[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

Four great Patroons came to honor their peer's
funeral.

These were Van Cortlandt, Phillipse with his
son-in-law Beverley Robinson, from the neighborhood,
and Livingston from above the Highlands.

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 libation
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 gentlemen
called him. He seemed proud to bear
the name of that eminent 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 doleful
tone.

“Billop swallows the whole, the infernal

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

usurer!” Van Cortlandt rejoined, looking lugubriously
at his fellows, and then cheerfully at his
glass.

“He 's too far gone to swallow anything. The
Devil has probably got him by this time. He
was dying three days ago,” said Beverley Robinson.

“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 interjected,
“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, Master
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.”

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

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, pacificator,
“I have a capital plan for young Brothertoft.”

“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,

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

and cribbed in no habitation; and always packed
to move, with a brain full of wits and a pocket
full of coupons.

The four proprietors finished 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 delivery.

“Let him alone!” said that `magister morum.
' “You know as much of love as of Latin.
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.

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

Meanwhile, a group of the tenants of the Manor,
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 tombstones,
puffed out their cheeks to rival the cherubs
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!” pronounced Isaac
Van Wart, through a warty nose. “But not
spry enough, — not spry enough!”

“Anybody could cheat him,” says lean Hendrecus
Canady, the root and Indian doctor, who
knew his fact by frequent personal experiments.

“Who 'd want to cheat a man that was everybody'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 newspaper,”
Van Wart suggested.

“If I was him, I 'd put in for Squire Billop's

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

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 Commissary.
I did n't weigh more 'n the Injun 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 presently
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

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

Galsworthy 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 affection,
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.

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

And sometimes, too, that vision of the father's
countenance, faint against a background of twilight,
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.

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.

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

Edwin 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 Galsworthy
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,” said Sam, “to pay a
mare-colt every year over and above my rent,
besides a six-year-old mare for a harriet, whenever
the new heir came in.”

“Heriot, I suppose you mean, Sam.”

“We call 'em heroits 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.”

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

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, anyhow.
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 Galsworthy.

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,

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

blowing Harriet Heriot's tail between her legs. The
omens were bad.

But when, early the second morning, the orphan
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.

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

With youth, good looks, an English education,
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
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 Edwin
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
doers. The fingers of my right hand seem too
many when I begin to number off the thorough
gentlemen of my own day. But were I ten
times Briareus, did another hand sprout whenever
I wanted a new tally, I never could count

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

the thorough blackguards among my contemporaries.
So much shade does it take to make
sunshine!

The Colonial world gave attention when it
heard a young Brothertoft was about to descend
into the arena and wrestle for life.

“So that is he!” was the cry. “How
handsome! how graceful! how chivalrous! how
brilliant! what a bow he makes! his manners
disarm every antagonist! He will not take advantages,
they say. He is generous, and has
visionary notions about fair play. He thinks a
beaten foe should not be trampled on or scalped.
He thinks enemies ought to be forgiven, and
friends to be sustained, through thick and thin.
Well, well! such fancies are venial errors in a
young aristocrat.”

The city received him as kindly as it does the
same manner of youth now, when its population
has increased one hundred-fold.

The chief lawyer said, “Come into my office
and copy papers, at a pound a week, and in a
year you will be a Hortensius.”

The chief merchant said, “If you like the
smell of rum, codfish, and beaver-skins, take a
place in my counting-house, at a hundred pounds
a year, and correct the spelling of my letters.
I promise nothing; but I may want a partner
by and by.”

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

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 Livingstons
down.”

Lord Loudon, Commander-in-Chief, swore that
Brothertoft was the only gentleman he had seen
among the dashed Provincials. “And,” says he,
“you speak Iroquois and French, and 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, Metaphysics,
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:

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

“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.

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

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, motherless,
the daughter and companion of a coarse
man who had basely made a great fortune. Rich
rogues always fancy that their children will inherit
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

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

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 distinguished
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 meet 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. Everybody
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 arrangement
for the late owner's retaining it.”

Skilful Jane! to whom a Vandyck was less
worth than its length and breadth in brocade.

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

She sealed this note with Colonel Billop's frank
motto, “Per omnia ad opes,” and despatched it.

Edwin was delighted at the prospect of recovering
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 Radical
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 already
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 grateful 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 requiring
payment. Farther back depositors are

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

feeding 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 Pæstum. 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 introduced
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 substitution
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 compunction
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.

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

Shall the talk of these children be here repeated?
It might fill a pleasant page; but this
history cannot deal with the details of their immature
lives. It only makes ready, in this First
Act, for the rapid business of a riper period.

When Edwin Brothertoft left the heiress's parlor,
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: —

Lady Jane Brothertoft, of Brothertoft Hall.

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 into
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 fragrance.
Jane looked up and saw herself in the
mirror. A blush deepened her somewhat carnal

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

carnations. Every cherub seemed to be laughing
significantly. She made a face at the merry
imps. As she did so, she caught sight of the reflection
of her father's portrait, also regarding
her. He was such a father as a child would
have been quite justified in disowning and utterly
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 butcherly
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
him. He is lovely; but I almost hate him. He
makes me feel ignorant and coarse and mean.
I don't want to be the kind of woman he has
been talking to with that deferential address.
But I suppose this elegant manner is all put on,
and he is really just like other people. He seems
to be pretty confident of carrying the world before
him. We shall be the great people of the
Province. Here comes the distinguished Sir Edwin
Brothertoft, and Lady Jane, his magnificent
wife! People shall not pretend to look down
upon me any more, because my father knew how

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

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 Murray
Hill for lovers of good family.

Edwin had found his Pearl, — a glorious, flashing
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 analyzing
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

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

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 beauty!
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 comrade.
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 brotherhood
of Love. Ring, merry bells! Your songs
shall be of blissful omen to my heart.”

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

Such soliloquies as those of the last chapter
presently led to dialogue of the same character.

The lady continued to scribble that brief romance,
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.

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

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 pleasant
incident of the portrait had brought us together,
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 ridiculous,
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 myself,
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

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

Merchant 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 much 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 place so beautiful in England, —
none so grand by nature, I mean.”

Here followed another rhapsody from this

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

poetic youth on the Manor and its people, the
river and the Highlands.

She was proud of her lover's eloquence, although
she did not sympathize much in his
enthusiasms. She had heard rivers talked of as
water-power or roads for water-carriage. Mountains
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 landlords.

But she listened, 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 supposed.

“I begin to long to see it,” she said, with real
interest. “And that dear old fat Sam Galsworthy,
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, he still timidly tender.

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

“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 softened,
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 Brothertoft
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 recommend
you a better cicerone.”

“Who can you possibly mean?”

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

“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 natural
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 balanced
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 the Billop motto, “Per omnia ad opes,”

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

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 costliest kind,” and cost
in England forty-two pounds eleven shillings and
threepence.

Venerable Rector Barclay read the service,
with 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 London, —
and had generally persuaded his disciples
to cut themselves down from polygamy to bigamy.
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 espiègle Miss Jay,
of that fine old Huguenot Protestant stock,
which still protests pertinaciously against iniquity
in Church and State. There was the sensible
Miss Schuyler, the buxom Miss Beekman,

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

high-bred Miss Van Rensselaer, Miss Winthrop,
faultless in toilette and temper, Miss Morris,
wearing the imperious nose of her family, popular
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 score of others, equally
fair, and equally worthy of a place in a fashionable
chronicle.

“Poor Edwin Brothertoft!” said the Peartree
Smith, as the young ladies filed out after the ceremony.
“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. Brothertoft!
why could he not find a mature woman?”
(Julia had this virtue, perhaps, to an exaggerated
degree, and had been suspected of designs
upon the bridegroom.) “Girls as young as she
is have had no chance to correct their ideal.
She will correct it at his expense. She will presently
find out he is not perfect, and then will
fancy some other man would have suited her better.
Women should have a few years of flirtation
before they settle in life. These pantalette
marriages never turn out well. An engagement
of a few weeks to that purse-proud baby, her

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

father's daughter! Poor Edwin Brothertoft!
He will come to disappointment and grief.”

With this, Miss Julia, striving to look Cassandra,
marches off the stage.

But Edwin Brothertoft had no misgivings. If
he had fancied any fault of temper in his betrothed,
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 coach 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 the
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

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

before us. How happy we shall be in our
glowing hopes! how happy in our generous ambitions!
how happy in our earnest life! Ah,
my love! how can I love you enough for the gift
of this beautiful moment, for the promise of the
fairer time to come!”

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

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 man 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 painful
story. Chapter after chapter might describe
the gradual vanishing of illusions, the slight
divergence, the widening of estrangement, the
death of trust, the deceit on one side, the wearing
misery of 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.

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

But the statement of the result is sad enough.
Let all these dreary chapters be condensed into
one!

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.
Her mind had narrowed to their ignoble methods
of judgment. Her heart's desire had been
taught to be for the cheap and mundane possessions,
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 feeling
of her first interview with her lover revived
and exasperated.

“I believe he wants to make me feel ignorant
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

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

suggestions. 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.”

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

“Good sense! It seems to me tiresome grumbling.
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.”

“O, there you go again into your foggy metaphysics!”

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 as 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 gentleman,
for all the base subterfuges by which
base people tried to defend it.

The Red Rover fortunately did not remain a

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

subject of discussion. On that very trip the Negroes
rose and broiled the captain 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 Colony as its foremost
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 gorgeous
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

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

Nature, not daubed with ochres. Huzzay! the
young sagamore is an Adonis. He beats Chesterfield
at a bow and Selwyn at a mot.”

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 appreciated
the new treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful.

Young Mr. Joshua Reynolds was flattered that
the distinguished stranger consented to sit to
him, and in return tried to flatter the portrait.

Young Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, a poor Bohemian,
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. Brothertoft first brought
her flashing black eyes and glowing cheeks into
the theatre, and only recovered when the

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

audience perceived the emotion and cheered it and
the lady together.

That great dilettante, Mr. Horace Walpole,
made the pair a charming déjeuner at Strawberry
Hill, upon which occasion he read aloud,
with much cadence, — as dilettante gentlemen
continue to do in our own time, — his friend Mr.
Gray's elaborate Elegy in a Country Churchyard,
just printed. After this literary treat, Mr. Horace
said: “Tell me something about that clever
young aide-de-camp, Washington, who got Iroquois
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 fanfaron,
' and laugh at him for calling the whiz
of cannon-balls `a delightful sound.'” Whereupon
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

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

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. Goldsmith,
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 traditions
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 playing
with,” said the Duke of Gurgoyle, inspecting
her in this attire. “And, by George, she
looks as if she could use it.”

Then the ugly old monster, and the other
blasé 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.”

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

“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'?”

“No,” she rejoined, petulantly; “a loyal bell
would not utter such treasonable notes. This
is what I hear: `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 precious
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-poohed
Remonstrance and Petition.

“You ought to have redress,” says Pitt, “but
I am hardly warm in my seat of Prime Minister.
I can only be a tacit friend at present.”

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

“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 resident
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 colonists
could not remain even half-civilized Yengeese,
but sank to absolute Yankees, —

Whose bows were contortions, and smiles
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 result
of the Brothertofts' visit to England.

Lucy Brothertoft, an only child, was born, —
a token of love revived, — alas! a monument of
love revived to die and be dismissed among
memories.

If the wife had been a true wife, how sweetly

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

her affection for her husband would have redoubled
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 christening
day. Alas! the chimes that welcome the
daughter to the bosom of the church are tolling
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 completely
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

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

days of bodily torture are over? Have we seen
no delicate spirit of a woman quelled by the embraces
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
man it had so generously gaped for quite lost his
appetite for fat things.

“Shame!” said the indignant Province.
“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 blossom,
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.
The Brothertofts were always weak as water.

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

And this mercenary fellow hurried her into a
marriage, a mere child, after an engagement of
a few weeks. No wonder she despises him. I
do, heartily. What lovely lace this is. I wonder
if she could n't give me another yard!
Heigh ho! Nobody smuggles for me!”

Brother patriots, too, had their opinion on
the subject of Brothertoft's withdrawal into obscurity.

“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 love 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 catastrophe
of the first act of the old, old tragedy.

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

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 themselves
after the crime, that is one of the needful
lessons of life.

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

Red.

That was the color now master in Mrs. Brothertoft's
houses, town and country.

Supercilious officers, in red coats, who were
addressed as General or My Lord, insolent officers,
in red coats, hight Colonel or Sir Harry,
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 en famille, bien
entendu.

Now and then a nasal patriot from Down East,
or a patriot Thee-and-Thouer from Philadelphia,
knocked at the door and inquired for Mr. Brothertoft.

“Out of town, Sir,” was the reply of the wiggy
negro.

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]