Edwin Brothertoft/Part III Chapter III

Chapter III.
Place aux héros!

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 sprightliest young turkey, fed on honeydew grasshoppers. There is a plum-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.

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 has 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 those 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 betrothed, 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 presently.”

They begin to show now upon the quarterdecks of the three frigates in the river. The guests, in full bloom of scarlet and gold, come up from cabin and ward-room of the Tartar, the Preston, and the Mercury. Jack on the forecastle has his joke, as each new figure struts forth, dodging whatever would stain or flavor him tarry. The belated men call to their servants, “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 didn’t you have these ruffles starched?”

The last man now struggles into his tightest Hessians. The last man draws on his silk stockings. 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. Present 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 captain’s coxswain, the prettiest man of the whole 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.

And now the gay party enters the dining-room at Brothertoft Manor.

How bright the sunbeams of the October afternoon, ricochetting from the smooth Hudson into the windows, gleam on the epaulets and buttons 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 flamboyant heroes will presently consume away every vestige 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 gentleman, too, of all this bandboxy company, is crowned with victor bays. They plucked them only t’ other day across the river on the ramparts of Forts Clinton and Montgomery. When Jack Burgoyne sends down his bunch of laurel from 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 Windsor Castle.

Sir Henry Clinton — no less — Cæsar ipse — hands in the grand hostess, and takes his seat at her right. How jolly he looks, the fat little man! How his round face shines, and his protuberant nose begins to glow with inhaling the steam of the feast!

“I must have you on my left, Admiral,” says the hostess, to a hearty gentleman in naval uniform.

“Thank you for my promotion, Madam,” rejoins 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 hypocrite and conspiratress? Why, the little dissembler laughs merrily, and flirts audaciously! Laughs merrily! Ah! there are bitter tears just beneath that laugh! If you call tolerating compliments from that young Captain at her right flirting, then she is flirting, and so conceals her disgust of her betrothed.

And who is that young Captain? He stole into the chair at Lucy’s right, and began to talk sentiment before he had had his soup. Who is this fine gentleman of twenty-six, with the oval face, the regular features, the slightly supercilious mouth, the dimpled chin, the hair so carefully powdered and queued? Who is this elegant petit maître? 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 Antré; 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 André’s head so long as there’s any of that venison left.”

“I dinked Chack was id Bedsylvadia or Cherzey,” says Emerick, wiping that enormous moustache 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 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 him into a scrape some of these days.”

So this sentimental Captain is Jack André. 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, née Sneyd, do not be over hasty to gain name and fame, 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 bribery 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! Swinging by the neck is a sorry exit for a petit maître, and it must be annoying to know that, in punishment for a single shabby act, one’s fame is standing forever in the pillory in Westminster Abbey.

Captain André whispered soft nothings to Lucy. And though Kerr glowered truculently, she listened, 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 tyranny, would have stammered, “love, honor, and obey,” — and “die.”

She was not always very attentive to her butterfly 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 bewildered by her throng of battling hopes and fears within, by the clatter of the feast, and Jack André’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 mind, — “How can she sit there so proud and handsome? How can she be so calm and hard? 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 applaud her wit. They listen to her suggestions. She seems to comprehend these political matters better than any of them. Hear Sir Henry Clinton, ‘Madam, if you were Queen of England, 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 times? Are not my suspicions 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 new and cruel thoughts, and forced herself again to listen to Jack André’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 Rambullet, 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 André, 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 Lucy, as she turned involuntarily, and also glanced at the animal. Then she drew away indignantly from the man 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 expressively toward the hostess.

Do we talk so at dinner-tables in 1860? eh, nous autres?

The hostess now rose, and beckoned her daughter.

“I leave you, gentlemen, to your toasts,” she said. “Major Kerr will be my representative.”

She moved to 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.

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 enough to supply ammunition.

“The Army!” “Hooray, hooray! Speech from Lord Rawdon!”

“The Navy!” “Three cheers for Commodore Hotham!”

“The captured forts!” Drank in silence to the memory of Colonel Campbell and Count Grabowski, killed there.

“Luck to Jack Burgoyne!” “Pouting Jack,” André suggests. “May he be a spiler to Schuyler, and fling Gates over the hedge into the ditch!” Laughter and cheers, and immense rattling of glasses on the table.

“Here’s to General Vaughan and his trip up the river to-morrow! May 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?

Kerr rose and endeavored to offer the famous sentiment known as The Four Rules of Arithmetic. He was muddled by this time, and the toast got itself transposed. He gravely proposed, in a thick voice, and in words with no syllables, — “Addition to the Whigs! Subtraction 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 André. Whereupon good-natured Emerick, to cover the general serio-comic dismay, rose and said, “Shettlemen, 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 André’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 Strephonics, — 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 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.