The founder of Brothertoft Manor died, and a second Edwin, the young Astyanax of Vandyck’s picture, became the Patroon.
A third Edwin succeeded him, a fourth followed, and in 1736 the fifth Edwin Brothertoft was born. He was an only child, like each of his forefathers. These pages chronicle his great joy and his great sorrow, and how he bore himself at a crisis of his individual life. Whoever runs may read stories like his in the broad light of to-day. This one withdraws itself into the chiaroscuro of a recent past.
The Brothertoft fortunes did not wax on the new continent. Each gentle Edwin transmitted to his heir the Manor docked of a few more square miles, the mansion a little more dilapidated, the furniture more worn and broken, the name a little less significant in the pushing world of the Province.
But each Edwin, with the sword and portrait of the first American, handed down the still more precious heirlooms of the family—honor unblemished, quick sympathies, a tender heart, a generous hand, refinement, courtesy—in short, all the qualities of mind and person that go “to grace a gentleman.”
It became the office of each to be the type gentleman of his time.
Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps they were purposely isolated from other offices. Nature takes no small pains to turn out her type blackguard a complete model of ignobility, and makes it his exclusive business to be himself. Why should she not be as careful with the antagonistic order?
The Brothertofts always married women like themselves, the female counterparts of their mild manhood. Each wife blended with her husband. No new elements of character appeared in the only child. Not one of them was a father vigorous enough to found a sturdy clan with broad shoulders and stiff wills, ordained to success from the cradle.
They never held their own in the world, much less took what was another’s. Each was conscious of a certain latent force, and left it latent. They lived weakly, and died young, like fair exotics. They were a mild, inefficient, ineffectual, lovely, decaying race, strong in all the charming qualities, feeble in all the robust ones.
And now let the procession of ancestors fade away into shadows; and let the last shadow lead forth the hero of this history in his proper substance!
Chapter III.
Edwin Brothertoft, fifth of that name, had been two years at Oxford, toiling at the peaceful tasks and dreaming the fair dreams of a young scholar.
It was the fashion of that time to send young men of property to be educated and Anglicized in England.
Bushwhackers and backwoodsmen the new continent trained to perfection. Most of the Colonists knew that two and two make four, and could put this and that together. But lore, classic or other—heavy lore out of tomes—was not to be had short of the old country. The Massachusetts and Connecticut mills, Harvard and Yale, turned out a light article of domestic lore, creditable enough considering their inferior facilities for manufacture; the heavy British stuff was much preferred by those who could afford to import it.
Edwin went to be Anglicized. Destiny meant that he shall not be. His life at Oxford came to a sharp end.
His father wrote: “My son, I am dying the early death of a Brothertoft. I have been foolish enough to lose the last of our fortune. Come home and forgive me!”
Beautiful Oxford! Fair spires and towers and dreamy cloisters—dusky chapels, and rich old halls—green gardens, overlooked by lovely oriels—high avenues of elms for quiet contemplation—companionship of earnest minds—a life of simple rules and struggles without pain, how hard it was for the young man to leave all this!
It was mid-January, 1757, when he saw home again.
A bleak prospect. The river was black ice. Dunderberg and the Highlands were chilly with snow. The beech-trees wore their dead leaves, in forlorn protest against the winter-time. The dilapidated Manor-House published the faded fortunes of its tenants.
“Tenants at will,” so said the father to his son, in the parlor where Vandyck’s picture presided.
“Whose will?” Edwin asked.
“Colonel Billop’s.”
“The name is new to me.”
“He is a half-pay officer and ex-army-contractor—a hard, cruel man. He has made a great fortune, as such men make fortunes.”
“Will his method suit me, father? You know I have mine to make.”
“Hardly. I am afraid you could not trade with the Indians—a handful of beads for a beaver-skin, a ‘big drunk’ for a bale of them.”
“I am afraid not.”
“I fear your conscience is too tender to let you put off beef that once galloped under the saddle to feed troops.”
“Yes; and I love horses too much to encourage hippophagy.”
“Could you look up men in desperate circumstance, and take their last penny in usury?”
“Is that his method?”
“Certainly. And to crown all, could you seduce your friend into a promising job, make the trustful fool responsible for the losses, and when they came, supply him means to pay them, receiving a ruinous mortgage as security? This is what he has done to me. Do any of these methods suit my son?” asked the elder, with a gentleman’s scorn.
“Meanness and avarice are new to me,” the junior rejoined, with a gentleman’s indignation. “Can a fortune so made profit a man?”
“Billop will not enjoy it. He is dying, too. His heirs will take possession, as mine retire.”
Edwin could not think thus coolly of his father’s death. To check tears, he went on with his queries.
“He has heirs, then, our unenviable successor?”
“One child, heir or heiress; I do not remember which.”
“Heir or heiress, I hope the new tenant will keep the old place in order, until I can win it back for you, father.”
“It cheers me greatly, my dear son,” said the father, with a smile on his worn, desponding face, “to find that you are not crushed by my avowal of poverty.”
“The thought of work exhilarates me,” the younger proudly returned.
“We Brothertofts have always needed the goad of necessity,” said the senior, in apology for himself and his race.
“Now, then, necessity shall make us acquainted with success. I will win it. You shall share it.”
“In the spirit, not in the body. But we will not speak of that. Where will you seek your success, here or there?”
He pointed to Vandyck’s group of the Parliamentary Colonel and his family. The forefather looked kindly down upon his descendants. Each of them closely resembled that mild, heroic gentleman.
“Here or in the land of our ancestors?” the father continued. “Your generation has the choice. No other will. These dull, deboshed Hanoverians on the throne of England will crowd us to revolution, as the Stuarts did the mother country.”
“Then Westchester may need a Brothertoft, as Lincolnshire did,” cries Edwin, ardently. His face flushed, his eye kindled, it seemed as if the Colonel, in the vigor of youth, had stepped down from the canvas.
His father was thrilled. A life could not name itself wasted which had passed to such a son.
“But let us not be visionary, my boy,” he went on