As Harry Warrington related to his new-found relative the simple story
of his adventures at home, no doubt Madam Bernstein, who possessed a
great sense of humour and a remarkable knowledge of the world, formed
her judgment respecting the persons and events described; and if her
opinion was not in all respects favourable, what can be said but that
men and women are imperfect, and human life not entirely pleasant or
profitable? The court and city-bred lady recoiled at the mere thought of
her American sister's countrified existence. Such a life would be rather
wearisome to most city-bred ladies. But little Madam Warrington knew no
better, and was satisfied with her life, as indeed she was with herself
in general. Because you and I are epicures or dainty feeders, it does
not follow that Hodge is miserable with his homely meal of bread and
bacon. Madam Warrington had a life of duties and employments which might
be humdrum, but at any rate were pleasant to her. She was a brisk little
woman of business, and all the affairs of her large estate came under
her cognisance. No pie was baked at Castlewood but her little finger was
in it. She set the maids to their spinning, she saw the kitchen wenches
at their work, she trotted afield on her pony, and oversaw the overseers
and the negro hands as they worked in the tobacco-and corn-fields. If a
slave was ill, she would go to his quarters in any weather, and doctor
him with great resolution. She had a book full of receipts after the old
fashion, and a closet where she distilled waters and compounded elixirs,
and a medicine-chest which was the terror of her neighbours. They
trembled to be ill, lest the little lady should be upon them with her
decoctions and her pills.
A hundred years back there were scarce any towns in Virginia; the
establishments of the gentry were little villages in which they
and their vassals dwelt. Rachel Esmond ruled like a little queen in
Castlewood; the princes, her neighbours, governed their estates round
about. Many of these were rather needy potentates, living plentifully
but in the roughest fashion, having numerous domestics whose liveries
were often ragged; keeping open houses, and turning away no stranger
from their gates; proud, idle, fond of all sorts of field sports
as became gentlemen of good lineage. The widow of Castlewood was as
hospitable as her neighbours, and a better economist than most of
them. More than one, no doubt, would have had no objection to share her
life-interest in the estate, and supply the place of papa to her boys.
But where was the man good enough for a person of her ladyship's exalted
birth? There was a talk of making the Duke of Cumberland viceroy, or
even king, over America. Madam Warrington's gossips laughed, and said
she was waiting for him. She remarked, with much gravity and dignity,
that persons of as high birth as his Royal Highness had made offers of
alliance to the Esmond family.
She had, as lieutenant under her, an officer's widow who has been before
named, and who had been Madam Esmond's companion at school, as her late
husband had been the regimental friend of the late Mr. Warrington. When
the English girls at the Kensington Academy, where Rachel Esmond had her
education, teased and tortured the little American stranger, and laughed
at the princified airs which she gave herself from a very early age,
Fanny Parker defended and befriended her. They both married ensigns
in Kingsley's. They became tenderly attached to each other. It was “my
Fanny” and “my Rachel” in the letters of the young ladies. Then, my
Fanny's husband died in sad out-at-elbowed circumstances, leaving
no provision for his widow and her infant; and, in one of his annual
voyages, Captain Franks brought over Mrs. Mountain, in the Young Rachel,
to Virginia.
There was plenty of room in Castlewood House, and Mrs. Mountain served
to enliven the place. She played cards with the mistress: she had some
knowledge of music, and could help the eldest boy in that way: she
laughed and was pleased with the guests: she saw to the strangers'
chambers, and presided over the presses and the linen. She was a kind,
brisk, jolly-looking widow, and more than one unmarried gentleman of the
colony asked her to change her name for his own. But she chose to keep
that of Mountain, though, and perhaps because, it had brought her no
good fortune. One marriage was enough for her, she said. Mr. Mountain
had amiably spent her little fortune and his own. Her last trinkets went
to pay his funeral; and, as long as Madam Warrington would keep her at
Castlewood, she preferred a home without a husband to any which as
yet had been offered to her in Virginia. The two ladies quarrelled
plentifully; but they loved each other: they made up their differences:
they fell out again, to be reconciled presently. When either of the boys
was ill, each lady vied with the other in maternal tenderness and care.
In his last days and illness, Mrs. Mountain's cheerfulness and kindness
had been greatly appreciated by the Colonel, whose memory Madam
Warrington regarded more than that of any living person. So that, year
after year, when Captain Franks would ask Mrs. Mountain, in his pleasant
way, whether she was going back with him that voyage? she would decline,
and say that she proposed to stay a year more.
And when suitors came to Madam Warrington, as come they would, she would
receive their compliments and attentions kindly enough, and asked more
than one of these lovers whether it was Mrs. Mountain he came after? She
would use her best offices with Mountain. Fanny was the best creature,
was of a good English family, and would make any gentleman happy. Did
the Squire declare it was to her and not her dependant that he paid his
addresses; she would make him her gravest curtsey, say that she really
had been utterly mistaken as to his views, and let him know that the
daughter of the Marquis of Esmond lived for her people and her sons,
and did not propose to change her condition. Have we not read how Queen
Elizabeth was a perfectly sensible woman of business, and was pleased to
inspire not only terror and awe, but love in the bosoms of her subjects?
So the little Virginian princess had her favourites, and accepted their
flatteries, and grew tired of them, and was cruel or kind to them as
suited her wayward imperial humour. There was no amount of compliment
which she would not graciously receive and take as her due. Her little
foible was so well known that the wags used to practise upon it.
Rattling Jack Firebrace of Henrico county had free quarters for months
at Castlewood, and was a prime favourite with the lady there, because
he addressed verses to her which he stole out of the pocket-books. Tom
Humbold of Spotsylvania wagered fifty hogsheads against five that he
would make her institute an order of knighthood, and won his wager.
The elder boy saw these freaks and oddities of his good mother's
disposition, and chafed and raged at them privately. From very early
days he revolted when flatteries and compliments were paid to the little
lady, and strove to expose them with his juvenile satire; so that
his mother would say gravely, “The Esmonds were always of a jealous
disposition, and my poor boy takes after my father and mother in this.”
George hated Jack Firebrace and Tom Humbold, and all their like;
whereas Harry went out sporting with them, and fowling, and fishing, and
cock-fighting, and enjoyed all the fun of the country.
One winter, after their first tutor had been dismissed, Madam Esmond
took them to Williamsburg, for such education as the schools and college
there afforded, and there it was the fortune of the family to listen to
the preaching of the famous Mr. Whitfield, who had come into Virginia,
where the habits and preaching of the established clergy were not very
edifying. Unlike many of the neighbouring provinces, Virginia was a
Church of England colony: the clergymen were paid by the State and had
glebes allotted to them; and, there being no Church of England bishop as
yet in America, the colonists were obliged to import their divines from
the mother-country. Such as came were not, naturally, of the very best
or most eloquent kind of pastors. Noblemen's hangers-on, insolvent
parsons who had quarrelled with justice or the bailiff, brought their
stained cassocks into the colony in the hopes of finding a living there.
No wonder that Whitfield's great voice stirred those whom harmless Mr.
Broadbent, the Williamsburg chaplain, never could awaken. At first the
boys were as much excited as their mother by Mr. Whitfield: they sang
hymns, and listened to him with fervour, and, could he have remained
long enough among them, Harry and George had both worn black coats
probably instead of epaulettes. The simple boys communicated their
experiences to one another, and were on the daily and nightly look-out
for the sacred “call,” in the hope or the possession of which such a
vast multitude of Protestant England was thrilling at the time.
But Mr. Whitfield could not stay always with the little congregation of
Williamsburg. His mission was to enlighten the whole benighted people of
the Church, and from the East to the West to trumpet the truth and bid
slumbering sinners awaken. However, he comforted the widow with precious
letters, and promised to send her a tutor for her sons who should be
capable of teaching them not only profane learning, but of strengthening
and confirming them in science much more precious.
In due course, a chosen vessel arrived from England. Young Mr. Ward had
a voice as loud as Mr. Whitfield's, and could talk almost as readily
and for as long a time. Night and evening the hall sounded with his
exhortations. The domestic negroes crept to the doors to listen to him.
Other servants darkened the porch windows with their crisp heads to hear
him discourse. It was over the black sheep of the Castlewood flock that
Mr. Ward somehow had the most influence. These woolly lamblings were
immensely affected by his exhortations, and, when he gave out the hymn,
there was such a negro chorus about the house as might be heard across
the Potomac--such a chorus as would never have been heard in the
Colonel's time--for that worthy gentleman had a suspicion of all
cassocks, and said he would never have any controversy with a clergyman
but upon backgammon. Where money was wanted for charitable purposes no
man was more ready, and the good, easy Virginian clergyman, who loved
backgammon heartily, too, said that the worthy Colonel's charity must
cover his other shortcomings.
Ward was a handsome young man. His preaching pleased Madam Esmond from
the first, and, I daresay, satisfied her as much as Mr. Whitfield's. Of
course it cannot be the case at the present day when they are so finely
educated, but women, a hundred years ago, were credulous, eager to
admire and believe, and apt to imagine all sorts of excellences in the
object of their admiration. For weeks, nay, months, Madam Esmond
was never tired of hearing Mr. Ward's great glib voice and voluble
commonplaces: and, according to her wont, she insisted that her
neighbours should come and listen to him, and ordered them to be
converted. Her young favourite, Mr. Washington, she was especially
anxious to influence; and again and again pressed him to come and
stay at Castlewood and benefit by the spiritual advantages there to
be obtained. But that young gentleman found he had particular business
which called him home or away from home, and always ordered his horse
of evenings when the time was coming for Mr. Ward's exercises. And--what
boys are just towards their pedagogue?--the twins grew speedily tired
and even rebellious under their new teacher.
They found him a bad scholar, a dull fellow, and ill-bred to boot.
George knew much more Latin and Greek than his master, and caught him
in perpetual blunders and false quantities. Harry, who could take much
greater liberties than were allowed to his elder brother, mimicked
Ward's manner of eating and talking, so that Mrs. Mountain and even
Madam Esmond were forced to laugh, and little Fanny Mountain would crow
with delight. Madam Esmond would have found the fellow out for a vulgar
quack but for her sons' opposition, which she, on her part, opposed with
her own indomitable will. “What matters whether he has more or less of
profane learning?” she asked; “in that which is most precious, Mr. W.
is able to be a teacher to all of us. What if his manners are a little
rough? Heaven does not choose its elect from among the great and
wealthy. I wish you knew one book, children, as well as Mr. Ward does.
It is your wicked pride--the pride of all the Esmonds--which prevents
you from listening to him. Go down on your knees in your chamber and
pray to be corrected of that dreadful fault.” Ward's discourse that
evening was about Naaman the Syrian, and the pride he had in his native
rivers of Abana and Pharpar, which he vainly imagined to be superior to
the healing waters of Jordan--the moral being, that he, Ward, was the
keeper and guardian of the undoubted waters of Jordan, and that the
unhappy, conceited boys must go to perdition unless they came to him.
George now began to give way to a wicked sarcastic method, which,
perhaps, he had inherited from his grandfather, and with which, when a
quiet, skilful young person chooses to employ it, he can make a whole
family uncomfortable. He took up Ward's pompous remarks and made jokes
of them, so that that young divine chafed and almost choked over his
great meals. He made Madam Esmond angry, and doubly so when he sent
off Harry into fits of laughter. Her authority was defied, her officer
scorned and insulted, her youngest child perverted, by the obstinate
elder brother. She made a desperate and unhappy attempt to maintain her
power.
The boys were fourteen years of age, Harry being taller and much more
advanced than his brother, who was delicate, and as yet almost childlike
in stature and appearance. The baculine method was a quite common mode
of argument in those days. Sergeants, schoolmasters, slave-overseers,
used the cane freely. Our little boys had been horsed many a day by Mr.
Dempster, their Scotch tutor, in their grandfather's time; and Harry,
especially, had got to be quite accustomed to the practice, and made
very light of it. But, in the interregnum after Colonel Esmond's death,
the cane had been laid aside, and the young gentlemen of Castlewood
had been allowed to have their own way. Her own and her lieutenant's
authority being now spurned by the youthful rebels, the unfortunate
mother thought of restoring it by means of coercion. She took counsel
of Mr. Ward. That athletic young pedagogue could easily find chapter and
verse to warrant the course which he wished to pursue--in fact, there
was no doubt about the wholesomeness of the practice in those clays. He
had begun by flattering the boys, finding a good berth and snug quarters
at Castlewood, and hoping to remain there.
But they laughed at his flattery, they scorned his bad manners, they
yawned soon at his sermons; the more their mother favoured him, the more
they disliked him; and so the tutor and the pupils cordially hated each
other. Mrs. Mountain, who was the boys' friend, especially George's
friend, whom she thought unjustly treated by his mother, warned the lads
to be prudent, and that some conspiracy was hatching against them. “Ward
is more obsequious than ever to your mamma. It turns my stomach, it
does, to hear him flatter, and to see him gobble--the odious wretch! You
must be on your guard, my poor boys--you must learn your lessons, and
not anger your tutor. A mischief will come, I know it will. Your mamma
was talking about you to Mr. Washington the other day, when I came into
the room. I don't like that Major Washington, you know I don't. Don't
say--O Mounty! Master Harry. You always stand up for your friends, you
do. The Major is very handsome and tall, and he may be very good, but he
is much too old a young man for me. Bless you, my dears, the quantity
of wild oats your father sowed and my own poor Mountain when they were
ensigns in Kingsley's, would fill sacks full! Show me Mr. Washington's
wild oats, I say--not a grain! Well, I happened to step in last Tuesday,
when he was here with your mamma; and I am sure they were talking about
you, for he said, 'Discipline is discipline, and must be preserved.
There can be but one command in a house, ma'am, and you must be the
mistress of yours.'”
“The very words he used to me,” cries Harry. “He told me that he did not
like to meddle with other folks' affairs, but that our mother was very
angry, dangerously angry, he said, and he begged me to obey Mr. Ward,
and specially to press George to do so.”
“Let him manage his own house, not mine,” says George, very haughtily.
And the caution, far from benefiting him, only rendered the lad more
supercilious and refractory.
On the next day the storm broke, and vengeance fell on the little
rebel's head. Words passed between George and Mr. Ward during the
morning study. The boy was quite insubordinate and unjust: even his
faithful brother cried out, and owned that he was in the wrong. Mr. Ward
kept his temper--to compress, bottle up, cork down, and prevent your
anger from present furious explosion, is called keeping your temper--and
said he should speak upon this business to Madam Esmond. When the family
met at dinner, Mr. Ward requested her ladyship to stay, and, temperately
enough, laid the subject of dispute before her.
He asked Master Harry to confirm what he had said: and poor Harry was
obliged to admit all the dominie's statements.
George, standing under his grandfather's portrait by the chimney, said
haughtily that what Mr. Ward had said was perfectly correct.
“To be a tutor to such a pupil is absurd,” said Mr. Ward, making a long
speech, interspersed with many of his usual Scripture phrases, at each
of which, as they occurred, that wicked young George smiled, and pished
scornfully, and at length Ward ended by asking her honour's leave to
retire.
“Not before you have punished this wicked and disobedient child,” said
Madam Esmond, who had been gathering anger during Ward's harangue, and
especially at her son's behaviour.
“Punish!” says George.
“Yes, sir, punish! If means of love and entreaty fail, as they have with
your proud heart, other means must be found to bring you to obedience.
I punish you now, rebellious boy, to guard you from greater punishment
hereafter. The discipline of this family must be maintained. There can
be but one command in a house, and I must be the mistress of mine. You
will punish this refractory boy, Mr. Ward, as we have agreed that you
should do, and if there is the least resistance on his part, my overseer
and servants will lend you aid.”
In some such words the widow no doubt must have spoken, but with many
vehement Scriptural allusions, which it does not become this
chronicler to copy. To be for ever applying to the Sacred Oracles, and
accommodating their sentences to your purpose--to be for ever taking
Heaven into your confidence about your private affairs, and
passionately calling for its interference in your family quarrels and
difficulties--to be so familiar with its designs and schemes as to be
able to threaten your neighbour with its thunders, and to know precisely
its intentions regarding him and others who differ from your infallible
opinion--this was the schooling which our simple widow had received from
her impetuous young spiritual guide, and I doubt whether it brought her
much comfort.
In the midst of his mother's harangue, in spite of it, perhaps, George
Esmond felt he had been wrong. “There can be but one command in the
house, and you must be mistress--I know who said those words before
you,” George said, slowly, and looking very white--“and--and I know,
mother, that I have acted wrongly to Mr. Ward.”
“He owns it! He asks pardon!” cries Harry. “That's right, George! That's
enough: isn't it?”
“No, it is not enough!” cried the little woman. “The disobedient boy
must pay the penalty of his disobedience. When I was headstrong, as I
sometimes was as a child before my spirit was changed and humbled, my
mamma punished me, and I submitted. So must George. I desire you will do
your duty, Mr. Ward.”
“Stop, mother!--you don't quite know what you are doing,” George said,
exceedingly agitated.
“I know that he who spares the rod spoils the child, ungrateful boy!”
says Madam Esmond, with more references of the same nature, which George
heard, looking very pale and desperate.
Upon the mantelpiece, under the Colonel's portrait, stood a china
cup, by which the widow set great store, as her father had always been
accustomed to drink from it. George suddenly took it, and a strange
smile passed over his pale face.
“Stay one minute. Don't go away yet,” he cried to his mother, who was
leaving the room. “You--you are very fond of this cup, mother?”--and
Harry looked at him, wondering. “If I broke it, it could never be
mended, could it? All the tinkers' rivets would not make it a whole cup
again. My dear old grandpapa's cup! I have been wrong. Mr. Ward, I ask
pardon. I will try and amend.”
The widow looked at her son indignantly, almost scornfully. “I thought,”
she said, “I thought an Esmond had been more of a man than to be afraid,
and--” here she gave a little scream as Harry uttered an exclamation,
and dashed forward with his hands stretched out towards his brother.
George, after looking at the cup, raised it, opened his hand, and let it
fall on the marble slab below him. Harry had tried in vain to catch it.
“It is too late, Hal,” George said. “You will never mend that
again--never. Now, mother, I am ready, as it is your wish. Will you come
and see whether I am afraid? Mr. Ward, I am your servant. Your servant?
Your slave! And the next time I meet Mr. Washington, madam, I will thank
him for the advice which he gave you.”
“I say, do your duty, sir!” cried Mrs. Esmond, stamping her little foot.
And George, making a low bow to Mr. Ward, begged him to go first out of
the room to the study.
“Stop! For God's sake, mother, stop!” cried poor Hal. But passion was
boiling in the little woman's heart, and she would not hear the boy's
petition. “You only abet him, sir!” she cried.--“If I had to do it
myself, it should be done!” And Harry, with sadness and wrath in his
countenance, left the room by the door through which Mr. Ward and his
brother had just issued.
The widow sank down on a great chair near it, and sat a while vacantly
looking at the fragments of the broken cup. Then she inclined her head
towards the door--one of half a dozen of carved mahogany which the
Colonel had brought from Europe. For a while there was silence: then a
loud outcry, which made the poor mother start.
In another minute Mr. Ward came out bleeding, from a great wound on his
head, and behind him Harry, with flaring eyes, and brandishing a little
couteau-de-chasse of his grandfather, which hung, with others of the
Colonel's weapons, on the library wall.
“I don't care. I did it,” says Harry. “I couldn't see this fellow strike
my brother; and, as he lifted his hand, I flung the great ruler at him.
I couldn't help it. I won't bear it; and, if one lifts a hand to me or
my brother, I'll have his life,” shouts Harry, brandishing the hanger.
The widow gave a great gasp and a sigh as she looked at the young
champion and his victim. She must have suffered terribly during the few
minutes of the boys' absence; and the stripes which she imagined had
been inflicted on the elder had smitten her own heart. She longed
to take both boys to it. She was not angry now. Very likely she was
delighted with the thought of the younger's prowess and generosity.
“You are a very naughty disobedient child,” she said, in an exceedingly
peaceable voice. “My poor Mr. Ward! What a rebel, to strike you! Papa's
great ebony ruler, was it? Lay down that hanger, child. 'Twas General
Webb gave it to my papa after the siege of Lille. Let me bathe your
wound, my good Mr. Ward, and thank Heaven it was no worse. Mountain!
Go fetch me some court-plaster out of the middle drawer in the japan
cabinet. Here comes George. Put on your coat and waistcoat, child! You
were going to take your punishment, sir, and that is sufficient. Ask
pardon, Harry, of good Mr. Ward, for your wicked rebellious spirit,--I
do, with all my heart, I am sure. And guard against your passionate
nature, child--and pray to be forgiven. My son, O my son!” Here, with a
burst of tears which she could no longer control, the little woman threw
herself on the neck of her eldest-born; whilst Harry, laying the hanger
down, went up very feebly to Mr. Ward, and said, “Indeed, I ask your
pardon, sir. I couldn't help it; on my honour I couldn't; nor bear to
see my brother struck.”
The widow was scared, as after her embrace she looked up at George's
pale face. In reply to her eager caresses, he coldly kissed her on the
forehead, and separated from her. “You meant for the best, mother,” he
said, “and I was in the wrong. But the cup is broken; and all the king's
horses and all the king's men cannot mend it. There--put the fair side
outwards on the mantelpiece, and the wound will not show.”
Again Madam Esmond looked at the lad, as he placed the fragments of the
poor cup on the ledge where it had always been used to stand. Her power
over him was gone. He had dominated her. She was not sorry for the
defeat; for women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered; and
from that day the young gentleman was master at Castlewood. His mother
admired him as he went up to Harry, graciously and condescendingly gave
Hal his hand, and said, “Thank you, brother!” as if he were a prince,
and Harry a general who had helped him in a great battle.
Then George went up to Mr. Ward, who was still piteously bathing his
eye and forehead in the water. “I ask pardon for Hal's violence, sir,”
George said, in great state. “You see, though we are very young, we
are gentlemen, and cannot brook an insult from strangers. I should
have submitted, as it was mamma's desire; but I am glad she no longer
entertains it.”
“And pray, sir, who is to compensate me?” says Mr. Ward; “who is to
repair the insult done to me?”
“We are very young,” says George, with another of his old-fashioned
bows. “We shall be fifteen soon. Any compensation that is usual amongst
gentlemen”
“This, sir, to a minister of the Word!” bawls out Ward, starting up,
and who knew perfectly well the lads' skill in fence, having a score of
times been foiled by the pair of them.
“You are not a clergyman yet. We thought you might like to be considered
as a gentleman. We did not know.”
“A gentleman! I am a Christian, sir!” says Ward, glaring furiously, and
clenching his great fists.
“Well, well, if you won't fight, why don't you forgive?” says Harry. “If
you don't forgive, why don't you fight? That's what I call the horns of
a dilemma;” and he laughed his frank, jolly laugh.
But this was nothing to the laugh a few days afterwards, when, the
quarrel having been patched up, along with poor Mr. Ward's eye, the
unlucky tutor was holding forth according to his custom. He tried to
preach the boys into respect for him, to reawaken the enthusiasm which
the congregation had felt for him; he wrestled with their manifest
indifference, he implored Heaven to warm their cold hearts again, and to
lift up those who were falling back. All was in vain. The widow wept no
more at his harangues, was no longer excited by his loudest tropes and
similes, nor appeared to be much frightened by the very hottest menaces
with which he peppered his discourse. Nay, she pleaded headache, and
would absent herself of an evening, on which occasion the remainder of
the little congregation was very cold indeed. One day, then, Ward,
still making desperate efforts to get back his despised authority, was
preaching on the beauty of subordination, the present lax spirit of the
age, and the necessity of obeying our spiritual and temporal rulers.
“For why, my dear friends,” he nobly asked (he was in the habit of
asking immensely dull questions, and straightway answering them with
corresponding platitudes), “why are governors appointed, but that we
should be governed? Why are tutors engaged, but that children should be
taught?” (here a look at the boys). “Why are rulers----” Here he paused,
looking with a sad, puzzled face at the young gentlemen. He saw in their
countenances the double meaning of the unlucky word he had uttered,
and stammered, and thumped the table with his fist. “Why, I say, are
rulers----”
“Rulers,” says George, looking at Harry.
“Rulers!” says Hal, putting his hand to his eye, where the poor tutor
still bore marks of the late scuffle. Rulers, o-ho! It was too much. The
boys burst out in an explosion of laughter. Mrs. Mountain, who was full
of fun, could not help joining in the chorus; and little Fanny, who had
always behaved very demurely and silently at these ceremonies, crowed
again, and clapped her little hands at the others laughing, not in the
least knowing the reason why.
This could not be borne. Ward shut down the book before him; in a few
angry, but eloquent and manly words, said he would speak no more in that
place; and left Castlewood not in the least regretted by Madam Esmond,
who had doted on him three months before.