Chapter III.
“Ah mon camarade! ma belle Moustache! My Petare!” cried Colonel La Radière, as Skerrett entered. “Soyez le bienvenu!”
The ardent Parisian officer of engineers rushed forward, and embraced his young friend with effusion.
“Glad to see you, Peter!” says Captain Livingston, a dry fellow, son of the Patroon. “Now, Radière, there’s a second man who talks French, to fire back your sacrebleus. Moi et Anthony’s Nose sommes fatigués à vous faire echo.”
“Come, boys,” says old Put, “talk Continental!”
The other officers in turn made Skerrett welcome, and the business of brewing blunders went on.
Does any one want a historic account of that Council of War, and what it did not do?
The want is easily supplied. Rap for the spirit of Colonel Humphreys, then late of Derby, Connecticut, late of Yale College, late tutor at Phillipse-Manor. He was Putnam’s aide, and wrote his biography. He was an inexorable poetaster. He was afterwards pompous gold-stick to Mr. President Washington. He went as Plenipo to Madrid, returned, became a model of deportment, and was known to his countrymen as the Ambassador from Derby.
(Raps are heard. Enter the Ghost of Humphreys.
“Now then, Ghost, talk short and sharp, not, as you used to, — to borrow two favorite words of yours, — sesquipedalian and stentorophonic! Tell us what was done at that council, and be spry about it!”
“Young Sir, I shall report your impertinence to George Washington and Christopher Columbus in Elysium. Christopher will say, ‘Founder the continent!’ George will say, ‘Perish the country!’ if its youth have drawn in and absorbed their bump of reverence.”
“O, belay that, old boy! Tell us what you did at the Council!”
“Nothing, your nineteenth-century ship!” responds Ghost, quelled and humble. “We pondered, and propounded, and finally concluded to do nothing, and let the enemy make the next move.”
“Which he proceeded to do by sending up General Vaughan to burn Kingston. That’s enough! Avaunt, Ghost!”
Exit Humphreys to tell Chris and George that America is going to the dogs.)
“Well,” said Putnam at last, “we’ve discussed and discussed, and I don’t see that there’s any way of getting a crack at the enemy, unless one of you boys wants to swim down the river, with a torch in his teeth, and set one of those frigates below the Highlands on fire. Who speaks?”
“Cold weather for swimming!” says Livingston.
“Well, boys, you must contrive something to keep our spirits up,” Putnam resumed. “When I was up to Fort Ti in ’58, and fighting was dull, we used to go out alone and bushwhack for a private particular Indian.”
“Perhaps I can offer a suggestion,” said Major Scrammel, Putnam’s other aide, re-entering the room after a brief absence.
Scrammel was a handsomish man with a baddish face. A man with his cut of jib and shape of beak hardly ever weathers the lee shore of perdition. For want of a moustache to twirl, he had a trick of pulling his nose. Perhaps he was training that feature for tweaks to come.
“Blaze away, Scrammel!” said his General; “you always have some ambush or other in your head.”
“Lady Brothertoft’s nigger, the butler, is up here with the latest news from below. I have just been out to speak to him.”
“What, Scrammel!” says Livingston, sotto voce. “A billet-doux from the fair Lucy?”
“La plus belle personne en Amerique!” Radière sighs.
“You don’t except the mother?” Livingston inquired; “that mature, magnificent Amazon!”
“No,” replied the Frenchman, laboriously building, brick by brick, a Gallo-American sentence. “The mother of the daughtare is too much in the Ladie Macquebeth. I figure to myself a poniard, enormous sharpe, in her fine ouhite hand, and at my heart. I seem to see her poot ze — pardon! the poison in the basin — the bowl — the gobbelit. I say, ‘Radière, care thyself! It is a dame who knows to stab.’ Mais, Mees Lucie! Ah, c’est autre chose!”
“Come, Scrammel!” Putnam said, impatiently; “we are waiting for your news.”
“The nigger stole away on some business of his own, which he is mysterious about; but he tells me that his mistress consoled herself at once for our retirement from Peekskill after we lost the forts. She had some of her friends from the British ships and Clinton’s army at her house as soon as we were gone.”
“I believe she is as dangerous a Tory as lives in all Westchester,” said the General. “She ought to be put in security.”
“What! after all those dinners of hers we have eaten, General?” says Livingston.
“I wish the dinners were out of me, and had never been in me,” Old Put rejoined, sheepishly. “I’m afraid we used to talk too much after her Madeira.”
The Council was evidently of that opinion, as a look whisking about the circle testified.
A very significant look, with a great basis of facts behind it. Suppose we dig into the brain of one of these officers, — say that keen Livingston’s, — and unearth a few facts about Mrs. Brothertoft, as she is at the beginning of Part II. of this history.
Now, then, off with Livingston’s scalp, and the top of his skull! and here we go rummaging among the convolutions of his brain for impressions branded, “Brothertoft, Mrs.” We strike a lead. We find a pocket. How compact this brain stows its thoughts! It must, for it has the millions on millions of a lifetime to contain. We have read of a thousand leagues of lace packed into a nut-shell. We have seen the Declaration of Independence photographed within the periphery of a picayune. Here’s closer stowage, — a packet of thoughts of actual material dimensions, but so infinitesimal that we shall have to bring a microscope to bear before we can apply the micrometer. Come, Sirius, nearest neighbor among the suns of eternity, pour thy beams through our lens and magnify this record! Thanks, Sirius! Quite plain now! That little black point has taken length and breadth, and here’s the whole damnation in large pica, — Heaven save us from the like!
Livingston Junior on Mrs. Brothertoft. Abstract of Record: —
“By scalps and tomahawks, what a splendid virago! She must be, this summer of 1777, some thirty-five or thirty-six, and in her primest prime. Heart’s as black as her hair, some say. Crushed her husband’s spirit, and he took himself off to kingdom come. Ambitious? I should think so. Tory, and peaches to the enemy? Of course. She uses her womanhood as a blind, and her beauty as a snare. Very well for her to say, ‘My business is to protect my property, and establish my daughter. Women don’t understand politics, and hate bloodshed.’ Bah! she understands her kind of politics, like a Catherine de’ Medici. Bloodshed! She could stab a man and see him writhe. But she gives capital dinners, — more like England than any others in America. Poor old Put, honest, frank, simple-hearted fellow! look at him on the sofa there with her, and a pint too much of her Madeira under his belt! She knows just how near to let his blue sleeve and buff cuff come to that shoulder of hers. He’ll tell all his plans to her, she’ll whisper ’em to a little bird, and pounce! one of these fine days the redcoats will be upon us. Upon us and on her sofa! Yes, and a good many inches nearer than Old Put is allowed to sit. For they do whisper scandal about Madam. When she dropped Julia Peartree Smith, the old tabby talked as old cats always talk about their ex-friends. Scandal! Yes, by the acre; but it’s splendid to see how she walks right over it. And several of us fine fellows will not hear or speak scandal of a house where that lovely Lucy lives, — the sweet, pure, innocent angel. They say the mother means to trade her off to a redcoat as soon as she can find one to suit. Mamma wants a son-in-law who will give her, scandal and all, a footing among stars and garters in England, when she has seen her estates safe through the war. It’s too bad. I’d go down and kidnap that guileless, trustful victim myself, if I wasn’t so desperately lazy. There’s Scrammel too, — he would play one of his meanest tricks to get her. Scrammel was almost the only one of us boys in buff and blue that was not taboo from Miss Lucy’s side. Mamma was not over cordial to our color unless it was buttoned over breasts that held secrets. Her black eyes very likely saw scoundrel in Scrammel’s face, and used him. Poor Lucy! It looks dark for her. And yet her love will never let her see what her mother is.”
Enough, Livingston! Thanks for this bit of character! Here’s your dot of a record, labelled “Brothertoft, Mrs.”! Now trepan your self with your own skull, clap your scalp back again on your sinciput, and listen to what Scrammel is saying!
“The old nigger tells me,” he was saying, “that Sir Henry Clinton and his Adjutant spent the night after Forts Clinton and Montgomery were taken quietly at Brothertoft Manor-House.”
“Well,” said the General, “then they had a better night than we had, running away through the Highlands. We can’t protect our friends. If the enemy have only made themselves welcome at the Manor-House, instead of burning it for its hospitality to us, Madam is lucky.”
“She seems to have made her new guests welcome. The nigger thinks she knew they were coming.”
“By George! — by Congress! I mean,” says Put, wincing, “if I ever get back to Peekskill —”
“She seems to think, according to her butler’s story, that you are never to come back,” Scrammel struck in.
“If that is all the news you have to tell, by way of keeping our spirits up, you might as well have been silent, sir!” growls Putnam.
“It’s not all,” Scrammel resumed. “The nigger thinks they are getting up some new expedition. But whether they do or not, the adjutant don’t go. He is to stay some days at the Manor.”
“Lord Rawdon, isn’t it?” Put asked. Well, he is a gentleman and a fine fellow, — not one of those arrogant, insolent dogs that rile us so.”
“Not Rawdon. He was to be. But Major Kerr got the appointment by family influence.”
“Kurr! c’est chien, n’est ce pas?” whispered Radière to Livingston.
“Yes,” returned the Captain; “and this Kerr is a sad dog. He bit Scrammel once badly at cards in New York, before the war. Scrammel don’t forgive. He hates Kerr, and means to bite back. Hear him snarl now!”
“The Honorable Major Kerr,” Scrammel continued, “third son of the Earl of Bendigh, Adjutant-General to Clinton’s forces, a fellow who hates us and abuses us and maltreats our prisoners, but an officer of importance, is staying and to stay several days, the only guest, at Brothertoft Manor-House. Let me see; it can’t be more than twenty miles away.”
He marked his words, and glanced about the circle. His eyes rested upon Livingston last.
“Oho!” says that gentleman. “I begin to comprehend. You mean to use the Brothertoft major-domo as Colonel Barton did his man Prince at Newport. Woolly-head’s skull is to butt through Kerr’s bedroom door, at dead of night. Then, enter Scrammel, puts a pistol to his captive’s temple and marches him off to Fishkill. Bravo! Belle ideé, n’est ce pas, mon Colonel?”
“Magnifique!” rejoined Radière. “I felicit thee of it, my Scaramelle.”
“Now, boys!” says Put, “this begins to sound like business. We need some important fellow, like Kerr, taken prisoner and brought here, to keep our spirits up. The thing’s easy enough and safe enough. If I was twenty years younger, general or no general, I’d make a dash to cut him out. Who volunteers to capture the Adjutant?”
“I remember myself,” said Radière, gravely, “of a billet, very short, very sharp, which our Chief wrote to Sir Clinton, lately. It was of one Edmund Palmer, taken — so this billet said — as one espy, condemned as one espy, and hangged as espy. Sir Clinton waits to answer that little billet. But I do not wish to read in his response the name of one of my young friends, taken as espy and hang-ged.”
“Why does not Scrammel execute Scrammel’s plan?” asked Livingston.
“I cannot be spared,” the aide-de-camp responded.
“O yes! never mind me!” cried the General. “Skerrett, here, can fill your place. Or Humphreys can stop writing doggerel and do double duty.”
Scrammel evidently was not eager to leave a vacancy, or to gag his brother aide-de-camp’s muse.
“Why don’t you volunteer yourself, Livingston?” he said. “You know the country and the house, and seemed to be well up in the method of Prescott’s capture at Newport.”
“I have not my reputation to make,” said the other, haughtily. Indeed, his reckless pluck was well known. “But I’m desperately lazy,” which was equally a notorious fact.
No other spoke, and presently all eyes were making focus upon that blonde Moustache, which the Marquis de Chastellux does not, and these pages do, endow with a big M, and make historic.
It was only the other day that the wearer of that decoration had become the hero of a famous ballad, beginning, —
“’T was night, rain poured; when British blades,
In number twelve or more,
As they sat tippling apple-jack,
Heard some one at the door.
“‘Arise,’ he cried, — ’t was Skerrett spoke,—
‘And trudge, or will or nill,
Twelve miles to General Washington,
At Pennibecker’s Mill.’”
Then the ballad went on to state, in stanzas many and melodious, how it happened that the “blades” of his Majesty’s great knife, the Army, were sheathed in a carouse, at an outpost near Philadelphia, without sentries. Apple-jack, too, — why they condescended to apple-jack, — that required explanation: “And apple-jack, that tipple base, Why did these heroes drain? O, where were nobler taps that night, — Port, sherry, and champagne?” Then the forced march of the unlucky captives was depicted: “It rained. The red coats on their backs Their skins did purple, blue; The powder on their heads grew paste; Each toe its boot wore through.” The poem closed with Washington’s verdict on the exploit: “Skerrett, my lad, thou art a Trump, The ace of all the pack; Come into Pennibecker’s Mill, And share my apple-jack!”
Hero once, hero always! When a. man has fairly compromised himself to heroism, there is no let-up for him. The world looks to him at once, when it wants its “deus ex machina.”
In the present quandary, all eyes turned to Peter Skerrett, Captor of Captives and Washington’s Ace of Trumps.
“General,” said he, “I seem to be the only unattached officer present. Nothing can be done now about my mission. I do not love to be idle. Allow me to volunteer in this service, if you think it important.”
Old Put began to look grave. “You risk your life. If they catch you in their lines, it is hanging business.”
“I knew this morning,” thought the Major, “that I should make a fool of myself before night. I have!”
“No danger, General!” he said aloud. “I’ve got the knack of this work. I like it better than the decapitation part of my trade.”
“Ah, Skerrett!” Livingston says, “that ballad will be the death of you. You will be adding Fitte after Fitte, until you get yourself discomfitted at last. Pun!”
Mark this! It was the Continental Pun at its point of development reached one year after the Declaration of Independence. O let us be joyful! Let us cry aloud with joy at our progress since. Puns like the above are now deemed senile, and tolerated only in the weekly newspapers.
No doggerel had been written about Scrammel. No lyric named him hero. “Your friend seems to have a taste for the office of kidnapper,” he caitiffly sneered to Livingston, under cover of his own hand, which tweaked the Scrammel nose as he spoke.
“He has a taste for doing what no one else dares,” rejoined the other. “Your nose is safe from him, even if he overhears you. I say, Skerrett, I don’t feel so lazy as I did. Take me with you. I know this country by leagues and by inches.”
“No, Harry; General Putnam cannot spare his Punster. One officer is enough. I shall take Jierck Dewitt for my aide-de-camp. He knows the Brothertoft-Manor country.”
“Empty Jierck of rum, cork him and green-seal him, mouth and nose, and there cannot be a better man.”
“Since you will go, you must,” says Put. “By the way, if you want a stanch, steady man, take Sergeant Lincoln. He somehow knows this country as if he had crept over it from the cradle. Where is that negro of Lady Brothertoft’s, Scrammel?”
“I left him talking to Lincoln. Major Skerrett will easily find him.”
“He was my wiggy friend,” thought Skerrett.
“Don’t fail to bag Kerr,” says Livingston. “He wants a Yankee education, — so does all England.”
“Yes,” says Radière, “we must have these Kurr at school. We must teach to them civility through our noses of rebels. We must flogge them with roddes from the Liberté-Tree. They shall partake our pork and bean. Yankee Doodle shall play itself to them on our two whistles and a tambour. Go, my Skerrett! Liberty despatch thee! Be the good, lucky boy!”
All the officers gave him Good speed! and Humphreys, Poetaster-General, began to bang the two lobes of his brain together, like a pair of cymbals, to strike out rhymes in advance for a pæan on the conquering hero’s return.
“You won’t stay to dinner,” cries Put. “There’s corned beef and apple-sauce, and a York State buckskin pumpkin-pie, — I wish it was a Connecticut one!”
“Yes,” says Livingston, “and I watched the cook this morning coursing that dumb rooster of yours, General, until he breathed his last.”
“Ah, my Skerrett!” sighed Radière. “Will posterity appreciate our sacrifices? Will they remember themselves — these oblivious posterity — of the Frenchmen who abandoned the cuisines of Paris to feed upon the swine and the bean a discretion, to swallow the mush sans melasse, to drink the Appel Jacque? Will they build the marble mausoleum, inscribed, ‘Cigit La Radière, Colonel. He was a Good Heart and a Bad Stomach, and He shed his Digestion for Liberty?’”
Skerrett laughed. “I will mention it to posterity, Colonel,” he said, — and this page redeems his promise.
Then, lest weeds might sprout under his feet, the Major turned his back upon dinner, — that moment announced, — and launched himself upon the current of his new adventure.
“Down!” he soliloquized; “down, my longings for buckskin pie, and for rooster dead of congestion of the lungs from over coursing! Tempt me not, ye banquets of Sybaris, until my train is laid and waiting for the fusee.”