The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

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Here, as he lay nursing himself, ubiquitous Mr. Holt reappeared, and
stopped a whole month at Mons, where he not only won over Colonel Esmond
to the King's side in politics (that side being always held by the
Esmond family); but where he endeavored to reopen the controversial
question between the churches once more, and to recall Esmond to that
religion in which, in his infancy, he had been baptized. Holt was a
casuist, both dexterous and learned, and presented the case between
the English church and his own in such a way that those who granted
his premises ought certainly to allow his conclusions. He touched on
Esmond's delicate state of health, chance of dissolution, and so forth;
and enlarged upon the immense benefits that the sick man was likely to
forego--benefits which the church of England did not deny to those of
the Roman communion, as how should she, being derived from that church,
and only an offshoot from it? But Mr. Esmond said that his church was
the church of his country, and to that he chose to remain faithful:
other people were welcome to worship and to subscribe any other set of
articles, whether at Rome or at Augsburg. But if the good Father meant
that Esmond should join the Roman communion for fear of consequences,
and that all England ran the risk of being damned for heresy, Esmond,
for one, was perfectly willing to take his chance of the penalty along
with the countless millions of his fellow-countrymen, who were bred
in the same faith, and along with some of the noblest, the truest, the
purest, the wisest, the most pious and learned men and women in the
world.

As for the political question, in that Mr. Esmond could agree with the
Father much more readily, and had come to the same conclusion,
though, perhaps, by a different way. The right divine, about which Dr.
Sacheverel and the High Church party in England were just now making a
bother, they were welcome to hold as they chose. If Richard Cromwell,
and his father before him had been crowned and anointed (and bishops
enough would have been found to do it), it seemed to Mr. Esmond that
they would have had the right divine just as much as any Plantagenet, or
Tudor, or Stuart. But the desire of the country being unquestionably
for an hereditary monarchy, Esmond thought an English king out of St.
Germains was better and fitter than a German prince from Herrenhausen,
and that if he failed to satisfy the nation, some other Englishman might
be found to take his place; and so, though with no frantic enthusiasm,
or worship of that monstrous pedigree which the Tories chose to consider
divine, he was ready to say, "God save King James!" when Queen Anne went
the way of kings and commoners.

"I fear, Colonel, you are no better than a republican at heart," says
the priest with a sigh.

"I am an Englishman," says Harry, "and take my country as I find her.
The will of the nation being for church and king, I am for church and
king too; but English church and English king; and that is why your
church isn't mine, though your king is."

Though they lost the day at Malplaquet, it was the French who were
elated by that action, whilst the conquerors were dispirited, by it; and
the enemy gathered together a larger army than ever, and made prodigious
efforts for the next campaign. Marshal Berwick was with the French this
year; and we heard that Mareschal Villars was still suffering of his
wound, was eager to bring our Duke to action, and vowed he would fight
us in his coach. Young Castlewood came flying back from Bruxelles, as
soon as he heard that fighting was to begin; and the arrival of the
Chevalier de St. George was announced about May. "It's the King's third
campaign, and it's mine," Frank liked saying. He was come back a greater
Jacobite than ever, and Esmond suspected that some fair conspirators
at Bruxelles had been inflaming the young man's ardor. Indeed, he owned
that he had a message from the Queen, Beatrix's godmother, who had given
her name to Frank's sister the year before he and his sovereign were
born.

However desirous Marshal Villars might be to fight, my Lord Duke did not
seem disposed to indulge him this campaign. Last year his Grace had been
all for the Whigs and Hanoverians; but finding, on going to England, his
country cold towards himself, and the people in a ferment of High Church
loyalty, the Duke comes back to his army cooled towards the Hanoverians,
cautious with the Imperialists, and particularly civil and polite
towards the Chevalier de St. George. 'Tis certain that messengers and
letters were continually passing between his Grace and his brave nephew,
the Duke of Berwick, in the opposite camp. No man's caresses were more
opportune than his Grace's, and no man ever uttered expressions of
regard and affection more generously. He professed to Monsieur de Torcy,
so Mr. St. John told the writer, quite an eagerness to be cut in pieces
for the exiled Queen and her family; nay more, I believe, this year
he parted with a portion of the most precious part of himself--his
money--which he sent over to the royal exiles. Mr. Tunstal, who was in
the Prince's service, was twice or thrice in and out of our camp; the
French, in theirs of Arlieu and about Arras. A little river, the Canihe
I think 'twas called, (but this is writ away from books and Europe; and
the only map the writer hath of these scenes of his youth, bears no
mark of this little stream,) divided our pickets from the enemy's.
Our sentries talked across the stream, when they could make themselves
understood to each other, and when they could not, grinned, and handed
each other their brandy-flasks or their pouches of tobacco. And one fine
day of June, riding thither with the officer who visited the outposts,
(Colonel Esmond was taking an airing on horseback, being too weak for
military duty,) they came to this river, where a number of English and
Scots were assembled, talking to the good-natured enemy on the other
side.

Esmond was especially amused with the talk of one long fellow, with a
great curling red moustache, and blue eyes, that was half a dozen
inches taller than his swarthy little comrades on the French side of the
stream, and being asked by the Colonel, saluted him, and said that he
belonged to the Royal Cravats.

From his way of saying "Royal Cravat," Esmond at once knew that the
fellow's tongue had first wagged on the banks of the Liffey, and not
the Loire; and the poor soldier--a deserter probably--did not like to
venture very deep into French conversation, lest his unlucky brogue
should peep out. He chose to restrict himself to such few expressions
in the French language as he thought he had mastered easily; and
his attempt at disguise was infinitely amusing. Mr. Esmond whistled
Lillibullero, at which Teague's eyes began to twinkle, and then flung
him a dollar, when the poor boy broke out with a "God bless--that is,
Dieu benisse votre honor," that would infallibly have sent him to the
provost-marshal had he been on our side of the river.

Whilst this parley was going on, three officers on horseback, on the
French side, appeared at some little distance, and stopped as if eying
us, when one of them left the other two, and rode close up to us who
were by the stream. "Look, look!" says the Royal Cravat, with great
agitation, "pas lui, that's he; not him, l'autre," and pointed to the
distant officer on a chestnut horse, with a cuirass shining in the sun,
and over it a broad blue ribbon.

"Please to take Mr. Hamilton's services to my Lord Marlborough--my Lord
Duke," says the gentleman in English: and, looking to see that the party
were not hostilely disposed, he added, with a smile, "There's a friend
of yours, gentlemen, yonder; he bids me to say that he saw some of your
faces on the 11th of September last year."

As the gentleman spoke, the other two officers rode up, and came quite
close. We knew at once who it was. It was the King, then two-and-twenty
years old, tall and slim, with deep brown eyes, that looked melancholy,
though his lips wore a smile. We took off our hats and saluted him. No
man, sure, could see for the first time, without emotion, the youthful
inheritor of so much fame and misfortune. It seemed to Mr. Esmond that
the Prince was not unlike young Castlewood, whose age and figure he
resembled. The Chevalier de St. George acknowledged the salute, and
looked at us hard. Even the idlers on our side of the river set up a
hurrah. As for the Royal Cravat, he ran to the Prince's stirrup, knelt
down and kissed his boot, and bawled and looked a hundred ejaculations
and blessings. The prince bade the aide-de-camp give him a piece of
money; and when the party saluting us had ridden away, Cravat spat upon
the piece of gold by way of benediction, and swaggered away, pouching
his coin and twirling his honest carroty moustache.

The officer in whose company Esmond was, the same little captain of
Handyside's regiment, Mr. Sterne, who had proposed the garden at Lille,
when my Lord Mohun and Esmond had their affair, was an Irishman too, and
as brave a little soul as ever wore a sword. "Bedad," says Roger Sterne,
"that long fellow spoke French so beautiful that I shouldn't have known
he wasn't a foreigner, till he broke out with his hulla-ballooing, and
only an Irish calf can bellow like that." And Roger made another remark
in his wild way, in which there was sense as well as absurdity--"If that
young gentleman," says he, "would but ride over to our camp, instead of
Villars's, toss up his hat and say, 'Here am I, the King, who'll follow
me?' by the Lord, Esmond, the whole army would rise and carry him home
again, and beat Villars, and take Paris by the way."

The news of the Prince's visit was all through the camp quickly, and
scores of ours went down in hopes to see him. Major Hamilton, whom
we had talked with, sent back by a trumpet several silver pieces for
officers with us. Mr. Esmond received one of these; and that medal, and
a recompense not uncommon amongst Princes, were the only rewards he
ever had from a Royal person, whom he endeavored not very long after to
serve.

Esmond quitted the army almost immediately after this, following his
general home; and, indeed, being advised to travel in the fine weather
and attempt to take no further part in the campaign. But he heard from
the army, that of the many who crowded to see the Chevalier de St.
George, Frank Castlewood had made himself most conspicuous: my Lord
Viscount riding across the little stream bareheaded to where the Prince
was, and dismounting and kneeling before him to do him homage. Some
said that the Prince had actually knighted him, but my lord denied
that statement, though he acknowledged the rest of the story, and
said:--"From having been out of favor with Corporal John," as he called
the Duke, "before his Grace warned him not to commit those follies, and
smiled on him cordially ever after."

"And he was so kind to me," Frank writ, "that I thought I would put in a
good word for Master Harry, but when I mentioned your name he looked as
black as thunder, and said he had never heard of you."




CHAPTER II.

I GO HOME, AND HARP ON THE OLD STRING.


After quitting Mons and the army, and as he was waiting for a packet
at Ostend, Esmond had a letter from his young kinsman Castlewood at
Bruxelles, conveying intelligence whereof Frank besought him to be the
bearer to London, and which caused Colonel Esmond no small anxiety.

The young scapegrace, being one-and-twenty years old, and being anxious
to sow his "wild otes," as he wrote, had married Mademoiselle de
Wertheim, daughter of Count de Wertheim, Chamberlain to the Emperor,
and having a post in the Household of the Governor of the Netherlands.
"P.S.," the young gentleman wrote: "Clotilda is OLDER THAN ME, which
perhaps may be objected to her: but I am so OLD A RAIK that the age
makes no difference, and I am DETERMINED to reform. We were married at
St. Gudule, by Father Holt. She is heart and soul for the GOOD CAUSE.
And here the cry is Vif-le-Roy, which my mother will JOIN IN, and Trix
TOO. Break this news to 'em gently: and tell Mr. Finch, my agent, to
press the people for their rents, and send me the RYNO anyhow. Clotilda
sings, and plays on the Spinet BEAUTIFULLY. She is a fair beauty. And
if it's a son, you shall stand GODFATHER. I'm going to leave the army,
having had ENUF OF SOLDERING; and my Lord Duke RECOMMENDS me. I shall
pass the winter here: and stop at least until Clo's lying in. I call
her OLD CLO, but nobody else shall. She is the cleverest woman in all
Bruxelles: understanding painting, music, poetry, and perfect at COOKERY
AND PUDDENS. I borded with the Count, that's how I came to know her.
There are four Counts her brothers. One an Abbey--three with the
Prince's army. They have a lawsuit for AN IMMENCE FORTUNE: but are now
in a PORE WAY. Break this to mother, who'll take anything from YOU.
And write, and bid Finch write AMEDIATELY. Hostel de l'Aigle Noire,
Bruxelles, Flanders."

So Frank had married a Roman Catholic lady, and an heir was expected,
and Mr. Esmond was to carry this intelligence to his mistress at London.
'Twas a difficult embassy; and the Colonel felt not a little tremor as
he neared the capital.

He reached his inn late, and sent a messenger to Kensington to announce
his arrival and visit the next morning. The messenger brought back news
that the Court was at Windsor, and the fair Beatrix absent and engaged
in her duties there. Only Esmond's mistress remained in her house at
Kensington. She appeared in court but once in the year; Beatrix was
quite the mistress and ruler of the little mansion, inviting the company
thither, and engaging in every conceivable frolic of town pleasure.
Whilst her mother, acting as the young lady's protectress and elder
sister, pursued her own path, which was quite modest and secluded.

As soon as ever Esmond was dressed (and he had been awake long before
the town), he took a coach for Kensington, and reached it so early that
he met his dear mistress coming home from morning prayers. She carried
her prayer-book, never allowing a footman to bear it, as everybody else
did: and it was by this simple sign Esmond knew what her occupation had
been. He called to the coachman to stop, and jumped out as she looked
towards him. She wore her hood as usual, and she turned quite pale when
she saw him. To feel that kind little hand near to his heart seemed
to give him strength. They were soon at the door of her ladyship's
house--and within it.

With a sweet sad smile she took his hand and kissed it.

"How ill you have been: how weak you look, my dear Henry," she said.

'Tis certain the Colonel did look like a ghost, except that ghosts do
not look very happy, 'tis said. Esmond always felt so on returning to
her after absence, indeed whenever he looked in her sweet kind face.

"I am come back to be nursed by my family," says he. "If Frank had
not taken care of me after my wound, very likely I should have gone
altogether."

"Poor Frank, good Frank!" says his mother. "You'll always be kind to
him, my lord," she went on. "The poor child never knew he was doing you
a wrong."

"My lord!" cries out Colonel Esmond. "What do you mean, dear lady?"

"I am no lady," says she; "I am Rachel Esmond, Francis Esmond's widow,
my lord. I cannot bear that title. Would we never had taken it from him
who has it now. But we did all in our power, Henry: we did all in our
power; and my lord and I--that is--"

"Who told you this tale, dearest lady?" asked the Colonel.

"Have you not had the letter I writ you? I writ to you at Mons directly
I heard it," says Lady Esmond.

"And from whom?" again asked Colonel Esmond--and his mistress then told
him that on her death-bed the Dowager Countess, sending for her, had
presented her with this dismal secret as a legacy. "'Twas very malicious
of the Dowager," Lady Esmond said, "to have had it so long, and to
have kept the truth from me." "Cousin Rachel," she said,--and Esmond's
mistress could not forbear smiling as she told the story--"Cousin
Rachel," cries the Dowager, "I have sent for you, as the doctors say
I may go off any day in this dysentery; and to ease my conscience of a
great load that has been on it. You always have been a poor creature and
unfit for great honor, and what I have to say won't, therefore, affect
you so much. You must know, Cousin Rachel, that I have left my house,
plate, and furniture, three thousand pounds in money, and my diamonds
that my late revered Saint and Sovereign, King James, presented me with,
to my Lord Viscount Castlewood."

"To my Frank?" says Lady Castlewood; "I was in hopes--"

To Viscount Castlewood, my dear; Viscount Castlewood and Baron Esmond
of Shandon in the Kingdom of Ireland, Earl and Marquis of Esmond under
patent of his Majesty King James the Second, conferred upon my husband
the late Marquis--for I am Marchioness of Esmond before God and man."

"And have you left poor Harry nothing, dear Marchioness?" asks Lady
Castlewood (she hath told me the story completely since with her quiet
arch way; the most charming any woman ever had: and I set down the
narrative here at length, so as to have done with it). "And have you
left poor Harry nothing?" asks my dear lady: "for you know, Henry," she
says with her sweet smile, "I used always to pity Esau--and I think I am
on his side--though papa tried very hard to convince me the other way."

"Poor Harry!" says the old lady. "So you want something left to poor
Harry: he,--he! (reach me the drops, cousin). Well, then, my dear, since
you want poor Harry to have a fortune, you must understand that ever
since the year 1691, a week after the battle of the Boyne, where the
Prince of Orange defeated his royal sovereign and father, for which
crime he is now suffering in flames (ugh! ugh!) Henry Esmond hath been
Marquis of Esmond and Earl of Castlewood in the United Kingdom, and
Baron and Viscount Castlewood of Shandon in Ireland, and a Baronet--and
his eldest son will be, by courtesy, styled Earl of Castlewood--he! he!
What do you think of that, my dear?"

"Gracious mercy! how long have you known this?" cries the other lady
(thinking perhaps that the old Marchioness was wandering in her wits).

"My husband, before he was converted, was a wicked wretch," the sick
sinner continued. "When he was in the Low Countries he seduced a
weaver's daughter; and added to his wickedness by marrying her. And then
he came to this country and married me--a poor girl--a poor innocent
young thing--I say,"--"though she was past forty, you know, Harry, when
she married: and as for being innocent"--"Well," she went on, "I knew
nothing of my lord's wickedness for three years after our marriage, and
after the burial of our poor little boy I had it done over again, my
dear: I had myself married by Father Holt in Castlewood chapel, as soon
as ever I heard the creature was dead--and having a great illness then,
arising from another sad disappointment I had, the priest came and told
me that my lord had a son before our marriage, and that the child was at
nurse in England; and I consented to let the brat be brought home, and a
queer little melancholy child it was when it came.

"Our intention was to make a priest of him: and he was bred for this,
until you perverted him from it, you wicked woman. And I had again hopes
of giving an heir to my lord, when he was called away upon the King's
business, and died fighting gloriously at the Boyne water.

"Should I be disappointed--I owed your husband no love, my dear, for he
had jilted me in the most scandalous way and I thought there would be
time to declare the little weaver's son for the true heir. But I was
carried off to prison, where your husband was so kind to me--urging
all his friends to obtain my release, and using all his credit in my
favor--that I relented towards him, especially as my director counselled
me to be silent; and that it was for the good of the King's service
that the title of our family should continue with your husband the late
viscount, whereby his fidelity would be always secured to the King. And
a proof of this is, that a year before your husband's death, when he
thought of taking a place under the Prince of Orange, Mr. Holt went to
him, and told him what the state of the matter was, and obliged him to
raise a large sum for his Majesty; and engaged him in the true cause so
heartily, that we were sure of his support on any day when it should be
considered advisable to attack the usurper. Then his sudden death came;
and there was a thought of declaring the truth. But 'twas determined
to be best for the King's service to let the title still go with the
younger branch; and there's no sacrifice a Castlewood wouldn't make for
that cause, my dear.

"As for Colonel Esmond, he knew the truth already." ("And then, Harry,"
my mistress said, "she told me of what had happened at my dear husband's
death-bed"). "He doth not intend to take the title, though it belongs to
him. But it eases my conscience that you should know the truth, my dear.
And your son is lawfully Viscount Castlewood so long as his cousin doth
not claim the rank."

This was the substance of the Dowager's revelation. Dean Atterbury had
knowledge of it, Lady Castlewood said, and Esmond very well knows how:
that divine being the clergyman for whom the late lord had sent on his
death-bed: and when Lady Castlewood would instantly have written to her
son, and conveyed the truth to him, the Dean's advice was that a letter
should be writ to Colonel Esmond rather; that the matter should be
submitted to his decision, by which alone the rest of the family were
bound to abide.

"And can my dearest lady doubt what that will be?" says the Colonel.

"It rests with you, Harry, as the head of our house."

"It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord's bedside," says
Colonel Esmond. "The children must know nothing of this. Frank and his
heirs after him must bear our name. 'Tis his rightfully; I have not even
a proof of that marriage of my father and mother, though my poor lord,
on his death-bed, told me that Father Holt had brought such a proof to
Castlewood. I would not seek it when I was abroad. I went and looked at
my poor mother's grave in her convent. What matter to her now? No court
of law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive my Lord Viscount and
set me up. I am the head of the house, dear lady; but Frank is Viscount
of Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would turn monk, or
disappear in America."

As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been
willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond
creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his
hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such as could not
but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that God
had given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by
some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to bestow benefits
or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred
upon a man--and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or
vanity, could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to
confer some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?

"Dearest saint," says he--"purest soul, that has had so much to suffer,
that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. 'Tis
for me to kneel, not for you: 'tis for me to be thankful that I can make
you happy. Hath my life any other aim? Blessed be God that I can serve
you! What pleasure, think you, could all the world give me compared to
that?"

"Don't raise me," she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who would have
lifted her. "Let me kneel--let me kneel, and--and--worship you."

Before such a partial judge as Esmond's dear mistress owned herself to
be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given in his favor;
and accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling her to the
news whereof he was bearer, of her son's marriage to a foreign lady,
Papist though she was. Lady Castlewood never could be brought to think
so ill of that religion as other people in England thought of it: she
held that ours was undoubtedly a branch of the Catholic church, but that
the Roman was one of the main stems on which, no doubt, many errors had
been grafted (she was, for a woman, extraordinarily well versed in this
controversy, having acted, as a girl, as secretary to her father, the
late dean, and written many of his sermons, under his dictation); and if
Frank had chosen to marry a lady of the church of south Europe, as she
would call the Roman communion, there was no need why she should not
welcome her as a daughter-in-law: and accordingly she wrote to her new
daughter a very pretty, touching letter (as Esmond thought, who had
cognizance of it before it went), in which the only hint of reproof was
a gentle remonstrance that her son had not written to herself, to ask
a fond mother's blessing for that step which he was about taking.
"Castlewood knew very well," so she wrote to her son, "that she never
denied him anything in her power to give, much less would she think of
opposing a marriage that was to make his happiness, as she trusted, and
keep him out of wild courses, which had alarmed her a good deal:" and
she besought him to come quickly to England, to settle down in his
family house of Castlewood ("It is his family house," says she, to
Colonel Esmond, "though only his own house by your forbearance") and to
receive the accompt of her stewardship during his ten years' minority.
By care and frugality, she had got the estate into a better condition
than ever it had been since the Parliamentary wars; and my lord was now
master of a pretty, small income, not encumbered of debts, as it
had been, during his father's ruinous time. "But in saving my son's
fortune," says she, "I fear I have lost a great part of my hold on him."
And, indeed, this was the case: her ladyship's daughter complaining that
their mother did all for Frank, and nothing for her; and Frank himself
being dissatisfied at the narrow, simple way of his mother's living at
Walcote, where he had been brought up more like a poor parson's son
than a young nobleman that was to make a figure in the world. 'Twas this
mistake in his early training, very likely, that set him so eager upon
pleasure when he had it in his power; nor is he the first lad that has
been spoiled by the over-careful fondness of women. No training is so
useful for children, great or small, as the company of their betters in
rank or natural parts; in whose society they lose the overweening sense
of their own importance, which stay-at-home people very commonly learn.