The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

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She appeared at the Hexton Assembly, bringing her lord after her,
scaring the country folks with the splendor of her diamonds, which she
always wore in public. They said she wore them in private, too, and
slept with them round her neck; though the writer can pledge his word
that this was a calumny. "If she were to take them off," my Lady Sark
said, "Tom Esmond, her husband, would run away with them and pawn them."
'Twas another calumny. My Lady Sark was also an exile from Court, and
there had been war between the two ladies before.

The village people began to be reconciled presently to their lady, who
was generous and kind, though fantastic and haughty, in her ways; and
whose praises Dr. Tusher, the Vicar, sounded loudly amongst his flock.
As for my lord, he gave no great trouble, being considered scarce more
than an appendage to my lady, who, as daughter of the old lords of
Castlewood, and possessor of vast wealth, as the country folks said
(though indeed nine-tenths of it existed but in rumor), was looked upon
as the real queen of the Castle, and mistress of all it contained.




CHAPTER III.

WHITHER IN THE TIME OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT, I HAD PRECEDED HIM AS
PAGE TO ISABELLA.


Coming up to London again some short time after this retreat, the Lord
Castlewood despatched a retainer of his to a little Cottage in the
village of Ealing, near to London, where for some time had dwelt an
old French refugee, by name Mr. Pastoureau, one of those whom the
persecution of the Huguenots by the French king had brought over to this
country. With this old man lived a little lad, who went by the name of
Henry Thomas. He remembered to have lived in another place a short time
before, near to London too, amongst looms and spinning-wheels, and a
great deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of
Frenchmen.

There he had a dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt. She
used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it was
homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau,
Bon Papa Pastoureau's new wife, who came to live with him after aunt
went away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived
Uncle George, who was a weaver too, but used to tell Harry that he was
a little gentleman, and that his father was a captain, and his mother an
angel.

When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was
embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and say, "Angel! she belongs to the
Babylonish scarlet woman." Bon Papa was always talking of the scarlet
woman. He had a little room where he always used to preach and
sing hymns out of his great old nose. Little Harry did not like the
preaching; he liked better the fine stories which aunt used to tell him.
Bon Papa's wife never told him pretty stories; she quarrelled with Uncle
George, and he went away.

After this, Harry's Bon Papa and his wife and two children of her own
that she brought with her, came to live at Ealing. The new wife gave her
children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not
why. Besides blows, he got ill names from her, which need not be set
down here, for the sake of old Mr. Pastoureau, who was still kind
sometimes. The unhappiness of those days is long forgiven, though they
cast a shade of melancholy over the child's youth, which will accompany
him, no doubt, to the end of his days: as those tender twigs are bent
the trees grow afterward; and he, at least, who has suffered as a child,
and is not quite perverted in that early school of unhappiness, learns
to be gentle and long-suffering with little children.

Harry was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback,
with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing.
The noverca, or unjust stepmother, who had neglected him for her own
two children, gave him supper enough the night before he went away, and
plenty in the morning. She did not beat him once, and told the children
to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear
to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have
beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the
rescue with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry's face the day he
went away; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather
when the gentleman in black came for the boy; and old Mr. Pastoureau, as
he gave the child his blessing, scowled over his shoulder at the strange
gentleman, and grumbled out something about Babylon and the scarlet
lady. He was grown quite old, like a child almost. Mrs. Pastoureau
used to wipe his nose as she did to the children. She was a great, big,
handsome young woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought
'twas only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which
the lackey helped him.

He was a Frenchman; his name was Blaise. The child could talk to him in
his own language perfectly well: he knew it better than English indeed,
having lived hitherto chiefly among French people: and being called the
Little Frenchman by other boys on Ealing Green. He soon learnt to speak
English perfectly, and to forget some of his French: children forget
easily. Some earlier and fainter recollections the child had of a
different country; and a town with tall white houses: and a ship. But
these were quite indistinct in the boy's mind, as indeed the memory of
Ealing soon became, at least of much that he suffered there.

The lackey before whom he rode was very lively and voluble, and informed
the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord's chaplain,
Father Holt--that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond--that my
Lord Viscount Castlewood was his parrain--that he was to live at the
great house of Castlewood, in the province of ----shire, where he would
see Madame the Viscountess, who was a grand lady. And so, seated on a
cloth before Blaise's saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to
a fine square called Covent Garden, near to which his patron lodged.

Mr. Holt, the priest, took the child by the hand, and brought him to
this nobleman, a grand languid nobleman in a great cap and flowered
morning-gown, sucking oranges. He patted Harry on the head and gave him
an orange.

"C'est bien ca," he said to the priest after eying the child, and the
gentleman in black shrugged his shoulders.

"Let Blaise take him out for a holiday," and out for a holiday the boy
and the valet went. Harry went jumping along; he was glad enough to go.

He will remember to his life's end the delights of those days. He was
taken to see a play by Monsieur Blaise, in a house a thousand times
greater and finer than the booth at Ealing Fair--and on the next happy
day they took water on the river, and Harry saw London Bridge, with the
houses and booksellers' shops thereon, looking like a street, and the
Tower of London, with the Armor, and the great lions and bears in the
moat--all under company of Monsieur Blaise.

Presently, of an early morning, all the party set forth for the country,
namely, my Lord Viscount and the other gentleman; Monsieur Blaise
and Harry on a pillion behind them, and two or three men with pistols
leading the baggage-horses. And all along the road the Frenchman told
little Harry stories of brigands, which made the child's hair stand
on end, and terrified him; so that at the great gloomy inn on the road
where they lay, he besought to be allowed to sleep in a room with one
of the servants, and was compassionated by Mr. Holt, the gentleman
who travelled with my lord, and who gave the child a little bed in his
chamber.

His artless talk and answers very likely inclined this gentleman in the
boy's favor, for next day Mr. Holt said Harry should ride behind him,
and not with the French lacky; and all along the journey put a thousand
questions to the child--as to his foster-brother and relations at
Ealing; what his old grandfather had taught him; what languages he knew;
whether he could read and write, and sing, and so forth. And Mr. Holt
found that Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages
of French and English very well; and when he asked Harry about singing,
the lad broke out with a hymn to the tune of Dr. Martin Luther, which
set Mr. Holt a-laughing; and even caused his grand parrain in the laced
hat and periwig to laugh too when Holt told him what the child was
singing. For it appeared that Dr. Martin Luther's hymns were not sung in
the churches Mr. Holt preached at.

"You must never sing that song any more: do you hear, little mannikin?"
says my Lord Viscount, holding up a finger.

"But we will try and teach you a better, Harry," Mr. Holt said; and
the child answered, for he was a docile child, and of an affectionate
nature, "That he loved pretty songs, and would try and learn anything
the gentleman would tell him." That day he so pleased the gentlemen by
his talk, that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged
him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the
day before, waited upon him now.

"'Tis well, 'tis well!" said Blaise, that night (in his own language)
when they lay again at an inn. "We are a little lord here; we are a
little lord now: we shall see what we are when we come to Castlewood,
where my lady is."

"When shall we come to Castlewood, Monsieur Blaise?" says Harry.

"Parbleu! my lord does not press himself," Blaise says, with a grin;
and, indeed, it seemed as if his lordship was not in a great hurry, for
he spent three days on that journey which Harry Esmond hath often since
ridden in a dozen hours. For the last two of the days Harry rode with
the priest, who was so kind to him, that the child had grown to be
quite fond and familiar with him by the journey's end, and had scarce
a thought in his little heart which by that time he had not confided to
his new friend.

At length, on the third day, at evening, they came to a village standing
on a green with elms round it, very pretty to look at; and the people
there all took off their hats, and made curtsies to my Lord Viscount,
who bowed to them all languidly; and there was one portly person that
wore a cassock and a broad-leafed hat, who bowed lower than any one--and
with this one both my lord and Mr. Holt had a few words. "This, Harry,
is Castlewood church," says Mr. Holt, "and this is the pillar thereof,
learned Doctor Tusher. Take off your hat, sirrah, and salute Dr.
Tusher!"

"Come up to supper, Doctor," says my lord; at which the Doctor made
another low bow, and the party moved on towards a grand house that
was before them, with many gray towers and vanes on them, and windows
flaming in the sunshine; and a great army of rooks, wheeling over their
heads, made for the woods behind the house, as Harry saw; and Mr. Holt
told him that they lived at Castlewood too.

They came to the house, and passed under an arch into a court-yard, with
a fountain in the centre, where many men came and held my lord's stirrup
as he descended, and paid great respect to Mr. Holt likewise. And the
child thought that the servants looked at him curiously, and smiled to
one another--and he recalled what Blaise had said to him when they were
in London, and Harry had spoken about his godpapa, when the Frenchman
said, "Parbleu, one sees well that my lord is your godfather;"
words whereof the poor lad did not know the meaning then, though he
apprehended the truth in a very short time afterwards, and learned it,
and thought of it with no small feeling of shame.

Taking Harry by the hand as soon as they were both descended from their
horses, Mr. Holt led him across the court, and under a low door to rooms
on a level with the ground; one of which Father Holt said was to be
the boy's chamber, the other on the other side of the passage being the
Father's own; and as soon as the little man's face was washed, and the
Father's own dress arranged, Harry's guide took him once more to the
door by which my lord had entered the hall, and up a stair, and through
an ante-room to my lady's drawing-room--an apartment than which Harry
thought he had never seen anything more grand--no, not in the Tower
of London which he had just visited. Indeed, the chamber was richly
ornamented in the manner of Queen Elizabeth's time, with great stained
windows at either end, and hangings of tapestry, which the sun shining
through the colored glass painted of a thousand lines; and here in
state, by the fire, sat a lady to whom the priest took up Harry, who was
indeed amazed by her appearance.

My Lady Viscountess's face was daubed with white and red up to the eyes,
to which the paint gave an unearthly glare: she had a tower of lace on
her head, under which was a bush of black curls--borrowed curls--so that
no wonder little Harry Esmond was scared when he was first presented to
her--the kind priest acting as master of the ceremonies at that solemn
introduction--and he stared at her with eyes almost as great as her own,
as he had stared at the player woman who acted the wicked tragedy-queen,
when the players came down to Ealing Fair. She sat in a great chair by
the fire-corner; in her lap was a spaniel-dog that barked furiously; on
a little table by her was her ladyship's snuff-box and her sugar-plum
box. She wore a dress of black velvet, and a petticoat of flame-colored
brocade. She had as many rings on her fingers as the old woman of
Banbury Cross; and pretty small feet which she was fond of showing, with
great gold clocks to her stockings, and white pantofles with red heels;
and an odor of musk was shook out of her garments whenever she moved
or quitted the room, leaning on her tortoise-shell stick, little Fury
barking at her heels.

Mrs. Tusher, the parson's wife, was with my lady. She had been
waiting-woman to her ladyship in the late lord's time, and, having her
soul in that business, took naturally to it when the Viscountess of
Castlewood returned to inhabit her father's house.

"I present to your ladyship your kinsman and little page of honor,
Master Henry Esmond," Mr. Holt said, bowing lowly, with a sort of
comical humility. "Make a pretty bow to my lady, Monsieur; and then
another little bow, not so low, to Madame Tusher--the fair priestess of
Castlewood."

"Where I have lived and hope to die, sir," says Madame Tusher, giving a
hard glance at the brat, and then at my lady.

Upon her the boy's whole attention was for a time directed. He could not
keep his great eyes off from her. Since the Empress of Ealing, he had
seen nothing so awful.

"Does my appearance please you, little page?" asked the lady.

"He would be very hard to please if it didn't," cried Madame Tusher.

"Have done, you silly Maria," said Lady Castlewood.

"Where I'm attached, I'm attached, Madame--and I'd die rather than not
say so."

"Je meurs ou je m'attache," Mr. Holt said with a polite grin. "The ivy
says so in the picture, and clings to the oak like a fond parasite as it
is."

"Parricide, sir!" cries Mrs. Tusher.

"Hush, Tusher--you are always bickering with Father Holt," cried my
lady. "Come and kiss my hand, child;" and the oak held out a BRANCH to
little Harry Esmond, who took and dutifully kissed the lean old hand,
upon the gnarled knuckles of which there glittered a hundred rings.

"To kiss that hand would make many a pretty fellow happy!" cried Mrs.
Tusher: on which my lady crying out, "Go, you foolish Tusher!" and
tapping her with her great fan, Tusher ran forward to seize her hand
and kiss it. Fury arose and barked furiously at Tusher; and Father Holt
looked on at this queer scene, with arch, grave glances.

The awe exhibited by the little boy perhaps pleased the lady to whom
this artless flattery was bestowed: for having gone down on his knee (as
Father Holt had directed him, and the mode then was) and performed his
obeisance, she said, "Page Esmond, my groom of the chamber will inform
you what your duties are, when you wait upon my lord and me; and good
Father Holt will instruct you as becomes a gentleman of our name. You
will pay him obedience in everything, and I pray you may grow to be as
learned and as good as your tutor."

The lady seemed to have the greatest reverence for Mr. Holt, and to be
more afraid of him than of anything else in the world. If she was ever
so angry, a word or look from Father Holt made her calm: indeed he had
a vast power of subjecting those who came near him; and, among the rest,
his new pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment
to the good Father, and became his willing slave almost from the first
moment he saw him.

He put his small hand into the Father's as he walked away from his first
presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions in his artless
childish way. "Who is that other woman?" he asked. "She is fat and
round; she is more pretty than my Lady Castlewood."

"She is Madame Tusher, the parson's wife of Castlewood. She has a son of
your age, but bigger than you."

"Why does she like so to kiss my lady's hand. It is not good to kiss."

"Tastes are different, little man. Madame Tusher is attached to my lady,
having been her waiting-woman before she was married, in the old lord's
time. She married Doctor Tusher the chaplain. The English household
divines often marry the waiting-women."

"You will not marry the French woman, will you? I saw her laughing with
Blaise in the buttery."

"I belong to a church that is older and better than the English church,"
Mr. Holt said (making a sign whereof Esmond did not then understand the
meaning, across his breast and forehead); "in our church the clergy do
not marry. You will understand these things better soon."

"Was not Saint Peter the head of your church?--Dr. Rabbits of Ealing
told us so."

The Father said, "Yes, he was."

"But Saint Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday that his
wife's mother lay sick of a fever." On which the Father again laughed,
and said he would understand this too better soon, and talked of other
things, and took away Harry Esmond, and showed him the great old house
which he had come to inhabit.

It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which were
rooks' nests, where the birds at morning and returning home at evening
made a great cawing. At the foot of the hill was a river, with a steep
ancient bridge crossing it; and beyond that a large pleasant green flat,
where the village of Castlewood stood, and stands, with the church in
the midst, the parsonage hard by it, the inn with the blacksmith's forge
beside it, and the sign of the "Three Castles" on the elm. The London
road stretched away towards the rising sun, and to the west were
swelling hills and peaks, behind which many a time Harry Esmond saw the
same sun setting, that he now looks on thousands of miles away across
the great ocean--in a new Castlewood, by another stream, that bears,
like the new country of wandering AEneas, the fond names of the land of
his youth.

The Hall of Castlewood was built with two courts, whereof one only, the
fountain-court, was now inhabited, the other having been battered down
in the Cromwellian wars. In the fountain-court, still in good repair,
was the great hall, near to the kitchen and butteries. A dozen of
living-rooms looking to the north, and communicating with the little
chapel that faced eastwards and the buildings stretching from that to
the main gate, and with the hall (which looked to the west) into the
court now dismantled. This court had been the most magnificent of the
two, until the Protector's cannon tore down one side of it before the
place was taken and stormed. The besiegers entered at the terrace under
the clock-tower, slaying every man of the garrison, and at their head my
lord's brother, Francis Esmond.

The Restoration did not bring enough money to the Lord Castlewood to
restore this ruined part of his house; where were the morning parlors,
above them the long music-gallery, and before which stretched the
garden-terrace, where, however, the flowers grew again which the boots
of the Roundheads had trodden in their assault, and which was restored
without much cost, and only a little care, by both ladies who succeeded
the second viscount in the government of this mansion. Round the
terrace-garden was a low wall with a wicket leading to the wooded height
beyond, that is called Cromwell's Battery to this day.

Young Harry Esmond learned the domestic part of his duty, which was easy
enough, from the groom of her ladyship's chamber: serving the Countess,
as the custom commonly was in his boyhood, as page, waiting at
her chair, bringing her scented water and the silver basin after
dinner--sitting on her carriage-step on state occasions, or on public
days introducing her company to her. This was chiefly of the Catholic
gentry, of whom there were a pretty many in the country and neighboring
city; and who rode not seldom to Castlewood to partake of the
hospitalities there. In the second year of their residence, the company
seemed especially to increase. My lord and my lady were seldom without
visitors, in whose society it was curious to contrast the difference
of behavior between Father Holt, the director of the family, and Doctor
Tusher, the rector of the parish--Mr. Holt moving amongst the very
highest as quite their equal, and as commanding them all; while poor
Doctor Tusher, whose position was indeed a difficult one, having been
chaplain once to the Hall, and still to the Protestant servants there,
seemed more like an usher than an equal, and always rose to go away
after the first course.

Also there came in these times to Father Holt many private visitors,
whom, after a little, Henry Esmond had little difficulty in recognizing
as ecclesiastics of the Father's persuasion, whatever their dresses
(and they adopted all) might be. These were closeted with the Father
constantly, and often came and rode away without paying their devoirs to
my lord and lady--to the lady and lord rather--his lordship being little
more than a cipher in the house, and entirely under his domineering
partner. A little fowling, a little hunting, a great deal of sleep, and
a long dine at cards and table, carried through one day after another
with his lordship. When meetings took place in this second year, which
often would happen with closed doors, the page found my lord's sheet of
paper scribbled over with dogs and horses, and 'twas said he had much
ado to keep himself awake at these councils: the Countess ruling over
them, and he acting as little more than her secretary.

Father Holt began speedily to be so much occupied with these meetings
as rather to neglect the education of the little lad who so gladly put
himself under the kind priest's orders. At first they read much and
regularly, both in Latin and French; the Father not neglecting in
anything to impress his faith upon his pupil, but not forcing him
violently, and treating him with a delicacy and kindness which surprised
and attached the child, always more easily won by these methods than by
any severe exercise of authority. And his delight in their walks was to
tell Harry of the glories of his order, of its martyrs and heroes, of
its Brethren converting the heathen by myriads, traversing the desert,
facing the stake, ruling the courts and councils, or braving the
tortures of kings; so that Harry Esmond thought that to belong to the
Jesuits was the greatest prize of life and bravest end of ambition; the
greatest career here, and in heaven the surest reward; and began to
long for the day, not only when he should enter into the one church
and receive his first communion, but when he might join that wonderful
brotherhood, which was present throughout all the world, and which
numbered the wisest, the bravest, the highest born, the most eloquent of
men among its members. Father Holt bade him keep his views secret,
and to hide them as a great treasure which would escape him if it was
revealed; and, proud of this confidence and secret vested in him,
the lad became fondly attached to the master who initiated him into
a mystery so wonderful and awful. And when little Tom Tusher, his
neighbor, came from school for his holiday, and said how he, too, was
to be bred up for an English priest, and would get what he called
an exhibition from his school, and then a college scholarship and
fellowship, and then a good living--it tasked young Harry Esmond's
powers of reticence not to say to his young companion, "Church!
priesthood! fat living! My dear Tommy, do you call yours a church and
a priesthood? What is a fat living compared to converting a hundred
thousand heathens by a single sermon? What is a scholarship at Trinity
by the side of a crown of martyrdom, with angels awaiting you as your
head is taken off? Could your master at school sail over the Thames on
his gown? Have you statues in your church that can bleed, speak, walk,
and cry? My good Tommy, in dear Father Holt's church these things take
place every day. You know Saint Philip of the Willows appeared to Lord
Castlewood, and caused him to turn to the one true church. No saints
ever come to you." And Harry Esmond, because of his promise to Father
Holt, hiding away these treasures of faith from T. Tusher, delivered
himself of them nevertheless simply to Father Holt; who stroked his
head, smiled at him with his inscrutable look, and told him that he did
well to meditate on these great things, and not to talk of them except
under direction.