"Isn"t this a beautiful piece?" says Beatrix, examining it, and she pointed out the arch graces of the Cupids, and the fine carving of the languid prostrate Mars. Esmond sickened as he thought of the warrior dead in his chamber, his servants and children weeping around him; and of this smiling creature attiring herself, as it were, for that nuptial death-bed. ""Tis a pretty piece of vanity," says he, looking gloomily at the beautiful creature: there were flambeaux in the room lighting up the brilliant mistress of it. She lifted up the great gold salver with her fair arms.
"Vanity!" says she, haughtily. "What is vanity in you, sir, is propriety in me. You ask a Jewish price for it, Mr. Graves; but have it I will, if only to spite Mr. Esmond."
"Oh, Beatrix, lay it down!" says Mr. Esmond. "Herodias! you know not what you carry in the charger."
She dropped it with a clang; the eager goldsmith running to seize his fallen ware. The lady"s face caught the fright from Esmond"s pale countenance, and her eyes shone out like beacons of alarm:--"What is it, Henry!" says she, running to him, and seizing both his hands. "What do you mean by your pale face and gloomy tones?"
"Come away, come away!" says Esmond, leading her: she clung frightened to him, and he supported her upon his heart, bidding the scared goldsmith leave them. The man went into the next apartment, staring with surprise, and hugging his precious charger.
"Oh, my Beatrix, my sister!" says Esmond, still holding in his arms the pallid and affrighted creature, "you have the greatest courage of any woman in the world; prepare to show it now, for you have a dreadful trial to bear."
She sprang away from the friend who would have protected her:--"Hath he left me?" says she. "We had words this morning: he was very gloomy, and I angered him: but he dared not, he dared not!" As she spoke a burning blush flushed over her whole face and bosom. Esmond saw it reflected in the gla.s.s by which she stood, with clenched hands, pressing her swelling heart.
"He has left you," says Esmond, wondering that rage rather than sorrow was in her looks.
"And he is alive," cried Beatrix, "and you bring me this commission! He has left me, and you haven"t dared to avenge me! You, that pretend to be the champion of our house, have let me suffer this insult! Where is Castlewood? I will go to my brother."
"The Duke is not alive, Beatrix," said Esmond.
She looked at her cousin wildly, and fell back to the wall as though shot in the breast:--"And you come here, and--and--you killed him?"
"No; thank heaven!" her kinsman said. "The blood of that n.o.ble heart doth not stain my sword! In its last hour it was faithful to thee, Beatrix Esmond. Vain and cruel woman! kneel and thank the awful heaven which awards life and death, and chastises pride, that the n.o.ble Hamilton died true to you; at least that "twas not your quarrel, or your pride, or your wicked vanity, that drove him to his fate. He died by the b.l.o.o.d.y sword which already had drank your own father"s blood. O woman, O sister! to that sad field where two corpses are lying--for the murderer died too by the hand of the man he slew--can you bring no mourners but your revenge and your vanity? G.o.d help and pardon thee, Beatrix, as he brings this awful punishment to your hard and rebellious heart."
Esmond had scarce done speaking, when his mistress came in. The colloquy between him and Beatrix had lasted but a few minutes, during which time Esmond"s servant had carried the disastrous news through the household.
The army of Vanity Fair, waiting without, gathered up all their fripperies and fled aghast. Tender Lady Castlewood had been in talk above with Dean Atterbury, the pious creature"s almoner and director; and the Dean had entered with her as a physician whose place was at a sick-bed. Beatrix"s mother looked at Esmond and ran towards her daughter, with a pale face and open heart and hands, all kindness and pity. But Beatrix pa.s.sed her by, nor would she have any of the medicaments of the spiritual physician. "I am best in my own room and by myself," she said. Her eyes were quite dry; nor did Esmond ever see them otherwise, save once, in respect to that grief. She gave him a cold hand as she went out: "Thank you, brother," she said, in a low voice, and with a simplicity more touching than tears; "all you have said is true and kind, and I will go away and ask pardon." The three others remained behind, and talked over the dreadful story. It affected Dr. Atterbury more even than us, as it seemed. The death of Mohun, her husband"s murderer, was more awful to my mistress than even the Duke"s unhappy end. Esmond gave at length what particulars he knew of their quarrel, and the cause of it. The two n.o.blemen had long been at war with respect to the Lord Gerard"s property, whose two daughters my Lord Duke and Mohun had married. They had met by appointment that day at the lawyer"s in Lincoln"s Inn Fields; had words which, though they appeared very trifling to those who heard them, were not so to men exasperated by long and previous enmity. Mohun asked my Lord Duke where he could see his Grace"s friends, and within an hour had sent two of his own to arrange this deadly duel. It was pursued with such fierceness, and sprung from so trifling a cause, that all men agreed at the time that there was a party, of which these three notorious brawlers were but agents, who desired to take Duke Hamilton"s life away. They fought three on a side, as in that tragic meeting twelve years back, which hath been recounted already, and in which Mohun performed his second murder. They rushed in, and closed upon each other at once without any feints or crossing of swords even, and stabbed one at the other desperately, each receiving many wounds; and Mohun having his death-wound, and my Lord Duke lying by him, Macartney came up and stabbed his Grace as he lay on the ground, and gave him the blow of which he died. Colonel Macartney denied this, of which the horror and indignation of the whole kingdom would nevertheless have him guilty, and fled the country, whither he never returned.
What was the real cause of the Duke Hamilton"s death?--a paltry quarrel that might easily have been made up, and with a ruffian so low, base, profligate, and degraded with former crimes and repeated murders, that a man of such renown and princely rank as my Lord Duke might have disdained to sully his sword with the blood of such a villain. But his spirit was so high that those who wished his death knew that his courage was like his charity, and never turned any man away; and he died by the hands of Mohun, and the other two cut-throats that were set on him. The Queen"s amba.s.sador to Paris died, the loyal and devoted servant of the House of Stuart, and a Royal Prince of Scotland himself, and carrying the confidence, the repentance of Queen Anne along with his own open devotion, and the good-will of millions in the country more, to the Queen"s exiled brother and sovereign.
That party to which Lord Mohun belonged had the benefit of his service, and now were well rid of such a ruffian. He, and Meredith, and Macartney, were the Duke of Marlborough"s men; and the two colonels had been broke but the year before for drinking perdition to the Tories. His Grace was a Whig now and a Hanoverian, and as eager for war as Prince Eugene himself. I say not that he was privy to Duke Hamilton"s death, I say that his party profited by it; and that three desperate and b.l.o.o.d.y instruments were found to effect that murder.
As Esmond and the Dean walked away from Kensington discoursing of this tragedy, and how fatal it was to the cause which they both had at heart, the street-criers were already out with their broadsides, shouting through the town the full, true, and horrible account of the death of Lord Mohun and Duke Hamilton in a duel. A fellow had got to Kensington, and was crying it in the square there at very early morning, when Mr.
Esmond happened to pa.s.s by. He drove the man from under Beatrix"s very window, whereof the cas.e.m.e.nt had been set open. The sun was shining though "twas November: he had seen the market-carts rolling into London, the guard relieved at the palace, the laborers trudging to their work in the gardens between Kensington and the City--the wandering merchants and hawkers filling the air with their cries. The world was going to its business again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for them; and kings, very likely, lost their chances. So night and day pa.s.s away, and to-morrow comes, and our place knows us not. Esmond thought of the courier, now galloping on the North road to inform him, who was Earl of Arran yesterday, that he was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand great schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant heart, beating a few hours since, and now in a little dust quiescent.
CHAPTER VII.
I VISIT CASTLEWOOD ONCE MORE.
Thus, for a third time, Beatrix"s ambitious hopes were circ.u.mvented, and she might well believe that a special malignant fate watched and pursued her, tearing her prize out of her hand just as she seemed to grasp it, and leaving her with only rage and grief for her portion. Whatever her feelings might have been of anger or of sorrow, (and I fear me that the former emotion was that which most tore her heart,) she would take no confidant, as people of softer natures would have done under such a calamity; her mother and her kinsman knew that she would disdain their pity, and that to offer it would be but to infuriate the cruel wound which fortune had inflicted. We knew that her pride was awfully humbled and punished by this sudden and terrible blow; she wanted no teaching of ours to point out the sad moral of her story. Her fond mother could give but her prayers, and her kinsman his faithful friendship and patience to the unhappy, stricken creature; and it was only by hints, and a word or two uttered months afterwards, that Beatrix showed she understood their silent commiseration, and on her part was secretly thankful for their forbearance. The people about the Court said there was that in her manner which frightened away scoffing and condolence: she was above their triumph and their pity, and acted her part in that dreadful tragedy greatly and courageously; so that those who liked her least were yet forced to admire her. We, who watched her after her disaster, could not but respect the indomitable courage and majestic calm with which she bore it. "I would rather see her tears than her pride," her mother said, who was accustomed to bear her sorrows in a very different way, and to receive them as the stroke of G.o.d, with an awful submission and meekness. But Beatrix"s nature was different to that tender parent"s; she seemed to accept her grief and to defy it; nor would she allow it (I believe not even in private and in her own chamber) to extort from her the confession of even a tear of humiliation or a cry of pain. Friends and children of our race, who come after me, in which way will you bear your trials? I know one that prays G.o.d will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eye all-seeing shall find you in the humble place.
Not that we should judge proud spirits otherwise than charitably. "Tis nature hath fashioned some for ambition and dominion, as it hath formed others for obedience and gentle submission. The leopard follows his nature as the lamb does, and acts after leopard law; she can neither help her beauty, nor her courage, nor her cruelty; nor a single spot on her shining coat; nor the conquering spirit which impels her; nor the shot which brings her down.
During that well-founded panic the Whigs had, lest the Queen should forsake their Hanoverian Prince, bound by oaths and treaties as she was to him, and recall her brother, who was allied to her by yet stronger ties of nature and duty; the Prince of Savoy, and the boldest of that party of the Whigs, were for bringing the young Duke of Cambridge over, in spite of the Queen, and the outcry of her Tory servants, arguing that the Electoral Prince, a Peer and Prince of the Blood-Royal of this Realm too, and in the line of succession to the crown, had, a right to sit in the Parliament whereof he was a member, and to dwell in the country which he one day was to govern. Nothing but the strongest ill will expressed by the Queen, and the people about her, and menaces of the Royal resentment, should this scheme be persisted in, prevented it from being carried into effect.
The boldest on our side were, in like manner, for having our Prince into the country. The undoubted inheritor of the right divine; the feelings of more than half the nation, of almost all the clergy, of the gentry of England and Scotland with him; entirely innocent of the crime for which his father suffered--brave, young, handsome, unfortunate--who in England would dare to molest the Prince should he come among us, and fling himself upon British generosity, hospitality, and honor? An invader with an army of Frenchmen behind him, Englishmen of spirit would resist to the death, and drive back to the sh.o.r.es whence he came; but a Prince, alone, armed with his right only, and relying on the loyalty of his people, was sure, many of his friends argued, of welcome, at least of safety, among us. The hand of his sister the Queen, of the people his subjects, never could be raised to do him a wrong. But the Queen was timid by nature, and the successive Ministers she had, had private causes for their irresolution. The bolder and honester men, who had at heart the ill.u.s.trious young exile"s cause, had no scheme of interest of their own to prevent them from seeing the right done, and, provided only he came as an Englishman, were ready to venture their all to welcome and defend him.
St. John and Harley both had kind words in plenty for the Prince"s adherents, and gave him endless promises of future support; but hints and promises were all they could be got to give; and some of his friends were for measures much bolder, more efficacious, and more open. With a party of these, some of whom are yet alive, and some whose names Mr.
Esmond has no right to mention, he found himself engaged the year after that miserable death of Duke Hamilton, which deprived the Prince of his most courageous ally in this country. Dean Atterbury was one of the friends whom Esmond may mention, as the brave bishop is now beyond exile and persecution, and to him, and one or two more, the Colonel opened himself of a scheme of his own, that, backed by a little resolution on the Prince"s part, could not fail of bringing about the accomplishment of their dearest wishes.
My young Lord Viscount Castlewood had not come to England to keep his majority, and had now been absent from the country for several years.
The year when his sister was to be married and Duke Hamilton died, my lord was kept at Bruxelles by his wife"s lying-in. The gentle Clotilda could not bear her husband out of her sight; perhaps she mistrusted the young scapegrace should he ever get loose from her leading-strings; and she kept him by her side to nurse the baby and administer posset to the gossips. Many a laugh poor Beatrix had had about Frank"s uxoriousness: his mother would have gone to Clotilda when her time was coming, but that the mother-in-law was already in possession, and the negotiations for poor Beatrix"s marriage were begun. A few months after the horrid catastrophe in Hyde Park, my mistress and her daughter retired to Castlewood, where my lord, it was expected, would soon join them. But, to say truth, their quiet household was little to his taste; he could be got to come to Walcote but once after his first campaign; and then the young rogue spent more than half his time in London, not appearing at Court or in public under his own name and t.i.tle, but frequenting plays, bagnios, and the very worst company, under the name of Captain Esmond (whereby his innocent kinsman got more than once into trouble); and so under various pretexts, and in pursuit of all sorts of pleasures, until he plunged into the lawful one of marriage, Frank Castlewood had remained away from this country, and was unknown, save amongst the gentlemen of the army, with whom he had served abroad. The fond heart of his mother was pained by this long absence. "Twas all that Henry Esmond could do to soothe her natural mortification, and find excuses for his kinsman"s levity.
In the autumn of the year 1713, Lord Castlewood thought of returning home. His first child had been a daughter; Clotilda was in the way of gratifying his lordship with a second, and the pious youth thought that, by bringing his wife to his ancestral home, by prayers to St. Philip of Castlewood, and what not, heaven might be induced to bless him with a son this time, for whose coming the expectant mamma was very anxious.
The long-debated peace had been proclaimed this year at the end of March; and France was open to us. Just as Frank"s poor mother had made all things ready for Lord Castlewood"s reception, and was eagerly expecting her son, it was by Colonel Esmond"s means that the kind lady was disappointed of her longing, and obliged to defer once more the darling hope of her heart.
Esmond took horses to Castlewood. He had not seen its ancient gray towers and well-remembered woods for nearly fourteen years, and since he rode thence with my lord, to whom his mistress with her young children by her side waved an adieu. What ages seemed to have pa.s.sed since then, what years of action and pa.s.sion, of care, love, hope, disaster! The children were grown up now, and had stories of their own. As for Esmond, he felt to be a hundred years old; his dear mistress only seemed unchanged; she looked and welcomed him quite as of old. There was the fountain in the court babbling its familiar music, the old hall and its furniture, the carved chair my late lord used, the very flagon he drank from. Esmond"s mistress knew he would like to sleep in the little room he used to occupy; "twas made ready for him, and wall-flowers and sweet herbs set in the adjoining chamber, the chaplain"s room.
In tears of not unmanly emotion, with prayers of submission to the awful Dispenser of death and life, of good and evil fortune, Mr. Esmond pa.s.sed a part of that first night at Castlewood, lying awake for many hours as the clock kept tolling (in tones so well remembered), looking back, as all men will, that revisit their home of childhood, over the great gulf of time, and surveying himself on the distant bank yonder, a sad little melancholy boy with his lord still alive--his dear mistress, a girl yet, her children sporting around her. Years ago, a boy on that very bed, when she had blessed him and called him her knight, he had made a vow to be faithful and never desert her dear service. Had he kept that fond boyish promise? Yes, before heaven; yes, praise be to G.o.d! His life had been hers; his blood, his fortune, his name, his whole heart ever since had been hers and her children"s. All night long he was dreaming his boyhood over again, and waking fitfully; he half fancied he heard Father Holt calling to him from the next chamber, and that he was coming in and out of from the mysterious window.
Esmond rose up before the dawn, pa.s.sed into the next room, where the air was heavy with the odor of the wall-flowers; looked into the brazier where the papers had been burnt, into the old presses where Holt"s books and papers had been kept, and tried the spring and whether the window worked still. The spring had not been touched for years, but yielded at length, and the whole fabric of the window sank down. He lifted it and it relapsed into its frame; no one had ever pa.s.sed thence since Holt used it sixteen years ago.
Esmond remembered his poor lord saying, on the last day of his life, that Holt used to come in and out of the house like a ghost, and knew that the Father liked these mysteries, and practised such secret disguises, entrances and exits: this was the way the ghost came and went, his pupil had always conjectured. Esmond closed the cas.e.m.e.nt up again as the dawn was rising over Castlewood village; he could hear the clinking at the blacksmith"s forge yonder among the trees, across the green, and past the river, on which a mist still lay sleeping.
Next Esmond opened that long cupboard over the woodwork of the mantel-piece, big enough to hold a man, and in which Mr. Holt used to keep sundry secret properties of his. The two swords he remembered so well as a boy, lay actually there still, and Esmond took them out and wiped them, with a strange curiosity of emotion. There were a bundle of papers here, too, which no doubt had been left at Holt"s last visit to the place, in my Lord Viscount"s life, that very day when the priest had been arrested and taken to Hexham Castle. Esmond made free with these papers, and found treasonable matter of King William"s reign, the names of Charnock and Perkins, Sir John Fenwick and Sir John Friend, Rookwood and Lodwick, Lords Montgomery and Allesbury, Clarendon and Yarmouth, that had all been engaged in plots against the usurper; a letter from the Duke of Berwick too, and one from the King at St. Germains, offering to confer upon his trusty and well-beloved Francis Viscount Castlewood the t.i.tles of Earl and Marquis of Esmond, bestowed by patent royal, and in the fourth year of his reign, upon Thomas Viscount Castlewood and the heirs-male of his body, in default of which issue the ranks and dignities were to pa.s.s to Francis aforesaid.
This was the paper, whereof my lord had spoken, which Holt showed him the very day he was arrested, and for an answer to which he would come back in a week"s time. I put these papers hastily into the crypt whence I had taken them, being interrupted by a tapping of a light finger at the ring of the chamber-door: "twas my kind mistress, with her face full of love and welcome. She, too, had pa.s.sed the night wakefuly, no doubt; but neither asked the other how the hours had been spent. There are things we divine without speaking, and know though they happen out of our sight. This fond lady hath told me that she knew both days when I was wounded abroad. Who shall say how far sympathy reaches, and how truly love can prophesy? "I looked into your room," was all she said; "the bed was vacant, the little old bed! I knew I should find you here."
And tender and blushing faintly with a benediction in her eyes, the gentle creature kissed him.
They walked out, hand-in-hand, through the old court, and to the terrace-walk, where the gra.s.s was glistening with dew, and the birds in the green woods above were singing their delicious choruses under the blushing morning sky. How well all things were remembered! The ancient towers and gables of the hall darkling against the east, the purple shadows on the green slopes, the quaint devices and carvings of the dial, the forest-crowned heights, the fair yellow plain cheerful with crops and corn, the shining river rolling through it towards the pearly hills beyond; all these were before us, along with a thousand beautiful memories of our youth, beautiful and sad, but as real and vivid in our minds as that fair and always-remembered scene our eyes beheld once more. We forget nothing. The memory sleeps, but wakens again; I often think how it shall be when, after the last sleep of death, the reveillee shall arouse us for ever, and the past in one flash of self-consciousness rush back, like the soul revivified.
The house would not be up for some hours yet, (it was July, and the dawn was only just awake,) and here Esmond opened himself to his mistress, of the business he had in hand, and what part Frank was to play in it. He knew he could confide anything to her, and that the fond soul would die rather than reveal it; and bidding her keep the secret from all, he laid it entirely before his mistress (always as staunch a little loyalist as any in the kingdom), and indeed was quite sure that any plan, of his was secure of her applause and sympathy. Never was such a glorious scheme to her partial mind, never such a devoted knight to execute it. An hour or two may have pa.s.sed whilst they were having their colloquy. Beatrix came out to them just as their talk was over; her tall beautiful form robed in sable (which she wore without ostentation ever since last year"s catastrophe), sweeping over the green terrace, and casting its shadows before her across the gra.s.s.
She made us one of her grand curtsies smiling, and called us "the young people." She was older, paler, and more majestic than in the year before; her mother seemed the youngest of the two. She never once spoke of her grief, Lady Castlewood told Esmond, or alluded, save by a quiet word or two, to the death of her hopes.
When Beatrix came back to Castlewood she took to visiting all the cottages and all the sick. She set up a school of children, and taught singing to some of them. We had a pair of beautiful old organs in Castlewood Church, on which she played admirably, so that the music there became to be known in the country for many miles round, and no doubt people came to see the fair organist as well as to hear her.
Parson Tusher and his wife were established at the vicarage, but his wife had brought him no children wherewith Tom might meet his enemies at the gate. Honest Tom took care not to have many such, his great shovel-hat was in his hand for everybody. He was profuse of bows and compliments. He behaved to Esmond as if the Colonel had been a Commander-in-Chief; he dined at the hall that day, being Sunday, and would not partake of pudding except under extreme pressure. He deplored my lord"s perversion, but drank his lordship"s health very devoutly; and an hour before at church sent the Colonel to sleep, with a long, learned, and refreshing sermon.
Esmond"s visit home was but for two days; the business he had in hand calling him away and out of the country. Ere he went, he saw Beatrix but once alone, and then she summoned him out of the long tapestry room, where he and his mistress were sitting, quite as in old times, into the adjoining chamber, that had been Viscountess Isabel"s sleeping apartment, and where Esmond perfectly well remembered seeing the old lady sitting up in the bed, in her night-rail, that morning when the troop of guard came to fetch her. The most beautiful woman in England lay in that bed now, whereof the great damask hangings were scarce faded since Esmond saw them last.
Here stood Beatrix in her black robes, holding a box in her hand; "twas that which Esmond had given her before her marriage, stamped with a coronet which the disappointed girl was never to wear; and containing his aunt"s legacy of diamonds.
"You had best take these with you, Harry," says she; "I have no need of diamonds any more." There was not the least token of emotion in her quiet low voice. She held out the black s.h.a.green case with her fair arm, that did not shake in the least. Esmond saw she wore a black velvet bracelet on it, with my Lord Duke"s picture in enamel; he had given it her but three days before he fell.
Esmond said the stones were his no longer, and strove to turn off that proffered restoration with a laugh: "Of what good," says he, "are they to me? The diamond loop to his hat did not set off Prince Eugene, and will not make my yellow face look any handsomer."
"You will give them to your wife, cousin," says she. "My cousin, your wife has a lovely complexion and shape."
"Beatrix," Esmond burst out, the old fire flaming out as it would at times, "will you wear those trinkets at your marriage? You whispered once you did not know me: you know me better now: how I sought, what I have sighed for, for ten years, what foregone!"
"A price for your constancy, my lord!" says she; "such a preux chevalier wants to be paid. Oh fie, cousin!"
"Again," Esmond spoke out, "if I do something you have at heart; something worthy of me and you; something that shall make me a name with which to endow you; will you take it? There was a chance for me once, you said; is it impossible to recall it? Never shake your head, but hear me; say you will hear me a year hence. If I come back to you and bring you fame, will that please you? If I do what you desire most--what he who is dead desired most--will that soften you?"
"What is it, Henry?" says she, her face lighting up; "what mean you?"