Edwin Brothertoft/Part III Chapter X
Chapter 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 Highlands, 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, and then they go back, and make apologies to Nature for not admiring her. And she, minding her own business, cares as little for the compliment as for the slight.
It is a bit of the world worth seeing, that bossy belt of latitude between Fishkill and Brothertoft Manor. There is a very splendid pageant to behold there in the halcyon days of 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 gorgeous 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, Minerva, fair-haired, contralto-voiced, and courteous, 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 Skerrett 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 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 responded.
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 den 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 glimmered upon every leaf in the groves.
These were the Manor lands. Each spot Edwin Brothertoft remembered as a scene of his childhood’s discoveries of facts and mysteries in Nature. They walked on for an hour, and 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. Ten 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 enthusiasm. “I am so bewildered with this beautiful prospect that I need to hear another man’s superlatives to satisfy me I am not in a dream. Come out, sir! We are quite safe.”
“My friend,” said Brothertoft. “I was hesitating 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 tragedy. 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 intoxicating 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 wrongs. It is grand to feel so young and brave again.”
For a moment there was bold light in his eyes and vigor in his bearing. The light faded presently 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 America. There are few enough now, town or country, cottage or palace, over whose doors may be seen the unmistakable cartouche of a gentleman.
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 prototype. 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.
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 nestled wherever a shelter invited them, or wherever a shoulder of lawn wanted an epaulet. Creepers 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 doors could be permitted. The little Dutch bricks of the sides and the freestone of the quoins and trimmings, their coloring revised 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. Absolute good taste had reigned at Brothertoft Manor for a century. Its results justified the government thoroughly. The present proprietress had been educated out of her gaudy fancies by this fine example of the success of a better method. She had altered nothing, and made her repairs and additions chime with the ancient harmony.
At this moment, too, of Peter Skerrett’s inspection, 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 with 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 creepers 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.”
“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 convinced 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 understand 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 appetizer. 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 discerned, ploughing and sowing for next summer 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 Cowboys should catch them. The whole scene wore a depressed and apprehensive air. Brothertoft Manor was willing to be well with both sides, and was equally uncomfortable with both. The tenants of the Manor were generally trying to persuade themselves 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 soilless senior said. “Ah, Skerrett! you are the young oak. If I had had you to lean upon, 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, “Sam plays old sledge with dummy, and Hendrecus is writin’ something in 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 anything 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 morning hours.
“The sun always seems to me to hold back 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,” returned 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 to my daughter.”
“I must keep myself the cool outsider, with only a knight-errant’s share in this adventure,” Peter said.
A hard task he found this! The father so charmed him that he felt himself, for his sake, 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 gentleness 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 recalling, “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.