Edwin Brothertoft/Part I Chapter III
Chapter III.
Edwin Brothertoft, fifth of that name, had been two years at Oxford, toiling at the peaceful tasks and dreaming the fair dreams of a young scholar.
It was the fashion of that time to send young men of property to be educated and Anglicized in England.
Bushwhackers and backwoodsmen the new continent trained to perfection. Most of the Colonists knew that two and two make four, and could put this and that together. But lore, classic or other, — heavy lore out of tomes, — was not to be had short of the old country. The Massachusetts and Connecticut mills, Harvard and Yale, turned out a light article of domestic lore, creditable enough considering their inferior facilities for manufacture; the heavy British stuff was much preferred by those who could afford to import it.
Edwin went to be Anglicized. Destiny meant that he shall not be. His life at Oxford came to a sharp end.
His father wrote: “My son, I am dying the early death of a Brothertoft. I have been foolish enough to lose the last of our fortune. Come home and forgive me!”
Beautiful Oxford! Fair spires and towers and dreamy cloisters, — dusky chapels, and rich old halls, — green gardens, overlooked by lovely oriels, — high avenues of elms for quiet contemplation, — companionship of earnest minds, — a life of simple rules and struggles without pain, how hard it was for the young man to leave all this!
It was mid-January, 1757, when he saw home again.
A bleak prospect. The river was black ice. Dunderberg and the Highlands were chilly with snow. The beech-trees wore their dead leaves, in forlorn protest against the winter-time. The dilapidated Manor-House published the faded fortunes of its tenants.
“Tenants at will,” so said the father to his son, in the parlor where Vandyck’s picture presided.
“Whose will?” Edwin asked.
“Colonel Billop’s.”
“The name is new to me.”
“He is a half-pay officer and ex-army-contractor, — a hard, cruel man. He has made a great fortune, as such men make fortunes.”
“Will his method suit me, father? You know I have mine to make.”
“Hardly. I am afraid you could not trade with the Indians, — a handful of beads for a beaver-skin, a ‘big drunk’ for a bale of them.”
“I am afraid not.”
“I fear your conscience is too tender to let you put off beef that once galloped under the saddle to feed troops.”
“Yes; and I love horses too much to encourage hippophagy.”
“Could you look up men in desperate circumstance, and take their last penny in usury?”
“Is that his method?”
“Certainly. And to crown all, could you seduce your friend into a promising job, make the trustful fool responsible for the losses, and when they came, supply him means to pay them, receiving a ruinous mortgage as security? This is what he has done to me. Do any of these methods suit my son?” asked the elder, with a gentleman’s scorn.
“Meanness and avarice are new to me,” the junior rejoined, with a gentleman’s indignation. “Can a fortune so made profit a man?”
“Billop will not enjoy it. He is dying, too. His heirs will take possession, as mine retire.”
Edwin could not think thus coolly of his father’s death. To check tears, he went on with his queries.
“He has heirs, then, our unenviable successor?”
“One child, heir or heiress; I do not remember which.”
“Heir or heiress, I hope the new tenant will keep the old place in order, until I can win it back for you, father.”
“It cheers me greatly, my dear son,” said the father, with a smile on his worn, desponding face, “to find that you are not crushed by my avowal of poverty.”
“The thought of work exhilarates me,” the younger proudly returned.
“We Brothertofts have always needed the goad of necessity,” said the senior, in apology for himself and his race.
“Now, then, necessity shall make us acquainted with success. I will win it. You shall share it.”
“In the spirit, not in the body. But we will not speak of that. Where will you seek your success, here or there?”
He pointed to Vandyck’s group of the Parliamentary Colonel and his family. The forefather looked kindly down upon his descendants. Each of them closely resembled that mild, heroic gentleman.
“Here or in the land of our ancestors?” the father continued. “Your generation has the choice. No other will. These dull, deboshed Hanoverians on the throne of England will crowd us to revolution, as the Stuarts did the mother country.”
“Then Westchester may need a Brothertoft, as Lincolnshire did,” cries Edwin, ardently. His face flushed, his eye kindled, it seemed as if the Colonel, in the vigor of youth, had stepped down from the canvas.
His father was thrilled. A life could not name itself wasted which had passed to such a son.
“But let us not be visionary, my boy,” he went on more quietly, and with weak doubts of the wisdom of enthusiasm. “England offers a brilliant career to one of your figure, your manners, and your talents. Our friends there do not forget us, as you know, for all our century of rustication here. When I am gone, and the Manor is gone, you will have not one single tie of property or person in America.”
“I love England,” said Edwin, “I love Oxford; the history, the romance, and the hope of England are all packed into that grand old casket of learning; but” — and he turned towards the portrait — “the Colonel embarked us on the continent. He would frown if we gave up the great ship and took to the little pinnace again.”
Clearly the young gentlemen was not Anglicized. 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 pleasantly for the future. They knew that gravity would bring them straightway to sadness.
Sadness must come. Both perceived that this meeting was the first in a series of farewells.
Daily interviews of farewell slowly led the father and the son to their hour of final parting.
How tenderly this dear paternal and filial love deepened in those flying weeks of winter. The dying man felt his earthly being sweetly completed by his son’s affection. His had been a somewhat lonely life. The robust manners of his compeers among the Patroons had repelled him. The early death of his wife had depressed and isolated him. No great crisis had happened to arouse and nerve the decaying gentleman.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I should not have accepted a merely negative life, if your mother had been with me to ripen my brave purposes into stout acts. Love is the impelling force of life. 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 Brothertoft, fourth of that name, by the side of his ancestors.