Sometimes Esmond would think there was hope. Then again he would be

plagued with despair, at some impertinence or coquetry of his mistress.

For days they would be like brother and sister, or the dearest

friends—she, simple, fond, and charming—he, happy beyond measure at her

good behaviour. But this would all vanish on a sudden. Either he would be

too pressing, and hint his love, when she would rebuff him instantly, and

give his vanity a box on the ear: or he would be jealous, and with perfect

good reason, of some new admirer that had sprung up, or some rich young

gentleman newly arrived in the town, that this incorrigible flirt would

set her nets and baits to draw in. If Esmond remonstrated, the little

rebel would say—“Who are you? I shall go my own way, sirrah, and that way

is towards a husband, and I don’t want _you_ on the way. I am for your

betters, colonel, for your betters: do you hear that? You might do if you

had an estate and were younger; only eight years older than I, you say!

pish, you are a hundred years older. You are an old, old Graveairs, and I

should make you miserable, that would be the only comfort I should have in

marrying you. But you have not money enough to keep a cat decently after

you have paid your man his wages, and your landlady her bill. Do you think

I’m going to live in a lodging, and turn the mutton at a string whilst

your honour nurses the baby? Fiddlestick, and why did you not get this

nonsense knocked out of your head when you were in the wars? You are come

back more dismal and dreary than ever. You and mamma are fit for each

other. You might be Darby and Joan, and play cribbage to the end of your

lives.”

“At least you own to your worldliness, my poor Trix,” says her mother.

“Worldliness—O my pretty lady! Do you think that I am a child in the

nursery, and to be frightened by Bogey? Worldliness, to be sure; and pray,

madam, where is the harm of wishing to be comfortable? When you are gone,

you dearest old woman, or when I am tired of you and have run away from

you, where shall I go? Shall I go and be head nurse to my Popish

sister-in-law, take the children their physic, and whip ’em, and put ’em

to bed when they are naughty? Shall I be Castlewood’s upper servant, and

perhaps marry Tom Tusher? _Merci!_ I have been long enough Frank’s humble

servant. Why am I not a man? I have ten times his brains, and had I worn

the—well, don’t let your ladyship be frightened—had I worn a sword and

periwig instead of this mantle and commode, to which nature has condemned

me—(though ’tis a pretty stuff, too—cousin Esmond! you will go to the

Exchange to-morrow, and get the exact counterpart of this ribbon, sir, do

you hear?)—I would have made our name talked about. So would Graveairs

here have made something out of our name if he had represented it. My Lord

Graveairs would have done very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and

would have made a very decent, grave speaker;” and here she began to

imitate Esmond’s way of carrying himself, and speaking to his face, and so

ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself

could see there was some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature.

“Yes,” says she, “I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that I want a good

husband. Where’s the harm of one? My face is my fortune. Who’ll come?—buy,

buy, buy! I cannot toil, neither can I spin, but I can play twenty-three

games on the cards. I can dance the last dance, I can hunt the stag, and I

think I could shoot flying. I can talk as wicked as any woman of my years,

and know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for at least one thousand

and one nights. I have a pretty taste for dress, diamonds, gambling, and

old china. I love sugar-plums, Malines lace (that you brought me, cousin,

is very pretty), the opera, and everything that is useless and costly. I

have got a monkey and a little black boy—Pompey, sir, go and give a dish

of chocolate to Colonel Graveairs,—and a parrot and a spaniel, and I must

have a husband. Cupid, you hear?”

“Iss, missis,” says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborow gave

her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his

mistress’s name on it.

“Iss, missis!” says Beatrix, imitating the child. “And if husband not

come, Pompey must go fetch one.”

And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray, as Miss Beatrix ran

up to her mother and ended her sally of mischief in her common way, with a

kiss—no wonder that upon paying such a penalty her fond judge pardoned

her.

-------------------------------------

When Mr. Esmond came home, his health was still shattered; and he took a

lodging near to his mistress’s, at Kensington, glad enough to be served by

them, and to see them day after day. He was enabled to see a little

company—and of the sort he liked best. Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison both did

him the honour to visit him: and drank many a flask of good claret at his

lodging, whilst their entertainer, through his wound, was kept to diet

drink and gruel. These gentlemen were Whigs, and great admirers of my Lord

Duke of Marlborough; and Esmond was entirely of the other party. But their

different views of politics did not prevent the gentlemen from agreeing in

private, nor from allowing, on one evening when Esmond’s kind old patron,

Lieutenant-General Webb, with a stick and a crutch, hobbled up to the

colonel’s lodging (which was prettily situate at Knightsbridge, between

London and Kensington, and looking over the Gardens), that the

lieutenant-general was a noble and gallant soldier—and even that he had

been hardly used in the Wynendael affair. He took his revenge in talk,

that must be confessed; and if Mr. Addison had had a mind to write a poem

about Wynendael, he might have heard from the commander’s own lips the

story a hundred times over.

Mr. Esmond, forced to be quiet, betook himself to literature for a

relaxation, and composed his comedy, whereof the prompter’s copy lieth in

my walnut escritoire, sealed up and docketed, _The Faithful Fool_, a

Comedy, as it was performed by her Majesty’s servants. ’Twas a very

sentimental piece; and Mr. Steele, who had more of that kind of sentiment

than Mr. Addison, admired it, whilst the other rather sneered at the

performance; though he owned that, here and there, it contained some

pretty strokes. He was bringing out his own play of _Cato_ at the time,

the blaze of which quite extinguished Esmond’s farthing candle: and his

name was never put to the piece, which was printed as by a Person of

Quality. Only nine copies were sold, though Mr. Dennis, the great critic,

praised it, and said ’twas a work of great merit; and Colonel Esmond had

the whole impression burned one day in a rage, by Jack Lockwood, his man.

All this comedy was full of bitter satiric strokes against a certain young

lady. The plot of the piece was quite a new one. A young woman was

represented with a great number of suitors, selecting a pert fribble of a

peer, in place of the hero (but ill-acted, I think, by Mr. Wilks, the

Faithful Fool), who persisted in admiring her. In the fifth act, Teraminta

was made to discover the merits of Eugenio (the F. F.), and to feel a

partiality for him too late; for he announced that he had bestowed his

hand and estate upon Rosaria, a country lass, endowed with every virtue.

But it must be owned that the audience yawned through the play; and that

it perished on the third night, with only half a dozen persons to behold

its agonies. Esmond and his two mistresses came to the first night, and

Miss Beatrix fell asleep; whilst her mother, who had not been to a play

since King James the Second’s time, thought the piece, though not

brilliant, had a very pretty moral.

Mr. Esmond dabbled in letters, and wrote a deal of prose and verse at this

time of leisure. When displeased with the conduct of Miss Beatrix, he

would compose a satire, in which he relieved his mind. When smarting under

the faithlessness of women, he dashed off a copy of verses, in which he

held the whole sex up to scorn. One day, in one of these moods, he made a

little joke, in which (swearing him to secrecy) he got his friend Dick

Steele to help him; and, composing a paper, he had it printed exactly like

Steele’s paper, and by his printer, and laid on his mistress’s

breakfast-table the following:—

“SPECTATOR.

No. 341. Tuesday, April 1, 1712.

Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur.—HORACE.

Thyself the moral of the Fable see.—CREECH.

“Jocasta is known as a woman of learning and fashion, and as one of the

most amiable persons of this Court and country. She is at home two

mornings of the week, and all the wits and a few of the beauties of London

flock to her assemblies. When she goes abroad to Tunbridge or the Bath, a

retinue of adorers rides the journey with her; and, besides the London

beaux, she has a crowd of admirers at the Wells, the polite amongst the

natives of Sussex and Somerset pressing round her tea-tables, and being

anxious for a nod from her chair. Jocasta’s acquaintance is thus very

numerous. Indeed, ’tis one smart writer’s work to keep her visiting-book—a

strong footman is engaged to carry it; and it would require a much

stronger head, even than Jocasta’s own, to remember the names of all her

dear friends.

“Either at Epsom Wells or at Tunbridge (for of this important matter

Jocasta cannot be certain) it was her ladyship’s fortune to become

acquainted with a young gentleman, whose conversation was so sprightly,

and manners amiable, that she invited the agreeable young spark to visit

her if ever he came to London, where her house in Spring Garden should be

open to him. Charming as he was, and without any manner of doubt a pretty

fellow, Jocasta hath such a regiment of the like continually marching

round her standard, that ’tis no wonder her attention is distracted

amongst them. And so, though this gentleman made a considerable impression

upon her, and touched her heart for at least three-and-twenty minutes, it

must be owned that she has forgotten his name. He is a dark man, and may

be eight-and-twenty years old. His dress is sober, though of rich

materials. He has a mole on his forehead over his left eye; has a blue

ribbon to his cane and sword, and wears his own hair.

“Jocasta was much flattered by beholding her admirer (for that everybody

admires who sees her is a point which she never can for a moment doubt) in

the next pew to her at St. James’s Church last Sunday; and the manner in

which he appeared to go to sleep during the sermon—though from under his

fringed eyelids it was evident he was casting glances of respectful

rapture towards Jocasta—deeply moved and interested her. On coming out of

church, he found his way to her chair, and made her an elegant bow as she

stepped into it. She saw him at Court afterwards, where he carried himself

with a most distinguished air, though none of her acquaintances knew his

name; and the next night he was at the play, where her ladyship was

pleased to acknowledge him from the side-box.

“During the whole of the comedy she racked her brains so to remember his

name, that she did not hear a word of the piece: and having the happiness

to meet him once more in the lobby of the playhouse, she went up to him in

a flutter, and bade him remember that she kept two nights in the week, and

that she longed to see him at Spring Garden.

“He appeared on Tuesday, in a rich suit, showing a very fine taste both in

the tailor and wearer; and though a knot of us were gathered round the

charming Jocasta, fellows who pretended to know every face upon the town,

not one could tell the gentleman’s name in reply to Jocasta’s eager

inquiries, flung to the right and left of her as he advanced up the room

with a bow that would become a duke.

“Jocasta acknowledged this salute with one of those smiles and curtsies of

which that lady hath the secret. She curtsies with a languishing air, as

if to say, ‘You are come at last. I have been pining for you:’ and then

she finishes her victim with a killing look, which declares: ‘O Philander!

I have no eyes but for you.’ Camilla hath as good a curtsy perhaps, and

Thalestris much such another look; but the glance and the curtsy together

belong to Jocasta of all the English beauties alone.

“ ‘Welcome to London, sir,’ says she. ‘One can see you are from the

country by your looks.’ She would have said ‘Epsom’, or ‘Tunbridge’, had

she remembered rightly at which place she had met the stranger; but, alas!

she had forgotten.

“The gentleman said, ‘he had been in town but three days; and one of his

reasons for coming hither was to have the honour of paying his court to

Jocasta.’

“She said, ‘the waters had agreed with her but indifferently.’

“ ‘The waters were for the sick,’ the gentleman said: ‘the young and

beautiful came but to make them sparkle. And, as the clergyman read the

service on Sunday,’ he added, ‘your ladyship reminded me of the angel that

visited the pool.’ A murmur of approbation saluted this sally. Manilio,

who is a wit when he is not at cards, was in such a rage that he revoked

when he heard it.

“Jocasta was an angel visiting the waters; but at which of the Bethesdas?

She was puzzled more and more; and, as her way always is, looked the more

innocent and simple, the more artful her intentions were.

“ ‘We were discoursing,’ says she, ‘about spelling of names and words when

you came. Why should we say goold and write gold, and call china chayny,

and Cavendish Candish, and Cholmondeley Chumley? If we call Pulteney

Poltney, why shouldn’t we call poultry pultry—and——’

“ ‘Such an enchantress as your ladyship,’ says he, ‘is mistress of all

sorts of spells.’ But this was Dr. Swift’s pun, and we all knew it.

“ ‘And—and how do you spell your name?’ says she, coming to the point, at

length; for this sprightly conversation had lasted much longer than is

here set down, and been carried on through at least three dishes of tea.

“ ‘Oh, madam,’ says he, ‘_I spell my name with the y_.’ And laying down

his dish, my gentleman made another elegant bow, and was gone in a moment.

“Jocasta hath had no sleep since this mortification, and the stranger’s

disappearance. If balked in anything, she is sure to lose her health and

temper; and we, her servants, suffer, as usual, during the angry fits of

our queen. Can you help us, Mr. Spectator, who know everything, to read

this riddle for her, and set at rest all our minds? We find in her list,

Mr. Berty, Mr. Smith, Mr. Pike, Mr. Tyler—who may be Mr. Bertie, Mr.

Smyth, Mr. Pyke, Mr. Tiler, for what we know. She hath turned away the

clerk of her visiting-book, a poor fellow with a great family of children.

Read me this riddle, good Mr. Shortface, and oblige your admirer—OEDIPUS.”

THE “TRUMPET” COFFEE-HOUSE, Whitehall.

“MR. SPECTATOR—I am a gentleman but little acquainted with the town,

though I have had a university education, and passed some years serving my

country abroad, where my name is better known than in the coffee-houses

and St. James’s.

“Two years since my uncle died, leaving me a pretty estate in the county

of Kent; and being at Tunbridge Wells last summer, after my mourning was

over, and on the look-out, if truth must be told, for some young lady who

would share with me the solitude of my great Kentish house, and be kind to

my tenantry (for whom a woman can do a great deal more good than the

best-intentioned man can), I was greatly fascinated by a young lady of

London, who was the toast of all the company at the Wells. Everyone knows

Saccharissa’s beauty; and I think, Mr. Spectator, no one better than

herself.

“My table-book informs me that I danced no less than seven-and-twenty sets

with her at the assembly. I treated her to the fiddles twice. I was

admitted on several days to her lodging, and received by her with a great

deal of distinction, and, for a time, was entirely her slave. It was only

when I found, from common talk of the company at the Wells, and from

narrowly watching one, who I once thought of asking the most sacred

question a man can put to a woman, that I became aware how unfit she was

to be a country gentleman’s wife; and that this fair creature was but a

heartless worldly jilt, playing with affections that she never meant to

return, and, indeed, incapable of returning them. ’Tis admiration such

women want, not love that touches them; and I can conceive, in her old

age, no more wretched creature than this lady will be, when her beauty

hath deserted her, when her admirers have left her, and she hath neither

friendship nor religion to console her.

“Business calling me to London, I went to St. James’s Church last Sunday,

and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the

whole service was so pert, languishing, and absurd; she flirted her fan,

and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut

my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld

hers (and very bright they are) still staring at me. I fell in with her

afterwards at Court, and at the playhouse; and here nothing would satisfy

her but she must elbow through the crowd and speak to me, and invite me to

the assembly, which she holds at her house, nor very far from Ch-r-ng

Cr-ss.

“Having made her a promise to attend, of course I kept my promise; and

found the young widow in the midst of a half-dozen of card-tables, and a

crowd of wits and admirers. I made the best bow I could, and advanced

towards her; and saw by a peculiar puzzled look in her face, though she

tried to hide her perplexity, that she had forgotten even my name.

“Her talk, artful as it was, convinced me that I had guessed aright. She

turned the conversation most ridiculously upon the spelling of names and

words; and I replied with as ridiculous, fulsome compliments as I could

pay her: indeed, one in which I compared her to an angel visiting the

sick-wells, went a little too far; nor should I have employed it, but that

the allusion came from the Second Lesson last Sunday, which we both had

heard, and I was pressed to answer her.

“Then she came to the question, which I knew was awaiting me, and asked

how I _spelt_ my name? ‘Madam,’ says I, turning on my heel, ‘I spell it

with the _y_.’ And so I left her, wondering at the light-heartedness of

the town-people, who forget and make friends so easily, and resolved to

look elsewhere for a partner for your constant reader.

“CYMON WYLDOATS.

“You know my real name, Mr. Spectator, in which there is no such a letter

as _hupsilon_. But if the lady, whom I have called Saccharissa, wonders

that I appear no more at the tea-tables, she is hereby respectfully

informed the reason _y_.”

-------------------------------------

The above is a parable, whereof the writer will now expound the meaning.

Jocasta was no other than Miss Esmond, maid of honour to her Majesty. She

had told Mr. Esmond this little story of having met a gentleman,

somewhere, and forgetting his name, when the gentleman, with no such

malicious intentions as those of “Cymon” in the above fable, made the

answer simply as above; and we all laughed to think how little Mistress

Jocasta-Beatrix had profited by her artifice and precautions.

As for Cymon he was intended to represent yours and her very humble

servant, the writer of the apologue and of this story, which we had

printed on a _Spectator_ paper at Mr. Steele’s office, exactly as those

famous journals were printed, and which was laid on the table at breakfast

in place of the real newspaper. Mistress Jocasta, who had plenty of wit,

could not live without her _Spectator_ to her tea; and this sham

_Spectator_ was intended to convey to the young woman that she herself was

a flirt, and that Cymon was a gentleman of honour and resolution, seeing

all her faults, and determined to break the chains once and for ever.

For though enough hath been said about this love business already—enough,

at least, to prove to the writer’s heirs what a silly fond fool their old

grandfather was, who would like them to consider him a a very wise old

gentleman; yet not near all has been told concerning this matter, which,

if it were allowed to take in Esmond’s journal the space it occupied in

his time, would weary his kinsmen and women of a hundred years’ time

beyond all endurance; and form such a diary of folly and drivelling,

raptures and rage, as no man of ordinary vanity would like to leave behind

him.

The truth is, that, whether she laughed at him or encouraged him; whether

she smiled or was cold, and turned her smiles on another—worldly and

ambitious, as he knew her to be; hard and careless, as she seemed to grow

with her Court life, and a hundred admirers that came to her and left her;

Esmond, do what he would, never could get Beatrix out of his mind; thought

of her constantly at home or away. If he read his name in a _Gazette_, or

escaped the shot of a cannon-ball or a greater danger in the campaign, as

has happened to him more than once, the instant thought after the honour

achieved or the danger avoided, was “What will _she_ say of it?” “Will

this distinction or the idea of this peril elate her or touch her, so as

to be better inclined towards me?” He could no more help this passionate

fidelity of temper than he could help the eyes he saw with—one or the

other seemed a part of his nature; and knowing every one of her faults as

well as the keenest of her detractors, and the folly of an attachment to

such a woman, of which the fruition could never bring him happiness for

above a week, there was yet a charm about this Circe from which the poor

deluded gentleman could not free himself; and for a much longer period

than Ulysses (another middle-aged officer, who had travelled much, and

been in the foreign wars), Esmond felt himself enthralled and besotted by

the wiles of this enchantress. Quit her! He could no more quit her, as the

Cymon of this story was made to quit his false one, than he could lose his

consciousness of yesterday. She had but to raise her finger, and he would

come back from ever so far; she had but to say, “I have discarded

such-and-such an adorer,” and the poor infatuated wretch would be sure to

come and _rôder_ about her mother’s house, willing to be put on the ranks

of suitors, though he knew he might be cast off the next week. If he were

like Ulysses in his folly at least, she was in so far like Penelope, that

she had a crowd of suitors, and undid day after day and night after night

the handiwork of fascination and the web of coquetry with which she was

wont to allure and entertain them.

Part of her coquetry may have come from her position about the Court,

where the beautiful maid of honour was the light about which a thousand

beaux came and fluttered; where she was sure to have a ring of admirers

round her, crowding to listen to her repartees as much as to admire her

beauty; and where she spoke and listened to much free talk, such as one

never would have thought the lips or ears of Rachel Castlewood’s daughter

would have uttered or heard. When in waiting at Windsor or Hampton, the

Court ladies and gentlemen would be making riding parties together; Mrs.

Beatrix in a horseman’s coat and hat, the foremost after the staghounds

and over the park fences, a crowd of young fellows at her heels. If the

English country ladies at this time were the most pure and modest of any

ladies in the world—the English town and Court ladies permitted themselves

words and behaviour that were neither modest nor pure; and claimed, some

of them, a freedom which those who love that sex most would never wish to

grant them. The gentlemen of my family that follow after me (for I don’t

encourage the ladies to pursue any such studies), may read in the works of

Mr. Congreve, and Dr. Swift, and others, what was the conversation and

what the habits of our time.

The most beautiful woman in England in 1712, when Esmond returned to this

country, a lady of high birth, and though of no fortune to be sure, with a

thousand fascinations of wit and manners—Beatrix Esmond—was now

six-and-twenty years old, and Beatrix Esmond still. Of her hundred adorers

she had not chosen one for a husband; and those who had asked had been

jilted by her; and more still had left her. A succession of near ten

years’ crops of beauties had come up since her time, and had been reaped

by proper _husband_men, if we may make an agricultural simile, and had

been housed comfortably long ago. Her own contemporaries were sober

mothers by this time; girls with not a tithe of her charms, or her wit,

having made good matches, and now claiming precedence over the spinster

who but lately had derided and outshone them. The young beauties were

beginning to look down on Beatrix as an old maid, and sneer, and call her

one of Charles the Second’s ladies, and ask whether her portrait was not

in the Hampton Court Gallery? But still she reigned, at least in one man’s

opinion, superior over all the little misses that were the toasts of the

young lads; and in Esmond’s eyes was ever perfectly lovely and young.

Who knows how many were nearly made happy by possessing her, or, rather,

how many were fortunate in escaping this siren? ’Tis a marvel to think

that her mother was the purest and simplest woman in the whole world, and

that this girl should have been born from her. I am inclined to fancy, my

mistress, who never said a harsh word to her children (and but twice or

thrice only to one person), must have been too fond and pressing with the

maternal authority; for her son and her daughter both revolted early; nor

after their first flight from the nest could they ever be brought back

quite to the fond mother’s bosom. Lady Castlewood, and perhaps it was as

well, knew little of her daughter’s life and real thoughts. How was she to

apprehend what passed in queens’ antechambers and at Court tables? Mrs.

Beatrix asserted her own authority so resolutely that her mother quickly

gave in. The maid of honour had her own equipage; went from home and came

back at her own will: her mother was alike powerless to resist her or to

lead her, or to command or to persuade her.

She had been engaged once, twice, thrice, to be married, Esmond believed.

When he quitted home, it hath been said, she was promised to my Lord

Ashburnham, and now, on his return, behold his lordship was just married

to Lady Mary Butler, the Duke of Ormonde’s daughter, and his fine houses,

and twelve thousand a year of fortune, for which Miss Beatrix had rather

coveted him, was out of her power. To her Esmond could say nothing in

regard to the breaking of this match; and, asking his mistress about it,

all Lady Castlewood answered was: “Do not speak to me about it, Harry. I

cannot tell you how or why they parted, and I fear to inquire. I have told

you before, that with all her kindness, and wit, and generosity, and that

sort of splendour of nature she has; I can say but little good of poor

Beatrix, and look with dread at the marriage she will form. Her mind is

fixed on ambition only, and making a great figure: and, this achieved, she

will tire of it as she does of everything. Heaven help her husband,

whoever he shall be! My Lord Ashburnham was a most excellent young man,

gentle and yet manly, of very good parts, so they told me, and as my

little conversation would enable me to judge: and a kind temper—kind and

enduring I’m sure he must have been, from all that he had to endure. But

he quitted her at last, from some crowning piece of caprice or tyranny of

hers; and now he has married a young woman that will make him a thousand

times happier than my poor girl ever could.”

The rupture, whatever its cause was (I heard the scandal, but indeed shall

not take pains to repeat at length in this diary the trumpery coffee-house

story), caused a good deal of low talk; and Mr. Esmond was present at my

lord’s appearance at the birthday with his bride, over whom the revenge

that Beatrix took was to look so imperial and lovely that the modest

downcast young lady could not appear beside her, and Lord Ashburnham, who

had his reasons for wishing to avoid her, slunk away quite shamefaced, and

very early. This time his grace the Duke of Hamilton, whom Esmond had seen

about her before, was constant at Miss Beatrix’s side: he was one of the

most splendid gentlemen of Europe, accomplished by books, by travel, by

long command of the best company, distinguished as a statesman, having

been ambassador in King William’s time, and a noble speaker in the Scots

Parliament, where he had led the party that was against the union, and

though now five- or six-and-forty years of age, a gentleman so high in

stature, accomplished in wit, and favoured in person, that he might

pretend to the hand of any princess in Europe.

“Should you like the duke for a cousin?” says Mr. Secretary St. John,

whispering to Colonel Esmond in French; “it appears that the widower

consoles himself.”

But to return to our little _Spectator_ paper and the conversation which

grew out of it. Miss Beatrix at first was quite _bit_ (as the phrase of

that day was) and did not “smoke” the authorship of the story: indeed

Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele’s manner (as

for the other author of the _Spectator_, his prose style I think is

altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of

men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity as

one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have a lady’s

name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so unfavourable.

Beatrix pished and psha’d over the paper; Colonel Esmond watching with no

little interest her countenance as she read it.

“How stupid your friend Mr. Steele becomes!” cries Miss Beatrix. “Epsom

and Tunbridge! Will he never have done with Epsom and Tunbridge, and with

beaux at church, and Jocastas and Lindamiras? Why does he not call women

Nelly and Betty, as their godfathers and godmothers did for them in their

baptism?”

“Beatrix, Beatrix!” says her mother, “speak gravely of grave things.”

“Mamma thinks the Church Catechism came from Heaven, I believe,” says

Beatrix, with a laugh, “and was brought down by a bishop from a mountain.

Oh, how I used to break my heart over it! Besides, I had a Popish

god-mother, mamma; why did you give me one?”

“I gave you the queen’s name,” says her mother, blushing. “And a very

pretty name it is,” said somebody else.

Beatrix went on reading—“Spell my name with a _y_—why, you wretch,” says

she, turning round to Colonel Esmond, “you have been telling my story to

Mr. Steele—or stop—you have written the paper yourself to turn me into

ridicule. For shame, sir!”

Poor Mr. Esmond felt rather frightened, and told a truth, which was

nevertheless an entire falsehood. “Upon my honour,” says he, “I have not

even read the _Spectator_ of this morning.” Nor had he, for that was not

the _Spectator_, but a sham newspaper put in its place.

She went on reading: her face rather flushed as she read. “No,” she says,

“I think you couldn’t have written it. I think it must have been Mr.

Steele when he was drunk—and afraid of his horrid vulgar wife. Whenever I

see an enormous compliment to a woman, and some outrageous panegyric about

female virtue, I always feel sure that the captain and his better half

have fallen out overnight, and that he has been brought home tipsy, or has

been found out in ——”

“Beatrix!” cries the Lady Castlewood.

“Well, mamma! Do not cry out before you are hurt. I am not going to say

anything wrong. I won’t give you more annoyance than I can help, you

pretty kind mamma. Yes, and your little Trix is a naughty little Trix, and

she leaves undone those things which she ought to have done, and does

those things which she ought not to have done, and there’s——well now—I

won’t go on. Yes, I will, unless you kiss me.” And with this the young

lady lays aside her paper, and runs up to her mother and performs a

variety of embraces with her ladyship, saying as plain as eyes could speak

to Mr. Esmond—“There, sir: would not _you_ like to play the very same

pleasant game?”

“Indeed, madam, I would,” says he.

“Would what?” asked Miss Beatrix.

“What you meant when you looked at me in that provoking way,” answers

Esmond.

“What a confessor!” cries Beatrix, with a laugh.

“What is it Henry would like, my dear?” asks her mother, the kind soul,

who was always thinking what we would like, and how she could please us.

The girl runs up to her—“Oh, you silly kind mamma,” she says, kissing her

again, “that’s what Harry would like;” and she broke out into a great

joyful laugh: and Lady Castlewood blushed as bashful as a maid of sixteen.

“Look at her, Harry,” whispers Beatrix, running up, and speaking in her

sweet low tones. “Doesn’t the blush become her? Isn’t she pretty? She

looks younger than I am: and I am sure she is a hundred million thousand

times better.”

Esmond’s kind mistress left the room, carrying her blushes away with her.

“If we girls at Court could grow such roses as that,” continues Beatrix,

with her laugh, “what wouldn’t we do to preserve ’em? We’d clip their

stalks and put ’em in salt and water. But those flowers don’t bloom at

Hampton Court and Windsor, Henry.” She paused for a minute, and the smile

fading away from her April face, gave place to a menacing shower of tears:

“Oh, how good she is, Harry,” Beatrix went on to say. “Oh, what a saint

she is! Her goodness frightens me. I’m not fit to live with her. I should

be better, I think, if she were not so perfect. She has had a great sorrow

in her life, and a great secret; and repented of it. It could not have

been my father’s death. She talks freely about that; nor could she have

loved him very much—though who knows what we women do love, and why?”

“What, and why, indeed,” says Mr. Esmond.

“No one knows,” Beatrix went on, without noticing this interruption except

by a look, “what my mother’s life is. She hath been at early prayer this

morning: she passes hours in her closet; if you were to follow her

thither, you would find her at prayers now. She tends the poor of the

place—the horrid dirty poor! She sits through the curate’s sermons—oh,

those dreary sermons! And you see, _on a beau dire_; but good as they are,

people like her are not fit to commune with us of the world. There is

always, as it were, a third person present, even when I and my mother are

alone. She can’t be frank with me quite; who is always thinking of the

next world, and of her guardian angel, perhaps that’s in company. Oh,

Harry, I’m jealous of that guardian angel!” here broke out Mistress

Beatrix. “It’s horrid, I know; but my mother’s life is all for Heaven, and

mine—all for earth. We can never be friends quite; and then, she cares

more for Frank’s little finger than she does for me—I know she does: and

she loves you, sir, a great deal too much; and I hate you for it. I would

have had her all to myself; but she wouldn’t. In my childhood, it was my

father she loved—(Oh, how could she? I remember him kind and handsome, but

so stupid, and not being able to speak after drinking wine). And then, it

was Frank; and now, it is Heaven and the clergyman. How I would have loved

her! From a child I used to be in a rage that she loved anybody but me;

but she loved you all better—all, I know she did. And now, she talks of

the blessed consolation of religion. Dear soul! she thinks she is happier

for believing, as she must, that we are all of us wicked and miserable

sinners; and this world is only a _pied à terre_ for the good, where they

stay for a night, as we do, coming from Walcote, at that great, dreary,

uncomfortable Hounslow inn, in those horrid beds. Oh, do you remember

those horrid beds?—and the chariot comes and fetches them to Heaven the

next morning.”

“Hush, Beatrix,” says Mr. Esmond.

“Hush, indeed. You are a hypocrite, too, Henry, with your grave airs and

your glum face. We are all hypocrites. Oh dear me! We are all alone,

alone, alone,” says poor Beatrix, her fair breast heaving with a sigh.

“It was I that writ every line of that paper, my dear,” says Mr. Esmond.

“You are not so worldly as you think yourself, Beatrix, and better than we

believe you. The good we have in us we doubt of; and the happiness that’s

to our hand we throw away. You bend your ambition on a great marriage and

establishment—and why? You’ll tire of them when you win them; and be no

happier with a coronet on your coach——”

“Than riding pillion with Lubin to market,” says Beatrix. “Thank you,

Lubin!”

“I’m a dismal shepherd, to be sure,” answers Esmond, with a blush; “and

require a nymph that can tuck my bed-clothes up, and make me water-gruel.

Well, Tom Lockwood can do that. He took me out of the fire upon his

shoulders, and nursed me through my illness as love will scarce ever do.

Only good wages, and a hope of my clothes, and the contents of my

portmanteau. How long was it that Jacob served an apprenticeship for

Rachel?”

“For mamma?” says Beatrix. “Is it mamma your honour wants, and that I

should have the happiness of calling you papa?”

Esmond blushed again. “I spoke of a Rachel that a shepherd courted five

thousand years ago; when shepherds were longer lived than now. And my

meaning was, that since I saw you first after our separation—a child you

were then——”

“And I put on my best stockings to captivate you, I remember, sir.”

“You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and such as you

were, I cared for no other woman. What little reputation I have won, it

was that you might be pleased with it: and, indeed, it is not much; and I

think a hundred fools in the army have got and deserved quite as much. Was

there something in the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made us all

gloomy, and dissatisfied, and lonely under its ruined old roof? We were

all so, even when together and united, as it seemed, following our

separate schemes, each as we sat round the table.”

“Dear, dreary old place!” cries Beatrix. “Mamma hath never had the heart

to go back thither since we left it, when—never mind how many years ago,”

and she flung back her curls, and looked over her fair shoulder at the

mirror superbly, as if she said, “Time, I defy you.”

“Yes,” says Esmond, who had the art, as she owned, of divining many of her

thoughts. “You can afford to look in the glass still; and only be pleased

by the truth it tells you. As for me, do you know what my scheme is? I

think of asking Frank to give me the Virginia estate King Charles gave our

grandfather.” (She gave a superb curtsy, as much as to say, “Our

grandfather, indeed! Thank you, Mr. Bastard.”) “Yes, I know you are

thinking of my bar-sinister, and so am I. A man cannot get over it in this

country; unless, indeed, he wears it across a king’s arms, when ’tis a

highly honourable coat: and I am thinking of retiring into the

plantations, and building myself a wigwam in the woods, and perhaps, if I

want company, suiting myself with a squaw. We will send your ladyship furs

over for the winter; and, when you are old, we’ll provide you with

tobacco. I am not quite clever enough, or not rogue enough—I know not

which—for the Old World. I may make a place for myself in the new, which

is not so full; and found a family there. When you are a mother yourself,

and a great lady, perhaps I shall send you over from the plantation some

day a little barbarian that is half Esmond half Mohock, and you will be

kind to him for his father’s sake, who was, after all, your kinsman; and

whom you loved a little.”

“What folly you are talking, Harry!” says Miss Beatrix, looking with her

great eyes.

“’Tis sober earnest,” says Esmond. And, indeed, the scheme had been

dwelling a good deal in his mind for some time past, and especially since

his return home, when he found how hopeless, and even degrading to

himself, his passion was. “No,” says he, then, “I have tried half a dozen

times now. I can bear being away from you well enough; but being with you

is intolerable” (another low curtsy on Mrs. Beatrix’s part), “and I will

go. I have enough to buy axes and guns for my men, and beads and blankets

for the savages; and I’ll go and live amongst them.”

“_Mon ami_,” she says, quite kindly, and taking Esmond’s hand, with an air

of great compassion. “You can’t think that in our position anything more

than our present friendship is possible. You are our elder brother—as such

we view you, pitying your misfortune, not rebuking you with it. Why, you

are old enough and grave enough to be our father. I always thought you a

hundred years old, Harry, with your solemn face and grave air. I feel as a

sister to you, and can no more. Isn’t that enough, sir?” And she put her

face quite close to his—who knows with what intention?

“It’s too much,” says Esmond, turning away. “I can’t bear this life, and

shall leave it. I shall stay, I think, to see you married, and then

freight a ship, and call it the _Beatrix_, and bid you all——”

Here the servant, flinging the door open, announced his grace the Duke of

Hamilton, and Esmond started back with something like an imprecation on

his lips, as the nobleman entered, looking splendid in his star and green

ribbon. He gave Mr. Esmond just that gracious bow which he would have

given to a lackey who fetched him a chair or took his hat, and seated

himself by Miss Beatrix, as the poor colonel went out of the room with a

hang-dog look.

Esmond’s mistress was in the lower room as he passed downstairs. She often

met him as he was coming away from Beatrix; and she beckoned him into the

apartment.

“Has she told you, Harry?” Lady Castlewood said.

“She has been very frank—very,” says Esmond.

“But—but about what is going to happen?”

“What is going to happen?” says he, his heart beating.

“His grace the Duke of Hamilton has proposed to her,” says my lady. “He

made his offer yesterday. They will marry as soon as his mourning is over;

and you have heard his grace is appointed ambassador to Paris; and the

ambassadress goes with him.”

Chapter IV. Beatrix’s New Suitor

The gentleman whom Beatrix had selected was, to be sure, twenty years

older than the colonel, with whom she quarrelled for being too old; but

this one was but a nameless adventurer, and the other the greatest duke in

Scotland, with pretensions even to a still higher title. My Lord Duke of

Hamilton had, indeed, every merit belonging to a gentleman, and he had had

the time to mature his accomplishments fully, being upwards of fifty years

old when Madam Beatrix selected him for a bridegroom. Duke Hamilton, then

Earl of Arran, had been educated at the famous Scottish University of

Glasgow, and, coming to London, became a great favourite of Charles the

Second, who made him a lord of his bedchamber, and afterwards appointed

him ambassador to the French king, under whom the earl served two

campaigns as his Majesty’s aide de camp; and he was absent on this service

when King Charles died.

King James continued my lord’s promotion—made him master of the wardrobe,

and colonel of the Royal Regiment of Horse; and his lordship adhered

firmly to King James, being of the small company that never quitted that

unfortunate monarch till his departure out of England; and then it was, in

1688, namely, that he made the friendship with Colonel Francis Esmond,

that had always been, more or less, maintained in the two families.

The earl professed a great admiration for King William always, but never

could give him his allegiance; and was engaged in more than one of the

plots in the late great king’s reign, which always ended in the plotters’

discomfiture, and generally in their pardon, by the magnanimity of the

king. Lord Arran was twice prisoner in the Tower during this reign,

undauntedly saying, when offered his release, upon parole not to engage

against King William, that he would not give his word, because “he was

sure he could not keep it”; but, nevertheless, he was both times

discharged without any trial; and the king bore this noble enemy so little

malice, that when his mother, the Duchess of Hamilton, of her own right,

resigned her claim on her husband’s death, the earl was, by patent signed

at Loo, 1690, created Duke of Hamilton, Marquis of Clydesdale, and Earl of

Arran, with precedency from the original creation. His grace took the

oaths and his seat in the Scottish Parliament in 1700: was famous there

for his patriotism and eloquence, especially in the debates about the

Union Bill, which Duke Hamilton opposed with all his strength, though he

would not go the length of the Scottish gentry, who were for resisting it

by force of arms. ’Twas said he withdrew his opposition all of a sudden,

and in consequence of letters from the king at St. Germains, who entreated

him on his allegiance not to thwart the queen, his sister, in this

measure; and the duke, being always bent upon effecting the king’s return

to his kingdom through a reconciliation between his Majesty and Queen

Anne, and quite averse to his landing with arms and French troops, held

aloof, and kept out of Scotland during the time when the Chevalier de St.

George’s descent from Dunkirk was projected, passing his time in England

in his great estate of Staffordshire.

When the Whigs went out of office in 1710, the queen began to show his

grace the very greatest marks of her favour. He was created Duke of

Brandon and Baron of Dutton in England; having the Thistle already

originally bestowed on him by King James the Second, his grace was now

promoted to the honour of the Garter—a distinction so great and

illustrious, that no subject hath ever borne them hitherto together. When

this objection was made to her Majesty, she was pleased to say, “Such a

subject as the Duke of Hamilton has a pre-eminent claim to every mark of

distinction which a crowned head can confer. I will henceforth wear both

orders myself.”

At the Chapter held at Windsor in October, 1712, the duke and other

knights, including Lord-Treasurer, the new-created Earl of Oxford and

Mortimer, were installed; and a few days afterwards his grace was

appointed Ambassador-Extraordinary to France, and his equipages, plate,

and liveries commanded, of the most sumptuous kind, not only for his

excellency the ambassador, but for her excellency the ambassadress, who

was to accompany him. Her arms were already quartered on the coach panels,

and her brother was to hasten over on the appointed day to give her away.

His lordship was a widower, having married, in 1698, Elizabeth, daughter

of Digby, Lord Gerard, by which marriage great estates came into the

Hamilton family; and out of these estates came, in part, that tragic

quarrel which ended the duke’s career.

-------------------------------------

From the loss of a tooth to that of a mistress there’s no pang that is not

bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty; and we

make up our mind to the misfortune when ’tis irremediable, part with the

tormentor, and mumble our crust on t’other side of the jaws. I think

Colonel Esmond was relieved when a ducal coach-and-six came and whisked

his charmer away out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. As

you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the

end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine company

of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as a goddess: so

when this portentous elevation was accomplished in the Esmond family, I am

not sure that every one of us did not treat the divine Beatrix with

special honours; at least, the saucy little beauty carried her head with a

toss of supreme authority, and assumed a touch-me-not air, which all her

friends very good-humouredly bowed to.

An old army acquaintance of Colonel Esmond’s, honest Tom Trett, who had

sold his company, married a wife, and turned merchant in the city, was

dreadfully gloomy for a long time, though living in a fine house on the

river, and carrying on a great trade to all appearance. At length Esmond

saw his friend’s name in the _Gazette_ as a bankrupt; and a week after

this circumstance my bankrupt walks into Mr. Esmond’s lodging with a face

perfectly radiant with good humour, and as jolly and careless as when they

had sailed from Southampton ten years before for Vigo. “This bankruptcy,”

says Tom, “has been hanging over my head these three years; the thought

hath prevented my sleeping, and I have looked at poor Polly’s head on

t’other pillow, and then towards my razor on the table, and thought to put

an end to myself, and so give my woes the slip. But now we are bankrupts:

Tom Trett pays as many shillings in the pound as he can; his wife has a

little cottage at Fulham, and her fortune secured to herself. I am afraid

neither of bailiff nor of creditor; and for the last six nights have slept

easy.” So it was that when Fortune shook her wings and left him, honest

Tom cuddled himself up in his ragged virtue, and fell asleep.

Esmond did not tell his friend how much his story applied to Esmond too;

but he laughed at it, and used it; and having fairly struck his docket in

this love transaction, determined to put a cheerful face on his

bankruptcy. Perhaps Beatrix was a little offended at his gaiety. “Is this

the way, sir, that you receive the announcement of your misfortune,” says

she, “and do you come smiling before me as if you were glad to be rid of

me?”

Esmond would not be put off from his good humour, but told her the story

of Tom Trett and his bankruptcy. “I have been hankering after the grapes

on the wall,” says he, “and lost my temper because they were beyond my

reach; was there any wonder? They’re gone now, and another has them—a

taller man than your humble servant has won them.” And the colonel made

his cousin a low bow.

“A taller man, cousin Esmond!” says she. “A man of spirit would have

scaled the wall, sir, and seized them! A man of courage would have fought

for ’em, not gaped for ’em.”

“A duke has but to gape and they drop into his mouth,” says Esmond, with

another low bow.

“Yes, sir,” says she, “a duke _is_ a taller man than you. And why should I

not be grateful to one such as his grace, who gives me his heart and his

great name? It is a great gift he honours me with; I know ’tis a bargain

between us; and I accept it, and will do my utmost to perform my part of

it. ’Tis no question of sighing and philandering between a nobleman of his

grace’s age and a girl who hath little of that softness in her nature. Why

should I not own that I am ambitious, Harry Esmond; and if it be no sin in

a man to covet honour, why should a woman too not desire it? Shall I be

frank with you, Harry, and say that if you had not been down on your

knees, and so humble, you might have fared better with me? A woman of my

spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry, and not by sighs and rueful

faces. All the time you are worshipping and singing hymns to me, I know

very well I am no goddess, and grow weary of the incense. So would you

have been weary of the goddess too—when she was called Mrs. Esmond, and

got out of humour because she had not pin-money enough, and was forced to

go about in an old gown. Eh! cousin, a goddess in a mob-cap, that has to

make her husband’s gruel, ceases to be divine—I am sure of it. I should

have been sulky and scolded; and of all the proud wretches in the world

Mr. Esmond is the proudest, let me tell him that. You never fall into a

passion; but you never forgive, I think. Had you been a great man, you

might have been good humoured; but being nobody, sir, you are too great a

man for me; and I’m afraid of you, cousin—there; and I won’t worship you,

and you’ll never be happy except with a woman who will. Why, after I

belonged to you, and after one of my tantrums, you would have put the

pillow over my head some night, and smothered me, as the black man does

the woman in the play that you’re so fond of. What’s the creature’s

name?—Desdemona. You would, you little black-eyed Othello!”

“I think I should, Beatrix,” says the colonel.

“And I want no such ending. I intend to live to be a hundred, and to go to

ten thousand routs and balls, and to play cards every night of my life

till the year eighteen hundred. And I like to be the first of my company,

sir; and I like flattery and compliments, and you give me none; and I like

to be made to laugh, sir, and who’s to laugh at _your_ dismal face, I

should like to know; and I like a coach-and-six or a coach-and-eight; and

I like diamonds, and a new gown every week; and people to say—‘That’s the

duchess—How well her grace looks—Make way for Madame l’Ambassadrice

d’Angleterre—Call her excellency’s people’—that’s what I like. And as for

you, you want a woman to bring your slippers and cap, and to sit at your

feet, and cry, ‘O caro! O bravo!’ whilst you read your Shakespeares, and

Miltons, and stuff. Mamma would have been the wife for you, had you been a

little older, though you look ten years older than she does—you do, you

glum-faced, blue-bearded, little old man! You might have sat, like Darby

and Joan, and flattered each other; and billed and cooed like a pair of

old pigeons on a perch. I want my wings and to use them, sir.” And she

spread out her beautiful arms, as if indeed she could fly off like the

pretty “Gawrie”, whom the man in the story was enamoured of.

“And what will your Peter Wilkins say to your flight?” says Esmond, who

never admired this fair creature more than when she rebelled and laughed

at him.

“A duchess knows her place,” says she, with a laugh. “Why, I have a son

already made for me, and thirty years old (my Lord Arran), and four

daughters. How they will scold, and what a rage they will be in, when I

come to take the head of the table! But I give them only a month to be

angry; at the end of that time they shall love me every one, and so shall

Lord Arran, and so shall all his grace’s Scots vassals and followers in

the Highlands. I’m bent on it; and, when I take a thing in my head, ’tis

done. His grace is the greatest gentleman in Europe, and I’ll try and make

him happy; and, when the king comes back, you may count on my protection,

Cousin Esmond—for come back the king will and shall: and I’ll bring him

back from Versailles, if he comes under my hoop.”

“I hope the world will make you happy, Beatrix,” says Esmond, with a sigh.

“You’ll be Beatrix till you are my lady duchess—will you not? I shall then

make your grace my very lowest bow.”

“None of these sighs and this satire, cousin,” she says. “I take his

grace’s great bounty thankfully—yes, thankfully; and will wear his honours

becomingly. I do not say he hath touched my heart; but he has my

gratitude, obedience, admiration—I have told him that, and no more; and

with that his noble heart is content. I have told him all—even the story

of that poor creature that I was engaged to—and that I could not love; and

I gladly gave his word back to him, and jumped for joy to get back my own.

I am twenty-five years old.”

“Twenty-six, my dear,” says Esmond.

“Twenty-five, sir—I choose to be twenty-five; and, in eight years, no man

hath ever touched my heart. Yes—you did once, for a little, Harry, when

you came back after Lille, and engaging with that murderer, Mohun, and

saving Frank’s life. I thought I could like you; and mamma begged me hard,

on her knees, and I did—for a day. But the old chill came over me, Henry,

and the old fear of you and your melancholy; and I was glad when you went

away, and engaged with my Lord Ashburnham, that I might hear no more of

you, that’s the truth. You are too good for me somehow. I could not make

you happy, and should break my heart in trying, and not being able to love

you. But if you had asked me when we gave you the sword, you might have

had me, sir, and we both should have been miserable by this time. I talked

with that silly lord all night just to vex you and mamma, and I succeeded,

didn’t I? How frankly we can talk of these things! It seems a thousand

years ago: and, though we are here sitting in the same room, there’s a

great wall between us. My dear, kind, faithful, gloomy old cousin! I can

like you now, and admire you too, sir, and say that you are brave, and

very kind, and very true, and a fine gentleman for all—for all your little

mishap at your birth,” says she, wagging her arch head.

“And now, sir,” says she, with a curtsy, “we must have no more talk except

when mamma is by, as his grace is with us; for he does not half like you,

cousin, and is as jealous as the black man in your favourite play.”

Though the very kindness of the words stabbed Mr. Esmond with the keenest

pang, he did not show his sense of the wound by any look of his (as

Beatrix, indeed, afterwards owned to him), but said, with a perfect

command of himself and an easy smile, “The interview must not end yet, my

dear, until I have had my last word. Stay, here comes your mother” (indeed

she came in here with her sweet anxious face, and Esmond, going up, kissed

her hand respectfully). “My dear lady may hear, too, the last words, which

are no secrets, and are only a parting benediction accompanying a present

for your marriage from an old gentleman your guardian; for I feel as if I

was the guardian of all the family, and an old, old fellow that is fit to

be the grandfather of you all; and in this character let me make my lady

duchess her wedding present. They are the diamonds my father’s widow left

me. I had thought Beatrix might have had them a year ago; but they are

good enough for a duchess, though not bright enough for the handsomest

woman in the world.” And he took the case out of his pocket in which the

jewels were, and presented them to his cousin.

She gave a cry of delight, for the stones were indeed very handsome, and

of great value; and the next minute the necklace was where Belinda’s cross

is in Mr. Pope’s admirable poem, and glittering on the whitest and most

perfectly-shaped neck in all England.

The girl’s delight at receiving these trinkets was so great, that after

rushing to the looking-glass and examining the effect they produced upon

that fair neck which they surrounded, Beatrix was running back with her

arms extended, and was perhaps for paying her cousin with a price, that he

would have liked no doubt to receive from those beautiful rosy lips of

hers, but at this moment the door opened, and his grace the bridegroom

elect was announced.

He looked very black upon Mr. Esmond, to whom he made a very low bow

indeed, and kissed the hand of each lady in his most ceremonious manner.

He had come in his chair from the palace hard by, and wore his two stars

of the Garter and the Thistle.

“Look, my lord duke,” says Mrs. Beatrix, advancing to him, and showing the

diamonds on her breast.

“Diamonds,” says his grace. “Hm! they seem pretty.”

“They are a present on my marriage,” says Beatrix.

“From her Majesty?” asks the duke. “The queen is very good.”

“From my cousin Henry—from our cousin Henry”—cry both the ladies in a

breath.

“I have not the honour of knowing the gentleman. I thought that my Lord

Castlewood had no brother: and that on your ladyship’s side there were no

nephews.”

“From our cousin, Colonel Henry Esmond, my lord,” says Beatrix, taking the

colonel’s hand very bravely—“who was left guardian to us by our father,

and who has a hundred times shown his love and friendship for our family.”

“The Duchess of Hamilton receives no diamonds but from her husband,

madam,” says the duke—“may I pray you to restore these to Mr. Esmond?”

“Beatrix Esmond may receive a present from our kinsman and benefactor, my

lord duke,” says Lady Castlewood, with an air of great dignity. “She is my

daughter yet: and if her mother sanctions the gift—no one else hath the

right to question it.”

“Kinsman and benefactor!” says the duke. “I know of no kinsman: and I do

not choose that my wife should have for benefactor a——”

“My lord,” says Colonel Esmond.

“I am not here to bandy words,” says his grace: “frankly I tell you that

your visits to this house are too frequent, and that I choose no presents

for the Duchess of Hamilton from gentlemen that bear a name they have no

right to.”

“My lord!” breaks out Lady Castlewood, “Mr. Esmond hath the best right to

that name of any man in the world: and ’tis as old and as honourable as

your grace’s.”

My lord duke smiled, and looked as if Lady Castlewood was mad, that was so

talking to him.

“If I called him benefactor,” said my mistress, “it is because he has been

so to us—yes, the noblest, the truest, the bravest, the dearest of

benefactors. He would have saved my husband’s life from Mohun’s sword. He

did save my boy’s, and defended him from that villain. Are those no

benefits?”

“I ask Colonel Esmond’s pardon,” says his grace, if possible more haughty

than before; “I would say not a word that should give him offence, and

thank him for his kindness to your ladyship’s family. My Lord Mohun and I

are connected, you know, by marriage—though neither by blood nor

friendship; but I must repeat what I said, that my wife can receive no

presents from Colonel Esmond.”

“My daughter may receive presents from the Head of our House: my daughter

may thankfully take kindness from her father’s, her mother’s, her

brother’s dearest friend; and be grateful for one more benefit besides the

thousand we owe him,” cries Lady Esmond. “What is a string of diamond

stones compared to that affection he hath given us—our dearest preserver

and benefactor? We owe him not only Frank’s life, but our all—yes, our

all,” says my mistress, with a heightened colour and a trembling voice.

“The title we bear is his, if he would claim it. ’Tis we who have no right

to our name: not he that’s too great for it. He sacrificed his name at my

dying lord’s bedside—sacrificed it to my orphan children; gave up rank and

honour because he loved us so nobly. His father was Viscount of Castlewood

and Marquis of Esmond before him; and he is his father’s lawful son and

true heir, and we are the recipients of his bounty, and he the chief of a

house that’s as old as your own. And if he is content to forgo his name

that my child may bear it, we love him and honour him and bless him under

whatever name he bears”—and here the fond and affectionate creature would

have knelt to Esmond again, but that he prevented her; and Beatrix,

running up to her with a pale face and a cry of alarm, embraced her and

said, “Mother, what is this?”

“’Tis a family secret, my lord duke,” says Colonel Esmond: “poor Beatrix

knew nothing of it: nor did my lady till a year ago. And I have as good a

right to resign my title as your grace’s mother to abdicate hers to you.”

“I should have told everything to the Duke of Hamilton,” said my mistress,

“had his grace applied to me for my daughter’s hand, and not to Beatrix. I

should have spoken with you this very day in private, my lord, had not

your words brought about this sudden explanation—and now ’tis fit Beatrix

should hear it; and know, as I would have all the world know, what we owe

to our kinsman and patron.”

And then in her touching way, and having hold of her daughter’s hand, and

speaking to her rather than my lord duke, Lady Castlewood told the story

which you know already—lauding up to the skies her kinsman’s behaviour. On

his side Mr. Esmond explained the reasons that seemed quite sufficiently

cogent with him, why the succession in the family, as at present it stood,

should not be disturbed; and he should remain, as he was, Colonel Esmond.

“And Marquis of Esmond, my lord,” says his grace, with a low bow. “Permit

me to ask your lordship’s pardon for words that were uttered in ignorance;

and to beg for the favour of your friendship. To be allied to you, sir,

must be an honour under whatever name you are known” (so his grace was

pleased to say): “and in return for the splendid present you make my wife,

your kinswoman, I hope you will please to command any service that James

Douglas can perform. I shall never be easy until I repay you a part of my

obligations at least; and ere very long, and with the mission her Majesty

hath given me,” says the duke, “that may perhaps be in my power. I shall

esteem it as a favour, my lord, if Colonel Esmond will give away the

bride.”

“And if he will take the usual payment in advance, he is welcome,” says

Beatrix, stepping up to him; and as Esmond kissed her, she whispered, “Oh,

why didn’t I know you before?”

My lord duke was as hot as a flame at this salute, but said never a word:

Beatrix made him a proud curtsy, and the two ladies quitted the room

together.

“When does your excellency go for Paris?” asks Colonel Esmond.

“As soon after the ceremony as may be,” his grace answered. “’Tis fixed

for the first of December: it cannot be sooner. The equipage will not be

ready till then. The queen intends the embassy should be very grand—and I

have law business to settle. That ill-omened Mohun has come, or is coming,

to London again: we are in a lawsuit about my late Lord Gerard’s property;

and he hath sent to me to meet him.”

Chapter V. Mohun Appears For The Last Time In This History

Besides my Lord Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, who, for family reasons, had

kindly promised his protection and patronage to Colonel Esmond, he had

other great friends in power now, both able and willing to assist him, and

he might, with such allies, look forward to as fortunate advancement in

civil life at home as he had got rapid promotion abroad. His grace was

magnanimous enough to offer to take Mr. Esmond as secretary on his Paris

embassy, but no doubt he intended that proposal should be rejected; at any

rate, Esmond could not bear the thoughts of attending his mistress farther

than the church-door after her marriage, and so declined that offer which

his generous rival made him.

Other gentlemen, in power, were liberal at least of compliments and

promises to Colonel Esmond. Mr. Harley, now become my Lord Oxford and

Mortimer, and installed Knight of the Garter on the same day as his grace

of Hamilton had received the same honour, sent to the colonel to say that

a seat in Parliament should be at his disposal presently, and Mr. St. John

held out many flattering hopes of advancement to the colonel when he

should enter the House. Esmond’s friends were all successful, and the most

successful and triumphant of all was his dear old commander, General Webb,

who was now appointed Lieutenant-General of the Land Forces, and received

with particular honour by the ministry, by the queen, and the people out

of doors, who huzza’d the brave chief when they used to see him in his

chariot, going to the House or to the Drawing-room, or hobbling on foot to

his coach from St. Stephen’s upon his glorious old crutch and stick, and

cheered him as loud as they had ever done Marlborough.

That great duke was utterly disgraced; and honest old Webb dated all his

grace’s misfortunes from Wynendael, and vowed that Fate served the traitor

right. Duchess Sarah had also gone to ruin; she had been forced to give up

her keys, and her places, and her pensions:—“Ah, ah!” says Webb, “she

would have locked up three millions of French crowns with her keys had I

but been knocked on the head, but I stopped that convoy at Wynendael.” Our

enemy Cardonnel was turned out of the House of Commons (along with Mr.

Walpole) for malversation of public money. Cadogan lost his place of

Lieutenant of the Tower. Marlborough’s daughters resigned their posts of

ladies of the bedchamber; and so complete was the duke’s disgrace, that

his son-in-law, Lord Bridgewater, was absolutely obliged to give up his

lodging at St. James’s, and had his half-pension, as Master of the Horse,

taken away. But I think the lowest depth of Marlborough’s fall was when he

humbly sent to ask General Webb when he might wait upon him; he who had

commanded the stout old general, who had injured him and sneered at him,

who had kept him dangling in his antechamber, who could not even after his

great service condescend to write him a letter in his own hand. The nation

was as eager for peace, as ever it had been hot for war. The Prince of

Savoy came amongst us, had his audience of the queen, and got his famous

Sword of Honour, and strove with all his force to form a Whig party

together, to bring over the young Prince of Hanover—to do anything which

might prolong the war, and consummate the ruin of the old sovereign whom

he hated so implacably. But the nation was tired of the struggle; so

completely wearied of it that not even our defeat at Denain could rouse us

into any anger, though such an action so lost two years before, would have

set all England in a fury. ’Twas easy to see that the great Marlborough

was not with the army. Eugene was obliged to fall back in a rage, and

forgo the dazzling revenge of his life. ’Twas in vain the duke’s side

asked, “Would we suffer our arms to be insulted? Would we not send back

the only champion who could repair our honour?” The nation had had its

bellyful of fighting; nor could taunts or outcries goad up our Britons any

more.

For a statesman, that was always prating of liberty, and had the grandest

philosophic maxims in his mouth, it must be owned that Mr. St. John

sometimes rather acted like a Turkish than a Greek philosopher, and

especially fell foul of one unfortunate set of men, the men of letters,

with a tyranny a little extraordinary in a man who professed to respect

their calling so much. The literary controversy at this time was very

bitter, the Government side was the winning one, the popular one, and I

think might have been the merciful one. ’Twas natural that the Opposition

should be peevish and cry out; some men did so from their hearts, admiring

the Duke of Marlborough’s prodigious talents, and deploring the disgrace

of the greatest general the world ever knew: ’twas the stomach that caused

other patriots to grumble, and such men cried out because they were poor,

and paid to do so. Against these my Lord Bolingbroke never showed the

slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into prison or into the pillory without

the least commiseration.

From having been a man of arms Mr. Esmond had now come to be a man of

letters, but on a safer side than that in which the above-cited poor

fellows ventured their liberties and ears. There was no danger on ours,

which was the winning side; besides, Mr. Esmond pleased himself by

thinking that he writ like a gentleman if he did not always succeed as a

wit.

Of the famous wits of that age, who have rendered Queen Anne’s reign

illustrious, and whose works will be in all Englishmen’s hands in ages yet

to come, Mr. Esmond saw many, but at public places chiefly; never having a

great intimacy with any of them, except with honest Dick Steele and Mr.

Addison, who parted company with Esmond, however, when that gentleman

became a declared Tory, and lived on close terms with the leading persons

of that party. Addison kept himself to a few friends, and very rarely

opened himself except in their company. A man more upright and

conscientious than he, it was not possible to find in public life, and one

whose conversation was so various, easy, and delightful. Writing now in my

mature years, I own that I think Addison’s politics were the right, and

were my time to come over again, I would be a Whig in England and not a

Tory; but with people that take a side in politics, ’tis men rather than

principles that commonly bind them. A kindness or a slight puts a man

under one flag or the other, and he marches with it to the end of the

campaign. Esmond’s master in war was injured by Marlborough, and hated

him: and the lieutenant fought the quarrels of his leader. Webb coming to

London was used as a weapon by Marlborough’s enemies (and true steel he

was, that honest chief); nor was his aide de camp, Mr. Esmond, an

unfaithful or unworthy partisan. ’Tis strange here, and on a foreign soil,

and in a land that is independent in all but the name (for that the North

American colonies shall remain dependants on yonder little island for

twenty years more, I never can think), to remember how the nation at home

seemed to give itself up to the domination of one or other aristocratic

party, and took a Hanoverian king, or a French one, according as either

prevailed. And while the Tories, the October Club gentlemen, the High

Church parsons that held by the Church of England, were for having a

Papist king, for whom many of their Scottish and English leaders, firm

churchmen all, laid down their lives with admirable loyalty and devotion;

they were governed by men who had notoriously no religion at all, but used

it as they would use any opinion for the purpose of forwarding their own

ambition. The Whigs, on the other hand, who professed attachment to

religion and liberty too, were compelled to send to Holland or Hanover for

a monarch around whom they could rally. A strange series of compromises is

that English history; compromise of principle, compromise of party,

compromise of worship! The lovers of English freedom and independence

submitted their religious consciences to an Act of Parliament; could not

consolidate their liberty without sending to Zell or the Hague for a king

to live under; and could not find amongst the proudest people in the world

a man speaking their own language, and understanding their laws, to govern

them. The Tory and High Church patriots were ready to die in defence of a

Papist family that had sold us to France; the great Whig nobles, the

sturdy Republican recusants who had cut off Charles Stuart’s head for

treason, were fain to accept a king whose title came to him through a

royal grandmother, whose own royal grandmother’s head had fallen under

Queen Bess’s hatchet. And our proud English nobles sent to a petty German

town for a monarch to come and reign in London; and our prelates kissed

the ugly hands of his Dutch mistresses, and thought it no dishonour. In

England you can but belong to one party or t’other, and you take the house

you live in with all its encumbrances, its retainers, its antique

discomforts, and ruins even; you patch up, but you never build up anew.

Will we of the New World submit much longer, even nominally, to this

ancient British superstition? There are signs of the times which make me

think that ere long we shall care as little about King George here, and

peers temporal and peers spiritual, as we do for King Canute or the

Druids.

This chapter began about the wits, my grandson may say, and hath wandered

very far from their company. The pleasantest of the wits I knew were the

Doctors Garth and Arbuthnot, and Mr. Gay, the author of _Trivia_, the most

charming kind soul that ever laughed at a joke or cracked a bottle. Mr.

Prior I saw, and he was the earthen pot swimming with the pots of brass

down the stream, and always and justly frightened lest he should break in

the voyage. I met him both at London and Paris, where he was performing

piteous congees to the Duke of Shrewsbury, not having courage to support

the dignity which his undeniable genius and talent had won him, and

writing coaxing letters to Secretary St. John, and thinking about his

plate and his place, and what on earth should become of him should his

party go out. The famous Mr. Congreve I saw a dozen of times at Button’s,

a splendid wreck of a man, magnificently attired, and though gouty, and

almost blind, bearing a brave face against fortune.

The great Mr. Pope (of whose prodigious genius I have no words to express

my admiration) was quite a puny lad at this time, appearing seldom in

public places. There were hundreds of men, wits, and pretty fellows

frequenting the theatres and coffee-houses of that day—whom _nunc

prescribere longum est_. Indeed I think the most brilliant of that sort I

ever saw was not till fifteen years afterwards, when I paid my last visit

in England, and met young Harry Fielding, son of the Fielding that served

in Spain and afterwards in Flanders with us, and who for fun and humour

seemed to top them all. As for the famous Dr. Swift, I can say of him,

“_vidi tantum_.” He was in London all these years up to the death of the

queen; and in a hundred public places where I saw him, but no more; he

never missed Court of a Sunday, where once or twice he was pointed out to

your grandfather. He would have sought me out eagerly enough had I been a

great man with a title to my name, or a star on my coat. At Court the

doctor had no eyes but for the very greatest. Lord Treasurer and St. John

used to call him Jonathan, and they paid him with this cheap coin for the

service they took of him. He writ their lampoons, fought their enemies,

flogged and bullied in their service, and it must be owned with a

consummate skill and fierceness. ’Tis said he hath lost his intellect now,

and forgotten his wrongs and his rage against mankind. I have always

thought of him and of Marlborough as the two greatest men of that age. I

have read his books (who doth not know them?) here in our calm woods, and

imagine a giant to myself as I think of him, a lonely fallen Prometheus,

groaning as the vulture tears him. Prometheus I saw, but when first I ever

had any words with him, the giant stepped out of a sedan-chair in the

Poultry, whither he had come with a tipsy Irish servant parading before

him, who announced him, bawling out his reverence’s name, whilst his

master below was as yet haggling with the chairman. I disliked this Mr.

Swift, and heard many a story about him, of his conduct to men, and his

words to women. He could flatter the great as much as he could bully the

weak; and Mr. Esmond, being younger and hotter in that day than now, was

determined, should he ever meet this dragon, not to run away from his

teeth and his fire.

Men have all sorts of motives which carry them onwards in life, and are

driven into acts of desperation, or it may be of distinction, from a

hundred different causes. There was one comrade of Esmond’s, an honest

little Irish lieutenant of Handyside’s, who owed so much money to a camp

sutler, that he began to make love to the man’s daughter, intending to pay

his debt that way; and at the battle of Malplaquet, flying away from the

debt and lady too, he rushed so desperately on the French lines, that he

got his company; and came a captain out of the action, and had to marry

the sutler’s daughter after all, who brought him his cancelled debt to her

father as poor Rogers’s fortune. To run out of the reach of bill and

marriage, he ran on the enemy’s pikes; and as these did not kill him he

was thrown back upon t’other horn of his dilemma. Our great duke at the

same battle was fighting, not the French, but the Tories in England; and

risking his life and the army’s, not for his country but for his pay and

places; and for fear of his wife at home, that only being in life whom he

dreaded. I have asked about men in my own company (new drafts of poor

country boys were perpetually coming over to us during the wars, and

brought from the ploughshare to the sword), and found that a half of them

under the flags were driven thither on account of a woman: one fellow was

jilted by his mistress and took the shilling in despair; another jilted

the girl, and fled from her and the parish to the tents where the law

could not disturb him. Why go on particularizing? What can the sons of

Adam and Eve expect, but to continue in that course of love and trouble

their father and mother set out on? O my grandson! I am drawing nigh to

the end of that period of my history, when I was acquainted with the great

world of England and Europe, my years are past the Hebrew poet’s limit,

and I say unto thee, all my troubles and joys too, for that matter, have

come from a woman; as thine will when thy destined course begins. ’Twas a

woman that made a soldier of me, that set me intriguing afterwards; I

believe I would have spun smocks for her had she so bidden me; what

strength I had in my head I would have given her; hath not every man in

his degree had his Omphale and Delilah? Mine befooled me on the banks of

the Thames, and in dear old England; thou mayest find thine own by

Rappahannoc.

To please that woman then I tried to distinguish myself as a soldier, and

afterwards as a wit and a politician; as to please another I would have

put on a black cassock and a pair of bands, and had done so but that a

superior fate intervened to defeat that project. And I say, I think the

world is like Captain Esmond’s company I spoke of anon; and, could you see

every man’s career in life, you would find a woman clogging him; or

clinging round his march and stopping him; or cheering him and goading

him; or beckoning him out of her chariot, so that he goes up to her, and

leaves the race to be run without him; or bringing him the apple, and

saying “Eat”; or fetching him the daggers and whispering “Kill! yonder

lies Duncan, and a crown, and an opportunity”.

Your grandfather fought with more effect as a politician than as a wit;

and having private animosities and grievances of his own and his general’s

against the great duke in command of the army, and more information on

military matters than most writers, who had never seen beyond the fire of

a tobacco-pipe at Wills’s, he was enabled to do good service for that

cause which he embarked in, and for Mr. St. John and his party. But he

disdained the abuse in which some of the Tory writers indulged; for

instance, Dr. Swift, who actually chose to doubt the Duke of Marlborough’s

courage, and was pleased to hint that his grace’s military capacity was

doubtful: nor were Esmond’s performances worse for the effect they were

intended to produce (though no doubt they could not injure the Duke of

Marlborough nearly so much in the public eyes as the malignant attacks of

Swift did, which were carefully directed so as to blacken and degrade

him), because they were writ openly and fairly by Mr. Esmond, who made no

disguise of them, who was now out of the army, and who never attacked the

prodigious courage and talents, only the selfishness and rapacity, of the

chief.

The colonel then, having writ a paper for one of the Tory journals, called

the _Post-Boy_ (a letter upon Bouchain, that the town talked about for two

whole days, when the appearance of an Italian singer supplied a fresh

subject for conversation), and having business at the Exchange, where Mrs.

Beatrix wanted a pair of gloves or a fan very likely, Esmond went to

correct his paper, and was sitting at the printer’s, when the famous Dr.

Swift came in, his Irish fellow with him that used to walk before his

chair, and bawled out his master’s name with great dignity.

Mr. Esmond was waiting for the printer too, whose wife had gone to the

tavern to fetch him, and was meantime engaged in drawing a picture of a

soldier on horseback for a dirty little pretty boy of the printer’s wife,

whom she had left behind her.

“I presume you are the editor of the _Post-Boy_, sir?” says the doctor, in

a grating voice that had an Irish twang; and he looked at the colonel from

under his two bushy eyebrows with a pair of very clear blue eyes. His

complexion was muddy, his figure rather fat, his chin double. He wore a

shabby cassock, and a shabby hat over his black wig, and he pulled out a

great gold watch, at which he looks very fierce.

“I am but a contributor, Dr. Swift,” says Esmond, with the little boy

still on his knee. He was sitting with his back in the window, so that the

doctor could not see him.

“Who told you I was Dr. Swift?” says the doctor, eyeing the other very

haughtily.

“Your reverence’s valet bawled out your name,” says the colonel. “I should

judge you brought him from Ireland.”

“And pray, sir, what right have you to judge whether my servant came from

Ireland or no? I want to speak with your employer, Mr. Leach. I’ll thank

ye go fetch him.”

“Where’s your papa, Tommy?” asks the colonel of the child, a smutty little

wretch in a frock.

Instead of answering, the child begins to cry; the doctor’s appearance had

no doubt frightened the poor little imp.

“Send that squalling little brat about his business, and do what I bid ye,

sir,” says the doctor.

“I must finish the picture first for Tommy,” says the colonel, laughing.

“Here, Tommy, will you have your Pandour with whiskers or without?”

“Whisters,” says Tommy, quite intent on the picture.

“Who the devil are ye, sir?” cries the doctor; “are ye a printer’s man or

are ye not?” he pronounced it like _naught_.

“Your reverence needn’t raise the devil to ask who I am,” says Colonel

Esmond. “Did you ever hear of Dr. Faustus, little Tommy? or Friar Bacon,

who invented gunpowder, and set the Thames on fire?”

Mr. Swift turned quite red, almost purple. “I did not intend any offence,

sir,” says he.

“I daresay, sir, you offended without meaning,” says the other drily.

“Who are ye, sir? Do you know who I am, sir? You are one of the pack of

Grub-Street scribblers that my friend Mr. Secretary hath laid by the

heels. How dare ye, sir, speak to me in this tone?” cries the doctor, in a

great fume.

“I beg your honour’s humble pardon if I have offended your honour,” says

Esmond, in a tone of great humility. “Rather than be sent to the Compter,

or be put in the pillory, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. But Mrs. Leach,

the printer’s lady, told me to mind Tommy whilst she went for her husband

to the tavern, and I daren’t leave the child lest he should fall into the

fire; but if your reverence will hold him——”

“I take the little beast!” says the doctor, starting back. “I am engaged

to your betters, fellow. Tell Mr. Leach that when he makes an appointment

with Dr. Swift he had best keep it, do ye hear? And keep a respectful

tongue in your head, sir, when you address a person like me.”

“I’m but a poor broken-down soldier,” says the colonel, “and I’ve seen

better days, though I am forced now to turn my hand to writing. We can’t

help our fate, sir.”

“You’re the person that Mr. Leach hath spoken to me of, I presume. Have

the goodness to speak civilly when you are spoken to—and tell Leach to

call at my lodgings in Bury Street, and bring the papers with him to-night

at ten o’clock. And the next time you see me, you’ll know me, and be

civil, Mr. Kemp.”

Poor Kemp, who had been a lieutenant at the beginning of the war, and

fallen into misfortune, was the writer of the _Post-Boy_, and now took

honest Mr. Leach’s pay in place of her Majesty’s. Esmond had seen this

gentleman, and a very ingenious, hard-working honest fellow he was,

toiling to give bread to a great family, and watching up many a long

winter night to keep the wolf from his door. And Mr. St. John, who had

liberty always on his tongue, had just sent a dozen of the Opposition

writers into prison, and one actually into the pillory, for what he called

libels, but libels not half so violent as those writ on our side. With

regard to this very piece of tyranny, Esmond had remonstrated strongly

with the secretary, who laughed and said, the rascals were served quite

right; and told Esmond a joke of Swift’s regarding the matter. Nay, more,

this Irishman, when St. John was about to pardon a poor wretch condemned

to death for rape, absolutely prevented the secretary from exercising this

act of good nature, and boasted that he had had the man hanged; and great

as the doctor’s genius might be, and splendid his ability, Esmond for one

would affect no love for him, and never desired to make his acquaintance.

The doctor was at Court every Sunday assiduously enough, a place the

colonel frequented but rarely, though he had a great inducement to go

there in the person of a fair maid of honour of her Majesty’s; and the

airs and patronage Mr. Swift gave himself, forgetting gentlemen of his

country whom he knew perfectly, his loud talk at once insolent and

servile, nay, perhaps his very intimacy with lord treasurer and the

secretary, who indulged all his freaks and called him Jonathan, you may be

sure, were remarked by many a person of whom the proud priest himself took

no note, during that time of his vanity and triumph.

’Twas but three days after the 15th of November, 1712 (Esmond minds him

well of the date), that he went by invitation to dine with his general,

the foot of whose table he used to take on these festive occasions, as he

had done at many a board, hard and plentiful, during the campaign. This

was a great feast, and of the latter sort; the honest old gentleman loved

to treat his friends splendidly: his grace of Ormonde, before he joined

his army as generalissimo, my Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, one of her

Majesty’s secretaries of state, my Lord Orkney, that had served with us

abroad, being of the party. His grace of Hamilton, master of the ordnance,

and in whose honour the feast had been given, upon his approaching

departure as ambassador to Paris, had sent an excuse to General Webb at

two o’clock, but an hour before the dinner: nothing but the most immediate

business, his grace said, should have prevented him having the pleasure of

drinking a parting glass to the health of General Webb. His absence

disappointed Esmond’s old chief, who suffered much from his wounds

besides; and though the company was grand, it was rather gloomy. St. John

came last, and brought a friend with him:—“I’m sure,” says my general,

bowing very politely, “my table hath always a place for Dr. Swift.”

Mr. Esmond went up to the doctor with a bow and a smile:—“I gave Dr.

Swift’s message,” says he, “to the printer: I hope he brought your

pamphlet to your lodgings in time.” Indeed poor Leach had come to his

house very soon after the doctor left it, being brought away rather tipsy

from the tavern by his thrifty wife; and he talked of cousin Swift in a

maudlin way, though of course Mr. Esmond did not allude to this

relationship. The doctor scowled, blushed, and was much confused, and said

scarce a word during the whole of dinner. A very little stone will

sometimes knock down these Goliaths of wit; and this one was often

discomfited when met by a man of any spirit; he took his place sulkily,

put water in his wine that the others drank plentifully, and scarce said a

word.

The talk was about the affairs of the day, or rather about persons than

affairs: my Lady Marlborough’s fury, her daughters in old clothes and

mob-caps looking out from their windows and seeing the company pass to the

Drawing-room; the gentleman-usher’s horror when the Prince of Savoy was

introduced to her Majesty in a tie-wig, no man out of a full-bottomed

periwig ever having kissed the royal hand before; about the Mohawks and

the damage they were doing, rushing through the town, killing and

murdering. Some one said the ill-omened face of Mohun had been seen at the

theatre the night before, and Macartney and Meredith with him. Meant to be

a feast, the meeting, in spite of drink, and talk, was as dismal as a

funeral. Every topic started subsided into gloom. His grace of Ormonde

went away because the conversation got upon Denain, where we had been

defeated in the last campaign. Esmond’s general was affected at the

allusion to this action too, for his comrade of Wynendael, the Count of

Nassau-Woudenberg, had been slain there. Mr. Swift, when Esmond pledged

him, said he drank no wine, and took his hat from the peg and went away,

beckoning my Lord Bolingbroke to follow him; but the other bade him take

his chariot and save his coach-hire, he had to speak with Colonel Esmond;

and when the rest of the company withdrew to cards, these two remained

behind in the dark.

Bolingbroke always spoke freely when he had drunk freely. His enemies

could get any secret out of him in that condition; women were even

employed to ply him, and take his words down. I have heard that my Lord

Stair, three years after, when the secretary fled to France and became the

pretender’s minister, got all the information he wanted by putting female

spies over St. John in his cups. He spoke freely now:—“Jonathan knows

nothing of this for certain, though he suspects it, and by George, Webb

will take an archbishopric, and Jonathan a—no, damme—Jonathan will take an

archbishopric from James, I warrant me, gladly enough. Your duke hath the

string of the whole matter in his hand,” the secretary went on. “We have

that which will force Marlborough to keep his distance, and he goes out of

London in a fortnight. Prior hath his business; he left me this morning,

and mark me, Harry, should fate carry off our august, our beloved, our

most gouty and plethoric queen, and defender of the faith, _la bonne cause

triomphera. A la santé de la bonne cause!_ Everything good comes from

France. Wine comes from France; give us another bumper to the _bonne

cause_.” We drank it together.

“Will the _bonne cause_ turn Protestant?” asked Mr. Esmond.

“No, hang it,” says the other, “he’ll defend our faith as in duty bound,

but he’ll stick by his own. The Hind and the Panther shall run in the same

car, by Jove. Righteousness and peace shall kiss each other; and we’ll

have Father Massillon to walk down the aisle of St. Paul’s, cheek by jowl,

with Dr. Sacheverel. Give us more wine; here’s a health to the _bonne

cause_, kneeling—damme, let’s drink it kneeling.” He was quite flushed and

wild with wine as he was talking.

“And suppose,” says Esmond, who always had this gloomy apprehension, “the

_bonne cause_ should give us up to the French, as his father and uncle did

before him?”

“Give us up to the French!” starts up Bolingbroke; “is there any English

gentleman that fears that? You who have seen Blenheim and Ramillies,

afraid of the French! Your ancestors and mine, and brave old Webb’s

yonder, have met them in a hundred fields, and our children will be ready

to do the like. Who’s he that wishes for more men from England? My cousin

Westmoreland? Give us up to the French, pshaw!”

“His uncle did,” says Mr. Esmond.

“And what happened to his grandfather?” broke out St. John, filling out

another bumper. “Here’s to the greatest monarch England ever saw; here’s

to the Englishman that made a kingdom of her. Our great king came from

Huntingdon, not Hanover; our fathers didn’t look for a Dutchman to rule

us. Let him come and we’ll keep him, and we’ll show him Whitehall. If he’s

a traitor let us have him here to deal with him; and then there are

spirits here as great as any that have gone before. There are men here

that can look at danger in the face and not be frightened at it. Traitor,

treason! what names are these to scare you and me? Are all Oliver’s men

dead, or his glorious name forgotten in fifty years? Are there no men

equal to him, think you, as good—aye, as good? God save the king! and, if

the monarchy fails us, God save the British republic!”

He filled another great bumper, and tossed it up and drained it wildly,

just as the noise of rapid carriage-wheels approaching was stopped at our

door, and after a hurried knock and a moment’s interval, Mr. Swift came

into the hall, ran upstairs to the room we were dining in, and entered it

with a perturbed face. St. John, excited with drink, was making some wild

quotation out of _Macbeth_, but Swift stopped him.

“Drink no more, my lord, for God’s sake,” says he, “I come with the most

dreadful news.”

“Is the queen dead?” cries out Bolingbroke, seizing on a water-glass.

“No, Duke Hamilton is dead, he was murdered an hour ago by Mohun and

Macartney; they had a quarrel this morning; they gave him not so much time

as to write a letter. He went for a couple of his friends, and he is dead,

and Mohun, too, the bloody villain, who was set on him. They fought in

Hyde Park just before sunset; the duke killed Mohun, and Macartney came up

and stabbed him, and the dog is fled. I have your chariot below; send to

every part of the country and apprehend that villain; come to the duke’s

house and see if any life be left in him.”

“O Beatrix, Beatrix,” thought Esmond, “and here ends my poor girl’s

ambition!”

Chapter VI. Poor Beatrix

There had been no need to urge upon Esmond the necessity of a separation

between him and Beatrix: Fate had done that completely; and I think from

the very moment poor Beatrix had accepted the duke’s offer, she began to

assume the majestic air of a duchess, nay, queen elect, and to carry

herself as one sacred and removed from us common people. Her mother and

kinsman both fell into her ways, the latter scornfully perhaps, and

uttering his usual gibes at her vanity and his own. There was a certain

charm about this girl of which neither Colonel Esmond nor his fond

mistress could forgo the fascination; in spite of her faults and her pride

and wilfulness, they were forced to love her; and, indeed, might be set

down as the two chief flatterers of the brilliant creature’s court.

Who, in the course of his life, hath not been so bewitched, and worshipped

some idol or another? Years after this passion hath been dead and buried,

along with a thousand other worldly cares and ambitions, he who felt it

can recall it out of its grave, and admire, almost as fondly as he did in

his youth, that lovely queenly creature. I invoke that beautiful spirit

from the shades and love her still; or rather I should say such a past is

always present to a man; such a passion once felt forms a part of his

whole being, and cannot be separated from it; it becomes a portion of the

man of to-day, just as any great faith or conviction, the discovery of

poetry, the awakening of religion, ever afterward influence him; just as

the wound I had at Blenheim, and of which I wear the scar, hath become

part of my frame and influenced my whole body, nay spirit, subsequently,

though ’twas got and healed forty years ago. Parting and forgetting! What

faithful heart can do these? Our great thoughts, our great affections, the

Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely, they cannot separate from our

consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of

their nature divine and immortal.

With the horrible news of this catastrophe, which was confirmed by the

weeping domestics at the duke’s own door, Esmond rode homewards as quick

as his lazy coach would carry him, devising all the time how he should

break the intelligence to the person most concerned in it; and if a satire

upon human vanity could be needed, that poor soul afforded it in the

altered company and occupations in which Esmond found her. For days

before, her chariot had been rolling the street from mercer to

toyshop—from goldsmith to laceman: her taste was perfect, or at least the

fond bridegroom had thought so, and had given entire authority over all

tradesmen, and for all the plate, furniture, and equipages, with which his

grace the ambassador wished to adorn his splendid mission. She must have

her picture by Kneller, a duchess not being complete without a portrait,

and a noble one he made, and actually sketched in, on a cushion, a coronet

which she was about to wear. She vowed she would wear it at King James the

Third’s coronation, and never a princess in the land would have become

ermine better. Esmond found the antechamber crowded with milliners and

toyshop women, obsequious goldsmiths with jewels, salvers, and tankards;

and mercer’s men with hangings, and velvets, and brocades. My lady duchess

elect was giving audience to one famous silversmith from Exeter “Change,”

who brought with him a great chased salver, of which he was pointing out

the beauties as Colonel Esmond entered. “Come,” says she, “cousin, and

admire the taste of this pretty thing.” I think Mars and Venus were lying

in the golden bower, that one gilt Cupid carried off the war-god’s

casque—another his sword—another his great buckler, upon which my Lord

Duke Hamilton’s arms with ours were to be engraved—and a fourth was

kneeling down to the reclining goddess with the ducal coronet in his

hands, God help us! The next time Mr. Esmond saw that piece of plate, the

arms were changed, the ducal coronet had been replaced by a viscount’s; it

formed part of the fortune of the thrifty goldsmith’s own daughter, when

she married my Lord Viscount Squanderfield two years after.

“Isn’t this a beautiful piece?” says Beatrix, examining it, and she

pointed out the arch graces of the Cupids, and the fine carving of the

languid prostrate Mars. Esmond sickened as he thought of the warrior dead

in his chamber, his servants and children weeping around him; and of this

smiling creature attiring herself, as it were, for that nuptial death-bed.

“’Tis a pretty piece of vanity,” says he, looking gloomily at the

beautiful creature: there were flambeaux in the room lighting up the

brilliant mistress of it. She lifted up the great gold salver with her

fair arms.

“Vanity!” says she haughtily. “What is vanity in you, sir, is propriety in

me. You ask a Jewish price for it, Mr. Graves; but have it I will, if only

to spite Mr. Esmond.”

“O Beatrix, lay it down!” says Mr. Esmond. “Herodias! you know not what

you carry in the charger.”

She dropped it with a clang; the eager goldsmith running to seize his

fallen ware. The lady’s face caught the fright from Esmond’s pale

countenance, and her eyes shone out like beacons of alarm:—“What is it,

Henry?” says she, running to him, and seizing both his hands. “What do you

mean by your pale face and gloomy tones?”

“Come away, come away!” says Esmond, leading her: she clung frightened to

him, and he supported her upon his heart, bidding the scared goldsmith

leave them. The man went into the next apartment, staring with surprise,

and hugging his precious charger.

“O my Beatrix, my sister!” says Esmond, still holding in his arms the

pallid and affrighted creature, “you have the greatest courage of any

woman in the world; prepare to show it now, for you have a dreadful trial

to bear.”

She sprang away from the friend who would have protected her:—“Hath he

left me?” says she. “We had words this morning: he was very gloomy, and I

angered him: but he dared not, he dared not!” As she spoke a burning blush

flushed over her whole face and bosom. Esmond saw it reflected in the

glass by which she stood, with clenched hands, pressing her swelling

heart.

“He has left you,” says Esmond, wondering that rage rather than sorrow was

in her looks.

“And he is alive,” cries Beatrix, “and you bring me this commission! He

has left me, and you haven’t dared to avenge me! You, that pretend to be

the champion of our house, have let me suffer this insult! Where is

Castlewood? I will go to my brother.”

“The duke is not alive, Beatrix,” said Esmond.

She looked at her cousin wildly, and fell back to the wall as though shot

in the breast:—“And you come here, and—and—you killed him?”

“No; thank Heaven,” her kinsman said, “the blood of that noble heart doth

not stain my sword! In its last hour it was faithful to thee, Beatrix

Esmond. Vain and cruel woman! kneel and thank the awful Heaven which

awards life and death, and chastises pride, that the noble Hamilton died

true to you; at least that ’twas not your quarrel, or your pride, or your

wicked vanity, that drove him to his fate. He died by the bloody sword

which already had drank your own father’s blood. O woman, O sister! to

that sad field where two corpses are lying—for the murderer died too by

the hand of the man he slew—can you bring no mourners but your revenge and

your vanity? God help and pardon thee, Beatrix, as He brings this awful

punishment to your hard and rebellious heart.”

Esmond had scarce done speaking, when his mistress came in. The colloquy

between him and Beatrix had lasted but a few minutes, during which time

Esmond’s servant had carried the disastrous news through the household.

The army of Vanity Fair, waiting without, gathered up all their fripperies

and fled aghast. Tender Lady Castlewood had been in talk above with Dean

Atterbury, the pious creature’s almoner and director; and the dean had

entered with her as a physician whose place was at a sick-bed. Beatrix’s

mother looked at Esmond and ran towards her daughter, with a pale face and

open heart and hands, all kindness and pity. But Beatrix passed her by,

nor would she have any of the medicaments of the spiritual physician. “I

am best in my own room and by myself,” she said. Her eyes were quite dry;

nor did Esmond ever see them otherwise, save once, in respect to that

grief. She gave him a cold hand as she went out: “Thank you, brother,” she

said, in a low voice, and with a simplicity more touching than tears; “all

you have said is true and kind, and I will go away and ask pardon.” The

three others remained behind, and talked over the dreadful story. It

affected Dr. Atterbury more even than us, as it seemed. The death of

Mohun, her husband’s murderer, was more awful to my mistress than even the

duke’s unhappy end. Esmond gave at length what particulars he knew of

their quarrel, and the cause of it. The two noblemen had long been at war

with respect to the Lord Gerard’s property, whose two daughters my lord

duke and Mohun had married. They had met by appointment that day at the

lawyer’s in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; had words which, though they appeared

very trifling to those who heard them, were not so to men exasperated by

long and previous enmity. Mohun asked my lord duke where he could see his

grace’s friends, and within an hour had sent two of his own to arrange

this deadly duel. It was pursued with such fierceness, and sprung from so

trifling a cause, that all men agreed at the time that there was a party,

of which these three notorious brawlers were but agents, who desired to

take Duke Hamilton’s life away. They fought three on a side, as in that

tragic meeting twelve years back, which hath been recounted already, and

in which Mohun performed his second murder. They rushed in, and closed

upon each other at once without any feints or crossing of swords even, and

stabbed one at the other desperately, each receiving many wounds; and

Mohun having his death-wound, and my lord duke lying by him, Macartney

came up and stabbed his grace as he lay on the ground, and gave him the

blow of which he died. Colonel Macartney denied this, of which the horror

and indignation of the whole kingdom would nevertheless have him guilty,

and fled the country, whither he never returned.

What was the real cause of the Duke Hamilton’s death—a paltry quarrel that

might easily have been made up, and with a ruffian so low, base,

profligate, and degraded with former crimes and repeated murders, that a

man of such a renown and princely rank as my lord duke might have

disdained to sully his sword with the blood of such a villain. But his

spirit was so high that those who wished his death knew that his courage

was like his charity, and never turned any man away; and he died by the

hands of Mohun, and the other two cut-throats that were set on him. The

queen’s ambassador to Paris died, the loyal and devoted servant of the

House of Stuart, and a royal prince of Scotland himself, and carrying the

confidence, the repentance of Queen Anne along with his own open devotion,

and the goodwill of millions in the country more, to the queen’s exiled

brother and sovereign.

That party to which Lord Mohun belonged had the benefit of his service,

and now were well rid of such a ruffian. He, and Meredith, and Macartney,

were the Duke of Marlborough’s men; and the two colonels had been broke

but the year before for drinking perdition to the Tories. His grace was a

Whig now and a Hanoverian, and as eager for war as Prince Eugene himself.

I say not that he was privy to Duke Hamilton’s death, I say that his party

profited by it; and that three desperate and bloody instruments were found

to effect that murder.

As Esmond and the dean walked away from Kensington discoursing of this

tragedy, and how fatal it was to the cause which they both had at heart;

the street-criers were already out with their broadsides, shouting through

the town the full, true, and horrible account of the death of Lord Mohun

and Duke Hamilton in a duel. A fellow had got to Kensington, and was

crying it in the square there at very early morning, when Mr. Esmond

happened to pass by. He drove the man from under Beatrix’s very window,

whereof the casement had been set open. The sun was shining though ’twas

November: he had seen the market-carts rolling into London, the guard

relieved at the Palace, the labourers trudging to their work in the

gardens between Kensington and the City—the wandering merchants and

hawkers filling the air with their cries. The world was going to its

business again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for them; and

kings, very likely, lost their chances. So night and day pass away, and

to-morrow comes, and our place knows us not. Esmond thought of the

courier, now galloping on the north road to inform him, who was Earl of

Arran yesterday, that he was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand

great schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant heart,

beating a few hours since, and now in a little dust quiescent.

Chapter VII. I Visit Castlewood Once More

Thus, for a third time, Beatrix’s ambitious hopes were circumvented, and

she might well believe that a special malignant fate watched and pursued

her, tearing her prize out of her hand just as she seemed to grasp it, and

leaving her with only rage and grief for her portion. Whatever her

feelings might have been of anger or of sorrow (and I fear me that the

former emotion was that which most tore her heart), she would take no

confidant, as people of softer natures would have done under such a

calamity; her mother and her kinsman knew that she would disdain their

pity, and that to offer it would be but to infuriate the cruel wound which

fortune had inflicted. We knew that her pride was awfully humbled and

punished by this sudden and terrible blow; she wanted no teaching of ours

to point out the sad moral of her story. Her fond mother could give but

her prayers, and her kinsman his faithful friendship and patience to the

unhappy stricken creature; and it was only by hints, and a word or two

uttered months afterwards, that Beatrix showed she understood their silent

commiseration, and on her part was secretly thankful for their

forbearance. The people about the Court said there was that in her manner

which frightened away scoffing and condolence: she was above their triumph

and their pity, and acted her part in that dreadful tragedy greatly and

courageously; so that those who liked her least were yet forced to admire

her. We, who watched her after her disaster, could not but respect the

indomitable courage and majestic calm with which she bore it. “I would

rather see her tears than her pride,” her mother said, who was accustomed

to bear her sorrows in a very different way, and to receive them as the

stroke of God, with an awful submission and meekness. But Beatrix’s nature

was different to that tender parent’s; she seemed to accept her grief, and

to defy it; nor would she allow it (I believe not even in private, and in

her own chamber) to extort from her the confession of even a tear of

humiliation or a cry of pain. Friends and children of our race, who come

after me, in which way will you bear your trials? I know one that prays

God will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eye all-seeing

shall find you in the humble place. Not that we should judge proud spirits

otherwise than charitably. ’Tis nature hath fashioned some for ambition

and dominion, as it hath formed others for obedience and gentle

submission. The leopard follows his nature as the lamb does, and acts

after leopard law; she can neither help her beauty, nor her courage, nor

her cruelty; nor a single spot on her shining coat; nor the conquering

spirit which impels her; nor the shot which brings her down.

-------------------------------------

During that well-founded panic the Whigs had, lest the queen should

forsake their Hanoverian prince, bound by oaths and treaties as she was to

him, and recall her brother, who was allied to her by yet stronger ties of

nature and duty; the Prince of Savoy, and the boldest of that party of the

Whigs, were for bringing the young Duke of Cambridge over, in spite of the

queen and the outcry of her Tory servants, arguing that the electoral

prince, a peer and prince of the blood-royal of this realm too, and in the

line of succession to the crown, had a right to sit in the Parliament

whereof he was a member, and to dwell in the country which he one day was

to govern. Nothing but the strongest ill will expressed by the queen, and

the people about her, and menaces of the royal resentment, should this

scheme be persisted in, prevented it from being carried into effect.

The boldest on our side were, in like manner, for having our prince into

the country. The undoubted inheritor of the right divine; the feelings of

more than half the nation, of almost all the clergy, of the gentry of

England and Scotland with him; entirely innocent of the crime for which

his father suffered—brave, young, handsome, unfortunate—who in England

would dare to molest the prince should he come among us, and fling himself

upon British generosity, hospitality, and honour? An invader with an army

of Frenchmen behind him, Englishmen of spirit would resist to the death,

and drive back to the shores whence he came; but a prince, alone, armed

with his right only, and relying on the loyalty of his people, was sure,

many of his friends argued, of welcome, at least of safety, among us. The

hand of his sister the queen, of the people his subjects, never could be

raised to do him a wrong. But the queen was timid by nature, and the

successive ministers she had, had private causes for their irresolution.

The bolder and honester men, who had at heart the illustrious young

exile’s cause, had no scheme of interest of their own to prevent them from

seeing the right done, and, provided only he came as an Englishman, were

ready to venture their all to welcome and defend him.

St. John and Harley both had kind words in plenty for the prince’s

adherents, and gave him endless promises of future support; but hints and

promises were all they could be got to give; and some of his friends were

for measures much bolder, more efficacious, and more open. With a party of

these, some of whom are yet alive, and some whose names Mr. Esmond has no

right to mention, he found himself engaged the year after that miserable

death of Duke Hamilton, which deprived the prince of his most courageous

ally in this country. Dean Atterbury was one of the friends whom Esmond

may mention, as the brave bishop is now beyond exile and persecution, and

to him, and one or two more, the colonel opened himself of a scheme of his

own, that, backed by a little resolution on the prince’s part, could not

fail of bringing about the accomplishment of their dearest wishes.

My young Lord Viscount Castlewood had not come to England to keep his

majority, and had now been absent from the country for several years. The

year when his sister was to be married and Duke Hamilton died, my lord was

kept at Bruxelles by his wife’s lying-in. The gentle Clotilda could not

bear her husband out of her sight; perhaps she mistrusted the young

scapegrace should he ever get loose from her leading-strings; and she kept

him by her side to nurse the baby and administer posset to the gossips.

Many a laugh poor Beatrix had had about Frank’s uxoriousness: his mother

would have gone to Clotilda when her time was coming, but that the

mother-in-law was already in possession, and the negotiations for poor

Beatrix’s marriage were begun. A few months after the horrid catastrophe

in Hyde Park, my mistress and her daughter retired to Castlewood, where my

lord, it was expected, would soon join them. But, to say truth, their

quiet household was little to his taste; he could be got to come to

Walcote but once after his first campaign; and then the young rogue spent

more than half his time in London, not appearing at Court, or in public

under his own name and title, but frequenting plays, bagnios, and the very

worst company, under the name of Captain Esmond (whereby his innocent

kinsman got more than once into trouble); and so under various pretexts,

and in pursuit of all sorts of pleasures, until he plunged into the lawful

one of marriage, Frank Castlewood had remained away from this country, and

was unknown, save amongst the gentlemen of the army, with whom he had

served abroad. The fond heart of his mother was pained by this long

absence. ’Twas all that Henry Esmond could do to soothe her natural

mortification, and find excuses for his kinsman’s levity.

In the autumn of the year 1713, Lord Castlewood thought of returning home.

His first child had been a daughter; Clotilda was in the way of gratifying

his lordship with a second, and the pious youth thought that, by bringing

his wife to his ancestral home, by prayers to St. Philip of Castlewood,

and what not, Heaven might be induced to bless him with a son this time,

for whose coming the expectant mamma was very anxious.

The long-debated peace had been proclaimed this year at the end of March;

and France was open to us. Just as Frank’s poor mother had made all things

ready for Lord Castlewood’s reception, and was eagerly expecting her son,

it was by Colonel Esmond’s means that the kind lady was disappointed of

her longing, and obliged to defer once more the darling hope of her heart.

Esmond took horses to Castlewood. He had not seen its ancient grey towers

and well-remembered woods for nearly fourteen years, and since he rode

thence with my lord, to whom his mistress with her young children by her

side waved an adieu, what ages seem to have passed since then, what years

of action and passion, of care, love, hope, disaster! The children were

grown up now, and had stories of their own. As for Esmond, he felt to be a

hundred years old; his dear mistress only seemed unchanged; she looked and

welcomed him quite as of old. There was the fountain in the court babbling

its familiar music, the old hall and its furniture, the carved chair my

late lord used, the very flagon he drank from. Esmond’s mistress knew he

would like to sleep in the little room he used to occupy; ’twas made ready

for him, and wall-flowers and sweet herbs set in the adjoining chamber,

the chaplain’s room.

In tears of not unmanly emotion, with prayers of submission to the awful

Dispenser of death and life, of good and evil fortune, Mr. Esmond passed a

part of that first night at Castlewood, lying awake for many hours as the

clock kept tolling (in tones so well remembered), looking back, as all men

will, that revisit their home of childhood, over the great gulf of time,

and surveying himself on the distant bank yonder, a sad little melancholy

boy, with his lord still alive—his dear mistress, a girl yet, her children

sporting around her. Years ago, a boy on that very bed, when she had

blessed him and called him her knight, he had made a vow to be faithful

and never desert her dear service. Had he kept that fond boyish promise?

Yes, before Heaven; yes, praise be to God! His life had been hers; his

blood, his fortune, his name, his whole heart ever since had been hers and

her children’s. All night long he was dreaming his boyhood over again, and

waking fitfully; he half fancied he heard Father Holt calling to him from

the next chamber, and that he was coming in and out from the mysterious

window.

Esmond rose up before the dawn, passed into the next room, where the air

was heavy with the odour of the wall-flowers; looked into the brasier

where the papers had been burnt, into the old presses where Holt’s books

and papers had been kept, and tried the spring, and whether the window

worked still. The spring had not been touched for years, but yielded at

length, and the whole fabric of the window sank down. He lifted it and it

relapsed into its frame; no one had ever passed thence since Holt used it

sixteen years ago.

Esmond remembered his poor lord saying, on the last day of his life, that

Holt used to come in and out of the house like a ghost, and knew that the

father liked these mysteries, and practised such secret disguises,

entrances, and exits; this was the way the ghost came and went, his pupil

had always conjectured. Esmond closed the casement up again as the dawn

was rising over Castlewood village; he could hear the clinking at the

blacksmith’s forge yonder among the trees, across the green, and past the

river, on which a mist still lay sleeping.