Harry could never have paid his share of that prodigious heavy reckoning which my landlord brought to his guests once a week: for be had but three pieces in his pockets that fatal night before the duel, when the gentlemen were at cards, and offered to play five. But whilst he was yet ill at the Gatehouse, after Lady Castlewood had visited him there, and before his trial, there came one in an orange-tawny coat and blue lace, the livery which the Esmonds always wore, and brought a sealed packet for Mr. Esmond, which contained twenty guineas, and a note saying that a counsel had been appointed for him, and that more money would be forthcoming whenever he needed it.
"Twas a queer letter from the scholar as she was, or as she called herself: the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood, written in the strange barbarous French which she and many other fine ladies of that time-- witness her Grace of Portsmouth--employed. Indeed, spelling was not an article of general commodity in the world then, and my Lord Marlborough"s letters can show that he, for one, had but a little share of this part of grammar:-- "MONG COUSSIN," my Lady Viscountess Dowager wrote, "je scay que vous vous etes bravement batew et grievement blessay--du coste de feu M. le Vicomte. M. le Compte de Varique ne se playt qua parlay de vous: M. de Moon aucy. Il di que vous avay voulew vous bastre avecque luy--que vous estes plus fort que luy fur l"ayscrimme-- quil"y a surtout certaine Botte que vous scavay quil n"a jammay sceu pariay: et que c"en eut ete fay de luy si vouseluy vous vous fussiay battews ansamb. Aincy ce pauv Vicompte est mort. Mort et pontayt--Mon coussin, mon coussin! jay dans la tayste que vous n"estes quung pety Monst--angcy que les Esmonds ong tousjours este. La veuve est chay moy. J"ay recuilly cet" pauve famme. Elle est furieuse cont vous, allans tous les jours chercher ley Roy (d"icy) demandant a gran cri revanche pour son Mary. Elle ne veux voyre ni entende parlay de vous: pourtant elle ne fay qu"en parlay milfoy par jour. Quand vous seray hor prison venay me voyre. J"auray soing de vous. Si cette pet.i.te Prude veut se defaire de song pety Monste (Helas je craing quil ne soy trotar!) je m"on chargeray. J"ay encor quelqu interay et quelques escus de costay.
"La Veuve se raccommode avec Miladi Marlboro qui est tout puicante avecque la Reine Anne. Cet dam senteraysent pour la pet.i.te prude; qui pourctant a un fi du mesme asge que vous savay.
"En sortant de prisong venez icy. Je ne puy vous recevoir chaymoy a cause des mechansetes du monde, may pre du moy vous aurez logement.
"ISABELLE VICOMTESSE D"ESMOND"
Marchioness of Esmond this lady sometimes called herself, in virtue of that patent which had been given by the late King James to Harry Esmond"s father; and in this state she had her train carried by a knight"s wife, a cup and cover of a.s.say to drink from, and fringed cloth.
He who was of the same age as little Francis, whom we shall henceforth call Viscount Castlewood here, was H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, born in the same year and month with Frank, and just proclaimed at Saint Germains, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.
CHAPTER III.
I TAKE THE QUEEN"S PAY IN QUIN"S REGIMENT.
The fellow in the orange-tawny livery with blue lace and facings was in waiting when Esmond came out of prison, and, taking the young gentleman"s slender baggage, led the way out of that odious Newgate, and by Fleet Conduit, down to the Thames, where a pair of oars was called, and they went up the river to Chelsey. Esmond thought the sun had never shone so bright; nor the air felt so fresh and exhilarating. Temple Garden, as they rowed by, looked like the garden of Eden to him, and the aspect of the quays, wharves, and buildings by the river, Somerset House, and Westminster (where the splendid new bridge was just beginning), Lambeth tower and palace, and that busy shining scene of the Thames swarming with boats and barges, filled his heart with pleasure and cheerfulness--as well such a beautiful scene might to one who had been a prisoner so long, and with so many dark thoughts deepening the gloom of his captivity. They rowed up at length to the pretty village of Chelsey, where the n.o.bility have many handsome country- houses; and so came to my Lady Viscountess"s house, a cheerful new house in the row facing the river, with a handsome garden behind it, and a pleasant look-out both towards Surrey and Kensington, where stands the n.o.ble ancient palace of the Lord Warwick, Harry"s reconciled adversary.
Here in her ladyship"s saloon, the young man saw again some of those pictures which had been at Castlewood, and which she had removed thence on the death of her lord, Harry"s father. Specially, and in the place of honor, was Sir Peter Lely"s picture of the honorable Mistress Isabella Esmond as Diana, in yellow satin, with a bow in her hand and a crescent in her forehead; and dogs frisking about her. "Twas painted about the time when royal Endymions were said to find favor with this virgin huntress; and, as G.o.ddesses have youth perpetual, this one believed to the day of her death that she never grew older: and always persisted in supposing the picture was still like her.
After he had been shown to her room by the groom of the chamber, who filled many offices besides in her ladyship"s modest household, and after a proper interval, his elderly G.o.ddess Diana vouchsafed to appear to the young man. A blackamoor in a Turkish habit, with red boots and a silver collar, on which the Viscountess"s arms were engraven, preceded her and bore her cushion; then came her gentlewoman; a little pack of spaniels barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress--then, behold, the Viscountess herself "dropping odors." Esmond recollected from his childhood that rich aroma of musk which his mother-in-law (for she may be called so) exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder towards sunset, so, in the decline of her years, the cheeks of my Lady Dowager blushed more deeply. Her face was illuminated with vermilion, which appeared the brighter from the white paint employed to set it off. She wore the ringlets which had been in fashion in King Charles"s time; whereas the ladies of King William"s had head-dresses like the towers of Cybele. Her eyes gleamed out from the midst of this queer structure of paint, dyes, and pomatums. Such was my Lady Viscountess, Mr. Esmond"s father"s widow.
He made her such a profound bow as her dignity and relationship merited, and advanced with the greatest gravity, and once more kissed that hand, upon the trembling knuckles of which glittered a score of rings--remembering old times when that trembling hand made him tremble. "Marchioness," says he, bowing, and on one knee, "is it only the hand I may have the honor of saluting?" For, accompanying that inward laughter, which the sight of such an astonishing old figure might well produce in the young man, there was good will too, and the kindness of consanguinity. She had been his father"s wife, and was his grandfather"s daughter. She had suffered him in old days, and was kind to him now after her fashion. And now that bar-sinister was removed from Esmond"s thought, and that secret opprobrium no longer cast upon his mind, he was pleased to feel family ties and own them--perhaps secretly vain of the sacrifice he had made, and to think that he, Esmond, was really the chief of his house, and only prevented by his own magnanimity from advancing his claim.
At least, ever since he had learned that secret from his poor patron on his dying bed, actually as he was standing beside it, he had felt an independency which he had never known before, and which since did not desert him. So he called his old aunt Marchioness, but with an air as if he was the Marquis of Esmond who so addressed her.
Did she read in the young gentleman"s eyes, which had now no fear of hers or their superannuated authority, that he knew or suspected the truth about his birth? She gave a start of surprise at his altered manner: indeed, it was quite a different bearing to that of the Cambridge student who had paid her a visit two years since, and whom she had dismissed with five pieces sent by the groom of the chamber. She eyed him, then trembled a little more than was her wont, perhaps, and said, "Welcome, cousin," in a frightened voice.
His resolution, as has been said before, had been quite different, namely, so to bear himself through life as if the secret of his birth was not known to him; but he suddenly and rightly determined on a different course. He asked that her ladyship"s attendants should be dismissed, and when they were private--"Welcome, nephew, at least, madam, it should be," he said. "A great wrong has been done to me and to you, and to my poor mother, who is no more."
"I declare before heaven that I was guiltless of it," she cried out, giving up her cause at once. "It was your wicked father who--"
"Who brought this dishonor on our family," says Mr. Esmond. "I know it full well. I want to disturb no one. Those who are in present possession have been my dearest benefactors, and are quite innocent of intentional wrong to me. The late lord, my dear patron, knew not the truth until a few months before his death, when Father Holt brought the news to him."
"The wretch! he had it in confession! he had it in confession!" cried out the Dowager Lady.
"Not so. He learned it elsewhere as well as in confession," Mr. Esmond answered. "My father, when wounded at the Boyne, told the truth to a French priest, who was in hiding after the battle, as well as to the priest there, at whose house he died. This gentleman did not think fit to divulge the story till he met with Mr. Holt at Saint Omer"s. And the latter kept it back for his own purpose, and until he had learned whether my mother was alive or no. She is dead years since, my poor patron told me with his dying breath, and I doubt him not. I do not know even whether I could prove a marriage. I would not if I could. I do not care to bring shame on our name, or grief upon those whom I love, however hardly they may use me. My father"s son, madam, won"t aggravate the wrong my father did you. Continue to be his widow, and give me your kindness. "Tis all I ask from you; and I shall never speak of this matter again."
"Mais vous etes un n.o.ble jeune homme!" breaks out my lady, speaking, as usual with her when she was agitated, in the French language.
"n.o.blesse oblige," says Mr. Esmond, making her a low bow. "There are those alive to whom, in return for their love to me, I often fondly said I would give my life away. Shall I be their enemy now, and quarrel about a t.i.tle? What matters who has it? "Tis with the family still."
"What can there be in that little prude of a woman that makes men so raffoler about her?" cries out my Lady Dowager. "She was here for a month pet.i.tioning the King. She is pretty, and well conserved; but she has not the bel air. In his late Majesty"s Court all the men pretended to admire her, and she was no better than a little wax doll. She is better now, and looks the sister of her daughter; but what mean you all by bepraising her? Mr. Steele, who was in waiting on Prince George, seeing her with her two children going to Kensington, writ a poem about her, and says he shall wear her colors, and dress in black for the future. Mr. Congreve says he will write a "Mourning Widow," that shall be better than his "Mourning Bride." Though their husbands quarrelled and fought when that wretch Churchill deserted the King (for which he deserved to be hung), Lady Marlborough has again gone wild about the little widow; insulted me in my own drawing-room, by saying "twas not the OLD widow, but the young Viscountess, she had come to see. Little Castlewood and little Lord Churchill are to be sworn friends, and have boxed each other twice or thrice like brothers already. "Twas that wicked young Mohun who, coming back from the provinces last year, where he had disinterred her, raved about her all the winter; said she was a pearl set before swine; and killed poor stupid Frank. The quarrel was all about his wife. I know "twas all about her. Was there anything between her and Mohun, nephew? Tell me now--was there anything? About yourself, I do not ask you to answer questions."
Mr. Esmond blushed up. "My lady"s virtue is like that of a saint in heaven, madam," he cried out.
"Eh!--mon neveu. Many saints get to heaven after having a deal to repent of. I believe you are like all the rest of the fools, and madly in love with her."
"Indeed, I loved and honored her before all the world," Esmond answered. "I take no shame in that."
"And she has shut her door on you--given the living to that horrid young cub, son of that horrid old bear, Tusher, and says she will never see you more. Monsieur mon neveu--we are all like that. When I was a young woman, I"m positive that a thousand duels were fought about me. And when poor Monsieur de Souchy drowned himself in the ca.n.a.l at Bruges because I danced with Count Springbock, I couldn"t squeeze out a single tear, but danced till five o"clock the next morning. "Twas the Count--no, "twas my Lord Ormond that played the fiddles, and his Majesty did me the honor of dancing all night with me.--How you are grown! You have got the bel air. You are a black man. Our Esmonds are all black. The little prude"s son is fair; so was his father--fair and stupid. You were an ugly little wretch when you came to Castlewood--you were all eyes, like a young crow. We intended you should be a priest. That awful Father Holt--how he used to frighten me when I was ill! I have a comfortable director now--the Abbe Douillette--a dear man. We make meagre on Fridays always. My cook is a devout pious man. You, of course, are of the right way of thinking. They say the Prince of Orange is very ill indeed."
In this way the old Dowager rattled on remorselessly to Mr. Esmond, who was quite astounded with her present volubility, contrasting it with her former haughty behavior to him. But she had taken him into favor for the moment, and chose not only to like him, as far as her nature permitted, but to be afraid of him; and he found himself to be as familiar with her now as a young man, as, when a boy, he had been timorous and silent. She was as good as her word respecting him. She introduced him to her company, of which she entertained a good deal--of the adherents of King James of course-- and a great deal of loud intriguing took place over her card- tables. She presented Mr. Esmond as her kinsman to many persons of honor; she supplied him not illiberally with money, which he had no scruple in accepting from her, considering the relationship which he bore to her, and the sacrifices which he himself was making in behalf of the family. But he had made up his mind to continue at no woman"s ap.r.o.n-strings longer; and perhaps had cast about how he should distinguish himself, and make himself a name, which his singular fortune had denied him. A discontent with his former bookish life and quietude,--a bitter feeling of revolt at that slavery in which he had chosen to confine himself for the sake of those whose hardness towards him make his heart bleed,--a restless wish to see men and the world,--led him to think of the military profession: at any rate, to desire to see a few campaigns, and accordingly he pressed his new patroness to get him a pair of colors; and one day had the honor of finding himself appointed an ensign in Colonel Quin"s regiment of Fusileers on the Irish establishment.
Mr. Esmond"s commission was scarce three weeks old when that accident befell King William which ended the life of the greatest, the wisest, the bravest, and most clement sovereign whom England ever knew. "Twas the fashion of the hostile party to a.s.sail this great prince"s reputation during his life; but the joy which they and all his enemies in Europe showed at his death, is a proof of the terror in which they held him. Young as Esmond was, he was wise enough (and generous enough too, let it be said) to scorn that indecency of gratulation which broke out amongst the followers of King James in London, upon the death of this ill.u.s.trious prince, this invincible warrior, this wise and moderate statesman. Loyalty to the exiled king"s family was traditional, as has been said, in that house to which Mr. Esmond belonged. His father"s widow had all her hopes, sympathies, recollections, prejudices, engaged on King James"s side; and was certainly as noisy a conspirator as ever a.s.serted the King"s rights, or abused his opponent"s, over a quadrille table or a dish of bohea. Her ladyship"s house swarmed with ecclesiastics, in disguise and out; with tale-bearers from St. Germains; and quidnuncs that knew the last news from Versailles; nay, the exact force and number of the next expedition which the French king was to send from Dunkirk, and which was to swallow up the Prince of Orange, his army and his court. She had received the Duke of Berwick when he landed here in "96. She kept the gla.s.s he drank from, vowing she never would use it till she drank King James the Third"s health in it on his Majesty"s return; she had tokens from the Queen, and relics of the saint who, if the story was true, had not always been a saint as far as she and many others were concerned. She believed in the miracles wrought at his tomb, and had a hundred authentic stories of wondrous cures effected by the blessed king"s rosaries, the medals which he wore, the locks of his hair, or what not. Esmond remembered a score of marvellous tales which the credulous old woman told him. There was the Bishop of Autun, that was healed of a malady he had for forty years, and which left him after he said ma.s.s for the repose of the king"s soul. There was M. Marais, a surgeon in Auvergne, who had a palsy in both his legs, which was cured through the king"s intercession. There was Philip Pitet, of the Benedictines, who had a suffocating cough, which wellnigh killed him, but he besought relief of heaven through the merits and intercession of the blessed king, and he straightway felt a profuse sweat breaking out all over him, and was recovered perfectly. And there was the wife of Mons. Lepervier, dancing-master to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, who was entirely eased of a rheumatism by the king"s intercession, of which miracle there could be no doubt, for her surgeon and his apprentice had given their testimony, under oath, that they did not in any way contribute to the cure. Of these tales, and a thousand like them, Mr. Esmond believed as much as he chose. His kinswoman"s greater faith had swallow for them all.
The English High Church party did not adopt these legends. But truth and honor, as they thought, bound them to the exiled king"s side; nor had the banished family any warmer supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband, very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign but the one was impossible. To serve King William for interest"s sake would have been a monstrous hypocrisy and treason. Her pure conscience could no more have consented to it than to a theft, a forgery, or any other base action. Lord Castlewood might have been won over, no doubt, but his wife never could: and he submitted his conscience to hers in this case as he did in most others, when he was not tempted too sorely. And it was from his affection and grat.i.tude most likely, and from that eager devotion for his mistress, which characterized all Esmond"s youth, that the young man subscribed to this, and other articles of faith, which his fond benefactress set him. Had she been a Whig, he had been one; had she followed Mr. Fox, and turned Quaker, no doubt he would have abjured ruffles and a periwig, and have forsworn swords, lace-coats, and clocked stockings. In the scholars" boyish disputes at the University, where parties ran very high, Esmond was noted as a Jacobite, and very likely from vanity as much as affection took the side of his family.
Almost the whole of the clergy of the country and more than a half of the nation were on this side. Ours is the most loyal people in the world surely; we admire our kings, and are faithful to them long after they have ceased to be true to us. "Tis a wonder to any one who looks back at the history of the Stuart family to think how they kicked their crowns away from them; how they flung away chances after chances; what treasures of loyalty they dissipated, and how fatally they were bent on consummating their own ruin. If ever men had fidelity, "twas they; if ever men squandered opportunity, "twas they; and, of all the enemies they had, they themselves were the most fatal.
When the Princess Anne succeeded, the wearied nation was glad enough to cry a truce from all these wars, controversies, and conspiracies, and to accept in the person of a Princess of the blood royal a compromise between the parties into which the country was divided. The Tories could serve under her with easy consciences; though a Tory herself, she represented the triumph of the Whig opinion. The people of England, always liking that their Princes should be attached to their own families, were pleased to think the Princess was faithful to hers; and up to the very last day and hour of her reign, and but for that fatality which he inherited from his fathers along with their claims to the English crown, King James the Third might have worn it. But he neither knew how to wait an opportunity, nor to use it when he had it; he was venturesome when he ought to have been cautious, and cautious when he ought to have dared everything. "Tis with a sort of rage at his inapt.i.tude that one thinks of his melancholy story. Do the Fates deal more specially with kings than with common men? One is apt to imagine so, in considering the history of that royal race, in whose behalf so much fidelity, so much valor, so much blood were desperately and bootlessly expended.
The King dead then, the Princess Anne (ugly Anne Hyde"s daughter, our Dowager at Chelsey called her) was proclaimed by trumpeting heralds all over the town from Westminster to Ludgate Hill, amidst immense jubilations of the people.
Next week my Lord Marlborough was promoted to the Garter, and to be Captain-General of her Majesty"s forces at home and abroad. This appointment only inflamed the Dowager"s rage, or, as she thought it, her fidelity to her rightful sovereign. "The Princess is but a puppet in the hands of that fury of a woman, who comes into my drawing-room and insults me to my face. What can come to a country that is given over to such a woman?" says the Dowager: "As for that double-faced traitor, my Lord Marlborough, he has betrayed every man and every woman with whom he has had to deal, except his horrid wife, who makes him tremble. "Tis all over with the country when it has got into the clutches of such wretches as these."
Esmond"s old kinswoman saluted the new powers in this way; but some good fortune at last occurred to a family which stood in great need of it, by the advancement of these famous personages who benefited humbler people that had the luck of being in their favor. Before Mr. Esmond left England in the month of August, and being then at Portsmouth, where he had joined his regiment, and was busy at drill, learning the practice and mysteries of the musket and pike, he heard that a pension on the Stamp Office had been got for his late beloved mistress, and that the young Mistress Beatrix was also to be taken into court. So much good, at least, had come of the poor widow"s visit to London, not revenge upon her husband"s enemies, but reconcilement to old friends, who pitied, and seemed inclined to serve her. As for the comrades in prison and the late misfortune, Colonel Westbury was with the Captain-General gone to Holland; Captain Macartney was now at Portsmouth, with his regiment of Fusileers and the force under command of his Grace the Duke of Ormond, bound for Spain it was said; my Lord Warwick was returned home; and Lord Mohun, so far from being punished for the homicide which had brought so much grief and change into the Esmond family, was gone in company of my Lord Macclesfield"s splendid emba.s.sy to the Elector of Hanover, carrying the Garter to his Highness, and a complimentary letter from the Queen.
CHAPTER IV.
RECAPITULATIONS.
From such fitful lights as could be cast upon his dark history by the broken narrative of his poor patron, torn by remorse and struggling in the last pangs of dissolution, Mr. Esmond had been made to understand so far, that his mother was long since dead; and so there could be no question as regarded her or her honor, tarnished by her husband"s desertion and injury, to influence her son in any steps which he might take either for prosecuting or relinquishing his own just claims. It appeared from my poor lord"s hurried confession, that he had been made acquainted with the real facts of the case only two years since, when Mr. Holt visited him, and would have implicated him in one of those many conspiracies by which the secret leaders of King James"s party in this country were ever endeavoring to destroy the Prince of Orange"s life or power: conspiracies so like murder, so cowardly in the means used, so wicked in the end, that our nation has sure done well in throwing off all allegiance and fidelity to the unhappy family that could not vindicate its right except by such treachery--by such dark intrigue and base agents. There were designs against King William that were no more honorable than the ambushes of cut-throats and footpads. "Tis humiliating to think that a great Prince, possessor of a great and sacred right, and upholder of a great cause, should have stooped to such baseness of a.s.sa.s.sination and treasons as are proved by the unfortunate King James"s own warrant and sign manual given to his supporters in this country. What he and they called levying war was, in truth, no better than instigating murder. The n.o.ble Prince of Orange burst magnanimously through those feeble meshes of conspiracy in which his enemies tried to envelop him: it seemed as if their cowardly daggers broke upon the breast of his undaunted resolution. After King James"s death, the Queen and her people at St. Germains--priests and women for the most part-- continued their intrigues in behalf of the young Prince, James the Third, as he was called in France and by his party here (this Prince, or Chevalier de St. George, was born in the same year with Esmond"s young pupil Frank, my Lord Viscount"s son); and the Prince"s affairs, being in the hands of priests and women, were conducted as priests and women will conduct them, artfully, cruelly, feebly, and to a certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuits" story I think as wholesome a one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and dexterous plot- builders in the world--there always comes a day when the roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that pa.s.sion for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. "Tis the nature of such to hate and envy the strong, and conspire their ruin; and the conspiracy succeeds very well, and everything presages the satisfactory overthrow of the great victim; until one day Gulliver rouses himself, shakes off the little vermin of an enemy, and walks away unmolested. Ah! the Irish soldiers might well say after the Boyne, "Change kings with us and we will fight it over again." Indeed, the fight was not fair between the two. "Twas a weak, priest-ridden, woman-ridden man, with such puny allies and weapons as his own poor nature led him to choose, contending against the schemes, the generalship, the wisdom, and the heart of a hero.
On one of these many coward"s errands then, (for, as I view them now, I can call them no less,) Mr. Holt had come to my lord at Castlewood, proposing some infallible plan for the Prince of Orange"s destruction, in which my Lord Viscount, loyalist as he was, had indignantly refused to join. As far as Mr. Esmond could gather from his dying words, Holt came to my lord with a plan of insurrection, and offer of the renewal, in his person, of that marquis"s t.i.tle which King James had conferred on the preceding viscount; and on refusal of this bribe, a threat was made, on Holt"s part, to upset my Lord Viscount"s claim to his estate and t.i.tle of Castlewood altogether. To back this astounding piece of intelligence, of which Henry Esmond"s patron now had the first light, Holt came armed with the late lord"s dying declaration, after the affair of the Boyne, at Trim, in Ireland, made both to the Irish priest and a French ecclesiastic of Holt"s order, that was with King James"s army. Holt showed, or pretended to show, the marriage certificate of the late Viscount Esmond with my mother, in the city of Brussels, in the year 1677, when the viscount, then Thomas Esmond, was serving with the English army in Flanders; he could show, he said, that this Gertrude, deserted by her husband long since, was alive, and a professed nun in the year 1685, at Brussels, in which year Thomas Esmond married his uncle"s daughter, Isabella, now called Viscountess Dowager of Castlewood; and leaving him, for twelve hours, to consider this astounding news (so the poor dying lord said), disappeared with his papers in the mysterious way in which he came. Esmond knew how, well enough: by that window from which he had seen the Father issue:--but there was no need to explain to my poor lord, only to gather from his parting lips the words which he would soon be able to utter no more.
Ere the twelve hours were over, Holt himself was a prisoner, implicated in Sir John Fenwick"s conspiracy, and locked up at Hexton first, whence he was transferred to the Tower; leaving the poor Lord Viscount, who was not aware of the others being taken, in daily apprehension of his return, when (as my Lord Castlewood declared, calling G.o.d to witness, and with tears in his dying eyes) it had been his intention at once to give up his estate and his t.i.tle to their proper owner, and to retire to his own house at Walcote with his family. "And would to G.o.d I had done it," the poor lord said. "I would not be here now, wounded to death, a miserable, stricken man!"
My lord waited day after day, and, as may be supposed, no messenger came; but at a month"s end Holt got means to convey to him a message out of the Tower, which was to this effect: that he should consider all unsaid that had been said, and that things were as they were.
"I had a sore temptation," said my poor lord. "Since I had come into this cursed t.i.tle of Castlewood, which hath never prospered with me, I have spent far more than the income of that estate, and my paternal one, too. I calculated all my means down to the last shilling, and found I never could pay you back, my poor Harry, whose fortune I had had for twelve years. My wife and children must have gone out of the house dishonored, and beggars. G.o.d knows, it hath been a miserable one for me and mine. Like a coward, I clung to that respite which Holt gave me. I kept the truth from Rachel and you. I tried to win money of Mohun, and only plunged deeper into debt; I scarce dared look thee in the face when I saw thee. This sword hath been hanging over my head these two years. I swear I felt happy when Mohun"s blade entered my side."
After lying ten months in the Tower, Holt, against whom nothing could be found except that he was a Jesuit priest, known to be in King James"s interest, was put on shipboard by the incorrigible forgiveness of King William, who promised him, however, a hanging if ever he should again set foot on English sh.o.r.e. More than once, whilst he was in prison himself, Esmond had thought where those papers could be, which the Jesuit had shown to his patron, and which had such an interest for himself. They were not found on Mr. Holt"s person when that Father was apprehended, for had such been the case my Lords of the Council had seen them, and this family history had long since been made public. However, Esmond cared not to seek the papers. His resolution being taken; his poor mother dead; what matter to him that doc.u.ments existed proving his right to a t.i.tle which he was determined not to claim, and of which he vowed never to deprive that family which he loved best in the world? Perhaps he took a greater pride out of his sacrifice than he would have had in those honors which he was resolved to forego. Again, as long as these t.i.tles were not forthcoming, Esmond"s kinsman, dear young Francis, was the honorable and undisputed owner of the Castlewood estate and t.i.tle. The mere word of a Jesuit could not overset Frank"s right of occupancy, and so Esmond"s mind felt actually at ease to think the papers were missing, and in their absence his dear mistress and her son the lawful Lady and Lord of Castlewood.
Very soon after his liberation, Mr. Esmond made it his business to ride to that village of Ealing where he had pa.s.sed his earliest years in this country, and to see if his old guardians were still alive and inhabitants of that place. But the only relique which he found of old M. Pastoureau was a stone in the churchyard, which told that Athanasius Pastoureau, a native of Flanders, lay there buried, aged 87 years. The old man"s cottage, which Esmond perfectly recollected, and the garden (where in his childhood he had pa.s.sed many hours of play and reverie, and had many a beating from his termagant of a foster-mother), were now in the occupation of quite a different family; and it was with difficulty that he could learn in the village what had come of Pastoureau"s widow and children. The clerk of the parish recollected her--the old man was scarce altered in the fourteen years that had pa.s.sed since last Esmond set eyes on him. It appeared she had pretty soon consoled herself after the death of her old husband, whom she ruled over, by taking a new one younger than herself, who spent her money and ill- treated her and her children. The girl died; one of the boys "listed; the other had gone apprentice. Old Mr. Rogers, the clerk, said he had heard that Mrs. Pastoureau was dead too. She and her husband had left Ealing this seven year; and so Mr. Esmond"s hopes of gaining any information regarding his parentage from this family were brought to an end. He gave the old clerk a crown-piece for his news, smiling to think of the time when he and his little playfellows had slunk out of the churchyard or hidden behind the gravestones, at the approach of this awful authority.
Who was his mother? What had her name been? When did she die? Esmond longed to find some one who could answer these questions to him, and thought even of putting them to his aunt the Viscountess, who had innocently taken the name which belonged of right to Henry"s mother. But she knew nothing, or chose to know nothing, on this subject, nor, indeed, could Mr. Esmond press her much to speak on it. Father Holt was the only man who could enlighten him, and Esmond felt he must wait until some fresh chance or new intrigue might put him face to face with his old friend, or bring that restless indefatigable spirit back to England again.
The appointment to his ensigncy, and the preparations necessary for the campaign, presently gave the young gentleman other matters to think of. His new patroness treated him very kindly and liberally; she promised to make interest and pay money, too, to get him a company speedily; she bade him procure a handsome outfit, both of clothes and of arms, and was pleased to admire him when he made his first appearance in his laced scarlet coat, and to permit him to salute her on the occasion of this interesting invest.i.ture. "Red," says she, tossing up her old head, "hath always been the color worn by the Esmonds." And so her ladyship wore it on her own cheeks very faithfully to the last. She would have him be dressed, she said, as became his father"s son, and paid cheerfully for his five- pound beaver, his black buckled periwig, and his fine holland shirts, and his swords, and his pistols, mounted with silver. Since the day he was born, poor Harry had never looked such a fine gentleman: his liberal step-mother filled his purse with guineas, too, some of which Captain Steele and a few choice spirits helped Harry to spend in an entertainment which d.i.c.k ordered (and, indeed, would have paid for, but that he had no money when the reckoning was called for; nor would the landlord give him any more credit) at the "Garter," over against the gate of the Palace, in Pall Mall.
The old Viscountess, indeed, if she had done Esmond any wrong formerly, seemed inclined to repair it by the present kindness of her behavior: she embraced him copiously at parting, wept plentifully, bade him write by every packet, and gave him an inestimable relic, which she besought him to wear round his neck--a medal, blessed by I know not what pope, and worn by his late sacred Majesty King James. So Esmond arrived at his regiment with a better equipage than most young officers could afford. He was older than most of his seniors, and had a further advantage which belonged but to very few of the army gentlemen in his day--many of whom could do little more than write their names--that he had read much, both at home and at the University, was master of two or three languages, and had that further education which neither books nor years will give, but which some men get from the silent teaching of adversity. She is a great schoolmistress, as many a poor fellow knows, that hath held his hand out to her ferule, and whimpered over his lesson before her awful chair.
CHAPTER V.
I GO ON THE VIGO BAY EXPEDITION, TASTE SALT-WATER AND SMELL POWDER.
The first expedition in which Mr. Esmond had the honor to be engaged, rather resembled one of the invasions projected by the redoubted Captain Avory or Captain Kidd, than a war between crowned heads, carried on by generals of rank and honor. On the 1st day of July, 1702, a great fleet, of a hundred and fifty sail, set sail from Spithead, under the command of Admiral Shovell, having on board 12,000 troops, with his Grace the Duke of Ormond as the Capt.-General of the expedition. One of these 12,000 heroes having never been to sea before, or, at least, only once in his infancy, when he made the voyage to England from that unknown country where he was born--one of those 12,000--the junior ensign of Colonel Quin"s regiment of Fusileers--was in a quite unheroic state of corporal prostration a few hours after sailing; and an enemy, had he boarded the ship, would have had easy work of him. From Portsmouth we put into Plymouth, and took in fresh reinforcements. We were off Finisterre on the 31st of July, so Esmond"s table-book informs him: and on the 8th of August made the rock of Lisbon. By this time the Ensign was grown as bold as an admiral, and a week afterwards had the fortune to be under fire for the first time--and under water, too,--his boat being swamped in the surf in Toros Bay, where the troops landed. The ducking of his new coat was all the harm the young soldier got in this expedition, for, indeed, the Spaniards made no stand before our troops, and were not in strength to do so.
But the campaign, if not very glorious, was very pleasant. New sights of nature, by sea and land--a life of action, beginning now for the first time--occupied and excited the young man. The many accidents, and the routine of shipboard--the military duty--the new acquaintances, both of his comrades in arms, and of the officers of the fleet--served to cheer and occupy his mind, and waken it out of that selfish depression into which his late unhappy fortunes had plunged him. He felt as if the ocean separated him from his past care, and welcomed the new era of life which was dawning for him. Wounds heal rapidly in a heart of two-and-twenty; hopes revive daily; and courage rallies in spite of a man. Perhaps, as Esmond thought of his late despondency and melancholy, and how irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so cheerful.
To see with one"s own eyes men and countries, is better than reading all the books of travel in the world: and it was with extreme delight and exultation that the young man found himself actually on his grand tour, and in the view of people and cities which he had read about as a boy. He beheld war for the first time--the pride, pomp, and circ.u.mstance of it, at least, if not much of the danger. He saw actually, and with his own eyes, those Spanish cavaliers and ladies whom he had beheld in imagination in that immortal story of Cervantes, which had been the delight of his youthful leisure. "Tis forty years since Mr. Esmond witnessed those scenes, but they remain as fresh in his memory as on the day when first he saw them as a young man. A cloud, as of grief, that had lowered over him, and had wrapped the last years of his life in gloom, seemed to clear away from Esmond during this fortunate voyage and campaign. His energies seemed to awaken and to expand under a cheerful sense of freedom. Was his heart secretly glad to have escaped from that fond but ign.o.ble bondage at home? Was it that the inferiority to which the idea of his base birth had compelled him, vanished with the knowledge of that secret, which though, perforce, kept to himself, was yet enough to cheer and console him? At any rate, young Esmond of the army was quite a different being to the sad little dependant of the kind Castlewood household, and the melancholy student of Trinity Walks; discontented with his fate, and with the vocation into which that drove him, and thinking, with a secret indignation, that the ca.s.sock and bands, and the very sacred office with which he had once proposed to invest himself, were, in fact, but marks of a servitude which was to continue all his life long. For, disguise it as he might to himself, he had all along felt that to be Castlewood"s chaplain was to be Castlewood"s inferior still, and that his life was but to be a long, hopeless servitude. So, indeed, he was far from grudging his old friend Tom Tusher"s good fortune (as Tom, no doubt, thought it). Had it been a mitre and Lambeth which his friends offered him, and not a small living and a country parsonage, he would have felt as much a slave in one case as in the other, and was quite happy and thankful to be free.
The bravest man I ever knew in the army, and who had been present in most of King William"s actions, as well as in the campaigns of the great Duke of Marlborough, could never be got to tell us of any achievement of his, except that once Prince Eugene ordered him up a tree to reconnoitre the enemy, which feat he could not achieve on account of the horseman"s boots he wore; and on another day that he was very nearly taken prisoner because of these jack-boots, which prevented him from running away. The present narrator shall imitate this laudable reserve, and doth not intend to dwell upon his military exploits, which were in truth not very different from those of a thousand other gentlemen. This first campaign of Mr. Esmond"s lasted but a few days; and as a score of books have been written concerning it, it may be dismissed very briefly here.
When our fleet came within view of Cadiz, our commander sent a boat with a white flag and a couple of officers to the Governor of Cadiz, Don Scipio de Brancaccio, with a letter from his Grace, in which he hoped that as Don Scipio had formerly served with the Austrians against the French, "twas to be hoped that his Excellency would now declare himself against the French King, and for the Austrian in the war between King Philip and King Charles. But his Excellency, Don Scipio, prepared a reply, in which he announced that, having served his former king with honor and fidelity, he hoped to exhibit the same loyalty and devotion towards his present sovereign, King Philip V.; and by the time this letter was ready, the two officers had been taken to see the town, and the alameda, and the theatre, where bull-fights are fought, and the convents, where the admirable works of Don Bartholomew Murillo inspired one of them with a great wonder and delight--such as he had never felt before--concerning this divine art of painting; and these sights over, and a handsome refection and chocolate being served to the English gentlemen, they were accompanied back to their shallop with every courtesy, and were the only two officers of the English army that saw at that time that famous city.
The general tried the power of another proclamation on the Spaniards, in which he announced that we only came in the interest of Spain and King Charles, and for ourselves wanted to make no conquest nor settlement in Spain at all. But all this eloquence was lost upon the Spaniards, it would seem: the Captain-General of Andalusia would no more listen to us than the Governor of Cadiz; and in reply to his Grace"s proclamation, the Marquis of Villadarias fired off another, which those who knew the Spanish thought rather the best of the two; and of this number was Harry Esmond, whose kind Jesuit in old days had instructed him, and now had the honor of translating for his Grace these harmless doc.u.ments of war. There was a hard touch for his Grace, and, indeed, for other generals in her Majesty"s service, in the concluding sentence of the Don: "That he and his council had the generous example of their ancestors to follow, who had never yet sought their elevation in the blood or in the flight of their kings. "Mori pro patria" was his device, which the Duke might communicate to the Princess who governed England."
Whether the troops were angry at this repartee or no, "tis certain something put them in a fury; for, not being able to get possession of Cadiz, our people seized upon Port Saint Mary"s and sacked it, burning down the merchants" storehouses, getting drunk with the famous wines there, pillaging and robbing quiet houses and convents, murdering and doing worse. And the only blood which Mr. Esmond drew in this shameful campaign, was the knocking down an English sentinel with a half-pike, who was offering insult to a poor trembling nun. Is she going to turn out a beauty? or a princess? or perhaps Esmond"s mother that he had lost and never seen? Alas no, it was but a poor wheezy old dropsical woman, with a wart upon her nose. But having been early taught a part of the Roman religion, he never had the horror of it that some Protestants have shown, and seem to think to be a part of ours.
After the pillage and plunder of St. Mary"s and an a.s.sault upon a fort or two, the troops all took shipping, and finished their expedition, at any rate, more brilliantly than it had begun. Hearing that the French fleet with a great treasure was in Vigo Bay, our Admirals, Rooke and Hopson, pursued the enemy thither; the troops landed and carried the forts that protected the bay, Hopson pa.s.sing the boom first on board his ship the "Torbay," and the rest of the ships, English and Dutch, following him. Twenty ships were burned or taken in the Port of Redondilla, and a vast deal more plunder than was ever accounted for; but poor men before that expedition were rich afterwards, and so often was it found and remarked that the Vigo officers came home with pockets full of money, that the notorious Jack Shafto, who made such a figure at the coffeehouses and gaming-tables in London, and gave out that he had been a soldier at Vigo, owned, when he was about to be hanged, that Bagshot Heath had been HIS Vigo, and that he only spoke of La Redondilla to turn away people"s eyes from the real place where the booty lay. Indeed, Hounslow or Vigo--which matters much? The latter was a bad business, though Mr. Addison did sing its praises in Latin. That honest gentleman"s muse had an eye to the main chance; and I doubt whether she saw much inspiration in the losing side.
But though Esmond, for his part, got no share of this fabulous booty, one great prize which he had out of the campaign was, that excitement of action and change of scene, which shook off a great deal of his previous melancholy. He learnt at any rate to bear his fate cheerfully. He brought back a browned face, a heart resolute enough, and a little pleasant store of knowledge and observation, from that expedition, which was over with the autumn, when the troops were back in England again; and Esmond giving up his post of secretary to General Lumley, whose command was over, and parting with that officer with many kind expressions of good will on the General"s side, had leave to go to London, to see if he could push his fortunes any way further, and found himself once more in his dowager aunt"s comfortable quarters at Chelsey, and in greater favor than ever with the old lady. He propitiated her with a present of a comb, a fan, and a black mantle, such as the ladies of Cadiz wear, and which my Lady Viscountess p.r.o.nounced became her style of beauty mightily. And she was greatily edified at hearing of that story of his rescue of the nun, and felt very little doubt but that her King James"s relic, which he had always dutifully worn in his desk, had kept him out of danger, and averted the shot of the enemy. My lady made feasts for him, introduced him to more company, and pushed his fortunes with such enthusiasm and success, that she got a promise of a company for him through the Lady Marlborough"s interest, who was graciously pleased to accept of a diamond worth a couple of hundred guineas, which Mr. Esmond was enabled to present to her ladyship through his aunt"s bounty, and who promised that she would take charge of Esmond"s fortune. He had the honor to make his appearance at the Queen"s drawing-room occasionally, and to frequent my Lord Marlborough"s levees. That great man received the young one with very especial favor, so Esmond"s comrades said, and deigned to say that he had received the best reports of Mr. Esmond, both for courage and ability, whereon you may be sure the young gentleman made a profound bow, and expressed himself eager to serve under the most distinguished captain in the world.
Whilst his business was going on thus prosperously, Esmond had his share of pleasure too, and made his appearance along with other young gentlemen at the coffee-houses, the theatres, and the Mall. He longed to hear of his dear mistress and her family: many a time, in the midst of the gayeties and pleasures of the town, his heart fondly reverted to them; and often as the young fellows of his society were making merry at the tavern, and calling toasts (as the fashion of that day was) over their wine, Esmond thought of persons--of two fair women, whom he had been used to adore almost, and emptied his gla.s.s with a sigh.
By this time the elder Viscountess had grown tired again of the younger, and whenever she spoke of my lord"s widow, "twas in terms by no means complimentary towards that poor lady: the younger woman not needing her protection any longer, the elder abused her. Most of the family quarrels that I have seen in life (saving always those arising from money disputes, when a division of twopence halfpenny will often drive the dearest relatives into war and estrangement,) spring out of jealousy and envy. Jack and Tom, born of the same family and to the same fortune, live very cordially together, not until Jack is ruined when Tom deserts him, but until Tom makes a sudden rise in prosperity, which Jack can"t forgive. Ten times to one "tis the unprosperous man that is angry, not the other who is in fault. "Tis Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a chair, that sickens at Mrs. Tom"s new coach-and-sick, cries out against her sister"s airs, and sets her husband against his brother. "Tis Jack who sees his brother shaking hands with a lord (with whom Jack would like to exchange snuff-boxes himself), that goes home and tells his wife how poor Tom is spoiled, he fears, and no better than a sneak, parasite, and beggar on horse back. I remember how furious the coffee-house wits were with d.i.c.k Steele when he set up his coach and fine house in Bloomsbury: they began to forgive him when the bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling d.i.c.k"s country-house. And yet d.i.c.k in the sponging-house, or d.i.c.k in the Park, with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial d.i.c.k Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of his just claim, to be spent by d.i.c.k upon champagne and fiddlers, laced clothes, fine furniture, and parasites, Jew and Christian, male and female, who clung to him. As, according to the famous maxim of Monsieur de Rochefoucault, "in our friends" misfortunes there"s something secretly pleasant to us;" so, on the other hand, their good fortune is disagreeable. If "tis hard for a man to bear his own good luck, "tis harder still for his friends to bear it for him and but few of them ordinarily can stand that trial: whereas one of the "precious uses" of adversity is, that it is a great reconciler; that it brings back averted kindness, disarms animosity, and causes yesterday"s enemy to fling his hatred aside, and hold out a hand to the fallen friend of old days. There"s pity and love, as well as envy, in the same heart and towards the same person. The rivalry stops when the compet.i.tor tumbles; and, as I view it, we should look at these agreeable and disagreeable qualities of our humanity humbly alike. They are consequent and natural, and our kindness and meanness both manly.
So you may either read the sentence, that the elder of Esmond"s two kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had lost somewhat of its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her grievances against the other, when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable; or we may say more benevolently (but the sum comes to the same figures, worked either way,) that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when Rachel was unhappy; and, bestirring herself in behalf of the poor widow and her children, gave them shelter and friendship. The ladies were quite good friends as long as the weaker one needed a protector. Before Esmond went away on his first campaign, his mistress was still on terms of friendship (though a poor little chit, a woman that had evidently no spirit in her, &c.) with the elder Lady Castlewood; and Mistress Beatrix was allowed to be a beauty.
But between the first year of Queen Anne"s reign, and the second, sad changes for the worse had taken place in the two younger ladies, at least in the elder"s description of them. Rachel, Viscountess Castlewood, had no more face than a dumpling, and Mrs. Beatrix was grown quite coa.r.s.e, and was losing all her beauty. Little Lord Blandford--(she never would call him Lord Blandford; his father was Lord Churchill--the King, whom he betrayed, had made him Lord Churchill, and he was Lord Churchill still)--might be making eyes at her; but his mother, that vixen of a Sarah Jennings, would never hear of such a folly. Lady Marlborough had got her to be a maid of honor at Court to the Princess, but she would repent of it. The widow Francis (she was but Mrs. Francis Esmond) was a scheming, artful, heartless hussy. She was spoiling her brat of a boy, and she would end by marrying her chaplain.
"What, Tusher!" cried Mr. Esmond, feeling a strange pang of rage and astonishment.
"Yes--Tusher, my maid"s son; and who has got all the qualities of his father the lackey in black, and his accomplished mamma the waiting-woman," cries my lady. "What do you suppose that a sentimental widow, who will live down in that dingy dungeon of a Castlewood, where she spoils her boy, kills the poor with her drugs, has prayers twice a day and sees n.o.body but the chaplain-- what do you suppose she can do, mon Cousin, but let the horrid parson, with his great square toes and hideous little green eyes, make love to her? Cela c"est vu, mon Cousin. When I was a girl at Castlewood, all the chaplains fell in love with me--they"ve nothing else to do."
My lady went on with more talk of this kind, though, in truth, Esmond had no idea of what she said further, so entirely did her first words occupy his thought. Were they true? Not all, nor half, nor a tenth part of what the garrulous old woman said, was true. Could this be so? No ear had Esmond for anything else, though his patroness chatted on for an hour.
Some young gentlemen of the town, with whom Esmond had made acquaintance, had promised to present him to that most charming of actresses, and lively and agreeable of women, Mrs. Bracegirdle, about whom Harry"s old adversary Mohun had drawn swords, a few years before my poor lord and he fell out. The famous Mr. Congreve had stamped with his high approval, to the which there was no gainsaying, this delightful person: and she was acting in d.i.c.k Steele"s comedies, and finally, and for twenty-four hours after beholding her, Mr. Esmond felt himself, or thought himself, to be as violently enamored of this lovely brunette, as were a thousand other young fellows about the city. To have once seen her was to long to behold her again; and to be offered the delightful privilege of her acquaintance, was a pleasure the very idea of which set the young lieutenant"s heart on fire. A man cannot live with comrades under the tents without finding out that he too is five-and-twenty. A young fellow cannot be cast down by grief and misfortune ever so severe but some night he begins to sleep sound, and some day when dinner-time comes to feel hungry for a beefsteak. Time, youth and good health, new scenes and the excitement of action and a campaign, had pretty well brought Esmond"s mourning to an end; and his comrades said that Don Dismal, as they called him, was Don Dismal no more. So when a party was made to dine at the "Rose," and go to the playhouse afterward, Esmond was as pleased as another to take his share of the bottle and the play.
How was it that the old aunt"s news, or it might be scandal, about Tom Tusher, caused such a strange and sudden excitement in Tom"s old playfellow? Hadn"t he sworn a thousand times in his own mind that the Lady of Castlewood, who had treated him with such kindness once, and then had left him so cruelly, was, and was to remain henceforth, indifferent to him for ever? Had his pride and his sense of justice not long since helped him to cure the pain of that desertion--was it even a pain to him now? Why, but last night as he walked across the fields and meadows to Chelsey from Pall Mall, had he not composed two or three stanzas of a song, celebrating Bracegirdle"s brown eyes, and declaring them a thousand times more beautiful than the brightest blue ones that ever languished under the lashes of an insipid fair beauty! But Tom Tusher! Tom Tusher, the waiting-woman"s son, raising up his little eyes to his mistress! Tom Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood"s widow! Rage and contempt filled Mr. Harry"s heart at the very notion; the honor of the family, of which he was the chief, made it his duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance, and to chastise the upstart who could dare to think of such an insult to their house. "Tis true Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles, and could remember many fine speeches he had made at college and elsewhere, with WORTH and not BIRTH for a text: but Tom Tusher to take the place of the n.o.ble Castlewood--faugh! "twas as monstrous as King Hamlet"s widow taking off her weeds for Claudius. Esmond laughed at all widows, all wives, all women; and were the banns about to be published, as no doubt they were, that very next Sunday at Walcote Church, Esmond swore that he would be present to shout No! in the face of the congregation, and to take a private revenge upon the ears of the bridegroom.
Instead of going to dinner then at the "Rose" that night, Mr. Esmond bade his servant pack a portmanteau and get horses, and was at Farnham, half-way on the road to Walcote, thirty miles off, before his comrades had got to their supper after the play. He bade his man give no hint to my Lady Dowager"s household of the expedition on which he was going; and as Chelsey was distant from London, the roads bad, and infested by footpads, and Esmond often in the habit, when engaged in a party of pleasure, of lying at a friend"s lodging in town, there was no need that his old aunt should be disturbed at his absence--indeed, nothing more delighted the old lady than to fancy that mon cousin, the incorrigible young sinner, was abroad boxing the watch, or scouring St. Giles"s. When she was not at her books of devotion, she thought Etheridge and Sedley very good reading. She had a hundred pretty stories about Rochester, Harry Jermyn, and Hamilton; and if Esmond would but have run away with the wife even of a citizen, "tis my belief she would have p.a.w.ned her diamonds (the best of them went to our Lady of Chaillot) to pay his damages.
My lord"s little house of Walcote--which he inhabited before he took his t.i.tle and occupied the house of Castlewood--lies about a mile from Winchester, and his widow had returned to Walcote after my lord"s death as a place always dear to her, and where her earliest and happiest days had been spent, cheerfuller than Castlewood, which was too large for her straitened means, and giving her, too, the protection of the ex-dean, her father. The young Viscount had a year"s schooling at the famous college there, with Mr. Tusher as his governor. So much news of them Mr. Esmond had had during the past year from the old Viscountess, his own father"s widow; from the young one there had never been a word.
Twice or thrice in his benefactor"s lifetime, Esmond had been to Walcote; and now, taking but a couple of hours" rest only at the inn on the road, he was up again long before daybreak, and made such good speed that he was at Walcote by two o"clock of the day. He rid to the end of the village, where he alighted and sent a man thence to Mr. Tusher, with a message that a gentleman from London would speak with him on urgent business. The messenger came back to say the Doctor was in town, most likely at prayers in the Cathedral. My Lady Viscountess was there, too; she always went to Cathedral prayers every day.
The horses belonged to the post-house at Winchester. Esmond mounted again and rode on to the "George;" whence he walked, leaving his grumbling domestic at last happy with a dinner, straight to the Cathedral. The organ was playing: the winter"s day was already growing gray: as he pa.s.sed under the street-arch into the Cathedral yard, and made his way into the ancient solemn edifice.
CHAPTER VI.
THE 29TH DECEMBER.
There was scarce a score of persons in the Cathedral beside the Dean and some of his clergy, and the choristers, young and old, that performed the beautiful evening prayer. But Mr. Tusher was one of the officiants, and read from the eagle in an authoritative voice, and a great black periwig; and in the stalls, still in her black widow"s hood, sat Esmond"s dear mistress, her son by her side, very much grown, and indeed a n.o.ble-looking youth, with his mother"s eyes, and his father"s curling brown hair, that fell over his point de Venise--a pretty picture such as Van Dyck might have painted. Mons. Rigaud"s portrait of my Lord Viscount, done at Paris afterwards, gives but a French version of his manly, frank, English face. When he looked up there were two sapphire beams out of his eyes such as no painter"s palette has the color to match, I think. On this day there was not much chance of seeing that particular beauty of my young lord"s countenance; for the truth is, he kept his eyes shut for the most part, and, the anthem being rather long, was asleep.
But the music ceasing, my lord woke up, looking about him, and his eyes lighting on Mr. Esmond, who was sitting opposite him, gazing with no small tenderness and melancholy upon two persons who had so much of his heart for so many years, Lord Castlewood, with a start, pulled at his mother"s sleeve (her face had scarce been lifted from her book), and said, "Look, mother!" so loud, that Esmond could hear on the other side of the church, and the old Dean on his throned stall. Lady Castlewood looked for an instant as her son bade her, and held up a warning finger to Frank; Esmond felt his whole face flush, and his heart throbbing, as that dear lady beheld him once more. The rest of the prayers were speedily over; Mr. Esmond did