“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 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 didn’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 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.
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.”
Respectfully, &c.,“Skervey Skaats.”
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. 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 heriots when they’re horses, and harriets when they’re mares. Well, your father wouldn’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.”
Edwin shook his head. “You are very kind, Sam; but I am my father’s son, and against tribute in any form.”
“I haven’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, 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.
Chapter V.
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 the thorough blackguards among my contemporaries.