Читать книгу Edwin Brothertoft - Theodore Winthrop - Страница 9

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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. 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 counterparts—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 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 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.

“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?”

“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,” 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 damask 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 offshoot 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, 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 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 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!”