With a sweet sad smile she took his hand and kissed it.
"How ill you have been: how weak you look, my dear Henry," she said.
"Tis certain the Colonel did look like a ghost, except that ghosts do not look very happy, "tis said. Esmond always felt so on returning to her after absence, indeed whenever he looked in her sweet kind face.
"I am come back to be nursed by my family," says he. "If Frank had not taken care of me after my wound, very likely I should have gone altogether."
"Poor Frank, good Frank!" says his mother. "You"ll always be kind to him, my lord," she went on. "The poor child never knew he was doing you a wrong."
"My lord!" cries out Colonel Esmond. "What do you mean, dear lady?"
"I am no lady," says she; "I am Rachel Esmond, Francis Esmond"s widow, my lord. I cannot bear that t.i.tle. Would we never had taken it from him who has it now. But we did all in our power, Henry: we did all in our power; and my lord and I--that is--"
"Who told you this tale, dearest lady?" asked the Colonel.
"Have you not had the letter I writ you? I writ to you at Mons directly I heard it," says Lady Esmond.
"And from whom?" again asked Colonel Esmond--and his mistress then told him that on her death-bed the Dowager Countess, sending for her, had presented her with this dismal secret as a legacy. ""Twas very malicious of the Dowager," Lady Esmond said, "to have had it so long, and to have kept the truth from me." "Cousin Rachel," she said,--and Esmond"s mistress could not forbear smiling as she told the story--"Cousin Rachel," cries the Dowager, "I have sent for you, as the doctors say I may go off any day in this dysentery; and to ease my conscience of a great load that has been on it. You always have been a poor creature and unfit for great honor, and what I have to say won"t, therefore, affect you so much. You must know, Cousin Rachel, that I have left my house, plate, and furniture, three thousand pounds in money, and my diamonds that my late revered Saint and Sovereign, King James, presented me with, to my Lord Viscount Castlewood."
"To my Frank?" says Lady Castlewood; "I was in hopes--"
To Viscount Castlewood, my dear; Viscount Castlewood and Baron Esmond of Shandon in the Kingdom of Ireland, Earl and Marquis of Esmond under patent of his Majesty King James the Second, conferred upon my husband the late Marquis--for I am Marchioness of Esmond before G.o.d and man."
"And have you left poor Harry nothing, dear Marchioness?" asks Lady Castlewood (she hath told me the story completely since with her quiet arch way; the most charming any woman ever had: and I set down the narrative here at length, so as to have done with it). "And have you left poor Harry nothing?" asks my dear lady: "for you know, Henry," she says with her sweet smile, "I used always to pity Esau--and I think I am on his side--though papa tried very hard to convince me the other way."
"Poor Harry!" says the old lady. "So you want something left to poor Harry: he,--he! (reach me the drops, cousin). Well, then, my dear, since you want poor Harry to have a fortune, you must understand that ever since the year 1691, a week after the battle of the Boyne, where the Prince of Orange defeated his royal sovereign and father, for which crime he is now suffering in flames (ugh! ugh!) Henry Esmond hath been Marquis of Esmond and Earl of Castlewood in the United Kingdom, and Baron and Viscount Castlewood of Shandon in Ireland, and a Baronet--and his eldest son will be, by courtesy, styled Earl of Castlewood--he! he! What do you think of that, my dear?"
"Gracious mercy! how long have you known this?" cries the other lady (thinking perhaps that the old Marchioness was wandering in her wits).
"My husband, before he was converted, was a wicked wretch," the sick sinner continued. "When he was in the Low Countries he seduced a weaver"s daughter; and added to his wickedness by marrying her. And then he came to this country and married me--a poor girl--a poor innocent young thing--I say,"--"though she was past forty, you know, Harry, when she married: and as for being innocent"--"Well," she went on, "I knew nothing of my lord"s wickedness for three years after our marriage, and after the burial of our poor little boy I had it done over again, my dear: I had myself married by Father Holt in Castlewood chapel, as soon as ever I heard the creature was dead--and having a great illness then, arising from another sad disappointment I had, the priest came and told me that my lord had a son before our marriage, and that the child was at nurse in England; and I consented to let the brat be brought home, and a queer little melancholy child it was when it came.
"Our intention was to make a priest of him: and he was bred for this, until you perverted him from it, you wicked woman. And I had again hopes of giving an heir to my lord, when he was called away upon the King"s business, and died fighting gloriously at the Boyne water.
"Should I be disappointed--I owed your husband no love, my dear, for he had jilted me in the most scandalous way and I thought there would be time to declare the little weaver"s son for the true heir. But I was carried off to prison, where your husband was so kind to me--urging all his friends to obtain my release, and using all his credit in my favor--that I relented towards him, especially as my director counselled me to be silent; and that it was for the good of the King"s service that the t.i.tle of our family should continue with your husband the late viscount, whereby his fidelity would be always secured to the King. And a proof of this is, that a year before your husband"s death, when he thought of taking a place under the Prince of Orange, Mr. Holt went to him, and told him what the state of the matter was, and obliged him to raise a large sum for his Majesty; and engaged him in the true cause so heartily, that we were sure of his support on any day when it should be considered advisable to attack the usurper. Then his sudden death came; and there was a thought of declaring the truth. But "twas determined to be best for the King"s service to let the t.i.tle still go with the younger branch; and there"s no sacrifice a Castlewood wouldn"t make for that cause, my dear.
"As for Colonel Esmond, he knew the truth already." ("And then, Harry," my mistress said, "she told me of what had happened at my dear husband"s death-bed"). "He doth not intend to take the t.i.tle, though it belongs to him. But it eases my conscience that you should know the truth, my dear. And your son is lawfully Viscount Castlewood so long as his cousin doth not claim the rank."
This was the substance of the Dowager"s revelation. Dean Atterbury had knowledge of it, Lady Castlewood said, and Esmond very well knows how: that divine being the clergyman for whom the late lord had sent on his death-bed: and when Lady Castlewood would instantly have written to her son, and conveyed the truth to him, the Dean"s advice was that a letter should be writ to Colonel Esmond rather; that the matter should be submitted to his decision, by which alone the rest of the family were bound to abide.
"And can my dearest lady doubt what that will be?" says the Colonel.
"It rests with you, Harry, as the head of our house."
"It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord"s bedside," says Colonel Esmond. "The children must know nothing of this. Frank and his heirs after him must bear our name. "Tis his rightfully; I have not even a proof of that marriage of my father and mother, though my poor lord, on his death-bed, told me that Father Holt had brought such a proof to Castlewood. I would not seek it when I was abroad. I went and looked at my poor mother"s grave in her convent. What matter to her now? No court of law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive my Lord Viscount and set me up. I am the head of the house, dear lady; but Frank is Viscount of Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would turn monk, or disappear in America."
As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his hands in an outbreak of pa.s.sionate love and grat.i.tude, such as could not but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that G.o.d had given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to bestow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred upon a man--and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity, could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?
"Dearest saint," says he--"purest soul, that has had so much to suffer, that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. "Tis for me to kneel, not for you: "tis for me to be thankful that I can make you happy. Hath my life any other aim? Blessed be G.o.d that I can serve you! What pleasure, think you, could all the world give me compared to that?"
"Don"t raise me," she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who would have lifted her. "Let me kneel--let me kneel, and--and--worship you."
Before such a partial judge as Esmond"s dear mistress owned herself to be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given in his favor; and accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling her to the news whereof he was bearer, of her son"s marriage to a foreign lady, Papist though she was. Lady Castlewood never could be brought to think so ill of that religion as other people in England thought of it: she held that ours was undoubtedly a branch of the Catholic church, but that the Roman was one of the main stems on which, no doubt, many errors had been grafted (she was, for a woman, extraordinarily well versed in this controversy, having acted, as a girl, as secretary to her father, the late dean, and written many of his sermons, under his dictation); and if Frank had chosen to marry a lady of the church of south Europe, as she would call the Roman communion, there was no need why she should not welcome her as a daughter-in-law: and accordingly she wrote to her new daughter a very pretty, touching letter (as Esmond thought, who had cognizance of it before it went), in which the only hint of reproof was a gentle remonstrance that her son had not written to herself, to ask a fond mother"s blessing for that step which he was about taking. "Castlewood knew very well," so she wrote to her son, "that she never denied him anything in her power to give, much less would she think of opposing a marriage that was to make his happiness, as she trusted, and keep him out of wild courses, which had alarmed her a good deal:" and she besought him to come quickly to England, to settle down in his family house of Castlewood ("It is his family house," says she, to Colonel Esmond, "though only his own house by your forbearance") and to receive the accompt of her stewardship during his ten years" minority. By care and frugality, she had got the estate into a better condition than ever it had been since the Parliamentary wars; and my lord was now master of a pretty, small income, not enc.u.mbered of debts, as it had been, during his father"s ruinous time. "But in saving my son"s fortune," says she, "I fear I have lost a great part of my hold on him." And, indeed, this was the case: her ladyship"s daughter complaining that their mother did all for Frank, and nothing for her; and Frank himself being dissatisfied at the narrow, simple way of his mother"s living at Walcote, where he had been brought up more like a poor parson"s son than a young n.o.bleman that was to make a figure in the world. "Twas this mistake in his early training, very likely, that set him so eager upon pleasure when he had it in his power; nor is he the first lad that has been spoiled by the over-careful fondness of women. No training is so useful for children, great or small, as the company of their betters in rank or natural parts; in whose society they lose the overweening sense of their own importance, which stay-at-home people very commonly learn.
But, as a prodigal that"s sending in a schedule of his debts to his friends, never puts all down, and, you may be sure, the rogue keeps back some immense swingeing bill, that he doesn"t dare to own; so the poor Frank had a very heavy piece of news to break to his mother, and which he hadn"t the courage to introduce into his first confession. Some misgivings Esmond might have, upon receiving Frank"s letter, and knowing into what hands the boy had fallen; but whatever these misgivings were, he kept them to himself, not caring to trouble his mistress with any fears that might be groundless.
However, the next mail which came from Bruxelles, after Frank had received his mother"s letters there, brought back a joint composition from himself and his wife, who could spell no better than her young scapegrace of a husband, full of expressions of thanks, love, and duty to the Dowager Viscountess, as my poor lady now was styled; and along with this letter (which was read in a family council, namely, the Viscountess, Mistress Beatrix, and the writer of this memoir, and which was p.r.o.nounced to be vulgar by the maid of honor, and felt to be so by the other two), there came a private letter for Colonel Esmond from poor Frank, with another dismal commission for the Colonel to execute, at his best opportunity; and this was to announce that Frank had seen fit, "by the exhortation of Mr. Holt, the influence of his Clotilda, and the blessing of heaven and the saints," says my lord, demurely, "to change his religion, and be received into the bosom of that church of which his sovereign, many of his family, and the greater part of the civilized world, were members." And his lordship added a postscript, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius very well, for it had the genuine tw.a.n.g of the Seminary, and was quite unlike poor Frank"s ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he reminded Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that church; and that his mother and sister should have his lordship"s prayers to the saints (an inestimable benefit, truly!) for their conversion.
If Esmond had wanted to keep this secret, he could not; for a day or two after receiving this letter, a notice from Bruxelles appeared in the Post-Boy and other prints, announcing that "a young Irish lord, the Viscount C-stlew--d, just come to his majority, and who had served the last campaigns with great credit, as aide-de- camp to his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, had declared for the Popish religion at Bruxelles, and had walked in a procession barefoot, with a wax-taper in his hand." The notorious Mr. Holt, who had been employed as a Jacobite agent during the last reign, and many times pardoned by King William, had been, the Post-Boy said, the agent of this conversion.
The Lady Castlewood was as much cast down by this news as Miss Beatrix was indignant at it. "So," says she, "Castlewood is no longer a home for us, mother. Frank"s foreign wife will bring her confessor, and there will be frogs for dinner; and all Tusher"s and my grandfather"s sermons are flung away upon my brother. I used to tell you that you killed him with the catechism, and that he would turn wicked as soon as he broke from his mammy"s leading-strings. Oh, mother, you would not believe that the young scapegrace was playing you tricks, and that sneak of a Tusher was not a fit guide for him. Oh, those parsons, I hate "em all!" says Mistress Beatrix, clapping her hands together; "yes, whether they wear ca.s.socks and buckles, or beards and bare feet. There"s a horrid Irish wretch who never misses a Sunday at Court, and who pays me compliments there, the horrible man; and if you want to know what parsons are, you should see his behavior, and hear him talk of his own cloth. They"re all the same, whether they"re bishops, or bonzes, or Indian fakirs. They try to domineer, and they frighten us with kingdom come; and they wear a sanctified air in public, and expect us to go down on our knees and ask their blessing; and they intrigue, and they grasp, and they backbite, and they slander worse than the worst courtier or the wickedest old woman. I heard this Mr. Swift sneering at my Lord Duke of Marlborough"s courage the other day. He! that Teague from Dublin! because his Grace is not in favor, dares to say this of him; and he says this that it may get to her Majesty"s ear, and to coax and wheedle Mrs. Masham. They say the Elector of Hanover has a dozen of mistresses in his court at Herrenhausen, and if he comes to be king over us, I wager that the bishops and Mr. Swift, that wants to be one, will coax and wheedle them. Oh, those priests and their grave airs! I"m sick of their square toes and their rustling ca.s.socks. I should like to go to a country where there was not one, or turn Quaker, and get rid of "em; and I would, only the dress is not becoming, and I"ve much too pretty a figure to hide it. Haven"t I, cousin?" and here she glanced at her person and the looking-gla.s.s, which told her rightly that a more beautiful shape and face never were seen.
"I made that onslaught on the priests," says Miss Beatrix, afterwards, "in order to divert my poor dear mother"s anguish about Frank. Frank is as vain as a girl, cousin. Talk of us girls being vain, what are WE to you? It was easy to see that the first woman who chose would make a fool of him, or the first robe--I count a priest and a woman all the same. We are always caballing; we are not answerable for the fibs we tell; we are always cajoling and coaxing, or threatening; and we are always making mischief, Colonel Esmond--mark my word for that, who know the world, sir, and have to make my way in it. I see as well as possible how Frank"s marriage hath been managed. The Count, our papa-in-law, is always away at the coffee-house. The Countess, our mother, is always in the kitchen looking after the dinner. The Countess, our sister, is at the spinet. When my lord comes to say he is going on the campaign, the lovely Clotilda bursts into tears, and faints--so; he catches her in his arms--no, sir, keep your distance, cousin, if you please--she cries on his shoulder, and he says, "Oh, my divine, my adored, my beloved Clotilda, are you sorry to part with me?" "Oh, my Francisco," says she, "oh my lord!" and at this very instant mamma and a couple of young brothers, with moustaches and long rapiers, come in from the kitchen, where they have been eating bread and onions. Mark my word, you will have all this woman"s relations at Castlewood three months after she has arrived there. The old count and countess, and the young counts and all the little countesses her sisters. Counts! every one of these wretches says he is a count. Guiscard, that stabbed Mr. Harvey, said he was a count; and I believe he was a barber. All Frenchmen are barbers-- Fiddledee! don"t contradict me--or else dancing-masters, or else priests." And so she rattled on.
"Who was it taught YOU to dance, Cousin Beatrix?" says the Colonel.
She laughed out the air of a minuet, and swept a low curtsy, coming up to the recover with the prettiest little foot in the world pointed out. Her mother came in as she was in this att.i.tude; my lady had been in her closet, having taken poor Frank"s conversion in a very serious way; the madcap girl ran up to her mother, put her arms round her waist, kissed her, tried to make her dance, and said: "Don"t be silly, you kind little mamma, and cry about Frank turning Papist. What a figure he must be, with a white sheet and a candle, walking in a procession barefoot!" And she kicked off her little slippers (the wonderfullest little shoes with wonderful tall red heels: Esmond pounced upon one as it fell close beside him), and she put on the drollest little moue, and marched up and down the room holding Esmond"s cane by way of taper. Serious as her mood was, Lady Castlewood could not refrain from laughing; and as for Esmond he looked on with that delight with which the sight of this fair creature always inspired him: never had he seen any woman so arch, so brilliant, and so beautiful.
Having finished her march, she put out her foot for her slipper. The Colonel knelt down: "If you will be Pope I will turn Papist," says he; and her Holiness gave him gracious leave to kiss the little stockinged foot before he put the slipper on.
Mamma"s feet began to pat on the floor during this operation, and Beatrix, whose bright eyes nothing escaped, saw that little mark of impatience. She ran up and embraced her mother, with her usual cry of, "Oh, you silly little mamma: your feet are quite as pretty as mine," says she: "they are, cousin, though she hides "em; but the shoemaker will tell you that he makes for both off the same last."
"You are taller than I am, dearest," says her mother, blushing over her whole sweet face--"and--and it is your hand, my dear, and not your foot he wants you to give him;" and she said it with a hysteric laugh, that had more of tears than laughter in it; laying her head on her daughter"s fair shoulder, and hiding it there. They made a very pretty picture together, and looked like a pair of sisters--the sweet simple matron seeming younger than her years, and her daughter, if not older, yet somehow, from a commanding manner and grace which she possessed above most women, her mother"s superior and protectress.
"But oh!" cries my mistress, recovering herself after this scene, and returning to her usual sad tone, ""tis a shame that we should laugh and be making merry on a day when we ought to be down on our knees and asking pardon."
"Asking pardon for what?" says saucy Mrs. Beatrix--"because Frank takes it into his head to fast on Fridays and worship images? You know if you had been born a Papist, mother, a Papist you would have remained to the end of your days. "Tis the religion of the King and of some of the best quality. For my part, I"m no enemy to it, and think Queen Bess was not a penny better than Queen Mary."
"Hush, Beatrix! Do not jest with sacred things, and remember of what parentage you come," cries my lady. Beatrix was ordering her ribbons, and adjusting her tucker, and performing a dozen provokingly pretty ceremonies, before the gla.s.s. The girl was no hypocrite at least. She never at that time could be brought to think but of the world and her beauty; and seemed to have no more sense of devotion than some people have of music, that cannot distinguish one air from another. Esmond saw this fault in her, as he saw many others--a bad wife would Beatrix Esmond make, he thought, for any man under the degree of a Prince. She was born to shine in great a.s.semblies, and to adorn palaces, and to command everywhere--to conduct an intrigue of politics, or to glitter in a queen"s train. But to sit at a homely table, and mend the stockings of a poor man"s children! that was no fitting duty for her, or at least one that she wouldn"t have broke her heart in trying to do. She was a princess, though she had scarce a shilling to her fortune; and one of her subjects--the most abject and devoted wretch, sure, that ever drivelled at a woman"s knees--was this unlucky gentleman; who bound his good sense, and reason, and independence, hand and foot, and submitted them to her.
And who does not know how ruthlessly women will tyrannize when they are let to domineer? and who does not know how useless advice is? I could give good counsel to my descendants, but I know they"ll follow their own way, for all their grandfather"s sermon. A man gets his own experience about women, and will take n.o.body"s hearsay; nor, indeed, is the young fellow worth a fig that would. "Tis I that am in love with my mistress, not my old grandmother that counsels me: "tis I that have fixed the value of the thing I would have, and know the price I would pay for it. It may be worthless to you, but "tis all my life to me. Had Esmond possessed the Great Mogul"s crown and all his diamonds, or all the Duke of Marlborough"s money, or all the ingots sunk at Vigo, he would have given them all for this woman. A fool he was, if you will; but so is a sovereign a fool, that will give half a princ.i.p.ality for a little crystal as big as a pigeon"s egg, and called a diamond: so is a wealthy n.o.bleman a fool, that will face danger or death, and spend half his life, and all his tranquillity, caballing for a blue ribbon; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath been known to pay ten thousand crowns for a tulip. There"s some particular prize we all of us value, and that every man of spirit will venture his life for. With this, it may be to achieve a great reputation for learning; with that, to be a man of fashion, and the admiration of the town; with another, to consummate a great work of art or poetry, and go to immortality that way; and with another, for a certain time of his life, the sole object and aim is a woman.
Whilst Esmond was under the domination of this pa.s.sion, he remembers many a talk he had with his intimates, who used to rally Our Knight of the Rueful Countenance at his devotion, whereof he made no disguise, to Beatrix; and it was with replies such as the above he met his friends" satire. "Granted, I am a fool," says he, "and no better than you; but you are no better than I. You have your folly you labor for; give me the charity of mine. What flatteries do you, Mr. St. John, stoop to whisper in the ears of a queen"s favorite? What nights of labor doth not the laziest man in the world endure, foregoing his bottle, and his boon companions, foregoing Lais, in whose lap he would like to be yawning, that he may prepare a speech full of lies, to cajole three hundred stupid country-gentlemen in the House of Commons, and get the hiccupping cheers of the October Club! What days will you spend in your jolting chariot." (Mr. Esmond often rode to Windsor, and especially, of later days, with the secretary.) "What hours will you pa.s.s on your gouty feet--and how humbly will you kneel down to present a despatch--you, the proudest man in the world, that has not knelt to G.o.d since you were a boy, and in that posture whisper, flatter, adore almost, a stupid woman, that"s often boozy with too much meat and drink, when Mr. Secretary goes for his audience! If my pursuit is vanity, sure yours is too." And then the Secretary, would fly out in such a rich flow of eloquence, as this pen cannot pretend to recall; advocating his scheme of ambition, showing the great good he would do for his country when he was the undisputed chief of it; backing his opinion with a score of pat sentences from Greek and Roman authorities (of which kind of learning he made rather an ostentatious display), and scornfully vaunting the very arts and meannesses by which fools were to be made to follow him, opponents to be bribed or silenced, doubters converted, and enemies overawed.
"I am Diogenes," says Esmond, laughing, "that is taken up for a ride in Alexander"s chariot. I have no desire to vanquish Darius or to tame Bucephalus. I do not want what you want, a great name or a high place: to have them would bring me no pleasure. But my moderation is taste, not virtue; and I know that what I do want is as vain as that which you long after. Do not grudge me my vanity, if I allow yours; or rather, let us laugh at both indifferently, and at ourselves, and at each other."
"If your charmer holds out," says St. John, "at this rate she may keep you twenty years besieging her, and surrender by the time you are seventy, and she is old enough to be a grandmother. I do not say the pursuit of a particular woman is not as pleasant a pastime as any other kind of hunting," he added; "only, for my part, I find the game won"t run long enough. They knock under too soon--that"s the fault I find with "em."
"The game which you pursue is in the habit of being caught, and used to being pulled down," says Mr. Esmond.
"But Dulcinea del Toboso is peerless, eh?" says the other. "Well, honest Harry, go and attack windmills--perhaps thou art not more mad than other people," St. John added, with a sigh.
CHAPTER III.
A PAPER OUT OF THE "SPECTATOR."
Doth any young gentleman of my progeny, who may read his old grandfather"s papers, chance to be presently suffering under the pa.s.sion of Love? There is a humiliating cure, but one that is easy and almost specific for the malady--which is, to try an alibi. Esmond went away from his mistress and was cured a half-dozen times; he came back to her side, and instantly fell ill again of the fever. He vowed that he could leave her and think no more of her, and so he could pretty well, at least, succeed in quelling that rage and longing he had whenever he was with her; but as soon as he returned he was as bad as ever again. Truly a ludicrous and pitiable object, at least exhausting everybody"s pity but his dearest mistress"s, Lady Castlewood"s, in whose tender breast he reposed all his dreary confessions, and who never tired of hearing him and pleading for him.
Sometimes Esmond would think there was hope. Then again he would be plagued with despair, at some impertinence or coquetry of his mistress. For days they would be like brother and sister, or the dearest friends--she, simple, fond, and charming--he, happy beyond measure at her good behavior. But this would all vanish on a sudden. Either he would be too pressing, and hint his love, when she would rebuff him instantly, and give his vanity a box on the ear; or he would be jealous, and with perfect good reason, of some new admirer that had sprung up, or some rich young gentleman newly arrived in the town, that this incorrigible flirt would set her nets and baits to draw in. If Esmond remonstrated, the little rebel would say--"Who are you? I shall go my own way, sirrah, and that way is towards a husband, and I don"t want YOU on the way. I am for your betters, Colonel, for your betters: do you hear that? You might do if you had an estate and were younger; only eight years older than I, you say! pish, you are a hundred years older. You are an old, old Graveairs, and I should make you miserable, that would be the only comfort I should have in marrying you. But you have not money enough to keep a cat decently after you have paid your man his wages, and your landlady her bill. Do you think I am going to live in a lodging, and turn the mutton at a string whilst your honor nurses the baby? Fiddlestick, and why did you not get this nonsense knocked out of your head when you were in the wars? You are come back more dismal and dreary than ever. You and mamma are fit for each other. You might be Darby and Joan, and play cribbage to the end of your lives."
"At least you own to your worldliness, my poor Trix," says her mother.
"Worldliness. Oh, my pretty lady! Do you think that I am a child in the nursery, and to be frightened by Bogey! Worldliness, to be sure; and pray, madam, where is the harm of wishing to be comfortable? When you are gone, you dearest old woman, or when I am tired of you and have run away from you, where shall I go? Shall I go and be head nurse to my Popish sister-in-law, take the children their physic, and whip "em, and put "em to bed when they are naughty? Shall I be Castlewood"s upper servant, and perhaps marry Tom Tusher? Merci! I have been long enough Frank"s humble servant. Why am I not a man? I have ten times his brains, and had I worn the--well, don"t let your ladyship be frightened--had I worn a sword and periwig instead of this mantle and commode to which nature has condemned me--(though "tis a pretty stuff, too--Cousin Esmond! you will go to the Exchange to-morrow, and get the exact counterpart of this ribbon, sir; do you hear?)--I would have made our name talked about. So would Graveairs here have made something out of our name if he had represented it. My Lord Graveairs would have done very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very decent, grave speaker." And here she began to imitate Esmond"s way of carrying himself and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature.
"Yes," says she, "I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that I want a good husband. Where"s the harm of one? My face is my fortune. Who"ll come?--buy, buy, buy! I cannot toil, neither can I spin, but I can play twenty-three games on the cards. I can dance the last dance, I can hunt the stag, and I think I could shoot flying. I can talk as wicked as any woman of my years, and know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for at least one thousand and one nights. I have a pretty taste for dress, diamonds, gambling, and old China. I love sugar-plums, Malines lace (that you brought me, cousin, is very pretty), the opera, and everything that is useless and costly. I have got a monkey and a little black boy--Pompey, sir, go and give a dish of chocolate to Colonel Graveairs,--and a parrot and a spaniel, and I must have a husband. Cupid, you hear?"
"Iss, Missis!" says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborrow gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his mistress"s name on it.
"Iss, Missis!" says Beatrix, imitating the child. "And if husband not come, Pompey must go fetch one."
And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray as Miss Beatrix ran up to her mother and ended her sally of mischief in her common way, with a kiss--no wonder that upon paying such a penalty her fond judge pardoned her.
When Mr. Esmond came home, his health was still shattered; and he took a lodging near to his mistresses, at Kensington, glad enough to be served by them, and to see them day after day. He was enabled to see a little company--and of the sort he liked best. Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison both did him the honor to visit him; and drank many a gla.s.s of good claret at his lodging, whilst their entertainer, through his wound, was kept to diet drink and gruel. These gentlemen were Whigs, and great admirers of my Lord Duke of Marlborough; and Esmond was entirely of the other party. But their different views of politics did not prevent the gentlemen from agreeing in private, nor from allowing, on one evening when Esmond"s kind old patron, Lieutenant-General Webb, with a stick and a crutch, hobbled up to the Colonel"s lodging (which was prettily situate at Knightsbridge, between London and Kensington, and looking over the Gardens), that the Lieutenant-General was a n.o.ble and gallant soldier--and even that he had been hardly used in the Wynendael affair. He took his revenge in talk, that must be confessed; and if Mr. Addison had had a mind to write a poem about Wynendael, he might have heard from the commander"s own lips the story a hundred times over.
Mr. Esmond, forced to be quiet, betook himself to literature for a relaxation, and composed his comedy, whereof the prompter"s copy lieth in my walnut escritoire, sealed up and docketed, "The Faithful Fool, a Comedy, as it was performed by her Majesty"s Servants." "Twas a very sentimental piece; and Mr. Steele, who had more of that kind of sentiment than Mr. Addison, admired it, whilst the other rather sneered at the performance; though he owned that, here and there, it contained some pretty strokes. He was bringing out his own play of "Cato" at the time, the blaze of which quite extinguished Esmond"s farthing candle; and his name was never put to the piece, which was printed as by a Person of Quality. Only nine copies were sold, though Mr. Dennis, the great critic, praised it, and said "twas a work of great merit; and Colonel Esmond had the whole impression burned one day in a rage, by Jack Lockwood, his man.
All this comedy was full of bitter satiric strokes against a certain young lady. The plot of the piece was quite a new one. A young woman was represented with a great number of suitors, selecting a pert fribble of a peer, in place of the hero (but ill- acted, I think, by Mr. Wilks, the Faithful Fool,) who persisted in admiring her. In the fifth act, Teraminta was made to discover the merits of Eugenio (the F. F.), and to feel a partiality for him too late; for he announced that he had bestowed his hand and estate upon Rosaria, a country la.s.s, endowed with every virtue. But it must be owned that the audience yawned through the play; and that it perished on the third night, with only half a dozen persons to behold its agonies. Esmond and his two mistresses came to the first night, and Miss Beatrix fell asleep; whilst her mother, who had not been to a play since King James the Second"s time, thought the piece, though not brilliant, had a very pretty moral.
Mr. Esmond dabbled in letters, and wrote a deal of prose and verse at this time of leisure. When displeased with the conduct of Miss Beatrix, he would compose a satire, in which he relieved his mind. When smarting under the faithlessness of women, he dashed off a copy of verses, in which he held the whole s.e.x up to scorn. One day, in one of these moods, he made a little joke, in which (swearing him to secrecy) he got his friend d.i.c.k Steele to help him; and, composing a paper, he had it printed exactly like Steele"s paper, and by his printer, and laid on his mistress"s breakfast-table the following-- "SPECTATOR.
"No. 341. "Tuesday, April 1, 1712.
Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur.--HORACE. Thyself the morain of the fable see.--CREECH.
"Jocasta is known as a woman of learning and fashion, and as one of the most amiable persons of this court and country. She is at home two mornings of the week, and all the wits and a few of the beauties of London flock to her a.s.semblies. When she goes abroad to Tunbridge or the Bath, a retinue of adorers rides the journey with her; and besides the London beaux, she has a crowd of admirers at the Wells, the polite amongst the natives of Suss.e.x and Somerset pressing round her tea-tables, and being anxious for a nod from her chair. Jocasta"s acquaintance is thus very numerous. Indeed, "tis one smart writer"s work to keep her visiting-book--a strong footman is engaged to carry it; and it would require a much stronger head even than Jocasta"s own to remember the names of all her dear friends.
"Either at Epsom Wells or at Tunbridge (for of this important matter Jocasta cannot be certain) it was her ladyship"s fortune to become acquainted with a young gentleman, whose conversation was so sprightly, and manners amiable, that she invited the agreeable young spark to visit her if ever he came to London, where her house in Spring Garden should be open to him. Charming as he was, and without any manner of doubt a pretty fellow, Jocasta hath such a regiment of the like continually marching round her standard, that "tis no wonder her attention is distracted amongst them. And so, though this gentleman made a considerable impression upon her, and touched her heart for at least three-and-twenty minutes, it must be owned that she has forgotten his name. He is a dark man, and may be eight-and-twenty years old. His dress is sober, though of rich materials. He has a mole on his forehead over his left eye; has a blue ribbon to his cane and sword, and wears his own hair.
"Jocasta was much flattered by beholding her admirer (for that everybody admires who sees her is a point which she never can for a moment doubt) in the next pew to her at St. James"s Church last Sunday; and the manner in which he appeared to go to sleep during the sermon--though from under his fringed eyelids it was evident he was casting glances of respectful rapture towards Jocasta--deeply moved and interested her. On coming out of church, he found his way to her chair, and made her an elegant bow as she stepped into it. She saw him at Court afterwards, where he carried himself with a most distinguished air, though none of her acquaintances knew his name; and the next night he was at the play, where her ladyship was pleased to acknowledge him from the side-box.
"During the whole of the comedy she racked her brains so to remember his name that she did not hear a word of the piece: and having the happiness to meet him once more in the lobby of the playhouse, she went up to him in a flutter, and bade him remember that she kept two nights in the week, and that she longed to see him at Spring Garden.
"He appeared on Tuesday, in a rich suit, showing a very fine taste both in the tailor and wearer; and though a knot of us were gathered round the charming Jocasta, fellows who pretended to know every face upon the town, not one could tell the gentleman"s name in reply to Jocasta"s eager inquiries, flung to the right and left of her as he advanced up the room with a bow that would become a duke.
"Jocasta acknowledged this salute with one of those smiles and curtsies of which that lady hath the secret. She curtsies with a languishing air, as if to say, "You are come at last. I have been pining for you:" and then she finishes her victim with a killing look, which declares: "O Philander! I have no eyes but for you." Camilla hath as good a curtsy perhaps, and Thalestris much such another look; but the glance and the curtsy together belong to Jocasta of all the English beauties alone.
""Welcome to London, sir," says she. "One can see you are from the country by your looks." She would have said "Epsom," or "Tunbridge," had she remembered rightly at which place she had met the stranger; but, alas! she had forgotten.
"The gentleman said, "he had been in town but three days; and one of his reasons for coming hither was to have the honor of paying his court to Jocasta."
"She said, "the waters had agreed with her but indifferently."
""The waters were for the sick," the gentleman said: "the young and beautiful came but to make them sparkle. And as the clergyman read the service on Sunday," he added, "your ladyship reminded me of the angel that visited the pool." A murmur of approbation saluted this sally. Manilio, who is a wit when he is not at cards, was in such a rage that he revoked when he heard it.
"Jocasta was an angel visiting the waters; but at which of the Bethesdas? She was puzzled more and more; and, as her way always is, looked the more innocent and simple, the more artful her intentions were.
""We were discoursing," says she, "about spelling of names and words when you came. Why should we say goold and write gold, and call china chayney, and Cavendish Candish, and Cholmondeley Chumley? If we call Pulteney Poltney, why shouldn"t we call poultry pultry--and--"
""Such an enchantress as your ladyship," says he, "is mistress of all sorts of spells." But this was Dr. Swift"s pun, and we all knew it.
""And--and how do you spell your name?" says she, coming to the point at length; for this sprightly conversation had lasted much longer than is here set down, and been carried on through at least three dishes of tea.
""Oh, madam," says he, "I SPELL MY NAME WITH THE Y." And laying down his dish, my gentleman made another elegant bow, and was gone in a moment.
"Jocasta hath had no sleep since this mortification, and the stranger"s disappearance. If balked in anything, she is sure to lose her health and temper; and we, her servants, suffer, as usual, during the angry fits of our Queen. Can you help us, Mr. Spectator, who know everything, to read this riddle for her, and set at rest all our minds? We find in her list, Mr. Berty, Mr. Smith, Mr. Pike, Mr. Tyler--who may be Mr. Bertie, Mr. Smyth, Mr. Pyke, Mr. Tiler, for what we know. She hath turned away the clerk of her visiting-book, a poor fellow with a great family of children. Read me this riddle, good Mr. Shortface, and oblige your admirer--OEDIPUS."
"THE TRUMPET COFFEE-HOUSE, WHITEHALL.
MR. SPECTATOR,--I am a gentleman but little acquainted with the town, though I have had a university education, and pa.s.sed some years serving my country abroad, where my name is better known than in the coffee-house and St. James"s.
"Two years since my uncle died, leaving me a pretty estate in the county of Kent; and being at Tunbridge Wells last summer, after my mourning was over, and on the look-out, if truth must be told, for some young lady who would share with me the solitude of my great Kentish house, and be kind to my tenantry (for whom a woman can do a great deal more good than the best-intentioned man can), I was greatly fascinated by a young lady of London, who was the toast of all the company at the Wells. Every one knows Saccharissa"s beauty; and I think, Mr. Spectator, no one better than herself.
"My table-book informs me that I danced no less than seven-and- twenty sets with her at the a.s.sembly. I treated her to the fiddles twice. I was admitted on several days to her lodging, and received by her with a great deal of distinction, and, for a time, was entirely her slave. It was only when I found, from common talk of the company at the Wells, and from narrowly watching one, who I once thought of asking the most sacred question a man can put to a woman, that I became aware how unfit she was to be a country gentleman"s wife; and that this fair creature was but a heartless worldly jilt, playing with affections that she never meant to return, and, indeed, incapable of returning them. "Tis admiration such women want, not love that touches them; and I can conceive, in her old age, no more wretched creature than this lady will be, when her beauty hath deserted her, when her admirers have left her, and she hath neither friendship nor religion to console her.
"Business calling me to London, I went to St. James"s Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behavior during the whole service was so pert, languishing, and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still staring at me. I fell in with her afterwards at Court, and at the playhouse; and here nothing would satisfy her but she must elbow through the crowd and speak to me, and invite me to the a.s.sembly, which she holds at her house, not very far from Ch-r-ng Cr-ss.
"Having made her a promise to attend, of course I kept my promise; and found the young widow in the midst of a half-dozen of card tables, and a crowd of wits and admirers. I made the best bow I could, and advanced towards her; and saw by a peculiar puzzled look in her face, though she tried to hide her perplexity, that she had forgotten even my name.
"Her talk, artful as it was, convinced me that I had guessed aright. She turned the conversation most ridiculously upon the spelling of names and words; and I replied with as ridiculous fulsome compliments as I could pay her: indeed, one in which I compared her to an angel visiting the sick wells, went a little too far; nor should I have employed it, but that the allusion came from the Second Lesson last Sunday, which we both had heard, and I was pressed to answer her.
"Then she came to the question, which I knew was awaiting me, and asked how I SPELT my name? "Madam," says I, turning on my heel, "I spell it with a Y." And so I left her, wondering at the light- heartedness of the town-people, who forget and make friends so easily, and resolved to look elsewhere for a partner for your constant reader, "CYMON WYLDOATS."
"You know my real name, Mr. Spectator, in which there is no such a letter as HUPSILON. But if the lady, whom I have called Saccharissa, wonders that I appear no more at the tea-tables, she is hereby respectfully informed the reason Y."
The above is a parable, whereof the writer will now expound the meaning. Jocasta was no other than Miss Esmond, Maid of Honor to her Majesty. She had told Mr. Esmond this little story of having met a gentleman somewhere, and forgetting his name, when the gentleman, with no such malicious intentions as those of "Cymon" in the above fable, made the answer simply as above; and we all laughed to think how little Mistress Jocasta-Beatrix had profited by her artifice and precautions.
As for Cymon, he was intended to represent yours and her very humble servant, the writer of the apologue and of this story, which we had printed on a "Spectator" paper at Mr. Steele"s office, exactly as those famous journals were printed, and which was laid on the table at breakfast in place of the real newspaper. Mistress Jocasta, who had plenty of wit, could not live without her Spectator to her tea; and this sham Spectator was intended to convey to the young woman that she herself was a flirt, and that Cymon was a gentleman of honor and resolution, seeing all her faults, and determined to break the chains once and for ever.
For though enough hath been said about this love-business already-- enough, at least, to prove to the writer"s heirs what a silly fond fool their old grandfather was, who would like them to consider him as a very wise old gentleman; yet not near all has been told concerning this matter, which, if it were allowed to take in Esmond"s journal the s.p.a.ce it occupied in his time, would weary his kinsmen and women of a hundred years" time beyond all endurance; and form such a diary of folly and drivelling, raptures and rage, as no man of ordinary vanity would like to leave behind him.
The truth is, that, whether she laughed at him or encouraged him; whether she smiled or was cold, and turned her smiles on another; worldly and ambitious, as he knew her to be; hard and careless, as she seemed to grow with her court life, and a hundred admirers that came to her and left her; Esmond, do what he would, never could get Beatrix out of his mind; thought of her constantly at home or away. If he read his name in a Gazette, or escaped the shot of a cannon- ball or a greater danger in the campaign, as has happened to him more than once, the instant thought after the honor achieved or the danger avoided, was, "What will SHE say of it?" "Will this distinction or the idea of this peril elate her or touch her, so as to be better inclined towards me?" He could no more help this pa.s.sionate fidelity of temper than he could help the eyes he saw with--one or the other seemed a part of his nature; and knowing every one of her faults as well as the keenest of her detractors, and the folly of an attachment to such a woman, of which the fruition could never bring him happiness for above a week, there was yet a charm about this Circe from which the poor deluded gentleman could not free himself; and for a much longer period than Ulysses (another middle-aged officer, who had travelled much, and been in the foreign wars,) Esmond felt himself enthralled and besotted by the wiles of this enchantress. Quit her! He could no more quit her, as the Cymon of this story was made to quit his false one, than he could lose his consciousness of yesterday. She had but to raise her finger, and he would come back from ever so far; she had but to say I have discarded such and such an adorer, and the poor infatuated wretch would be sure to come and roder about her mother"s house, willing to be put on the ranks of suitors, though he knew he might be cast off the next week. If he were like Ulysses in his folly, at least she was in so far like Penelope that she had a crowd of suitors, and undid day after day and night after night the handiwork of fascination and the web of coquetry with which she was wont to allure and entertain them.
Part of her coquetry may have come from her position about the Court, where the beautiful maid of honor was the light about which a thousand beaux came and fluttered; where she was sure to have a ring of admirers round her, crowding to listen to her repartees as much as to admire her beauty; and where she spoke and listened to much free talk, such as one never would have thought the lips or ears of Rachel Castlewood"s daughter would have uttered or heard. When in waiting at Windsor or Hampton, the Court ladies and gentlemen would be making riding parties together; Mrs. Beatrix in a horseman"s coat and hat, the foremost after the stag-hounds and over the park fences, a crowd of young fellows at her heels. If the English country ladies at this time were the most pure and modest of any ladies in the world--the English town and court ladies permitted themselves words and behavior that were neither modest nor pure; and claimed, some of them, a freedom which those who love that s.e.x most would never wish to grant them. The gentlemen of my family that follow after me (for I don"t encourage the ladies to pursue any such studies), may read in the works of Mr. Congreve, and Dr. Swift and others, what was the conversation and what the habits of our time.
The most beautiful woman in England in 1712, when Esmond returned to this country, a lady of high birth, and though of no fortune to be sure, with a thousand fascinations of wit and manners, Beatrix Esmond was now six-and-twenty years old, and Beatrix Esmond still. Of her hundred adorers she had not chosen one for a husband; and those who had asked had been jilted by her; and more still had left her. A succession of near ten years" crops of beauties had come up since her time, and had been reaped by proper HUSBANDmen, if we may make an agricultural simile, and had been housed comfortably long ago. Her own contemporaries were sober mothers by this time; girls with not a t.i.the of her charms, or her wit, having made good matches, and now claiming precedence over the spinster who but lately had derided and outshone them. The young beauties were beginning to look down on Beatrix as an old maid, and sneer, and call her one of Charles II."s ladies, and ask whether her portrait was not in the Hampton Court Gallery? But still she reigned, at least in one man"s opinion, superior over all the little misses that were the toasts of the young lads; and in Esmond"s eyes was ever perfectly lovely and young.
Who knows how many were nearly made happy by possessing her, or, rather, how many were fortunate in escaping this siren? "Tis a marvel to think that her mother was the purest and simplest woman in the whole world, and that this girl should have been born from her. I am inclined to fancy, my mistress, who never said a harsh word to her children (and but twice or thrice only to one person), must have been too fond and pressing with the maternal authority; for her son and her daughter both revolted early; nor after their first flight from the nest could they ever be brought back quite to the fond mother"s bosom. Lady Castlewood, and perhaps it was as well, knew little of her daughter"s life and real thoughts. How was she to apprehend what pa.s.ses in Queen"s ante-chambers and at Court tables? Mrs. Beatrix a.s.serted her own authority so resolutely that her mother quickly gave in. The maid of honor had her own equipage; went from home and came back at her own will: her mother was alike powerless to resist her or to lead her, or to command or to persuade her.
She had been engaged once, twice, thrice, to be married, Esmond believed. When he quitted home, it hath been said, she was promised to my Lord Ashburnham, and now, on his return, behold his lordship was just married to Lady Mary Butler, the Duke of Ormonde"s daughter, and his fine houses, and twelve thousand a year of fortune, for which Miss Beatrix had rather coveted him, was out of her power. To her Esmond could say nothing in regard to the breaking of this match; and, asking his mistress about it, all Lady Castlewood answered was: "do not speak to me about it, Harry. I cannot tell you how or why they parted, and I fear to inquire. I have told you before, that with all her kindness, and wit, and generosity, and that sort of splendor of nature she has, I can say but little good of poor Beatrix, and look with dread at the marriage she will form. Her mind is fixed on ambition only, and making a great figure; and, this achieved, she will tire of it as she does of everything. Heaven help her husband, whoever he shall be! My Lord Ashburnham was a most excellent young man, gentle and yet manly, of very good parts, so they told me, and as my little conversation would enable me to judge: and a kind temper--kind and enduring I"m sure he must have been, from all that he had to endure. But he quitted her at last, from some crowning piece of caprice or tyranny of hers; and now he has married a young woman that will make him a thousand times happier than my poor girl ever could."
The rupture, whatever its cause was, (I heard the scandal, but indeed shall not take pains to repeat at length in this diary the trumpery coffee-house story,) caused a good deal of low talk; and Mr. Esmond was present at my lord"s appearance at the Birthday with his bride, over whom the revenge that Beatrix took was to look so imperial and lovely that the modest downcast young lady could not appear beside her, and Lord Ashburnham, who had his reasons for wishing to avoid her, slunk away quite shamefaced, and very early. This time his Grace the Duke of Hamilton, whom Esmond had seen about her before, was constant at Miss Beatrix"s side: he was one of the most splendid gentlemen of Europe, accomplished by books, by travel, by long command of the best company, distinguished as a statesman, having been amba.s.sador in King Williamn"s time, and a n.o.ble speaker in the Scots" Parliament, where he had led the party that was against the Union, and though now five or six and forty years of age, a gentleman so high in stature, accomplished in wit, and favored in person, that he might pretend to the hand of any Princess in Europe.