Chapter VII.
“After this history, I want a little topography,” said Skerrett. “Can you sketch me a ground plan of the house?”
That skeleton, Brothertoft could draw without much feeling. The house, as it stood, complete in the background of memory, he would not allow himself to recall. Its walls and furniture were to him the unshifted scenes and properties of a tragedy. If he painted them before his mind’s eye, an evil-omened figure of a woman would step from behind the curtain, threatening some final horror, to close the drama of their lives.
“This wing to the right,” Skerrett said, “seems an addition.”
“It was built on by the present proprietress,” coldly rejoined the former heir.
“Stables here!” continued the Major, tracing the plan. “Dining-room windows open toward them. Shrubbery here, not too far off for an ambush. Now, Voltaire, if we could get Major Kerr alone in that dining-room in the dusk of the evening to-morrow, I could walk him off easily.”
“Ho!” exclaims the butler. “That’s all settled beforehand.”
“Kerr sometimes makes late sittings there, then? I fancied I knew his habits.”
“He’s a poor hand at courtin’,” says Voltaire, with contempt. “Ladies likes dewotion, — that’s my ’sperience. He’s only dewoted to fillin’ hisself full of wine.”
“A two-bottle man?”
“Every day, when the ladies leave table, he rubs his hands,” — Voltaire imitates, — “and says, ‘Now then, old boy, fresh bottle! Yellow-seal! Don’t shake him!’ He drinks that pretty slow, and gives me a glass and says, ‘Woolly-head, we’ll drink my pretty Lucy. Lucky Kerr’s pretty bride!’”
Peter Skerrett here looked ferocious.
“Then,” continued the old fellow, “he drops off asleep at the table till four o’clock. Then he wakes up, sour, and sings out,” — Voltaire imitates, — “‘Hullo, you dam nigger! Look sharp! Another bottle! If you shake him, I’ll cut your black heart out.’ He drinks him, and then byme-by he says, ‘Ole fel! Shmore wide, ole fel. Tuther boddle dow! I ashkitspussonle favor, ole fel!’ Then he sings a little, and gets generally accelerated.”
“I would rather have him slowed, than accelerated,” says Peter.
“Oho!” grinned the butler, and whispered to himself, “If the Major thinks he ought to be stupid-tipsy for the good of the cause and Miss Lucy, I can deteriorate him, into his Madeira, with a little drop of our French Gutter de Rosy brandy. That will take the starch out of his legs, and make him easy to handle. But that is my business. I won’t tell nobody my secrets. The pantry and I must keep dark.”
“I cannot help a grain of compunction in this matter,” Skerrett said. “A gentleman does not like to interfere in another man’s courtship.”
“Do you call this plot of a coarse man with an unmotherly woman by the fair name of courtship?” Brothertoft said.
“No. And fortunately the lady has no illusions. I should not like to be the one to tell Beauty she had loved Beast. But this Beauty, it seems, has kept her heart too pure to have lost her fine maidenly instinct of aversion to a blackguard. Well, no more metaphysics! Scruples be hanged. Kerr don’t deserve to be treated like a gentleman. England should have kept such fellows at home, if she wanted us to believe good manners were possible under a monarchy. Now, then, Mr. Brothertoft, suppose I do not get myself ‘hanged as one espy,’ and take my prisoner, — does his capture protect your daughter enough?”
“I could wish, if it were possible, to have her with me henceforth.”
“We must make it possible, though it complicates matters. I could rush in, snatch Kerr, and be off. The blow would be struck, the enemy annoyed, our people amused; but in a fortnight Clinton would offer some Yankee major and a brace of captains to boot for his Adjutant, the Honorable, &c. Then he would go down and play Beast to Beauty again.”
“Save my daughter, once for all; if it can be done.”
“I’ll try. Now, Voltaire, listen!”
Which he opened his mouth to do.
“What people, besides the two ladies and Major Kerr, will be at your house to-morrow evening, — the servants, I mean?”
“Oh! we live small at the Manor, now, ridiculous small. It’s war times now. Rents isn’t paid. When we want a proper lot of servants, we takes clodhoppers.”
“Lucky for my plans you do live small,” Skerrett said. “Never mind your family pride! Name the household!”
“Me and Sappho and Plato, all patriots; Jierck Dewitt’s wife and her sister, Sally Bilsby, both Tories, — that is, gals that likes redcoats more than is good for ’em.”
“Could you manage to have the girls out of the way to-morrow evening?”
“Easy enough. They’ll be glad to get away for a frolic.”
