The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

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CHAPTER IV.

I AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED TO THAT
RELIGION.--VISCOUNTESS CASTLEWOOD.


Had time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been properly
nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest ere he was a dozen years
older, and might have finished his days a martyr in China or a victim
on Tower Hill: for, in the few months they spent together at Castlewood,
Mr. Holt obtained an entire mastery over the boy's intellect and
affections; and had brought him to think, as indeed Father Holt
thought with all his heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so
desirable, as that which many brethren of his famous order were ready
to undergo. By love, by a brightness of wit and good-humor that charmed
all, by an authority which he knew how to assume, by a mystery and
silence about him which increased the child's reverence for him, he won
Harry's absolute fealty, and would have kept it, doubtless, if schemes
greater and more important than a poor little boy's admission into
orders had not called him away.

After being at home for a few months in tranquillity (if theirs might be
called tranquillity, which was, in truth, a constant bickering), my lord
and lady left the country for London, taking their director with them:
and his little pupil scarce ever shed more bitter tears in his life than
he did for nights after the first parting with his dear friend, as he
lay in the lonely chamber next to that which the Father used to occupy.
He and a few domestics were left as the only tenants of the great house:
and, though Harry sedulously did all the tasks which the Father set him,
he had many hours unoccupied, and read in the library, and bewildered
his little brains with the great books he found there.

After a while, the little lad grew accustomed to the loneliness of the
place; and in after days remembered this part of his life as a
period not unhappy. When the family was at London the whole of the
establishment travelled thither with the exception of the porter--who
was, moreover, brewer, gardener, and woodman--and his wife and children.
These had their lodging in the gate-house hard by, with a door into the
court; and a window looking out on the green was the Chaplain's room;
and next to this a small chamber where Father Holt had his books, and
Harry Esmond his sleeping closet. The side of the house facing the
east had escaped the guns of the Cromwellians, whose battery was on the
height facing the western court; so that this eastern end bore few marks
of demolition, save in the chapel, where the painted windows surviving
Edward the Sixth had been broke by the Commonwealthmen. In Father Holt's
time little Harry Esmond acted as his familiar and faithful little
servitor; beating his clothes, folding his vestments, fetching his
water from the well long before daylight, ready to run anywhere for the
service of his beloved priest. When the Father was away, he locked his
private chamber; but the room where the books were was left to little
Harry, who, but for the society of this gentleman, was little less
solitary when Lord Castlewood was at home.

The French wit saith that a hero is none to his valet-de-chambre, and
it required less quick eyes than my lady's little page was naturally
endowed with, to see that she had many qualities by no means heroic,
however much Mrs. Tusher might flatter and coax her. When Father Holt
was not by, who exercised an entire authority over the pair, my lord
and my lady quarrelled and abused each other so as to make the servants
laugh, and to frighten the little page on duty. The poor boy trembled
before his mistress, who called him by a hundred ugly names, who made
nothing of boxing his ears, and tilting the silver basin in his face
which it was his business to present to her after dinner. She hath
repaired, by subsequent kindness to him, these severities, which it must
be owned made his childhood very unhappy. She was but unhappy herself at
this time, poor soul! and I suppose made her dependants lead her own sad
life. I think my lord was as much afraid of her as her page was, and the
only person of the household who mastered her was Mr. Holt. Harry was
only too glad when the Father dined at table, and to slink away and
prattle with him afterwards, or read with him, or walk with him.
Luckily my Lady Viscountess did not rise till noon. Heaven help the poor
waiting-woman who had charge of her toilet! I have often seen the poor
wretch come out with red eyes from the closet where those long and
mysterious rites of her ladyship's dress were performed, and the
backgammon-box locked up with a rap on Mrs. Tusher's fingers when she
played ill, or the game was going the wrong way.

Blessed be the king who introduced cards, and the kind inventors
of piquet and cribbage, for they employed six hours at least of her
ladyship's day, during which her family was pretty easy. Without this
occupation my lady frequently declared she should die. Her dependants
one after another relieved guard--'twas rather a dangerous post to play
with her ladyship--and took the cards turn about. Mr. Holt would sit
with her at piquet during hours together, at which time she behaved
herself properly; and as for Dr. Tusher, I believe he would have left a
parishioner's dying bed, if summoned to play a rubber with his patroness
at Castlewood. Sometimes, when they were pretty comfortable together,
my lord took a hand. Besides these my lady had her faithful poor Tusher,
and one, two, three gentlewomen whom Harry Esmond could recollect in
his time. They could not bear that genteel service very long; one after
another tried and failed at it. These and the housekeeper, and little
Harry Esmond, had a table of their own. Poor ladies their life was far
harder than the page's. He was sound asleep, tucked up in his little
bed, whilst they were sitting by her ladyship reading her to sleep, with
the "News Letter" or the "Grand Cyrus." My lady used to have boxes of
new plays from London, and Harry was forbidden, under the pain of a
whipping, to look into them. I am afraid he deserved the penalty pretty
often, and got it sometimes. Father Holt applied it twice or thrice,
when he caught the young scapegrace with a delightful wicked comedy of
Mr. Shadwell's or Mr. Wycherley's under his pillow.

These, when he took any, were my lord's favorite reading. But he
was averse to much study, and, as his little page fancied, to much
occupation of any sort.

It always seemed to young Harry Esmond that my lord treated him with
more kindness when his lady was not present, and Lord Castlewood would
take the lad sometimes on his little journeys a-hunting or a-birding;
he loved to play at cards and tric-trac with him, which games the boy
learned to pleasure his lord: and was growing to like him better daily,
showing a special pleasure if Father Holt gave a good report of him,
patting him on the head, and promising that he would provide for the
boy. However, in my lady's presence, my lord showed no such marks of
kindness, and affected to treat the lad roughly, and rebuked him sharply
for little faults, for which he in a manner asked pardon of young Esmond
when they were private, saying if he did not speak roughly, she would,
and his tongue was not such a bad one as his lady's--a point whereof the
boy, young as he was, was very well assured.

Great public events were happening all this while, of which the simple
young page took little count. But one day, riding into the neighboring
town on the step of my lady's coach, his lordship and she and Father
Holt being inside, a great mob of people came hooting and jeering round
the coach, bawling out "The Bishops for ever!" "Down with the Pope!" "No
Popery! no Popery! Jezebel, Jezebel!" so that my lord began to laugh,
my lady's eyes to roll with anger, for she was as bold as a lioness,
and feared nobody; whilst Mr. Holt, as Esmond saw from his place on the
step, sank back with rather an alarmed face, crying out to her ladyship,
"For God's sake, madam, do not speak or look out of window; sit still."
But she did not obey this prudent injunction of the Father; she thrust
her head out of the coach window, and screamed out to the coachman,
"Flog your way through them, the brutes, James, and use your whip!"

The mob answered with a roaring jeer of laughter, and fresh cries of
"Jezebel! Jezebel!" My lord only laughed the more: he was a languid
gentleman: nothing seemed to excite him commonly, though I have seen
him cheer and halloo the hounds very briskly, and his face (which was
generally very yellow and calm) grow quite red and cheerful during a
burst over the Downs after a hare, and laugh, and swear, and huzzah at a
cockfight, of which sport he was very fond. And now, when the mob began
to hoot his lady, he laughed with something of a mischievous look, as
though he expected sport, and thought that she and they were a match.

James the coachman was more afraid of his mistress than the mob,
probably, for he whipped on his horses as he was bidden, and the
post-boy that rode with the first pair (my lady always rode with her
coach-and-six,) gave a cut of his thong over the shoulders of one fellow
who put his hand out towards the leading horse's rein.

It was a market-day, and the country-people were all assembled with
their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no
sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a
great cabbage came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which
my lord laughed more, for it knocked my lady's fan out of her hand, and
plumped into Father Holt's stomach. Then came a shower of carrots and
potatoes.

"For Heaven's sake be still!" says Mr. Holt; "we are not ten paces from
the 'Bell' archway, where they can shut the gates on us, and keep out
this canaille."

The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow in the
crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which the poor
little wretch set up a shout; the man laughed, a great big saddler's
apprentice of the town. "Ah! you d--- little yelling Popish bastard,"
he said, and stooped to pick up another; the crowd had gathered quite
between the horses and the inn door by this time, and the coach was
brought to a dead stand-still. My lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of
the door on his side of the coach, squeezing little Harry behind it; had
hold of the potato-thrower's collar in an instant, and the next moment
the brute's heels were in the air, and he fell on the stones with a
thump.

"You hulking coward!" says he; "you pack of screaming blackguards! how
dare you attack children, and insult women? Fling another shot at that
carriage, you sneaking pigskin cobbler, and by the Lord I'll send my
rapier through you!"

Some of the mob cried, "Huzzah, my lord!" for they knew him, and
the saddler's man was a known bruiser, near twice as big as my lord
Viscount.

"Make way there," says he (he spoke in a high shrill voice, but with
a great air of authority). "Make way, and let her ladyship's carriage
pass." The men that were between the coach and the gate of the "Bell"
actually did make way, and the horses went in, my lord walking after
them with his hat on his head.

As he was going in at the gate, through which the coach had just rolled,
another cry begins, of "No Popery--no Papists!" My lord turns round and
faces them once more.

"God save the King!" says he at the highest pitch of his voice. "Who
dares abuse the King's religion? You, you d--d psalm-singing cobbler,
as sure as I'm a magistrate of this county I'll commit you!" The fellow
shrank back, and my lord retreated with all the honors of the day.
But when the little flurry caused by the scene was over, and the flush
passed off his face, he relapsed into his usual languor, trifled with
his little dog, and yawned when my lady spoke to him.

This mob was one of many thousands that were going about the country at
that time, huzzahing for the acquittal of the seven bishops who had been
tried just then, and about whom little Harry Esmond at that time knew
scarce anything. It was Assizes at Hexton, and there was a great meeting
of the gentry at the "Bell;" and my lord's people had their new liveries
on, and Harry a little suit of blue and silver, which he wore upon
occasions of state; and the gentlefolks came round and talked to my
lord: and a judge in a red gown, who seemed a very great personage,
especially complimented him and my lady, who was mighty grand. Harry
remembers her train borne up by her gentlewoman. There was an assembly
and ball at the great room at the "Bell," and other young gentlemen of
the county families looked on as he did. One of them jeered him for his
black eye, which was swelled by the potato, and another called him a
bastard, on which he and Harry fell to fisticuffs. My lord's cousin,
Colonel Esmond of Walcote, was there, and separated the two lads--a
great tall gentleman, with a handsome good-natured face. The boy did not
know how nearly in after-life he should be allied to Colonel Esmond, and
how much kindness he should have to owe him.

There was little love between the two families. My lady used not to
spare Colonel Esmond in talking of him, for reasons which have been
hinted already; but about which, at his tender age, Henry Esmond could
be expected to know nothing.

Very soon afterwards, my lord and lady went to London with Mr. Holt,
leaving, however, the page behind them. The little man had the great
house of Castlewood to himself; or between him and the housekeeper, Mrs.
Worksop, an old lady who was a kinswoman of the family in some distant
way, and a Protestant, but a staunch Tory and king's-man, as all the
Esmonds were. He used to go to school to Dr. Tusher when he was at home,
though the Doctor was much occupied too. There was a great stir and
commotion everywhere, even in the little quiet village of Castlewood,
whither a party of people came from the town, who would have broken
Castlewood Chapel windows, but the village people turned out, and even
old Sieveright, the republican blacksmith, along with them: for my
lady, though she was a Papist, and had many odd ways, was kind to the
tenantry, and there was always a plenty of beef, and blankets, and
medicine for the poor at Castlewood Hall.

A kingdom was changing hands whilst my lord and lady were away. King
James was flying, the Dutchmen were coming; awful stories about them and
the Prince of Orange used old Mrs. Worksop to tell to the idle little
page.

He liked the solitude of the great house very well; he had all the
play-books to read, and no Father Holt to whip him, and a hundred
childish pursuits and pastimes, without doors and within, which made
this time very pleasant.




CHAPTER V.

MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE RESTORATION OF KING JAMES II.


Not having been able to sleep, for thinking of some lines for eels which
he had placed the night before, the lad was lying in his little bed,
waiting for the hour when the gate would be open, and he and his
comrade, John Lockwood, the porter's son, might go to the pond and see
what fortune had brought them. At daybreak John was to awaken him, but
his own eagerness for the sport had served as a reveillez long since--so
long, that it seemed to him as if the day never would come.

It might have been four o'clock when he heard the door of the opposite
chamber, the Chaplain's room, open, and the voice of a man coughing in
the passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for certain it was a robber, or
hoping perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging open his own door, saw before
him the Chaplain's door open, and a light inside, and a figure standing
in the doorway, in the midst of a great smoke which issued from the
room.

"Who's there?" cried out the boy, who was of a good spirit.

"Silentium!" whispered the other; "'tis I, my boy!" and, holding his
hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognizing his master and friend,
Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the Chaplain's room that
looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke came from a great
flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the
Chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad,
who was charmed to see his tutor, the Father continued the burning of
his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantel-piece wall,
which Harry had never seen before.

Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad's attention fixed at once on this
hole. "That is right, Harry," he said; "faithful little famuli, see all
and say nothing. You are faithful, I know."

"I know I would go to the stake for you," said Harry.

"I don't want your head," said the Father, patting it kindly; "all you
have to do is to hold your tongue. Let us burn these papers, and say
nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them?"

Harry Esmond blushed, and held down his head; he HAD looked as the fact
was, and without thinking, at the paper before him; and though he had
seen it, could not understand a word of it, the letters being quite
clear enough, but quite without meaning. They burned the papers, beating
down the ashes in a brazier, so that scarce any traces of them remained.

Harry had been accustomed to see Father Holt in more dresses than one;
it not being safe, or worth the danger, for Popish ecclesiastics to wear
their proper dress; and he was, in consequence, in no wise astonished
that the priest should now appear before him in a riding-dress, with
large buff leather boots, and a feather to his hat, plain, but such as
gentlemen wore.

"You know the secret of the cupboard," said he, laughing, "and must be
prepared for other mysteries;" and he opened--but not a secret cupboard
this time--only a wardrobe, which he usually kept locked, and from which
he now took out two or three dresses and perruques of different colors,
and a couple of swords of a pretty make (Father Holt was an expert
practitioner with the small-sword, and every day, whilst he was at home,
he and his pupil practised this exercise, in which the lad became a very
great proficient), a military coat and cloak, and a farmer's smock,
and placed them in the large hole over the mantel-piece from which the
papers had been taken.

"If they miss the cupboard," he said, "they will not find these; if
they find them, they'll tell no tales, except that Father Holt wore more
suits of clothes than one. All Jesuits do. You know what deceivers we
are, Harry."

Harry was alarmed at the notion that his friend was about to leave him;
but "No," the priest said, "I may very likely come back with my lord
in a few days. We are to be tolerated; we are not to be persecuted. But
they may take a fancy to pay a visit at Castlewood ere our return; and,
as gentlemen of my cloth are suspected, they might choose to examine
my papers, which concern nobody--at least not them." And to this day,
whether the papers in cipher related to politics, or to the affairs of
that mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil,
Harry Esmond, remains in entire ignorance.

The rest of his goods, his small wardrobe, &c. Holt left untouched on
his shelves and in his cupboard, taking down--with a laugh, however--and
flinging into the brazier, where he only half burned them, some
theological treatises which he had been writing against the English
divines. "And now," said he, "Henry, my son, you may testify, with a
safe conscience, that you saw me burning Latin sermons the last time I
was here before I went away to London; and it will be daybreak directly,
and I must be away before Lockwood is stirring."

"Will not Lockwood let you out, sir?" Esmond asked. Holt laughed; he
was never more gay or good-humored than when in the midst of action or
danger.

"Lockwood knows nothing of my being here, mind you," he said; "nor would
you, you little wretch! had you slept better. You must forget that I
have been here; and now farewell. Close the door, and go to your own
room, and don't come out till--stay, why should you not know one secret
more? I know you will never betray me."

In the Chaplain's room were two windows; the one looking into the court
facing westwards to the fountain; the other, a small casement strongly
barred, and looking on to the green in front of the Hall. This window
was too high to reach from the ground; but, mounting on a buffet which
stood beneath it, Father Holt showed me how, by pressing on the base
of the window, the whole framework of lead, glass, and iron stanchions
descended into a cavity worked below, from which it could be drawn and
restored to its usual place from without; a broken pane being purposely
open to admit the hand which was to work upon the spring of the machine.

"When I am gone," Father Holt said, "you may push away the buffet, so
that no one may fancy that an exit has been made that way; lock the
door; place the key--where shall we put the key?--under 'Chrysostom' on
the book-shelf; and if any ask for it, say I keep it there, and told you
where to find it, if you had need to go to my room. The descent is easy
down the wall into the ditch; and so, once more farewell, until I see
thee again, my dear son." And with this the intrepid Father mounted
the buffet with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window,
lifting up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only
leaving room for Harry Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his hand
before the casement closed, the bars fixing as firmly as ever,
seemingly, in the stone arch overhead. When Father Holt next arrived at
Castlewood, it was by the public gate on horseback; and he never so much
as alluded to the existence of the private issue to Harry, except when
he had need of a private messenger from within, for which end, no doubt,
he had instructed his young pupil in the means of quitting the Hall.

Esmond, young as he was, would have died sooner than betray his friend
and master, as Mr. Holt well knew; for he had tried the boy more than
once, putting temptations in his way, to see whether he would yield to
them and confess afterwards, or whether he would resist them, as he did
sometimes, or whether he would lie, which he never did. Holt instructing
the boy on this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie,
as it certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a
negation--and therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice
or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to
either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as
lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance
(says he), suppose a good citizen, who had seen his Majesty take refuge
there, had been asked, "Is King Charles up that oak-tree?" his duty
would have been not to say, Yes--so that the Cromwellians should seize
the king and murder him like his father--but No; his Majesty being
private in the tree, and therefore not to be seen there by loyal
eyes: all which instruction, in religion and morals, as well as in the
rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy took eagerly and with
gratitude from his tutor. When, then, Holt was gone, and told Harry not
to see him, it was as if he had never been. And he had this answer pat
when he came to be questioned a few days after.

The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond learned from
seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the roads were
muddy, and he never was known to wear his silk, only his stuff one,
a-horseback), with a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and
Nahum, his clerk, ornamented with a like decoration. The Doctor was
walking up and down in front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw
him, and heard him say he was going to pay his duty to his Highness
the Prince, as he mounted his pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The
village people had orange cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith's
laughing daughter pinned one into Harry's old hat, which he tore out
indignantly when they bade him to cry "God save the Prince of Orange and
the Protestant religion!" but the people only laughed, for they liked
the boy in the village, where his solitary condition moved the general
pity, and where he found friendly welcomes and faces in many houses.
Father Holt had many friends there too, for he not only would fight the
blacksmith at theology, never losing his temper, but laughing the whole
time in his pleasant way; but he cured him of an ague with quinquina,
and was always ready with a kind word for any man that asked it, so that
they said in the village 'twas a pity the two were Papists.

The Director and the Vicar of Castlewood agreed very well; indeed, the
former was a perfectly-bred gentleman, and it was the latter's business
to agree with everybody. Doctor Tusher and the lady's-maid, his spouse,
had a boy who was about the age of little Esmond; and there was such a
friendship between the lads, as propinquity and tolerable kindness and
good-humor on either side would be pretty sure to occasion. Tom Tusher
was sent off early, however, to a school in London, whither his father
took him and a volume of sermons, in the first year of the reign of King
James; and Tom returned but once, a year afterwards, to Castlewood for
many years of his scholastic and collegiate life. Thus there was less
danger to Tom of a perversion of his faith by the Director, who scarce
ever saw him, than there was to Harry, who constantly was in the Vicar's
company; but as long as Harry's religion was his Majesty's, and my
lord's, and my lady's, the Doctor said gravely, it should not be for
him to disturb or disquiet him: it was far from him to say that his
Majesty's Church was not a branch of the Catholic Church; upon which
Father Holt used, according to his custom, to laugh, and say that the
Holy Church throughout all the world, and the noble Army of Martyrs,
were very much obliged to the Doctor.