Edwin Brothertoft/Part III Chapter VII

Chapter VII.
Portentous all the morning was Voltaire to Sappho.

Now cookery, like chemistry, must have peace to perform its experiments in.

Poor Sappho, with her husband darting into the kitchen, looking mysterious, exploding “Hush!” and darting off again, was as much flustered as a nervous chemical professor when his pupils jeer his juggles with cabbage-liquor, and 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 pudding. 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. Yesterday’s dinner was sublime; to-day’s would be ridiculous. Conspiracy upsets domestic economy, as it does political.

When Voltaire had deranged his wife with dark hints, he proceeded to perplex his son.

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 Manor, and when they came were short. Economy 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 juvenissimus and another urchin from the Manor to “chore” for him. They were unpaid attachés. They did free service as stable-boys, for the honor and education of the thing, for the privilege of chewing straws among the horses, and for the luxury of a daily bellyful of pork and pudding, and a nightly bed in the loft.

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 occasionally 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 lumbering 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 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 hasn’t got holt yet.”

“Plato,” says he, stepping into the great picturesque 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.

“Them 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 conspirator. “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, Nothing 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.

“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, ho, ho! Now I’s gwine to gib you a conundrum, Plato.”

Plato let go Volante’s tail, which he was combing, and pricked up his ears.

“What does a young lady do when she don’t want to marry her fust husband?”

“Marries her second,” guessed Plato, cheerfully.

“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 Voltaire. “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 sebben seal is opened.”

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 undiscovered. He knew of the interview with Old Sam Galsworthy and Hendrecus Canady, an hour before sunrise. He comprehended enough of the plot to enjoy it as a magnificent conundrum, 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 contemplated the empty bottles of yesterday’s banquet. 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 campaigns. 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 Tombigbee, now severe Continental, and 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 wouldn’t let go, if it once cotched here. Bat nobody ever comes except me.”

A flaring dip, very free with sparks, was certainly dangerous in this den. Who has not seen such a tinder-box of a place under a careless old country-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 shudder 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, carefully sheltering his candle with a big paw, brown on the back and red on the palm.

Combustibles were faintly visible in the glimmer. There were empty wine-boxes overflowing 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 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 faction. There was a ciderless cider-cask, beginning to gape at the seams, like a barge out of water. Rubbish had certainly called a congress in this cellar, and the entire rubbish interest 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 forlornness, 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.

“Three bottles for Major Kerr, — his last,” he said. “One, very particular, for Major Skerrett 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 fallow’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 private 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 revealed. Why deteriorate the morals of 1860 by recalling forgotten methods of cheating? Adulteration 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 tomorrow’s auto-da-fé.