THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ.
A COLONEL IN THE SERVICE OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN ANNE
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
By William Makepeace Thackeray
Boston, Estes and Lauriat, Publishers
TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE
WILLIAM BINGHAM, LORD ASHBURTON.
MY DEAR LORD,
The writer of a book which copies the manners and language of Queen
Anne's time, must not omit the Dedication to the Patron; and I ask leave
to inscribe this volume to your Lordship, for the sake of the great
kindness and friendship which I owe to you and yours.
My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage to a country
where your name is as well known as here. Wherever I am, I shall
gratefully regard you; and shall not be the less welcomed in America
because I am,
Your obliged friend and servant,
W. M. THACKERAY.
LONDON, October 18, 1852.
PREFACE.
THE ESMONDS OF VIRGINIA.
The estate of Castlewood, in Virginia, which was given to our ancestors
by King Charles the First, as some return for the sacrifices made in
his Majesty's cause by the Esmond family, lies in Westmoreland county,
between the rivers Potomac and Rappahannock, and was once as great as
an English Principality, though in the early times its revenues were
but small. Indeed, for near eighty years after our forefathers possessed
them, our plantations were in the hands of factors, who enriched
themselves one after another, though a few scores of hogsheads of
tobacco were all the produce that, for long after the Restoration, our
family received from their Virginian estates.
My dear and honored father, Colonel Henry Esmond, whose history, written
by himself, is contained in the accompanying volume, came to Virginia
in the year 1718, built his house of Castlewood, and here permanently
settled. After a long stormy life in England, he passed the remainder
of his many years in peace and honor in this country; how beloved and
respected by all his fellow-citizens, how inexpressibly dear to his
family, I need not say. His whole life was a benefit to all who were
connected with him. He gave the best example, the best advice, the
most bounteous hospitality to his friends; the tenderest care to
his dependants; and bestowed on those of his immediate family such a
blessing of fatherly love and protection as can never be thought of,
by us, at least, without veneration and thankfulness; and my sons'
children, whether established here in our Republic, or at home in
the always beloved mother country, from which our late quarrel hath
separated us, may surely be proud to be descended from one who in all
ways was so truly noble.
My dear mother died in 1736, soon after our return from England, whither
my parents took me for my education; and where I made the acquaintance
of Mr. Warrington, whom my children never saw. When it pleased heaven,
in the bloom of his youth, and after but a few months of a most happy
union, to remove him from me, I owed my recovery from the grief which
that calamity caused me, mainly to my dearest father's tenderness, and
then to the blessing vouchsafed to me in the birth of my two beloved
boys. I know the fatal differences which separated them in politics
never disunited their hearts; and as I can love them both, whether
wearing the King's colors or the Republic's, I am sure that they love
me and one another, and him above all, my father and theirs, the dearest
friend of their childhood, the noble gentleman who bred them from their
infancy in the practice and knowledge of Truth, and Love and Honor.
My children will never forget the appearance and figure of their revered
grandfather; and I wish I possessed the art of drawing (which my papa
had in perfection), so that I could leave to our descendants a portrait
of one who was so good and so respected. My father was of a dark
complexion, with a very great forehead and dark hazel eyes, overhung by
eyebrows which remained black long after his hair was white. His nose
was aquiline, his smile extraordinary sweet. How well I remember it, and
how little any description I can write can recall his image! He was of
rather low stature, not being above five feet seven inches in height; he
used to laugh at my sons, whom he called his crutches, and say they
were grown too tall for him to lean upon. But small as he was, he had
a perfect grace and majesty of deportment, such as I have never seen in
this country, except perhaps in our friend Mr. Washington, and commanded
respect wherever he appeared.
In all bodily exercises he excelled, and showed an extraordinary
quickness and agility. Of fencing he was especially fond, and made my
two boys proficient in that art; so much so, that when the French came
to this country with Monsieur Rochambeau, not one of his officers was
superior to my Henry, and he was not the equal of my poor George,
who had taken the King's side in our lamentable but glorious war of
independence.
Neither my father nor my mother ever wore powder in their hair; both
their heads were as white as silver, as I can remember them. My dear
mother possessed to the last an extraordinary brightness and freshness
of complexion; nor would people believe that she did not wear rouge. At
sixty years of age she still looked young, and was quite agile. It was
not until after that dreadful siege of our house by the Indians, which
left me a widow ere I was a mother, that my dear mother's health broke.
She never recovered her terror and anxiety of those days which ended so
fatally for me, then a bride scarce six months married, and died in my
father's arms ere my own year of widowhood was over.
From that day, until the last of his dear and honored life, it was
my delight and consolation to remain with him as his comforter and
companion; and from those little notes which my mother hath made here
and there in the volume in which my father describes his adventures
in Europe, I can well understand the extreme devotion with which she
regarded him--a devotion so passionate and exclusive as to prevent her,
I think, from loving any other person except with an inferior regard;
her whole thoughts being centred on this one object of affection and
worship. I know that, before her, my dear father did not show the love
which he had for his daughter; and in her last and most sacred moments,
this dear and tender parent owned to me her repentance that she had
not loved me enough: her jealousy even that my father should give his
affection to any but herself: and in the most fond and beautiful words
of affection and admonition, she bade me never to leave him, and to
supply the place which she was quitting. With a clear conscience, and a
heart inexpressibly thankful, I think I can say that I fulfilled those
dying commands, and that until his last hour my dearest father never had
to complain that his daughter's love and fidelity failed him.
And it is since I knew him entirely--for during my mother's life he
never quite opened himself to me--since I knew the value and splendor of
that affection which he bestowed upon me, that I have come to understand
and pardon what, I own, used to anger me in my mother's lifetime, her
jealousy respecting her husband's love. 'Twas a gift so precious, that
no wonder she who had it was for keeping it all, and could part with
none of it, even to her daughter.
Though I never heard my father use a rough word, 'twas extraordinary
with how much awe his people regarded him; and the servants on our
plantation, both those assigned from England and the purchased negroes,
obeyed him with an eagerness such as the most severe taskmasters round
about us could never get from their people. He was never familiar,
though perfectly simple and natural; he was the same with the meanest
man as with the greatest, and as courteous to a black slave-girl as to
the Governor's wife. No one ever thought of taking a liberty with him
(except once a tipsy gentleman from York, and I am bound to own that
my papa never forgave him): he set the humblest people at once on their
ease with him, and brought down the most arrogant by a grave satiric
way, which made persons exceedingly afraid of him. His courtesy was not
put on like a Sunday suit, and laid by when the company went away; it
was always the same; as he was always dressed the same, whether for a
dinner by ourselves or for a great entertainment. They say he liked
to be the first in his company; but what company was there in which
he would not be first? When I went to Europe for my education, and we
passed a winter at London with my half-brother, my Lord Castlewood and
his second lady, I saw at her Majesty's Court some of the most famous
gentlemen of those days; and I thought to myself none of these are
better than my papa; and the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who came to us
from Dawley, said as much, and that the men of that time were not like
those of his youth:--“Were your father, Madam,” he said, “to go into the
woods, the Indians would elect him Sachem;” and his lordship was pleased
to call me Pocahontas.
I did not see our other relative, Bishop Tusher's lady, of whom so much
is said in my papa's memoirs--although my mamma went to visit her in
the country. I have no pride (as I showed by complying with my mother's
request, and marrying a gentleman who was but the younger son of a
Suffolk Baronet), yet I own to A DECENT RESPECT for my name, and wonder
how one who ever bore it, should change it for that of Mrs. THOMAS
TUSHER. I pass over as odious and unworthy of credit those reports
(which I heard in Europe and was then too young to understand), how this
person, having LEFT HER FAMILY and fled to Paris, out of jealousy of
the Pretender betrayed his secrets to my Lord Stair, King George's
Ambassador, and nearly caused the Prince's death there; how she came to
England and married this Mr. Tusher, and became a great favorite of
King George the Second, by whom Mr. Tusher was made a Dean, and then a
Bishop. I did not see the lady, who chose to remain AT HER PALACE all
the time we were in London; but after visiting her, my poor mamma said
she had lost all her good looks, and warned me not to set too much
store by any such gifts which nature had bestowed upon me. She grew
exceedingly stout; and I remember my brother's wife, Lady Castlewood,
saying--“No wonder she became a favorite, for the King likes them old
and ugly, as his father did before him.” On which papa said--“All women
were alike; that there was never one so beautiful as that one; and that
we could forgive her everything but her beauty.” And hereupon my mamma
looked vexed, and my Lord Castlewood began to laugh; and I, of course,
being a young creature, could not understand what was the subject of
their conversation.
After the circumstances narrated in the third book of these Memoirs, my
father and mother both went abroad, being advised by their friends to
leave the country in consequence of the transactions which are recounted
at the close of the volume of the Memoirs. But my brother, hearing how
the FUTURE BISHOP'S LADY had quitted Castlewood and joined the Pretender
at Paris, pursued him, and would have killed him, Prince as he was, had
not the Prince managed to make his escape. On his expedition to Scotland
directly after, Castlewood was so enraged against him that he asked
leave to serve as a volunteer, and join the Duke of Argyle's army
in Scotland, which the Pretender never had the courage to face; and
thenceforth my Lord was quite reconciled to the present reigning family,
from whom he hath even received promotion.
Mrs. Tusher was by this time as angry against the Pretender as any of
her relations could be, and used to boast, as I have heard, that she
not only brought back my Lord to the Church of England, but procured
the English peerage for him, which the JUNIOR BRANCH of our family at
present enjoys. She was a great friend of Sir Robert Walpole, and would
not rest until her husband slept at Lambeth, my papa used laughing to
say. However, the Bishop died of apoplexy suddenly, and his wife erected
a great monument over him; and the pair sleep under that stone, with
a canopy of marble clouds and angels above them--the first Mrs. Tusher
lying sixty miles off at Castlewood.
But my papa's genius and education are both greater than any a woman can
be expected to have, and his adventures in Europe far more exciting than
his life in this country, which was passed in the tranquil offices of
love and duty; and I shall say no more by way of introduction to his
Memoirs, nor keep my children from the perusal of a story which is much
more interesting than that of their affectionate old mother,
RACHEL ESMOND WARRINGTON.
CASTLEWOOD, VIRGINIA,
November 3, 1778.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
THE EARLY YOUTH OF HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY
COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE.
CHAPTER
I. An Account of the Family of Esmond of Castlewood Hall
II. Relates how Francis, Fourth Viscount, arrives at Castlewood
III. Whither, in the time of Thomas, Third Viscount, I had preceded him
as Page to Isabella
IV. I am placed under a Popish Priest and bred to that Religion.--
Viscountess Castlewood
V. My Superiors are engaged in Plots for the Restoration of King James
II
VI. The Issue of the Plots.--The Death of Thomas, Third Viscount of
Castlewood; and the Imprisonment of his Viscountess
VII. I am left at Castlewood an Orphan, and find most kind Protectors
there
VIII. After Good Fortune comes Evil
IX. I have the Small-pox, and prepare to leave Castlewood
X. I go to Cambridge, and do but little Good there
XI. I come home for a Holiday to Castlewood, and find a Skeleton in the
House
XII. My Lord Mohun comes among us for no Good
XIII. My Lord leaves us and his Evil behind him
XIV. We ride after him to London
BOOK II.
CONTAINS MR. ESMOND'S MILITARY LIFE, AND OTHER MATTERS APPERTAINING TO
THE ESMOND FAMILY.
I. I am in Prison, and Visited, but not Consoled there
II. I come to the End of my Captivity, but not of my Trouble
III. I take the Queen's Pay in Quin's Regiment
IV. Recapitulations
V. I go on the Vigo Bay Expedition, taste Salt Water and smell Powder
VI. The 29th December
VII. I am made Welcome at Walcote
VIII. Family Talk
IX. I make the Campaign of 1704
X. An Old Story about a Fool and a Woman
XI. The famous Mr. Joseph Addison
XII. I get a Company in the Campaign of 1706
XIII. I meet an Old Acquaintance in Flanders, and find my Mother's Grave
and my own Cradle there
XIV. The Campaign of 1707, 1708
XV. General Webb wins the Battle of Wynendael
BOOK III.
CONTAINING THE END OF MR. ESMOND'S ADVENTURES IN ENGLAND.
I. I come to an End of my Battles and Bruises
II. I go Home, and harp on the Old String
III. A Paper out of the “Spectator”
IV. Beatrix's New Suitor
V. Mohun appears for the Last Time in this History
VI. Poor Beatrix
VII. I visit Castlewood once more
VIII. I travel to France and bring Home a Portrait of Rigaud
IX. The Original of the Portrait comes to England
X. We entertain a very Distinguished Guest at Kensington
XI. Our Guest quits us as not being Hospitable enough
XII. A great Scheme, and who Balked it
XIII. August 1st, 1714
THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND.
BOOK I
THE EARLY YOUTH OF HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY
COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE.
The actors in the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics to
a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great
head-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these
appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and
cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King
Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the
Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously
bewailing the fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History
hath encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the
Theatre. She too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to
measure. She too, in our age, busies herself with the affairs only of
kings; waiting on them obsequiously and stately, as if she were but a
mistress of court ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering
of the affairs of the common people. I have seen in his very old age and
decrepitude the old French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and
model of kinghood--who never moved but to measure, who lived and died
according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting in enacting
through life the part of Hero; and, divested of poetry, this was but a
little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red
heels to make him look tall--a hero for a book if you like, or for a
brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in a Roman shape, but what
more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or
Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon? I wonder shall History ever pull off her
periwig and cease to be court-ridden? Shall we see something of France
and England besides Versailles and Windsor? I saw Queen Anne at the
latter place tearing down the Park slopes, after her stag-hounds, and
driving her one-horse chaise--a hot, red-faced woman, not in the least
resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back upon St.
Paul's, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. She was
neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand
her a letter or a wash-hand basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to
the end of time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a
natural posture: not to be for ever performing cringes and congees
like a court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the
presence of the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar
rather than heroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will
give our children a much better idea of the manners of the present
age in England, than the Court Gazette and the newspapers which we get
thence.
There was a German officer of Webb's, with whom we used to joke, and of
whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be believed in
the army, that he was eldest son of the hereditary Grand Bootjack of the
Empire, and the heir to that honor of which his ancestors had been very
proud, having been kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot,
as they drew the boot from the other. I have heard that the old
Lord Castlewood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a
chronicle, though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom
he served (and who as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen
English and Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about
the Court than of his ancestral honors, and valued his dignity (as Lord
of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset) so highly, that he
cheerfully ruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who
bestowed it. He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged
his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by
fines and sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton,
where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterward making terms with the
Commonwealth, for which the elder brother never forgave him), and
where his second brother Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical
profession, was slain on Castlewood Tower, being engaged there both as
preacher and artilleryman. This resolute old loyalist, who was with the
King whilst his house was thus being battered down, escaped abroad with
his only son, then a boy, to return and take a part in Worcester fight.
On that fatal field Eustace Esmond was killed, and Castlewood fled from
it once more into exile, and henceforward, and after the Restoration,
never was away from the Court of the monarch (for whose return we offer
thanks in the Prayer-Book) who sold his country and who took bribes of
the French king.
What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is
more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison has
painted such a figure in his noble piece of Cato. But suppose fugitive
Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen
faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out
for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The
Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes
the door--on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up--upon him and
his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends
are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris
to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and
impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to
claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled divinity as that.
About the King's follower, the Viscount Castlewood--orphan of his son,
ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery,
old and in exile--his kinsmen I suppose should be silent; nor if this
patriarch fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by
to laugh at his red face and white hairs. What! does a stream rush out
of a mountain free and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and
throw out bright tributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that
have noble commencements have often no better endings; it is not without
a kind of awe and reverence that an observer should speculate upon such
careers as he traces the course of them. I have seen too much of success
in life to take off my hat and huzzah to it as it passes in its gilt
coach: and would do my little part with my neighbors on foot, that they
should not gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the
Lord Mayor going in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House? Is it
poor Jack of Newgate's procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men,
conducting him on his last journey to Tyburn? I look into my heart
and think that I sin as good as my Lord Mayor, and know I am as bad as
Tyburn Jack. Give me a chain and red gown and a pudding before me, and
I could play the part of Alderman very well, and sentence Jack after
dinner. Starve me, keep me from books and honest people, educate me to
love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on Hounslow Heath, with a purse
before me, and I will take it. “And I shall be deservedly hanged,” say
you, wishing to put an end to this prosing. I don't say No. I can't but
accept the world as I find it, including a rope's end, as long as it is
in fashion.
CHAPTER I.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE FAMILY OF ESMOND OF CASTLEWOOD HALL.
When Francis, fourth Viscount Castlewood, came to his title, and
presently after to take possession of his house of Castlewood, county
Hants, in the year 1691, almost the only tenant of the place besides
the domestics was a lad of twelve years of age, of whom no one seemed to
take any note until my Lady Viscountess lighted upon him, going over the
house with the housekeeper on the day of her arrival. The boy was in the
room known as the Book-room, or Yellow Gallery, where the portraits of
the family used to hang, that fine piece among others of Sir Antonio Van
Dyck of George, second Viscount, and that by Mr. Dobson of my lord the
third Viscount, just deceased, which it seems his lady and widow did not
think fit to carry away, when she sent for and carried off to her house
at Chelsey, near to London, the picture of herself by Sir Peter Lely, in
which her ladyship was represented as a huntress of Diana's court.
The new and fair lady of Castlewood found the sad, lonely, little
occupant of this gallery busy over his great book, which he laid down
when he was aware that a stranger was at hand. And, knowing who that
person must be, the lad stood up and bowed before her, performing a shy
obeisance to the mistress of his house.
She stretched out her hand--indeed when was it that that hand would
not stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief and
ill-fortune? “And this is our kinsman,” she said “and what is your name,
kinsman?”
“My name is Henry Esmond,” said the lad, looking up at her in a sort
of delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a Dea certe, and
appeared the most charming object he had ever looked on. Her golden hair
was shining in the gold of the sun; her complexion was of a dazzling
bloom; her lips smiling, and her eyes beaming with a kindness which made
Harry Esmond's heart to beat with surprise.
“His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady,” says Mrs. Worksop,
the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued more than he
hated), and the old gentlewoman looked significantly towards the late
lord's picture, as it now is in the family, noble and severe-looking,
with his hand on his sword, and his order on his cloak, which he had
from the Emperor during the war on the Danube against the Turk.
Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait and the
lad, the new Viscountess, who had still hold of the boy's hand as she
looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand quickly, and walked
down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop.
When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the same spot,
and with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it on his black coat.
Her heart melted, I suppose (indeed she hath since owned as much), at
the notion that she should do anything unkind to any mortal, great or
small; for, when she returned, she had sent away the housekeeper upon an
errand by the door at the farther end of the gallery; and, coming back
to the lad, with a look of infinite pity and tenderness in her eyes, she
took his hand again, placing her other fair hand on his head, and saying
some words to him, which were so kind, and said in a voice so sweet,
that the boy, who had never looked upon so much beauty before, felt as
if the touch of a superior being or angel smote him down to the ground,
and kissed the fair protecting hand as he knelt on one knee. To the very
last hour of his life, Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke and
looked, the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the
beam of her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips
blooming in a smile, the sun making a golden halo round her hair.
As the boy was yet in this attitude of humility, enters behind him a
portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old in his hand. The
gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her adorer, with
his little queer figure, his sallow face, and long black hair. The lady
blushed, and seemed to deprecate his ridicule by a look of appeal to her
husband, for it was my Lord Viscount who now arrived, and whom the lad
knew, having once before seen him in the late lord's lifetime.
“So this is the little priest” says my lord, looking down at the lad;
“welcome, kinsman.”
“He is saying his prayers to mamma,” says the little girl, who came up
to her papa's knees; and my lord burst out into another great laugh at
this, and kinsman Henry looked very silly. He invented a half-dozen of
speeches in reply, but 'twas months afterwards when he thought of this
adventure: as it was, he had never a word in answer.
“Le pauvre enfant, il n'a que nous,” says the lady, looking to her lord;
and the boy, who understood her, though doubtless she thought otherwise,
thanked her with all his heart for her kind speech.
“And he shan't want for friends here,” says my lord in a kind voice,
“shall he, little Trix?”
The little girl, whose name was Beatrix, and whom her papa called by
this diminutive, looked at Henry Esmond solemnly, with a pair of large
eyes, and then a smile shone over her face, which was as beautiful as
that of a cherub, and she came up and put out a little hand to him. A
keen and delightful pang of gratitude, happiness, affection, filled the
orphan child's heart, as he received from the protectors, whom heaven
had sent to him, these touching words and tokens of friendliness and
kindness. But an hour since, he had felt quite alone in the world: when
he heard the great peal of bells from Castlewood church ringing that
morning to welcome the arrival of the new lord and lady, it had rung
only terror and anxiety to him, for he knew not how the new owner would
deal with him; and those to whom he formerly looked for protection were
forgotten or dead. Pride and doubt too had kept him within-doors, when
the Vicar and the people of the village, and the servants of the house,
had gone out to welcome my Lord Castlewood--for Henry Esmond was no
servant, though a dependant; no relative, though he bore the name and
inherited the blood of the house; and in the midst of the noise and
acclamations attending the arrival of the new lord (for whom, you may
be sure, a feast was got ready, and guns were fired, and tenants and
domestics huzzahed when his carriage approached and rolled into the
court-yard of the hall), no one ever took any notice of young Henry
Esmond, who sat unobserved and alone in the Book-room, until the
afternoon of that day, when his new friends found him.
When my lord and lady were going away thence, the little girl, still
holding her kinsman by the hand, bade him to come too. “Thou wilt always
forsake an old friend for a new one, Trix,” says her father to her
good-naturedly; and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his lady.
They passed thence through the music-gallery, long since dismantled, and
Queen Elizabeth's Rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into the terrace,
where was a fine prospect of sunset and the great darkling woods with
a cloud of rooks returning; and the plain and river with Castlewood
village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at--and the little
heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on the
terrace in his nurse's arms, from whom he ran across the grass instantly
he perceived his mother, and came to her.
“If thou canst not be happy here,” says my lord, looking round at the
scene, “thou art hard to please, Rachel.”
“I am happy where you are,” she said, “but we were happiest of all at
Walcote Forest.” Then my lord began to describe what was before them to
his wife, and what indeed little Harry knew better than he--viz., the
history of the house: how by yonder gate the page ran away with the
heiress of Castlewood, by which the estate came into the present family;
how the Roundheads attacked the clock-tower, which my lord's father was
slain in defending. “I was but two years old then,” says he, “but take
forty-six from ninety, and how old shall I be, kinsman Harry?”
“Thirty,” says his wife, with a laugh.
“A great deal too old for you, Rachel,” answers my lord, looking fondly
down at her. Indeed she seemed to be a girl, and was at that time scarce
twenty years old.
“You know, Frank, I will do anything to please you,” says she, “and I
promise you I will grow older every day.”
“You mustn't call papa, Frank; you must call papa my lord now,” says
Miss Beatrix, with a toss of her little head; at which the mother
smiled, and the good-natured father laughed, and the little trotting boy
laughed, not knowing why--but because he was happy, no doubt--as every
one seemed to be there. How those trivial incidents and words, the
landscape and sunshine, and the group of people smiling and talking,
remain fixed on the memory!
As the sun was setting, the little heir was sent in the arms of his
nurse to bed, whither he went howling; but little Trix was promised to
sit to supper that night--“and you will come too, kinsman, won't you?”
she said.
Harry Esmond blushed: “I--I have supper with Mrs. Worksop,” says he.
“D--n it,” says my lord, “thou shalt sup with us, Harry, to-night!
Shan't refuse a lady, shall he, Trix?”--and they all wondered at Harry's
performance as a trencher-man, in which character the poor boy acquitted
himself very remarkably; for the truth is he had had no dinner, nobody
thinking of him in the bustle which the house was in, during the
preparations antecedent to the new lord's arrival.
“No dinner! poor dear child!” says my lady, heaping up his plate with
meat, and my lord, filling a bumper for him, bade him call a health; on
which Master Harry, crying “The King,” tossed off the wine. My lord was
ready to drink that, and most other toasts: indeed only too ready. He
would not hear of Doctor Tusher (the Vicar of Castlewood, who came to
supper) going away when the sweetmeats were brought: he had not had a
chaplain long enough, he said, to be tired of him: so his reverence kept
my lord company for some hours over a pipe and a punch-bowl; and went
away home with rather a reeling gait, and declaring a dozen of times,
that his lordship's affability surpassed every kindness he had ever had
from his lordship's gracious family.
As for young Esmond, when he got to his little chamber, it was with a
heart full of surprise and gratitude towards the new friends whom this
happy day had brought him. He was up and watching long before the house
was astir, longing to see that fair lady and her children--that kind
protector and patron: and only fearful lest their welcome of the past
night should in any way be withdrawn or altered. But presently little
Beatrix came out into the garden, and her mother followed, who greeted
Harry as kindly as before. He told her at greater length the histories
of the house (which he had been taught in the old lord's time), and
to which she listened with great interest; and then he told her, with
respect to the night before, that he understood French, and thanked her
for her protection.
“Do you?” says she, with a blush; “then, sir, you shall teach me and
Beatrix.” And she asked him many more questions regarding himself, which
had best be told more fully and explicitly than in those brief replies
which the lad made to his mistress's questions.
CHAPTER II.
RELATES HOW FRANCIS, FOURTH VISCOUNT, ARRIVES AT CASTLEWOOD.
'Tis known that the name of Esmond and the estate of Castlewood, com.
Hants, came into possession of the present family through Dorothea,
daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and Marquis Esmond, and Lord of
Castlewood, which lady married, 23 Eliz., Henry Poyns, gent.; the said
Henry being then a page in the household of her father. Francis, son and
heir of the above Henry and Dorothea, who took the maternal name which
the family hath borne subsequently, was made Knight and Baronet by King
James the First; and being of a military disposition, remained long in
Germany with the Elector-Palatine, in whose service Sir Francis incurred
both expense and danger, lending large sums of money to that
unfortunate Prince; and receiving many wounds in the battles against the
Imperialists, in which Sir Francis engaged.
On his return home Sir Francis was rewarded for his services and
many sacrifices, by his late Majesty James the First, who graciously
conferred upon this tried servant the post of Warden of the Butteries
and Groom of the King's Posset, which high and confidential office he
filled in that king's and his unhappy successor's reign.
His age, and many wounds and infirmities, obliged Sir Francis to perform
much of his duty by deputy: and his son, Sir George Esmond, knight and
banneret, first as his father's lieutenant, and afterwards as inheritor
of his father's title and dignity, performed this office during almost
the whole of the reign of King Charles the First, and his two sons who
succeeded him.
Sir George Esmond married, rather beneath the rank that a person of his
name and honor might aspire to, the daughter of Thos. Topham, of the
city of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, taking the Parliamentary
side in the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the
property which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who
devised his money to his second daughter, Barbara, a spinster.
Sir George Esmond, on his part, was conspicuous for his attachment and
loyalty to the Royal cause and person: and the King being at Oxford in
1642, Sir George, with the consent of his father, then very aged and
infirm, and residing at his house of Castlewood, melted the whole of the
family plate for his Majesty's service.
For this, and other sacrifices and merits, his Majesty, by patent under
the Privy Seal, dated Oxford, Jan., 1643, was pleased to advance Sir
Francis Esmond to the dignity of Viscount Castlewood, of Shandon, in
Ireland: and the Viscount's estate being much impoverished by loans to
the King, which in those troublesome times his Majesty could not repay,
a grant of land in the plantations of Virginia was given to the Lord
Viscount.; part of which land is in possession of descendants of his
family to the present day.
The first Viscount Castlewood died full of years, and within a few
months after he had been advanced to his honors. He was succeeded by his
eldest son, the before-named George; and left issue besides, Thomas,
a colonel in the King's army, who afterwards joined the Usurper's
Government; and Francis, in holy orders, who was slain whilst defending
the House of Castlewood against the Parliament, anno 1647.
George Lord Castlewood (the second Viscount), of King Charles the
First's time, had no male issue save his one son, Eustace Esmond, who
was killed, with half of the Castlewood men beside him, at Worcester
fight. The lands about Castlewood were sold and apportioned to the
Commonwealth men; Castlewood being concerned in almost all of the plots
against the Protector, after the death of the King, and up to King
Charles the Second's restoration. My lord followed that king's Court
about in its exile, having ruined himself in its service. He had but one
daughter, who was of no great comfort to her father; for misfortune had
not taught those exiles sobriety of life; and it is said that the Duke
of York and his brother the King both quarrelled about Isabel Esmond.
She was maid of honor to the Queen Henrietta Maria; she early joined the
Roman Church; her father, a weak man, following her not long after at
Breda.
On the death of Eustace Esmond at Worcester, Thomas Esmond, nephew to
my Lord Castlewood, and then a stripling, became heir to the title. His
father had taken the Parliament side in the quarrels, and so had been
estranged from the chief of his house; and my Lord Castlewood was at
first so much enraged to think that his title (albeit little more than
an empty one now) should pass to a rascally Roundhead, that he would
have married again, and indeed proposed to do so to a vintner's daughter
at Bruges, to whom his lordship owed a score for lodging when the King
was there, but for fear of the laughter of the Court, and the anger
of his daughter, of whom he stood in awe; for she was in temper as
imperious and violent as my lord, who was much enfeebled by wounds and
drinking, was weak.
Lord Castlewood would have had a match between his daughter Isabel and
her cousin, the son of that Francis Esmond who was killed at Castlewood
siege. And the lady, it was said, took a fancy to the young man, who was
her junior by several years (which circumstance she did not consider to
be a fault in him); but having paid his court, and being admitted to the
intimacy of the house, he suddenly flung up his suit, when it seemed
to be pretty prosperous, without giving a pretext for his behavior.
His friends rallied him at what they laughingly chose to call his
infidelity; Jack Churchill, Frank Esmond's lieutenant in the Royal
Regiment of Foot-guards, getting the company which Esmond vacated, when
he left the Court and went to Tangier in a rage at discovering that his
promotion depended on the complaisance of his elderly affianced bride.
He and Churchill, who had been condiscipuli at St. Paul's School, had
words about this matter; and Frank Esmond said to him with an oath,
“Jack, your sister may be so-and-so, but by Jove my wife shan't!” and
swords were drawn, and blood drawn too, until friends separated them on
this quarrel. Few men were so jealous about the point of honor in those
days; and gentlemen of good birth and lineage thought a royal blot was
an ornament to their family coat. Frank Esmond retired in the sulks,
first to Tangier, whence he returned after two years' service, settling
on a small property he had of his mother, near to Winchester, and became
a country gentleman, and kept a pack of beagles, and never came to
Court again in King Charles's time. But his uncle Castlewood was never
reconciled to him; nor, for some time afterwards, his cousin whom he had
refused.
By places, pensions, bounties from France, and gifts from the King,
whilst his daughter was in favor, Lord Castlewood, who had spent in the
Royal service his youth and fortune, did not retrieve the latter quite,
and never cared to visit Castlewood, or repair it, since the death of
his son, but managed to keep a good house, and figure at Court, and to
save a considerable sum of ready money.
And now, his heir and nephew, Thomas Esmond, began to bid for his
uncle's favor. Thomas had served with the Emperor, and with the Dutch,
when King Charles was compelled to lend troops to the States; and
against them, when his Majesty made an alliance with the French King. In
these campaigns Thomas Esmond was more remarked for duelling, brawling,
vice, and play, than for any conspicuous gallantry in the field, and
came back to England, like many another English gentleman who has
travelled, with a character by no means improved by his foreign
experience. He had dissipated his small paternal inheritance of a
younger brother's portion, and, as truth must be told, was no better
than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about Alsatia and the
Friars, when he bethought him of a means of mending his fortune.
His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody's word but
her own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. She was lean,
and yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the
toy-shops in London could not make a beauty of her--Mr. Killigrew called
her the Sybil, the death's-head put up at the King's feast as a memento
mori, &c.--in fine, a woman who might be easy of conquest, but whom
only a very bold man would think of conquering. This bold man was Thomas
Esmond. He had a fancy to my Lord Castlewood's savings, the amount of
which rumor had very much exaggerated. Madame Isabel was said to have
Royal jewels of great value; whereas poor Tom Esmond's last coat but one
was in pawn.
My lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, nigh to
the Duke's Theatre and the Portugal ambassador's chapel. Tom Esmond,
who had frequented the one as long as he had money to spend among the
actresses, now came to the church as assiduously. He looked so lean and
shabby, that he passed without difficulty for a repentant sinner; and
so, becoming converted, you may be sure took his uncle's priest for a
director.
This charitable father reconciled him with the old lord, his uncle,
who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my
lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court,
while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the
point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard--to his twopenny
ordinary in Bell Yard.
Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began
to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and
clean linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be sure; but he made
amends on the other days: and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr.
Wycherley said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown rank old morsel
his cousin. There were endless jokes and lampoons about this marriage at
Court: but Tom rode thither in his uncle's coach now, called him father,
and having won could afford to laugh. This marriage took place very
shortly before King Charles died: whom the Viscount of Castlewood
speedily followed.
The issue of this marriage was one son, whom the parents watched with an
intense eagerness and care; but who, in spite of nurses and physicians,
had only a brief existence. His tainted blood did not run very long in
his poor feeble little body. Symptoms of evil broke out early on him;
and, part from flattery, part superstition, nothing would satisfy my
lord and lady, especially the latter, but having the poor little cripple
touched by his Majesty at his church. They were ready to cry out miracle
at first (the doctors and quack-salvers being constantly in attendance
on the child, and experimenting on his poor little body with every
conceivable nostrum) but though there seemed, from some reason, a
notable amelioration in the infant's health after his Majesty touched
him, in a few weeks afterward the poor thing died--causing the
lampooners of the Court to say, that the King, in expelling evil out of
the infant of Tom Esmond and Isabella his wife, expelled the life out of
it, which was nothing but corruption.
The mother's natural pang at losing this poor little child must have
been increased when she thought of her rival Frank Esmond's wife, who
was a favorite of the whole Court, where my poor Lady Castlewood was
neglected, and who had one child, a daughter, flourishing and beautiful,
and was about to become a mother once more.
The Court, as I have heard, only laughed the more because the poor lady,
who had pretty well passed the age when ladies are accustomed to have
children, nevertheless determined not to give hope up, and even when she
came to live at Castlewood, was constantly sending over to Hexton for
the doctor, and announcing to her friends the arrival of an heir. This
absurdity of hers was one amongst many others which the wags used to
play upon. Indeed, to the last days of her life, my Lady Viscountess had
the comfort of fancying herself beautiful, and persisted in blooming
up to the very midst of winter, painting roses on her cheeks long after
their natural season, and attiring herself like summer though her head
was covered with snow.
Gentlemen who were about the Court of King Charles, and King James, have
told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady,
with which it's not necessary that posterity should be entertained. She
is said to have had great powers of invective and, if she fought with
all her rivals in King James's favor, 'tis certain she must have had
a vast number of quarrels on her hands. She was a woman of an intrepid
spirit, and, it appears, pursued and rather fatigued his Majesty with
her rights and her wrongs. Some say that the cause of her leaving Court
was jealousy of Frank Esmond's wife: others, that she was forced to
retreat after a great battle which took place at Whitehall, between her
ladyship and Lady Dorchester, Tom Killigrew's daughter, whom the King
delighted to honor, and in which that ill-favored Esther got the better
of our elderly Vashti. But her ladyship, for her part, always averred
that it was her husband's quarrel, and not her own, which occasioned the
banishment of the two into the country; and the cruel ingratitude of the
Sovereign in giving away, out of the family, that place of Warden of
the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset, which the two last Lords
Castlewood had held so honorably, and which was now conferred upon a
fellow of yesterday, and a hanger-on of that odious Dorchester creature,
my Lord Bergamot;* “I never,” said my lady, “could have come to see his
Majesty's posset carried by any other hand than an Esmond. I should have
dashed the salver out of Lord Bergamot's hand, had I met him.” And those
who knew her ladyship are aware that she was a person quite capable of
performing this feat, had she not wisely kept out of the way.
* Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686,
Gentleman Usher of the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed
Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset (on
the decease of George, second Viscount Castlewood),
accompanied his Majesty to St. Germain's, where he died
without issue. No Groom of the Posset was appointed by the
Prince of Orange, nor hath there been such an officer in any
succeeding reign.
Holding the purse-strings in her own control, to which, indeed, she
liked to bring most persons who came near her, Lady Castlewood could
command her husband's obedience, and so broke up her establishment
at London; she had removed from Lincoln's-Inn-Fields to Chelsey, to a
pretty new house she bought there; and brought her establishment, her
maids, lap-dogs, and gentlewomen, her priest, and his lordship her
husband, to Castlewood Hall, that she had never seen since she quitted
it as a child with her father during the troubles of King Charles the
First's reign. The walls were still open in the old house as they had
been left by the shot of the Commonwealthmen. A part of the mansion
was restored and furbished up with the plate, hangings, and furniture
brought from the house in London. My lady meant to have a triumphal
entry into Castlewood village, and expected the people to cheer as
she drove over the Green in her great coach, my lord beside her, her
gentlewomen, lap-dogs, and cockatoos on the opposite seat, six horses to
her carriage, and servants armed and mounted following it and preceding
it. But 'twas in the height of the No-Popery cry; the folks in the
village and the neighboring town were scared by the sight of her
ladyship's painted face and eyelids, as she bobbed her head out of the
coach window, meaning, no doubt, to be very gracious; and one old woman
said, “Lady Isabel! lord-a-mercy, it's Lady Jezebel!” a name by which
the enemies of the right honorable Viscountess were afterwards in the
habit of designating her. The country was then in a great No-Popery
fervor; her ladyship's known conversion, and her husband's, the priest
in her train, and the service performed at the chapel of Castlewood
(though the chapel had been built for that worship before any other was
heard of in the country, and though the service was performed in the
most quiet manner), got her no favor at first in the county or
village. By far the greater part of the estate of Castlewood had been
confiscated, and been parcelled out to Commonwealthmen. One or two of
these old Cromwellian soldiers were still alive in the village, and
looked grimly at first upon my Lady Viscountess, when she came to dwell
there.
She appeared at the Hexton Assembly, bringing her lord after her,
scaring the country folks with the splendor of her diamonds, which she
always wore in public. They said she wore them in private, too, and
slept with them round her neck; though the writer can pledge his word
that this was a calumny. “If she were to take them off,” my Lady Sark
said, “Tom Esmond, her husband, would run away with them and pawn them.”
'Twas another calumny. My Lady Sark was also an exile from Court, and
there had been war between the two ladies before.
The village people began to be reconciled presently to their lady, who
was generous and kind, though fantastic and haughty, in her ways; and
whose praises Dr. Tusher, the Vicar, sounded loudly amongst his flock.
As for my lord, he gave no great trouble, being considered scarce more
than an appendage to my lady, who, as daughter of the old lords of
Castlewood, and possessor of vast wealth, as the country folks said
(though indeed nine-tenths of it existed but in rumor), was looked upon
as the real queen of the Castle, and mistress of all it contained.
CHAPTER III.
WHITHER IN THE TIME OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT, I HAD PRECEDED HIM AS
PAGE TO ISABELLA.
Coming up to London again some short time after this retreat, the Lord
Castlewood despatched a retainer of his to a little Cottage in the
village of Ealing, near to London, where for some time had dwelt an
old French refugee, by name Mr. Pastoureau, one of those whom the
persecution of the Huguenots by the French king had brought over to this
country. With this old man lived a little lad, who went by the name of
Henry Thomas. He remembered to have lived in another place a short time
before, near to London too, amongst looms and spinning-wheels, and a
great deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of
Frenchmen.
There he had a dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt. She
used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it was
homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau,
Bon Papa Pastoureau's new wife, who came to live with him after aunt
went away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived
Uncle George, who was a weaver too, but used to tell Harry that he was
a little gentleman, and that his father was a captain, and his mother an
angel.
When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was
embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and say, “Angel! she belongs to the
Babylonish scarlet woman.” Bon Papa was always talking of the scarlet
woman. He had a little room where he always used to preach and
sing hymns out of his great old nose. Little Harry did not like the
preaching; he liked better the fine stories which aunt used to tell him.
Bon Papa's wife never told him pretty stories; she quarrelled with Uncle
George, and he went away.
After this, Harry's Bon Papa and his wife and two children of her own
that she brought with her, came to live at Ealing. The new wife gave her
children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not
why. Besides blows, he got ill names from her, which need not be set
down here, for the sake of old Mr. Pastoureau, who was still kind
sometimes. The unhappiness of those days is long forgiven, though they
cast a shade of melancholy over the child's youth, which will accompany
him, no doubt, to the end of his days: as those tender twigs are bent
the trees grow afterward; and he, at least, who has suffered as a child,
and is not quite perverted in that early school of unhappiness, learns
to be gentle and long-suffering with little children.
Harry was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback,
with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing.
The noverca, or unjust stepmother, who had neglected him for her own
two children, gave him supper enough the night before he went away, and
plenty in the morning. She did not beat him once, and told the children
to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear
to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have
beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the
rescue with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry's face the day he
went away; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather
when the gentleman in black came for the boy; and old Mr. Pastoureau, as
he gave the child his blessing, scowled over his shoulder at the strange
gentleman, and grumbled out something about Babylon and the scarlet
lady. He was grown quite old, like a child almost. Mrs. Pastoureau
used to wipe his nose as she did to the children. She was a great, big,
handsome young woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought
'twas only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which
the lackey helped him.
He was a Frenchman; his name was Blaise. The child could talk to him in
his own language perfectly well: he knew it better than English indeed,
having lived hitherto chiefly among French people: and being called the
Little Frenchman by other boys on Ealing Green. He soon learnt to speak
English perfectly, and to forget some of his French: children forget
easily. Some earlier and fainter recollections the child had of a
different country; and a town with tall white houses: and a ship. But
these were quite indistinct in the boy's mind, as indeed the memory of
Ealing soon became, at least of much that he suffered there.
The lackey before whom he rode was very lively and voluble, and informed
the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord's chaplain,
Father Holt--that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond--that my
Lord Viscount Castlewood was his parrain--that he was to live at the
great house of Castlewood, in the province of ----shire, where he would
see Madame the Viscountess, who was a grand lady. And so, seated on a
cloth before Blaise's saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to
a fine square called Covent Garden, near to which his patron lodged.
Mr. Holt, the priest, took the child by the hand, and brought him to
this nobleman, a grand languid nobleman in a great cap and flowered
morning-gown, sucking oranges. He patted Harry on the head and gave him
an orange.
“C'est bien ca,” he said to the priest after eying the child, and the
gentleman in black shrugged his shoulders.
“Let Blaise take him out for a holiday,” and out for a holiday the boy
and the valet went. Harry went jumping along; he was glad enough to go.
He will remember to his life's end the delights of those days. He was
taken to see a play by Monsieur Blaise, in a house a thousand times
greater and finer than the booth at Ealing Fair--and on the next happy
day they took water on the river, and Harry saw London Bridge, with the
houses and booksellers' shops thereon, looking like a street, and the
Tower of London, with the Armor, and the great lions and bears in the
moat--all under company of Monsieur Blaise.
Presently, of an early morning, all the party set forth for the country,
namely, my Lord Viscount and the other gentleman; Monsieur Blaise
and Harry on a pillion behind them, and two or three men with pistols
leading the baggage-horses. And all along the road the Frenchman told
little Harry stories of brigands, which made the child's hair stand
on end, and terrified him; so that at the great gloomy inn on the road
where they lay, he besought to be allowed to sleep in a room with one
of the servants, and was compassionated by Mr. Holt, the gentleman
who travelled with my lord, and who gave the child a little bed in his
chamber.
His artless talk and answers very likely inclined this gentleman in the
boy's favor, for next day Mr. Holt said Harry should ride behind him,
and not with the French lacky; and all along the journey put a thousand
questions to the child--as to his foster-brother and relations at
Ealing; what his old grandfather had taught him; what languages he knew;
whether he could read and write, and sing, and so forth. And Mr. Holt
found that Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages
of French and English very well; and when he asked Harry about singing,
the lad broke out with a hymn to the tune of Dr. Martin Luther, which
set Mr. Holt a-laughing; and even caused his grand parrain in the laced
hat and periwig to laugh too when Holt told him what the child was
singing. For it appeared that Dr. Martin Luther's hymns were not sung in
the churches Mr. Holt preached at.
“You must never sing that song any more: do you hear, little mannikin?”
says my Lord Viscount, holding up a finger.
“But we will try and teach you a better, Harry,” Mr. Holt said; and
the child answered, for he was a docile child, and of an affectionate
nature, “That he loved pretty songs, and would try and learn anything
the gentleman would tell him.” That day he so pleased the gentlemen by
his talk, that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged
him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the
day before, waited upon him now.
“'Tis well, 'tis well!” said Blaise, that night (in his own language)
when they lay again at an inn. “We are a little lord here; we are a
little lord now: we shall see what we are when we come to Castlewood,
where my lady is.”
“When shall we come to Castlewood, Monsieur Blaise?” says Harry.
“Parbleu! my lord does not press himself,” Blaise says, with a grin;
and, indeed, it seemed as if his lordship was not in a great hurry, for
he spent three days on that journey which Harry Esmond hath often since
ridden in a dozen hours. For the last two of the days Harry rode with
the priest, who was so kind to him, that the child had grown to be
quite fond and familiar with him by the journey's end, and had scarce
a thought in his little heart which by that time he had not confided to
his new friend.
At length, on the third day, at evening, they came to a village standing
on a green with elms round it, very pretty to look at; and the people
there all took off their hats, and made curtsies to my Lord Viscount,
who bowed to them all languidly; and there was one portly person that
wore a cassock and a broad-leafed hat, who bowed lower than any one--and
with this one both my lord and Mr. Holt had a few words. “This, Harry,
is Castlewood church,” says Mr. Holt, “and this is the pillar thereof,
learned Doctor Tusher. Take off your hat, sirrah, and salute Dr.
Tusher!”
“Come up to supper, Doctor,” says my lord; at which the Doctor made
another low bow, and the party moved on towards a grand house that
was before them, with many gray towers and vanes on them, and windows
flaming in the sunshine; and a great army of rooks, wheeling over their
heads, made for the woods behind the house, as Harry saw; and Mr. Holt
told him that they lived at Castlewood too.
They came to the house, and passed under an arch into a court-yard, with
a fountain in the centre, where many men came and held my lord's stirrup
as he descended, and paid great respect to Mr. Holt likewise. And the
child thought that the servants looked at him curiously, and smiled to
one another--and he recalled what Blaise had said to him when they were
in London, and Harry had spoken about his godpapa, when the Frenchman
said, “Parbleu, one sees well that my lord is your godfather;”
words whereof the poor lad did not know the meaning then, though he
apprehended the truth in a very short time afterwards, and learned it,
and thought of it with no small feeling of shame.
Taking Harry by the hand as soon as they were both descended from their
horses, Mr. Holt led him across the court, and under a low door to rooms
on a level with the ground; one of which Father Holt said was to be
the boy's chamber, the other on the other side of the passage being the
Father's own; and as soon as the little man's face was washed, and the
Father's own dress arranged, Harry's guide took him once more to the
door by which my lord had entered the hall, and up a stair, and through
an ante-room to my lady's drawing-room--an apartment than which Harry
thought he had never seen anything more grand--no, not in the Tower
of London which he had just visited. Indeed, the chamber was richly
ornamented in the manner of Queen Elizabeth's time, with great stained
windows at either end, and hangings of tapestry, which the sun shining
through the colored glass painted of a thousand lines; and here in
state, by the fire, sat a lady to whom the priest took up Harry, who was
indeed amazed by her appearance.
My Lady Viscountess's face was daubed with white and red up to the eyes,
to which the paint gave an unearthly glare: she had a tower of lace on
her head, under which was a bush of black curls--borrowed curls--so that
no wonder little Harry Esmond was scared when he was first presented to
her--the kind priest acting as master of the ceremonies at that solemn
introduction--and he stared at her with eyes almost as great as her own,
as he had stared at the player woman who acted the wicked tragedy-queen,
when the players came down to Ealing Fair. She sat in a great chair by
the fire-corner; in her lap was a spaniel-dog that barked furiously; on
a little table by her was her ladyship's snuff-box and her sugar-plum
box. She wore a dress of black velvet, and a petticoat of flame-colored
brocade. She had as many rings on her fingers as the old woman of
Banbury Cross; and pretty small feet which she was fond of showing, with
great gold clocks to her stockings, and white pantofles with red heels;
and an odor of musk was shook out of her garments whenever she moved
or quitted the room, leaning on her tortoise-shell stick, little Fury
barking at her heels.
Mrs. Tusher, the parson's wife, was with my lady. She had been
waiting-woman to her ladyship in the late lord's time, and, having her
soul in that business, took naturally to it when the Viscountess of
Castlewood returned to inhabit her father's house.
“I present to your ladyship your kinsman and little page of honor,
Master Henry Esmond,” Mr. Holt said, bowing lowly, with a sort of
comical humility. “Make a pretty bow to my lady, Monsieur; and then
another little bow, not so low, to Madame Tusher--the fair priestess of
Castlewood.”
“Where I have lived and hope to die, sir,” says Madame Tusher, giving a
hard glance at the brat, and then at my lady.
Upon her the boy's whole attention was for a time directed. He could not
keep his great eyes off from her. Since the Empress of Ealing, he had
seen nothing so awful.
“Does my appearance please you, little page?” asked the lady.
“He would be very hard to please if it didn't,” cried Madame Tusher.
“Have done, you silly Maria,” said Lady Castlewood.
“Where I'm attached, I'm attached, Madame--and I'd die rather than not
say so.”
“Je meurs ou je m'attache,” Mr. Holt said with a polite grin. “The ivy
says so in the picture, and clings to the oak like a fond parasite as it
is.”
“Parricide, sir!” cries Mrs. Tusher.
“Hush, Tusher--you are always bickering with Father Holt,” cried my
lady. “Come and kiss my hand, child;” and the oak held out a BRANCH to
little Harry Esmond, who took and dutifully kissed the lean old hand,
upon the gnarled knuckles of which there glittered a hundred rings.
“To kiss that hand would make many a pretty fellow happy!” cried Mrs.
Tusher: on which my lady crying out, “Go, you foolish Tusher!” and
tapping her with her great fan, Tusher ran forward to seize her hand
and kiss it. Fury arose and barked furiously at Tusher; and Father Holt
looked on at this queer scene, with arch, grave glances.
The awe exhibited by the little boy perhaps pleased the lady to whom
this artless flattery was bestowed: for having gone down on his knee (as
Father Holt had directed him, and the mode then was) and performed his
obeisance, she said, “Page Esmond, my groom of the chamber will inform
you what your duties are, when you wait upon my lord and me; and good
Father Holt will instruct you as becomes a gentleman of our name. You
will pay him obedience in everything, and I pray you may grow to be as
learned and as good as your tutor.”
The lady seemed to have the greatest reverence for Mr. Holt, and to be
more afraid of him than of anything else in the world. If she was ever
so angry, a word or look from Father Holt made her calm: indeed he had
a vast power of subjecting those who came near him; and, among the rest,
his new pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment
to the good Father, and became his willing slave almost from the first
moment he saw him.
He put his small hand into the Father's as he walked away from his first
presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions in his artless
childish way. “Who is that other woman?” he asked. “She is fat and
round; she is more pretty than my Lady Castlewood.”
“She is Madame Tusher, the parson's wife of Castlewood. She has a son of
your age, but bigger than you.”
“Why does she like so to kiss my lady's hand. It is not good to kiss.”
“Tastes are different, little man. Madame Tusher is attached to my lady,
having been her waiting-woman before she was married, in the old lord's
time. She married Doctor Tusher the chaplain. The English household
divines often marry the waiting-women.”
“You will not marry the French woman, will you? I saw her laughing with
Blaise in the buttery.”
“I belong to a church that is older and better than the English church,”
Mr. Holt said (making a sign whereof Esmond did not then understand the
meaning, across his breast and forehead); “in our church the clergy do
not marry. You will understand these things better soon.”
“Was not Saint Peter the head of your church?--Dr. Rabbits of Ealing
told us so.”
The Father said, “Yes, he was.”
“But Saint Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday that his
wife's mother lay sick of a fever.” On which the Father again laughed,
and said he would understand this too better soon, and talked of other
things, and took away Harry Esmond, and showed him the great old house
which he had come to inhabit.
It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which were
rooks' nests, where the birds at morning and returning home at evening
made a great cawing. At the foot of the hill was a river, with a steep
ancient bridge crossing it; and beyond that a large pleasant green flat,
where the village of Castlewood stood, and stands, with the church in
the midst, the parsonage hard by it, the inn with the blacksmith's forge
beside it, and the sign of the “Three Castles” on the elm. The London
road stretched away towards the rising sun, and to the west were
swelling hills and peaks, behind which many a time Harry Esmond saw the
same sun setting, that he now looks on thousands of miles away across
the great ocean--in a new Castlewood, by another stream, that bears,
like the new country of wandering AEneas, the fond names of the land of
his youth.
The Hall of Castlewood was built with two courts, whereof one only, the
fountain-court, was now inhabited, the other having been battered down
in the Cromwellian wars. In the fountain-court, still in good repair,
was the great hall, near to the kitchen and butteries. A dozen of
living-rooms looking to the north, and communicating with the little
chapel that faced eastwards and the buildings stretching from that to
the main gate, and with the hall (which looked to the west) into the
court now dismantled. This court had been the most magnificent of the
two, until the Protector's cannon tore down one side of it before the
place was taken and stormed. The besiegers entered at the terrace under
the clock-tower, slaying every man of the garrison, and at their head my
lord's brother, Francis Esmond.
The Restoration did not bring enough money to the Lord Castlewood to
restore this ruined part of his house; where were the morning parlors,
above them the long music-gallery, and before which stretched the
garden-terrace, where, however, the flowers grew again which the boots
of the Roundheads had trodden in their assault, and which was restored
without much cost, and only a little care, by both ladies who succeeded
the second viscount in the government of this mansion. Round the
terrace-garden was a low wall with a wicket leading to the wooded height
beyond, that is called Cromwell's Battery to this day.
Young Harry Esmond learned the domestic part of his duty, which was easy
enough, from the groom of her ladyship's chamber: serving the Countess,
as the custom commonly was in his boyhood, as page, waiting at
her chair, bringing her scented water and the silver basin after
dinner--sitting on her carriage-step on state occasions, or on public
days introducing her company to her. This was chiefly of the Catholic
gentry, of whom there were a pretty many in the country and neighboring
city; and who rode not seldom to Castlewood to partake of the
hospitalities there. In the second year of their residence, the company
seemed especially to increase. My lord and my lady were seldom without
visitors, in whose society it was curious to contrast the difference
of behavior between Father Holt, the director of the family, and Doctor
Tusher, the rector of the parish--Mr. Holt moving amongst the very
highest as quite their equal, and as commanding them all; while poor
Doctor Tusher, whose position was indeed a difficult one, having been
chaplain once to the Hall, and still to the Protestant servants there,
seemed more like an usher than an equal, and always rose to go away
after the first course.
Also there came in these times to Father Holt many private visitors,
whom, after a little, Henry Esmond had little difficulty in recognizing
as ecclesiastics of the Father's persuasion, whatever their dresses
(and they adopted all) might be. These were closeted with the Father
constantly, and often came and rode away without paying their devoirs to
my lord and lady--to the lady and lord rather--his lordship being little
more than a cipher in the house, and entirely under his domineering
partner. A little fowling, a little hunting, a great deal of sleep, and
a long dine at cards and table, carried through one day after another
with his lordship. When meetings took place in this second year, which
often would happen with closed doors, the page found my lord's sheet of
paper scribbled over with dogs and horses, and 'twas said he had much
ado to keep himself awake at these councils: the Countess ruling over
them, and he acting as little more than her secretary.
Father Holt began speedily to be so much occupied with these meetings
as rather to neglect the education of the little lad who so gladly put
himself under the kind priest's orders. At first they read much and
regularly, both in Latin and French; the Father not neglecting in
anything to impress his faith upon his pupil, but not forcing him
violently, and treating him with a delicacy and kindness which surprised
and attached the child, always more easily won by these methods than by
any severe exercise of authority. And his delight in their walks was to
tell Harry of the glories of his order, of its martyrs and heroes, of
its Brethren converting the heathen by myriads, traversing the desert,
facing the stake, ruling the courts and councils, or braving the
tortures of kings; so that Harry Esmond thought that to belong to the
Jesuits was the greatest prize of life and bravest end of ambition; the
greatest career here, and in heaven the surest reward; and began to
long for the day, not only when he should enter into the one church
and receive his first communion, but when he might join that wonderful
brotherhood, which was present throughout all the world, and which
numbered the wisest, the bravest, the highest born, the most eloquent of
men among its members. Father Holt bade him keep his views secret,
and to hide them as a great treasure which would escape him if it was
revealed; and, proud of this confidence and secret vested in him,
the lad became fondly attached to the master who initiated him into
a mystery so wonderful and awful. And when little Tom Tusher, his
neighbor, came from school for his holiday, and said how he, too, was
to be bred up for an English priest, and would get what he called
an exhibition from his school, and then a college scholarship and
fellowship, and then a good living--it tasked young Harry Esmond's
powers of reticence not to say to his young companion, “Church!
priesthood! fat living! My dear Tommy, do you call yours a church and
a priesthood? What is a fat living compared to converting a hundred
thousand heathens by a single sermon? What is a scholarship at Trinity
by the side of a crown of martyrdom, with angels awaiting you as your
head is taken off? Could your master at school sail over the Thames on
his gown? Have you statues in your church that can bleed, speak, walk,
and cry? My good Tommy, in dear Father Holt's church these things take
place every day. You know Saint Philip of the Willows appeared to Lord
Castlewood, and caused him to turn to the one true church. No saints
ever come to you.” And Harry Esmond, because of his promise to Father
Holt, hiding away these treasures of faith from T. Tusher, delivered
himself of them nevertheless simply to Father Holt; who stroked his
head, smiled at him with his inscrutable look, and told him that he did
well to meditate on these great things, and not to talk of them except
under direction.
CHAPTER IV.
I AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED TO THAT
RELIGION.--VISCOUNTESS CASTLEWOOD.
Had time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been properly
nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest ere he was a dozen years
older, and might have finished his days a martyr in China or a victim
on Tower Hill: for, in the few months they spent together at Castlewood,
Mr. Holt obtained an entire mastery over the boy's intellect and
affections; and had brought him to think, as indeed Father Holt
thought with all his heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so
desirable, as that which many brethren of his famous order were ready
to undergo. By love, by a brightness of wit and good-humor that charmed
all, by an authority which he knew how to assume, by a mystery and
silence about him which increased the child's reverence for him, he won
Harry's absolute fealty, and would have kept it, doubtless, if schemes
greater and more important than a poor little boy's admission into
orders had not called him away.
After being at home for a few months in tranquillity (if theirs might be
called tranquillity, which was, in truth, a constant bickering), my lord
and lady left the country for London, taking their director with them:
and his little pupil scarce ever shed more bitter tears in his life than
he did for nights after the first parting with his dear friend, as he
lay in the lonely chamber next to that which the Father used to occupy.
He and a few domestics were left as the only tenants of the great house:
and, though Harry sedulously did all the tasks which the Father set him,
he had many hours unoccupied, and read in the library, and bewildered
his little brains with the great books he found there.
After a while, the little lad grew accustomed to the loneliness of the
place; and in after days remembered this part of his life as a
period not unhappy. When the family was at London the whole of the
establishment travelled thither with the exception of the porter--who
was, moreover, brewer, gardener, and woodman--and his wife and children.
These had their lodging in the gate-house hard by, with a door into the
court; and a window looking out on the green was the Chaplain's room;
and next to this a small chamber where Father Holt had his books, and
Harry Esmond his sleeping closet. The side of the house facing the
east had escaped the guns of the Cromwellians, whose battery was on the
height facing the western court; so that this eastern end bore few marks
of demolition, save in the chapel, where the painted windows surviving
Edward the Sixth had been broke by the Commonwealthmen. In Father Holt's
time little Harry Esmond acted as his familiar and faithful little
servitor; beating his clothes, folding his vestments, fetching his
water from the well long before daylight, ready to run anywhere for the
service of his beloved priest. When the Father was away, he locked his
private chamber; but the room where the books were was left to little
Harry, who, but for the society of this gentleman, was little less
solitary when Lord Castlewood was at home.
The French wit saith that a hero is none to his valet-de-chambre, and
it required less quick eyes than my lady's little page was naturally
endowed with, to see that she had many qualities by no means heroic,
however much Mrs. Tusher might flatter and coax her. When Father Holt
was not by, who exercised an entire authority over the pair, my lord
and my lady quarrelled and abused each other so as to make the servants
laugh, and to frighten the little page on duty. The poor boy trembled
before his mistress, who called him by a hundred ugly names, who made
nothing of boxing his ears, and tilting the silver basin in his face
which it was his business to present to her after dinner. She hath
repaired, by subsequent kindness to him, these severities, which it must
be owned made his childhood very unhappy. She was but unhappy herself at
this time, poor soul! and I suppose made her dependants lead her own sad
life. I think my lord was as much afraid of her as her page was, and the
only person of the household who mastered her was Mr. Holt. Harry was
only too glad when the Father dined at table, and to slink away and
prattle with him afterwards, or read with him, or walk with him.
Luckily my Lady Viscountess did not rise till noon. Heaven help the poor
waiting-woman who had charge of her toilet! I have often seen the poor
wretch come out with red eyes from the closet where those long and
mysterious rites of her ladyship's dress were performed, and the
backgammon-box locked up with a rap on Mrs. Tusher's fingers when she
played ill, or the game was going the wrong way.
Blessed be the king who introduced cards, and the kind inventors
of piquet and cribbage, for they employed six hours at least of her
ladyship's day, during which her family was pretty easy. Without this
occupation my lady frequently declared she should die. Her dependants
one after another relieved guard--'twas rather a dangerous post to play
with her ladyship--and took the cards turn about. Mr. Holt would sit
with her at piquet during hours together, at which time she behaved
herself properly; and as for Dr. Tusher, I believe he would have left a
parishioner's dying bed, if summoned to play a rubber with his patroness
at Castlewood. Sometimes, when they were pretty comfortable together,
my lord took a hand. Besides these my lady had her faithful poor Tusher,
and one, two, three gentlewomen whom Harry Esmond could recollect in
his time. They could not bear that genteel service very long; one after
another tried and failed at it. These and the housekeeper, and little
Harry Esmond, had a table of their own. Poor ladies their life was far
harder than the page's. He was sound asleep, tucked up in his little
bed, whilst they were sitting by her ladyship reading her to sleep, with
the “News Letter” or the “Grand Cyrus.” My lady used to have boxes of
new plays from London, and Harry was forbidden, under the pain of a
whipping, to look into them. I am afraid he deserved the penalty pretty
often, and got it sometimes. Father Holt applied it twice or thrice,
when he caught the young scapegrace with a delightful wicked comedy of
Mr. Shadwell's or Mr. Wycherley's under his pillow.
These, when he took any, were my lord's favorite reading. But he
was averse to much study, and, as his little page fancied, to much
occupation of any sort.
It always seemed to young Harry Esmond that my lord treated him with
more kindness when his lady was not present, and Lord Castlewood would
take the lad sometimes on his little journeys a-hunting or a-birding;
he loved to play at cards and tric-trac with him, which games the boy
learned to pleasure his lord: and was growing to like him better daily,
showing a special pleasure if Father Holt gave a good report of him,
patting him on the head, and promising that he would provide for the
boy. However, in my lady's presence, my lord showed no such marks of
kindness, and affected to treat the lad roughly, and rebuked him sharply
for little faults, for which he in a manner asked pardon of young Esmond
when they were private, saying if he did not speak roughly, she would,
and his tongue was not such a bad one as his lady's--a point whereof the
boy, young as he was, was very well assured.
Great public events were happening all this while, of which the simple
young page took little count. But one day, riding into the neighboring
town on the step of my lady's coach, his lordship and she and Father
Holt being inside, a great mob of people came hooting and jeering round
the coach, bawling out “The Bishops for ever!” “Down with the Pope!” “No
Popery! no Popery! Jezebel, Jezebel!” so that my lord began to laugh,
my lady's eyes to roll with anger, for she was as bold as a lioness,
and feared nobody; whilst Mr. Holt, as Esmond saw from his place on the
step, sank back with rather an alarmed face, crying out to her ladyship,
“For God's sake, madam, do not speak or look out of window; sit still.”
But she did not obey this prudent injunction of the Father; she thrust
her head out of the coach window, and screamed out to the coachman,
“Flog your way through them, the brutes, James, and use your whip!”
The mob answered with a roaring jeer of laughter, and fresh cries of
“Jezebel! Jezebel!” My lord only laughed the more: he was a languid
gentleman: nothing seemed to excite him commonly, though I have seen
him cheer and halloo the hounds very briskly, and his face (which was
generally very yellow and calm) grow quite red and cheerful during a
burst over the Downs after a hare, and laugh, and swear, and huzzah at a
cockfight, of which sport he was very fond. And now, when the mob began
to hoot his lady, he laughed with something of a mischievous look, as
though he expected sport, and thought that she and they were a match.
James the coachman was more afraid of his mistress than the mob,
probably, for he whipped on his horses as he was bidden, and the
post-boy that rode with the first pair (my lady always rode with her
coach-and-six,) gave a cut of his thong over the shoulders of one fellow
who put his hand out towards the leading horse's rein.
It was a market-day, and the country-people were all assembled with
their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no
sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a
great cabbage came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which
my lord laughed more, for it knocked my lady's fan out of her hand, and
plumped into Father Holt's stomach. Then came a shower of carrots and
potatoes.
“For Heaven's sake be still!” says Mr. Holt; “we are not ten paces from
the 'Bell' archway, where they can shut the gates on us, and keep out
this canaille.”
The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow in the
crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which the poor
little wretch set up a shout; the man laughed, a great big saddler's
apprentice of the town. “Ah! you d--- little yelling Popish bastard,”
he said, and stooped to pick up another; the crowd had gathered quite
between the horses and the inn door by this time, and the coach was
brought to a dead stand-still. My lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of
the door on his side of the coach, squeezing little Harry behind it; had
hold of the potato-thrower's collar in an instant, and the next moment
the brute's heels were in the air, and he fell on the stones with a
thump.
“You hulking coward!” says he; “you pack of screaming blackguards! how
dare you attack children, and insult women? Fling another shot at that
carriage, you sneaking pigskin cobbler, and by the Lord I'll send my
rapier through you!”
Some of the mob cried, “Huzzah, my lord!” for they knew him, and
the saddler's man was a known bruiser, near twice as big as my lord
Viscount.
“Make way there,” says he (he spoke in a high shrill voice, but with
a great air of authority). “Make way, and let her ladyship's carriage
pass.” The men that were between the coach and the gate of the “Bell”
actually did make way, and the horses went in, my lord walking after
them with his hat on his head.
As he was going in at the gate, through which the coach had just rolled,
another cry begins, of “No Popery--no Papists!” My lord turns round and
faces them once more.
“God save the King!” says he at the highest pitch of his voice. “Who
dares abuse the King's religion? You, you d--d psalm-singing cobbler,
as sure as I'm a magistrate of this county I'll commit you!” The fellow
shrank back, and my lord retreated with all the honors of the day.
But when the little flurry caused by the scene was over, and the flush
passed off his face, he relapsed into his usual languor, trifled with
his little dog, and yawned when my lady spoke to him.
This mob was one of many thousands that were going about the country at
that time, huzzahing for the acquittal of the seven bishops who had been
tried just then, and about whom little Harry Esmond at that time knew
scarce anything. It was Assizes at Hexton, and there was a great meeting
of the gentry at the “Bell;” and my lord's people had their new liveries
on, and Harry a little suit of blue and silver, which he wore upon
occasions of state; and the gentlefolks came round and talked to my
lord: and a judge in a red gown, who seemed a very great personage,
especially complimented him and my lady, who was mighty grand. Harry
remembers her train borne up by her gentlewoman. There was an assembly
and ball at the great room at the “Bell,” and other young gentlemen of
the county families looked on as he did. One of them jeered him for his
black eye, which was swelled by the potato, and another called him a
bastard, on which he and Harry fell to fisticuffs. My lord's cousin,
Colonel Esmond of Walcote, was there, and separated the two lads--a
great tall gentleman, with a handsome good-natured face. The boy did not
know how nearly in after-life he should be allied to Colonel Esmond, and
how much kindness he should have to owe him.
There was little love between the two families. My lady used not to
spare Colonel Esmond in talking of him, for reasons which have been
hinted already; but about which, at his tender age, Henry Esmond could
be expected to know nothing.
Very soon afterwards, my lord and lady went to London with Mr. Holt,
leaving, however, the page behind them. The little man had the great
house of Castlewood to himself; or between him and the housekeeper, Mrs.
Worksop, an old lady who was a kinswoman of the family in some distant
way, and a Protestant, but a staunch Tory and king's-man, as all the
Esmonds were. He used to go to school to Dr. Tusher when he was at home,
though the Doctor was much occupied too. There was a great stir and
commotion everywhere, even in the little quiet village of Castlewood,
whither a party of people came from the town, who would have broken
Castlewood Chapel windows, but the village people turned out, and even
old Sieveright, the republican blacksmith, along with them: for my
lady, though she was a Papist, and had many odd ways, was kind to the
tenantry, and there was always a plenty of beef, and blankets, and
medicine for the poor at Castlewood Hall.
A kingdom was changing hands whilst my lord and lady were away. King
James was flying, the Dutchmen were coming; awful stories about them and
the Prince of Orange used old Mrs. Worksop to tell to the idle little
page.
He liked the solitude of the great house very well; he had all the
play-books to read, and no Father Holt to whip him, and a hundred
childish pursuits and pastimes, without doors and within, which made
this time very pleasant.
CHAPTER V.
MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE RESTORATION OF KING JAMES II.
Not having been able to sleep, for thinking of some lines for eels which
he had placed the night before, the lad was lying in his little bed,
waiting for the hour when the gate would be open, and he and his
comrade, John Lockwood, the porter's son, might go to the pond and see
what fortune had brought them. At daybreak John was to awaken him, but
his own eagerness for the sport had served as a reveillez long since--so
long, that it seemed to him as if the day never would come.
It might have been four o'clock when he heard the door of the opposite
chamber, the Chaplain's room, open, and the voice of a man coughing in
the passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for certain it was a robber, or
hoping perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging open his own door, saw before
him the Chaplain's door open, and a light inside, and a figure standing
in the doorway, in the midst of a great smoke which issued from the
room.
“Who's there?” cried out the boy, who was of a good spirit.
“Silentium!” whispered the other; “'tis I, my boy!” and, holding his
hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognizing his master and friend,
Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the Chaplain's room that
looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke came from a great
flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the
Chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad,
who was charmed to see his tutor, the Father continued the burning of
his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantel-piece wall,
which Harry had never seen before.
Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad's attention fixed at once on this
hole. “That is right, Harry,” he said; “faithful little famuli, see all
and say nothing. You are faithful, I know.”
“I know I would go to the stake for you,” said Harry.
“I don't want your head,” said the Father, patting it kindly; “all you
have to do is to hold your tongue. Let us burn these papers, and say
nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them?”
Harry Esmond blushed, and held down his head; he HAD looked as the fact
was, and without thinking, at the paper before him; and though he had
seen it, could not understand a word of it, the letters being quite
clear enough, but quite without meaning. They burned the papers, beating
down the ashes in a brazier, so that scarce any traces of them remained.
Harry had been accustomed to see Father Holt in more dresses than one;
it not being safe, or worth the danger, for Popish ecclesiastics to wear
their proper dress; and he was, in consequence, in no wise astonished
that the priest should now appear before him in a riding-dress, with
large buff leather boots, and a feather to his hat, plain, but such as
gentlemen wore.
“You know the secret of the cupboard,” said he, laughing, “and must be
prepared for other mysteries;” and he opened--but not a secret cupboard
this time--only a wardrobe, which he usually kept locked, and from which
he now took out two or three dresses and perruques of different colors,
and a couple of swords of a pretty make (Father Holt was an expert
practitioner with the small-sword, and every day, whilst he was at home,
he and his pupil practised this exercise, in which the lad became a very
great proficient), a military coat and cloak, and a farmer's smock,
and placed them in the large hole over the mantel-piece from which the
papers had been taken.
“If they miss the cupboard,” he said, “they will not find these; if
they find them, they'll tell no tales, except that Father Holt wore more
suits of clothes than one. All Jesuits do. You know what deceivers we
are, Harry.”
Harry was alarmed at the notion that his friend was about to leave him;
but “No,” the priest said, “I may very likely come back with my lord
in a few days. We are to be tolerated; we are not to be persecuted. But
they may take a fancy to pay a visit at Castlewood ere our return; and,
as gentlemen of my cloth are suspected, they might choose to examine
my papers, which concern nobody--at least not them.” And to this day,
whether the papers in cipher related to politics, or to the affairs of
that mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil,
Harry Esmond, remains in entire ignorance.
The rest of his goods, his small wardrobe, &c. Holt left untouched on
his shelves and in his cupboard, taking down--with a laugh, however--and
flinging into the brazier, where he only half burned them, some
theological treatises which he had been writing against the English
divines. “And now,” said he, “Henry, my son, you may testify, with a
safe conscience, that you saw me burning Latin sermons the last time I
was here before I went away to London; and it will be daybreak directly,
and I must be away before Lockwood is stirring.”
“Will not Lockwood let you out, sir?” Esmond asked. Holt laughed; he
was never more gay or good-humored than when in the midst of action or
danger.
“Lockwood knows nothing of my being here, mind you,” he said; “nor would
you, you little wretch! had you slept better. You must forget that I
have been here; and now farewell. Close the door, and go to your own
room, and don't come out till--stay, why should you not know one secret
more? I know you will never betray me.”
In the Chaplain's room were two windows; the one looking into the court
facing westwards to the fountain; the other, a small casement strongly
barred, and looking on to the green in front of the Hall. This window
was too high to reach from the ground; but, mounting on a buffet which
stood beneath it, Father Holt showed me how, by pressing on the base
of the window, the whole framework of lead, glass, and iron stanchions
descended into a cavity worked below, from which it could be drawn and
restored to its usual place from without; a broken pane being purposely
open to admit the hand which was to work upon the spring of the machine.
“When I am gone,” Father Holt said, “you may push away the buffet, so
that no one may fancy that an exit has been made that way; lock the
door; place the key--where shall we put the key?--under 'Chrysostom' on
the book-shelf; and if any ask for it, say I keep it there, and told you
where to find it, if you had need to go to my room. The descent is easy
down the wall into the ditch; and so, once more farewell, until I see
thee again, my dear son.” And with this the intrepid Father mounted
the buffet with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window,
lifting up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only
leaving room for Harry Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his hand
before the casement closed, the bars fixing as firmly as ever,
seemingly, in the stone arch overhead. When Father Holt next arrived at
Castlewood, it was by the public gate on horseback; and he never so much
as alluded to the existence of the private issue to Harry, except when
he had need of a private messenger from within, for which end, no doubt,
he had instructed his young pupil in the means of quitting the Hall.
Esmond, young as he was, would have died sooner than betray his friend
and master, as Mr. Holt well knew; for he had tried the boy more than
once, putting temptations in his way, to see whether he would yield to
them and confess afterwards, or whether he would resist them, as he did
sometimes, or whether he would lie, which he never did. Holt instructing
the boy on this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie,
as it certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a
negation--and therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice
or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to
either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as
lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance
(says he), suppose a good citizen, who had seen his Majesty take refuge
there, had been asked, “Is King Charles up that oak-tree?” his duty
would have been not to say, Yes--so that the Cromwellians should seize
the king and murder him like his father--but No; his Majesty being
private in the tree, and therefore not to be seen there by loyal
eyes: all which instruction, in religion and morals, as well as in the
rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy took eagerly and with
gratitude from his tutor. When, then, Holt was gone, and told Harry not
to see him, it was as if he had never been. And he had this answer pat
when he came to be questioned a few days after.
The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond learned from
seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the roads were
muddy, and he never was known to wear his silk, only his stuff one,
a-horseback), with a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and
Nahum, his clerk, ornamented with a like decoration. The Doctor was
walking up and down in front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw
him, and heard him say he was going to pay his duty to his Highness
the Prince, as he mounted his pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The
village people had orange cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith's
laughing daughter pinned one into Harry's old hat, which he tore out
indignantly when they bade him to cry “God save the Prince of Orange and
the Protestant religion!” but the people only laughed, for they liked
the boy in the village, where his solitary condition moved the general
pity, and where he found friendly welcomes and faces in many houses.
Father Holt had many friends there too, for he not only would fight the
blacksmith at theology, never losing his temper, but laughing the whole
time in his pleasant way; but he cured him of an ague with quinquina,
and was always ready with a kind word for any man that asked it, so that
they said in the village 'twas a pity the two were Papists.
The Director and the Vicar of Castlewood agreed very well; indeed, the
former was a perfectly-bred gentleman, and it was the latter's business
to agree with everybody. Doctor Tusher and the lady's-maid, his spouse,
had a boy who was about the age of little Esmond; and there was such a
friendship between the lads, as propinquity and tolerable kindness and
good-humor on either side would be pretty sure to occasion. Tom Tusher
was sent off early, however, to a school in London, whither his father
took him and a volume of sermons, in the first year of the reign of King
James; and Tom returned but once, a year afterwards, to Castlewood for
many years of his scholastic and collegiate life. Thus there was less
danger to Tom of a perversion of his faith by the Director, who scarce
ever saw him, than there was to Harry, who constantly was in the Vicar's
company; but as long as Harry's religion was his Majesty's, and my
lord's, and my lady's, the Doctor said gravely, it should not be for
him to disturb or disquiet him: it was far from him to say that his
Majesty's Church was not a branch of the Catholic Church; upon which
Father Holt used, according to his custom, to laugh, and say that the
Holy Church throughout all the world, and the noble Army of Martyrs,
were very much obliged to the Doctor.
It was while Dr. Tusher was away at Salisbury that there came a troop
of dragoons with orange scarfs, and quartered in Castlewood, and some
of them came up to the Hall, where they took possession, robbing nothing
however beyond the hen-house and the beer-cellar: and only insisting
upon going through the house and looking for papers. The first room they
asked to look at was Father Holt's room, of which Harry Esmond brought
the key, and they opened the drawers and the cupboards, and tossed over
the papers and clothes--but found nothing except his books and clothes,
and the vestments in a box by themselves, with which the dragoons
made merry, to Harry Esmond's horror. And to the questions which the
gentleman put to Harry, he replied that Father Holt was a very kind man
to him, and a very learned man, and Harry supposed would tell him none
of his secrets if he had any. He was about eleven years old at this
time, and looked as innocent as boys of his age.
The family were away more than six months, and when they returned
they were in the deepest state of dejection, for King James had been
banished, the Prince of Orange was on the throne, and the direst
persecutions of those of the Catholic faith were apprehended by my
lady, who said she did not believe that there was a word of truth in the
promises of toleration that Dutch monster made, or in a single word the
perjured wretch said. My lord and lady were in a manner prisoners in
their own house; so her ladyship gave the little page to know, who was
by this time growing of an age to understand what was passing about him,
and something of the characters of the people he lived with.
“We are prisoners,” says she; “in everything but chains, we are
prisoners. Let them come, let them consign me to dungeons, or strike off
my head from this poor little throat” (and she clasped it in her long
fingers). “The blood of the Esmonds will always flow freely for their
kings. We are not like the Churchills--the Judases, who kiss their
master and betray him. We know how to suffer, how even to forgive in the
royal cause” (no doubt it was to that fatal business of losing the place
of Groom of the Posset to which her ladyship alluded, as she did half
a dozen times in the day). “Let the tyrant of Orange bring his rack and
his odious Dutch tortures--the beast! the wretch! I spit upon him and
defy him. Cheerfully will I lay this head upon the block; cheerfully
will I accompany my lord to the scaffold: we will cry 'God save
King James!' with our dying breath, and smile in the face of the
executioner.” And she told her page, a hundred times at least, of the
particulars of the last interview which she had with his Majesty.
“I flung myself before my liege's feet,” she said, “at Salisbury.
I devoted myself--my husband--my house, to his cause. Perhaps he
remembered old times, when Isabella Esmond was young and fair; perhaps
he recalled the day when 'twas not I that knelt--at least he spoke to me
with a voice that reminded ME of days gone by. 'Egad!' said his Majesty,
'you should go to the Prince of Orange; if you want anything.' 'No,
sire,' I replied, 'I would not kneel to a Usurper; the Esmond that would
have served your Majesty will never be groom to a traitor's posset.' The
royal exile smiled, even in the midst of his misfortune; he deigned to
raise me with words of consolation. The Viscount, my husband, himself,
could not be angry at the august salute with which he honored me!”
The public misfortune had the effect of making my lord and his lady
better friends than they ever had been since their courtship. My
lord Viscount had shown both loyalty and spirit, when these were rare
qualities in the dispirited party about the King; and the praise he got
elevated him not a little in his wife's good opinion, and perhaps in his
own. He wakened up from the listless and supine life which he had been
leading; was always riding to and fro in consultation with this friend
or that of the King's; the page of course knowing little of his doings,
but remarking only his greater cheerfulness and altered demeanor.
Father Holt came to the Hall constantly, but officiated no longer openly
as chaplain; he was always fetching and carrying: strangers, military
and ecclesiastic (Harry knew the latter, though they came in all sorts
of disguises), were continually arriving and departing. My lord made
long absences and sudden reappearances, using sometimes the means of
exit which Father Holt had employed, though how often the little window
in the Chaplain's room let in or let out my lord and his friends, Harry
could not tell. He stoutly kept his promise to the Father of not prying,
and if at midnight from his little room he heard noises of persons
stirring in the next chamber, he turned round to the wall, and hid his
curiosity under his pillow until it fell asleep. Of course he could
not help remarking that the priest's journeys were constant, and
understanding by a hundred signs that some active though secret business
employed him: what this was may pretty well be guessed by what soon
happened to my lord.
No garrison or watch was put into Castlewood when my lord came back, but
a Guard was in the village; and one or other of them was always on the
Green keeping a look-out on our great gate, and those who went out and
in. Lockwood said that at night especially every person who came in or
went out was watched by the outlying sentries. 'Twas lucky that we had
a gate which their Worships knew nothing about. My lord and Father Holt
must have made constant journeys at night: once or twice little Harry
acted as their messenger and discreet little aide-de-camp. He remembers
he was bidden to go into the village with his fishing-rod, enter certain
houses, ask for a drink of water, and tell the good man, “There would be
a horse-market at Newbury next Thursday,” and so carry the same message
on to the next house on his list.
He did not know what the message meant at the time, nor what was
happening: which may as well, however, for clearness' sake, be explained
here. The Prince of Orange being gone to Ireland, where the King was
ready to meet him with a great army, it was determined that a great
rising of his Majesty's party should take place in this country; and my
lord was to head the force in our county. Of late he had taken a greater
lead in affairs than before, having the indefatigable Mr. Holt at his
elbow, and my Lady Viscountess strongly urging him on; and my Lord
Sark being in the Tower a prisoner, and Sir Wilmot Crawley, of Queen's
Crawley, having gone over to the Prince of Orange's side--my lord became
the most considerable person in our part of the county for the affairs
of the King.
It was arranged that the regiment of Scots Grays and Dragoons, then
quartered at Newbury, should declare for the King on a certain day, when
likewise the gentry affected to his Majesty's cause were to come in with
their tenants and adherents to Newbury, march upon the Dutch troops
at Reading under Ginckel; and, these overthrown, and their indomitable
little master away in Ireland, 'twas thought that our side might move on
London itself, and a confident victory was predicted for the King.
As these great matters were in agitation, my lord lost his listless
manner and seemed to gain health; my lady did not scold him, Mr. Holt
came to and fro, busy always; and little Harry longed to have been a few
inches taller, that he might draw a sword in this good cause.
One day, it must have been about the month of July, 1690, my lord, in
a great horseman's coat, under which Harry could see the shining of a
steel breastplate he had on, called little Harry to him, put the hair
off the child's forehead, and kissed him, and bade God bless him in such
an affectionate way as he never had used before. Father Holt blessed him
too, and then they took leave of my Lady Viscountess, who came from her
apartment with a pocket-handkerchief to her eyes, and her gentlewoman
and Mrs. Tusher supporting her. “You are going to--to ride,” says she.
“Oh, that I might come too--but in my situation I am forbidden horse
exercise.”
“We kiss my Lady Marchioness's hand,” says Mr. Holt.
“My lord, God speed you!” she said, stepping up and embracing my lord in
a grand manner. “Mr. Holt, I ask your blessing:” and she knelt down for
that, whilst Mrs. Tusher tossed her head up.
Mr. Holt gave the same benediction to the little page, who went down
and held my lord's stirrups for him to mount; there were two servants
waiting there too--and they rode out of Castlewood gate.
As they crossed the bridge, Harry could see an officer in scarlet ride
up touching his hat, and address my lord.
The party stopped, and came to some parley or discussion, which
presently ended, my lord putting his horse into a canter after taking
off his hat and making a bow to the officer, who rode alongside him step
for step: the trooper accompanying him falling back, and riding with my
lord's two men. They cantered over the Green, and behind the elms (my
lord waving his hand, Harry thought), and so they disappeared. That
evening we had a great panic, the cow-boy coming at milking-time riding
one of our horses, which he had found grazing at the outer park-wall.
All night my Lady Viscountess was in a very quiet and subdued mood.
She scarce found fault with anybody; she played at cards for six hours;
little page Esmond went to sleep. He prayed for my lord and the good
cause before closing his eyes.
It was quite in the gray of the morning when the porter's bell rang, and
old Lockwood, waking up, let in one of my lord's servants, who had gone
with him in the morning, and who returned with a melancholy story. The
officer who rode up to my lord had, it appeared, said to him, that it
was his duty to inform his lordship that he was not under arrest, but
under surveillance, and to request him not to ride abroad that day.
My lord replied that riding was good for his health, that if the Captain
chose to accompany him he was welcome; and it was then that he made a
bow, and they cantered away together.
When he came on to Wansey Down, my lord all of a sudden pulled up, and
the party came to a halt at the cross-way.
“Sir,” says he to the officer, “we are four to two; will you be so kind
as to take that road, and leave me go mine?”
“Your road is mine, my lord,” says the officer.
“Then--” says my lord; but he had no time to say more, for the officer,
drawing a pistol, snapped it at his lordship; as at the same moment
Father Holt, drawing a pistol, shot the officer through the head. It was
done, and the man dead in an instant of time. The orderly, gazing at the
officer, looked seared for a moment, and galloped away for his life.
“Fire! fire!” cries out Father Holt, sending another shot after the
trooper, but the two servants were too much surprised to use their
pieces, and my lord calling to them to hold their hands, the fellow got
away.
“Mr. Holt, qui pensait a tout,” says Blaise, “gets off his horse,
examines the pockets of the dead officer for papers, gives his money to
us two, and says, 'The wine is drawn, M. le Marquis,'--why did he say
Marquis to M. le Vicomte?--'we must drink it.'
“The poor gentleman's horse was a better one than that I rode,”
Blaise continues; “Mr. Holt bids me get on him, and so I gave a cut to
Whitefoot, and she trotted home. We rode on towards Newbury; we heard
firing towards midday: at two o'clock a horseman comes up to us as we
were giving our cattle water at an inn--and says, 'All is done! The
Ecossais declared an hour too soon--General Ginckel was down upon them.'
The whole thing was at an end.
“'And we've shot an officer on duty, and let his orderly escape,' says
my lord.
“'Blaise,' says Mr. Holt, writing two lines on his table-book, one for
my lady and one for you, Master Harry; 'you must go back to Castlewood,
and deliver these,' and behold me.”
And he gave Harry the two papers. He read that to himself, which only
said, “Burn the papers in the cupboard, burn this. You know nothing
about anything.” Harry read this, ran up stairs to his mistress's
apartment, where her gentlewoman slept near to the door, made her bring
a light and wake my lady, into whose hands he gave the paper. She was a
wonderful object to look at in her night attire, nor had Harry ever seen
the like.
As soon as she had the paper in her hand, Harry stepped back to the
Chaplain's room, opened the secret cupboard over the fireplace, burned
all the papers in it, and, as he had seen the priest do before, took
down one of his reverence's manuscript sermons, and half burnt that
in the brazier. By the time the papers were quite destroyed it was
daylight. Harry ran back to his mistress again. Her gentlewoman ushered
him again into her ladyship's chamber; she told him (from behind her
nuptial curtains) to bid the coach be got ready, and that she would ride
away anon.
But the mysteries of her ladyship's toilet were as awfully long on this
day as on any other, and, long after the coach was ready, my lady was
still attiring herself. And just as the Viscountess stepped forth from
her room, ready for departure, young John Lockwood comes running up
from the village with news that a lawyer, three officers, and twenty or
four-and-twenty soldiers, were marching thence upon the house. John had
but two minutes the start of them, and, ere he had well told his story,
the troop rode into our court-yard.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ISSUE OF THE PLOTS.--THE DEATH OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT OF
CASTLEWOOD; AND THE IMPRISONMENT OF HIS VISCOUNTESS.
At first my lady was for dying like Mary, Queen of Scots (to whom she
fancied she bore a resemblance in beauty), and, stroking her scraggy
neck, said, “They will find Isabel of Castlewood is equal to her fate.”
Her gentlewoman, Victoire, persuaded her that her prudent course was,
as she could not fly, to receive the troops as though she suspected
nothing, and that her chamber was the best place wherein to await them.
So her black Japan casket, which Harry was to carry to the coach, was
taken back to her ladyship's chamber, whither the maid and mistress
retired. Victoire came out presently, bidding the page to say her
ladyship was ill, confined to her bed with the rheumatism.
By this time the soldiers had reached Castlewood. Harry Esmond saw
them from the window of the tapestry parlor; a couple of sentinels were
posted at the gate--a half-dozen more walked towards the stable; and
some others, preceded by their commander, and a man in black, a lawyer
probably, were conducted by one of the servants to the stair leading up
to the part of the house which my lord and lady inhabited.
So the Captain, a handsome kind man, and the lawyer, came through the
ante-room to the tapestry parlor, and where now was nobody but young
Harry Esmond, the page.
“Tell your mistress, little man,” says the Captain, kindly, “that we
must speak to her.”
“My mistress is ill a-bed,” said the page.
“What complaint has she?” asked the Captain.
The boy said, “The rheumatism!”
“Rheumatism! that's a sad complaint,” continues the good-natured
Captain; “and the coach is in the yard to fetch the Doctor, I suppose?”
“I don't know,” says the boy.
“And how long has her ladyship been ill?”
“I don't know,” says the boy.
“When did my lord go away?”
“Yesterday night.”
“With Father Holt?”
“With Mr. Holt.”
“And which way did they travel?” asks the lawyer.
“They travelled without me,” says the page.
“We must see Lady Castlewood.”
“I have orders that nobody goes in to her ladyship--she is sick,” says
the page; but at this moment Victoire came out. “Hush!” says she; and,
as if not knowing that any one was near, “What's this noise?” says she.
“Is this gentleman the Doctor?”
“Stuff! we must see Lady Castlewood,” says the lawyer, pushing by.
The curtains of her ladyship's room were down, and the chamber dark,
and she was in bed with a nightcap on her head, and propped up by her
pillows, looking none the less ghastly because of the red which was
still on her cheeks, and which she could not afford to forego.
“Is that the Doctor?” she said.
“There is no use with this deception, madam,” Captain Westbury said (for
so he was named). “My duty is to arrest the person of Thomas, Viscount
Castlewood, a nonjuring peer--of Robert Tusher, Vicar of Castlewood--and
Henry Holt, known under various other names and designations, a Jesuit
priest, who officiated as chaplain here in the late king's time, and is
now at the head of the conspiracy which was about to break out in this
country against the authority of their Majesties King William and Queen
Mary--and my orders are to search the house for such papers or traces of
the conspiracy as may be found here. Your ladyship will please give me
your keys, and it will be as well for yourself that you should help us,
in every way, in our search.”
“You see, sir, that I have the rheumatism, and cannot move,” said
the lady, looking uncommonly ghastly as she sat up in her bed, where,
however, she had had her cheeks painted, and a new cap put on, so that
she might at least look her best when the officers came.
“I shall take leave to place a sentinel in the chamber, so that your
ladyship, in case you should wish to rise, may have an arm to lean on,”
Captain Westbury said. “Your woman will show me where I am to look;” and
Madame Victoire, chattering in her half French and half English jargon,
opened while the Captain examined one drawer after another; but, as
Harry Esmond thought, rather carelessly, with a smile on his face, as if
he was only conducting the examination for form's sake.
Before one of the cupboards Victoire flung herself down, stretching out
her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, cried, “Non, jamais, monsieur
l'officier! Jamais! I will rather die than let you see this wardrobe.”
But Captain Westbury would open it, still with a smile on his face,
which, when the box was opened, turned into a fair burst of laughter.
It contained--not papers regarding the conspiracy--but my lady's wigs,
washes, and rouge-pots, and Victoire said men were monsters, as the
Captain went on with his perquisition. He tapped the back to see whether
or no it was hollow, and as he thrust his hands into the cupboard, my
lady from her bed called out, with a voice that did not sound like that
of a very sick woman, “Is it your commission to insult ladies as well as
to arrest gentlemen, Captain?”
“These articles are only dangerous when worn by your ladyship,” the
Captain said, with a low bow, and a mock grin of politeness. “I have
found nothing which concerns the Government as yet--only the weapons
with which beauty is authorized to kill,” says he, pointing to a wig
with his sword-tip. “We must now proceed to search the rest of the
house.”
“You are not going to leave that wretch in the room with me,” cried my
lady, pointing to the soldier.
“What can I do, madam? Somebody you must have to smooth your pillow and
bring your medicine--permit me--”
“Sir!” screamed out my lady.
“Madam, if you are too ill to leave the bed,” the Captain then said,
rather sternly, “I must have in four of my men to lift you off in the
sheet. I must examine this bed, in a word; papers may be hidden in a bed
as elsewhere; we know that very well and * * *.”
Here it was her ladyship's turn to shriek, for the Captain, with his
fist shaking the pillows and bolsters, at last came to “burn” as they
say in the play of forfeits, and wrenching away one of the pillows,
said, “Look! did not I tell you so? Here is a pillow stuffed with
paper.”
“Some villain has betrayed us,” cried out my lady, sitting up in the
bed, showing herself full dressed under her night-rail.
“And now your ladyship can move, I am sure; permit me to give you my
hand to rise. You will have to travel for some distance, as far as
Hexton Castle to-night. Will you have your coach? Your woman shall
attend you if you like--and the japan-box?”
“Sir! you don't strike a MAN when he is down,” said my lady, with some
dignity: “can you not spare a woman?”
“Your ladyship must please to rise, and let me search the bed,” said the
Captain; “there is no more time to lose in bandying talk.”
And, without more ado, the gaunt old woman got up. Harry Esmond
recollected to the end of his life that figure, with the brocade dress
and the white night-rail, and the gold-clocked red stockings, and white
red-heeled shoes, sitting up in the bed, and stepping down from it. The
trunks were ready packed for departure in her ante-room, and the horses
ready harnessed in the stable: about all which the Captain seemed to
know, by information got from some quarter or other; and whence Esmond
could make a pretty shrewd guess in after-times, when Dr. Tusher
complained that King William's government had basely treated him for
services done in that cause.
And here he may relate, though he was then too young to know all that
was happening, what the papers contained, of which Captain Westbury had
made a seizure, and which papers had been transferred from the japan-box
to the bed when the officers arrived.
There was a list of gentlemen of the county in Father Holt's hand
writing--Mr. Freeman's (King James's) friends--a similar paper being
found among those of Sir John Fenwick and Mr. Coplestone, who suffered
death for this conspiracy.
There was a patent conferring the title of Marquis of Esmond on my
Lord Castlewood and the heirs-male of his body; his appointment as
Lord-Lieutenant of the County, and Major-General.*
* To have this rank of Marquis restored in the family had
always been my Lady Viscountess's ambition; and her old
maiden aunt, Barbara Topham, the goldsmith's daughter, dying
about this time, and leaving all her property to Lady
Castlewood, I have heard that her ladyship sent almost the
whole of the money to King James, a proceeding which so
irritated my Lord Castlewood that he actually went to the
parish church, and was only appeased by the Marquis's title
which his exiled Majesty sent to him in return for the
15,000L. his faithful subject lent him.
There were various letters from the nobility and gentry, some ardent
and some doubtful, in the King's service; and (very luckily for him) two
letters concerning Colonel Francis Esmond: one from Father Holt, which
said, “I have been to see this Colonel at his house at Walcote, near to
Wells, where he resides since the King's departure, and pressed him very
eagerly in Mr. Freeman's cause, showing him the great advantage he would
have by trading with that merchant, offering him large premiums there as
agreed between us. But he says no: he considers Mr. Freeman the head of
the firm, will never trade against him or embark with any other trading
company, but considers his duty was done when Mr. Freeman left England.
This Colonel seems to care more for his wife and his beagles than for
affairs. He asked me much about young H. E., 'that bastard,' as he
called him; doubting my lord's intentions respecting him. I reassured
him on this head, stating what I knew of the lad, and our intentions
respecting him, but with regard to Freeman he was inflexible.”
And another letter was from Colonel Esmond to his kinsman, to say that
one Captain Holton had been with him offering him large bribes to join,
YOU KNOW WHO, and saying that the head of the house of Castlewood was
deeply engaged in that quarter. But for his part he had broke his
sword when the K. left the country, and would never again fight in that
quarrel. The P. of O. was a man, at least, of a noble courage, and his
duty, and, as he thought, every Englishman's, was to keep the country
quiet, and the French out of it: and, in fine, that he would have
nothing to do with the scheme.
Of the existence of these two letters and the contents of the pillow,
Colonel Frank Esmond, who became Viscount Castlewood, told Henry
Esmond afterwards, when the letters were shown to his lordship, who
congratulated himself, as he had good reason, that he had not joined
in the scheme which proved so fatal to many concerned in it. But,
naturally, the lad knew little about these circumstances when they
happened under his eyes: only being aware that his patron and his
mistress were in some trouble, which had caused the flight of the one
and the apprehension of the other by the officers of King William.
The seizure of the papers effected, the gentlemen did not pursue their
further search through Castlewood House very rigorously. They examined
Mr. Holt's room, being led thither by his pupil, who showed, as the
Father had bidden him, the place where the key of his chamber lay,
opened the door for the gentlemen, and conducted them into the room.
When the gentlemen came to the half-burned papers in the brazier, they
examined them eagerly enough, and their young guide was a little amused
at their perplexity.
“What are these?” says one.
“They're written in a foreign language,” says the lawyer. “What are you
laughing at, little whelp?” adds he, turning round as he saw the boy
smile.
“Mr. Holt said they were sermons,” Harry said, “and bade me to burn
them;” which indeed was true of those papers.
“Sermons indeed--it's treason, I would lay a wager,” cries the lawyer.
“Egad! it's Greek to me,” says Captain Westbury. “Can you read it,
little boy?”
“Yes, sir, a little,” Harry said.
“Then read, and read in English, sir, on your peril,” said the lawyer.
And Harry began to translate:--
“Hath not one of your own writers said, 'The children of Adam are now
laboring as much as he himself ever did, about the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, shaking the boughs thereof, and seeking the fruit,
being for the most part unmindful of the tree of life.' Oh blind
generation! 'tis this tree of knowledge to which the serpent has led
you”--and here the boy was obliged to stop, the rest of the page being
charred by the fire: and asked of the lawyer--“Shall I go on, sir?”
The lawyer said--“This boy is deeper than he seems: who knows that he is
not laughing at us?”
“Let's have in Dick the Scholar,” cried Captain Westbury, laughing: and
he called to a trooper out of the window--“Ho, Dick, come in here and
construe.”
A thick-set soldier, with a square good-humored face, came in at the
summons, saluting his officer.
“Tell us what is this, Dick,” says the lawyer.
“My name is Steele, sir,” says the soldier. “I may be Dick for my
friends, but I don't name gentlemen of your cloth amongst them.”
“Well then, Steele.”
“Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you address a gentleman of his
Majesty's Horse Guards, be pleased not to be so familiar.”
“I didn't know, sir,” said the lawyer.
“How should you? I take it you are not accustomed to meet with
gentlemen,” says the trooper.
“Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper,” says Westbury.
“'Tis Latin,” says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his officer,
“and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth's,” and he translated the words
pretty much as Henry Esmond had rendered them.
“What a young scholar you are,” says the Captain to the boy.
“Depend on't, he knows more than he tells,” says the lawyer. “I think we
will pack him off in the coach with old Jezebel.”
“For construing a bit of Latin?” said the Captain, very good-naturedly.
“I would as lief go there as anywhere,” Harry Esmond said, simply, “for
there is nobody to care for me.”
There must have been something touching in the child's voice, or in
this description of his solitude--for the Captain looked at him very
good-naturedly, and the trooper, called Steele, put his hand kindly on
the lad's head, and said some words in the Latin tongue.
“What does he say?” says the lawyer.
“Faith, ask Dick himself,” cried Captain Westbury.
“I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to
succor the miserable, and that's not YOUR trade, Mr. Sheepskin,” said
the trooper.
“You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbet,” the Captain
said. And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind face and kind word,
felt very grateful to this good-natured champion.
The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach; and the Countess
and Victoire came down and were put into the vehicle. This woman, who
quarrelled with Harry Esmond all day, was melted at parting with him,
and called him “dear angel,” and “poor infant,” and a hundred other
names.
The Viscountess, giving him her lean hand to kiss, bade him always be
faithful to the house of Esmond. “If evil should happen to my lord,”
says she, “his SUCCESSOR, I trust, will be found, and give you
protection. Situated as I am, they will not dare wreak their vengeance
on me NOW.” And she kissed a medal she wore with great fervor, and
Henry Esmond knew not in the least what her meaning was; but hath since
learned that, old as she was, she was for ever expecting, by the good
offices of saints and relics, to have an heir to the title of Esmond.
Harry Esmond was too young to have been introduced into the secrets
of politics in which his patrons were implicated; for they put but few
questions to the boy (who was little of stature, and looked much younger
than his age), and such questions as they put he answered cautiously
enough, and professing even more ignorance than he had, for which his
examiners willingly enough gave him credit. He did not say a word about
the window or the cupboard over the fireplace; and these secrets quite
escaped the eyes of the searchers.
So then my lady was consigned to her coach, and sent off to Hexton, with
her woman and the man of law to bear her company, a couple of troopers
riding on either side of the coach. And Harry was left behind at the
Hall, belonging as it were to nobody, and quite alone in the world.
The captain and a guard of men remained in possession there; and the
soldiers, who were very good-natured and kind, ate my lord's mutton and
drank his wine, and made themselves comfortable, as they well might do
in such pleasant quarters.
The captains had their dinner served in my lord's tapestry parlor, and
poor little Harry thought his duty was to wait upon Captain Westbury's
chair, as his custom had been to serve his lord when he sat there.
After the departure of the Countess, Dick the Scholar took Harry Esmond
under his special protection, and would examine him in his humanities
and talk to him both of French and Latin, in which tongues the lad
found, and his new friend was willing enough to acknowledge, that he was
even more proficient than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned them
from a Jesuit, in the praise of whom and whose goodness Harry was never
tired of speaking, Dick, rather to the boy's surprise, who began to have
an early shrewdness, like many children bred up alone, showed a great
deal of theological science, and knowledge of the points at issue
between the two churches; so that he and Harry would have hours of
controversy together, in which the boy was certainly worsted by the
arguments of this singular trooper. “I am no common soldier,” Dick would
say, and indeed it was easy to see by his learning, breeding, and
many accomplishments, that he was not. “I am of one of the most ancient
families in the empire; I have had my education at a famous school,
and a famous university; I learned my first rudiments of Latin near to
Smithfield, in London, where the martyrs were roasted.”
“You hanged as many of ours,” interposed Harry; “and, for the matter of
persecution, Father Holt told me that a young gentleman of Edinburgh,
eighteen years of age, student at the college there, was hanged for
heresy only last year, though he recanted, and solemnly asked pardon for
his errors.”
“Faith! there has been too much persecution on both sides: but 'twas you
taught us.”
“Nay, 'twas the Pagans began it,” cried the lad, and began to instance
a number of saints of the Church, from the proto-martyr downwards--“this
one's fire went out under him: that one's oil cooled in the caldron: at
a third holy head the executioner chopped three times and it would not
come off. Show us martyrs in YOUR church for whom such miracles have
been done.”
“Nay,” says the trooper gravely, “the miracles of the first three
centuries belong to my Church as well as yours, Master Papist,” and then
added, with something of a smile upon his countenance, and a queer look
at Harry--“And yet, my little catechiser, I have sometimes thought about
those miracles, that there was not much good in them, since the victim's
head always finished by coming off at the third or fourth chop, and the
caldron, if it did not boil one day, boiled the next. Howbeit, in our
times, the Church has lost that questionable advantage of respites.
There never was a shower to put out Ridley's fire, nor an angel to turn
the edge of Campion's axe. The rack tore the limbs of Southwell
the Jesuit and Sympson the Protestant alike. For faith, everywhere
multitudes die willingly enough. I have read in Monsieur Rycaut's
'History of the Turks,' of thousands of Mahomet's followers rushing
upon death in battle as upon certain Paradise; and in the great Mogul's
dominions people fling themselves by hundreds under the cars of the
idols annually, and the widows burn themselves on their husbands'
bodies, as 'tis well known. 'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so
hard, Master Harry--every man of every nation has done that--'tis the
living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost,” he added with
a sigh. “And ah!” he added, “my poor lad, I am not strong enough to
convince thee by my life--though to die for my religion would give me
the greatest of joys--but I had a dear friend in Magdalen College in
Oxford; I wish Joe Addison were here to convince thee, as he quickly
could--for I think he's a match for the whole College of Jesuits; and
what's more, in his life too. In that very sermon of Dr. Cudworth's
which your priest was quoting from, and which suffered martydom in the
brazier,”--Dick added with a smile, “I had a thought of wearing the
black coat (but was ashamed of my life, you see, and took to this sorry
red one); I have often thought of Joe Addison--Dr. Cudworth says,
'A good conscience is the best looking-glass of heaven'--and there's
serenity in my friend's face which always reflects it--I wish you could
see him, Harry.”
“Did he do you a great deal of good?” asked the lad, simply.
“He might have done,” said the other--“at least he taught me to see and
approve better things. 'Tis my own fault, deteriora sequi.”
“You seem very good,” the boy said.
“I'm not what I seem, alas!” answered the trooper--and indeed, as it
turned out, poor Dick told the truth--for that very night, at supper
in the hall, where the gentlemen of the troop took their repasts,
and passed most part of their days dicing and smoking of tobacco, and
singing and cursing, over the Castlewood ale--Harry Esmond found Dick
the Scholar in a woful state of drunkenness. He hiccupped out a sermon
and his laughing companions bade him sing a hymn, on which Dick,
swearing he would run the scoundrel through the body who insulted his
religion, made for his sword, which was hanging on the wall, and fell
down flat on the floor under it, saying to Harry, who ran forward to
help him, “Ah, little Papist, I wish Joseph Addison was here!”
Though the troopers of the King's Life-Guards were all gentlemen, yet
the rest of the gentlemen seemed ignorant and vulgar boors to Harry
Esmond, with the exception of this good-natured Corporal Steele the
Scholar, and Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant, who were always
kind to the lad. They remained for some weeks or months encamped in
Castlewood, and Harry learned from them, from time to time, how the lady
at Hexton Castle was treated, and the particulars of her confinement
there. 'Tis known that King William was disposed to deal very leniently
with the gentry who remained faithful to the old King's cause; and no
prince usurping a crown, as his enemies said he did, (righteously
taking it, as I think now,) ever caused less blood to be shed. As for
women-conspirators, he kept spies on the least dangerous, and locked up
the others. Lady Castlewood had the best rooms in Hexton Castle, and the
gaoler's garden to walk in; and though she repeatedly desired to be led
out to execution, like Mary Queen of Scots, there never was any thought
of taking her painted old head off, or any desire to do aught but keep
her person in security.
And it appeared she found that some were friends in her misfortune, whom
she had, in her prosperity, considered as her worst enemies. Colonel
Francis Esmond, my lord's cousin and her ladyship's, who had married the
Dean of Winchester's daughter, and, since King James's departure out of
England, had lived not very far away from Hexton town, hearing of his
kinswoman's strait, and being friends with Colonel Brice, commanding for
King William in Hexton, and with the Church dignitaries there, came
to visit her ladyship in prison, offering to his uncle's daughter any
friendly services which lay in his power. And he brought his lady and
little daughter to see the prisoner, to the latter of whom, a child
of great beauty and many winning ways, the old Viscountess took not
a little liking, although between her ladyship and the child's mother
there was little more love than formerly. There are some injuries which
women never forgive one another; and Madam Francis Esmond, in marrying
her cousin, had done one of those irretrievable wrongs to Lady
Castlewood. But as she was now humiliated, and in misfortune, Madam
Francis could allow a truce to her enmity, and could be kind for a
while, at least, to her husband's discarded mistress. So the little
Beatrix, her daughter, was permitted often to go and visit the
imprisoned Viscountess, who, in so far as the child and its father
were concerned, got to abate in her anger towards that branch of the
Castlewood family. And the letters of Colonel Esmond coming to light,
as has been said, and his conduct being known to the King's council, the
Colonel was put in a better position with the existing government than
he had ever before been; any suspicions regarding his loyalty were
entirely done away; and so he was enabled to be of more service to his
kinswoman than he could otherwise have been.
And now there befell an event by which this lady recovered her liberty,
and the house of Castlewood got a new owner, and fatherless little Harry
Esmond a new and most kind protector and friend. Whatever that secret
was which Harry was to hear from my lord, the boy never heard it; for
that night when Father Holt arrived, and carried my lord away with him,
was the last on which Harry ever saw his patron. What happened to my
lord may be briefly told here. Having found the horses at the place
where they were lying, my lord and Father Holt rode together to
Chatteris, where they had temporary refuge with one of the Father's
penitents in that city; but the pursuit being hot for them, and the
reward for the apprehension of one or the other considerable, it was
deemed advisable that they should separate; and the priest betook
himself to other places of retreat known to him, whilst my lord passed
over from Bristol into Ireland, in which kingdom King James had a court
and an army. My lord was but a small addition to this; bringing, indeed,
only his sword and the few pieces in his pocket; but the King received
him with some kindness and distinction in spite of his poor plight,
confirmed him in his new title of Marquis, gave him a regiment, and
promised him further promotion. But titles or promotion were not to
benefit him now. My lord was wounded at the fatal battle of the Boyne,
flying from which field (long after his master had set him an example)
he lay for a while concealed in the marshy country near to the town of
Trim, and more from catarrh and fever caught in the bogs than from the
steel of the enemy in the battle, sank and died. May the earth lie light
upon Thomas of Castlewood! He who writes this must speak in charity,
though this lord did him and his two grievous wrongs: for one of these
he would have made amends, perhaps, had life been spared him; but the
other lay beyond his power to repair, though 'tis to be hoped that a
greater Power than a priest has absolved him of it. He got the comfort
of this absolution, too, such as it was: a priest of Trim writing a
letter to my lady to inform her of this calamity.
But in those days letters were slow of travelling, and our priest's took
two months or more on its journey from Ireland to England: where, when
it did arrive, it did not find my lady at her own house; she was at the
King's house of Hexton Castle when the letter came to Castlewood, but it
was opened for all that by the officer in command there.
Harry Esmond well remembered the receipt of this letter, which Lockwood
brought in as Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant were on the green
playing at bowls, young Esmond looking on at the sport, or reading his
book in the arbor.
“Here's news for Frank Esmond,” says Captain Westbury; “Harry, did you
ever see Colonel Esmond?” And Captain Westbury looked very hard at the
boy as he spoke.
Harry said he had seen him but once when he was at Hexton, at the ball
there.
“And did he say anything?”
“He said what I don't care to repeat,” Harry answered. For he was now
twelve years of age: he knew what his birth was, and the disgrace of
it; and he felt no love towards the man who had most likely stained his
mother's honor and his own.
“Did you love my Lord Castlewood?”
“I wait until I know my mother, sir, to say,” the boy answered, his eyes
filling with tears.
“Something has happened to Lord Castlewood,” Captain Westbury said in a
very grave tone--“something which must happen to us all. He is dead of a
wound received at the Boyne, fighting for King James.”
“I am glad my lord fought for the right cause,” the boy said.
“It was better to meet death on the field like a man, than face it on
Tower-hill, as some of them may,” continued Mr. Westbury. “I hope he has
made some testament, or provided for thee somehow. This letter says he
recommends unicum filium suum dilectissimum to his lady. I hope he has
left you more than that.”
Harry did not know, he said. He was in the hands of Heaven and Fate; but
more lonely now, as it seemed to him, than he had been all the rest of
his life; and that night, as he lay in his little room which he still
occupied, the boy thought with many a pang of shame and grief of his
strange and solitary condition: how he had a father and no father; a
nameless mother that had been brought to ruin, perhaps, by that very
father whom Harry could only acknowledge in secret and with a blush,
and whom he could neither love nor revere. And he sickened to think how
Father Holt, a stranger, and two or three soldiers, his acquaintances
of the last six weeks, were the only friends he had in the great wide
world, where he was now quite alone. The soul of the boy was full of
love, and he longed as he lay in the darkness there for some one upon
whom he could bestow it. He remembers, and must to his dying day, the
thoughts and tears of that long night, the hours tolling through it.
Who was he, and what? Why here rather than elsewhere? I have a mind, he
thought, to go to that priest at Trim, and find out what my father said
to him on his death-bed confession. Is there any child in the whole
world so unprotected as I am? Shall I get up and quit this place, and
run to Ireland? With these thoughts and tears the lad passed that night
away until he wept himself to sleep.
The next day, the gentlemen of the guard, who had heard what had
befallen him, were more than usually kind to the child, especially his
friend Scholar Dick, who told him about his own father's death, which
had happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not quite five years of
age. “That was the first sensation of grief,” Dick said, “I ever knew.
I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat
weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating
the coffin, and calling Papa; on which my mother caught me in her arms,
and told me in a flood of tears Papa could not hear me, and would play
with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he
could never come to us again. And this,” said Dick kindly, “has made
me pity all children ever since; and caused me to love thee, my poor
fatherless, motherless lad. And, if ever thou wantest a friend, thou
shalt have one in Richard Steele.”
Harry Esmond thanked him, and was grateful. But what could Corporal
Steele do for him? take him to ride a spare horse, and be servant to the
troop? Though there might be a bar in Harry Esmond's shield, it was a
noble one. The counsel of the two friends was, that little Harry
should stay where he was, and abide his fortune: so Esmond stayed on at
Castlewood, awaiting with no small anxiety the fate, whatever it was,
which was over him.
CHAPTER VII.
I AM LEFT AT CASTLEWOOD AN ORPHAN, AND FIND MOST KIND PROTECTORS THERE.
During the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, honest Dick the Scholar
was the constant companion of the lonely little orphan lad Harry Esmond:
and they read together, and they played bowls together, and when the
other troopers or their officers, who were free-spoken over their cups,
(as was the way of that day, when neither men nor women were over-nice,)
talked unbecomingly of their amours and gallantries before the child,
Dick, who very likely was setting the whole company laughing, would stop
their jokes with a maxima debetur pueris reverentia, and once offered
to lug out against another trooper called Hulking Tom, who wanted to ask
Harry Esmond a ribald question.
Also, Dick seeing that the child had, as he said, a sensibility above
his years, and a great and praiseworthy discretion, confided to Harry
his love for a vintner's daughter, near to the Tollyard, Westminster,
whom Dick addressed as Saccharissa in many verses of his composition,
and without whom he said it would be impossible that he could continue
to live. He vowed this a thousand times in a day, though Harry smiled to
see the love-lorn swain had his health and appetite as well as the most
heart-whole trooper in the regiment: and he swore Harry to secrecy too,
which vow the lad religiously kept, until he found that officers and
privates were all taken into Dick's confidence, and had the benefit of
his verses. And it must be owned likewise that, while Dick was sighing
after Saccharissa in London, he had consolations in the country; for
there came a wench out of Castlewood village who had washed his linen,
and who cried sadly when she heard he was gone: and without paying her
bill too, which Harry Esmond took upon himself to discharge by giving
the girl a silver pocket-piece, which Scholar Dick had presented to him,
when, with many embraces and prayers for his prosperity, Dick parted
from him, the garrison of Castlewood being ordered away. Dick the
Scholar said he would never forget his young friend, nor indeed did he:
and Harry was sorry when the kind soldiers vacated Castlewood, looking
forward with no small anxiety (for care and solitude had made him
thoughtful beyond his years) to his fate when the new lord and lady of
the house came to live there. He had lived to be past twelve years old
now; and had never had a friend, save this wild trooper, perhaps, and
Father Holt; and had a fond and affectionate heart, tender to weakness,
that would fain attach itself to somebody, and did not seem at rest
until it had found a friend who would take charge of it.
The instinct which led Henry Esmond to admire and love the gracious
person, the fair apparition of whose beauty and kindness had so moved
him when he first beheld her, became soon a devoted affection and
passion of gratitude, which entirely filled his young heart, that
as yet, except in the case of dear Father Holt, had had very little
kindness for which to be thankful. O Dea certe, thought he, remembering
the lines out of the AEneas which Mr. Holt had taught him. There seemed,
as the boy thought, in every look or gesture of this fair creature,
an angelical softness and bright pity--in motion or repose she seemed
gracious alike; the tone of her voice, though she uttered words ever so
trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted almost to anguish. It cannot
be called love, that a lad of twelve years of age, little more than a
menial, felt for an exalted lady, his mistress: but it was worship.
To catch her glance, to divine her errand and run on it before she had
spoken it; to watch, follow, adore her; became the business of his life.
Meanwhile, as is the way often, his idol had idols of her own, and never
thought of or suspected the admiration of her little pigmy adorer.
My lady had on her side her three idols: first and foremost, Jove
and supreme ruler, was her lord, Harry's patron, the good Viscount of
Castlewood. All wishes of his were laws with her. If he had a headache,
she was ill. If he frowned, she trembled. If he joked, she smiled and
was charmed. If he went a-hunting, she was always at the window to see
him ride away, her little son crowing on her arm, or on the watch till
his return. She made dishes for his dinner: spiced wine for him: made
the toast for his tankard at breakfast: hushed the house when he slept
in his chair, and watched for a look when he woke. If my lord was not a
little proud of his beauty, my lady adored it. She clung to his arm as
he paced the terrace, her two fair little hands clasped round his great
one; her eyes were never tired of looking in his face and wondering at
its perfection. Her little son was his son, and had his father's look
and curly brown hair. Her daughter Beatrix was his daughter, and had his
eyes--were there ever such beautiful eyes in the world? All the house
was arranged so as to bring him ease and give him pleasure. She liked
the small gentry round about to come and pay him court, never caring for
admiration for herself; those who wanted to be well with the lady must
admire him. Not regarding her dress, she would wear a gown to rags,
because he had once liked it: and, if he brought her a brooch or a
ribbon, would prefer it to all the most costly articles of her wardrobe.
My lord went to London every year for six weeks, and the family being
too poor to appear at Court with any figure, he went alone. It was not
until he was out of sight that her face showed any sorrow: and what
a joy when he came back! What preparation before his return! The fond
creature had his arm-chair at the chimney-side--delighting to put the
children in it, and look at them there. Nobody took his place at the
table; but his silver tankard stood there as when my lord was present.
A pretty sight it was to see, during my lord's absence, or on those many
mornings when sleep or headache kept him a-bed, this fair young lady of
Castlewood, her little daughter at her knee, and her domestics gathered
round her, reading the Morning Prayer of the English Church. Esmond
long remembered how she looked and spoke, kneeling reverently before the
sacred book, the sun shining upon her golden hair until it made a halo
round about her. A dozen of the servants of the house kneeled in a line
opposite their mistress; for a while Harry Esmond kept apart from these
mysteries, but Doctor Tusher showing him that the prayers read were
those of the Church of all ages, and the boy's own inclination prompting
him to be always as near as he might to his mistress, and to think all
things she did right, from listening to the prayers in the ante-chamber,
he came presently to kneel down with the rest of the household in
the parlor; and before a couple of years my lady had made a thorough
convert. Indeed, the boy loved his catechiser so much that he would have
subscribed to anything she bade him, and was never tired of listening to
her fond discourse and simple comments upon the book, which she read to
him in a voice of which it was difficult to resist the sweet persuasion
and tender appealing kindness. This friendly controversy, and the
intimacy which it occasioned, bound the lad more fondly than ever to his
mistress. The happiest period of all his life was this; and the
young mother, with her daughter and son, and the orphan lad whom she
protected, read and worked and played, and were children together.
If the lady looked forward--as what fond woman does not?--towards the
future, she had no plans from which Harry Esmond was left out; and a
thousand and a thousand times, in his passionate and impetuous way,
he vowed that no power should separate him from his mistress; and only
asked for some chance to happen by which he might show his fidelity
to her. Now, at the close of his life, as he sits and recalls in
tranquillity the happy and busy scenes of it, he can think, not
ungratefully, that he has been faithful to that early vow. Such a life
is so simple that years may be chronicled in a few lines. But few men's
life-voyages are destined to be all prosperous; and this calm of which
we are speaking was soon to come to an end.
As Esmond grew, and observed for himself, he found of necessity much to
read and think of outside that fond circle of kinsfolk who had admitted
him to join hand with them. He read more books than they cared to study
with him; was alone in the midst of them many a time, and passed nights
over labors, futile perhaps, but in which they could not join him. His
dear mistress divined his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness
of affection: began to forebode a time when he would escape from his
home-nest; and, at his eager protestations to the contrary, would
only sigh and shake her head. Before those fatal decrees in life are
executed, there are always secret previsions and warning omens. When
everything yet seems calm, we are aware that the storm is coming. Ere
the happy days were over, two at least of that home-party felt that they
were drawing to a close; and were uneasy, and on the look-out for the
cloud which was to obscure their calm.
'Twas easy for Harry to see, however much his lady persisted in
obedience and admiration for her husband, that my lord tired of his
quiet life, and grew weary, and then testy, at those gentle bonds with
which his wife would have held him. As they say the Grand Lama of Thibet
is very much fatigued by his character of divinity, and yawns on
his altar as his bonzes kneel and worship him, many a home-god grows
heartily sick of the reverence with which his family-devotees pursue
him, and sighs for freedom and for his old life, and to be off the
pedestal on which his dependants would have him sit for ever, whilst
they adore him, and ply him with flowers, and hymns, and incense,
and flattery;--so, after a few years of his marriage my honest Lord
Castlewood began to tire; all the high-flown raptures and devotional
ceremonies with which his wife, his chief priestess, treated him, first
sent him to sleep, and then drove him out of doors; for the truth must
be told, that my lord was a jolly gentleman, with very little of the
august or divine in his nature, though his fond wife persisted in
revering it--and, besides, he had to pay a penalty for this love, which
persons of his disposition seldom like to defray: and, in a word, if he
had a loving wife, had a very jealous and exacting one. Then he wearied
of this jealousy; then he broke away from it; then came, no doubt,
complaints and recriminations; then, perhaps, promises of amendment
not fulfilled; then upbraidings not the more pleasant because they
were silent, and only sad looks and tearful eyes conveyed them. Then,
perhaps, the pair reached that other stage which is not uncommon in
married life, when the woman perceives that the god of the honeymoon is
a god no more; only a mortal like the rest of us--and so she looks into
her heart, and lo! vacuae sedes et inania arcana. And now, supposing our
lady to have a fine genius and a brilliant wit of her own, and the magic
spell and infatuation removed from her which had led her to worship as
a god a very ordinary mortal--and what follows? They live together, and
they dine together, and they say “my dear” and “my love” as heretofore;
but the man is himself, and the woman herself: that dream of love is
over as everything else is over in life; as flowers and fury, and griefs
and pleasures, are over.
Very likely the Lady Castlewood had ceased to adore her husband herself
long before she got off her knees, or would allow her household to
discontinue worshipping him. To do him justice, my lord never exacted
this subservience: he laughed and joked and drank his bottle, and
swore when he was angry, much too familiarly for any one pretending to
sublimity; and did his best to destroy the ceremonial with which his
wife chose to surround him. And it required no great conceit on young
Esmond's part to see that his own brains were better than his patron's,
who, indeed, never assumed any airs of superiority over the lad, or
over any dependant of his, save when he was displeased, in which case he
would express his mind in oaths very freely; and who, on the contrary,
perhaps, spoiled “Parson Harry,” as he called young Esmond, by
constantly praising his parts and admiring his boyish stock of learning.
It may seem ungracious in one who has received a hundred favors from his
patron to speak in any but a reverential manner of his elders; but the
present writer has had descendants of his own, whom he has brought
up with as little as possible of the servility at present exacted
by parents from children (under which mask of duty there often lurks
indifference, contempt, or rebellion): and as he would have his
grandsons believe or represent him to be not an inch taller than Nature
has made him: so, with regard to his past acquaintances, he would
speak without anger, but with truth, as far as he knows it, neither
extenuating nor setting down aught in malice.
So long, then, as the world moved according to Lord Castlewood's wishes,
he was good-humored enough; of a temper naturally sprightly and easy,
liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to receive
the tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could
perform to perfection--shooting at a mark and flying, breaking horses,
riding at the ring, pitching the quoit, playing at all games with great
skill. And not only did he do these things well, but he thought he did
them to perfection; hence he was often tricked about horses, which he
pretended to know better than any jockey; was made to play at ball and
billiards by sharpers who took his money, and came back from London
wofully poorer each time than he went, as the state of his affairs
testified when the sudden accident came by which his career was brought
to an end.
He was fond of the parade of dress, and passed as many hours daily at
his toilette as an elderly coquette. A tenth part of his day was spent
in the brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was
curling and brown, and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig,
such as almost everybody of that time wore. (We have the liberty of our
hair back now, but powder and pomatum along with it. When, I wonder,
will these monstrous poll-taxes of our age be withdrawn, and men allowed
to carry their colors, black, red, or gray, as Nature made them?) And as
he liked her to be well dressed, his lady spared no pains in that matter
to please him; indeed, she would dress her head or cut it off if he had
bidden her.
It was a wonder to young Esmond, serving as page to my lord and lady,
to hear, day after day, to such company as came, the same boisterous
stories told by my lord, at which his lady never failed to smile or hold
down her head, and Doctor Tusher to burst out laughing at the proper
point, or cry, “Fie, my lord, remember my cloth!” but with such a
faint show of resistance, that it only provoked my lord further. Lord
Castlewood's stories rose by degrees, and became stronger after the ale
at dinner and the bottle afterwards; my lady always taking flight after
the very first glass to Church and King, and leaving the gentlemen to
drink the rest of the toasts by themselves.
And, as Harry Esmond was her page, he also was called from duty at this
time. “My lord has lived in the army and with soldiers,” she would
say to the lad, “amongst whom great license is allowed. You have had
a different nurture, and I trust these things will change as you grow
older; not that any fault attaches to my lord, who is one of the best
and most religious men in this kingdom.” And very likely she believed
so. 'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
And as Esmond has taken truth for his motto, it must be owned, even
with regard to that other angel, his mistress, that she had a fault of
character which flawed her perfections. With the other sex perfectly
tolerant and kindly, of her own she was invariably jealous; and a proof
that she had this vice is, that though she would acknowledge a thousand
faults that she had not, to this which she had she could never be got
to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to
Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord,
laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her
foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken
at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman
squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion
were ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady Castlewood was kind, as her
nature made her to everybody almost; but as soon as ever she had to do
with a pretty woman, she was cold, retiring, and haughty. The country
ladies found this fault in her; and though the men all admired her,
their wives and daughters complained of her coldness and aims, and said
that Castlewood was pleasanter in Lady Jezebel's time (as the dowager
was called) than at present. Some few were of my mistress's side.
Old Lady Blenkinsop Jointure, who had been at court in King James the
First's time, always took her side; and so did old Mistress Crookshank,
Bishop Crookshank's daughter, of Hexton, who, with some more of their
like, pronounced my lady an angel: but the pretty women were not of this
mind; and the opinion of the country was that my lord was tied to his
wife's apron-strings, and that she ruled over him.
The second fight which Harry Esmond had, was at fourteen years of age,
with Bryan Hawkshaw, Sir John Hawkshaw's son, of Bramblebrook, who,
advancing this opinion, that my lady was jealous and henpecked my lord,
put Harry in such a fury, that Harry fell on him and with such rage,
that the other boy, who was two years older and by far bigger than he,
had by far the worst of the assault, until it was interrupted by Doctor
Tusher walking out of the dinner-room.
Bryan Hawkshaw got up bleeding at the nose, having, indeed, been
surprised, as many a stronger man might have been, by the fury of the
assault upon him.
“You little bastard beggar!” he said, “I'll murder you for this!”
And indeed he was big enough.
“Bastard or not,” said the other, grinding his teeth, “I have a
couple of swords, and if you like to meet me, as a man, on the terrace
to-night--”
And here the Doctor coming up, the colloquy of the young champions
ended. Very likely, big as he was, Hawkshaw did not care to continue a
fight with such a ferocious opponent as this had been.
CHAPTER VIII.
AFTER GOOD FORTUNE COMES EVIL.
Since my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu brought home the custom of
inoculation from Turkey (a perilous practice many deem it, and only a
useless rushing into the jaws of danger), I think the severity of the
small-pox, that dreadful scourge of the world, has somewhat been abated
in our part of it; and remember in my time hundreds of the young and
beautiful who have been carried to the grave, or have only risen from
their pillows frightfully scarred and disfigured by this malady. Many
a sweet face hath left its roses on the bed on which this dreadful and
withering blight has laid them. In my early days, this pestilence would
enter a village and destroy half its inhabitants: at its approach, it
may well be imagined, not only the beautiful but the strongest were
alarmed, and those fled who could. One day in the year 1694 (I have good
reason to remember it), Doctor Tusher ran into Castlewood House, with a
face of consternation, saying that the malady had made its appearance at
the blacksmith's house in the village, and that one of the maids there
was down in the small-pox.
The blacksmith, besides his forge and irons for horses, had an ale-house
for men, which his wife kept, and his company sat on benches before the
inn-door, looking at the smithy while they drank their beer. Now,
there was a pretty girl at this inn, the landlord's men called Nancy
Sievewright, a bouncing, fresh-looking lass, whose face was as red as
the hollyhocks over the pales of the garden behind the inn. At this time
Harry Esmond was a lad of sixteen, and somehow in his walks and rambles
it often happened that he fell in with Nancy Sievewright's bonny face;
if he did not want something done at the blacksmith's he would go and
drink ale at the “Three Castles,” or find some pretext for seeing this
poor Nancy. Poor thing, Harry meant or imagined no harm; and she, no
doubt, as little, but the truth is they were always meeting--in the
lanes, or by the brook, or at the garden-palings, or about Castlewood:
it was, “Lord, Mr. Henry!” and “how do you do, Nancy?” many and many a
time in the week. 'Tis surprising the magnetic attraction which draws
people together from ever so far. I blush as I think of poor Nancy now,
in a red bodice and buxom purple cheeks and a canvas petticoat; and that
I devised schemes, and set traps, and made speeches in my heart, which
I seldom had courage to say when in presence of that humble enchantress,
who knew nothing beyond milking a cow, and opened her black eyes with
wonder when I made one of my fine speeches out of Waller or Ovid. Poor
Nancy! from the midst of far-off years thine honest country face beams
out; and I remember thy kind voice as if I had heard it yesterday.
When Doctor Tusher brought the news that the small-pox was at the “Three
Castles,” whither a tramper, it was said, had brought the malady, Henry
Esmond's first thought was of alarm for poor Nancy, and then of shame
and disquiet for the Castlewood family, lest he might have brought this
infection; for the truth is that Mr. Harry had been sitting in a back
room for an hour that day, where Nancy Sievewright was with a little
brother who complained of headache, and was lying stupefied and crying,
either in a chair by the corner of the fire, or in Nancy's lap, or on
mine.
Little Lady Beatrix screamed out at Dr. Tusher's news; and my lord cried
out, “God bless me!” He was a brave man, and not afraid of death in
any shape but this. He was very proud of his pink complexion and fair
hair--but the idea of death by small-pox scared him beyond all other
ends. “We will take the children and ride away to-morrow to Walcote:”
this was my lord's small house, inherited from his mother, near to
Winchester.
“That is the best refuge in case the disease spreads,” said Dr. Tusher.
“'Tis awful to think of it beginning at the ale-house; half the people
of the village have visited that to-day, or the blacksmith's, which is
the same thing. My clerk Nahum lodges with them--I can never go into my
reading-desk and have that fellow so near me. I WON'T have that man near
me.”
“If a parishioner dying in the small-pox sent to you, would you not go?”
asked my lady, looking up from her frame of work, with her calm blue
eyes.
“By the Lord, I wouldn't,” said my lord.
“We are not in a popish country; and a sick man doth not absolutely
need absolution and confession,” said the Doctor. “'Tis true they are a
comfort and a help to him when attainable, and to be administered with
hope of good. But in a case where the life of a parish priest in the
midst of his flock is highly valuable to them, he is not called upon to
risk it (and therewith the lives, future prospects, and temporal, even
spiritual welfare of his own family) for the sake of a single person,
who is not very likely in a condition even to understand the religious
message whereof the priest is the bringer--being uneducated, and
likewise stupefied or delirious by disease. If your ladyship or his
lordship, my excellent good friend and patron, were to take it . . .”
“God forbid!” cried my lord.
“Amen,” continued Dr. Tusher. “Amen to that prayer, my very good lord!
for your sake I would lay my life down”--and, to judge from the alarmed
look of the Doctor's purple face, you would have thought that that
sacrifice was about to be called for instantly.
To love children, and be gentle with them, was an instinct, rather than
a merit, in Henry Esmond; so much so, that he thought almost with a
sort of shame of his liking for them, and of the softness into which it
betrayed him; and on this day the poor fellow had not only had his
young friend, the milkmaid's brother, on his knee, but had been drawing
pictures and telling stories to the little Frank Castlewood, who had
occupied the same place for an hour after dinner, and was never tired
of Henry's tales, and his pictures of soldiers and horses. As luck would
have it, Beatrix had not on that evening taken her usual place, which
generally she was glad enough to have, upon her tutor's lap. For
Beatrix, from the earliest time, was jealous of every caress which was
given to her little brother Frank. She would fling away even from the
maternal arms, if she saw Frank had been there before her; insomuch that
Lady Esmond was obliged not to show her love for her son in the presence
of the little girl, and embraced one or the other alone. She would turn
pale and red with rage if she caught signs of intelligence or affection
between Frank and his mother: would sit apart, and not speak for a whole
night, if she thought the boy had a better fruit or a larger cake than
hers; would fling away a ribbon if he had one; and from the earliest
age, sitting up in her little chair by the great fireplace opposite to
the corner where Lady Castlewood commonly sat at her embroidery, would
utter infantine sarcasms about the favor shown to her brother. These, if
spoken in the presence of Lord Castlewood, tickled and amused his humor;
he would pretend to love Frank best, and dandle and kiss him, and roar
with laughter at Beatrix's jealousy. But the truth is, my lord did not
often witness these scenes, nor very much trouble the quiet fireside at
which his lady passed many long evenings. My lord was hunting all day
when the season admitted; he frequented all the cock-fights and fairs
in the country, and would ride twenty miles to see a main fought, or two
clowns break their heads at a cudgelling-match; and he liked better to
sit in his parlor drinking ale and punch with Jack and Tom, than in
his wife's drawing-room: whither, if he came, he brought only too often
bloodshot eyes, a hiccupping voice, and a reeling gait. The management
of the house, and the property, the care of the few tenants and the
village poor, and the accounts of the estate, were in the hands of his
lady and her young secretary, Harry Esmond. My lord took charge of the
stables, the kennel, and the cellar--and he filled this and emptied it
too.
So it chanced that upon this very day, when poor Harry Esmond had had
the blacksmith's son, and the peer's son, alike upon his knee, little
Beatrix, who would come to her tutor willingly enough with her book and
her writing, had refused him, seeing the place occupied by her brother,
and, luckily for her, had sat at the further end of the room, away from
him, playing with a spaniel dog which she had, (and for which, by fits
and starts, she would take a great affection,) and talking at Harry
Esmond over her shoulder, as she pretended to caress the dog, saying
that Fido would love her, and she would love Fido, and nothing but Fido
all her life.
When, then, the news was brought that the little boy at the “Three
Castles” was ill with the small-pox, poor Harry Esmond felt a shock of
alarm, not so much for himself as for his mistress's son, whom he might
have brought into peril. Beatrix, who had pouted sufficiently, (and who,
whenever a stranger appeared, began, from infancy almost, to play off
little graces to catch his attention,) her brother being now gone to
bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the Doctor
was very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick
boots and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated
learning the catechism.
But as she advanced towards Esmond from the corner where she had been
sulking, he started back and placed the great chair on which he was
sitting between him and her--saying in the French language to Lady
Castlewood, with whom the young lad had read much, and whom he had
perfected in this tongue--“Madam, the child must not approach me; I must
tell you that I was at the blacksmith's to-day, and had his little boy
upon my lap.”
“Where you took my son afterwards,” Lady Castlewood said, very angry,
and turning red. “I thank you, sir, for giving him such company.
Beatrix,” she said in English, “I forbid you to touch Mr. Esmond. Come
away, child--come to your room. Come to your room--I wish your Reverence
good-night--and you, sir, had you not better go back to your friends at
the ale-house?” her eyes, ordinarily so kind, darted flashes of anger
as she spoke; and she tossed up her head (which hung down commonly) with
the mien of a princess.
“Hey-day!” says my lord, who was standing by the fireplace--indeed
he was in the position to which he generally came by that hour of the
evening--“Hey-day! Rachel, what are you in a passion about? Ladies ought
never to be in a passion. Ought they, Doctor Tusher? though it does good
to see Rachel in a passion--Damme, Lady Castlewood, you look dev'lish
handsome in a passion.”
“It is, my lord, because Mr. Henry Esmond, having nothing to do with
his time here, and not having a taste for our company, has been to the
ale-house, where he has SOME FRIENDS.”
My lord burst out, with a laugh and an oath--“You young slyboots, you've
been at Nancy Sievewright. D--- the young hypocrite, who'd have thought
it in him? I say, Tusher, he's been after--”
“Enough, my lord,” said my lady, “don't insult me with this talk.”
“Upon my word,” said poor Harry, ready to cry with shame and
mortification, “the honor of that young person is perfectly unstained
for me.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” says my lord, more and more laughing and
tipsy. “Upon his HONOR, Doctor--Nancy Sieve-- . . .”
“Take Mistress Beatrix to bed,” my lady cried at this moment to Mrs.
Tucker her woman, who came in with her ladyship's tea. “Put her into my
room--no, into yours,” she added quickly. “Go, my child: go, I say: not
a word!” And Beatrix, quite surprised at so sudden a tone of authority
from one who was seldom accustomed to raise her voice, went out of the
room with a scared countenance, and waited even to burst out a-crying
until she got to the door with Mrs. Tucker.
For once her mother took little heed of her sobbing, and continued
to speak eagerly--“My lord,” she said, “this young man--your
dependant--told me just now in French--he was ashamed to speak in his
own language--that he had been at the ale-house all day, where he has
had that little wretch who is now ill of the small-pox on his knee. And
he comes home reeking from that place--yes, reeking from it--and takes
my boy into his lap without shame, and sits down by me, yes, by ME.
He may have killed Frank for what I know--killed our child. Why was he
brought in to disgrace our house? Why is he here? Let him go--let him
go, I say, to-night, and pollute the place no more.”
She had never once uttered a syllable of unkindness to Harry Esmond; and
her cruel words smote the poor boy, so that he stood for some moments
bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice of such a stab from such
a hand. He turned quite white from red, which he had been.
“I cannot help my birth, madam,” he said, “nor my other misfortune. And
as for your boy, if--if my coming nigh to him pollutes him now, it was
not so always. Good-night, my lord. Heaven bless you and yours for your
goodness to me. I have tired her ladyship's kindness out, and I will
go;” and, sinking down on his knee, Harry Esmond took the rough hand of
his benefactor and kissed it.
“He wants to go to the ale-house--let him go,” cried my lady.
“I'm d--d if he shall,” said my lord. “I didn't think you could be so
d--d ungrateful, Rachel.”
Her reply was to burst into a flood of tears, and to quit the room with
a rapid glance at Harry Esmond,--as my lord, not heeding them, and
still in great good-humor, raised up his young client from his kneeling
posture (for a thousand kindnesses had caused the lad to revere my lord
as a father), and put his broad hand on Harry Esmond's shoulder.
“She was always so,” my lord said; “the very notion of a woman drives
her mad. I took to liquor on that very account, by Jove, for no other
reason than that; for she can't be jealous of a beer-barrel or a bottle
of rum, can she, Doctor? D--- it, look at the maids--just look at
the maids in the house” (my lord pronounced all the words
together--just-look-at-the-maze-in-the-house: jever-see-such-maze?) “You
wouldn't take a wife out of Castlewood now, would you, Doctor?” and my
lord burst out laughing.
The Doctor, who had been looking at my Lord Castlewood from under his
eyelids, said, “But joking apart, and, my lord, as a divine, I
cannot treat the subject in a jocular light, nor, as a pastor of this
congregation, look with anything but sorrow at the idea of so very young
a sheep going astray.”
“Sir,” said young Esmond, bursting out indignantly, “she told me that
you yourself were a horrid old man, and had offered to kiss her in the
dairy.”
“For shame, Henry,” cried Doctor Tusher, turning as red as a
turkey-cock, while my lord continued to roar with laughter. “If you
listen to the falsehoods of an abandoned girl--”
“She is as honest as any woman in England, and as pure for me,” cried
out Henry, “and, as kind, and as good. For shame on you to malign her!”
“Far be it from me to do so,” cried the Doctor. “Heaven grant I may
be mistaken in the girl, and in you, sir, who have a truly PRECOCIOUS
genius; but that is not the point at issue at present. It appears that
the small-pox broke out in the little boy at the 'Three Castles;' that
it was on him when you visited the ale-house, for your OWN reasons; and
that you sat with the child for some time, and immediately afterwards
with my young lord.” The Doctor raised his voice as he spoke, and
looked towards my lady, who had now come back, looking very pale, with a
handkerchief in her hand.
“This is all very true, sir,” said Lady Esmond, looking at the young
man.
“'Tis to be feared that he may have brought the infection with him.”
“From the ale-house--yes,” said my lady.
“D--- it, I forgot when I collared you, boy,” cried my lord, stepping
back. “Keep off, Harry my boy; there's no good in running into the
wolf's jaws, you know.”
My lady looked at him with some surprise, and instantly advancing to
Henry Esmond, took his hand. “I beg your pardon, Henry,” she said; “I
spoke very unkindly. I have no right to interfere with you--with your--”
My lord broke out into an oath. “Can't you leave the boy alone, my
lady?” She looked a little red, and faintly pressed the lad's hand as
she dropped it.
“There is no use, my lord,” she said; “Frank was on his knee as he was
making pictures, and was running constantly from Henry to me. The evil
is done, if any.”
“Not with me, damme,” cried my lord. “I've been smoking,”--and he
lighted his pipe again with a coal--“and it keeps off infection; and as
the disease is in the village--plague take it--I would have you leave
it. We'll go to-morrow to Walcote, my lady.”
“I have no fear,” said my lady; “I may have had it as an infant: it
broke out in our house then; and when four of my sisters had it at home,
two years before our marriage, I escaped it, and two of my dear sisters
died.”
“I won't run the risk,” said my lord; “I'm as bold as any man, but I'll
not bear that.”
“Take Beatrix with you and go,” said my lady. “For us the mischief is
done; and Tucker can wait upon us, who has had the disease.”
“You take care to choose 'em ugly enough,” said my lord, at which her
ladyship hung down her head and looked foolish: and my lord, calling
away Tusher, bade him come to the oak parlor and have a pipe. The Doctor
made a low bow to her ladyship (of which salaams he was profuse), and
walked off on his creaking square-toes after his patron.
When the lady and the young man were alone, there was a silence of some
moments, during which he stood at the fire, looking rather vacantly
at the dying embers, whilst her ladyship busied herself with the
tambour-frame and needles.
“I am sorry,” she said, after a pause, in a hard, dry voice,--“I REPEAT
I am sorry that I showed myself so ungrateful for the safety of my son.
It was not at all my wish that you should leave us, I am sure, unless
you found pleasure elsewhere. But you must perceive, Mr. Esmond, that at
your age, and with your tastes, it is impossible that you can continue
to stay upon the intimate footing in which you have been in this family.
You have wished to go to the University, and I think 'tis quite as well
that you should be sent thither. I did not press this matter, thinking
you a child, as you are, indeed, in years--quite a child; and I
should never have thought of treating you otherwise until--until these
CIRCUMSTANCES came to light. And I shall beg my lord to despatch you
as quick as possible: and will go on with Frank's learning as well as I
can, (I owe my father thanks for a little grounding, and you, I'm sure,
for much that you have taught me,)--and--and I wish you a good-night,
Mr. Esmond.”
And with this she dropped a stately curtsy, and, taking her candle,
went away through the tapestry door, which led to her apartments. Esmond
stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce
seemed to see until she was gone; and then her image was impressed upon
him, and remained for ever fixed upon his memory. He saw her retreating,
the taper lighting up her marble face, her scarlet lip quivering, and
her shining golden hair. He went to his own room, and to bed, where he
tried to read, as his custom was; but he never knew what he was reading
until afterwards he remembered the appearance of the letters of the book
(it was in Montaigne's Essays), and the events of the day passed before
him--that is, of the last hour of the day; for as for the morning, and
the poor milkmaid yonder, he never so much as once thought. And he could
not get to sleep until daylight, and woke with a violent headache, and
quite unrefreshed.
He had brought the contagion with him from the “Three Castles” sure
enough, and was presently laid up with the smallpox, which spared the
hall no more than it did the cottage.
CHAPTER IX.
I HAVE THE SMALL-POX, AND PREPARE TO LEAVE CASTLEWOOD.
When Harry Esmond passed through the crisis of that malady, and returned
to health again, he found that little Frank Esmond had also suffered
and rallied after the disease, and the lady his mother was down with it,
with a couple more of the household. “It was a Providence, for which we
all ought to be thankful,” Doctor Tusher said, “that my lady and her son
were spared, while Death carried off the poor domestics of the house;”
and rebuked Harry for asking, in his simple way, For which we ought
to be thankful--that the servants were killed, or the gentlefolks
were saved? Nor could young Esmond agree in the Doctor's vehement
protestations to my lady, when he visited her during her convalescence,
that the malady had not in the least impaired her charms, and had not
been churl enough to injure the fair features of the Viscountess of
Castlewood; whereas, in spite of these fine speeches, Harry thought that
her ladyship's beauty was very much injured by the small-pox. When
the marks of the disease cleared away, they did not, it is true, leave
furrows or scars on her face (except one, perhaps, on her forehead over
her left eyebrow); but the delicacy of her rosy color and complexion was
gone: her eyes had lost their brilliancy, her hair fell, and her face
looked older. It was as if a coarse hand had rubbed off the delicate
tints of that sweet picture, and brought it, as one has seen unskilful
painting-cleaners do, to the dead color. Also, it must be owned, that
for a year or two after the malady, her ladyship's nose was swollen and
redder.
There would be no need to mention these trivialities, but that they
actually influenced many lives, as trifles will in the world, where a
gnat often plays a greater part than an elephant, and a mole-hill, as
we know in King William's case, can upset an empire. When Tusher in his
courtly way (at which Harry Esmond always chafed and spoke scornfully)
vowed and protested that my lady's face was none the worse--the lad
broke out and said, “It IS worse and my mistress is not near so handsome
as she was;” on which poor Lady Castlewood gave a rueful smile, and a
look into a little Venice glass she had, which showed her, I suppose,
that what the stupid boy said was only too true, for she turned away
from the glass, and her eyes filled with tears.
The sight of these in Esmond's heart always created a sort of rage of
pity, and seeing them on the face of the lady whom he loved best, the
young blunderer sank down on his knees, and besought her to pardon him,
saying that he was a fool and an idiot, that he was a brute to make such
a speech, he who had caused her malady; and Doctor Tusher told him that
a bear he was indeed, and a bear he would remain, at which speech poor
young Esmond was so dumbstricken that he did not even growl.
“He is MY bear, and I will not have him baited, Doctor,” my lady said,
patting her hand kindly on the boy's head, as he was still kneeling at
her feet. “How your hair has come off! And mine, too,” she added with
another sigh.
“It is not for myself that I cared,” my lady said to Harry, when the
parson had taken his leave; “but AM I very much changed? Alas! I fear
'tis too true.”
“Madam, you have the dearest, and kindest, and sweetest face in the
world, I think,” the lad said; and indeed he thought and thinks so.
“Will my lord think so when he comes back?” the lady asked with a sigh,
and another look at her Venice glass. “Suppose he should think as you
do, sir, that I am hideous--yes, you said hideous--he will cease to care
for me. 'Tis all men care for in women, our little beauty. Why did he
select me from among my sisters? 'Twas only for that. We reign but for a
day or two: and be sure that Vashti knew Esther was coming.”
“Madam,” said Mr. Esmond, “Ahasuerus was the Grand Turk, and to change
was the manner of his country, and according to his law.”
“You are all Grand Turks for that matter,” said my lady, “or would be if
you could. Come, Frank, come, my child. You are well, praised be Heaven.
YOUR locks are not thinned by this dreadful small-pox: nor your poor
face scarred--is it, my angel?”
Frank began to shout and whimper at the idea of such a misfortune. From
the very earliest time the young lord had been taught to admire his
beauty by his mother: and esteemed it as highly as any reigning toast
valued hers.
One day, as he himself was recovering from his fever and illness, a
pang of something like shame shot across young Esmond's breast, as he
remembered that he had never once during his illness given a thought
to the poor girl at the smithy, whose red cheeks but a month ago he
had been so eager to see. Poor Nancy! her cheeks had shared the fate of
roses, and were withered now. She had taken the illness on the same day
with Esmond--she and her brother were both dead of the small-pox, and
buried under the Castlewood yew-trees. There was no bright face looking
now from the garden, or to cheer the old smith at his lonely fireside.
Esmond would have liked to have kissed her in her shroud (like the
lass in Mr. Prior's pretty poem); but she rested many a foot below the
ground, when Esmond after his malady first trod on it.
Doctor Tusher brought the news of this calamity, about which Harry
Esmond longed to ask, but did not like. He said almost the whole village
had been stricken with the pestilence; seventeen persons were dead
of it, among them mentioning the names of poor Nancy and her little
brother. He did not fail to say how thankful we survivors ought to be.
It being this man's business to flatter and make sermons, it must be
owned he was most industrious in it, and was doing the one or the other
all day.
And so Nancy was gone; and Harry Esmond blushed that he had not a single
tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the
rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs
deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that
surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was
an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a
long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a
funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and
are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to his last
day, some of the doggerel lines in which his muse bewailed his pretty
lass; not without shame to remember how bad the verses were, and how
good he thought them; how false the grief, and yet how he was rather
proud of it. 'Tis an error, surely, to talk of the simplicity of youth.
I think no persons are more hypocritical, and have a more affected
behavior to one another, than the young. They deceive themselves and
each other with artifices that do not impose upon men of the world; and
so we get to understand truth better, and grow simpler as we grow older.
When my lady heard of the fate which had befallen poor Nancy, she said
nothing so long as Tusher was by, but when he was gone, she took Harry
Esmond's hand and said--
“Harry, I beg your pardon for those cruel words I used on the night you
were taken ill. I am shocked at the fate of the poor creature, and
am sure that nothing had happened of that with which, in my anger, I
charged you. And the very first day we go out, you must take me to the
blacksmith, and we must see if there is anything I can do to console
the poor old man. Poor man! to lose both his children! What should I do
without mine?”
And this was, indeed, the very first walk which my lady took, leaning on
Esmond's arm, after her illness. But her visit brought no consolation to
the old father; and he showed no softness, or desire to speak. “The Lord
gave and took away,” he said; and he knew what His servant's duty was.
He wanted for nothing--less now than ever before, as there were
fewer mouths to feed. He wished her ladyship and Master Esmond good
morning--he had grown tall in his illness, and was but very little
marked; and with this, and a surly bow, he went in from the smithy to
the house, leaving my lady, somewhat silenced and shamefaced, at the
door. He had a handsome stone put up for his two children, which may be
seen in Castlewood churchyard to this very day; and before a year was
out his own name was upon the stone. In the presence of Death, that
sovereign ruler, a woman's coquetry is seared; and her jealousy will
hardly pass the boundaries of that grim kingdom. 'Tis entirely of
the earth, that passion, and expires in the cold blue air, beyond our
sphere.
At length, when the danger was quite over, it was announced that my lord
and his daughter would return. Esmond well remembered the day. The lady
his mistress was in a flurry of fear: before my lord came, she went into
her room, and returned from it with reddened cheeks. Her fate was about
to be decided. Her beauty was gone--was her reign, too, over? A minute
would say. My lord came riding over the bridge--he could be seen from
the great window, clad in scarlet, and mounted on his gray hackney--his
little daughter ambled by him in a bright riding-dress of blue, on a
shining chestnut horse. My lady leaned against the great mantel-piece,
looking on, with one hand on her heart--she seemed only the more pale
for those red marks on either cheek. She put her handkerchief to her
eyes, and withdrew it, laughing hysterically--the cloth was quite red
with the rouge when she took it away. She ran to her room again, and
came back with pale cheeks and red eyes--her son in her hand--just as my
lord entered, accompanied by young Esmond, who had gone out to meet his
protector, and to hold his stirrup as he descended from horseback.
“What, Harry, boy!” my lord said, good-naturedly, “you look as gaunt as
a greyhound. The small-pox hasn't improved your beauty, and your side of
the house hadn't never too much of it--ho, ho!”
And he laughed, and sprang to the ground with no small agility, looking
handsome and red, within a jolly face and brown hair, like a Beef-eater;
Esmond kneeling again, as soon as his patron had descended, performed
his homage, and then went to greet the little Beatrix, and help her from
her horse.
“Fie! how yellow you look,” she said; “and there are one, two, red
holes in your face;” which, indeed, was very true; Harry Esmond's harsh
countenance bearing, as long as it continued to be a human face, the
marks of the disease.
My lord laughed again, in high good-humor.
“D--- it!” said he, with one of his usual oaths, “the little slut sees
everything. She saw the Dowager's paint t'other day, and asked her
why she wore that red stuff--didn't you, Trix? and the Tower; and
St. James's; and the play; and the Prince George, and the Princess
Anne--didn't you, Trix?”
“They are both very fat, and smelt of brandy,” the child said.
Papa roared with laughing.
“Brandy!” he said. “And how do you know, Miss Pert?”
“Because your lordship smells of it after supper, when I embrace you
before you go to bed,” said the young lady, who, indeed, was as pert
as her father said, and looked as beautiful a little gipsy as eyes ever
gazed on.
“And now for my lady,” said my lord, going up the stairs, and passing
under the tapestry curtain that hung before the drawing-room door.
Esmond remembered that noble figure, handsomely arrayed in scarlet.
Within the last few months he himself had grown from a boy to be a man,
and with his figure his thoughts had shot up, and grown manly.
My lady's countenance, of which Harry Esmond was accustomed to watch the
changes, and with a solicitous affection to note and interpret the signs
of gladness or care, wore a sad and depressed look for many weeks
after her lord's return: during which it seemed as if, by caresses and
entreaties, she strove to win him back from some ill humor he had, and
which he did not choose to throw off. In her eagerness to please him she
practised a hundred of those arts which had formerly charmed him, but
which seemed now to have lost their potency. Her songs did not amuse
him; and she hushed them and the children when in his presence. My lord
sat silent at his dinner, drinking greatly, his lady opposite to him,
looking furtively at his face, though also speechless. Her silence
annoyed him as much as her speech; and he would peevishly, and with an
oath, ask her why she held her tongue and looked so glum; or he would
roughly check her when speaking, and bid her not talk nonsense. It
seemed as if, since his return, nothing she could do or say could please
him.
When a master and mistress are at strife in a house, the subordinates
in the family take the one side or the other. Harry Esmond stood in
so great fear of my lord, that he would run a league barefoot to do a
message for him; but his attachment for Lady Esmond was such a passion
of grateful regard, that to spare her a grief, or to do her a service,
he would have given his life daily: and it was by the very depth and
intensity of this regard that he began to divine how unhappy his adored
lady's life was, and that a secret care (for she never spoke of her
anxieties) was weighing upon her.
Can any one, who has passed through the world and watched the nature
of men and women there, doubt what had befallen her? I have seen, to be
sure, some people carry down with them into old age the actual bloom
of their youthful love, and I know that Mr. Thomas Parr lived to be a
hundred and sixty years old. But, for all that, threescore and ten is
the age of men, and few get beyond it; and 'tis certain that a man who
marries for mere beaux yeux, as my lord did, considers this part of the
contract at an end when the woman ceases to fulfil hers, and his love
does not survive her beauty. I know 'tis often otherwise, I say; and can
think (as most men in their own experience may) of many a house,
where, lighted in early years, the sainted lamp of love hath never been
extinguished; but so there is Mr. Parr, and so there is the great giant
at the fair that is eight feet high--exceptions to men--and that poor
lamp whereof I speak, that lights at first the nuptial chamber, is
extinguished by a hundred winds and draughts down the chimney, or
sputters out for want of feeding. And then--and then it is Chloe, in the
dark, stark awake, and Strephon snoring unheeding; or vice versa, 'tis
poor Strephon that has married a heartless jilt, and awoke out of that
absurd vision of conjugal felicity, which was to last for ever, and is
over like any other dream. One and other has made his bed, and so must
lie in it, until that final day when life ends, and they sleep separate.
About this time young Esmond, who had a knack of stringing verses,
turned some of Ovid's Epistles into rhymes, and brought them to his lady
for her delectation. Those which treated of forsaken women touched her
immensely, Harry remarked; and when Oenone called after Paris, and Medea
bade Jason come back again, the lady of Castlewood sighed, and said she
thought that part of the verses was the most pleasing. Indeed, she would
have chopped up the Dean, her old father, in order to bring her husband
back again. But her beautiful Jason was gone, as beautiful Jasons will
go, and the poor enchantress had never a spell to keep him.
My lord was only sulky as long as his wife's anxious face or behavior
seemed to upbraid him. When she had got to master these, and to show an
outwardly cheerful countenance and behavior, her husband's good-humor
returned partially, and he swore and stormed no longer at dinner, but
laughed sometimes, and yawned unrestrainedly; absenting himself often
from home, inviting more company thither, passing the greater part of
his days in the hunting-field, or over the bottle as before; but with
this difference, that the poor wife could no longer see now, as she had
done formerly, the light of love kindled in his eyes. He was with her,
but that flame was out: and that once welcome beacon no more shone
there.
What were this lady's feelings when forced to admit the truth whereof
her foreboding glass had given her only too true warning, that within
her beauty her reign had ended, and the days of her love were over?
What does a seaman do in a storm if mast and rudder are carried away? He
ships a jurymast, and steers as he best can with an oar. What happens if
your roof falls in a tempest? After the first stun of the calamity the
sufferer starts up, gropes around to see that the children are safe, and
puts them under a shed out of the rain. If the palace burns down, you
take shelter in the barn. What man's life is not overtaken by one or
more of these tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on
rocks to shelter as best we may?
When Lady Castlewood found that her great ship had gone down, she began
as best she might after she had rallied from the effects of the loss,
to put out small ventures of happiness; and hope for little gains and
returns, as a merchant on 'Change, indocilis pauperiem pati, having lost
his thousands, embarks a few guineas upon the next ship. She laid out
her all upon her children, indulging them beyond all measure, as was
inevitable with one of her kindness of disposition; giving all her
thoughts to their welfare--learning, that she might teach them; and
improving her own many natural gifts and feminine accomplishments, that
she might impart them to her young ones. To be doing good for some one
else, is the life of most good women. They are exuberant of kindness, as
it were, and must impart it to some one. She made herself a good scholar
of French, Italian, and Latin, having been grounded in these by her
father in her youth; hiding these gifts from her husband out of fear,
perhaps, that they should offend him, for my lord was no bookman--pish'd
and psha'd at the notion of learned ladies, and would have been angry
that his wife could construe out of a Latin book of which he could
scarce understand two words. Young Esmond was usher, or house tutor,
under her or over her, as it might happen. During my lord's many
absences, these school-days would go on uninterruptedly: the mother
and daughter learning with surprising quickness; the latter by fits and
starts only, and as suited her wayward humor. As for the little lord,
it must be owned that he took after his father in the matter of
learning--liked marbles and play, and the great horse and the little one
which his father brought him, and on which he took him out a-hunting, a
great deal better than Corderius and Lily; marshalled the village boys,
and had a little court of them, already flogging them, and domineering
over them with a fine imperious spirit, that made his father laugh when
he beheld it, and his mother fondly warn him. The cook had a son, the
woodman had two, the big lad at the porter's lodge took his cuffs
and his orders. Doctor Tusher said he was a young nobleman of gallant
spirit; and Harry Esmond, who was his tutor, and eight years his little
lordship's senior, had hard work sometimes to keep his own temper, and
hold his authority over his rebellious little chief and kinsman.
In a couple of years after that calamity had befallen which had robbed
Lady Castlewood of a little--a very little--of her beauty, and her
careless husband's heart (if the truth must be told, my lady had found
not only that her reign was over, but that her successor was appointed,
a Princess of a noble house in Drury Lane somewhere, who was installed
and visited by my lord at the town eight miles off--pudet haec opprobria
dicere nobis)--a great change had taken place in her mind, which, by
struggles only known to herself, at least never mentioned to any one,
and unsuspected by the person who caused the pain she endured--had
been schooled into such a condition as she could not very likely have
imagined possible a score of months since, before her misfortunes had
begun.
She had oldened in that time as people do who suffer silently great
mental pain; and learned much that she had never suspected before. She
was taught by that bitter teacher Misfortune. A child the mother of
other children, but two years back her lord was a god to her; his words
her law; his smile her sunshine; his lazy commonplaces listened to
eagerly, as if they were words of wisdom--all his wishes and freaks
obeyed with a servile devotion. She had been my lord's chief slave and
blind worshipper. Some women bear farther than this, and submit not only
to neglect but to unfaithfulness too--but here this lady's allegiance
had failed her. Her spirit rebelled, and disowned any more obedience.
First she had to bear in secret the passion of losing the adored object;
then to get further initiation, and to find this worshipped being was
but a clumsy idol: then to admit the silent truth, that it was she was
superior, and not the monarch her master: that she had thoughts which
his brains could never master, and was the better of the two; quite
separate from my lord although tied to him, and bound, as almost all
people (save a very happy few), to work all her life alone. My lord sat
in his chair, laughing his laugh, cracking his joke, his face flushing
with wine--my lady in her place over against him--he never suspecting
that his superior was there, in the calm resigned lady, cold of manner,
with downcast eyes. When he was merry in his cups, he would make jokes
about her coldness, and, “D--- it, now my lady is gone, we will have
t'other bottle,” he would say. He was frank enough in telling his
thoughts, such as they were. There was little mystery about my lord's
words or actions. His Fair Rosamond did not live in a Labyrinth, like
the lady of Mr. Addison's opera, but paraded with painted cheeks and a
tipsy retinue in the country town. Had she a mind to be revenged, Lady
Castlewood could have found the way to her rival's house easily enough;
and, if she had come with bowl and dagger, would have been routed off
the ground by the enemy with a volley of Billingsgate, which the fair
person always kept by her.
Meanwhile, it has been said, that for Harry Esmond his benefactress's
sweet face had lost none of its charms. It had always the kindest of
looks and smiles for him--smiles, not so gay and artless perhaps as
those which Lady Castlewood had formerly worn, when, a child herself,
playing with her children, her husband's pleasure and authority were all
she thought of; but out of her griefs and cares, as will happen I think
when these trials fall upon a kindly heart, and are not too unbearable,
grew up a number of thoughts and excellences which had never come into
existence, had not her sorrow and misfortunes engendered them. Sure,
occasion is the father of most that is good in us. As you have seen the
awkward fingers and clumsy tools of a prisoner cut and fashion the most
delicate little pieces of carved work; or achieve the most prodigious
underground labors, and cut through walls of masonry, and saw iron bars
and fetters; 'tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or
endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but
for the circumstance which gave them a being.
“'Twas after Jason left her, no doubt,” Lady Castlewood once said with
one of her smiles to young Esmond (who was reading to her a version of
certain lines out of Euripides), “that Medea became a learned woman and
a great enchantress.”
“And she could conjure the stars out of heaven,” the young tutor added,
“but she could not bring Jason back again.”
“What do you mean?” asked my lady, very angry.
“Indeed I mean nothing,” said the other, “save what I've read in books.
What should I know about such matters? I have seen no woman save you
and little Beatrix, and the parson's wife and my late mistress, and your
ladyship's woman here.”
“The men who wrote your books,” says my lady, “your Horaces, and Ovids,
and Virgils, as far as I know of them, all thought ill of us, as all
the heroes they wrote about used us basely. We were bred to be slaves
always; and even of our own times, as you are still the only lawgivers,
I think our sermons seem to say that the best woman is she who bears
her master's chains most gracefully. 'Tis a pity there are no nunneries
permitted by our church: Beatrix and I would fly to one, and end our
days in peace there away from you.”
“And is there no slavery in a convent?” says Esmond.
“At least if women are slaves there, no one sees them,” answered the
lady. “They don't work in street gangs with the public to jeer them: and
if they suffer, suffer in private. Here comes my lord home from hunting.
Take away the books. My lord does not love to see them. Lessons are over
for to-day, Mr. Tutor.” And with a curtsy and a smile she would end this
sort of colloquy.
Indeed “Mr. Tutor,” as my lady called Esmond, had now business enough on
his hands in Castlewood house. He had three pupils, his lady and her two
children, at whose lessons she would always be present; besides writing
my lord's letters, and arranging his accompts for him--when these could
be got from Esmond's indolent patron.
Of the pupils the two young people were but lazy scholars, and as my
lady would admit no discipline such as was then in use, my lord's son
only learned what he liked, which was but little, and never to his
life's end could be got to construe more than six lines of Virgil.
Mistress Beatrix chattered French prettily, from a very early age;
and sang sweetly, but this was from her mother's teaching--not Harry
Esmond's, who could scarce distinguish between “Green Sleeves” and
“Lillibullero;” although he had no greater delight in life than to hear
the ladies sing. He sees them now (will he ever forget them?) as they
used to sit together of the summer evenings--the two golden heads over
the page--the child's little hand, and the mother's beating the time,
with their voices rising and falling in unison.
But if the children were careless, 'twas a wonder how eagerly the
mother learnt from her young tutor--and taught him too. The happiest
instinctive faculty was this lady's--a faculty for discerning latent
beauties and hidden graces of books, especially books of poetry, as in a
walk she would spy out field-flowers and make posies of them, such as
no other hand could. She was a critic, not by reason but by feeling; the
sweetest commentator of those books they read together; and the happiest
hours of young Esmond's life, perhaps, were those passed in the company
of this kind mistress and her children.
These happy days were to end soon, however; and it was by the Lady
Castlewood's own decree that they were brought to a conclusion. It
happened about Christmas-time, Harry Esmond being now past sixteen
years of age, that his old comrade, adversary, and friend, Tom Tusher,
returned from his school in London, a fair, well-grown, and sturdy lad,
who was about to enter college, with an exhibition from his school, and
a prospect of after promotion in the church. Tom Tusher's talk was of
nothing but Cambridge now; and the boys, who were good friends, examined
each other eagerly about their progress in books. Tom had learned some
Greek and Hebrew, besides Latin, in which he was pretty well skilled,
and also had given himself to mathematical studies under his father's
guidance, who was a proficient in those sciences, of which Esmond knew
nothing; nor could he write Latin so well as Tom, though he could talk
it better, having been taught by his dear friend the Jesuit Father, for
whose memory the lad ever retained the warmest affection, reading his
books, keeping his swords clean in the little crypt where the Father
had shown them to Esmond on the night of his visit; and often of a night
sitting in the chaplain's room, which he inhabited, over his books, his
verses, and rubbish, with which the lad occupied himself, he would look
up at the window, thinking he wished it might open and let in the good
Father. He had come and passed away like a dream; but for the swords
and books Harry might almost think the Father was an imagination of his
mind--and for two letters which had come to him, one from abroad, full
of advice and affection, another soon after he had been confirmed by the
Bishop of Hexton, in which Father Holt deplored his falling away. But
Harry Esmond felt so confident now of his being in the right, and of his
own powers as a casuist, that he thought he was able to face the Father
himself in argument, and possibly convert him.
To work upon the faith of her young pupil, Esmond's kind mistress sent
to the library of her father the Dean, who had been distinguished in the
disputes of the late king's reign; and, an old soldier now, had hung
up his weapons of controversy. These he took down from his shelves
willingly for young Esmond, whom he benefited by his own personal advice
and instruction. It did not require much persuasion to induce the boy
to worship with his beloved mistress. And the good old nonjuring Dean
flattered himself with a conversion which, in truth, was owing to a much
gentler and fairer persuader.
Under her ladyship's kind eyes (my lord's being sealed in sleep pretty
generally), Esmond read many volumes of the works of the famous British
Divines of the last age, and was familiar with Wake and Sherlock, with
Stillingfleet and Patrick. His mistress never tired to listen or to
read, to pursue the texts with fond comments, to urge those points which
her fancy dwelt on most, or her reason deemed most important. Since the
death of her father the Dean, this lady hath admitted a certain latitude
of theological reading which her orthodox father would never have
allowed; his favorite writers appealing more to reason and antiquity
than to the passions or imaginations of their readers, so that the works
of Bishop Taylor, nay, those of Mr. Baxter and Mr. Law, have in reality
found more favor with my Lady Castlewood than the severer volumes of our
great English schoolmen.
In later life, at the University, Esmond reopened the controversy, and
pursued it in a very different manner, when his patrons had determined
for him that he was to embrace the ecclesiastical life. But though his
mistress's heart was in this calling, his own never was much. After that
first fervor of simple devotion, which his beloved Jesuit priest had
inspired in him, speculative theology took but little hold upon the
young man's mind. When his early credulity was disturbed, and his saints
and virgins taken out of his worship, to rank little higher than the
divinities of Olympus, his belief became acquiescence rather than ardor;
and he made his mind up to assume the cassock and bands, as another
man does to wear a breastplate and jack-boots, or to mount a merchant's
desk, for a livelihood, and from obedience and necessity, rather than
from choice. There were scores of such men in Mr. Esmond's time at the
universities, who were going to the church with no better calling than
his.
When Thomas Tusher was gone, a feeling of no small depression and
disquiet fell upon young Esmond, of which, though he did not complain,
his kind mistress must have divined the cause: for soon after she showed
not only that she understood the reason of Harry's melancholy, but could
provide a remedy for it. Her habit was thus to watch, unobservedly,
those to whom duty or affection bound her, and to prevent their
designs, or to fulfil them, when she had the power. It was this lady's
disposition to think kindnesses, and devise silent bounties and to
scheme benevolence, for those about her. We take such goodness, for the
most part, as if it was our due; the Marys who bring ointment for our
feet get but little thanks. Some of us never feel this devotion at all,
or are moved by it to gratitude or acknowledgment; others only recall it
years after, when the days are past in which those sweet kindnesses were
spent on us, and we offer back our return for the debt by a poor tardy
payment of tears. Then forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind
glances shine out of the past--oh so bright and clear!--oh so longed
after!--because they are out of reach; as holiday music from withinside
a prison wall--or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because
unattainable--more bright because of the contrast of present darkness
and solitude, whence there is no escape.
All the notice, then, which Lady Castlewood seemed to take of Harry
Esmond's melancholy, upon Tom Tusher's departure, was, by a gayety
unusual to her, to attempt to dispel his gloom. She made his three
scholars (herself being the chief one) more cheerful than ever they had
been before, and more docile, too, all of them learning and reading
much more than they had been accustomed to do. “For who knows,” said
the lady, “what may happen, and whether we may be able to keep such a
learned tutor long?”
Frank Esmond said he for his part did not want to learn any more, and
cousin Harry might shut up his book whenever he liked, if he would
come out a-fishing; and little Beatrix declared she would send for Tom
Tusher, and HE would be glad enough to come to Castlewood, if Harry
chose to go away.
At last comes a messenger from Winchester one day, bearer of a letter,
with a great black seal, from the Dean there, to say that his sister
was dead, and had left her fortune of 2,000L. among her six nieces, the
Dean's daughters; and many a time since has Harry Esmond recalled the
flushed face and eager look wherewith, after this intelligence, his kind
lady regarded him. She did not pretend to any grief about the deceased
relative, from whom she and her family had been many years parted.
When my lord heard of the news, he also did not make any very long
face. “The money will come very handy to furnish the music-room and the
cellar, which is getting low, and buy your ladyship a coach and a
couple of horses that will do indifferent to ride or for the coach. And,
Beatrix, you shall have a spinnet: and, Frank, you shall have a little
horse from Hexton Fair; and, Harry, you shall have five pounds to buy
some books,” said my lord, who was generous with his own, and indeed
with other folk's money. “I wish your aunt would die once a year,
Rachel; we could spend your money, and all your sisters', too.”
“I have but one aunt--and--and I have another use for the money, my
lord,” says my lady, turning very red.
“Another use, my dear; and what do you know about money?” cries my lord.
“And what the devil is there that I don't give you which you want!”
“I intend to give this money--can't you fancy how, my lord?”
My lord swore one of his large oaths that he did not know in the least
what she meant.
“I intend it for Harry Esmond to go to college. Cousin Harry,” says my
lady, “you mustn't stay longer in this dull place, but make a name to
yourself, and for us too, Harry.”
“D--n it, Harry's well enough here,” says my lord, for a moment looking
rather sulky.
“Is Harry going away? You don't mean to say you will go away?” cry out
Frank and Beatrix at one breath.
“But he will come back: and this will always be his home,” cries my
lady, with blue eyes looking a celestial kindness: “and his scholars
will always love him; won't they?”
“By G-d, Rachel, you're a good woman!” says my lord, seizing my lady's
hand, at which she blushed very much, and shrank back, putting her
children before her. “I wish you joy, my kinsman,” he continued, giving
Harry Esmond a hearty slap on the shoulder. “I won't balk your luck. Go
to Cambridge, boy, and when Tusher dies you shall have the living
here, if you are not better provided by that time. We'll furnish the
dining-room and buy the horses another year. I'll give thee a nag out
of the stable: take any one except my hack and the bay gelding and the
coach-horses; and God speed thee, my boy!”
“Have the sorrel, Harry; 'tis a good one. Father says 'tis the best
in the stable,” says little Frank, clapping his hands, and jumping up.
“Let's come and see him in the stable.” And the other, in his delight
and eagerness, was for leaving the room that instant to arrange about
his journey.
The Lady Castlewood looked after him with sad penetrating glances. “He
wishes to be gone already, my lord,” said she to her husband.
The young man hung back abashed. “Indeed, I would stay for ever, if your
ladyship bade me,” he said.
“And thou wouldst be a fool for thy pains, kinsman,” said my lord. “Tut,
tut, man. Go and see the world. Sow thy wild oats; and take the best
luck that Fate sends thee. I wish I were a boy again, that I might go to
college, and taste the Trumpington ale.”
“Ours, indeed, is but a dull home,” cries my lady, with a little of
sadness and, maybe, of satire, in her voice: “an old glum house, half
ruined, and the rest only half furnished; a woman and two children are
but poor company for men that are accustomed to better. We are only fit
to be your worship's handmaids, and your pleasures must of necessity lie
elsewhere than at home.”
“Curse me, Rachel, if I know now whether thou art in earnest or not,”
said my lord.
“In earnest, my lord!” says she, still clinging by one of her children.
“Is there much subject here for joke?” And she made him a grand curtsy,
and, giving a stately look to Harry Esmond, which seemed to say,
“Remember; you understand me, though he does not,” she left the room
with her children.
“Since she found out that confounded Hexton business,” my lord
said--“and be hanged to them that told her!--she has not been the same
woman. She, who used to be as humble as a milkmaid, is as proud as a
princess,” says my lord. “Take my counsel, Harry Esmond, and keep clear
of women. Since I have had anything to do with the jades, they have
given me nothing but disgust. I had a wife at Tangier, with whom, as she
couldn't speak a word of my language, you'd have thought I might lead a
quiet life. But she tried to poison me, because she was jealous of a Jew
girl. There was your aunt, for aunt she is--aunt Jezebel, a pretty
life your father led with HER! and here's my lady. When I saw her on a
pillion, riding behind the Dean her father, she looked and was such a
baby, that a sixpenny doll might have pleased her. And now you see what
she is--hands off, highty-tighty, high and mighty, an empress couldn't
be grander. Pass us the tankard, Harry my boy. A mug of beer and a toast
at morn, says my host. A toast and a mug of beer at noon, says my dear.
D--n it, Polly loves a mug of ale, too, and laced with brandy, by Jove!”
Indeed, I suppose they drank it together; for my lord was often thick
in his speech at mid-day dinner; and at night at supper, speechless
altogether.
Harry Esmond's departure resolved upon, it seemed as if the Lady
Castlewood, too, rejoiced to lose him; for more than once, when the
lad, ashamed perhaps at his own secret eagerness to go away (at any
rate stricken with sadness at the idea of leaving those from whom he
had received so many proofs of love and kindness inestimable), tried to
express to his mistress his sense of gratitude to her, and his sorrow at
quitting those who had so sheltered and tended a nameless and houseless
orphan, Lady Castlewood cut short his protests of love and his
lamentations, and would hear of no grief, but only look forward to
Harry's fame and prospects in life. “Our little legacy will keep you
for four years like a gentleman. Heaven's Providence, your own genius,
industry, honor, must do the rest for you. Castlewood will always be a
home for you; and these children, whom you have taught and loved, will
not forget to love you. And, Harry,” said she (and this was the only
time when she spoke with a tear in her eye, or a tremor in her voice),
“it may happen in the course of nature that I shall be called away
from them: and their father--and--and they will need true friends and
protectors. Promise me that you will be true to them--as--as I think I
have been to you--and a mother's fond prayer and blessing go with you.”
“So help me God, madam, I will,” said Harry Esmond, falling on his
knees, and kissing the hand of his dearest mistress. “If you will have
me stay now, I will. What matters whether or no I make my way in life,
or whether a poor bastard dies as unknown as he is now? 'Tis enough
that I have your love and kindness surely; and to make you happy is duty
enough for me.”
“Happy!” says she; “but indeed I ought to be, with my children, and--”
“Not happy!” cried Esmond (for he knew what her life was, though he and
his mistress never spoke a word concerning it). “If not happiness,
it may be ease. Let me stay and work for you--let me stay and be your
servant.”
“Indeed, you are best away,” said my lady, laughing, as she put her hand
on the boy's head for a moment. “You shall stay in no such dull place.
You shall go to college and distinguish yourself as becomes your name.
That is how you shall please me best; and--and if my children want you,
or I want you, you shall come to us; and I know we may count on you.”
“May heaven forsake me if you may not!” Harry said, getting up from his
knee.
“And my knight longs for a dragon this instant that he may fight,” said
my lady, laughing; which speech made Harry Esmond start, and turn red;
for indeed the very thought was in his mind, that he would like
that some chance should immediately happen whereby he might show his
devotion. And it pleased him to think that his lady had called him “her
knight,” and often and often he recalled this to his mind, and prayed
that he might be her true knight, too.
My lady's bed-chamber window looked out over the country, and you could
see from it the purple hills beyond Castlewood village, the green common
betwixt that and the Hall, and the old bridge which crossed over the
river. When Harry Esmond went away for Cambridge, little Frank ran
alongside his horse as far as the bridge, and there Harry stopped for a
moment, and looked back at the house where the best part of his life had
been passed. It lay before him with its gray familiar towers, a pinnacle
or two shining in the sun, the buttresses and terrace walls casting
great blue shades on the grass. And Harry remembered, all his life
after, how he saw his mistress at the window looking out on him in a
white robe, the little Beatrix's chestnut curls resting at her mother's
side. Both waved a farewell to him, and little Frank sobbed to leave
him. Yes, he WOULD be his lady's true knight, he vowed in his heart; he
waved her an adieu with his hat. The village people had Good-by to say
to him too. All knew that Master Harry was going to college, and most of
them had a kind word and a look of farewell. I do not stop to say what
adventures he began to imagine, or what career to devise for himself
before he had ridden three miles from home. He had not read Monsieur
Galland's ingenious Arabian tales as yet; but be sure that there are
other folks who build castles in the air, and have fine hopes, and kick
them down too, besides honest Alnaschar.
CHAPTER X.
I GO TO CAMBRIDGE, AND DO BUT LITTLE GOOD THERE.
Mr lord, who said he should like to revisit the old haunts of his youth,
kindly accompanied Harry Esmond in his first journey to Cambridge. Their
road lay through London, where my Lord Viscount would also have Harry
stay a few days to show him the pleasures of the town before he entered
upon his university studies, and whilst here Harry's patron conducted
the young man to my Lady Dowager's house at Chelsey near London:
the kind lady at Castlewood having specially ordered that the young
gentleman and the old should pay a respectful visit in that quarter.
Her ladyship the Viscountess Dowager occupied a handsome new house in
Chelsey, with a garden behind it, and facing the river, always a bright
and animated sight with its swarms of sailors, barges, and wherries.
Harry laughed at recognizing in the parlor the well-remembered old
piece of Sir Peter Lely, wherein his father's widow was represented as
a virgin huntress, armed with a gilt bow-and-arrow, and encumbered only
with that small quantity of drapery which it would seem the virgins in
King Charles's day were accustomed to wear.
My Lady Dowager had left off this peculiar habit of huntress when she
married. But though she was now considerably past sixty years of age, I
believe she thought that airy nymph of the picture could still be easily
recognized in the venerable personage who gave an audience to Harry and
his patron.
She received the young man with even more favor than she showed to the
elder, for she chose to carry on the conversation in French, in which my
Lord Castlewood was no great proficient, and expressed her satisfaction
at finding that Mr. Esmond could speak fluently in that language. “'Twas
the only one fit for polite conversation,” she condescended to say, “and
suitable to persons of high breeding.”
My lord laughed afterwards, as the gentlemen went away, at his
kinswoman's behavior. He said he remembered the time when she could
speak English fast enough, and joked in his jolly way at the loss he had
had of such a lovely wife as that.
My Lady Viscountess deigned to ask his lordship news of his wife and
children; she had heard that Lady Castlewood had had the small-pox; she
hoped she was not so VERY much disfigured as people said.
At this remark about his wife's malady, my Lord Viscount winced and
turned red; but the Dowager, in speaking of the disfigurement of the
young lady, turned to her looking-glass and examined her old wrinkled
countenance in it with such a grin of satisfaction, that it was all her
guests could do to refrain from laughing in her ancient face.
She asked Harry what his profession was to be; and my lord, saying that
the lad was to take orders, and have the living of Castlewood when old
Dr. Tusher vacated it, she did not seem to show any particular anger at
the notion of Harry's becoming a Church of England clergyman, nay, was
rather glad than otherwise, that the youth should be so provided for.
She bade Mr. Esmond not to forget to pay her a visit whenever he passed
through London, and carried her graciousness so far as to send a purse
with twenty guineas for him, to the tavern at which my lord put up (the
“Greyhound,” in Charing Cross); and, along with this welcome gift for
her kinsman, she sent a little doll for a present to my lord's little
daughter Beatrix, who was growing beyond the age of dolls by this time,
and was as tall almost as her venerable relative.
After seeing the town, and going to the plays, my Lord Castlewood and
Esmond rode together to Cambridge, spending two pleasant days upon the
journey. Those rapid new coaches were not established, as yet, that
performed the whole journey between London and the University in a
single day; however, the road was pleasant and short enough to Harry
Esmond, and he always gratefully remembered that happy holiday which his
kind patron gave him.
Mr. Esmond was entered a pensioner of Trinity College in Cambridge,
to which famous college my lord had also in his youth belonged. Dr.
Montague was master at this time, and received my Lord Viscount with
great politeness: so did Mr. Bridge, who was appointed to be Harry's
tutor. Tom Tusher, who was of Emanuel College, and was by this time
a junior soph, came to wait upon my lord, and to take Harry under his
protection; and comfortable rooms being provided for him in the great
court close by the gate, and near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings,
Harry's patron took leave of him with many kind words and blessings,
and an admonition to him to behave better at the University than my lord
himself had ever done.
'Tis needless in these memoirs to go at any length into the particulars
of Harry Esmond's college career. It was like that of a hundred young
gentlemen of that day. But he had the ill fortune to be older by a
couple of years than most of his fellow-students; and by his previous
solitary mode of bringing up, the circumstances of his life, and the
peculiar thoughtfulness and melancholy that had naturally engendered, he
was, in a great measure, cut off from the society of comrades who were
much younger and higher-spirited than he. His tutor, who had bowed
down to the ground, as he walked my lord over the college grass-plats,
changed his behavior as soon as the nobleman's back was turned, and
was--at least Harry thought so--harsh and overbearing. When the lads
used to assemble in their greges in hall, Harry found himself alone in
the midst of that little flock of boys; they raised a great laugh at
him when he was set on to read Latin, which he did with the foreign
pronunciation taught to him by his old master, the Jesuit, than which
he knew no other. Mr. Bridge, the tutor, made him the object of clumsy
jokes, in which he was fond of indulging. The young man's spirit was
chafed, and his vanity mortified; and he found himself, for some time,
as lonely in this place as ever he had been at Castlewood, whither he
longed to return. His birth was a source of shame to him, and he fancied
a hundred slights and sneers from young and old, who, no doubt, had
treated him better had he met them himself more frankly. And as he looks
back, in calmer days, upon this period of his life, which he thought so
unhappy, he can see that his own pride and vanity caused no small part
of the mortifications which he attributed to other's ill will. The world
deals good-naturedly with good-natured people, and I never knew a sulky
misanthropist who quarrelled with it, but it was he, and not it, that
was in the wrong. Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty of good advice on this
subject, for Tom had both good sense and good humor; but Mr. Harry chose
to treat his senior with a great deal of superfluous disdain and absurd
scorn, and would by no means part from his darling injuries, in which,
very likely, no man believed but himself. As for honest Doctor Bridge,
the tutor found, after a few trials of wit with the pupil, that the
young man was an ugly subject for wit, and that the laugh was often
turned against him. This did not make tutor and pupil any better
friends; but had, so far, an advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridge was
induced to leave him alone; and so long as he kept his chapels, and did
the college exercises required of him, Bridge was content not to see
Harry's glum face in his class, and to leave him to read and sulk for
himself in his own chamber.
A poem or two in Latin and English, which were pronounced to have some
merit, and a Latin oration, (for Mr. Esmond could write that language
better than pronounce it,) got him a little reputation both with the
authorities of the University and amongst the young men, with whom he
began to pass for more than he was worth. A few victories over their
common enemy, Mr. Bridge, made them incline towards him, and look upon
him as the champion of their order against the seniors. Such of the lads
as he took into his confidence found him not so gloomy and haughty as
his appearance led them to believe; and Don Dismallo, as he was called,
became presently a person of some little importance in his college, and
was, as he believes, set down by the seniors there as rather a dangerous
character.
Don Dismallo was a staunch young Jacobite, like the rest of his family;
gave himself many absurd airs of loyalty; used to invite young friends
to Burgundy, and give the King's health on King James's birthday; wore
black on the day of his abdication; fasted on the anniversary of King
William's coronation; and performed a thousand absurd antics, of which
he smiles now to think.
These follies caused many remonstrances on Tom Tusher's part, who
was always a friend to the powers that be, as Esmond was always in
opposition to them. Tom was a Whig, while Esmond was a Tory. Tom never
missed a lecture, and capped the proctor with the profoundest of bows.
No wonder he sighed over Harry's insubordinate courses, and was angry
when the others laughed at him. But that Harry was known to have my
Lord Viscount's protection, Tom no doubt would have broken with him
altogether. But honest Tom never gave up a comrade as long as he was the
friend of a great man. This was not out of scheming on Tom's part, but
a natural inclination towards the great. 'Twas no hypocrisy in him
to flatter, but the bent of his mind, which was always perfectly
good-humored, obliging, and servile.
Harry had very liberal allowances, for his dear mistress of Castlewood
not only regularly supplied him, but the Dowager of Chelsey made her
donation annual, and received Esmond at her house near London every
Christmas; but, in spite of these benefactions, Esmond was constantly
poor; whilst 'twas a wonder with how small a stipend from his father Tom
Tusher contrived to make a good figure. 'Tis true that Harry both spent,
gave, and lent his money very freely, which Thomas never did. I think he
was like the famous Duke of Marlborough in this instance, who, getting
a present of fifty pieces, when a young man, from some foolish woman
who fell in love with his good looks, showed the money to Cadogan in a
drawer scores of years after, where it had lain ever since he had sold
his beardless honor to procure it. I do not mean to say that Tom ever
let out his good looks so profitably, for nature had not endowed him
with any particular charms of person, and he ever was a pattern of moral
behavior, losing no opportunity of giving the very best advice to his
younger comrade; with which article, to do him justice, he parted very
freely. Not but that he was a merry fellow, too, in his way; he loved a
joke, if by good fortune he understood it, and took his share generously
of a bottle if another paid for it, and especially if there was a young
lord in company to drink it. In these cases there was not a harder
drinker in the University than Mr. Tusher could be; and it was edifying
to behold him, fresh shaved and with smug face, singing out “Amen!”
at early chapel in the morning. In his reading, poor Harry permitted
himself to go a-gadding after all the Nine Muses, and so very likely had
but little favor from any one of them; whereas Tom Tusher, who had
no more turn for poetry than a ploughboy, nevertheless, by a dogged
perseverance and obsequiousness in courting the divine Calliope, got
himself a prize, and some credit in the University, and a fellowship
at his college, as a reward for his scholarship. In this time of Mr.
Esmond's life, he got the little reading which he ever could boast of,
and passed a good part of his days greedily devouring all the books on
which he could lay hand. In this desultory way the works of most of the
English, French, and Italian poets came under his eyes, and he had
a smattering of the Spanish tongue likewise, besides the ancient
languages, of which, at least of Latin, he was a tolerable master.
Then, about midway in his University career, he fell to reading for the
profession to which worldly prudence rather than inclination called him,
and was perfectly bewildered in theological controversy. In the course
of his reading (which was neither pursued with that seriousness or that
devout mind which such a study requires) the youth found himself at the
end of one month a Papist, and was about to proclaim his faith; the next
month a Protestant, with Chillingworth; and the third a sceptic, with
Hobbes and Bayle. Whereas honest Tom Tusher never permitted his mind to
stray out of the prescribed University path, accepted the Thirty-nine
Articles with all his heart, and would have signed and sworn to other
nine-and-thirty with entire obedience. Harry's wilfulness in this
matter, and disorderly thoughts and conversation, so shocked and
afflicted his senior, that there grew up a coldness and estrangement
between them, so that they became scarce more than mere acquaintances,
from having been intimate friends when they came to college first.
Politics ran high, too, at the University; and here, also, the young
men were at variance. Tom professed himself, albeit a high-churchman,
a strong King William's-man; whereas Harry brought his family Tory
politics to college with him, to which he must add a dangerous
admiration for Oliver Cromwell, whose side, or King James's by turns,
he often chose to take in the disputes which the young gentlemen used
to hold in each other's rooms, where they debated on the state of the
nation, crowned and deposed kings, and toasted past and present heroes
and beauties in flagons of college ale.
Thus, either from the circumstances of his birth, or the natural
melancholy of his disposition, Esmond came to live very much by himself
during his stay at the University, having neither ambition enough to
distinguish himself in the college career, nor caring to mingle with
the mere pleasures and boyish frolics of the students, who were, for
the most part, two or three years younger than he. He fancied that the
gentlemen of the common-room of his college slighted him on account of
his birth, and hence kept aloof from their society. It may be that
he made the ill will, which he imagined came from them, by his own
behavior, which, as he looks back on it in after life, he now sees
was morose and haughty. At any rate, he was as tenderly grateful for
kindness as he was susceptible of slight and wrong; and, lonely as
he was generally, yet had one or two very warm friendships for his
companions of those days.
One of these was a queer gentleman that resided in the University,
though he was no member of it, and was the professor of a science scarce
recognized in the common course of college education. This was a French
refugee-officer, who had been driven out of his native country at the
time of the Protestant persecutions there, and who came to Cambridge,
where he taught the science of the small-sword, and set up a
saloon-of-arms. Though he declared himself a Protestant, 'twas said
Mr. Moreau was a Jesuit in disguise; indeed, he brought very strong
recommendations to the Tory party, which was pretty strong in that
University, and very likely was one of the many agents whom King James
had in this country. Esmond found this gentleman's conversation very
much more agreeable and to his taste than the talk of the college
divines in the common-room; he never wearied of Moreau's stories of
the wars of Turenne and Conde, in which he had borne a part; and being
familiar with the French tongue from his youth, and in a place where
but few spoke it, his company became very agreeable to the brave old
professor of arms, whose favorite pupil he was, and who made Mr. Esmond
a very tolerable proficient in the noble science of escrime.
At the next term Esmond was to take his degree of Bachelor of Arts, and
afterwards, in proper season, to assume the cassock and bands which his
fond mistress would have him wear. Tom Tusher himself was a parson and
a fellow of his college by this time; and Harry felt that he would very
gladly cede his right to the living of Castlewood to Tom, and that his
own calling was in no way to the pulpit. But as he was bound, before
all things in the world, to his dear mistress at home, and knew that a
refusal on his part would grieve her, he determined to give her no
hint of his unwillingness to the clerical office: and it was in this
unsatisfactory mood of mind that he went to spend the last vacation he
should have at Castlewood before he took orders.
CHAPTER XI.
I COME HOME FOR A HOLIDAY TO CASTLEWOOD, AND FIND A SKELETON IN THE
HOUSE.
At his third long vacation, Esmond came as usual to Castlewood, always
feeling an eager thrill of pleasure when he found himself once more
in the house where he had passed so many years, and beheld the kind
familiar eyes of his mistress looking upon him. She and her children
(out of whose company she scarce ever saw him) came to greet him. Miss
Beatrix was grown so tall that Harry did not quite know whether he
might kiss her or no; and she blushed and held back when he offered
that salutation, though she took it, and even courted it, when they were
alone. The young lord was shooting up to be like his gallant father in
look, though with his mother's kind eyes: the lady of Castlewood herself
seemed grown, too, since Harry saw her--in her look more stately, in
her person fuller, in her face still as ever most tender and friendly, a
greater air of command and decision than had appeared in that guileless
sweet countenance which Harry remembered so gratefully. The tone of her
voice was so much deeper and sadder when she spoke and welcomed him,
that it quite startled Esmond, who looked up at her surprised as she
spoke, when she withdrew her eyes from him; nor did she ever look at him
afterwards when his own eyes were gazing upon her. A something hinting
at grief and secret, and filling his mind with alarm undefinable, seemed
to speak with that low thrilling voice of hers, and look out of those
clear sad eyes. Her greeting to Esmond was so cold that it almost pained
the lad, (who would have liked to fall on his knees, and kiss the skirt
of her robe, so fond and ardent was his respect and regard for her,)
and he faltered in answering the questions which she, hesitating on her
side, began to put to him. Was he happy at Cambridge? Did he study too
hard? She hoped not. He had grown very tall, and looked very well.
“He has got a moustache!” cries out Master Esmond.
“Why does he not wear a peruke like my Lord Mohun?” asked Miss Beatrix.
“My lord says that nobody wears their own hair.”
“I believe you will have to occupy your old chamber,” says my lady. “I
hope the housekeeper has got it ready.”
“Why, mamma, you have been there ten times these three days yourself!”
exclaims Frank.
“And she cut some flowers which you planted in my garden--do you
remember, ever so many years ago? when I was quite a little girl,” cries
out Miss Beatrix, on tiptoe. “And mamma put them in your window.”
“I remember when you grew well after you were ill that you used to like
roses,” said the lady, blushing like one of them. They all conducted
Harry Esmond to his chamber; the children running before, Harry walking
by his mistress hand-in-hand.
The old room had been ornamented and beautified not a little to receive
him. The flowers were in the window in a china vase; and there was a
fine new counterpane on the bed, which chatterbox Beatrix said mamma had
made too. A fire was crackling on the hearth, although it was June. My
lady thought the room wanted warming; everything was done to make him
happy and welcome: “And you are not to be a page any longer, but a
gentleman and kinsman, and to walk with papa and mamma,” said the
children. And as soon as his dear mistress and children had left him to
himself, it was with a heart overflowing with love and gratefulness that
he flung himself down on his knees by the side of the little bed, and
asked a blessing upon those who were so kind to him.
The children, who are always house tell-tales, soon made him acquainted
with the little history of the house and family. Papa had been to London
twice. Papa often went away now. Papa had taken Beatrix to Westlands,
where she was taller than Sir George Harper's second daughter, though
she was two years older. Papa had taken Beatrix and Frank both to
Bellminster, where Frank had got the better of Lord Bellminster's son in
a boxing-match--my lord, laughing, told Harry afterwards. Many gentlemen
came to stop with papa, and papa had gotten a new game from London,
a French game, called a billiard--that the French king played it very
well: and the Dowager Lady Castlewood had sent Miss Beatrix a present;
and papa had gotten a new chaise, with two little horses, which he drove
himself, beside the coach, which mamma went in; and Dr. Tusher was a
cross old plague, and they did not like to learn from him at all; and
papa did not care about them learning, and laughed when they were at
their books, but mamma liked them to learn, and taught them; and “I
don't think papa is fond of mamma,” said Miss Beatrix, with her great
eyes. She had come quite close up to Harry Esmond by the time this
prattle took place, and was on his knee, and had examined all the points
of his dress, and all the good or bad features of his homely face.
“You shouldn't say that papa is not fond of mamma,” said the boy, at
this confession. “Mamma never said so; and mamma forbade you to say it,
Miss Beatrix.”
'Twas this, no doubt, that accounted for the sadness in Lady
Castlewood's eyes, and the plaintive vibrations of her voice. Who
does not know of eyes, lighted by love once, where the flame shines no
more?--of lamps extinguished, once properly trimmed and tended? Every
man has such in his house. Such mementoes make our splendidest chambers
look blank and sad; such faces seen in a day cast a gloom upon our
sunshine. So oaths mutually sworn, and invocations of heaven, and
priestly ceremonies, and fond belief, and love, so fond and faithful
that it never doubted but that it should live for ever, are all of no
avail towards making love eternal: it dies, in spite of the banns and
the priest; and I have often thought there should be a visitation of the
sick for it, and a funeral service, and an extreme unction, and an
abi in pace. It has its course, like all mortal things--its beginning,
progress, and decay. It buds and it blooms out into sunshine, and it
withers and ends. Strephon and Chloe languish apart; join in a rapture:
and presently you hear that Chloe is crying, and Strephon has broken
his crook across her back. Can you mend it so as to show no marks of
rupture? Not all the priests of Hymen, not all the incantations to the
gods, can make it whole!
Waking up from dreams, books, and visions of college honors, in which
for two years, Harry Esmond had been immersed, he found himself,
instantly, on his return home, in the midst of this actual tragedy of
life, which absorbed and interested him more than all his tutor had
taught him. The persons whom he loved best in the world, and to whom he
owed most, were living unhappily together. The gentlest and kindest of
women was suffering ill usage and shedding tears in secret: the man who
made her wretched by neglect, if not by violence, was Harry's benefactor
and patron. In houses where, in place of that sacred, inmost flame
of love, there is discord at the centre, the whole household becomes
hypocritical, and each lies to his neighbor. The husband (or it may
be the wife) lies when the visitor comes in, and wears a grin of
reconciliation or politeness before him. The wife lies (indeed, her
business is to do that, and to smile, however much she is beaten),
swallows her tears, and lies to her lord and master; lies in bidding
little Jackey respect dear papa; lies in assuring grandpapa that she
is perfectly happy. The servants lie, wearing grave faces behind their
master's chair, and pretending to be unconscious of the fighting;
and so, from morning till bedtime, life is passed in falsehood. And
wiseacres call this a proper regard of morals, and point out Baucis and
Philemon as examples of a good life.
If my lady did not speak of her griefs to Harry Esmond, my lord was
by no means reserved when in his cups, and spoke his mind very freely,
bidding Harry in his coarse way, and with his blunt language, beware
of all women as cheats, jades, jilts, and using other unmistakable
monosyllables in speaking of them. Indeed, 'twas the fashion of the day,
as I must own; and there's not a writer of my time of any note, with the
exception of poor Dick Steele, that does not speak of a woman as of
a slave, and scorn and use her as such. Mr. Pope, Mr. Congreve, Mr.
Addison, Mr. Gay, every one of 'em, sing in this key, each according to
his nature and politeness, and louder and fouler than all in abuse is
Dr. Swift, who spoke of them as he treated them, worst of all.
Much of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married people come
in my mind from the husband's rage and revolt at discovering that
his slave and bedfellow, who is to minister to all his wishes, and is
church-sworn to honor and obey him--is his superior; and that HE,
and not she, ought to be the subordinate of the twain; and in these
controversies, I think, lay the cause of my lord's anger against his
lady. When he left her, she began to think for herself, and her thoughts
were not in his favor. After the illumination, when the love-lamp is
put out that anon we spoke of, and by the common daylight we look at the
picture, what a daub it looks! what a clumsy effigy! How many men and
wives come to this knowledge, think you? And if it be painful to a woman
to find herself mated for life to a boor, and ordered to love and honor
a dullard; it is worse still for the man himself perhaps, whenever in
his dim comprehension the idea dawns that his slave and drudge yonder
is, in truth, his superior; that the woman who does his bidding, and
submits to his humor, should be his lord; that she can think a thousand
things beyond the power of his muddled brains; and that in yonder head,
on the pillow opposite to him, lie a thousand feelings, mysteries of
thought, latent scorns and rebellions, whereof he only dimly perceives
the existence as they look out furtively from her eyes: treasures of
love doomed to perish without a hand to gather them; sweet fancies and
images of beauty that would grow and unfold themselves into flower;
bright wit that would shine like diamonds could it be brought into the
sun: and the tyrant in possession crushes the outbreak of all these,
drives them back like slaves into the dungeon and darkness, and chafes
without that his prisoner is rebellious, and his sworn subject undutiful
and refractory. So the lamp was out in Castlewood Hall, and the lord
and lady there saw each other as they were. With her illness and altered
beauty my lord's fire for his wife disappeared; with his selfishness and
faithlessness her foolish fiction of love and reverence was rent away.
Love!--who is to love what is base and unlovely? Respect!--who is to
respect what is gross and sensual? Not all the marriage oaths sworn
before all the parsons, cardinals, ministers, muftis, and rabbins in
the world, can bind to that monstrous allegiance. This couple was living
apart then; the woman happy to be allowed to love and tend her children
(who were never of her own good-will away from her), and thankful to
have saved such treasures as these out of the wreck in which the better
part of her heart went down.
These young ones had had no instructors save their mother, and Doctor
Tusher for their theology occasionally, and had made more progress than
might have been expected under a tutor so indulgent and fond as Lady
Castlewood. Beatrix could sing and dance like a nymph. Her voice was
her father's delight after dinner. She ruled over the house with little
imperial ways, which her parents coaxed and laughed at. She had long
learned the value of her bright eyes, and tried experiments in coquetry,
in corpore vili, upon rustics and country squires, until she should
prepare to conquer the world and the fashion. She put on a new ribbon to
welcome Harry Esmond, made eyes at him, and directed her young smiles at
him, not a little to the amusement of the young man, and the joy of her
father, who laughed his great laugh, and encouraged her in her thousand
antics. Lady Castlewood watched the child gravely and sadly: the
little one was pert in her replies to her mother, yet eager in her
protestations of love and promises of amendment; and as ready to cry
(after a little quarrel brought on by her own giddiness) until she
had won back her mamma's favor, as she was to risk the kind lady's
displeasure by fresh outbreaks of restless vanity. From her mother's sad
looks she fled to her father's chair and boozy laughter. She already
set the one against the other: and the little rogue delighted in the
mischief which she knew how to make so early.
The young heir of Castlewood was spoiled by father and mother both. He
took their caresses as men do, and as if they were his right. He had
his hawks and his spaniel dog, his little horse and his beagles. He had
learned to ride, and to drink, and to shoot flying: and he had a
small court, the sons of the huntsman and woodman, as became the
heir-apparent, taking after the example of my lord his father. If he had
a headache, his mother was as much frightened as if the plague were in
the house: my lord laughed and jeered in his abrupt way--(indeed, 'twas
on the day after New Year's Day, and an excess of mince-pie)--and said
with some of his usual oaths--“D--n it, Harry Esmond--you see how my
lady takes on about Frank's megrim. She used to be sorry about me, my
boy (pass the tankard, Harry), and to be frightened if I had a headache
once. She don't care about my head now. They're like that--women
are--all the same, Harry, all jilts in their hearts. Stick to
college--stick to punch and buttery ale: and never see a woman that's
handsomer than an old cinder-faced bed-maker. That's my counsel.”
It was my lord's custom to fling out many jokes of this nature, in
presence of his wife and children, at meals--clumsy sarcasms which my
lady turned many a time, or which, sometimes, she affected not to hear,
or which now and again would hit their mark and make the poor victim
wince (as you could see by her flushing face and eyes filling with
tears), or which again worked her up to anger and retort, when,
in answer to one of these heavy bolts, she would flash back with a
quivering reply. The pair were not happy; nor indeed was it happy to be
with them. Alas that youthful love and truth should end in bitterness
and bankruptcy! To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder;
but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.
Harry Esmond became the confidant of one and the other--that is, my
lord told the lad all his griefs and wrongs (which were indeed of Lord
Castlewood's own making), and Harry divined my lady's; his affection
leading him easily to penetrate the hypocrisy under which Lady
Castlewood generally chose to go disguised, and see her heart aching
whilst her face wore a smile. 'Tis a hard task for women in life, that
mask which the world bids them wear. But there is no greater crime than
for a woman who is ill used and unhappy to show that she is so. The
world is quite relentless about bidding her to keep a cheerful face; and
our women, like the Malabar wives, are forced to go smiling and painted
to sacrifice themselves with their husbands; their relations being the
most eager to push them on to their duty, and, under their shouts and
applauses, to smother and hush their cries of pain.
So, into the sad secret of his patron's household, Harry Esmond became
initiated, he scarce knew how. It had passed under his eyes two years
before, when he could not understand it; but reading, and thought, and
experience of men, had oldened him; and one of the deepest sorrows of a
life which had never, in truth, been very happy, came upon him now, when
he was compelled to understand and pity a grief which he stood quite
powerless to relieve.
It hath been said my lord would never take the oath of allegiance, nor
his seat as a peer of the kingdom of Ireland, where, indeed, he had but
a nominal estate; and refused an English peerage which King William's
government offered him as a bribe to secure his loyalty.
He might have accepted this, and would doubtless, but for the earnest
remonstrances of his wife, who ruled her husband's opinions better than
she could govern his conduct, and who being a simple-hearted woman,
with but one rule of faith and right, never thought of swerving from her
fidelity to the exiled family, or of recognizing any other sovereign but
King James; and though she acquiesced in the doctrine of obedience to
the reigning power, no temptation, she thought, could induce her to
acknowledge the Prince of Orange as rightful monarch, nor to let her
lord so acknowledge him. So my Lord Castlewood remained a nonjuror all
his life nearly, though his self-denial caused him many a pang, and left
him sulky and out of humor.
The year after the Revolution, and all through King William's life, 'tis
known there were constant intrigues for the restoration of the exiled
family; but if my Lord Castlewood took any share of these, as is
probable, 'twas only for a short time, and when Harry Esmond was too
young to be introduced into such important secrets.
But in the year 1695, when that conspiracy of Sir John Fenwick, Colonel
Lowick, and others, was set on foot, for waylaying King William as he
came from Hampton Court to London, and a secret plot was formed, in
which a vast number of the nobility and people of honor were engaged,
Father Holt appeared at Castlewood, and brought a young friend with
him, a gentleman whom 'twas easy to see that both my lord and the Father
treated with uncommon deference. Harry Esmond saw this gentleman, and
knew and recognized him in after life, as shall be shown in its place;
and he has little doubt now that my Lord Viscount was implicated
somewhat in the transactions which always kept Father Holt employed
and travelling hither and thither under a dozen of different names and
disguises. The Father's companion went by the name of Captain James;
and it was under a very different name and appearance that Harry Esmond
afterwards saw him.
It was the next year that the Fenwick conspiracy blew up, which is a
matter of public history now, and which ended in the execution of Sir
John and many more, who suffered manfully for their treason, and who
were attended to Tyburn by my lady's father Dean Armstrong, Mr.
Collier, and other stout nonjuring clergymen, who absolved them at the
gallows-foot.
'Tis known that when Sir John was apprehended, discovery was made of a
great number of names of gentlemen engaged in the conspiracy; when, with
a noble wisdom and clemency, the Prince burned the list of conspirators
furnished to him, and said he would know no more. Now it was after this
that Lord Castlewood swore his great oath, that he would never, so
help him heaven, be engaged in any transaction against that brave and
merciful man; and so he told Holt when the indefatigable priest visited
him, and would have had him engage in a farther conspiracy. After this
my lord ever spoke of King William as he was--as one of the wisest, the
bravest, and the greatest of men. My Lady Esmond (for her part) said she
could never pardon the King, first, for ousting his father-in-law
from his throne, and secondly, for not being constant to his wife, the
Princess Mary. Indeed, I think if Nero were to rise again, and be king
of England, and a good family man, the ladies would pardon him. My lord
laughed at his wife's objections--the standard of virtue did not fit him
much.
The last conference which Mr. Holt had with his lordship took place when
Harry was come home for his first vacation from college (Harry saw his
old tutor but for a half-hour, and exchanged no private words with him),
and their talk, whatever it might be, left my Lord Viscount very much
disturbed in mind--so much so, that his wife, and his young kinsman,
Henry Esmond, could not but observe his disquiet. After Holt was
gone, my lord rebuffed Esmond, and again treated him with the greatest
deference; he shunned his wife's questions and company, and looked at
his children with such a face of gloom and anxiety, muttering, “Poor
children--poor children!” in a way that could not but fill those whose
life it was to watch him and obey him with great alarm. For which gloom,
each person interested in the Lord Castlewood, framed in his or her own
mind an interpretation.
My lady, with a laugh of cruel bitterness said, “I suppose the person
at Hexton has been ill, or has scolded him” (for my lord's infatuation
about Mrs. Marwood was known only too well). Young Esmond feared for his
money affairs, into the condition of which he had been initiated; and
that the expenses, always greater than his revenue, had caused Lord
Castlewood disquiet.
One of the causes why my Lord Viscount had taken young Esmond into his
special favor was a trivial one, that hath not before been mentioned,
though it was a very lucky accident in Henry Esmond's life. A very few
months after my lord's coming to Castlewood, in the winter time--the
little boy, being a child in a petticoat, trotting about--it happened
that little Frank was with his father after dinner, who fell asleep over
his wine, heedless of the child, who crawled to the fire; and, as good
fortune would have it, Esmond was sent by his mistress for the boy just
as the poor little screaming urchin's coat was set on fire by a log;
when Esmond, rushing forward, tore the dress off the infant, so that his
own hands were burned more than the child's, who was frightened rather
than hurt by this accident. But certainly 'twas providential that a
resolute person should have come in at that instant, or the child had
been burned to death probably, my lord sleeping very heavily after
drinking, and not waking so cool as a man should who had a danger to
face.
Ever after this the father, loud in his expressions of remorse and
humility for being a tipsy good-for-nothing, and of admiration for Harry
Esmond, whom his lordship would style a hero for doing a very trifling
service, had the tenderest regard for his son's preserver, and Harry
became quite as one of the family. His burns were tended with the
greatest care by his kind mistress, who said that heaven had sent him
to be the guardian of her children, and that she would love him all her
life.
And it was after this, and from the very great love and tenderness which
had grown up in this little household, rather than from the exhortations
of Dean Armstrong (though these had no small weight with him), that
Harry came to be quite of the religion of his house and his dear
mistress, of which he has ever since been a professing member. As for
Dr. Tusher's boasts that he was the cause of this conversion--even in
these young days Mr. Esmond had such a contempt for the Doctor, that had
Tusher bade him believe anything (which he did not--never meddling at
all), Harry would that instant have questioned the truth on't.
My lady seldom drank wine; but on certain days of the year, such as
birthdays (poor Harry had never a one) and anniversaries, she took a
little; and this day, the 29th December, was one. At the end, then, of
this year, '96, it might have been a fortnight after Mr. Holt's last
visit, Lord Castlewood being still very gloomy in mind, and sitting at
table--my lady bidding a servant bring her a glass of wine, and looking
at her husband with one of her sweet smiles, said--
“My lord, will you not fill a bumper too, and let me call a toast?”
“What is it, Rachel?” says he, holding out his empty glass to be filled.
“'Tis the 29th of December,” says my lady, with her fond look of
gratitude: “and my toast is, 'Harry--and God bless him, who saved my
boy's life!'”
My lord looked at Harry hard, and drank the glass, but clapped it down
on the table in a moment, and, with a sort of groan, rose up, and went
out of the room. What was the matter? We all knew that some great grief
was over him.
Whether my lord's prudence had made him richer, or legacies had fallen
to him, which enabled him to support a greater establishment than that
frugal one which had been too much for his small means, Harry Esmond
knew not; but the house of Castlewood was now on a scale much more
costly than it had been during the first years of his lordship's coming
to the title. There were more horses in the stable and more servants in
the hall, and many more guests coming and going now than formerly, when
it was found difficult enough by the strictest economy to keep the house
as befitted one of his lordship's rank, and the estate out of debt. And
it did not require very much penetration to find that many of the new
acquaintances at Castlewood were not agreeable to the lady there: not
that she ever treated them or any mortal with anything but courtesy; but
they were persons who could not be welcome to her; and whose society a
lady so refined and reserved could scarce desire for her children. There
came fuddling squires from the country round, who bawled their songs
under her windows and drank themselves tipsy with my lord's punch and
ale: there came officers from Hexton, in whose company our little lord
was made to hear talk and to drink, and swear too, in a way that made
the delicate lady tremble for her son. Esmond tried to console her by
saying what he knew of his College experience; that with this sort
of company and conversation a man must fall in sooner or later in his
course through the world: and it mattered very little whether he heard
it at twelve years old or twenty--the youths who quitted mother's
apron-strings the latest being not uncommonly the wildest rakes. But it
was about her daughter that Lady Castlewood was the most anxious,
and the danger which she thought menaced the little Beatrix from the
indulgences which her father gave her, (it must be owned that my lord,
since these unhappy domestic differences especially, was at once violent
in his language to the children when angry, as he was too familiar, not
to say coarse, when he was in a good humor,) and from the company into
which the careless lord brought the child.
Not very far off from Castlewood is Sark Castle, where the Marchioness
of Sark lived, who was known to have been a mistress of the late King
Charles--and to this house, whither indeed a great part of the country
gentry went, my lord insisted upon going, not only himself, but on
taking his little daughter and son, to play with the children there. The
children were nothing loth, for the house was splendid, and the welcome
kind enough. But my lady, justly no doubt, thought that the children of
such a mother as that noted Lady Sark had been, could be no good company
for her two; and spoke her mind to her lord. His own language when he
was thwarted was not indeed of the gentlest: to be brief, there was a
family dispute on this, as there had been on many other points--and the
lady was not only forced to give in, for the other's will was law--nor
could she, on account of their tender age, tell her children what
was the nature of her objection to their visit of pleasure, or indeed
mention to them any objection at all--but she had the additional secret
mortification to find them returning delighted with their new friends,
loaded with presents from them, and eager to be allowed to go back to
a place of such delights as Sark Castle. Every year she thought the
company there would be more dangerous to her daughter, as from a child
Beatrix grew to a woman, and her daily increasing beauty, and many
faults of character too, expanded.
It was Harry Esmond's lot to see one of the visits which the old Lady of
Sark paid to the Lady of Castlewood Hall: whither she came in state with
six chestnut horses and blue ribbons, a page on each carriage step, a
gentleman of the horse, and armed servants riding before and behind her.
And, but that it was unpleasant to see Lady Castlewood's face, it was
amusing to watch the behavior of the two enemies: the frigid patience
of the younger lady, and the unconquerable good-humor of the elder--who
would see no offence whatever her rival intended, and who never ceased
to smile and to laugh, and to coax the children, and to pay compliments
to every man, woman, child, nay dog, or chair and table, in Castlewood,
so bent was she upon admiring everything there. She lauded the children,
and wished as indeed she well might--that her own family had been
brought up as well as those cherubs. She had never seen such a
complexion as dear Beatrix's--though to be sure she had a right to
it from father and mother--Lady Castlewood's was indeed a wonder of
freshness, and Lady Sark sighed to think she had not been born a fair
woman; and remarking Harry Esmond, with a fascinating superannuated
smile, she complimented him on his wit, which she said she could see
from his eyes and forehead; and vowed that she would never have HIM at
Sark until her daughter were out of the way.
CHAPTER XII.
MY LORD MOHUN COMES AMONG US FOR NO GOOD.
There had ridden along with this old Princess's cavalcade, two
gentlemen: her son, my Lord Firebrace, and his friend, my Lord Mohun,
who both were greeted with a great deal of cordiality by the hospitable
Lord of Castlewood. My Lord Firebrace was but a feeble-minded
and weak-limbed young nobleman, small in stature and limited in
understanding to judge from the talk young Esmond had with him; but
the other was a person of a handsome presence, with the bel air, and a
bright daring warlike aspect, which, according to the chronicle of those
days, had already achieved for him the conquest of several beauties and
toasts. He had fought and conquered in France, as well as in Flanders;
he had served a couple of campaigns with the Prince of Baden on the
Danube, and witnessed the rescue of Vienna from the Turk. And he spoke
of his military exploits pleasantly, and with the manly freedom of a
soldier, so as to delight all his hearers at Castlewood, who were little
accustomed to meet a companion so agreeable.
On the first day this noble company came, my lord would not hear of
their departure before dinner, and carried away the gentlemen to amuse
them, whilst his wife was left to do the honors of her house to the old
Marchioness and her daughter within. They looked at the stables where my
Lord Mohun praised the horses, though there was but a poor show there:
they walked over the old house and gardens, and fought the siege of
Oliver's time over again: they played a game of rackets in the old
court, where my Lord Castlewood beat my Lord Mohun, who said he loved
ball of all things, and would quickly come back to Castlewood for his
revenge. After dinner they played bowls and drank punch in the green
alley; and when they parted they were sworn friends, my Lord Castlewood
kissing the other lord before he mounted on horseback, and pronouncing
him the best companion he had met for many a long day. All night long,
over his tobacco-pipe, Castlewood did not cease to talk to Harry Esmond
in praise of his new friend, and in fact did not leave off speaking of
him until his lordship was so tipsy that he could not speak plainly any
more.
At breakfast next day it was the same talk renewed; and when my lady
said there was something free in the Lord Mohun's looks and manner of
speech which caused her to mistrust him, her lord burst out with one of
his laughs and oaths; said that he never liked man, woman, or beast,
but what she was sure to be jealous of it; that Mohun was the prettiest
fellow in England; that he hoped to see more of him whilst in the
country; and that he would let Mohun know what my Lady Prude said of
him.
“Indeed,” Lady Castlewood said, “I liked his conversation well enough.
'Tis more amusing than that of most people I know. I thought it, I own,
too free; not from what he said, as rather from what he implied.”
“Psha! your ladyship does not know the world,” said her husband; “and
you have always been as squeamish as when you were a miss of fifteen.”
“You found no fault when I was a miss at fifteen.”
“Begad, madam, you are grown too old for a pinafore now; and I hold
that 'tis for me to judge what company my wife shall see,” said my lord,
slapping the table.
“Indeed, Francis, I never thought otherwise,” answered my lady, rising
and dropping him a curtsy, in which stately action, if there was
obedience, there was defiance too; and in which a bystander, deeply
interested in the happiness of that pair as Harry Esmond was, might see
how hopelessly separated they were; what a great gulf of difference and
discord had run between them.
“By G-d! Mohun is the best fellow in England; and I'll invite him here,
just to plague that woman. Did you ever see such a frigid insolence as
it is, Harry? That's the way she treats me,” he broke out, storming, and
his face growing red as he clenched his fists and went on. “I'm nobody
in my own house. I'm to be the humble servant of that parson's daughter.
By Jove! I'd rather she should fling the dish at my head than sneer at
me as she does. She puts me to shame before the children with her d--d
airs; and, I'll swear, tells Frank and Beaty that papa's a reprobate,
and that they ought to despise me.”
“Indeed and indeed, sir, I never heard her say a word but of respect
regarding you,” Harry Esmond interposed.
“No, curse it! I wish she would speak. But she never does. She
scorns me, and holds her tongue. She keeps off from me, as if I was a
pestilence. By George! she was fond enough of her pestilence once. And
when I came a-courting, you would see miss blush--blush red, by George!
for joy. Why, what do you think she said to me, Harry? She said herself,
when I joked with her about her d--d smiling red cheeks: ''Tis as they
do at St. James's; I put up my red flag when my king comes.' I was the
king, you see, she meant. But now, sir, look at her! I believe she would
be glad if I was dead; and dead I've been to her these five years--ever
since you all of you had the small-pox: and she never forgave me for
going away.”
“Indeed, my lord, though 'twas hard to forgive, I think my mistress
forgave it,” Harry Esmond said; “and remember how eagerly she watched
your lordship's return, and how sadly she turned away when she saw your
cold looks.”
“Damme!” cries out my lord; “would you have had me wait and catch the
small-pox? Where the deuce had been the good of that? I'll bear danger
with any man--but not useless danger--no, no. Thank you for nothing.
And--you nod your head, and I know very well, Parson Harry, what you
mean. There was the--the other affair to make her angry. But is a woman
never to forgive a husband who goes a-tripping? Do you take me for a
saint?”
“Indeed, sir, I do not,” says Harry, with a smile.
“Since that time my wife's as cold as the statue at Charing Cross. I
tell thee she has no forgiveness in her, Henry. Her coldness blights
my whole life, and sends me to the punch-bowl, or driving about the
country. My children are not mine, but hers, when we are together. 'Tis
only when she is out of sight with her abominable cold glances, that
run through me, that they'll come to me, and that I dare to give them so
much as a kiss; and that's why I take 'em and love 'em in other people's
houses, Harry. I'm killed by the very virtue of that proud woman.
Virtue! give me the virtue that can forgive; give me the virtue that
thinks not of preserving itself, but of making other folks happy.
Damme, what matters a scar or two if 'tis got in helping a friend in ill
fortune?”
And my lord again slapped the table, and took a great draught from the
tankard. Harry Esmond admired as he listened to him, and thought how the
poor preacher of this self-sacrifice had fled from the small-pox, which
the lady had borne so cheerfully, and which had been the cause of so
much disunion in the lives of all in this house. “How well men preach,”
thought the young man, “and each is the example in his own sermon. How
each has a story in a dispute, and a true one, too, and both are right
or wrong as you will!” Harry's heart was pained within him, to watch the
struggles and pangs that tore the breast of this kind, manly friend and
protector.
“Indeed, sir,” said he, “I wish to God that my mistress could hear you
speak as I have heard you; she would know much that would make her life
the happier, could she hear it.” But my lord flung away with one of his
oaths, and a jeer; he said that Parson Harry was a good fellow; but that
as for women, all women were alike--all jades and heartless. So a man
dashes a fine vase down, and despises it for being broken. It may be
worthless--true: but who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it?
Harry, who would have given his life to make his benefactress and her
husband happy, bethought him, now that he saw what my lord's state of
mind was, and that he really had a great deal of that love left in his
heart, and ready for his wife's acceptance if she would take it, whether
he could not be a means of reconciliation between these two persons,
whom he revered the most in the world. And he cast about how he should
break a part of his mind to his mistress, and warn her that in his,
Harry's opinion, at least, her husband was still her admirer, and even
her lover.
But he found the subject a very difficult one to handle, when he
ventured to remonstrate, which he did in the very gravest tone, (for
long confidence and reiterated proofs of devotion and loyalty had given
him a sort of authority in the house, which he resumed as soon as ever
he returned to it,) and with a speech that should have some effect, as,
indeed, it was uttered with the speaker's own heart, he ventured most
gently to hint to his adored mistress that she was doing her husband
harm by her ill opinion of him, and that the happiness of all the family
depended upon setting her right.
She, who was ordinarily calm and most gentle, and full of smiles and
soft attentions, flushed up when young Esmond so spoke to her, and rose
from her chair, looking at him with a haughtiness and indignation that
he had never before known her to display. She was quite an altered being
for that moment; and looked an angry princess insulted by a vassal.
“Have you ever heard me utter a word in my lord's disparagement?” she
asked hastily, hissing out her words, and stamping her foot.
“Indeed, no,” Esmond said, looking down.
“Are you come to me as his ambassador--YOU?” she continued.
“I would sooner see peace between you than anything else in the world,”
Harry answered, “and would go of any embassy that had that end.”
“So YOU are my lord's go-between?” she went on, not regarding this
speech. “You are sent to bid me back into slavery again, and inform me
that my lord's favor is graciously restored to his handmaid? He is weary
of Covent Garden, is he, that he comes home and would have the fatted
calf killed?”
“There's good authority for it, surely,” said Esmond.
“For a son, yes; but my lord is not my son. It was he who cast me away
from him. It was he who broke our happiness down, and he bids me to
repair it. It was he who showed himself to me at last, as he was, not
as I had thought him. It is he who comes before my children stupid and
senseless with wine--who leaves our company for that of frequenters of
taverns and bagnios--who goes from his home to the City yonder and his
friends there, and when he is tired of them returns hither, and expects
that I shall kneel and welcome him. And he sends YOU as his chamberlain!
What a proud embassy! Monsieur, I make you my compliment of the new
place.”
“It would be a proud embassy, and a happy embassy too, could I bring you
and my lord together,” Esmond replied.
“I presume you have fulfilled your mission now, sir. 'Twas a pretty
one for you to undertake. I don't know whether 'tis your Cambridge
philosophy, or time, that has altered your ways of thinking,” Lady
Castlewood continued, still in a sarcastic tone. “Perhaps you too have
learned to love drink, and to hiccup over your wine or punch;--which is
your worship's favorite liquor? Perhaps you too put up at the 'Rose'
on your way to London, and have your acquaintances in Covent Garden. My
services to you, sir, to principal and ambassador, to master and--and
lackey.”
“Great heavens! madam,” cried Harry. “What have I done that thus, for a
second time, you insult me? Do you wish me to blush for what I used to
be proud of, that I lived on your bounty? Next to doing you a service
(which my life would pay for), you know that to receive one from you is
my highest pleasure. What wrong have I done you that you should wound me
so, cruel woman?”
“What wrong?” she said, looking at Esmond with wild eyes. “Well,
none--none that you know of, Harry, or could help. Why did you bring
back the small-pox,” she added, after a pause, “from Castlewood village?
You could not help it, could you? Which of us knows whither fate leads
us? But we were all happy, Henry, till then.” And Harry went away from
this colloquy, thinking still that the estrangement between his patron
and his beloved mistress was remediable, and that each had at heart a
strong attachment to the other.
The intimacy between the Lords Mohun and Castlewood appeared to increase
as long as the former remained in the country; and my Lord of Castlewood
especially seemed never to be happy out of his new comrade's sight.
They sported together, they drank, they played bowls and tennis: my Lord
Castlewood would go for three days to Sark, and bring back my Lord Mohun
to Castlewood--where indeed his lordship made himself very welcome to
all persons, having a joke or a new game at romps for the children, all
the talk of the town for my lord, and music and gallantry and plenty of
the beau langage for my lady, and for Harry Esmond, who was never tired
of hearing his stories of his campaigns and his life at Vienna, Venice,
Paris, and the famous cities of Europe which he had visited both in
peace and war. And he sang at my lady's harpsichord, and played cards
or backgammon, or his new game of billiards with my lord (of whom he
invariably got the better) always having a consummate good-humor, and
bearing himself with a certain manly grace, that might exhibit somewhat
of the camp and Alsatia perhaps, but that had its charm, and stamped
him a gentleman: and his manner to Lady Castlewood was so devoted and
respectful, that she soon recovered from the first feelings of dislike
which she had conceived against him--nay, before long, began to be
interested in his spiritual welfare, and hopeful of his conversion,
lending him books of piety, which he promised dutifully to study. With
her my lord talked of reform, of settling into quiet life, quitting the
court and town, and buying some land in the neighborhood--though it
must be owned that, when the two lords were together over their Burgundy
after dinner, their talk was very different, and there was very little
question of conversion on my Lord Mohun's part. When they got to their
second bottle, Harry Esmond used commonly to leave these two noble
topers, who, though they talked freely enough, heaven knows, in his
presence (Good Lord, what a set of stories, of Alsatia and Spring
Garden, of the taverns and gaming-houses, of the ladies of the
court, and mesdames of the theatres, he can recall out of their godly
conversation!)--although, I say, they talked before Esmond freely, yet
they seemed pleased when he went away, and then they had another
bottle, and then they fell to cards, and then my Lord Mohun came to her
ladyship's drawing-room; leaving his boon companion to sleep off his
wine.
'Twas a point of honor with the fine gentlemen of those days to lose
or win magnificently at their horse-matches, or games of cards and
dice--and you could never tell, from the demeanor of these two lords
afterwards, which had been successful and which the loser at their
games. And when my lady hinted to my lord that he played more than she
liked, he dismissed her with a “pish,” and swore that nothing was more
equal than play betwixt gentlemen, if they did but keep it up long
enough. And these kept it up long enough, you may be sure. A man of
fashion of that time often passed a quarter of his day at cards, and
another quarter at drink: I have known many a pretty fellow, who was
a wit too, ready of repartee, and possessed of a thousand graces, who
would be puzzled if he had to write more than his name.
There is scarce any thoughtful man or woman, I suppose, but can look
back upon his course of past life, and remember some point, trifling
as it may have seemed at the time of occurrence, which has nevertheless
turned and altered his whole career. 'Tis with almost all of us, as
in M. Massillon's magnificent image regarding King William, a grain de
sable that perverts or perhaps overthrows us; and so it was but a light
word flung in the air, a mere freak of perverse child's temper, that
brought down a whole heap of crushing woes upon that family whereof
Harry Esmond formed a part.
Coming home to his dear Castlewood in the third year of his academical
course, (wherein he had now obtained some distinction, his Latin Poem
on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, Princess Anne of Denmark's son,
having gained him a medal, and introduced him to the society of the
University wits,) Esmond found his little friend and pupil Beatrix grown
to be taller than her mother, a slim and lovely young girl, with cheeks
mantling with health and roses: with eyes like stars shining out
of azure, with waving bronze hair clustered about the fairest young
forehead ever seen: and a mien and shape haughty and beautiful, such
as that of the famous antique statue of the huntress Diana--at one time
haughty, rapid, imperious, with eyes and arrows that dart and kill.
Harry watched and wondered at this young creature, and likened her in
his mind to Artemis with the ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon
the children of Niobe; at another time she was coy and melting as
Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous
Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her full splendor:
but crescent and brilliant, our young gentleman of the University, his
head full of poetical fancies, his heart perhaps throbbing with desires
undefined, admired this rising young divinity; and gazed at her (though
only as at some “bright particular star,” far above his earth) with
endless delight and wonder. She had been a coquette from the earliest
times almost, trying her freaks and jealousies, her wayward frolics and
winning caresses, upon all that came within her reach; she set her women
quarrelling in the nursery, and practised her eyes on the groom as she
rode behind him on the pillion.
She was the darling and torment of father and mother. She intrigued with
each secretly; and bestowed her fondness and withdrew it, plied them
with tears, smiles, kisses, cajolements;--when the mother was angry, as
happened often, flew to the father, and sheltering behind him, pursued
her victim; when both were displeased, transferred her caresses to the
domestics, or watched until she could win back her parents' good graces,
either by surprising them into laughter and good-humor, or appeasing
them by submission and artful humility. She was saevo laeta negotio,
like that fickle goddess Horace describes, and of whose “malicious joy”
a great poet of our own has written so nobly--who, famous and heroic as
he was, was not strong enough to resist the torture of women.
It was but three years before that the child, then but ten years old,
had nearly managed to make a quarrel between Harry Esmond and his
comrade, good-natured, phlegmatic Thomas Tusher, who never of his own
seeking quarrelled with anybody: by quoting to the latter some silly
joke which Harry had made regarding him--(it was the merest idlest jest,
though it near drove two old friends to blows, and I think such a battle
would have pleased her)--and from that day Tom kept at a distance from
her; and she respected him, and coaxed him sedulously whenever they met.
But Harry was much more easily appeased, because he was fonder of the
child: and when she made mischief, used cutting speeches, or caused her
friends pain, she excused herself for her fault, not by admitting and
deploring it, but by pleading not guilty, and asserting innocence so
constantly, and with such seeming artlessness, that it was impossible to
question her plea. In her childhood, they were but mischiefs then which
she did; but her power became more fatal as she grew older--as a kitten
first plays with a ball, and then pounces on a bird and kills it. 'Tis
not to be imagined that Harry Esmond had all this experience at this
early stage of his life, whereof he is now writing the history--many
things here noted were but known to him in later days. Almost everything
Beatrix did or undid seemed good, or at least pardonable, to him then,
and years afterwards.
It happened, then, that Harry Esmond came home to Castlewood for his
last vacation, with good hopes of a fellowship at his college, and a
contented resolve to advance his fortune that way. 'Twas in the first
year of the present century, Mr. Esmond (as far as he knew the period of
his birth) being then twenty-two years old. He found his quondam pupil
shot up into this beauty of which we have spoken, and promising yet
more: her brother, my lord's son, a handsome high-spirited brave lad,
generous and frank, and kind to everybody, save perhaps his sister,
with whom Frank was at war (and not from his but her fault)--adoring his
mother, whose joy he was: and taking her side in the unhappy matrimonial
differences which were now permanent, while of course Mistress Beatrix
ranged with her father. When heads of families fall out, it must
naturally be that their dependants wear the one or the other party's
color; and even in the parliaments in the servants' hall or the stables,
Harry, who had an early observant turn, could see which were my lord's
adherents and which my lady's, and conjecture pretty shrewdly how their
unlucky quarrel was debated. Our lackeys sit in judgment on us. My
lord's intrigues may be ever so stealthily conducted, but his valet
knows them; and my lady's woman carries her mistress's private history
to the servants' scandal market, and exchanges it against the secrets of
other abigails.
CHAPTER XIII.
MY LORD LEAVES US AND HIS EVIL BEHIND HIM.
My Lord Mohun (of whose exploits and fame some of the gentlemen of the
University had brought down but ugly reports) was once more a guest at
Castlewood, and seemingly more intimately allied with my lord even than
before. Once in the spring those two noblemen had ridden to Cambridge
from Newmarket, whither they had gone for the horse-racing, and had
honored Harry Esmond with a visit at his rooms; after which Doctor
Montague, the master of the College, who had treated Harry somewhat
haughtily, seeing his familiarity with these great folks, and that my
Lord Castlewood laughed and walked with his hand on Harry's shoulder,
relented to Mr. Esmond, and condescended to be very civil to him; and
some days after his arrival, Harry, laughing, told this story to Lady
Esmond, remarking how strange it was that men famous for learning and
renowned over Europe, should, nevertheless, so bow down to a title, and
cringe to a nobleman ever so poor. At this Mistress Beatrix flung up her
head, and said it became those of low origin to respect their betters;
that the parsons made themselves a great deal too proud, she thought;
and that she liked the way at Lady Sark's best, where the chaplain,
though he loved pudding, as all parsons do, always went away before the
custard.
“And when I am a parson,” says Mr. Esmond, “will you give me no custard,
Beatrix?”
“You--you are different,” Beatrix answered. “You are of our blood.”
“My father was a parson, as you call him,” said my lady.
“But mine is a peer of Ireland,” says Mistress Beatrix, tossing her
head. “Let people know their places. I suppose you will have me go down
on my knees and ask a blessing of Mr. Thomas Tusher, that has just been
made a curate and whose mother was a waiting-maid.”
And she tossed out of the room, being in one of her flighty humors then.
When she was gone, my lady looked so sad and grave, that Harry asked
the cause of her disquietude. She said it was not merely what he said
of Newmarket, but what she had remarked, with great anxiety and
terror, that my lord, ever since his acquaintance with the Lord
Mohun especially, had recurred to his fondness for play, which he had
renounced since his marriage.
“But men promise more than they are able to perform in marriage,” said
my lady, with a sigh. “I fear he has lost large sums; and our property,
always small, is dwindling away under this reckless dissipation. I heard
of him in London with very wild company. Since his return, letters
and lawyers are constantly coming and going: he seems to me to have a
constant anxiety, though he hides it under boisterousness and laughter.
I looked through--through the door last night, and--and before,” said
my lady, “and saw them at cards after midnight; no estate will bear that
extravagance, much less ours, which will be so diminished that my son
will have nothing at all, and my poor Beatrix no portion!”
“I wish I could help you, madam,” said Harry Esmond, sighing, and
wishing that unavailingly, and for the thousandth time in his life.
“Who can? Only God,” said Lady Esmond--“only God, in whose hands we
are.” And so it is, and for his rule over his family, and for
his conduct to wife and children--subjects over whom his power is
monarchical--any one who watches the world must think with trembling
sometimes of the account which many a man will have to render. For in
our society there's no law to control the King of the Fireside. He is
master of property, happiness--life almost. He is free to punish,
to make happy or unhappy--to ruin or to torture. He may kill a wife
gradually, and be no more questioned than the Grand seignior who drowns
a slave at midnight. He may make slaves and hypocrites of his children;
or friends and freemen; or drive them into revolt and enmity against the
natural law of love. I have heard politicians and coffee-house wiseacres
talking over the newspaper, and railing at the tyranny of the French
King, and the Emperor, and wondered how these (who are monarchs, too,
in their way) govern their own dominions at home, where each man rules
absolute. When the annals of each little reign are shown to the Supreme
Master, under whom we hold sovereignty, histories will be laid bare of
household tyrants as cruel as Amurath, and as savage as Nero, and as
reckless and dissolute as Charles.
If Harry Esmond's patron erred, 'twas in the latter way, from a
disposition rather self-indulgent than cruel; and he might have been
brought back to much better feelings, had time been given to him to
bring his repentance to a lasting reform.
As my lord and his friend Lord Mohun were such close companions,
Mistress Beatrix chose to be jealous of the latter; and the two
gentlemen often entertained each other by laughing, in their rude
boisterous way, at the child's freaks of anger and show of dislike.
“When thou art old enough, thou shalt marry Lord Mohun,” Beatrix's
father would say: on which the girl would pout and say, “I would rather
marry Tom Tusher.” And because the Lord Mohun always showed an extreme
gallantry to my Lady Castlewood, whom he professed to admire devotedly,
one day, in answer to this old joke of her father's, Beatrix said, “I
think my lord would rather marry mamma than marry me; and is waiting
till you die to ask her.”
The words were said lightly and pertly by the girl one night before
supper, as the family party were assembled near the great fire. The two
lords, who were at cards, both gave a start; my lady turned as red as
scarlet, and bade Mistress Beatrix go to her own chamber; whereupon the
girl, putting on, as her wont was, the most innocent air, said, “I am
sure I meant no wrong; I am sure mamma talks a great deal more to Harry
Esmond than she does to papa--and she cried when Harry went away, and
she never does when papa goes away! and last night she talked to Lord
Mohun for ever so long, and sent us out of the room, and cried when we
came back, and--”
“D--n!” cried out my Lord Castlewood, out of all patience. “Go out of
the room, you little viper!” and he started up and flung down his cards.
“Ask Lord Mohun what I said to him, Francis,” her ladyship said, rising
up with a scared face, but yet with a great and touching dignity and
candor in her look and voice. “Come away with me, Beatrix.” Beatrix
sprung up too; she was in tears now.
“Dearest mamma, what have I done?” she asked. “Sure I meant no harm.”
And she clung to her mother, and the pair went out sobbing together.
“I will tell you what your wife said to me, Frank,” my Lord Mohun cried.
“Parson Harry may hear it; and, as I hope for heaven, every word I say
is true. Last night, with tears in her eyes, your wife implored me to
play no more with you at dice or at cards, and you know best whether
what she asked was not for your good.”
“Of course, it was, Mohun,” says my lord in a dry hard voice. “Of course
you are a model of a man: and the world knows what a saint you are.”
My Lord Mohun was separated from his wife, and had had many affairs of
honor: of which women as usual had been the cause.
“I am no saint, though your wife is--and I can answer for my actions as
other people must for their words,” said my Lord Mohun.
“By G--, my lord, you shall,” cried the other, starting up.
“We have another little account to settle first, my lord,” says Lord
Mohun. Whereupon Harry Esmond, filled with alarm for the consequences
to which this disastrous dispute might lead, broke out into the most
vehement expostulations with his patron and his adversary. “Gracious
heavens!” he said, “my lord, are you going to draw a sword upon your
friend in your own house? Can you doubt the honor of a lady who is as
pure as heaven, and would die a thousand times rather than do you a
wrong? Are the idle words of a jealous child to set friends at variance?
Has not my mistress, as much as she dared do, besought your lordship, as
the truth must be told, to break your intimacy with my Lord Mohun; and
to give up the habit which may bring ruin on your family? But for my
Lord Mohun's illness, had he not left you?”
“'Faith, Frank, a man with a gouty toe can't run after other men's
wives,” broke out my Lord Mohun, who indeed was in that way, and with
a laugh and a look at his swathed limb so frank and comical, that the
other dashing his fist across his forehead was caught by that infectious
good-humor, and said with his oath, “---- it, Harry, I believe thee,”
and so this quarrel was over, and the two gentlemen, at swords drawn but
just now, dropped their points, and shook hands.
Beati pacifici. “Go, bring my lady back,” said Harry's patron. Esmond
went away only too glad to be the bearer of such good news. He found her
at the door; she had been listening there, but went back as he came. She
took both his hands, hers were marble cold. She seemed as if she would
fall on his shoulder. “Thank you, and God bless you, my dear brother
Harry,” she said. She kissed his hand, Esmond felt her tears upon it:
and leading her into the room, and up to my lord, the Lord Castlewood,
with an outbreak of feeling and affection such as he had not exhibited
for many a long day, took his wife to his heart, and bent over and
kissed her and asked her pardon.
“'Tis time for me to go to roost. I will have my gruel a-bed,” said my
Lord Mohun: and limped off comically on Harry Esmond's arm. “By George,
that woman is a pearl!” he said; “and 'tis only a pig that wouldn't
value her. Have you seen the vulgar traipsing orange-girl whom
Esmond”--but here Mr. Esmond interrupted him, saying, that these were
not affairs for him to know.
My lord's gentleman came in to wait upon his master, who was no sooner
in his nightcap and dressing-gown than he had another visitor whom his
host insisted on sending to him: and this was no other than the Lady
Castlewood herself with the toast and gruel, which her husband bade her
make and carry with her own hands in to her guest.
Lord Castlewood stood looking after his wife as she went on this errand,
and as he looked, Harry Esmond could not but gaze on him, and remarked
in his patron's face an expression of love, and grief, and care, which
very much moved and touched the young man. Lord Castlewood's hands fell
down at his sides, and his head on his breast, and presently he said,--
“You heard what Mohun said, parson?”
“That my lady was a saint?”
“That there are two accounts to settle. I have been going wrong these
five years, Harry Esmond. Ever since you brought that damned small-pox
into the house, there has been a fate pursuing me, and I had best have
died of it, and not run away from it like a coward. I left Beatrix with
her relations, and went to London; and I fell among thieves, Harry, and
I got back to confounded cards and dice, which I hadn't touched since
my marriage--no, not since I was in the Duke's Guard, with those wild
Mohocks. And I have been playing worse and worse, and going deeper and
deeper into it; and I owe Mohun two thousand pounds now; and when it's
paid I am little better than a beggar. I don't like to look my boy in
the face; he hates me, I know he does. And I have spent Beaty's little
portion: and the Lord knows what will come if I live; the best thing I
can do is to die, and release what portion of the estate is redeemable
for the boy.”
Mohun was as much master at Castlewood as the owner of the Hall itself;
and his equipages filled the stables, where, indeed, there was room
and plenty for many more horses than Harry Esmond's impoverished patron
could afford to keep. He had arrived on horseback with his people; but
when his gout broke out my Lord Mohun sent to London for a light chaise
he had, drawn by a pair of small horses, and running as swift, wherever
roads were good, as a Laplander's sledge. When this carriage came, his
lordship was eager to drive the Lady Castlewood abroad in it, and did so
many times, and at a rapid pace, greatly to his companion's enjoyment,
who loved the swift motion and the healthy breezes over the downs which
lie hard upon Castlewood, and stretch thence towards the sea. As this
amusement was very pleasant to her, and her lord, far from showing
any mistrust of her intimacy with Lord Mohun, encouraged her to be his
companion--as if willing by his present extreme confidence to make up
for any past mistrust which his jealousy had shown--the Lady Castlewood
enjoyed herself freely in this harmless diversion, which, it must be
owned, her guest was very eager to give her; and it seemed that she grew
the more free with Lord Mohun, and pleased with his company, because of
some sacrifice which his gallantry was pleased to make in her favor.
Seeing the two gentlemen constantly at cards still of evenings, Harry
Esmond one day deplored to his mistress that this fatal infatuation
of her lord should continue; and now they seemed reconciled together,
begged his lady to hint to her husband that he should play no more.
But Lady Castlewood, smiling archly and gayly, said she would speak to
him presently, and that, for a few nights more at least, he might be let
to have his amusement.
“Indeed, madam,” said Harry, “you know not what it costs you; and 'tis
easy for any observer who knows the game, to see that Lord Mohun is by
far the stronger of the two.”
“I know he is,” says my lady, still with exceeding good-humor; “he is
not only the best player, but the kindest player in the world.”
“Madam, madam!” Esmond cried, transported and provoked. “Debts of honor
must be paid some time or other; and my master will be ruined if he goes
on.”
“Harry, shall I tell you a secret?” my lady replied, with kindness and
pleasure still in her eyes. “Francis will not be ruined if he goes on;
he will be rescued if he goes on. I repent of having spoken and thought
unkindly of the Lord Mohun when he was here in the past year. He is full
of much kindness and good; and 'tis my belief that we shall bring him
to better things. I have lent him 'Tillotson' and your favorite
'Bishop Taylor,' and he is much touched, he says; and as a proof of his
repentance--(and herein lies my secret)--what do you think he is doing
with Francis? He is letting poor Frank win his money back again. He hath
won already at the last four nights; and my Lord Mohun says that he will
not be the means of injuring poor Frank and my dear children.”
“And in God's name, what do you return him for the sacrifice?” asked
Esmond, aghast; who knew enough of men, and of this one in particular,
to be aware that such a finished rake gave nothing for nothing. “How, in
heaven's name, are you to pay him?”
“Pay him! With a mother's blessing and a wife's prayers!” cries my lady,
clasping her hands together. Harry Esmond did not know whether to
laugh, to be angry, or to love his dear mistress more than ever for the
obstinate innocency with which she chose to regard the conduct of a man
of the world, whose designs he knew better how to interpret. He told the
lady, guardedly, but so as to make his meaning quite clear to her, what
he knew in respect of the former life and conduct of this nobleman; of
other women against whom he had plotted, and whom he had overcome;
of the conversation which he, Harry himself, had had with Lord Mohun,
wherein the lord made a boast of his libertinism, and frequently avowed
that he held all women to be fair game (as his lordship styled this
pretty sport), and that they were all, without exception, to be won. And
the return Harry had for his entreaties and remonstrances was a fit
of anger on Lady Castlewood's part, who would not listen to his
accusations; she said and retorted that he himself must be very wicked
and perverted to suppose evil designs where she was sure none were
meant. “And this is the good meddlers get of interfering,” Harry thought
to himself with much bitterness; and his perplexity and annoyance were
only the greater, because he could not speak to my Lord Castlewood
himself upon a subject of this nature, or venture to advise or warn him
regarding a matter so very sacred as his own honor, of which my lord was
naturally the best guardian.
But though Lady Castlewood would listen to no advice from her young
dependant, and appeared indignantly to refuse it when offered, Harry
had the satisfaction to find that she adopted the counsel which she
professed to reject; for the next day she pleaded a headache, when my
Lord Mohun would have had her drive out, and the next day the headache
continued; and next day, in a laughing gay way, she proposed that the
children should take her place in his lordship's car, for they would
be charmed with a ride of all things; and she must not have all the
pleasure for herself. My lord gave them a drive with a very good grace,
though, I dare say, with rage and disappointment inwardly--not that his
heart was very seriously engaged in his designs upon this simple lady:
but the life of such men is often one of intrigue, and they can no more
go through the day without a woman to pursue, than a fox-hunter without
his sport after breakfast.
Under an affected carelessness of demeanor, and though there was no
outward demonstration of doubt upon his patron's part since the quarrel
between the two lords, Harry yet saw that Lord Castlewood was watching
his guest very narrowly; and caught sight of distrust and smothered rage
(as Harry thought) which foreboded no good. On the point of honor Esmond
knew how touchy his patron was; and watched him almost as a physician
watches a patient, and it seemed to him that this one was slow to take
the disease, though he could not throw off the poison when once it had
mingled with his blood. We read in Shakspeare (whom the writer for his
part considers to be far beyond Mr. Congreve, Mr. Dryden, or any of the
wits of the present period,) that when jealousy is once declared, nor
poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, will ever
soothe it or medicine it away.
In fine, the symptoms seemed to be so alarming to this young physician
(who, indeed, young as he was, had felt the kind pulses of all those
dear kinsmen), that Harry thought it would be his duty to warn my Lord
Mohun, and let him know that his designs were suspected and watched. So
one day, when in rather a pettish humor his lordship had sent to Lady
Castlewood, who had promised to drive with him, and now refused to come,
Harry said--“My lord, if you will kindly give me a place by your side
I will thank you; I have much to say to you, and would like to speak to
you alone.”
“You honor me by giving me your confidence, Mr. Henry Esmond,” says the
other, with a very grand bow. My lord was always a fine gentleman, and
young as he was there was that in Esmond's manner which showed that he
was a gentleman too, and that none might take a liberty with him--so the
pair went out, and mounted the little carriage, which was in waiting for
them in the court, with its two little cream-colored Hanoverian horses
covered with splendid furniture and champing at the bit.
“My lord,” says Harry Esmond, after they were got into the country, and
pointing to my Lord Mohun's foot, which was swathed in flannel, and put
up rather ostentatiously on a cushion--“my lord, I studied medicine at
Cambridge.”
“Indeed, Parson Harry,” says he; “and are you going to take out a
diploma: and cure your fellow-students of the--”
“Of the gout,” says Harry, interrupting him, and looking him hard in the
face; “I know a good deal about the gout.”
“I hope you may never have it. 'Tis an infernal disease,” says my lord,
“and its twinges are diabolical. Ah!” and he made a dreadful wry face,
as if he just felt a twinge.
“Your lordship would be much better if you took off all that flannel--it
only serves to inflame the toe,” Harry continued, looking his man full
in the face.
“Oh! it only serves to inflame the toe, does it?” says the other, with
an innocent air.
“If you took off that flannel, and flung that absurd slipper away, and
wore a boot,” continues Harry.
“You recommend me boots, Mr. Esmond?” asks my lord.
“Yes, boots and spurs. I saw your lordship three days ago run down the
gallery fast enough,” Harry goes on. “I am sure that taking gruel at
night is not so pleasant as claret to your lordship; and besides it
keeps your lordship's head cool for play, whilst my patron's is hot and
flustered with drink.”
“'Sdeath, sir, you dare not say that I don't play fair?” cries my lord,
whipping his horses, which went away at a gallop.
“You are cool when my lord is drunk,” Harry continued; “your lordship
gets the better of my patron. I have watched you as I looked up from my
books.”
“You young Argus!” says Lord Mohun, who liked Harry Esmond--and for
whose company and wit, and a certain daring manner, Harry had a great
liking too--“You young Argus! you may look with all your hundred eyes
and see we play fair. I've played away an estate of a night, and I've
played my shirt off my back; and I've played away my periwig and gone
home in a nightcap. But no man can say I ever took an advantage of him
beyond the advantage of the game. I played a dice-cogging scoundrel in
Alsatia for his ears and won 'em, and have one of 'em in my lodging in
Bow Street in a bottle of spirits. Harry Mohun will play any man for
anything--always would.”
“You are playing awful stakes, my lord, in my patron's house,” Harry
said, “and more games than are on the cards.”
“What do you mean, sir?” cries my lord, turning round, with a flush on
his face.
“I mean,” answers Harry, in a sarcastic tone, “that your gout is
well--if ever you had it.”
“Sir!” cried my lord, getting hot.
“And to tell the truth I believe your lordship has no more gout than I
have. At any rate, change of air will do you good, my Lord Mohun. And I
mean fairly that you had better go from Castlewood.”
“And were you appointed to give me this message?” cries the Lord Mohun.
“Did Frank Esmond commission you?”
“No one did. 'Twas the honor of my family that commissioned me.”
“And you are prepared to answer this?” cries the other, furiously
lashing his horses.
“Quite, my lord: your lordship will upset the carriage if you whip so
hotly.”
“By George, you have a brave spirit!” my lord cried out, bursting into a
laugh. “I suppose 'tis that infernal botte de Jesuite that makes you so
bold,” he added.
“'Tis the peace of the family I love best in the world,” Harry Esmond
said warmly--“'tis the honor of a noble benefactor--the happiness of my
dear mistress and her children. I owe them everything in life, my lord;
and would lay it down for any one of them. What brings you here to
disturb this quiet household? What keeps you lingering month after month
in the country? What makes you feign illness, and invent pretexts for
delay? Is it to win my poor patron's money? Be generous, my lord, and
spare his weakness for the sake of his wife and children. Is it to
practise upon the simple heart of a virtuous lady? You might as well
storm the Tower single-handed. But you may blemish her name by light
comments on it, or by lawless pursuits--and I don't deny that 'tis in
your power to make her unhappy. Spare these innocent people, and leave
them.”
“By the Lord, I believe thou hast an eye to the pretty Puritan thyself,
Master Harry,” says my lord, with his reckless, good-humored laugh, and
as if he had been listening with interest to the passionate appeal of
the young man. “Whisper, Harry. Art thou in love with her thyself? Hath
tipsy Frank Esmond come by the way of all flesh?”
“My lord, my lord,” cried Harry, his face flushing and his eyes filling
as he spoke, “I never had a mother, but I love this lady as one. I
worship her as a devotee worships a saint. To hear her name spoken
lightly seems blasphemy to me. Would you dare think of your own mother
so, or suffer any one so to speak of her? It is a horror to me to fancy
that any man should think of her impurely. I implore you, I beseech you,
to leave her. Danger will come out of it.”
“Danger, psha!” says my lord, giving a cut to the horses, which at this
minute--for we were got on to the Downs--fairly ran off into a gallop
that no pulling could stop. The rein broke in Lord Mohun's hands, and
the furious beasts scampered madly forwards, the carriage swaying to
and fro, and the persons within it holding on to the sides as best
they might, until seeing a great ravine before them, where an upset was
inevitable, the two gentlemen leapt for their lives, each out of his
side of the chaise. Harry Esmond was quit for a fall on the grass, which
was so severe that it stunned him for a minute; but he got up presently
very sick, and bleeding at the nose, but with no other hurt. The Lord
Mohun was not so fortunate; he fell on his head against a stone, and lay
on the ground, dead to all appearance.
This misadventure happened as the gentlemen were on their return
homewards; and my Lord Castlewood, with his son and daughter, who were
going out for a ride, met the ponies as they were galloping with the car
behind, the broken traces entangling their heels, and my lord's people
turned and stopped them. It was young Frank who spied out Lord Mohun's
scarlet coat as he lay on the ground, and the party made up to that
unfortunate gentleman and Esmond, who was now standing over him. His
large periwig and feathered hat had fallen off, and he was bleeding
profusely from a wound on the forehead, and looking, and being, indeed,
a corpse.
“Great God! he's dead!” says my lord. “Ride, some one: fetch a
doctor--stay. I'll go home and bring back Tusher; he knows surgery,” and
my lord, with his son after him, galloped away.
They were scarce gone when Harry Esmond, who was indeed but just come to
himself, bethought him of a similar accident which he had seen on a ride
from Newmarket to Cambridge, and taking off a sleeve of my lord's
coat, Harry, with a penknife, opened a vein of his arm, and was greatly
relieved, after a moment, to see the blood flow. He was near half an
hour before he came to himself, by which time Doctor Tusher and little
Frank arrived, and found my lord not a corpse indeed, but as pale as
one.
After a time, when he was able to bear motion, they put my lord upon
a groom's horse, and gave the other to Esmond, the men walking on each
side of my lord, to support him, if need were, and worthy Doctor Tusher
with them. Little Frank and Harry rode together at a foot pace.
When we rode together home, the boy said: “We met mamma, who was walking
on the terrace with the doctor, and papa frightened her, and told her
you were dead . . .”
“That I was dead!” asks Harry.
“Yes. Papa says: 'Here's poor Harry killed, my dear;' on which mamma
gives a great scream; and oh, Harry! she drops down; and I thought she
was dead too. And you never saw such a way as papa was in: he swore one
of his great oaths: and he turned quite pale; and then he began to laugh
somehow, and he told the Doctor to take his horse, and me to follow him;
and we left him. And I looked back, and saw him dashing water out of the
fountain on to mamma. Oh, she was so frightened!”
Musing upon this curious history--for my Lord Mohun's name was Henry
too, and they called each other Frank and Harry often--and not a little
disturbed and anxious, Esmond rode home. His dear lady was on the
terrace still, one of her women with her, and my lord no longer there.
There are steps and a little door thence down into the road. My lord
passed, looking very ghastly, with a handkerchief over his head, and
without his hat and periwig, which a groom carried, but his politeness
did not desert him, and he made a bow to the lady above.
“Thank heaven, you are safe,” she said.
“And so is Harry too, mamma,” says little Frank,--“huzzay!”
Harry Esmond got off the horse to run to his mistress, as did little
Frank, and one of the grooms took charge of the two beasts, while the
other, hat and periwig in hand, walked by my lord's bridle to the front
gate, which lay half a mile away.
“Oh, my boy! what a fright you have given me!” Lady Castlewood said,
when Harry Esmond came up, greeting him with one of her shining looks,
and a voice of tender welcome; and she was so kind as to kiss the young
man ['twas the second time she had so honored him), and she walked into
the house between him and her son, holding a hand of each.
CHAPTER XIV.
WE RIDE AFTER HIM TO LONDON.
After a repose of a couple of days, the Lord Mohun was so far recovered
of his hurt as to be able to announce his departure for the next
morning; when, accordingly, he took leave of Castlewood, proposing to
ride to London by easy stages, and lie two nights upon the road. His
host treated him with a studied and ceremonious courtesy, certainly
different from my lord's usual frank and careless demeanor; but there
was no reason to suppose that the two lords parted otherwise than good
friends, though Harry Esmond remarked that my Lord Viscount only saw
his guest in company with other persons, and seemed to avoid being alone
with him. Nor did he ride any distance with Lord Mohun, as his custom
was with most of his friends, whom he was always eager to welcome and
unwilling to lose; but contented himself, when his lordship's horses
were announced, and their owner appeared, booted for his journey, to
take a courteous leave of the ladies of Castlewood, by following the
Lord Mohun down stairs to his horses, and by bowing and wishing him
a good-day, in the court-yard. “I shall see you in London before very
long, Mohun,” my lord said, with a smile, “when we will settle our
accounts together.”
“Do not let them trouble you, Frank,” said the other good-naturedly, and
holding out his hand, looked rather surprised at the grim and stately
manner in which his host received his parting salutation; and so,
followed by his people, he rode away.
Harry Esmond was witness of the departure. It was very different to my
lord's coming, for which great preparation had been made (the old house
putting on its best appearance to welcome its guest), and there was
a sadness and constraint about all persons that day, which filled Mr.
Esmond with gloomy forebodings, and sad indefinite apprehensions. Lord
Castlewood stood at the door watching his guest and his people as they
went out under the arch of the outer gate. When he was there, Lord Mohun
turned once more, my Lord Viscount slowly raised his beaver and bowed.
His face wore a peculiar livid look, Harry thought. He cursed and kicked
away his dogs, which came jumping about him--then he walked up to the
fountain in the centre of the court, and leaned against a pillar and
looked into the basin. As Esmond crossed over to his own room, late the
chaplain's, on the other side of the court, and turned to enter in at
the low door, he saw Lady Castlewood looking through the curtains of
the great window of the drawing-room overhead, at my lord as he stood
regarding the fountain. There was in the court a peculiar silence
somehow; and the scene remained long in Esmond's memory:--the sky bright
overhead; the buttresses of the building and the sun-dial casting shadow
over the gilt memento mori inscribed underneath; the two dogs, a black
greyhound and a spaniel nearly white, the one with his face up to the
sun, and the other snuffing amongst the grass and stones, and my lord
leaning over the fountain, which was bubbling audibly. 'Tis strange how
that scene, and the sound of that fountain, remain fixed on the memory
of a man who has beheld a hundred sights of splendor, and danger too, of
which he has kept no account.
It was Lady Castlewood--she had been laughing all the morning, and
especially gay and lively before her husband and his guest--who as soon
as the two gentlemen went together from her room, ran to Harry, the
expression of her countenance quite changed now, and with a face and
eyes full of care, and said, “Follow them, Harry, I am sure something
has gone wrong.” And so it was that Esmond was made an eavesdropper at
this lady's orders and retired to his own chamber, to give himself time
in truth to try and compose a story which would soothe his mistress, for
he could not but have his own apprehension that some serious quarrel was
pending between the two gentlemen.
And now for several days the little company at Castlewood sat at
table as of evenings: this care, though unnamed and invisible, being
nevertheless present alway, in the minds of at least three persons
there. My lord was exceeding gentle and kind. Whenever he quitted the
room, his wife's eyes followed him. He behaved to her with a kind of
mournful courtesy and kindness remarkable in one of his blunt ways and
ordinary rough manner. He called her by her Christian name often and
fondly, was very soft and gentle with the children, especially with the
boy, whom he did not love, and being lax about church generally, he went
thither and performed all the offices (down even to listening to Dr.
Tusher's sermon) with great devotion.
“He paces his room all night; what is it? Henry, find out what it is,”
Lady Castlewood said constantly to her young dependant. “He has sent
three letters to London,” she said, another day.
“Indeed, madam, they were to a lawyer,” Harry answered, who knew of
these letters, and had seen a part of the correspondence, which related
to a new loan my lord was raising; and when the young man remonstrated
with his patron, my lord said, “He was only raising money to pay off an
old debt on the property, which must be discharged.”
Regarding the money, Lady Castlewood was not in the least anxious. Few
fond women feel money-distressed; indeed you can hardly give a woman
a greater pleasure than to bid her pawn her diamonds for the man she
loves; and I remember hearing Mr. Congreve say of my Lord Marlborough,
that the reason why my lord was so successful with women as a young man,
was because he took money of them. “There are few men who will make such
a sacrifice for them,” says Mr. Congreve, who knew a part of the sex
pretty well.
Harry Esmond's vacation was just over, and, as hath been said, he was
preparing to return to the University for his last term before taking
his degree and entering into the Church. He had made up his mind for
this office, not indeed with that reverence which becomes a man about to
enter upon a duty so holy, but with a worldly spirit of acquiescence
in the prudence of adopting that profession for his calling. But his
reasoning was that he owed all to the family of Castlewood, and loved
better to be near them than anywhere else in the world; that he might
be useful to his benefactors, who had the utmost confidence in him and
affection for him in return; that he might aid in bringing up the young
heir of the house and acting as his governor; that he might continue to
be his dear patron's and mistress's friend and adviser, who both were
pleased to say that they should ever look upon him as such; and so, by
making himself useful to those he loved best, he proposed to console
himself for giving up of any schemes of ambition which he might have had
in his own bosom. Indeed, his mistress had told him that she would not
have him leave her; and whatever she commanded was will to him.
The Lady Castlewood's mind was greatly relieved in the last few days of
this well-remembered holiday time, by my lord's announcing one morning,
after the post had brought him letters from London, in a careless tone,
that the Lord Mohun was gone to Paris, and was about to make a great
journey in Europe; and though Lord Castlewood's own gloom did not wear
off, or his behavior alter, yet this cause of anxiety being removed from
his lady's mind, she began to be more hopeful and easy in her spirits,
striving too, with all her heart, and by all the means of soothing in
her power, to call back my lord's cheerfulness and dissipate his moody
humor.
He accounted for it himself, by saying that he was out of health; that
he wanted to see his physician; that he would go to London, and consult
Doctor Cheyne. It was agreed that his lordship and Harry Esmond should
make the journey as far as London together; and of a Monday morning, the
11th of October, in the year 1700, they set forwards towards London on
horseback. The day before being Sunday, and the rain pouring down, the
family did not visit church; and at night my lord read the service
to his family very finely, and with a peculiar sweetness and
gravity--speaking the parting benediction, Harry thought, as solemn
as ever he heard it. And he kissed and embraced his wife and children
before they went to their own chambers with more fondness than he was
ordinarily wont to show, and with a solemnity and feeling of which they
thought in after days with no small comfort.
They took horse the next morning (after adieux from the family as tender
as on the night previous), lay that night on the road, and entered
London at nightfall; my lord going to the “Trumpet,” in the Cockpit,
Whitehall, a house used by the military in his time as a young man, and
accustomed by his lordship ever since.
An hour after my lord's arrival (which showed that his visit had been
arranged beforehand), my lord's man of business arrived from Gray's Inn;
and thinking that his patron might wish to be private with the lawyer,
Esmond was for leaving them: but my lord said his business was short;
introduced Mr. Esmond particularly to the lawyer, who had been engaged
for the family in the old lord's time; who said that he had paid the
money, as desired that day, to my Lord Mohun himself, at his lodgings in
Bow Street; that his lordship had expressed some surprise, as it was not
customary to employ lawyers, he said, in such transactions between men
of honor; but nevertheless, he had returned my Lord Viscount's note of
hand, which he held at his client's disposition.
“I thought the Lord Mohun had been in Paris!” cried Mr. Esmond, in great
alarm and astonishment.
“He is come back at my invitation,” said my Lord Viscount. “We have
accounts to settle together.”
“I pray heaven they are over, sir,” says Esmond.
“Oh, quite,” replied the other, looking hard at the young man. “He was
rather troublesome about that money which I told you I had lost to him
at play. And now 'tis paid, and we are quits on that score, and we shall
meet good friends again.”
“My lord,” cried out Esmond, “I am sure you are deceiving me, and that
there is a quarrel between the Lord Mohun and you.”
“Quarrel--pish! We shall sup together this very night, and drink a
bottle. Every man is ill-humored who loses such a sum as I have lost.
But now 'tis paid, and my anger is gone with it.”
“Where shall we sup, sir?” says Harry.
“WE! Let some gentlemen wait till they are asked,” says my Lord Viscount
with a laugh. “You go to Duke Street, and see Mr. Betterton. You love
the play, I know. Leave me to follow my own devices: and in the morning
we'll breakfast together, with what appetite we may, as the play says.”
“By G--! my lord, I will not leave you this night,” says Harry Esmond.
“I think I know the cause of your dispute. I swear to you 'tis nothing.
On the very day the accident befell Lord Mohun, I was speaking to him
about it. I know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry on his
part.”
“You know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry between Lord Mohun
and my wife,” says my lord, in a thundering voice--“you knew of this and
did not tell me?”
“I knew more of it than my dear mistress did herself, sir--a thousand
times more. How was she, who was as innocent as a child, to know what
was the meaning of the covert addresses of a villain?”
“A villain he is, you allow, and would have taken my wife away from me.”
“Sir, she is as pure as an angel,” cried young Esmond.
“Have I said a word against her?” shrieks out my lord. “Did I ever doubt
that she was pure? It would have been the last day of her life when
I did. Do you fancy I think that SHE would go astray? No, she hasn't
passion enough for that. She neither sins nor forgives. I know her
temper--and now I've lost her, by heaven I love her ten thousand times
more than ever I did--yes, when she was as young and as beautiful as an
angel--when she smiled at me in her old father's house, and used to lie
in wait for me there as I came from hunting--when I used to fling my
head down on her little knees and cry like a child on her lap--and swear
I would reform, and drink no more and play no more, and follow women no
more; when all the men of the Court used to be following her--when she
used to look with her child more beautiful, by George, than the Madonna
in the Queen's Chapel. I am not good like her, I know it. Who is--by
heaven, who is? I tired and wearied her, I know that very well. I
could not talk to her. You men of wit and books could do that, and I
couldn't--I felt I couldn't. Why, when you was but a boy of fifteen I
could hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I
was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were always a
good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I felt she didn't
belong to me: and the children don't. And I besotted myself, and gambled
and drank, and took to all sorts of deviltries out of despair and fury.
And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know she likes him.”
“Indeed, and on my soul, you are wrong, sir,” Esmond cried.
“She takes letters from him,” cries my lord--“look here, Harry,” and he
pulled out a paper with a brown stain of blood upon it. “It fell from
him that day he wasn't killed. One of the grooms picked it up from the
ground and gave it me. Here it is in their d--d comedy jargon. 'Divine
Gloriana--Why look so coldly on your slave who adores you? Have you no
compassion on the tortures you have seen me suffering? Do you vouchsafe
no reply to billets that are written with the blood of my heart.' She
had more letters from him.”
“But she answered none,” cries Esmond.
“That's not Mohun's fault,” says my lord, “and I will be revenged on
him, as God's in heaven, I will.”
“For a light word or two, will you risk your lady's honor and your
family's happiness, my lord?” Esmond interposed beseechingly.
“Psha--there shall be no question of my wife's honor,” said my lord; “we
can quarrel on plenty of grounds beside. If I live, that villain will be
punished; if I fall, my family will be only the better: there will only
be a spendthrift the less to keep in the world: and Frank has better
teaching than his father. My mind is made up, Harry Esmond, and whatever
the event is, I am easy about it. I leave my wife and you as guardians
to the children.”
Seeing that my lord was bent upon pursuing this quarrel, and that no
entreaties would draw him from it, Harry Esmond (then of a hotter and
more impetuous nature than now, when care, and reflection, and gray
hairs have calmed him) thought it was his duty to stand by his kind,
generous patron, and said, “My lord, if you are determined upon war, you
must not go into it alone. 'Tis the duty of our house to stand by its
chief; and I should neither forgive myself nor you if you did not call
me, or I should be absent from you at a moment of danger.”
“Why, Harry, my poor boy, you are bred for a parson,” says my lord,
taking Esmond by the hand very kindly; “and it were a great pity that
you should meddle in the matter.”
“Your lordship thought of being a churchman once,” Harry answered, “and
your father's orders did not prevent him fighting at Castlewood against
the Roundheads. Your enemies are mine, sir; I can use the foils, as you
have seen, indifferently well, and don't think I shall be afraid when
the buttons are taken off 'em.” And then Harry explained, with some
blushes and hesitation (for the matter was delicate, and he feared lest,
by having put himself forward in the quarrel, he might have offended
his patron), how he had himself expostulated with the Lord Mohun, and
proposed to measure swords with him if need were, and he could not be
got to withdraw peaceably in this dispute. “And I should have beat him,
sir,” says Harry, laughing. “He never could parry that botte I brought
from Cambridge. Let us have half an hour of it, and rehearse--I can
teach it your lordship: 'tis the most delicate point in the world, and
if you miss it, your adversary's sword is through you.”
“By George, Harry, you ought to be the head of the house,” says my lord,
gloomily. “You had been a better Lord Castlewood than a lazy sot like
me,” he added, drawing his hand across his eyes, and surveying his
kinsman with very kind and affectionate glances.
“Let us take our coats off and have half an hour's practice before
nightfall,” says Harry, after thankfully grasping his patron's manly
hand.
“You are but a little bit of a lad,” says my lord, good-humoredly;
“but, in faith, I believe you could do for that fellow. No, my boy,” he
continued, “I'll have none of your feints and tricks of stabbing: I can
use my sword pretty well too, and will fight my own quarrel my own way.”
“But I shall be by to see fair play?” cries Harry.
“Yes, God bless you--you shall be by.”
“When is it, sir?” says Harry, for he saw that the matter had been
arranged privately and beforehand by my lord.
“'Tis arranged thus: I sent off a courier to Jack Westbury to say that I
wanted him specially. He knows for what, and will be here presently, and
drink part of that bottle of sack. Then we shall go to the theatre in
Duke Street, where we shall meet Mohun; and then we shall all go sup at
the 'Rose' or the 'Greyhound.' Then we shall call for cards, and
there will be probably a difference over the cards--and then, God help
us!--either a wicked villain and traitor shall go out of the world, or
a poor worthless devil, that doesn't care to remain in it. I am better
away, Hal--my wife will be all the happier when I am gone,” says my
lord, with a groan, that tore the heart of Harry Esmond, so that he
fairly broke into a sob over his patron's kind hand.
“The business was talked over with Mohun before he left home--Castlewood
I mean”--my lord went on. “I took the letter in to him, which I had
read, and I charged him with his villainy, and he could make no denial
of it, only he said that my wife was innocent.”
“And so she is; before heaven, my lord, she is!” cries Harry.
“No doubt, no doubt. They always are,” says my lord. “No doubt, when she
heard he was killed, she fainted from accident.”
“But, my lord, MY name is Harry,” cried out Esmond, burning red. “You
told my lady, 'Harry was killed!'”
“Damnation! shall I fight you too?” shouts my lord in a fury. “Are you,
you little serpent, warmed by my fire, going to sting--YOU?--No, my boy,
you're an honest boy; you are a good boy.” (And here he broke from rage
into tears even more cruel to see.) “You are an honest boy, and I love
you; and, by heavens, I am so wretched that I don't care what sword it
is that ends me. Stop, here's Jack Westbury. Well, Jack! Welcome, old
boy! This is my kinsman, Harry Esmond.”
“Who brought your bowls for you at Castlewood, sir?” says Harry, bowing;
and the three gentlemen sat down and drank of that bottle of sack which
was prepared for them.
“Harry is number three,” says my lord. “You needn't be afraid of him,
Jack.” And the Colonel gave a look, as much as to say, “Indeed, he don't
look as if I need.” And then my lord explained what he had only told by
hints before. When he quarrelled with Lord Mohun he was indebted to his
lordship in a sum of sixteen hundred pounds, for which Lord Mohun said
he proposed to wait until my Lord Viscount should pay him. My lord
had raised the sixteen hundred pounds and sent them to Lord Mohun that
morning, and before quitting home had put his affairs into order, and
was now quite ready to abide the issue of the quarrel.
When we had drunk a couple of bottles of sack, a coach was called, and
the three gentlemen went to the Duke's Playhouse, as agreed. The play
was one of Mr. Wycherley's--“Love in a Wood.”
Harry Esmond has thought of that play ever since with a kind of terror,
and of Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress who performed the girl's part in
the comedy. She was disguised as a page, and came and stood before the
gentlemen as they sat on the stage, and looked over her shoulder with
a pair of arch black eyes, and laughed at my lord, and asked what ailed
the gentleman from the country, and had he had bad news from Bullock
fair?
Between the acts of the play the gentlemen crossed over and conversed
freely. There were two of Lord Mohun's party, Captain Macartney, in a
military habit, and a gentleman in a suit of blue velvet and silver in a
fair periwig, with a rich fall of point of Venice lace--my Lord the Earl
of Warwick and Holland. My lord had a paper of oranges, which he ate and
offered to the actresses, joking with them. And Mrs. Bracegirdle, when
my Lord Mohun said something rude, turned on him, and asked him what he
did there, and whether he and his friends had come to stab anybody else,
as they did poor Will Mountford? My lord's dark face grew darker at this
taunt, and wore a mischievous, fatal look. They that saw it remembered
it, and said so afterward.
When the play was ended the two parties joined company; and my Lord
Castlewood then proposed that they should go to a tavern and sup.
Lockit's, the “Greyhound,” in Charing Cross, was the house selected.
All six marched together that way; the three lords going a-head, Lord
Mohun's captain, and Colonel Westbury, and Harry Esmond, walking behind
them. As they walked, Westbury told Harry Esmond about his old friend
Dick the Scholar, who had got promotion, and was Cornet of the Guards,
and had wrote a book called the “Christian Hero,” and had all the Guards
to laugh at him for his pains, for the Christian Hero was breaking the
commandments constantly, Westbury said, and had fought one or two duels
already. And, in a lower tone, Westbury besought young Mr. Esmond to
take no part in the quarrel. “There was no need for more seconds than
one,” said the Colonel, “and the Captain or Lord Warwick might easily
withdraw.” But Harry said no; he was bent on going through with the
business. Indeed, he had a plan in his head, which, he thought, might
prevent my Lord Viscount from engaging.
They went in at the bar of the tavern, and desired a private room and
wine and cards, and when the drawer had brought these, they began to
drink and call healths, and as long as the servants were in the room
appeared very friendly.
Harry Esmond's plan was no other than to engage in talk with Lord Mohun,
to insult him, and so get the first of the quarrel. So when cards were
proposed he offered to play. “Psha!” says my Lord Mohun (whether wishing
to save Harry, or not choosing, to try the botte de Jesuite, it is
not to be known)--“Young gentlemen from college should not play these
stakes. You are too young.”
“Who dares say I am too young?” broke out Harry. “Is your lordship
afraid?”
“Afraid!” cries out Mohun.
But my good Lord Viscount saw the move--“I'll play you for ten moidores,
Mohun,” says he. “You silly boy, we don't play for groats here as you
do at Cambridge.” And Harry, who had no such sum in his pocket (for his
half-year's salary was always pretty well spent before it was due), fell
back with rage and vexation in his heart that he had not money enough to
stake.
“I'll stake the young gentleman a crown,” says the Lord Mohun's captain.
“I thought crowns were rather scarce with the gentlemen of the army,”
says Harry.
“Do they birch at College?” says the Captain.
“They birch fools,” says Harry, “and they cane bullies, and they fling
puppies into the water.”
“Faith, then, there's some escapes drowning,” says the Captain, who was
an Irishman; and all the gentlemen began to laugh, and made poor Harry
only more angry.
My Lord Mohun presently snuffed a candle. It was when the drawers
brought in fresh bottles and glasses and were in the room on which my
Lord Viscount said--“The Deuce take you, Mohun, how damned awkward you
are. Light the candle, you drawer.”
“Damned awkward is a damned awkward expression, my lord,” says the
other. “Town gentlemen don't use such words--or ask pardon if they do.”
“I'm a country gentleman,” says my Lord Viscount.
“I see it by your manner,” says my Lord Mohun. “No man shall say damned
awkward to me.”
“I fling the words in your face, my lord,” says the other; “shall I send
the cards too?”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen! before the servants?” cry out Colonel Westbury
and my Lord Warwick in a breath. The drawers go out of the room hastily.
They tell the people below of the quarrel up stairs.
“Enough has been said,” says Colonel Westbury. “Will your lordships meet
to-morrow morning?”
“Will my Lord Castlewood withdraw his words?” asks the Earl of Warwick.
“My Lord Castlewood will be ---- first,” says Colonel Westbury.
“Then we have nothing for it. Take notice, gentlemen, there have been
outrageous words--reparation asked and refused.”
“And refused,” says my Lord Castlewood, putting on his hat. “Where shall
the meeting be? and when?”
“Since my Lord refuses me satisfaction, which I deeply regret, there is
no time so good as now,” says my Lord Mohun. “Let us have chairs and go
to Leicester Field.”
“Are your lordship and I to have the honor of exchanging a pass or two?”
says Colonel Westbury, with a low bow to my Lord of Warwick and Holland.
“It is an honor for me,” says my lord, with a profound congee, “to be
matched with a gentleman who has been at Mons and Namur.”
“Will your Reverence permit me to give you a lesson?” says the Captain.
“Nay, nay, gentlemen, two on a side are plenty,” says Harry's patron.
“Spare the boy, Captain Macartney,” and he shook Harry's hand--for the
last time, save one, in his life.
At the bar of the tavern all the gentlemen stopped, and my Lord Viscount
said, laughing, to the barwoman, that those cards set people sadly
a-quarrelling; but that the dispute was over now, and the parties were
all going away to my Lord Mohun's house, in Bow Street, to drink a
bottle more before going to bed.
A half-dozen of chairs were now called, and the six gentlemen stepping
into them, the word was privately given to the chairmen to go to
Leicester Field, where the gentlemen were set down opposite the
“Standard Tavern.” It was midnight, and the town was abed by this time,
and only a few lights in the windows of the houses; but the night was
bright enough for the unhappy purpose which the disputants came about;
and so all six entered into that fatal square, the chairmen standing
without the railing and keeping the gate, lest any persons should
disturb the meeting.
All that happened there hath been matter of public notoriety, and is
recorded, for warning to lawless men, in the annals of our country.
After being engaged for not more than a couple of minutes, as Harry
Esmond thought (though being occupied at the time with his own
adversary's point, which was active, he may not have taken a good note
of time), a cry from the chairmen without, who were smoking their pipes,
and leaning over the railings of the field as they watched the dim
combat within, announced that some catastrophe had happened, which
caused Esmond to drop his sword and look round, at which moment his
enemy wounded him in the right hand. But the young man did not heed
this hurt much, and ran up to the place where he saw his dear master was
down.
My Lord Mohun was standing over him.
“Are you much hurt, Frank?” he asked in a hollow voice.
“I believe I am a dead man,” my lord said from the ground.
“No, no, not so,” says the other; “and I call God to witness, Frank
Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but given me a
chance. In--in the first cause of our falling out, I swear that no one
was to blame but me, and--and that my lady--”
“Hush!” says my poor Lord Viscount, lifting himself on his elbow and
speaking faintly. “'Twas a dispute about the cards--the cursed cards.
Harry my boy, are you wounded, too? God help thee! I loved thee, Harry,
and thou must watch over my little Frank--and--and carry this little
heart to my wife.”
And here my dear lord felt in his breast for a locket he wore there,
and, in the act, fell back fainting.
We were all at this terrified, thinking him dead; but Esmond and Colonel
Westbury bade the chairmen come into the field; and so my lord was
carried to one Mr. Aimes, a surgeon, in Long Acre, who kept a bath, and
there the house was wakened up, and the victim of this quarrel carried
in.
My Lord Viscount was put to bed, and his wound looked to by the surgeon,
who seemed both kind and skilful. When he had looked to my lord, he
bandaged up Harry Esmond's hand (who, from loss of blood, had fainted
too, in the house, and may have been some time unconscious); and when
the young man came to himself, you may be sure he eagerly asked what
news there were of his dear patron; on which the surgeon carried him
to the room where the Lord Castlewood lay; who had already sent for a
priest; and desired earnestly, they said, to speak with his kinsman. He
was lying on a bed, very pale and ghastly, with that fixed, fatal look
in his eyes, which betokens death; and faintly beckoning all the other
persons away from him with his hand, and crying out “Only Harry Esmond,”
the hand fell powerless down on the coverlet, as Harry came forward, and
knelt down and kissed it.
“Thou art all but a priest, Harry,” my Lord Viscount gasped out, with a
faint smile, and pressure of his cold hand. “Are they all gone? Let me
make thee a death-bed confession.”
And with sacred Death waiting, as it were, at the bed-foot, as an awful
witness of his words, the poor dying soul gasped out his last wishes
in respect of his family;--his humble profession of contrition for his
faults;--and his charity towards the world he was leaving. Some things
he said concerned Harry Esmond as much as they astonished him. And
my Lord Viscount, sinking visibly, was in the midst of these strange
confessions, when the ecclesiastic for whom my lord had sent, Mr.
Atterbury, arrived.
This gentleman had reached to no great church dignity as yet, but
was only preacher at St. Bride's, drawing all the town thither by his
eloquent sermons. He was godson to my lord, who had been pupil to his
father; had paid a visit to Castlewood from Oxford more than once; and
it was by his advice, I think, that Harry Esmond was sent to Cambridge,
rather than to Oxford, of which place Mr. Atterbury, though a
distinguished member, spoke but ill.
Our messenger found the good priest already at his books at five o'clock
in the morning, and he followed the man eagerly to the house where my
poor Lord Viscount lay--Esmond watching him, and taking his dying words
from his mouth.
My lord, hearing of Mr. Atterbury's arrival, and squeezing Esmond's
hand, asked to be alone with the priest; and Esmond left them there for
this solemn interview. You may be sure that his own prayers and grief
accompanied that dying benefactor. My lord had said to him that which
confounded the young man--informed him of a secret which greatly
concerned him. Indeed, after hearing it, he had had good cause for doubt
and dismay; for mental anguish as well as resolution. While the colloquy
between Mr. Atterbury and his dying penitent took place within, an
immense contest of perplexity was agitating Lord Castlewood's young
companion.
At the end of an hour--it may be more--Mr. Atterbury came out of the
room, looking very hard at Esmond, and holding a paper.
“He is on the brink of God's awful judgment,” the priest whispered. “He
has made his breast clean to me. He forgives and believes, and makes
restitution. Shall it be in public? Shall we call a witness to sign it?”
“God knows,” sobbed out the young man, “my dearest lord has only done me
kindness all his life.”
The priest put the paper into Esmond's hand. He looked at it. It swam
before his eyes.
“'Tis a confession,” he said.
“'Tis as you please,” said Mr. Atterbury.
There was a fire in the room where the cloths were drying for the baths,
and there lay a heap in a corner saturated with the blood of my dear
lord's body. Esmond went to the fire, and threw the paper into it. 'Twas
a great chimney with glazed Dutch tiles. How we remember such trifles at
such awful moments!--the scrap of the book that we have read in a great
grief--the taste of that last dish that we have eaten before a duel, or
some such supreme meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the Bagnio
was a rude picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of
Esau's birthright. The burning paper lighted it up.
“'Tis only a confession, Mr. Atterbury,” said the young man. He leaned
his head against the mantel-piece: a burst of tears came to his eyes.
They were the first he had shed as he sat by his lord, scared by this
calamity, and more yet by what the poor dying gentleman had told him,
and shocked to think that he should be the agent of bringing this double
misfortune on those he loved best.
“Let us go to him,” said Mr. Esmond. And accordingly they went into the
next chamber, where by this time, the dawn had broke, which showed my
lord's poor pale face and wild appealing eyes, that wore that awful
fatal look of coming dissolution. The surgeon was with him. He went into
the chamber as Atterbury came out thence. My Lord Viscount turned round
his sick eyes towards Esmond. It choked the other to hear that rattle in
his throat.
“My Lord Viscount,” says Mr. Atterbury, “Mr. Esmond wants no witnesses,
and hath burned the paper.”
“My dearest master!” Esmond said, kneeling down, and taking his hand and
kissing it.
My Lord Viscount sprang up in his bed, and flung his arms round Esmond.
“God bl--bless--” was all he said. The blood rushed from his mouth,
deluging the young man. My dearest lord was no more. He was gone with a
blessing on his lips, and love and repentance and kindness in his manly
heart.
“Benedicti benedicentes,” says Mr. Atterbury, and the young man,
kneeling at the bedside, groaned out an “Amen.”
“Who shall take the news to her?” was Mr. Esmond's next thought. And
on this he besought Mr. Atterbury to bear the tidings to Castlewood.
He could not face his mistress himself with those dreadful news. Mr.
Atterbury complying kindly, Esmond writ a hasty note on his table-book
to my lord's man, bidding him get the horses for Mr. Atterbury, and ride
with him, and send Esmond's own valise to the Gatehouse prison, whither
he resolved to go and give himself up.
BOOK II.
CONTAINS MR. ESMOND'S MILITARY LIFE, AND OTHER MATTERS APPERTAINING TO
THE ESMOND FAMILY.
CHAPTER I.
I AM IN PRISON, AND VISITED, BUT NOT CONSOLED THERE.
Those may imagine, who have seen death untimely strike down persons
revered and beloved, and know how unavailing consolation is, what was
Harry Esmond's anguish after being an actor in that ghastly midnight
scene of blood and homicide. He could not, he felt, have faced his dear
mistress, and told her that story. He was thankful that kind Atterbury
consented to break the sad news to her; but, besides his grief, which
he took into prison with him, he had that in his heart which secretly
cheered and consoled him.
A great secret had been told to Esmond by his unhappy stricken kinsman,
lying on his death-bed. Were he to disclose it, as in equity and honor
he might do, the discovery would but bring greater grief upon those whom
he loved best in the world, and who were sad enough already. Should he
bring down shame and perplexity upon all those beings to whom he was
attached by so many tender ties of affection and gratitude? degrade his
father's widow? impeach and sully his father's and kinsman's honor? and
for what? for a barren title, to be worn at the expense of an innocent
boy, the son of his dearest benefactress. He had debated this matter in
his conscience, whilst his poor lord was making his dying confession. On
one side were ambition, temptation, justice even; but love, gratitude,
and fidelity, pleaded on the other. And when the struggle was over in
Harry's mind, a glow of righteous happiness filled it; and it was with
grateful tears in his eyes that he returned thanks to God for that
decision which he had been enabled to make.
“When I was denied by my own blood,” thought he, “these dearest friends
received and cherished me. When I was a nameless orphan myself, and
needed a protector, I found one in yonder kind soul, who has gone to his
account repenting of the innocent wrong he has done.”
And with this consoling thought he went away to give himself up at the
prison, after kissing the cold lips of his benefactor.
It was on the third day after he had come to the Gatehouse prison,
(where he lay in no small pain from his wound, which inflamed and ached
severely,) and with those thoughts and resolutions that have been just
spoke of, to depress, and yet to console him, that H. Esmond's keeper
came and told him that a visitor was asking for him, and though he could
not see her face, which was enveloped in a black hood, her whole figure,
too, being veiled and covered with the deepest mourning, Esmond knew at
once that his visitor was his dear mistress.
He got up from his bed, where he was lying, being very weak; and
advancing towards her as the retiring keeper shut the door upon him and
his guest in that sad place, he put forward his left hand (for the right
was wounded and bandaged), and he would have taken that kind one of his
mistress, which had done so many offices of friendship for him for so
many years.
But the Lady Castlewood went back from him, putting back her hood, and
leaning against the great stanchioned door which the gaoler had just
closed upon them. Her face was ghastly white, as Esmond saw it, looking
from the hood; and her eyes, ordinarily so sweet and tender, were fixed
on him with such a tragic glance of woe and anger, as caused the young
man, unaccustomed to unkindness from that person, to avert his own
glances from her face.
“And this, Mr. Esmond,” she said, “is where I see you; and 'tis to this
you have brought me!”
“You have come to console me in my calamity, madam,” said he (though, in
truth, he scarce knew how to address her, his emotions at beholding her
so overpowered him).
She advanced a little, but stood silent and trembling, looking out
at him from her black draperies, with her small white hands clasped
together, and quivering lips and hollow eyes.
“Not to reproach me,” he continued after a pause. “My grief is
sufficient as it is.”
“Take back your hand--do not touch me with it!” she cried. “Look!
there's blood on it!”
“I wish they had taken it all,” said Esmond; “if you are unkind to me.”
“Where is my husband?” she broke out. “Give me back my husband, Henry.
Why did you stand by at midnight and see him murdered? Why did the
traitor escape who did it? You, the champion of your house, who offered
to die for us! You that he loved and trusted, and to whom I confided
him--you that vowed devotion and gratitude, and I believed you--yes, I
believed you--why are you here, and my noble Francis gone? Why did
you come among us? You have only brought us grief and sorrow; and
repentance, bitter, bitter repentance, as a return for our love and
kindness. Did I ever do you a wrong, Henry? You were but an orphan child
when I first saw you--when HE first saw you, who was so good, and noble,
and trusting. He would have had you sent away, but, like a foolish
woman, I besought him to let you stay. And you pretended to love us, and
we believed you--and you made our house wretched, and my husband's heart
went from me: and I lost him through you--I lost him--the husband of my
youth, I say. I worshipped him: you know I worshipped him--and he was
changed to me. He was no more my Francis of old--my dear, dear soldier.
He loved me before he saw you; and I loved him. Oh, God is my witness
how I loved him! Why did he not send you from among us? 'Twas only
his kindness, that could refuse me nothing then. And, young as you
were--yes, and weak and alone--there was evil, I knew there was evil in
keeping you. I read it in your face and eyes. I saw that they boded harm
to us--and it came, I knew it would. Why did you not die when you had
the small-pox--and I came myself and watched you, and you didn't know me
in your delirium--and you called out for me, though I was there at your
side? All that has happened since, was a just judgment on my wicked
heart--my wicked jealous heart. Oh, I am punished--awfully punished!
My husband lies in his blood--murdered for defending me, my kind, kind,
generous lord--and you were by, and you let him die, Henry!”
These words, uttered in the wildness of her grief, by one who was
ordinarily quiet, and spoke seldom except with a gentle smile and a
soothing tone, rung in Esmond's ear; and 'tis said that he repeated many
of them in the fever into which he now fell from his wound, and perhaps
from the emotion which such passionate, undeserved upbraidings caused
him. It seemed as if his very sacrifices and love for this lady and her
family were to turn to evil and reproach: as if his presence amongst
them was indeed a cause of grief, and the continuance of his life but
woe and bitterness to theirs. As the Lady Castlewood spoke bitterly,
rapidly, without a tear, he never offered a word of appeal or
remonstrance: but sat at the foot of his prison-bed, stricken only with
the more pain at thinking it was that soft and beloved hand which should
stab him so cruelly, and powerless against her fatal sorrow. Her words
as she spoke struck the chords of all his memory, and the whole of
his boyhood and youth passed within him; whilst this lady, so fond
and gentle but yesterday--this good angel whom he had loved and
worshipped--stood before him, pursuing him with keen words and aspect
malign.
“I wish I were in my lord's place,” he groaned out. “It was not my fault
that I was not there, madam. But Fate is stronger than all of us, and
willed what has come to pass. It had been better for me to have died
when I had the illness.”
“Yes, Henry,” said she--and as she spoke she looked at him with a glance
that was at once so fond and so sad, that the young man, tossing up his
arms, wildly fell back, hiding his head in the coverlet of the bed. As
he turned he struck against the wall with his wounded hand, displacing
the ligature; and he felt the blood rushing again from the wound. He
remembered feeling a secret pleasure at the accident--and thinking,
“Suppose I were to end now, who would grieve for me?”
This hemorrhage, or the grief and despair in which the luckless young
man was at the time of the accident, must have brought on a deliquium
presently; for he had scarce any recollection afterwards, save of some
one, his mistress probably, seizing his hand--and then of the buzzing
noise in his ears as he awoke, with two or three persons of the prison
around his bed, whereon he lay in a pool of blood from his arm.
It was now bandaged up again by the prison surgeon, who happened to be
in the place; and the governor's wife and servant, kind people both,
were with the patient. Esmond saw his mistress still in the room when
he awoke from his trance; but she went away without a word; though
the governor's wife told him that she sat in her room for some time
afterward, and did not leave the prison until she heard that Esmond was
likely to do well.
Days afterwards, when Esmond was brought out of a fever which he had,
and which attacked him that night pretty sharply, the honest keeper's
wife brought her patient a handkerchief fresh washed and ironed, and at
the corner of which he recognized his mistress's well-known cipher
and viscountess's crown. “The lady had bound it round his arm when he
fainted, and before she called for help,” the keeper's wife said. “Poor
lady! she took on sadly about her husband. He has been buried to-day,
and a many of the coaches of the nobility went with him--my Lord
Marlborough's and my Lord Sunderland's, and many of the officers of the
Guards, in which he served in the old King's time; and my lady has been
with her two children to the King at Kensington, and asked for justice
against my Lord Mohun, who is in hiding, and my Lord the Earl of Warwick
and Holland, who is ready to give himself up and take his trial.”
Such were the news, coupled with assertions about her own honesty and
that of Molly her maid, who would never have stolen a certain trumpery
gold sleeve-button of Mr. Esmond's that was missing after his fainting
fit, that the keeper's wife brought to her lodger. His thoughts followed
to that untimely grave, the brave heart, the kind friend, the gallant
gentleman, honest of word and generous of thought, (if feeble of
purpose, but are his betters much stronger than he?) who had given him
bread and shelter when he had none; home and love when he needed them;
and who, if he had kept one vital secret from him, had done that
of which he repented ere dying--a wrong indeed, but one followed by
remorse, and occasioned by almost irresistible temptation.
Esmond took his handkerchief when his nurse left him, and very likely
kissed it, and looked at the bauble embroidered in the corner. “It
has cost thee grief enough,” he thought, “dear lady, so loving and so
tender. Shall I take it from thee and thy children? No, never! Keep it,
and wear it, my little Frank, my pretty boy. If I cannot make a name for
myself, I can die without one. Some day, when my dear mistress sees my
heart, I shall be righted; or if not here or now, why, elsewhere; where
Honor doth not follow us, but where Love reigns perpetual.”
'Tis needless to relate here, as the reports of the lawyers already have
chronicled them, the particulars or issue of that trial which ensued
upon my Lord Castlewood's melancholy homicide. Of the two lords engaged
in that sad matter, the second, my Lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland,
who had been engaged with Colonel Westbury, and wounded by him, was
found not guilty by his peers, before whom he was tried (under the
presidence of the Lord Steward, Lord Somers); and the principal, the
Lord Mohun, being found guilty of the manslaughter, (which, indeed, was
forced upon him, and of which he repented most sincerely,) pleaded his
clergy, and so was discharged without any penalty. The widow of the
slain nobleman, as it was told us in prison, showed an extraordinary
spirit; and, though she had to wait for ten years before her son was old
enough to compass it, declared she would have revenge of her husband's
murderer. So much and suddenly had grief, anger, and misfortune appeared
to change her. But fortune, good or ill, as I take it, does not change
men and women. It but develops their characters. As there are a thousand
thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the
pen to write, so the heart is a secret even to him (or her) who has it
in his own breast. Who hath not found himself surprised into revenge, or
action, or passion, for good or evil, whereof the seeds lay within him,
latent and unsuspected, until the occasion called them forth? With the
death of her lord, a change seemed to come over the whole conduct and
mind of Lady Castlewood; but of this we shall speak in the right season
and anon.
The lords being tried then before their peers at Westminster, according
to their privilege, being brought from the Tower with state processions
and barges, and accompanied by lieutenants and axe-men, the commoners
engaged in that melancholy fray took their trial at Newgate, as became
them; and, being all found guilty, pleaded likewise their benefit
of clergy. The sentence, as we all know in these cases, is, that the
culprit lies a year in prison, or during the King's pleasure, and is
burned in the hand, or only stamped with a cold iron; or this part of
the punishment is altogether remitted at the grace of the Sovereign. So
Harry Esmond found himself a criminal and a prisoner at two-and-twenty
years old; as for the two colonels, his comrades, they took the matter
very lightly. Duelling was a part of their business; and they could not
in honor refuse any invitations of that sort.
But the case was different with Mr. Esmond. His life was changed by
that stroke of the sword which destroyed his kind patron's. As he lay in
prison, old Dr. Tusher fell ill and died; and Lady Castlewood appointed
Thomas Tusher to the vacant living; about the filling of which she had
a thousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never should
part; how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, like
saintly George Herbert or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiest and greatest
lot in life; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her
part, she owned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishop
should have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would
find a good wife for Harry Esmond: and so on, with a hundred pretty
prospects told by fireside evenings, in fond prattle, as the children
played about the hall. All these plans were overthrown now. Thomas
Tusher wrote to Esmond, as he lay in prison, announcing that his
patroness had conferred upon him the living his reverend father had
held for many years; that she never, after the tragical events which had
occurred (whereof Tom spoke with a very edifying horror), could see
in the revered Tusher's pulpit, or at her son's table, the man who was
answerable for the father's life; that her ladyship bade him to say that
she prayed for her kinsman's repentance and his worldly happiness; that
he was free to command her aid for any scheme of life which he might
propose to himself; but that on this side of the grave she would see him
no more. And Tusher, for his own part, added that Harry should have his
prayers as a friend of his youth, and commended him whilst he was in
prison to read certain works of theology, which his Reverence pronounced
to be very wholesome for sinners in his lamentable condition.
And this was the return for a life of devotion--this the end of years of
affectionate intercourse and passionate fidelity! Harry would have died
for his patron, and was held as little better than his murderer: he had
sacrificed, she did not know how much, for his mistress, and she threw
him aside; he had endowed her family with all they had, and she talked
about giving him alms as to a menial! The grief for his patron's loss;
the pains of his own present position, and doubts as to the future: all
these were forgotten under the sense of the consummate outrage which he
had to endure, and overpowered by the superior pang of that torture.
He writ back a letter to Mr. Tusher from his prison, congratulating
his Reverence upon his appointment to the living of Castlewood:
sarcastically bidding him to follow in the footsteps of his admirable
father, whose gown had descended upon him; thanking her ladyship for her
offer of alms, which he said he should trust not to need; and beseeching
her to remember that, if ever her determination should change towards
him, he would be ready to give her proofs of a fidelity which had never
wavered, and which ought never to have been questioned by that house.
“And if we meet no more, or only as strangers in this world,” Mr. Esmond
concluded, “a sentence against the cruelty and injustice of which I
disdain to appeal; hereafter she will know who was faithful to her,
and whether she had any cause to suspect the love and devotion of her
kinsman and servant.”
After the sending of this letter, the poor young fellow's mind was more
at ease than it had been previously. The blow had been struck, and he
had borne it. His cruel goddess had shaken her wings and fled: and left
him alone and friendless, but virtute sua. And he had to bear him up, at
once the sense of his right and the feeling of his wrongs, his honor
and his misfortune. As I have seen men waking and running to arms at a
sudden trumpet, before emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute;
meets the threatening danger with undaunted countenance; and, whether
conquered or conquering, faces it always. Ah! no man knows his strength
or his weakness, till occasion proves them. If there be some thoughts
and actions of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks with
shame, sure there are some which he may be proud to own and remember;
forgiven injuries, conquered temptations (now and then) and difficulties
vanquished by endurance.
It was these thoughts regarding the living, far more than any great
poignancy of grief respecting the dead, which affected Harry Esmond
whilst in prison after his trial: but it may be imagined that he could
take no comrade of misfortune into the confidence of his feelings,
and they thought it was remorse and sorrow for his patron's loss which
affected the young man, in error of which opinion he chose to leave
them. As a companion he was so moody and silent that the two officers,
his fellow-sufferers, left him to himself mostly, liked little very
likely what they knew of him, consoled themselves with dice, cards, and
the bottle, and whiled away their own captivity in their own way. It
seemed to Esmond as if he lived years in that prison: and was changed
and aged when he came out of it. At certain periods of life we live
years of emotion in a few weeks--and look back on those times, as on
great gaps between the old life and the new. You do not know how much
you suffer in those critical maladies of the heart, until the disease is
over and you look back on it afterwards. During the time, the suffering
is at least sufferable. The day passes in more or less of pain, and the
night wears away somehow. 'Tis only in after days that we see what the
danger has been--as a man out a-hunting or riding for his life looks at
a leap, and wonders how he should have survived the taking of it. O dark
months of grief and rage! of wrong and cruel endurance! He is old now
who recalls you. Long ago he has forgiven and blest the soft hand that
wounded him: but the mark is there, and the wound is cicatrized only--no
time, tears, caresses, or repentance, can obliterate the scar. We are
indocile to put up with grief, however. Reficimus rates quassas: we
tempt the ocean again and again, and try upon new ventures. Esmond
thought of his early time as a novitiate, and of this past trial as
an initiation before entering into life--as our young Indians undergo
tortures silently before they pass to the rank of warriors in the tribe.
The officers, meanwhile, who were not let into the secret of the grief
which was gnawing at the side of their silent young friend, and being
accustomed to such transactions, in which one comrade or another was
daily paying the forfeit of the sword, did not, of course, bemoan
themselves very inconsolably about the fate of their late companion in
arms. This one told stories of former adventures of love, or war,
or pleasure, in which poor Frank Esmond had been engaged; t'other
recollected how a constable had been bilked, or a tavern-bully beaten:
whilst my lord's poor widow was sitting at his tomb worshipping him as
an actual saint and spotless hero--so the visitors said who had news of
Lady Castlewood; and Westbury and Macartney had pretty nearly had all
the town to come and see them.
The duel, its fatal termination, the trial of the two peers and the
three commoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement in the
town. The prints and News Letters were full of them. The three gentlemen
in Newgate were almost as much crowded as the bishops in the Tower, or
a highwayman before execution. We were allowed to live in the Governor's
house, as hath been said, both before trial and after condemnation,
waiting the King's pleasure; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrel
known, so closely had my lord and the two other persons who knew it kept
the secret, but every one imagined that the origin of the meeting was
a gambling dispute. Except fresh air, the prisoners had, upon payment,
most things they could desire. Interest was made that they should not
mix with the vulgar convicts, whose ribald choruses and loud laughter
and curses could be heard from their own part of the prison, where they
and the miserable debtors were confined pell-mell.