"Harry Esmond, come hither," cries out d.i.c.k. "Thou hast heard me talk over and over again of my dearest Joe, my guardian angel?"
"Indeed," says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, "it is not from you only that I have learnt to admire Mr. Addison. We loved good poetry at Cambridge as well as at Oxford; and I have some of yours by heart, though I have put on a red coat... . "O qui canoro blandius Orpheo vocale ducis carmen;" shall I go on, sir?" says Mr. Esmond, who, indeed, had read and loved the charming Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that time knew and admired them.
"This is Captain Esmond who was at Blenheim," says Steele.
"Lieutenant Esmond," says the other, with a low bow, "at Mr. Addison"s service.
"I have heard of you," says Mr. Addison, with a smile; as, indeed, everybody about town had heard that unlucky story about Esmond"s dowager aunt and the d.u.c.h.ess.
"We were going to the "George" to take a bottle before the play," says Steele: "wilt thou be one, Joe?"
Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard by, where he was still rich enough to give a good bottle of wine to his friends; and invited the two gentlemen to his apartment in the Haymarket, whither we accordingly went.
"I shall get credit with my landlady," says he, with a smile, "when she sees two such fine gentlemen as you come up my stair." And he politely made his visitors welcome to his apartment, which was indeed but a shabby one, though no grandee of the land could receive his guests with a more perfect and courtly grace than this gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting of a slice of meat and a penny loaf, was awaiting the owner of the lodgings. "My wine is better than my meat," says Mr. Addison; "my Lord Halifax sent me the Burgundy." And he set a bottle and gla.s.ses before his friends, and ate his simple dinner in a very few minutes, after which the three fell to, and began to drink. "You see," says Mr. Addison, pointing to his writing-table, whereon was a map of the action at Hochstedt, and several other gazettes and pamphlets relating to the battle, "that I, too, am busy about your affairs, Captain. I am engaged as a poetical gazetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem on the campaign."
So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him what he knew about the famous battle, drew the river on the table aliquo mero, and with the aid of some bits of tobacco-pipe showed the advance of the left wing, where he had been engaged.
A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the table beside our bottles and gla.s.ses, and d.i.c.k having plentifully refreshed himself from the latter, took up the pages of ma.n.u.script, writ out with scarce a blot or correction, in the author"s slim, neat handwriting, and began to read therefrom with great emphasis and volubility. At pauses of the verse, the enthusiastic reader stopped and fired off a great salvo of applause.
Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison"s friend. "You are like the German Burghers," says he, "and the Princes on the Mozelle: when our army came to a halt, they always sent a deputation to compliment the chief, and fired a salute with all their artillery from their walls."
"And drunk the great chiefs health afterward, did not they?" says Captain Steele, gayly filling up a b.u.mper;--he never was tardy at that sort of acknowledgment of a friend"s merit.
"And the Duke, since you will have me act his Grace"s part," says Mr. Addison, with a smile, and something of a blush, "pledged his friends in return. Most Serene Elector of Covent Garden, I drink to your Highness"s health," and he filled himself a gla.s.s. Joseph required scarce more pressing than d.i.c.k to that sort of amus.e.m.e.nt; but the wine never seemed at all to fl.u.s.ter Mr. Addison"s brains; it only unloosed his tongue: whereas Captain Steele"s head and speech were quite overcome by a single bottle.
No matter what the verses were, and, to say truth, Mr. Esmond found some of them more than indifferent, d.i.c.k"s enthusiasm for his chief never faltered, and in every line from Addison"s pen, Steele found a master-stroke. By the time d.i.c.k had come to that part of the poem, wherein the bard describes as blandly as though he were recording a dance at the opera, or a harmless bout of bucolic cudgelling at a village fair, that b.l.o.o.d.y and ruthless part of our campaign, with the remembrance whereof every soldier who bore a part in it must sicken with shame--when we were ordered to ravage and lay waste the Elector"s country; and with fire and murder, slaughter and crime, a great part of his dominions was overrun; when d.i.c.k came to the lines-- "In vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand With sword and fire, and ravages the land, In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn, A thousand villages to ashes turn. To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat, And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat. Their trembling lords the common shade partake, And cries of infants found in every brake. The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands, Loth to obey his leader"s just commands. The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed, To see his just commands so well obeyed;"
by this time wine and friendship had brought poor d.i.c.k to a perfectly maudlin state, and he hiccupped out the last line with a tenderness that set one of his auditors a-laughing.
"I admire the license of your poets," says Esmond to Mr. Addison. (d.i.c.k, after reading of the verses, was fain to go off, insisting on kissing his two dear friends before his departure, and reeling away with his periwig over his eyes.) "I admire your art: the murder of the campaign is done to military music, like a battle at the opera, and the virgins shriek in harmony, as our victorious grenadiers march into their villages. Do you know what a scene it was?"--(by this time, perhaps, the wine had warmed Mr. Esmond"s head too,)--"what a triumph you are celebrating? what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, over which the commander"s genius presided, as calm as though he didn"t belong to our sphere? You talk of the "listening soldier fixed in sorrow," the "leader"s grief swayed by generous pity;" to my belief the leader cared no more for bleating flocks than he did for infants" cries, and many of our ruffians butchered one or the other with equal alacrity. I was ashamed of my trade when I saw those horrors perpetrated, which came under every man"s eyes. You hew out of your polished verses a stately image of smiling victory; I tell you "tis an uncouth, distorted, savage idol; hideous, b.l.o.o.d.y, and barbarous. The rites performed before it are shocking to think of. You great poets should show it as it is--ugly and horrible, not beautiful and serene. Oh, sir, had you made the campaign, believe me, you never would have sung it so."
During this little outbreak, Mr. Addison was listening, smoking out of his long pipe, and smiling very placidly. "What would you have?" says he. "In our polished days, and according to the rules of art, "tis impossible that the Muse should depict tortures or begrime her hands with the horrors of war. These are indicated rather than described; as in the Greek tragedies, that, I dare say, you have read (and sure there can be no more elegant specimens of composition), Agamemnon is slain, or Medea"s children destroyed, away from the scene;--the chorus occupying the stage and singing of the action to pathetic music. Something of this I attempt, my dear sir, in my humble way: "tis a panegyric I mean to write, and not a satire. Were I to sing as you would have me, the town would tear the poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of the common hangman. Do you not use tobacco? Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nicotian is the most soothing and salutary. We must paint our great Duke," Mr. Addison went on, "not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weaknesses like the rest of us, but as a hero. "Tis in a triumph, not a battle, that your humble servant is riding his sleek Pegasus. We college poets trot, you know, on very easy nags; it hath been, time out of mind, part of the poet"s profession to celebrate the actions of heroes in verse, and to sing the deeds which you men of war perform. I must follow the rules of my art, and the composition of such a strain as this must be harmonious and majestic, not familiar, or too near the vulgar truth. Si parva licet: if Virgil could invoke the divine Augustus, a humbler poet from the banks of the Isis may celebrate a victory and a conqueror of our own nation, in whose triumphs every Briton has a share, and whose glory and genius contributes to every citizen"s individual honor. When hath there been, since our Henrys" and Edwards" days, such a great feat of arms as that from which you yourself have brought away marks of distinction? If "tis in my power to sing that song worthily, I will do so, and be thankful to my Muse. If I fail as a poet, as a Briton at least I will show my loyalty, and fling up my cap and huzzah for the conqueror:-- ""Rheni pacator et Istri Omnis in hoc uno variis discordia cessit Ordinibus; laetatur eques, plauditque senator, Votaque patricio certant plebeia favori.""
"There were as brave men on that field," says Mr. Esmond (who never could be made to love the Duke of Marlborough, nor to forget those stories which he used to hear in his youth regarding that great chiefs selfishness and treachery)--"there were men at Blenheim as good as the leader, whom neither knights nor senators applauded, nor voices plebeian or patrician favored, and who lie there forgotten, under the clods. What poet is there to sing them?"
"To sing the gallant souls of heroes sent to Hades!" says Mr. Addison, with a smile. "Would you celebrate them all? If I may venture to question anything in such an admirable work, the catalogue of the ships in Homer hath always appeared to me as somewhat wearisome; what had the poem been, supposing the writer had chronicled the names of captains, lieutenants, rank and file? One of the greatest of a great man"s qualities is success; "tis the result of all the others; "tis a latent power in him which compels the favor of the G.o.ds, and subjugates fortune. Of all his gifts I admire that one in the great Marlborough. To be brave? every man is brave. But in being victorious, as he is, I fancy there is something divine. In presence of the occasion, the great soul of the leader shines out, and the G.o.d is confessed. Death itself respects him, and pa.s.ses by him to lay others low. War and carnage flee before him to ravage other parts of the field, as Hector from before the divine Achilles. You say he hath no pity; no more have the G.o.ds, who are above it, and superhuman. The fainting battle gathers strength at his aspect; and, wherever he rides, victory charges with him."
A couple of days after, when Mr. Esmond revisited his poetic friend, he found this thought, struck out in the fervor of conversation, improved and shaped into those famous lines, which are in truth the n.o.blest in the poem of the "Campaign." As the two gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe, the little maid-servant that waited on his lodging came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court or a great man"s levee. The courtier coughed a little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked round the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as was the owner in his worn, snuff-colored suit and plain tie-wig.
"How goes on the magnum opus, Mr. Addison?" says the Court gentleman on looking down at the papers that were on the table.
"We were but now over it," says Addison (the greatest courtier in the land could not have a more splendid politeness, or greater dignity of manner). "Here is the plan," says he, "on the table: hac ibat Simois, here ran the little river Nebel: hic est Sigeia tellus, here are Tallard"s quarters, at the bowl of this pipe, at the attack of which Captain Esmond was present. I have the honor to introduce him to Mr. Boyle; and Mr. Esmond was but now depicting aliquo proelia mixta mero, when you came in." In truth, the two gentlemen had been so engaged when the visitor arrived, and Addison, in his smiling way, speaking of Mr. Webb, colonel of Esmond"s regiment (who commanded a brigade in the action, and greatly distinguished himself there), was lamenting that he could find never a suitable rhyme for Webb, otherwise the brigade should have had a place in the poet"s verses. "And for you, you are but a lieutenant," says Addison, "and the Muse can"t occupy herself with any gentleman under the rank of a field officer."
Mr. Boyle was all impatient to hear, saying that my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Halifax were equally anxious; and Addison, blushing, began reading of his verses, and, I suspect, knew their weak parts as well as the most critical hearer. When he came to the lines describing the angel, that "Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage,"
he read with great animation, looking at Esmond, as much as to say, "You know where that simile came from--from our talk, and our bottle of Burgundy, the other day."
The poet"s two hearers were caught with enthusiasm, and applauded the verses with all their might. The gentleman of the Court sprang up in great delight. "Not a word more, my dear sir," says he. "Trust me with the papers--I"ll defend them with my life. Let me read them over to my Lord Treasurer, whom I am appointed to see in half an hour. I venture to promise, the verses shall lose nothing by my reading, and then, sir, we shall see whether Lord Halifax has a right to complain that his friend"s pension is no longer paid." And without more ado, the courtier in lace seized the ma.n.u.script pages, placed them in his breast with his ruffled hand over his heart, executed a most gracious wave of the hat with the disengaged hand, and smiled and bowed out of the room, leaving an odor of pomander behind him.
"Does not the chamber look quite dark?" says Addison, surveying it, "after the glorious appearance and disappearance of that gracious messenger? Why, he illuminated the whole room. Your scarlet, Mr. Esmond, will bear any light; but this threadbare old coat of mine, how very worn it looked under the glare of that splendor! I wonder whether they will do anything for me," he continued. "When I came out of Oxford into the world, my patrons promised me great things; and you see where their promises have landed me, in a lodging up two pair of stairs, with a sixpenny dinner from the cook"s shop. Well, I suppose this promise will go after the others, and fortune will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time these seven years. "I puff the prost.i.tute away,"" says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his pipe. "There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable; no hardship even in honest dependence that an honest man may not put up with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of me, and thinking to make a figure in the world with the parts and learning which had got me no small name in our college. The world is the ocean, and Isis and Charwell are but little drops, of which the sea takes no account. My reputation ended a mile beyond Maudlin Tower; no one took note of me; and I learned this at least, to bear up against evil fortune with a cheerful heart. Friend d.i.c.k hath made a figure in the world, and has pa.s.sed me in the race long ago. What matters a little name or a little fortune? There is no fortune that a philosopher cannot endure. I have been not unknown as a scholar, and yet forced to live by turning bear-leader, and teaching a boy to spell. What then? The life was not pleasant, but possible--the bear was bearable. Should this venture fail, I will go back to Oxford; and some day, when you are a general, you shall find me a curate in a ca.s.sock and bands, and I shall welcome your honor to my cottage in the country, and to a mug of penny ale. "Tis not poverty that"s the hardest to bear, or the least happy lot in life," says Mr. Addison, shaking the ash out of his pipe. "See, my pipe is smoked out. Shall we have another bottle? I have still a couple in the cupboard, and of the right sort. No more?--let us go abroad and take a turn on the Mall, or look in at the theatre and see d.i.c.k"s comedy. "Tis not a masterpiece of wit; but d.i.c.k is a good fellow, though he doth not set the Thames on fire."
Within a month after this day, Mr. Addison"s ticket had come up a prodigious prize in the lottery of life. All the town was in an uproar of admiration of his poem, the "Campaign," which d.i.c.k Steele was spouting at every coffee-house in Whitehall and Covent Garden. The wits on the other side of Temple Bar saluted him at once as the greatest poet the world had seen for ages; the people huzza"ed for Marlborough and for Addison, and, more than this, the party in power provided for the meritorious poet, and Addison got the appointment of Commissioner of Excise, which the famous Mr. Locke vacated, and rose from this place to other dignities and honors; his prosperity from henceforth to the end of his life being scarce ever interrupted. But I doubt whether he was not happier in his garret in the Haymarket, than ever he was in his splendid palace at Kensington; and I believe the fortune that came to him in the shape of the countess his wife was no better than a shrew and a vixen.
Gay as the town was, "twas but a dreary place for Mr. Esmond, whether his charmer was in or out of it, and he was glad when his general gave him notice that he was going back to his division of the army which lay in winter-quarters at Bois-le-Duc. His dear mistress bade him farewell with a cheerful face; her blessing he knew he had always, and wheresoever fate carried him. Mistress Beatrix was away in attendance on her Majesty at Hampton Court, and kissed her fair fingertips to him, by way of adieu, when he rode thither to take his leave. She received her kinsman in a waiting- room, where there were half a dozen more ladies of the Court, so that his high-flown speeches, had he intended to make any (and very likely he did), were impossible; and she announced to her friends that her cousin was going to the army, in as easy a manner as she would have said he was going to a chocolate-house. He asked with a rather rueful face, if she had any orders for the army? and she was pleased to say that she would like a mantle of Mechlin lace. She made him a saucy curtsy in reply to his own dismal bow. She deigned to kiss her fingertips from the window, where she stood laughing with the other ladies, and chanced to see him as he made his way to the "Toy." The Dowager at Chelsey was not sorry to part with him this time. "Mon cher, vous etes triste comme un sermon," she did him the honor to say to him; indeed, gentlemen in his condition are by no means amusing companions, and besides, the fickle old woman had now found a much more amiable favorite, and raffoled for her darling lieutenant of the Guard. Frank remained behind for a while, and did not join the army till later, in the suite of his Grace the Commander-in-Chief. His dear mother, on the last day before Esmond went away, and when the three dined together, made Esmond promise to befriend her boy, and besought Frank to take the example of his kinsman as of a loyal gentleman and brave soldier, so she was pleased to say; and at parting, betrayed not the least sign of faltering or weakness, though, G.o.d knows, that fond heart was fearful enough when others were concerned, though so resolute in bearing its own pain.
Esmond"s general embarked at Harwich. "Twas a grand sight to see Mr. Webb dressed in scarlet on the deck, waving his hat as our yacht put off, and the guns saluted from the sh.o.r.e. Harry did not see his viscount again, until three months after, at Bois-le-Duc, when his Grace the Duke came to take the command, and Frank brought a budget of news from home: how he had supped with this actress, and got tired of that; how he had got the better of Mr. St. John, both over the bottle, and with Mrs. Mountford, of the Haymarket Theatre (a veteran charmer of fifty, with whom the young scapegrace chose to fancy himself in love); how his sister was always at her tricks, and had jilted a young baron for an old earl. "I can"t make out Beatrix," he said; "she cares for none of us--she only thinks about herself; she is never happy unless she is quarrelling; but as for my mother--my mother, Harry, is an angel." Harry tried to impress on the young fellow the necessity of doing everything in his power to please that angel; not to drink too much; not to go into debt; not to run after the pretty Flemish girls, and so forth, as became a senior speaking to a lad. "But Lord bless thee!" the boy said; "I may do what I like, and I know she will love me all the same;" and so, indeed, he did what he liked. Everybody spoiled him, and his grave kinsman as much as the rest.
CHAPTER XII.
I GET A COMPANY IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1706.
On Whit-Sunday, the famous 23rd of May, 1706, my young lord first came under the fire of the enemy, whom we found posted in order of battle, their lines extending three miles or more, over the high ground behind the little Gheet river, and having on his left the little village of Anderkirk or Autre-eglise, and on his right Ramillies, which has given its name to one of the most brilliant and disastrous days of battle that history ever hath recorded.
Our Duke here once more met his old enemy of Blenheim, the Bavarian Elector and the Marechal Villeroy, over whom the Prince of Savoy had gained the famous victory of Chiari. What Englishman or Frenchman doth not know the issue of that day? Having chosen his own ground, having a force superior to the English, and besides the excellent Spanish and Bavarian troops, the whole Maison-du-Roy with him, the most splendid body of horse in the world,--in an hour (and in spite of the prodigious gallantry of the French Royal Household, who charged through the centre of our line and broke it,) this magnificent army of Villeroy was utterly routed by troops that had been marching for twelve hours, and by the intrepid skill of a commander, who did, indeed, seem in the presence of the enemy to be the very Genius of Victory.
I think it was more from conviction than policy, though that policy was surely the most prudent in the world, that the great Duke always spoke of his victories with an extraordinary modesty, and as if it was not so much his own admirable genius and courage which achieved these amazing successes, but as if he was a special and fatal instrument in the hands of Providence, that willed irresistibly the enemy"s overthrow. Before his actions he always had the church service read solemnly, and professed an undoubting belief that our Queen"s arms were blessed and our victory sure. All the letters which he writ after his battles show awe rather than exultation; and he attributes the glory of these achievements, about which I have heard mere petty officers and men bragging with a pardonable vainglory, in nowise to his own bravery or skill, but to the superintending protection of heaven, which he ever seemed to think was our especial ally. And our army got to believe so, and the enemy learnt to think so too; for we never entered into a battle without a perfect confidence that it was to end in a victory; nor did the French, after the issue of Blenheim, and that astonishing triumph of Ramillies, ever meet us without feeling that the game was lost before it was begun to be played, and that our general"s fortune was irresistible. Here, as at Blenheim, the Duke"s charger was shot, and "twas thought for a moment he was dead. As he mounted another, Binfield, his master of the horse, kneeling to hold his Grace"s stirrup, had his head shot away by a cannon-ball. A French gentleman of the Royal Household, that was a prisoner with us, told the writer that at the time of the charge of the Household, when their horse and ours were mingled, an Irish officer recognized the Prince-Duke, and calling out--"Marlborough, Marlborough!" fired his pistol at him a bout-portant, and that a score more carbines and pistols were discharged at him. Not one touched him: he rode through the French Curia.s.siers sword-in-hand, and entirely unhurt, and calm and smiling, rallied the German Horse, that was reeling before the enemy, brought these and twenty squadrons of Orkney"s back upon them, and drove the French across the river, again leading the charge himself, and defeating the only dangerous move the French made that day.
Major-General Webb commanded on the left of our line, and had his own regiment under the orders of their beloved colonel. Neither he nor they belied their character for gallantry on this occasion; but it was about his dear young lord that Esmond was anxious, never having sight of him save once, in the whole course of the day, when he brought an order from the Commander-in-Chief to Mr. Webb. When our horse, having charged round the right flank of the enemy by Overkirk, had thrown him into entire confusion, a general advance was made, and our whole line of foot, crossing the little river and the mora.s.s, ascended the high ground where the French were posted, cheering as they went, the enemy retreating before them. "Twas a service of more glory than danger, the French battalions never waiting to exchange push of pike or bayonet with ours; and the gunners flying from their pieces, which our line left behind us as they advanced, and the French fell back.
At first it was a retreat orderly enough; but presently the retreat became a rout, and a frightful slaughter of the French ensued on this panic: so that an army of sixty thousand men was utterly crushed and destroyed in the course of a couple of hours. It was as if a hurricane had seized a compact numerous fleet, flung it all to the winds, shattered, sunk, and annihilated it: afflavit Deus, et dissipati sunt. The French army of Flanders was gone, their artillery, their standards, their treasure, provisions, and ammunition were all left behind them: the poor devils had even fled without their soup-kettles, which are as much the palladia of the French infantry as of the Grand Seignior"s Janissaries, and round which they rally even more than round their lilies.
The pursuit, and a dreadful carnage which ensued (for the dregs of a battle, however brilliant, are ever a base residue of rapine, cruelty, and drunken plunder,) was carried far beyond the field of Ramillies.
Honest Lockwood, Esmond"s servant, no doubt wanted to be among the marauders himself and take his share of the booty; for when, the action over, and the troops got to their ground for the night, the Captain bade Lockwood get a horse, he asked, with a very rueful countenance, whether his honor would have him come too; but his honor only bade him go about his own business, and Jack hopped away quite delighted as soon as he saw his master mounted. Esmond made his way, and not without danger and difficulty, to his Grace"s headquarters, and found for himself very quickly where the aide-de- camps" quarters were, in an out-building of a farm, where several of these gentlemen were seated, drinking and singing, and at supper. If he had any anxiety about his boy, "twas relieved at once. One of the gentlemen was singing a song to a tune that Mr. Farquhar and Mr. Gay both had used in their admirable comedies, and very popular in the army of that day; and after the song came a chorus, "Over the hills and far away;" and Esmond heard Frank"s fresh voice, soaring, as it were, over the songs of the rest of the young men--a voice that had always a certain artless, indescribable pathos with it, and indeed which caused Mr. Esmond"s eyes to fill with tears now, out of thankfulness to G.o.d the child was safe and still alive to laugh and sing.
When the song was over Esmond entered the room, where he knew several of the gentlemen present, and there sat my young lord, having taken off his cuira.s.s, his waistcoat open, his face flushed, his long yellow hair hanging over his shoulders, drinking with the rest; the youngest, gayest, handsomest there. As soon as he saw Esmond, he clapped down his gla.s.s, and running towards his friend, put both his arms round him and embraced him. The other"s voice trembled with joy as he greeted the lad; he had thought but now as he stood in the court-yard under the clear-shining moonlight: "Great G.o.d! what a scene of murder is here within a mile of us; what hundreds and thousands have faced danger to-day; and here are these lads singing over their cups, and the same moon that is shining over yonder horrid field is looking down on Walcote very likely, while my lady sits and thinks about her boy that is at the war." As Esmond embraced his young pupil now, "twas with the feeling of quite religious thankfulness and an almost paternal pleasure that he beheld him.
Round his neck was a star with a striped ribbon, that was made of small brilliants and might be worth a hundred crowns. "Look," says he, "won"t that be a pretty present for mother?"
"Who gave you the Order?" says Harry, saluting the gentleman: "did you win it in battle?"
"I won it," cried the other, "with my sword and my spear. There was a mousquetaire that had it round his neck--such a big mousquetaire, as big as General Webb. I called out to him to surrender, and that I"d give him quarter: he called me a pet.i.t polisson and fired his pistol at me, and then sent it at my head with a curse. I rode at him, sir, drove my sword right under his arm-hole, and broke it in the rascal"s body. I found a purse in his holster with sixty-five Louis in it, and a bundle of love- letters, and a flask of Hungary-water. Vive la guerre! there are the ten pieces you lent me. I should like to have a fight every day;" and he pulled at his little moustache and bade a servant bring a supper to Captain Esmond.
Harry fell to with a very good appet.i.te; he had tasted nothing since twenty hours ago, at early dawn. Master Grandson, who read this, do you look for the history of battles and sieges? Go, find them in the proper books; this is only the story of your grandfather and his family. Far more pleasant to him than the victory, though for that too he may say meminisse juvat, it was to find that the day was over, and his dear young Castlewood was unhurt.
And would you, sirrah, wish to know how it was that a sedate Captain of Foot, a studious and rather solitary bachelor of eight or nine and twenty years of age, who did not care very much for the jollities which his comrades engaged in, and was never known to lose his heart in any garrison-town--should you wish to know why such a man had so prodigious a tenderness, and tended so fondly a boy of eighteen, wait, my good friend, until thou art in love with thy schoolfellow"s sister, and then see how mighty tender thou wilt be towards him. Esmond"s general and his Grace the Prince-Duke were notoriously at variance, and the former"s friendship was in nowise likely to advance any man"s promotion of whose services Webb spoke well; but rather likely to injure him, so the army said, in the favor of the greater man. However, Mr. Esmond had the good fortune to be mentioned very advantageously by Major-General Webb in his report after the action; and the major of his regiment and two of the captains having been killed upon the day of Ramillies, Esmond, who was second of the lieutenants, got his company, and had the honor of serving as Captain Esmond in the next campaign.
My lord went home in the winter, but Esmond was afraid to follow him. His dear mistress wrote him letters more than once, thanking him, as mothers know how to thank, for his care and protection of her boy, extolling Esmond"s own merits with a great deal more praise than they deserved; for he did his duty no better than any other officer; and speaking sometimes, though gently and cautiously, of Beatrix. News came from home of at least half a dozen grand matches that the beautiful maid of honor was about to make. She was engaged to an earl, our gentleman of St. James"s said, and then jilted him for a duke, who, in his turn, had drawn off. Earl or duke it might be who should win this Helen, Esmond knew she would never bestow herself on a poor captain. Her conduct, it was clear, was little satisfactory to her mother, who scarcely mentioned her, or else the kind lady thought it was best to say nothing, and leave time to work out its cure. At any rate, Harry was best away from the fatal object which always wrought him so much mischief; and so he never asked for leave to go home, but remained with his regiment that was garrisoned in Brussels, which city fell into our hands when the victory of Ramillies drove the French out of Flanders.
CHAPTER XIII.
I MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN FLANDERS, AND FIND MY MOTHER"S GRAVE AND MY OWN CRADLE THERE.
Being one day in the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, admiring the antique splendor of the architecture (and always entertaining a great tenderness and reverence for the Mother Church, that hath been as wickedly persecuted in England as ever she herself persecuted in the days of her prosperity), Esmond saw kneeling at a side altar an officer in a green uniform coat, very deeply engaged in devotion. Something familiar in the figure and posture of the kneeling man struck Captain Esmond, even before he saw the officer"s face. As he rose up, putting away into his pocket a little black breviary, such as priests use, Esmond beheld a countenance so like that of his friend and tutor of early days, Father Holt, that he broke out into an exclamation of astonishment and advanced a step towards the gentleman, who was making his way out of church. The German officer too looked surprised when he saw Esmond, and his face from being pale grew suddenly red. By this mark of recognition, the Englishman knew that he could not be mistaken; and though the other did not stop, but on the contrary rather hastily walked away towards the door, Esmond pursued him and faced him once more, as the officer, helping himself to holy water, turned mechanically towards the altar, to bow to it ere he quitted the sacred edifice.
"My Father!" says Esmond in English.
"Silence! I do not understand. I do not speak English," says the other in Latin.
Esmond smiled at this sign of confusion, and replied in the same language--"I should know my Father in any garment, black or white, shaven or bearded;" for the Austrian officer was habited quite in the military manner, and had as warlike a mustachio as any Pandour.
He laughed--we were on the church steps by this time, pa.s.sing through the crowd of beggars that usually is there holding up little trinkets for sale and whining for alms. "You speak Latin," says he, "in the English way, Harry Esmond; you have forsaken the old true Roman tongue you once knew." His tone was very frank, and friendly quite; the kind voice of fifteen years back; he gave Esmond his hand as he spoke.
"Others have changed their coats too, my Father," says Esmond, glancing at his friend"s military decoration.
"Hush! I am Mr. or Captain von Holtz, in the Bavarian Elector"s service, and on a mission to his Highness the Prince of Savoy. You can keep a secret I know from old times."
"Captain von Holtz," says Esmond, "I am your very humble servant."
"And you, too, have changed your coat," continues the other in his laughing way; "I have heard of you at Cambridge and afterwards: we have friends everywhere; and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was as good a fencer as he was a bad theologian." (So, thinks Esmond, my old maitre d"armes was a Jesuit, as they said.) "Perhaps you are right," says the other, reading his thoughts quite as he used to do in old days; "you were all but killed at Hochstedt of a wound in the left side. You were before that at Vigo, aide- de-camp to the Duke of Ormonde. You got your company the other day after Ramillies; your general and the Prince-Duke are not friends; he is of the Webbs of Lydiard Tregoze, in the county of York, a relation of my Lord St. John. Your cousin, M. de Castlewood, served his first campaign this year in the Guard; yes, I do know a few things, as you see."
Captain Esmond laughed in his turn. "You have indeed a curious knowledge," he says. A foible of Mr. Holt"s, who did know more about books and men than, perhaps, almost any person Esmond had ever met, was omniscience; thus in every point he here professed to know, he was nearly right, but not quite. Esmond"s wound was in the right side, not the left; his first general was General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out of Wiltshire, not out of Yorkshire; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his old master in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a knowledge of the other"s character, and he smiled to think that this was his oracle of early days; only now no longer infallible or divine.
"Yes," continues Father Holt, or Captain von Holtz, "for a man who has not been in England these eight years, I know what goes on in London very well. The old Dean is dead, my Lady Castlewood"s father. Do you know that your recusant bishops wanted to consecrate him Bishop of Southampton, and that Collier is Bishop of Thetford by the same imposition? The Princess Anne has the gout and eats too much; when the King returns, Collier will be an archbishop."
"Amen!" says Esmond, laughing; "and I hope to see your Eminence no longer in jack-boots, but red stockings, at Whitehall."
"You are always with us--I know that--I heard of that when you were at Cambridge; so was the late lord; so is the young viscount."
"And so was my father before me," said Mr. Esmond, looking calmly at the other, who did not, however, show the least sign of intelligence in his impenetrable gray eyes--how well Harry remembered them and their look! only crows" feet were wrinkled round them--marks of black old Time had settled there.
Esmond"s face chose to show no more sign of meaning than the Father"s. There may have been on the one side and the other just the faintest glitter of recognition, as you see a bayonet shining out of an ambush; but each party fell back, when everything was again dark.
"And you, mon capitaine, where have you been?" says Esmond, turning away the conversation from this dangerous ground, where neither chose to engage.
"I may have been in Pekin," says he, "or I may have been in Paraguay--who knows where? I am now Captain von Holtz, in the service of his Electoral Highness, come to negotiate exchange of prisoners with his Highness of Savoy."
"Twas well known that very many officers in our army were well- affected towards the young king at St. Germains, whose right to the throne was undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current. It wounded our English pride to think that a shabby High-Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a t.i.the as great as those of many of the princes of our ancient English n.o.bility, who could not speak a word of our language, and whom we chose to represent as a sort of German boor, feeding on train-oil and sour-crout, with a bevy of mistresses in a barn, should come to reign over the proudest and most polished people in the world. Were we, the conquerors of the Grand Monarch, to submit to that ign.o.ble domination? What did the Hanoverian"s Protestantism matter to us? Was it not notorious (we were told and led to believe so) that one of the daughters of this Protestant hero was being bred up with no religion at all, as yet, and ready to be made Lutheran or Roman, according as the husband might be whom her parents should find for her? This talk, very idle and abusive much of it was, went on at a hundred mess-tables in the army; there was scarce an ensign that did not hear it, or join in it, and everybody knew, or affected to know, that the Commander-in- Chief himself had relations with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick ("twas by an Englishman, thank G.o.d, that we were beaten at Almanza), and that his Grace was most anxious to restore the royal race of his benefactors, and to repair his former treason.
This is certain, that for a considerable period no officer in the Duke"s army lost favor with the Commander-in-Chief for entertaining or proclaiming his loyalty towards the exiled family. When the Chevalier de St. George, as the King of England called himself, came with the dukes of the French blood royal, to join the French army under Vendosme, hundreds of ours saw him and cheered him, and we all said he was like his father in this, who, seeing the action of La Hogue fought between the French ships and ours, was on the side of his native country during the battle. But this, at least the Chevalier knew, and every one knew, that, however well our troops and their general might be inclined towards the prince personally, in the face of the enemy there was no question at all. Wherever my Lord Duke found a French army, he would fight and beat it, as he did at Oudenarde, two years after Ramillies, where his Grace achieved another of his transcendent victories; and the n.o.ble young prince, who charged gallantly along with the magnificent Maison-du-Roy, sent to compliment his conquerors after the action.
In this battle, where the young Electoral Prince of Hanover behaved himself very gallantly, fighting on our side, Esmond"s dear General Webb distinguished himself prodigiously, exhibiting consummate skill and coolness as a general, and fighting with the personal bravery of a common soldier. Esmond"s good-luck again attended him; he escaped without a hurt, although more than a third of his regiment was killed, had again the honor to be favorably mentioned in his commander"s report, and was advanced to the rank of major. But of this action there is little need to speak, as it hath been related in every Gazette, and talked of in every hamlet in this country. To return from it to the writer"s private affairs, which here, in his old age, and at a distance, he narrates for his children who come after him. Before Oudenarde, after that chance rencontre with Captain von Holtz at Brussels, a s.p.a.ce of more than a year elapsed, during which the captain of Jesuits and the captain of Webb"s Fusileers were thrown very much together. Esmond had no difficulty in finding out (indeed, the other made no secret of it to him, being a.s.sured from old times of his pupil"s fidelity), that the negotiator of prisoners was an agent from St. Germains, and that he carried intelligence between great personages in our camp and that of the French. "My business," said he--"and I tell you, both because I can trust you and your keen eyes have already discovered it--is between the King of England and his subjects here engaged in fighting the French king. As between you and them, all the Jesuits in the world will not prevent your quarrelling: fight it out, gentlemen. St. George for England, I say--and you know who says so, wherever he may be."
I think Holt loved to make a parade of mystery, as it were, and would appear and disappear at our quarters as suddenly as he used to return and vanish in the old days at Castlewood. He had pa.s.ses between both armies, and seemed to know (but with that inaccuracy which belonged to the good Father"s omniscience) equally well what pa.s.sed in the French camp and in ours. One day he would give Esmond news of a great feste that took place in the French quarters, of a supper of Monsieur de Rohan"s, where there was play and violins, and then dancing and masques; the King drove thither in Marshal Villars" own guinguette. Another day he had the news of his Majesty"s ague: the King had not had a fit these ten days, and might be said to be well. Captain Holtz made a visit to England during this time, so eager was he about negotiating prisoners; and "twas on returning from this voyage that he began to open himself more to Esmond, and to make him, as occasion served, at their various meetings, several of those confidences which are here set down all together.
The reason of his increased confidence was this: upon going to London, the old director of Esmond"s aunt, the dowager, paid her ladyship a visit at Chelsey, and there learnt from her that Captain Esmond was acquainted with the secret of his family, and was determined never to divulge it. The knowledge of this fact raised Esmond in his old tutor"s eyes, so Holt was pleased to say, and he admired Harry very much for his abnegation.
"The family at Castlewood have done far more for me than my own ever did," Esmond said. "I would give my life for them. Why should I grudge the only benefit that "tis in my power to confer on them?" The good Father"s eyes filled with tears at this speech, which to the other seemed very simple: he embraced Esmond, and broke out into many admiring expressions; he said he was a n.o.ble coeur, that he was proud of him, and fond of him as his pupil and friend--regretted more than ever that he had lost him, and been forced to leave him in those early times, when he might have had an influence over him, have brought him into that only true church to which the Father belonged, and enlisted him in the n.o.blest army in which a man ever engaged--meaning his own society of Jesus, which numbers (says he) in its troops the greatest heroes the world ever knew;--warriors brave enough to dare or endure anything, to encounter any odds, to die any death--soldiers that have won triumphs a thousand times more brilliant than those of the greatest general; that have brought nations on their knees to their sacred banner, the Cross; that have achieved glories and palms incomparably brighter than those awarded to the most splendid earthly conquerors--crowns of immortal light, and seats in the high places of heaven.
Esmond was thankful for his old friend"s good opinion, however little he might share the Jesuit-father"s enthusiasm. "I have thought of that question, too," says he, "dear Father," and he took the other"s hand--"thought it out for myself, as all men must, and contrive to do the right, and trust to heaven as devoutly in my way as you in yours. Another six months of you as a child, and I had desired no better. I used to weep upon my pillow at Castlewood as I thought of you, and I might have been a brother of your order; and who knows," Esmond added, with a smile, "a priest in full orders, and with a pair of mustachios, and a Bavarian uniform?"
"My son," says Father Holt, turning red, "in the cause of religion and loyalty all disguises are fair."
"Yes," broke in Esmond, "all disguises are fair, you say; and all uniforms, say I, black or red,--a black c.o.c.kade or a white one--or a laced hat, or a sombrero, with a tonsure under it. I cannot believe that St. Francis Xavier sailed over the sea in a cloak, or raised the dead--I tried, and very nearly did once, but cannot. Suffer me to do the right, and to hope for the best in my own way."
Esmond wished to cut short the good Father"s theology, and succeeded; and the other, sighing over his pupil"s invincible ignorance, did not withdraw his affection from him, but gave him his utmost confidence--as much, that is to say, as a priest can give: more than most do; for he was naturally garrulous, and too eager to speak.
Holt"s friendship encouraged Captain Esmond to ask, what he long wished to know, and none could tell him, some history of the poor mother whom he had often imagined in his dreams, and whom he never knew. He described to Holt those circ.u.mstances which are already put down in the first part of this story--the promise he had made to his dear lord, and that dying friend"s confession; and he besought Mr. Holt to tell him what he knew regarding the poor woman from whom he had been taken.
"She was of this very town," Holt said, and took Esmond to see the street where her father lived, and where, as he believed, she was born. "In 1676, when your father came hither in the retinue of the late king, then Duke of York, and banished hither in disgrace, Captain Thomas Esmond became acquainted with your mother, pursued her, and made a victim of her; he hath told me in many subsequent conversations, which I felt bound to keep private then, that she was a woman of great virtue and tenderness, and in all respects a most fond, faithful creature. He called himself Captain Thomas, having good reason to be ashamed of his conduct towards her, and hath spoken to me many times with sincere remorse for that, as with fond love for her many amiable qualities, he owned to having treated her very ill: and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and poverty. She became with child of you; was cursed by her own parents at that discovery; though she never upbraided, except by her involuntary tears, and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of her wretchedness and ruin.
"Thomas Esmond--Captain Thomas, as he was called--became engaged in a gaming-house brawl, of which the consequence was a duel, and a wound so severe that he never--his surgeon said--could outlive it. Thinking his death certain, and touched with remorse, he sent for a priest of the very Church of St. Gudule where I met you; and on the same day, after his making submission to our Church, was married to your mother a few weeks before you were born. My Lord Viscount Castlewood, Marquis of Esmond, by King James"s patent, which I myself took to your father, your lordship was christened at St. Gudule by the same cure who married your parents, and by the name of Henry Thomas, son of E. Thomas, officier Anglois, and Gertrude Maes. You see you belong to us from your birth, and why I did not christen you when you became my dear little pupil at Castlewood.
"Your father"s wound took a favorable turn--perhaps his conscience was eased by the right he had done--and to the surprise of the doctors he recovered. But as his health came back, his wicked nature, too, returned. He was tired of the poor girl, whom he had ruined; and receiving some remittance from his uncle, my lord the old viscount, then in England, he pretended business, promised return, and never saw your poor mother more.
"He owned to me, in confession first, but afterwards in talk before your aunt, his wife, else I never could have disclosed what I now tell you, that on coming to London he writ a pretended confession to poor Gertrude Maes--Gertrude Esmond--of his having been married in England previously, before uniting himself with her; said that his name was not Thomas; that he was about to quit Europe for the Virginian plantations, where, indeed, your family had a grant of land from King Charles the First; sent her a supply of money, the half of the last hundred guineas he had, entreated her pardon, and bade her farewell.
"Poor Gertrude never thought that the news in this letter might be untrue as the rest of your father"s conduct to her. But though a young man of her own degree, who knew her history, and whom she liked before she saw the English gentleman who was the cause of all her misery, offered to marry her, and to adopt you as his own child, and give you his name, she refused him. This refusal only angered her father, who had taken her home; she never held up her head there, being the subject of constant unkindness after her fall; and some devout ladies of her acquaintance offering to pay a little pension for her, she went into a convent, and you were put out to nurse.
"A sister of the young fellow who would have adopted you as his son was the person who took charge of you. Your mother and this person were cousins. She had just lost a child of her own, which you replaced, your own mother being too sick and feeble to feed you; and presently your nurse grew so fond of you, that she even grudged letting you visit the convent where your mother was, and where the nuns petted the little infant, as they pitied and loved its unhappy parent. Her vocation became stronger every day, and at the end of two years she was received as a sister of the house.
"Your nurse"s family were silk-weavers out of France, whither they returned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your mother took her vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old. "Twas a town, before the late vigorous measures of the French king, full of Protestants, and here your nurse"s father, old Pastoureau, he with whom you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines, perverting all his house with him. They were expelled thence by the edict of his most Christian Majesty, and came to London, and set up their looms in Spittlefields. The old man brought a little money with him, and carried on his trade, but in a poor way. He was a widower; by this time his daughter, a widow too, kept house for him, and his son and he labored together at their vocation. Meanwhile your father had publicly owned his conversion just before King Charles"s death (in whom our Church had much such another convert), was reconciled to my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and married, as you know, to his daughter.
"It chanced that the younger Pastoureau, going with a piece of brocade to the mercer who employed him, on Ludgate Hill, met his old rival coming out of an ordinary there. Pastoureau knew your father at once, seized him by the collar, and upbraided him as a villain, who had seduced his mistress, and afterwards deserted her and her son. Mr. Thomas Esmond also recognized Pastoureau at once, besought him to calm his indignation, and not to bring a crowd round about them; and bade him to enter into the tavern, out of which he had just stepped, when he would give him any explanation. Pastoureau entered, and heard the landlord order the drawer to show Captain Thomas to a room; it was by his Christian name that your father was familiarly called at his tavern haunts, which, to say the truth, were none of the most reputable.
"I must tell you that Captain Thomas, or my Lord Viscount afterwards, was never at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman or a dun with a volubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time, of which many a creditor of his has been the dupe. His tales used to gather verisimilitude as he went on with them. He strung together fact after fact with a wonderful rapidity and coherence. It required, saving your presence, a very long habit of acquaintance with your father to know when his lordship was l----,-- telling the truth or no.
"He told me with rueful remorse when he was ill--for the fear of death set him instantly repenting, and with shrieks of laughter when he was well, his lordship having a very great sense of humor-- how in a half an hour"s time, and before a bottle was drunk, he had completely succeeded in biting poor Pastoureau. The seduction he owned to: that he could not help: he was quite ready with tears at a moment"s warning, and shed them profusely to melt his credulous listener. He wept for your mother even more than Pastoureau did, who cried very heartily, poor fellow, as my lord informed me; he swore upon his honor that he had twice sent money to Brussels, and mentioned the name of the merchant with whom it was lying for poor Gertrude"s use. He did not even know whether she had a child or no, or whether she was alive or dead; but got these facts easily out of honest Pastoureau"s answers to him. When he heard that she was in a convent, he said he hoped to end his days in one himself, should he survive his wife, whom he hated, and had been forced by a cruel father to marry; and when he was told that Gertrude"s son was alive, and actually in London, "I started," says he; "for then, damme, my wife was expecting to lie in, and I thought should this old Put, my father-in-law, run rusty, here would be a good chance to frighten him."
"He expressed the deepest grat.i.tude to the Pastoureau family for the care of the infant: you were now near six years old; and on Pastoureau bluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see the darling child, that they never wished to see his ill- omened face again within their doors; that he might have the boy, though they should all be very sorry to lose him; and that they would take his money, they being poor, if he gave it; or bring him up, by G.o.d"s help, as they had hitherto done, without: he acquiesced in this at once, with a sigh, said, "Well, "twas better that the dear child should remain with friends who had been so admirably kind to him;" and in his talk to me afterwards, honestly praised and admired the weaver"s conduct and spirit; owned that the Frenchman was a right fellow, and he, the Lord have mercy upon him, a sad villain.
"Your father," Mr. Holt went on to say, "was good-natured with his money when he had it; and having that day received a supply from his uncle, gave the weaver ten pieces with perfect freedom, and promised him further remittances. He took down eagerly Pastoureau"s name and place of abode in his table-book, and when the other asked him for his own, gave, with the utmost readiness, his name as Captain Thomas, New Lodge, Penzance, Cornwall; he said he was in London for a few days only on business connected with his wife"s property; described her as a shrew, though a woman of kind disposition; and depicted his father as a Cornish squire, in an infirm state of health, at whose death he hoped for something handsome, when he promised richly to reward the admirable protector of his child, and to provide for the boy. "And by Gad, sir," he said to me in his strange laughing way, "I ordered a piece of brocade of the very same pattern as that which the fellow was carrying, and presented it to my wife for a morning wrapper, to receive company after she lay in of our little boy."
"Your little pension was paid regularly enough; and when your father became Viscount Castlewood on his uncle"s demise, I was employed to keep a watch over you, and "twas at my instance that you were brought home. Your foster-mother was dead; her father made acquaintance with a woman whom he married, who quarrelled with his son. The faithful creature came back to Brussels to be near the woman he loved, and died, too, a few months before her. Will you see her cross in the convent cemetery? The Superior is an old penitent of mine, and remembers Soeur Marie Madeleine fondly still."
Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst a thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the gra.s.sy mounds, that particular one which marked his mother"s resting-place. Many more of those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name, with which sorrow had rebaptized her, and which fondly seemed to hint their individual story of love and grief. He fancied her in tears and darkness, kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her cares were buried. Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much as in awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her), and in pity for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. To this cross she brought them; for this heavenly bridegroom she exchanged the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousand such hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of the gra.s.s over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister"s bedside (so fresh made, that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it); beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross, and then on the gra.s.s below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth: then came a sound as of chanting, from the chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place which poor Mary Magdeleine once had there, were kneeling at the same stall, and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had found consolation. Might she sleep in peace--might she sleep in peace; and we, too, when our struggles and pains are over! But the earth is the Lord"s as the heaven is; we are alike his creatures here and yonder. I took a little flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went my way, like the bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world again. Silent receptacle of death; tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of tempest and trouble! I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks.