Ones
Our Tunbridge friends were now weary of the Wells, and eager to take
their departure. When the autumn should arrive, Bath was Madame de
Bernstein's mark. There were more cards, company, life, there. She
would reach it after paying a few visits to her country friends. Harry
promised, with rather a bad grace, to ride with Lady Maria and the
chaplain to Castlewood. Again they passed by Oakhurst village, and the
hospitable house where Harry had been so kindly entertained. Maria
made so many keen remarks about the young ladies of Oakhurst, and their
setting their caps at Harry, and the mother's evident desire to catch
him for one of them, that, somewhat in a pet, Mr. Warrington said he
would pass his friends' door, as her ladyship disliked and abused
them; and was very haughty and sulky that evening at the inn where they
stopped, some few miles farther on the road. At supper, my Lady Maria's
smiles brought no corresponding good-humour to Harry's face; her tears
(which her ladyship had at command) did not seem to create the least
sympathy from Mr. Warrington; to her querulous remarks he growled a
surly reply; and my lady was obliged to go to bed at length without
getting a single tete-a-tete with her cousin,--that obstinate chaplain,
as if by order, persisting in staying in the room. Had Harry given
Sampson orders to remain? She departed with a sigh. He bowed her to the
door with an obstinate politeness, and consigned her to the care of the
landlady and her maid.
What horse was that which galloped out of the inn-yard ten minutes after
Lady Maria had gone to her chamber? An hour after her departure
from their supper-room, Mrs. Betty came in for her lady's bottle of
smelling-salts, and found Parson Sampson smoking a pipe alone.
Mr. Warrington was gone to bed--was gone to fetch a walk in the
moonlight--how should he know where Mr. Harry was? Sampson answered,
in reply to the maid's interrogatories. Mr. Warrington was ready to set
forward the next morning, and took his place by the side of Lady Maria's
carriage. But his brow was black--the dark spirit was still on him. He
hardly spoke to her during the journey. “Great heavens! she must have
told him that she stole it!” thought Lady Maria within her own mind.
The fact is, that, as they were walking up that steep hill which lies
about three miles from Oakhurst, on the Westerham road, Lady Maria
Esmond, leaning on her fond youth's arm, and indeed very much in love
with him, had warbled into his ear the most sentimental vows, protests,
and expressions of affection. As she grew fonder, he grew colder. As she
looked up in his face, the sun shone down upon hers, which, fresh and
well-preserved as it was, yet showed some of the lines and wrinkles of
twoscore years; and poor Harry, with that arm leaning on his, felt it
intolerably weighty, and by no means relished his walk up the hill. To
think that all his life, that drag was to be upon him! It was a dreary
look forward and he cursed the moonlight walk, and the hot evening, and
the hot wine which had made him give that silly pledge by which he was
fatally bound.
Maria's praises and raptures annoyed Harry beyond measure. The poor
thing poured out scraps of the few plays which she knew that had
reference to her case, and strove with her utmost power to charm her
young companion. She called him, over and over again, her champion, her
Henrico, her preserver, and vowed that his Molinda would be ever, ever
faithful to him. She clung to him. “Ah, child! have I not thy precious
image, thy precious hair, thy precious writing here?” she said, looking
in his face. “Shall it not go with me to the grave? It would, sir, were
I to meet with unkindness from my Henrico!” she sighed out.
Here was a strange story! Madame Bernstein had given him the little
silken case--she had burned the hair and the note which the case
contained, and Maria had it still on her heart! It was then, at the
start which Harry gave, as she was leaning on his arm--at the sudden
movement as if he would drop hers--that Lady Maria felt her first pang
of remorse that she had told a fib, or rather, that she was found out in
telling a fib, which is a far more cogent reason for repentance. Heaven
help us! if some people were to do penance for telling lies, would they
ever be out of sackcloth and ashes?
Arrived at Castlewood, Mr. Harry's good-humour was not increased. My
lord was from home; the ladies also were away; the only member of
the family whom Harry found, was Mr. Will, who returned from
partridge-shooting just as the chaise and cavalcade reached the gate,
and who turned very pale when he saw his cousin, and received a sulky
scowl of recognition from the young Virginian.
Nevertheless, he thought to put a good face on the matter, and they met
at supper, where, before my Lady Maria, their conversation was at first
civil, but not lively. Mr. Will had been to some races? To several. He
had been pretty successful in his bets? Mr. Warrington hopes. Pretty
well. “And you have brought back my horse sound?” asked Mr. Warrington.
“Your horse! what horse?” asked Mr. Will.
“What horse? my horse!” says Mr. Harry, curtly.
“Protest I don't understand you,” says Will.
“The brown horse for which I played you, and which I won of you the
night before you rode away upon it,” says Mr. Warrington, sternly. “You
remember the horse, Mr. Esmond.”
“Mr. Warrington, I perfectly well remember playing you for a horse,
which my servant handed over to you on the day of your departure.”
“The chaplain was present at our play. Mr. Sampson, will you be umpire
between us?” Mr. Warrington said, with much gentleness.
“I am bound to decide that Mr. Warrington played for the brown horse,”
says Mr. Sampson.
“Well, he got the other one,” said sulky Mr. Will, with a grin.
“And sold it for thirty shillings!” said Mr. Warrington, always
preserving his calm tone.
Will was waggish. “Thirty shillings? and a devilish good price, too, for
the broken-kneed old rip. Ha, ha!”
“Not a word more. 'Tis only a question about a bet, my dear Lady Maria.
Shall I serve you some more chicken?” Nothing could be more studiously
courteous and gay than Mr. Warrington was, so long as the lady remained
in the room. When she rose to go, Harry followed her to the door, and
closed it upon her with the most courtly bow of farewell. He stood at
the closed door for a moment, and then he bade the servants retire. When
those menials were gone, Mr. Warrington locked the heavy door before
them, and pocketed the key.
As it clicked in the lock, Mr. Will, who had been sitting over his
punch, looking now and then askance at his cousin, asked, with one
of the oaths which commonly garnished his conversation, what the--Mr.
Warrington meant by that?
“I guess there's going to be a quarrel,” said Mr. Warrington, blandly,
“and there is no use in having these fellows look on at rows between
their betters.”
“Who is going to quarrel here, I should like to know?” asked Will,
looking very pale, and grasping a knife.
“Mr. Sampson, you were present when I played Mr. Will fifty guineas
against his brown horse?”
“Against his horse!” bawls out Mr. Will.
“I am not such a something fool as you take me for,” says Mr.
Warrington, “although I do come from Virginia!” And he repeated his
question: “Mr. Sampson, you were here when I played the Honourable
William Esmond, Esquire, fifty guineas against his brown horse?”
“I must own it, sir,” says the chaplain, with a deprecatory look towards
his lord's brother.
“I don't own no such a thing,” says Mr. Will, with rather a forced
laugh.
“No, sir: because it costs you no more pains to lie than to cheat,” said
Mr. Warrington, walking up to his cousin. “Hands off, Mr. Chaplain, and
see fair play! Because you are no better than a--ha!----”
No better than a what we can't say, and shall never know, for as Harry
uttered the exclamation, his dear cousin flung a wine bottle at Mr.
Warrington's head, who bobbed just in time, so that the missile flew
across the room, and broke against the wainscot opposite, breaking
the face of a pictured ancestor of the Esmond family, and then itself
against the wall, whence it spirted a pint of good port wine over the
chaplain's face and flowered wig. “Great heavens, gentlemen, I pray you
to be quiet!” cried the parson, dripping with gore.
But gentlemen are not inclined at some moments to remember the commands
of the Church. The bottle having failed, Mr. Esmond seized the large
silver-handled knife and drove at his cousin. But Harry caught up
the other's right hand with his left, as he had seen the boxers do at
Marybone; and delivered a rapid blow upon Mr. Esmond's nose, which sent
him reeling up against the oak panels, and I dare say caused him to see
ten thousand illuminations. He dropped his knife in his retreat against
the wall, which his rapid antagonist kicked under the table.
Now Will, too, had been at Marybone and Hockley-in-the-Hole, and after
a gasp for breath and a glare over his bleeding nose at his enemy, he
dashed forward his head as though it had been a battering-ram, intending
to project it into Mr. Henry Warrington's stomach.
This manoeuvre Harry had seen, too, on his visit to Marybone, and
amongst the negroes upon the maternal estate, who would meet in combat
like two concutient cannon-balls, each harder than the other. But Harry
had seen and marked the civilised practice of the white man. He skipped
aside, and, saluting his advancing enemy with a tremendous blow on the
right ear, felled him, so that he struck his head against the heavy oak
table and sank lifeless to the ground.
“Chaplain, you will bear witness that it has been a fair fight!” said
Mr. Warrington, still quivering with the excitement of the combat, but
striving with all his might to restrain himself and look cool. And he
drew the key from his pocket and opened the door in the lobby, behind
which three or four servants were gathered. A crash of broken glass, a
cry, a shout, an oath or two, had told them that some violent scene was
occurring within, and they entered, and behold two victims bedabbled
with red--the chaplain bleeding port wine, and the Honourable William
Esmond, Esquire, stretched in his own gore.
“Mr. Sampson will bear witness that I struck fair, and that Mr.
Esmond hit the first blow,” said Mr. Warrington. “Undo his neckcloth,
somebody--he may be dead; and get a fleam, Gumbo, and bleed him. Stop!
He is coming to himself! Lift him up, you, and tell a maid to wash the
floor.”
Indeed, in a minute, Mr. Will did come to himself. First his eyes rolled
about, or rather, I am ashamed to say, his eye, one having been closed
by Mr. Warrington's first blow. First, then, his eye rolled about; then
he gasped and uttered an inarticulate moan or two, then he began to
swear and curse very freely and articulately.
“He is getting well,” said Mr. Warrington.
“Oh, praise be Mussy!” sighs the sentimental Betty.
“Ask him, Gumbo, whether he would like any more?” said Mr. Warrington,
with a stern humour.
“Massa Harry say, wool you like any maw?” asked obedient Gumbo, bowing
over the prostrate gentleman.
“No, curse you, you black devil!” says Mr. Will, hitting up at the black
object before him. (“So he nearly cut my tongue in to in my mouf!” Gumbo
explained to the pitying Betty.) “No, that is, yes! You infernal Mohock!
Why does not somebody kick him out of the place?”
“Because nobody dares, Mr. Esmond,” says Mr. Warrington, with great
state, arranging his ruffles--his ruffled ruffles.
“And nobody won't neither,” growled the men. They had all grown to love
Harry, whereas Mr. Will had nobody's good word.
“We know all's fair, sir. It ain't the first time Master William have
been served so.”
“And I hope it won't be the last,” cries shrill Betty. “To go for to
strike a poor black gentleman so!”
Mr. Will had gathered himself up by this time, had wiped his bleeding
face with a napkin, and was skulking off to bed.
“Surely it's manners to say good night to the company. Good night, Mr.
Esmond,” says Mr. Warrington, whose jokes, though few, were not very
brilliant; but the honest lad relished the brilliant sally and laughed
at it inwardly.
“He's ad his zopper, and he goes to baid!” says Betty, in her native
dialect, at which everybody laughed outright, except Mr. William, who
went away leaving a black fume of curses, as it were, rolling out of
that funnel, his mouth.
It must be owned that Mr. Warrington continued to be witty the next
morning. He sent a note to Mr. Will begging to know whether he was for
a ride to town or anywheres else. If he was for London, that he would
friten the highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, and look a very genteel figar
at the Chocolate House. Which letter, I fear, Mr. Will received with his
usual violence, requesting the writer to go to some place--not Hounslow.
And, besides the parley between Will and Harry, there comes a maiden
simpering to Mr. Warrington's door, and Gumbo advances, holding
something white and triangular in his ebon fingers.
Harry knew what it was well enough. “Of course it's a letter,” groans
he. Molinda greets her Enrico, etc. etc. etc. No sleep has she known
that night, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth. Has Enrico slept
well in the halls of his fathers? und so weiter, und so weiter. He must
never never quaril and be so cruel again. Kai ta loipa. And I protest I
shan't quote any more of this letter. Ah, tablets, golden once,--are ye
now faded leaves? Where is the juggler who transmuted you, and why is
the glamour over?
After the little scandal with cousin Will, Harry's dignity would not
allow him to stay longer at Castlewood: he wrote a majestic letter
to the lord of the mansion, explaining the circumstances which had
occurred, and, as he called in Parson Sampson to supervise the document,
no doubt it contained none of those eccentricities in spelling which
figured in his ordinary correspondence at this period. He represented to
poor Maria, that after blackening the eye and damaging the nose of a son
of the house, he should remain in it with a very bad grace; and she was
forced to acquiesce in the opinion that, for the present, his absence
would best become him. Of course, she wept plentiful tears at parting
with him. He would go to London, and see younger beauties: he would find
none, none who would love him like his fond Maria. I fear Mr. Warrington
did not exhibit any profound emotion on leaving her: nay, he cheered
up immediately after he crossed Castlewood Bridge, and made his horses
whisk over the road at ten miles an hour: he sang to them to go along:
he nodded to the pretty girls by the roadside: he chucked my landlady
under the chin: he certainly was not inconsolable. Truth is, he
longed to be back in London again, to make a figure at St. James's,
at Newmarket, wherever the men of fashion congregated. All that petty
Tunbridge society of women and card-playing seemed child's-play to him
now he had tasted the delight of London life.
By the time he reached London again, almost all the four-and-forty
pounds which we have seen that he possessed at Tunbridge had slipped out
of his pocket, and further supplies were necessary. Regarding these he
made himself presently easy. There were the two sums of 5000 pounds in
his own and his brother's name, of which he was the master. He would
take up a little money, and with a run or two of good luck at play he
could easily replace it. Meantime he must live in a manner becoming his
station, and it must be explained to Madam Esmond that a gentleman
of his rank cannot keep fitting company, and appear as becomes him in
society, upon a miserable pittance of two hundred a year.
Mr. Warrington sojourned at the Bedford Coffee-House as before, but only
for a short while. He sought out proper lodgings at the Court end of the
town, and fixed on some apartments in Bond Street, where he and
Gumbo installed themselves, his horses standing at a neighbouring
livery-stable. And now tailors, mercers, and shoemakers were put in
requisition. Not without a pang of remorse, he laid aside his mourning
and figured in a laced hat and waistcoat. Gumbo was always dexterous in
the art of dressing hair, and with a little powder flung into his fair
locks Mr. Warrington's head was as modish as that of any gentleman in
the Mall. He figured in the Ring in his phaeton. Reports of his great
wealth had long since preceded him to London, and not a little curiosity
was excited about the fortunate Virginian.
Until our young friend could be balloted for at the proper season,
my Lord March had written down his name for the club at White's
Chocolate-House, as a distinguished gentleman from America. There were
as yet but few persons of fashion in London, but with a pocket full of
money at one-and-twenty, a young fellow can make himself happy even out
of the season; and Mr. Harry was determined to enjoy.
He ordered Mr. Draper, then, to sell five hundred pounds of his stock.
What would his poor mother have said had she known that the young
spendthrift was already beginning to dissipate his patrimony? He dined
at the tavern, he supped at the club, where Jack Morris introduced him,
with immense eulogiums, to such gentlemen as were in town. Life and
youth and pleasure were before him, the wine was set a-running, and the
eager lad was greedy to drink. Do you see, far away in the west yonder,
the pious widow at her prayers for her son? Behind the trees at Oakhurst
a tender little heart, too, is beating for him, perhaps. When the
Prodigal Son was away carousing, were not love and forgiveness still on
the watch for him?
Amongst the inedited letters of the late Lord Orford, there is one which
the present learned editor, Mr. Peter Cunningbam, has omitted from his
collection, doubting possibly the authenticity of the document. Nay,
I myself have only seen a copy of it in the Warrington papers in Madam
Esmond's prim handwriting, and noted “Mr. H. Walpole's account of my son
Henry at London, and of Baroness Tusher,--wrote to General Conway.”
“ARLINGTON STREET, Friday Night.
“I have come away, child, for a day or two from my devotions to our Lady
of Strawberry. Have I not been on my knees to her these three weeks,
and aren't the poor old joints full of rheumatism? A fit took me that
I would pay London a visit, that I would go to Vauxhall and Ranelagh.
Quoi! May I not have my rattle as well as other elderly babies? Suppose,
after being so long virtuous, I take a fancy to cakes and ale, shall
your reverence say nay to me? George Selwyn and Tony Storer and
your humble servant took boat at Westminster t'other night. Was it
Tuesday?--no, Tuesday I was with their Graces of Norfolk, who are just
from Tunbridge--it was Wednesday. How should I know? Wasn't I dead drunk
with a whole pint of lemonade I took at White's?
“The Norfolk folk had been entertaining me on Tuesday with the account
of a young savage Iroquois, Choctaw, or Virginian, who has lately been
making a little noise in our quarter of the globe. He is an offshoot of
that disreputable family of Esmond, Castlewood, of whom all the men are
gamblers and spendthrifts, and all the women--well, I shan't say the
word, lest Lady Ailesbury should be looking over your shoulder. Both the
late lords, my father told me, were in his pay, and the last one, a beau
of Queen Anne's reign, from a viscount advanced to be an earl through
the merits and intercession of his notorious old sister Bernstein, late
Tusher, nee Esmond--a great beauty, too, of her day, a favourite of the
old Pretender. She sold his secrets to my papa, who paid her for them;
and being nowise particular in her love for the Stuarts, came over to
the august Hanoverian house at present reigning over us. 'Will Horace
Walpole's tongue never stop scandal?' says your wife over your shoulder.
I kiss your ladyship's hand. I am dumb. The Bernstein is a model of
virtue. She had no good reasons for marrying her father's chaplain.
Many of the nobility omit the marriage altogether. She wasn't ashamed
of being Mrs. Tusher, and didn't take a German Baroncino for a second
husband, whom nobody out of Hanover ever saw. The Yarmouth bears no
malice. Esther and Vashti are very good friends, and have been cheating
each other at Tunbridge at cards all the summer.
“'And what has all this to do with the Iroquois?' says your ladyship.
The Iroquois has been at Tunbridge, too--not cheating, perhaps, but
winning vastly. They say he has bled Lord March of thousands--Lord
March, by whom so much blood hath been shed, that he has quarrelled with
everybody, fought with everybody, rode over everybody, been fallen in
love with by everybody's wife except Mr. Conway's, and not excepting her
present Majesty, the Countess of England, Scotland, France and Ireland,
Queen of Walmoden and Yarmouth, whom Heaven preserve to us.
“You know an offensive little creature, de par le monde, one Jack
Morris, who skips in and out of all the houses of London. When we were
at Vauxhall, Mr. Jack gave us a nod under the shoulder of a pretty young
fellow enough, on whose arm he was leaning, and who appeared hugely
delighted with the enchantments of the garden. Lord, how he stared
at the fireworks! Gods, how he huzzayed at the singing of a horrible
painted wench who shrieked the ears off my head! A twopenny string of
glass beads and a strip of tawdry cloth are treasures in Iroquois-land,
and our savage valued them accordingly.
“A buzz went about the place that this was the fortunate youth. He won
three hundred at White's last night very genteelly from Rockingham and
my precious nephew, and here he was bellowing and huzzaying over the
music so as to do you good to hear. I do not love a puppet-show, but I
love to treat children to one, Miss Conway! I present your ladyship my
compliments, and hope we shall go and see the dolls together.
“When the singing woman came down from her throne, Jack Morris must
introduce my Virginian to her. I saw him blush up to the eyes, and make
her, upon my word, a very fine bow, such as I had no idea was practised
in wigwams. 'There is a certain jenny squaw about her, and that's why
the savage likes her,' George said--a joke certainly not as brilliant as
a firework. After which it seemed to me that the savage and the savages
retired together.
“Having had a great deal too much to eat and drink three hours before,
my partners must have chicken and rack-punch at Vauxhall, where George
fell asleep straightway, and for my sins I must tell Tony Storer what
I knew about this Virginian's amiable family, especially some of the
Bernstein's antecedents, and the history of another elderly beauty of
the family, a certain Lady Maria, who was au mieux with the late Prince
of Wales. What did I say? I protest not half of what I knew, and of
course not a tenth part of what I was going to tell, for who should
start out upon us but my savage, this time quite red in the face; and in
his war paint. The wretch had been drinking fire-water in the next box!
“He cocked his hat, clapped his hand to his sword, asked which of the
gentleman was it that was maligning his family? so that I was obliged to
entreat him not to make such a noise, lest he should wake my friend, Mr.
George Selwyn. And I added, 'I assure you, sir, I had no idea that you
were near me, and most sincerely apologise for giving you pain.'
“The Huron took his hand off his tomahawk at this pacific rejoinder,
made a bow not ungraciously, said he could not, of course, ask more than
an apology from a gentleman of my age (Merci, monsieur!), and, hearing
the name of Mr. Selwyn, made another bow to George, and said he had
a letter to him from Lord March, which he had had the ill-fortune to
mislay. George has put him up for the club, it appears, in conjunction
with March, and no doubt these three lambs will fleece each other.
Meanwhile, my pacified savage sate down with us, and buried the hatchet
in another bowl of punch, for which these gentlemen must call. Heaven
help us! 'Tis eleven o'clock, and here comes Bedson with my gruel! H. W.
“To the Honourable. H. S. Conway.”