like a ghost. Poor Kerr! plaintive at first, then sullen, then surly, then doleful. The runt pony set its legs EDWIN BROTHEKTOFT. 323 hard down on terra firmna, and bumped the bumptiousness all out of him. All the good nature of his captors could not better his case. He was sadly dejected in mind and flaccid in person when the party issued from the Highlands, a little after late moon- rise. Major Skerrett only waited till he saw the pumpkins of the Fishkill plain, lying solitary or social, and turning up their cheeks to the cool salute of wan and waning Luna. Then he gave his prisoner to Van Wart and Galsworthy, to be put to bed at Putnam's quarters, and himself, with Hendrecus, turned back to meet the fugi- tives. Let us now trace them on their flight from Brothertoft Manor. *t page: 324-325[View Page 324-325] XVIII. THE other party of fugitives took a more cir- cuitous route, to the east, through that scantily peopled region. Volante stepped proudly along, pricking up her ears to recognize familiar bughears, and to question strange stocks and stones, whether they were "miching malicho" to horse-flesh. Brothertoft walked by his daughter's side. Only now and then in their hurried march could he take her hand and speak and hear some word of tender love. But the conscious- ness in each of the other's presence, and the knowledge of the new birth of the holiest of all the holy affections between them, was sufficient. A vague bliss involved them as they hurried through the dim night. And both evaded the thought of that Hate they had left behind, that embodied Hate, helpless and alone, at Brothertoft lManor. The negroes trotted along, babbling, comically together. Jierck Dewitt led the way in silence. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 325 "I shall never dare to face Major Skerrett again, if I don't bring these people straight through," - so he thought. "I am just sober enough to walk my chalk if I pin my eyes to it. If I look at anything else, or think of anything else, this path 'll go to zigzagging, and splitting up into squirrel-tracks, and climbing up trees. Old Voltaire says he don't know these back roads very well. If I lose the track, we shall be nowhere." The region a mile back from the river was mostly forest then, with scattered clearings. Of- ten the course of our fugitives was merely a wood-road, or a cow-path, or an old trail. There were giant boles stopping the way, and prone trunks barricading it. There were bogs and thickets to avoid. It is bewildering business to travel through a forest in the dark. Jierck Dewitt knew this well. He did not distract his attention with talk, or recalling the events of the evening. He held tight with all his eyes and all his wits to the track, commanding it not to divide or meander. This severe application steadied his brain. He slowly sobered. The fine fumes of his potations of Brothertoft Madeira, in the cellar, exhaled. The coarser gases of rum from the paternal jug split their exit through the sutures of his skull. page: 326-327[View Page 326-327] 326 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. It seemed a moment, it seemed a millennium, it was an hour, when the party reached the foot of Cedar Ridge, almost three miles from the Manor-House. Cedar Ridge is a famous look-out. "What you cannot see from there is' not worth see- ing," say the neighbors. It rises some three hundred feet above the level of the river, and surveys highlands north, uplands and lowlands south, with Janus-like vision. Long before Hendrecus Hudson baptized the North River, Ce-dar Ridge was a sacred mount -a hill of Sion -to the Redskins. Fire had disforested the summit, and laid bare two bosomy mounds, stereoscopic counterparts, with a little depression between. A single cedar, old as the eldest hills, grew in this hollow. Around it had generations of frowzy Indian braves held frantic powwows, and danced their bow-legged minuets. Many a captive had suffered the fate of Saint Sebastian against its trunk, and dab- bled the roots with his copper-colored blood. Savory fragments of roast Iroquois had fattened the soil. Fed on this unwholesome diet, and topped every winter by Boreas, the tree made hard, red flesh, and bloated into a stunted, wicked-looking Dagon, as gnarled and knobby as that old yew-tree of Fountains Abbey, which -so goes the myth -was Joseph of Arima- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 327 thea's staff, - planted by him there when he was oil his tour to convert the hairy Britons from Angli to Angeli. A famous point of view was Cedar Ridge, named after this little giant, this squat sovereign among evergreens. Such a landmark attained without' error, Jierck Dewitt began to feel secure. He could relax his strict attention to his duties as guide, and let his thoughts confuse him again. The moment he began to review the events of the evening with a sobered brain, he grew suddenly troubled. He halted where the forest ceased on the ridge, and the two bare mounds with the low cedar appeared against the sky. He paused there, and let Voltaire overtake him. This was the third night of that old brave's travels. The present pace was telling on him. He was puffing loud and long, as he stopped at Jierck's signal. The others passed on up the ridge. The white mare became a spot of light in the open. "Voltaire," whispered Jierck, "I did n't see the Mistress around when we left the Manor. Do you know what was done with her?" "Where was you, that you did n't see?" asks Voltaire, taking and yielding air in great gasps between every word. page: 328-329[View Page 328-329] 828 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. "Never minld that! What became of her?" "Why you know (puff) that she fired (gasp) a pistol (explosion and sigh) at Master; and everybody thought (wheeze) that she'd shot him dead." Here Voltaire took in a gallon or so of night air, and delivered it slowly back, by the pint, in the form of a chain of clouds, as white as if they came from the lungs of a pure Cau- casian. This speech explained half the mystery to Jierck. His curiosity seemed to become more troublesome. H6e continued anxiously: "Yes, yes, I know,"-which he did not until this moment. "But what was done with her after- wards. I was outside, doing my part there." "You was outside, was you?" says Voltaire, slowly recovering fluency. "Well, I guess they wanted you inside." "A man can't be in two places at once. What did they want me for?" "Them two boys - the root-doctor's son and Samuel Galsworthy -is as spry as any two boys I ever see. Mighty spry and strong and handy boys they. is; but they had a'most a orkud job with Mistress, she tearing and scratching so. They wanted another hand bad; but they got through, and fixed her up right at last." "Fixed her! How?" "What you in such an orful hurry about? Let a man take breff, won't you?" EDWIN BROTHtEKTOFT. 829 ' Yes ; but speak quick! What did they do with her? Is she left there?" "Leff thar!" says Voltaire, relapsing into full patois. "Whar would dey leave her? She's done tied up in a big arm-cheer in de parlor. An' dar she 'll stay all dis bressed night, jess like a turkey truss up fur to be roast." And he gave a little, triumphant chuckle, that seemed to remember old cruelties he had suffered at her lands. Jierck made no answer. He seemed to need breath as much as the negro. He gave a little gasp, and sprang up the hill-side. Puzzled, Voltaire followed slowly after. While they talked, the others had 'climbed to the top of the ridge, and halted to rest where the old cedar stood barring the way. Jierck Dewitt came panting up to the summit. He turned and glanced hastily over the hazy breadth of slumbering landscape below. Belts of mist lay in the little valleys. Beyond was the river, a broad white pathway, like a void. And beyond again, the black heaps of the 'mountains westward. Here and there in the vague, a dot of light marked a farm-house. The lanterns of the British frigates were to be seen twinkling like reflections of stars in water. It may have been fancy, but in the silence Lucy thought that she heard the far-away sound page: 330-331[View Page 330-331] 330 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. of the Tartar's bell striking four bells, ten o'clock, and her consorts responding. Jierck continued peering intently into the dark. His seeming alarm communicated itself to the party. "What is it?" said Brothertoft. "Do you fear pursuit?" "No," whispered Jierck. His monosyllable sent a shiver to all their hearts. There was a veiled scream in this single word, - a revelation of some terrible panic await- ing them. "I must see farther," resumed Dewitt, in the same curdling tone; and he sprang up the mound on the right. Edwin Brothertoft, impressed by this strange terror, followed. He was within a dozen feet of the summit, and its wider reach of view, when Jierck leaped down and seized him tight by both shoulders. Jierck caught breath. Then, with his face close to the other's, "My God!" he hissed, "I 've set the house on fire.. We 've left that woman there, tied, to burn to death." XIX. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT shook off the man's clutch of horror, and stared southward. A dull glow, like the light of moonrise through mist, was visible close to the dark line of the horizon. Instantly, as he looked, the glow deepened. The black mass of the Manor-House appeared against the light. The fire must be in the rear and below. An alarm-gun from the frigate came booming through the silence. While they stood paralyzed, Edwin Brothertoft sprang down from the mound, tore his daugh- ter from the saddle, and was mounted himself quick as thought. "I must save her!" he cried, -" your mother, my wife!" He was gone. A moment they could see the white horse, like a flash of light, as she flung down the break-neck hill-side. Then she leaped into the mist, and a moment more they could hear her hoofs clattering. page: 332-333[View Page 332-333] 332 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. They stood appalled and speechless. Heart-beat by heart-beat it seemed that the fire grew intenser. All the world was blotted out for the gazers, except that one red spot, like a displaced moonrise, far to the southward. Fire was not master yet. Who could say? Only three long miles. He might save her, Other succor might come. Lucy gave one more look into that ocean of mist where she knew her father was strug- gling. Then, quick but quiet, she seized poor Jierck Dewitt's arm. "Come," she said; "show me the way,- the shortest way. I will follow my father." XX. BROTHERTOFT galloped down the hill-side. He had no whip or spur, but thet mare took in his passion, made it her own, and dashed forward madly. No winding by comfortable curves for them! They bore straight for the house. Three miles from Cedar Ridge,- three miles to go! and broken country, all hill and gully! No sane man could gallop it by day. A night ride there might be the dream of a madman. There were belts of forest, dense and dark, with trees standing thick as palisades. There were ravines crowded with thorny thickets. There were stony brooks, and dry channels stonier. There were high walls slanting up the sharp slopes of the scattered clearings. Down was steep, and up was steep, and it was all up and down. But, though darkness trebled the dan- ger, horse or rider never shrank. They bore straight on. Three miles to go! And while they galloped, the rider's thought galloped. Sometimes it burst out into a cry of encouragement for his horse; sometimes it was page: 334-335[View Page 334-335] 334 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. unspoken; but all the while it went on wildly, thus - "On, Volante! Straight for that light to the south! Fires move fast; we must go faster. Only three miles away, and there she sits bound,- and the flames coming, - she I once loved, God knows how faithfully! Gallop, gallop, Volante! "Bravely! here we are down the ridge! Now, stretch out over this smooth bit of clear- ing! Yes; that black line is a stone wall. Measure it, Volante! Not four feet! Good practice for our first leap! Easy now, steady! Hurrah! Over and a foot to spare! Well done, horse! And I have been a plodding foot-soldier! But I can ride still, like a boy, side-saddle or no saddle. A Brothertoft cannot lose the cavalier. We shall win. "What, Volante? Nothing to fear,--that white strip in the dell! Only a brook. Barely twelve feet to leap. Never mind the dark and the bad start! Remember my wife, - she burns, if we flinch. Now, together! Hurrah! Over, thank God! Splashed, but safe over and away! "A clearingi again. Shame, Volante! Are you a ploughman's horse, that you labor so clumsily in these furrows? See that horrible, glow upon the sky! This wood hides it again. Idle forest! why was it not burned clean from the ground a century ago? Everything baffles. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 335 No, Volante! No turning aside for this wind- row! Over, over! Through, through, and now straight on! Yes; the hill is steep, but we must gallop down it. No stumbling. What! another wall, and higher ? You shrink! No,- you must. She shall not burn! Now, God help us! Down? No; up and off! Hurrah! 1"How we have rattled through those two miles! And here is the road. Easier travel- ling, if you can only take that worm fence! The top bars are sure to be rotten. A fair start, my good mare, and do your best! Bravely again! I knew we should crash over. Plain sailing now! What, limping, flagging, Volante ? Shame! This is a road fit for a lady's summer- evening canter. Shake out, Volante! Let me see your stride ! Show your Lincolnshire blood! The winner in this race win's Life,--LIFE, do you hear ? Wake up there, you farmers! Turn out and help! Fire at Brothertoft Manor. FIRE ! "Faster, faster! Are we too late? Never! I see the glow brighten against the sky; but the night is still as death; fire will move slow. We shall see at the turn of the road. Faster now! She must not burn, sitting there, where I saw her by the dear fireside of the years gone by,-sitting bound, and the flames snarling. Ah! I so loved her! I so trusted her! We were young. Life was so beautiful! God was page: 336-337[View Page 336-337] 836 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. so good! It was miserable that she should wound me, and more cruelly wound her own soul. But I have forgiven her. O, let me save her, if only to speak peace and pardon! She shall not'burn. A dozen strides, and we can see the house. Perhaps this great light is the sta- bles. No, - everything! Fire everywhere. Too late! too late! Never! I can burn. She shall not." And they galloped up the lawn. XXI. " I AM FIRE, a new-comer on the scene at Broth- ertoft Manor-House. "I was a spark from Jierck Dewitt's flint, a flash of his powder, a feeble smoulder, a pretty, graceful little flame, peering about for something nutritious. I was weak. I get force as I go. Let me once fairly touch fuel, and I will roar you, roar you,--ay, and roast you too\! '"What a grand pile of rubbish I see, now that I can light up this dusky den of a cellar!s Let me burrow here! Let me scamper here! Aha, I am warm and strong'! A leap now! Hurrah! I am so large and vigorous that I can multiply myself. Go, littleflames, rummage everywhere. Blaze, my children, flash in the corners, find what you like, 'eat and grow fierce. Grow fierce and agile! I mean to exhibit you by and by. You must presently run up stairs, make your- selves broad and slender, dance, exult, and de- vour everywhere. "A drop of the famous Brothertoft Madeira, now, for Fire and family! Here goes at the --5 V page: 338-339[View Page 338-339] 338 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. wine-room. I cannot stop to draw corks. Down go the shelves! Crash go the bottles! Drink, flames, drink! What nectar!' How this black hole of a cellar shines! Fine wine makes me hungry for finer fare! I could eat tithits now. Perhaps I shall find them up stairs. A cradle with a fat bambing,- that would be a sweet morsel! A maiden's bed with a white-limbed maiden on it,--that I could take finely. Come flames, my children, up stairs, and let us see, what we can find! Up, my strongest, my hun- griest, my dr'unkest flames! up and follow! "I am FIRE! This house and all that be in it are mine." XXII. MRS. BROTHERTOFT sat in the parlor of the de- serted mansion, bound, helpless, and alone. She was exhausted and weak after her furious struggle with her captors. Mental frenzy had wearied her mind. As Major Skerrett closed the door, and she was left solitary, a little brief sleep, like a faint, fell upon her. It could have lasted but a moment, for when she suddenly awoke, the final footsteps of the re- tiring party were still sounding upon the gravel road. She listened intently. The sound ceased. Human presence had departed. Silence about her,- except that the fire on the hearth hissed and muttered, as fire imprisoned is wont to do, in feeble protest against its powerlessness. This moment of sleep seemed to draw a line sharp as death between two eras in Mrs. Brother- toft's history. From the hither side of this em- phatic interval of oblivion she could survey her past life apart from the present. Violence, Force, page: 340-341[View Page 340-341] 340 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. had at last intervened in her career, and made their mark sharp as the sudden cleft of an earth- quake in a plain. She had now the opportunity, as she sat bound, strictly but not harshy, before a comfortable fire, to review her conduct and approve or condemn. She could now ask herself why Force had come in to baffle her plans, -what laws she had broken to merit this inevitable penalty of failure and insulting punishment. There was a pause in her life, such as is given to all erring ahd guilty lives many times in life, and to all souls in death, to look at past ruin quietly, and plan, if they will, with larger wisdom for the time to come. She rapidly put together her facts, and without much difficulty comprehended the plot of Kerr's capture and Lucy's evasion. It angered her to be defeated by a " silly child," as she had named her. But she put this aside for the moment. A graver matter was to be considered. She thought of her husband, lying in the dining-ro m, slain, as she supposed, by her hand. Then, in her soul, began a great and terrible battle. "You are free!" her old companion Furies whispered her. "Free of that incubus, your husband. Such triumph well repays you for the insult of a few hours' bondage.'" But then a low voice within her seemed to ask, EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 341 "Triumph! Can you name it triumph that you have trampled on your womanhood, and done murder to a man who gave you only love and only pity when you wronged him?" "Be proud of yourself, beautiful creature!" whispered the Furies. "You are an imperial woman, rich, masterly, and skilful, with a bril- liant career before you." "Humble yourself before God and your own soul, miserable woman!" the inner voice re- plied. 'Repent, or that murdered man will take his stand at your side forever." "He owed you this vengeance," her evil spir- its hinted, " for your great disappointment. If he had not been a nerveless dreamer, full of feeble scruples and sham ambitions, you would have had all your heart desired. He basely cheated you. He promised everything, and per- formed nothing. He was the pride of the Prov- ince; he let himself sink into insignificance. Poor-spirited nobody! It was a kindness to snuff out his mean and paltry life." "Did you see his gentle face as he fell?" the counter influence made answer. "How gray and old he was! Do you remember him?-it seems but yesterday -a fair youth, kindling with the hopes that to him were holy. You loved him sometimes,-do you not recognize those moments as your noblest? Have not page: 342-343[View Page 342-343] ,342 EDWLIN BROTHERTOFT. yours been the false ambitions and' the idle dreams? Is not all this misery and failure the result of your first trifling with sin, and then choosing it? Disloyal woman,-if you are a woman, and' not a fiend, -your cruelty has brought defeat and shame upon you! Profit by this moment of quiet reflection! 'see how the broken law revenges itself!" "Yes, madam," the other voices here inter- rupted, "you cannot escape what your weakness calls shame. You will never live down scandal. The untempted people will never admit you to their ranks. Scorn them. Do not yield to : feeble regrets. Be yourself, -your brave, de- fiant self!" !! The Furies were getting the better. The i virago was more and more overpowering the woman. Sometimes she sat patient'; Some- times she raged and struggled impotently with her bonds. It was terrible in the dim parlor to watch her face, and mark the tokens of that mad war within. -The fire in the chimney had been slowly heat- ing the logs all this time. They were ripe to blaze. Suddenly they burst into a bright flame. Mrs. Brothertoft looked up and saw herself in the mirror over the fireplace. There was hardly time for a thrill of self-admiration. Tile same flash that showed her her own face revealed also " EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 343 the reflection of the portrait behind her. She saw the heads of Colonel Brothertoft and his white horse looking through the torn curtain. Sh ehad not glanced that way since her scene of yesterday evening with the picture. She had evaded a sight that recalled her treason. Now it forced itself upon her. Here she was bound; and there, over her own head in the mirror, was a ghostly shadow of what? What! was this the ghosther image of her husband's very ghost? Was he there in the can- vas? Had he stolen away out of that dead thing once his body, lying only a few steps and two doors off? Was he there watching her? Why did he wear that triumphant smile? He was not used to smile much in the dreary old times;--never to sneer as this semblance was oing. Even that beast, Ithe white horse, shared in his master's exultation over her captivity,- his nostrils swelled, and- he seemed to pant for breath enough to neigh over a victory. She stared. an instant, fascinated by that faint image. There was a certain vague sense of relief in its presence. This shadow of her hus- band murdered might be a terror; but he in- tervened a third party in the hostile parley mnd the thickening war between her two selves. This memento of remorse came to the succor Df the almost beaten relics of her better nature, page: 344-345[View Page 344-345] anE dS UWIN BROTHERTOFT. and commanded them to turn and make head again against that reckless, triumphant, bedlam creature, who was fast gaining the final mastery and absorbing her total being. Was it thus? Had this image of a ghost come to say, "My wife, the old tie cannot break. I come to plead with you not to annihilate the woman, not to repel the medicine of remorse, I and make yourself an incurable, irreclaimable fiend, -was this his errand of mercy? 9 Or did he stand there to hound on the Fren- zies, spiritual essences, to her, to him visible beings, whom she felt seducing her? Was he smiling with delight to see her spirit zigzagging acrQss the line between madness and sanity, and staggering farther, every turn, away from self- i control? Which was this shadow's office? While she trembled between these questions, still staring at those two reflections in the mirror, -herself and that image of the portrait, --sud- I denly the flash of flame in the chimney went out. A downward draught sent clouds of white smoke drifting about the room. Mrs. Brothertoft peered a moment into the darkness. Her own reflection in the mirror was just visible, as she stirred her head. She missed the other. But there were strange sounds sud- Jenly awakened,-a strange whispering through ;he house. i *', EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 345. So long as her seeming, ghostly companion was visible, she had kept down her terror. Now, as she fancied it still present but unseen, a great dread fell upon her. She writhed in her bonds to turn and face that portrait on the wall. She could, with all her pains, only move enough to see a little corner of the curtain. Did it move ? Would something unearthly presently put aside those dusky folds, and come rustling to her side ? She listened a moment, and then screamed aloud. The sound of her own voice a little reassured her. She laughed harshly, and her soliloquy went on, but wilder, and without the mild en- treaties of her better self. " What a fool I am to disturb myself with mere paint and canvas ! But I will have that picture burnt, - yes, burnt, to-morrow morning. The man is gone, and every, relic of him and his name shall perish from the earth. How plainly I seem to see him lying there dead, with his face upturned ! What ? -Do dead men stir? I think he stirred. Do you dare to lift your finger and point at me ? I had a right to shoot housebreakers. Put down your finger, sir! You will not ? Bahl! Do what you please, you cannot terrify me. You shall be burnt, burnt, -do you hear ? I smell fire strangely. page: 346-347[View Page 346-347] 346 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. The smoke from that chimney, -yes, nothing else. I am afraid I shall be cold before morn- ing; but now I am feverish. The air seems hot and dry. I suppose I have grown excited, tied here. What is that low rustling all the while? Sometimes it seems to come from the cellar, then it is here. Any one in this room? Speak! Dewitt, Sarah, is that you come home,? No an- swer; and this whispering grows louder. Some other chimney must be smoking; I can hardly breathe. I must try to sleep, or I shall go mad before morning with that dead man in the house. Put down your finger, sir! Don't point at me like a school-boy! What! Is he coming? Is that his step I hear in the hall? Let me see ]he has only two steps to make to the door, five across the hall, then two more and he could lean over and whisper what he thought of me." She listened awhile to the strange sounds below, and then went on: "If you come in here, Edwin Brothertoft, and speak to me, I shall go crazy. I cannot hear any of your meek talk. Lie where you are till morning, and then, if you wish, you shall be buried. Perhaps burning was a little too harsh. Morning is not manl hours away. It must be nearly ten o'clockj But if this smoke grows any thicker, I shall ceri t^inly smother. These ghastly noises get loudec anid louder. What can that crash be? Is thll EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 847 dead man coming? Help, help! Keep him away! Mr. Brothertoft, Edwin, if you love me, pray stop fumbling at that latch. You know how indulgent you always were to my little fancies; do not come in, if you please. I am afraid, Edwin, afraid. I am so fevered, tied here by those cursed brigands, that I shall go mad. I am suffocating with this smoke. Will some one bring' me a little water? But when you come, do not look into that room across the hall. There is a gray-headed man lying there. He may say I murdered him. Do not take notice of him, he was always weak-minded. He will say I insulted, wronged, dishonored him, and made his life a burden and a shame. Do not listen to scandal against a woman; but bring me a drop, one drop of water to cooi, my throat, for I am burning with a horrible fever. If these strange noises underneath and all around do not cease, I shall certainly go mad. What can it mean? I hear sounds like an army. I would rather not receive your friends at present, Mr.. Brothertoft, if it is their feet and voices I hear. j This smoke makes my eyes; red, and you always were proud of my beauty, you know. What! have they lighted their torches, those ghosts in the hall? Or is this glow through the room the moon? No. My God FIRE! ,I shall burn. O Lucy, Lucy! O Edwin, help!" page: 348-349[View Page 348-349] XXIII. XXIII. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT came galloping up to the flames. Had he won this race, with a life for its prize? The maddened mare tore forward, as if she would leap in among the loud riot there. Fire everywhere! A mob of arrogant, roar- ing, frenzied flames possessed the cellar and the ground-floor. Each window, so long a peaceful entrance for sunbeams, now glowed with light within, or thrust out great cruel blades of fire, striking at darkness., Fire sheathed the base of the turret. Agile flames were climbing up its sides, and little playful flashes seized the creep- ers that overhung Lucy's window, and, clinging to these, peered in through the panes, looking for such diet as they craved. The husband turned the corner of the house, and galloped up to the window, -that window where an hour ago he had stood gazing at the proud, hateful face of the woman he loved so bitterly. The white horse and its rider looked in at the EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 349 window. And this is what the one quick, com- prehensive glance of horror showed them, as a draught of air dragged the smoke away. Opposite, on the wall, the two heads of the picture were just yielding to the flames around them. Little buds of flame were sprouting through the floor, little tendrils wreathing the doors, and drawing a closer circle about the fig- ure at their centre. There she sat, as if this scene was prepared to illuminate her beauty, A gush of air lifted the smoke like a curtain, and there she was sitting, her black hair tower- ing above her pale forehead, her white arms bound to the chair, and the red light of her diamond resting upon her white bosom. The smoke had half suffocated her. But she was revived by the sudden flood of air, as a burned door gave way. She turned her head toward the window, - did her spirit tell her that the heart she had wounded was there? She lifted her feeble head as her husband dashed forward, and it seemed to him that, amid all the snarling and roaring of the flames, he could hear her moan, "Help, Edwin! Help!" The bulbs of flame through the floor shot up and grew rank, the wreaths of flame reached out and spread fast as the beautiful tendrils of a magic vine, the smoke drifted together again, and hid the room and the figure sitting there; page: 350-351[View Page 350-351] a :p rt A D1W 15 aKiK UP J T Over the carpet of flame, through the bower of flame, where long streamers redder than autumn hung and climbed, through the thick, blinding, suffocating, baffling smoke, Edwin Brothertoft sprang in to save his wife. God help him, for his love is strong! By this time, from the Tartar frigate and her consorts, boats'-crews were making for the burn- ing house. They hoped to handle and furl the flames, as they would a flapping maintopsail in a gale. By this time the Manor people were also hurrying up, with neighborly intent to fling looking-glasses and crockery from the windows, and save them. The Tartars were exhilarated by the splendid spectacle of fire in revolt. Itwas indeed a wild and passionate scene. From every window fin- gers of flame beckoned the world to behold it. And now on Lucy's turret Fire had hoisted its banner, as in a castle the flag goes up when the master comes to hold holiday. The sailors gained the foot of the lawn. This pageant burst upon them. They sprang for- ward with a hurrah. Suddenly the. foremost paused and huddled together. What is it? A dark figure, bearing some heavy burden, appeared at the only window of the front where ;he flames were not overflowing in full streams and fountaining upward. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 351 The figure came fighting forward. Fire shouted, and clutched at it. Smoke poured around, to bewilder it. The figure-a man's form-staggered and fell. Inward or outward --inward into that fiery furnace, or, outward toward the quiet, frosty air of night-the sailors could not see. They rushed on more eagerly, but this time without the cheer. Only the bravest, with Commodore Hotham. himself at their head, dared face the flames, and touch the scorching heat to seek for that es- caping figure they had seen. They found him lying without, under the great window,--a man, and in his arms a burned and blackened thing. It might be, they thought, a woman. They carried them away where the air was cool, and the crisp frost was unmelted on the grass. The man breathed, and moaned. No one knew his face, masked with black smoke. With the neighbors, Mrs. Dewitt now came running up, and joined the group. "See!" said she, with a shudder. "This was my mistress. She always wore this diamond on her neck in the evening. She is dead. No; she breathes!" Yes; there was the gem, showing red reflec- tions of the flames., An hour ago the woman page: 352-353[View Page 352-353] AdT I aUsIUJ1 TOFT E. had been a beauty, and the diamond a point of admiration, saying, "Mark this white neck and this fair bosom!" Now it made the utter ruin there more pitiful. Some one led forward Volante, drooping and all in a foam. There'was evidently some mys- tery in this disaster. "Take these burned crea- tares to the nearest house," said Hotham. "And now, boys, some of you try to save the stables. Some come with me at the house. There were more people in it." The sailors fought fire. The others carried the two bodies to Bilsby's farm-house. The flames showed' them their path under the red- leaved trees of October. The same ruddy light was guiding Lucy, Brotherft on her way to what a little while ago was home. Long before she reached the spot, the roar and frenzy of the flames had subsided. Nothing was left but the ragged walls and the red ruins of the Manor-House. It had been punished by fire for the misery and sin it had sheltered. A guard of sailors, under a lieutenant, pro- *ected what little property had been saved. 5ucy learned from them how an unknown man lad rescued her mother to die away from the lames.', EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 353 She left Voltaire to make some plausible story of the kidnapping, and to invent a release of hers from the captors' hands, when the fire they had accidentally kindled was discovered. She hastened to help the father she loved and the mother she pitied so deeply. Jierck Dewitt followed her to Bilsby's door. "Go, Jierck!" she said. "It makes me shudder to see you, and think of this dreadful harm you have done. Go and tell the whole to Major Skerrett." "' Will you speak to my wife, Miss Lucy, and show her how she is to blame, - how her wrong sent me wrong? Tell her how she and I are linked in with ruin here. Perhaps it will help you to forgive me if you cap better her." Lucy promised. She entered the farm-house to encounter her holy duties with her parents. Jierck hurried off to meet Major Skerrett, give him the sorrowful history of the night, and warn him away from a region that would be alive by daylight, and bayonetting haystacks and hollow trees for kidnappers. The penitent fellow could get no farther on his return than Cedar Ridge. There he saw the red embers of the Manor-House watching him from the edge of the horizon, like the eye of a Cy- clops. He was fascinated, and, sank down at the w page: 354-355[View Page 354-355] ....- , .lA U 1 U S' 1 U I . foot of the uncanny old cedar, sick with horror and fatigue. Skerrett and Canady, pressing anxiously onj found Jierck there at sunrise, asleep and half dead with cold. They roused Iim, and heard his story. A little wreath of smoke alone marked the site of the Manor-House. Here was the starting- point, there was the goal of Edwin Brothertoft's night gallop. It thrilled the Major to hear of that wild ride, and to fancy he saw the white horse dashiing through the darkness on that noble errand of mercy. "Some men would have said, 'iCurse her! let her burn! She's hurt me worse than fire 'll hurt her,' "says Hendrecus. ,Some would have took the turns of the road, and got to the house when it was nothing but chimbleys. Some would have been afeard of being known, and shot for a rebel. I've heard say that the Patroon was n't one of the strong kind; but he's done a splendid thing here, and I'm proud of myself that I was born on the same soil, and stand a chance to have some of the same natural grit into me.", Nothing further could be done, and it was not safe to loiter. The three returned over the Highlands to Putnam's army. And that day, and for many days, Peter Skerrett meditated on EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 355 this terrible end of the sorrow and sin at Broth- ertoft Manor. He traced with ghastly interest; the different paths by which vengeance con- verged upon the guilty woman, anld saw with what careful method her crime had prepared its own punishment. "God grant," said he, " that she may live to know what love and pity did to save, her from the horror of her penalty!" page: 356-357[View Page 356-357] XXIV. WOULD that marred and ruined being, once the beautiful Mrs. Brothertoft, ever revive enough to ask and receive forgiveness from her hus- band? Lucy did notrdare to hope it. She watched the breathing corpse, and looked to see it any mo- ment escape from its bodily torture into death. Edwin Brothertoft was but little harmed by the flames. A single leap had carried him through the fiery circle which was devouring his wife, as she sat bound. In an instant he had dragged her away over the falling floor, cut her free, and was at the window struggling through. He had been almost stifled by the smoke, but his hurts were slight. In a few days he was at his Wife's bedside. He alone could interpret the sad, sad language of her suffering moans. Her soul, half dormant, in a body robbed of all its senses, seemed to per- ceive his presence and his absence by some spir- itual touch. Would she ever hear his words of peace? o EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 357 The red, ripe leaves grew over-ripe, ailr fell, and buried October. Then came the first days of November, with their clear, sharp sunshine, and bold, blue sky, and massive white clouds, sailing with the northwest wind a month be- fore the snow-drifts. Sweet Indian summer fol- lowed. Its low southern breezes whispered the dying refrain of the times of roses and passion- ate sunshine. Edwin Brothertoft sat by his wife's window one twilight of that pensive season. A new phase in his life had begun from the night of the rescue. By that one bold act of heroism he had leaped out of the old feebleness. He felt forgotten forces stir in him. His long sorrow became to him as a sickness from which a man rises fresh and purified. In this mood, with the dim landscape before him, a symbol of his own sombre history, and the glowing sky of evening beyond, symbolizing the clear and open regions of his mind's career henceforth,- in this mood he grew tenderer for his wife than ever before. It was no earthly love he felt for her. That had perished long ago. Deceit on her side wounded it. Disloyalty killed it. The element of passion was gone. There would have been a deep sense of shame in recalling his lover fond- ness once for a woman since unfaithful. But page: 358-359[View Page 358-359] 358 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. now he looked back upon her wrongs and his errors as irremediable facts, and he could pity both alike. The tendency of such a character as hers, so trained as hers, to some great rebellion against the eternal laws, some great trial of its strength with God, and to some great and final lesson of defeat, became plain to him. The law of truth in love and faith in marriage is the law a woman is likely to break if she is a law- breaker. She had broken it, and he divined the spiritual warfare and the knowledge of defeat and degra- dation which had been her spiritual punishment, bitterer to bear than this final corporeal ven- geance. Entering into her heart and reading the thoughts there, he utterly forgave and pitied her. And for himself,-what harm had she done him? None,--so he plainly saw. Except for the disenchanting office of this great sorrow, he would have lived and died a worldly man. When his poetic ardors passed with youth, lihe would have dwindled away a prosperous gen- tleman, lost his heroic and martyr spirit, and smiled or sneered or trembled at the shout for freedom through the land. Except for this great sorrow, his graceful gifts would have made him a courtier, his refinement would have become fas- EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 359 tidiousness, he would have learned to idolize the status quo, and then, when the moment came for self-sacrifice, he would have been false to his nobler self. That meanness and misery he had escaped. That he had escaped it, and knew himself to be a man wholly true, was victory. The world might repeat its old refrain of dis- appointment in his career; it might say, "He promised to be our brilliant leader, - he is no- body." But it could never say, "See, there is Brothertoft! He was an ardent patriot; but wealth spoiled imn, the Court bought him, and he left us meanly."' "My life," he thought, " has been somewhat a negative. I have missed success. I have missed the joy of household peace. And yet I bear no grudge against my destiny. I have never for one moment been false to the highest truth, and that is a victory greater than success." These last words he had spoken aloud. In reply, he heard a stir and a murmur from his wife. He turned to her, and in the dusk he could see that her life was recoiling from death to gain strength to die. Voice and expression returned to her. "Edwin!" she called to him, feebly. "Jane?" he answered. In the pleading tone of her cry, in the sweet page: 360-361[View Page 360-361] 360 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. affection of his one word of response, each read the other's heart. There was no need of long interpretation. To her yearning for pardon and love, her name upon his lips gave full assurance that both were granted. She reached blindly for his hand. He took hers tenderly. And there by the solemn twilight they parted for a time. Death parted them. She awoke in eternity. He stayed, to share a little longer in the dreamy work of life. ' \ ' ^! \. XXV. A WORD of farewell to Major Kerr. He had a horrid, horrid time at Fishkill. Little but pork and beans to eat, little but apple-jack to drink, nothing but discomfiture to think of. He experienced shame. A ;letter was conveyed to him from Lucy Brothertoft. She wrote, as kindly as might be, what her real feelings had been toward him. She also described the sad tragedy of the night of his capture. The conviction that he was a shabby fellow had by this time pierced Kerr's pachyderm. He was grateful to Lucy that she felt no contempt for him. But her gentle dignity reproached his unmanliness to her, and he became a very de- jected penitent. General Burgoyne has been an important character behind the scenes of ,this drama. He was a clever amateur playwright, and while our personages have been doing and suffering, the General has been at work at a historical play, 16 page: 362-363[View Page 362-363] 362 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. which he meant to name, "Saratoga, or the Last of the Rebels." There was some able acting ill it, and all the world watched for the catastrophe quite breathless and agape. A brilliant pageant of a surrender closed the play, in which, to the general surprise, it was Jack Burgoyne, and not Horatio Gates, who gave up the sword and yielded the palm. This news came flying down to Fishkill within ten days after Major Kerr's capture. The unlucky fellow heard of the great take of British and Hessian officers. He began to fear prisoners were a drug in the market, and he must eat Continental fare till his stomach was quite gone. "Write to Sir Henry Clinton," said Old Put, good-naturedly, "that I'll swap you for your value in the Yankees he took with the Highland forts." Kerr indited a doleful account of his diet and impending dyspepsia to his General. "I must have him back,"5 said Sir Henry. "Anybody can be an Adjutant; but nobody in His Majesty's army can carve a saddle of mutton, or take out a sidebone, with Kerr." The "swap" was arranged. The Major was put on board the Tartar, opposite Brothertoft Manor. He went off a sadder and a wiser man. His capture had served its purpose of amusing EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 363 Putnam's desponding forces. The General had been able to write to Washington, "We have lost the Highland forts; but we have taken an Ad- ju tant"; - and Humphreys had composed a doggerel, beginning,-" O Muse, inspire my feeble pen, To sing a deed of merit, Performed to daunt the enemy, By Major Peter Skerrett." Poor Kerr! when he reached New York, he was all the time haunted by regrets for his lost bride. "Up again, and take another!" is the only advice to be given under such circum- stances. Some other flower of lower degree must be a substitute for the rose. Cap'n Baylor, late of a whaler, now the chief oil man of New York, had a daughter Betty. She was a dumpy little maid. Flippers were her hands, fin-like were her feet. Nothing stat- uesque about her; but she tinkled with coin, and that tintinnabulation often opens the eyes of Pygmalion. Her the Major wooed, and glibly won. Cap'n Baylor oiled out his son-in-law's debts. Kerr resigned his Adjutancy, and took his wife home. Gout presently carried off the knobby old Earl of Bendigh. The Bucephalus colt made Brother Tom acephalous, by throwing him over a wall. Brother Dick succumbed to Bacchus. Harry Kerr, our Kerr, became the sixth Earl of Bendigh. page: 364-365[View Page 364-365] 364 EDWIN BROTRIEKTOFT. His dumpy Countess studied manners in Eng- land, and acquired the delicious languor of a lady's-maid. .She wore, morning, noon, and night, white gloves tight as thumbikins. She consumed perfume by the puncheon. But she was an honest, merry. soul, who would stand no bullying. She kept Kerr in order, and made him quite a tolerably respectable fellow at last. By and by, out of supreme gratitude to her for his wedded bliss, he had the Baylor arms looked up at the Herald's office. They were found, and quartered with his own, and may still be seen on the coat of the Kerrs, Bendigh branch, as follows: "On a rolling sea vert, a Leviathan rampant, sifflant proper. Crest, a hand grasping a harpoon. Motto, ILLIC SPIRAT, -THERE SHE BLOWS." XXVI. GENERAL VAUGHAN came down the river from Kingston, smelling of arson. Sir Henry Clinton destroyed the Highland forts and retired to New York. The Continental outposts forthwith re- occupied Peekskill. With them 'came Peter Skerrett, and there were bristles on his upper lip a week or so old. He hastened at once toward the Bilsby farm, where the Brothertofts had found shelter. He turned aside on the way to see the ruins of the AManor-House. It was still brilliant October. If the trees that first put on crimsons and purples now were sere and bare, later comers kept up the pageant. Indeed, the great oaks had only just consented to the change of season. It took sharp frosts to scourge green summer out of them. The woods seemed as splendid to Peter Sker- rett as when he looked over them on the day of his adventure here. Nothing was altered, except in one forlorn spot. There, instead of the fine old dignified Manor- page: 366-367[View Page 366-367] 366 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. House, appeared only a dew-sodden heap of cin- ders and ashes,-the tragic monument of a tragedy. "It did well to perish," thought Skerrett. "It had sheltered crime. Its moral atmosphere was tainted. The pure had fled from it. Hap- piness never could dwell there." , Peter stood leaning against a great oak-tree, and studying the scene. The autumn leaves around him dallied and drifted, and fell into the lap of earth. He lingered, he hesitated, and let his looks dally with the vagrant leaves, as they circled and floated in the quiet air, choosing the spots where they would lay them down and die. Just now he was in such eager haste; and now he hesitated, he lingered, he shrank from an interview he had ardently anticipated. The fair girl he had aided to save from a mis- erable fate,--her face, seen for a moment dimly by starlight, ever haunted him. These heavy sorrows, coming upon her young life, filled him with infinite pity. As he thought of her, the undeveloped true lover in him began to de- velop. And now, standing in this place where he had first seen her in a moment of peril, where he had felt the grateful pressure of her hand, he perceived how large and vigorous his passion had grown from'these small beginnings. l EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 367 He feared the meeting he had yearned for. It was to assure him whether this was really love he felt, or but another passing fancy like the others past. And if it were the great, deep love he hoped,- if, when he saw her face, and touched her hand, and heard her voice again, his soul recognized hers as the one companion soul, - this filled him with another dread. For if to know himself a lover, and half foresee that, after long and thorough proof of worthiness, he might be beloved, were the earliest thrill of an immortal joy; so this meeting, if it named him lover, and yet convinced him by sure tokens that his love would never be returned, was the first keen pang of a sorrow immeasurable. No wonder that he waited, and traced the cir- cuits of the falling leaves, and simulated to his mind a hundred motives for delay. It was so still in the warm, sunshiny afternoon that he could hear the crumbling cinders fall in the ruins, and all about him the ceaseless rustle of the showering foliage. But presently a noise more articulate sounded on the dry carpet of the path behind him. A light footstep was coming slowly toward this desolated spot. It seemed to Skerrett that he divined whose step would bring her hither to read again the lesson of the ruins. page: 368-369[View Page 368-369] 868 EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. He walked forward a little, that his sudden appearance against the oak might not startle the new-comer. He would not turn. It was new to the brave and ardent fellow to perceive timidity in his heart, and to evade an encounter with any danger. The footstep quickened,-a woman's surely. In a moment he heard a sweet voice call his name. A shy and timorous call, a gentle, trembling tone, - it came through the sunshine and made all the air music. Her voice! It was the voice he had longed and dreaded to hear. But now he feared no more. He believed that his immortal joy was begun, and these tremors of his soul, in answer to the trembles of her call, could never be the earliest warnings of an agony. He saw her face again, fairer than he had dreamed, in the happy sunlight. He felt again the thankful pressure of her hand. He listened to her earnest words of gratitude. They spoke a little- he gravely, she tear- fully - of the tragedy of her mother's life. This shadow deepened the tenderness of the lover. And she, perceiving this, drew closer to him, giving tokens, faint but sure, as he fancied, of the slow ripening happiness to grow henceforth. Then she guided him to see his friend, her father. EDWIN BROTHERTOFT. 369 The level sunbeams of evening went before them in the path. They disappeared amid the wood. Golden sunshine flowed after them. The trees showered all the air full of golden leaves of good omen. It seems the fair beginning of a faithful love. Will it end in doubt, sorrow, shame, and for- giveness; or in trust, joy, constancy, and peace? THE END. Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. , page: 370-371 (Advertisement) [View Page 370-371 (Advertisement) ] of price. BOSTON, 135 WASHNGTON STREEB, MAY, 1862. A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY I TICKNOR 'AND FIELDS. 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