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 [pg 040] many brethren of his famous order were ready to undergo. By love, by a brightness of wit and good humour 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 Commonwealth men. 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, [pg 041] 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 [pg 042] 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 found 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 favourite 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 neighbouring 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 [pg 043] 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 huzza 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 postboy that rode with the first pair (my lady always went 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 [pg 044] said, and stooped to pick up another; the crowd had gathered quite between the horses and in the inn door by this time, and the coach was brought to a dead standstill. 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, “Huzza, 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 shrunk back, and my lord retreated with all the honours 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, huzzaing 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 [pg 045] 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 stanch 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 Sievewright, 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.
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, Job Lockwood, the porter's son, might go to the pond and see what fortune had brought them. At daybreak Job was to awaken him, but his own eagerness for the sport had served as a réveille 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 mantelpiece 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.
[pg 047]“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 perukes of different colours, 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 mantelpiece 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 [pg 048] 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-humoured 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, [pg 049] 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 firm 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 [pg 050] 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 bid 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 humour 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.
It was while Dr. Tusher was away at Salisbury that there came a troop of dragoons with orange scarfs, and quartered in Castlewood, and some of them came up to the Hall, where they took possession, robbing nothing however [pg 051] beyond the hen-house and the beer-cellar; and only insisting upon going through the house and looking for papers. The first room they asked to look at was Father Holt's room, of which Harry Esmond brought the key, and they opened the drawers and the cupboards, and tossed over the papers and clothes—but found nothing except his books and clothes, and the vestments in a box by themselves, with which the dragoons made merry, to Harry Esmond's horror. And to the questions which the gentleman put to Harry, he replied, that Father Holt was a very kind man to him, and a very learned man, and Harry supposed would tell him none of his secrets if he had any. He was about eleven years old at this time, and looked as innocent as boys of his age.
The family were away more than six months, and when they returned they were in the deepest state of dejection, for King James had been banished, the Prince of Orange was on the throne, and the direst persecutions of those of the Catholic faith were apprehended by my lady, who said she did not believe that there was a word of truth in the promises of toleration that Dutch monster made, or in a single word the perjured wretch said. My lord and lady were in a manner prisoners in their own house; so her ladyship gave the little page to know, who was by this time growing of an age to understand what was passing about him, and something of the characters of the people he lived with.
“We are prisoners,” says she; “in everything but chains, we are prisoners. Let them come, let them consign me to dungeons, or strike off my head from this poor little throat” (and she clasped it in her long fingers). “The blood of the Esmonds will always flow freely for their kings. We are not like the Churchills—the Judases, who kiss their master and betray him. We know how to suffer, how even to forgive in the royal cause” (no doubt it was to that fatal business of losing the place of Groom of the Posset to which her ladyship alluded, as she did half a dozen times in the day). “Let the tyrant of Orange bring his rack and his odious Dutch tortures—the beast! the wretch! I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay this head upon the block; cheerfully will I accompany my lord to the scaffold: we will cry, ‘God save King James!’ with our dying breath, and smile in the face of the executioner.” And she told her [pg 052] page a hundred times at least of the particulars of the last interview which she had with his Majesty.
“I flung myself before my liege's feet,” she said, “at Salisbury. I devoted myself—my husband—my house, to his cause. Perhaps he remembered old times, when Isabella Esmond was young and fair; perhaps he recalled the day when 'twas not I that knelt—at least he spoke to me with a voice that reminded me of days gone by. ‘Egad!’ said his Majesty, ‘you should go to the Prince of Orange, if you want anything.’ ‘No, sire,’ I replied, ‘I would not kneel to a usurper; the Esmond that would have served your Majesty will never be groom to a traitor's posset.’ The royal exile smiled, even in the midst of his misfortune; he deigned to raise me with words of consolation. The viscount, my husband, himself, could not be angry at the august salute with which he honoured me!”
The public misfortune had the effect of making my lord and his lady better friends than they ever had been since their courtship. My lord viscount had shown both loyalty and spirit, when these were rare qualities in the dispirited party about the king; and the praise he got elevated him not a little in his wife's good opinion, and perhaps in his own. He wakened up from the listless and supine life which he had been leading; was always riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the king's; the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his greater cheerfulness and altered demeanour.
Father Holt came to the Hall constantly, but officiated no longer openly as chaplain; he was always fetching and carrying: strangers, military and ecclesiastic (Harry knew the latter though they came in all sorts of disguises), were continually arriving and departing. My lord made long absences and sudden reappearances, using sometimes the means of exit which Father Holt had employed, though how often the little window in the chaplain's room let in or let out my lord and his friends, Harry could not tell. He stoutly kept his promise to the father of not prying, and if at midnight from his little room he heard noises of persons stirring in the next chamber, he turned round to the wall and hid his curiosity under his pillow until it fell asleep. Of course he could not help remarking that the priest's journeys were constant, and understanding by a hundred signs that some active though secret business employed [pg 053] him: what this was may pretty well be guessed by what soon happened to my lord.
No garrison or watch was put into Castlewood when my lord came back, but a guard was in the village; and one or other of them was always on the Green keeping a look-out on our great gate, and those who went out and in. Lockwood said that at night especially every person who came in or went out was watched by the outlying sentries. 'Twas lucky that we had a gate which their worships knew nothing about. My lord and Father Holt must have made constant journeys at night: once or twice little Harry acted as their messenger and discreet little aide de camp. He remembers he was bidden to go into the village with his fishing-rod, enter certain houses, ask for a drink of water, and tell the good man, “There would be a horse-market at Newbury next Thursday,” and so carry the same message on to the next house on his list.
He did not know what the message meant at the time, nor what was happening: which may as well, however, for clearness' sake, be explained here. The Prince of Orange being gone to Ireland, where the king was ready to meet him with a great army, it was determined that a great rising of his Majesty's party should take place in this country: and my lord was to head the force in our county. Of late he had taken a greater lead in affairs than before, having the indefatigable Mr. Holt at his elbow, and my lady viscountess strongly urging him on; and my Lord Sark being in the Tower a prisoner, and Sir Wilmot Crawley, of Queen's Crawley, having gone over to the Prince of Orange's side—my lord became the most considerable person in our part of the county for the affairs of the king.
It was arranged that the regiment of Scots Greys and Dragoons, then quartered at Newbury, should declare for the king on a certain day, when likewise the gentry affected to his Majesty's cause were to come in with their tenants and adherents to Newbury, march upon the Dutch troops at Reading under Ginckel; and, these overthrown, and their indomitable little master away in Ireland, 'twas thought that our side might move on London itself, and a confident victory was predicted for the king.
As these great matters were in agitation, my lord lost his listless manner and seemed to gain health; my lady did not scold him, Mr. Holt came to and fro, busy always; [pg 054] and little Harry longed to have been a few inches taller, that he might draw a sword in this good cause.
One day, it must have been about the month of July, 1690, my lord, in a great horseman's coat, under which Harry could see the shining of a steel breastplate he had on, called little Harry to him, put the hair off the child's forehead, and kissed him, and bade God bless him in such an affectionate way as he never had used before. Father Holt blessed him too, and then they took leave of my lady viscountess, who came from her apartment with a pocket-handkerchief to her eyes, and her gentlewoman and Mrs. Tusher supporting her.
“You are going to—to ride,” says she. “Oh, that I might come too!—but in my situation I am forbidden horse exercise.”
“We kiss my lady marchioness's hand,” says Mr. Holt.
“My lord, God speed you!” she said, stepping up and embracing my lord in a grand manner. “Mr. Holt, I ask your blessing:” and she knelt down for that, whilst Mrs. Tusher tossed her head up.
Mr. Holt gave the same benediction to the little page, who went down and held my lord's stirrups for him to mount; there were two servants waiting there too—and they rode out of Castlewood gate.
As they crossed the bridge Harry could see an officer in scarlet ride up touching his hat, and address my lord.
The party stopped, and came to some parley or discussion, which presently ended, my lord putting his horse into a canter after taking off his hat and making a bow to the officer who rode alongside him step for step: the trooper accompanying him, falling back, and riding with my lord's two men. They cantered over the Green, and behind the elms (my lord waving his hand, Harry thought), and so they disappeared.
That evening we had a great panic, the cow-boy coming at milking-time riding one of our horses, which he had found grazing at the outer park wall.
All night my lady viscountess was in a very quiet and subdued mood. She scarce found fault with anybody; she played at cards for six hours; little page Esmond went to sleep. He prayed for my lord and the good cause before closing his eyes.
It was quite in the grey of the morning when the porter's [pg 055] bell rang, and old Lockwood waking up, let in one of my lord's servants, who had gone with him in the morning, and who returned with a melancholy story.
The officer who rode up to my lord had, it appeared, said to him, that it was his duty to inform his lordship that he was not under arrest, but under surveillance, and to request him not to ride abroad that day.
My lord replied that riding was good for his health, that if the captain chose to accompany him he was welcome, and it was then that he made a bow, and they cantered away together.
When he came on to Wansey Down, my lord all of a sudden pulled up, and the party came to a halt at the crossway.
“Sir” says he to the officer, “we are four to two; will you be so kind as to take that road, and leave me to go mine?”
“Your road is mine, my lord,” says the officer.
“Then,” says my lord, but he had no time to say more, for the officer, drawing a pistol, snapped it at his lordship; as at the same moment Father Holt, drawing a pistol, shot the officer through the head.
It was done, and the man dead in an instant of time. The orderly, gazing at the officer, looked scared for a moment, and galloped away for his life.
“Fire! fire!” cries out Father Holt, sending another shot after the trooper, but the two servants were too much surprised to use their pieces, and my lord calling to them to hold their hands, the fellow got away.
“Mr. Holt, qui pensoit à tout,” says Blaise, “gets off his horse, examines the pockets of the dead officer for papers, gives his money to us two, and says, ‘The wine is drawn, monsieur le marquis,’—why did he say marquis to monsieur le vicomte?—‘we must drink it.’
“The poor gentleman's horse was a better one than that I rode,” Blaise continues; “Mr. Holt bids me get on him, and so I gave a cut to Whitefoot, and she trotted home. We rode on towards Newbury; we heard firing towards midday: at two o'clock a horseman comes up to us as we were giving our cattle water at an inn—and says, All is done. The Ecossois declared an hour too soon—General Ginckel was down upon them. The whole thing was at an end.
“ ‘And we've shot an officer on duty, and let his orderly escape,’ says my lord.
[pg 056]“ ‘Blaise,’ says Mr. Holt, writing two lines on his table-book, one for my lady, and one for you, Master Harry; ‘you must go back to Castlewood, and deliver these,’ and behold me.”
And he gave Harry the two papers. He read that to himself, which only said, “Burn the papers in the cupboard, burn this. You know nothing about anything.” Harry read this, ran upstairs to his mistress's apartment, where her gentlewoman slept near to the door, made her bring a light and wake my lady, into whose hands he gave the paper. She was a wonderful object to look at in her night attire, nor had Harry ever seen the like.
As soon as she had the paper in her hand, Harry stepped back to the chaplain's room, opened the secret cupboard over the fireplace, burned all the papers in it, and, as he had seen the priest do before, took down one of his reverence's manuscript sermons, and half burnt that in the brazier. By the time the papers were quite destroyed it was daylight. Harry ran back to his mistress again. Her gentlewoman ushered him again into her ladyship's chamber; she told him (from behind her nuptial curtains) to bid the coach be got ready, and that she would ride away anon.
But the mysteries of her ladyship's toilet were as awfully long on this day as on any other, and, long after the coach was ready, my lady was still attiring herself. And just as the viscountess stepped forth from her room, ready for departure, young Job Lockwood comes running up from the village with news that a lawyer, three officers, and twenty or four-and-twenty soldiers, were marching thence upon the house. Job had but two minutes the start of them, and, ere he had well told his story, the troop rode into our courtyard.
At first my lady was for dying like Mary, Queen of Scots (to whom she fancied she bore a resemblance in beauty), and, stroking her scraggy neck, said, “They will find Isabel of Castlewood is equal to her fate.” Her gentlewoman, Victoire, persuaded her that her prudent course was, as she could not fly, to receive the troops as though she suspected nothing, and that her chamber was the best place wherein to await them. So her black japan casket which Harry was to carry to the coach was taken back to her ladyship's chamber, whither the maid and mistress retired. Victoire came out presently, bidding the page to say her ladyship was ill, confined to her bed with the rheumatism.
By this time the soldiers had reached Castlewood. Harry Esmond saw them from the window of the tapestry parlour; a couple of sentinels were posted at the gate—a half-dozen more walked towards the stable; and some others, preceded by their commander, and a man in black, a lawyer probably, were conducted by one of the servants to the stair leading up to the part of the house which my lord and lady inhabited.
So the captain, a handsome kind man, and the lawyer, came through the ante-room to the tapestry parlour, and where now was nobody but young Harry Esmond, the page.
“Tell your mistress, little man,” says the captain kindly, “that we must speak to her.”
“My mistress is ill abed,” said the page.
“What complaint has she?” asked the captain.
The boy said, “the rheumatism!”
“Rheumatism! that's a sad complaint,” continues the good-natured captain; “and the coach is in the yard to fetch the doctor, I suppose?”
“I don't know,” says the boy.
“And how long has her ladyship been ill?”
“I don't know,” says the boy.
“When did my lord go away?”
“Yesterday night.”
[pg 058]“With Father Holt?”
“With Mr. Holt.”
“And which way did they travel?” asks the lawyer.
“They travelled without me,” says the page.
“We must see Lady Castlewood.”
“I have orders that nobody goes in to her ladyship—she is sick,” says the page; but at this moment Victoire came out. “Hush!” says she; and, as if not knowing that any one was near, “What's this noise?” says she. “Is this gentleman the doctor?”
“Stuff! we must see Lady Castlewood,” says the lawyer, pushing by.
The curtains of her ladyship's room were down, and the chamber dark, and she was in bed with a nightcap on her head, and propped up by her pillows, looking none the less ghastly because of the red which was still on her cheeks, and which she could not afford to forgo.
“Is that the doctor?” she said.
“There is no use with this deception, madam,” Captain Westbury said (for so he was named). “My duty is to arrest the person of Thomas, Viscount Castlewood, a nonjuring peer—of Robert Tusher, Vicar of Castlewood—and Henry Holt, known under various other names and designations, a Jesuit priest, who officiated as chaplain here in the late king's time, and is now at the head of the conspiracy which was about to break out in this country against the authority of their Majesties King William and Queen Mary—and my orders are to search the house for such papers or traces of the conspiracy as may be found here. Your ladyship will please to give me your keys, and it will be as well for yourself that you should help us, in every way, in our search.”
“You see, sir, that I have the rheumatism, and cannot move,” said the lady, looking uncommonly ghastly as she sat up in her bed, where however she had had her cheeks painted, and a new cap put on, so that she might at least look her best when the officers came.
“I shall take leave to place a sentinel in the chamber, so that your ladyship, in case you should wish to rise, may have an arm to lean on,” Captain Westbury said. “Your woman will show me where I am to look;” and Madame Victoire, chattering in her half-French and half-English jargon, opened while the captain examined one drawer after another; but, as Harry Esmond thought, rather carelessly, with a smile on [pg 059] his face, as if he was only conducting the examination for form's sake.
Before one of the cupboards Victoire flung herself down, stretching out her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, cried, “Non, jamais, monsieur l'officier! Jamais! I will rather die than let you see this wardrobe.”
But Captain Westbury would open it, still with a smile on his face, which, when the box was opened, turned into a fair burst of laughter. It contained—not papers regarding the conspiracy—but my lady's wigs, washes, and rouge-pots, and Victoire said men were monsters, as the captain went on with his perquisition. He tapped the back to see whether or no it was hollow, and as he thrust his hands into the cupboard, my lady from her bed called out with a voice that did not sound like that of a very sick woman, “Is it your commission to insult ladies as well as to arrest gentlemen, captain?”
“These articles are only dangerous when worn by your ladyship,” the captain said with a low bow, and a mock grin of politeness. “I have found nothing which concerns the Government as yet—only the weapons with which beauty is authorized to kill,” says he, pointing to a wig with his sword-tip. “We must now proceed to search the rest of the house.”
“You are not going to leave that wretch in the room with me,” cried my lady, pointing to the soldier.
“What can I do, madam? Somebody you must have to smooth your pillow and bring your medicine—permit me——”
“Sir!” screamed out my lady—
“Madam, if you are too ill to leave the bed,” the captain then said, rather sternly, “I must have in four of my men to lift you off in the sheet: I must examine this bed, in a word; papers may be hidden in a bed as elsewhere; we know that very well and——”
Here it was her ladyship's turn to shriek, for the captain, with his fist shaking the pillows and bolsters, at last came to “burn”, as they say in the play of forfeits, and wrenching away one of the pillows, said, “Look, did not I tell you so? Here is a pillow stuffed with paper.”
“Some villain has betrayed us,” cried out my lady, sitting up in the bed, showing herself full dressed under her night-rail.
[pg 060]“And now your ladyship can move, I am sure; permit me to give you my hand to rise. You will have to travel for some distance, as far as Hexton Castle to-night. Will you have your coach? Your woman shall attend you if you like—and the japan-box?”
“Sir! you don't strike a man when he is down,” said my lady, with some dignity: “can you not spare a woman?”
“Your ladyship must please to rise and let me search the bed,” said the captain; “there is no more time to lose in bandying talk.”
And, without more ado, the gaunt old woman got up. Harry Esmond recollected to the end of his life that figure, with the brocade dress and the white night-rail, and the gold-clocked red stockings, and white red-heeled shoes sitting up in the bed, and stepping down from it. The trunks were ready packed for departure in her ante-room, and the horses ready harnessed in the stable: about all which the captain seemed to know, by information got from some quarter or other; and, whence, Esmond could make a pretty shrewd guess in after-times, when Dr. Tusher complained that King William's Government had basely treated him for services done in that cause.
And here he may relate, though he was then too young to know all that was happening, what the papers contained, of which Captain Westbury had made a seizure, and which papers had been transferred from the japan-box to the bed when the officers arrived.
There was a list, of gentlemen of the county in Father Holt's handwriting—Mr. Freeman's (King James's) friends—a similar paper being found among those of Sir John Fenwick and Mr. Coplestone, who suffered death for this conspiracy.
There was a patent conferring the title of Marquis of Esmond on my Lord Castlewood, and the heirs male of his body; his appointment as lord lieutenant of the county, and major-general.7
[pg 061]There were various letters from the nobility and gentry, some ardent and some doubtful, in the king's service; and (very luckily for him) two letters concerning Colonel Francis Esmond; one from Father Holt, which said, “I have been to see this colonel at his house at Walcote near to Wells, where he resides since the king's departure, and pressed him very eagerly in Mr. Freeman's cause, showing him the great advantage he would have by trading with that merchant, offering him large premiums there as agreed between us. But he says no: he considers Mr. Freeman the head of the firm, will never trade against him or embark with any other trading company, but considers his duty was done when Mr. Freeman left England. This colonel seems to care more for his wife and his beagles than for affairs. He asked me much about young H. E., ‘that bastard,’ as he called him: doubting my lord's intentions respecting him. I reassured him on this head, stating what I knew of the lad, and our intentions respecting him, but with regard to Freeman he was inflexible.”
And another letter was from Colonel Esmond to his kinsman, to say that one Captain Holton had been with him offering him large bribes to join, you know who, and saying that the head of the house of Castlewood was deeply engaged in that quarter. But for his part he had broke his sword when the K. left the country, and would never again fight in that quarrel. The P. of O. was a man, at least, of a noble courage, and his duty and, as he thought, every Englishman's, was to keep the country quiet, and the French out of it: and, in fine, that he would have nothing to do with the scheme.
Of the existence of these two letters and the contents of the pillow, Colonel Frank Esmond, who became Viscount Castlewood, told Henry Esmond afterwards, when the letters were shown to his lordship, who congratulated himself, as he had good reason, that he had not joined in the scheme which proved so fatal to many concerned in it. But, naturally, the lad knew little about these circumstances when they happened under his eyes: only being aware that his patron and his mistress were in some trouble, which had caused the flight of the one, and the apprehension of the other by the officers of King William.
[pg 062]The seizure of the papers effected, the gentlemen did not pursue their further search through Castlewood house very rigorously. They examined Mr. Holt's room, being led thither by his pupil, who showed, as the father had bidden him, the place where the key of his chamber lay, opened the door for the gentlemen, and conducted them into the room.
When the gentlemen came to the half-burned papers in the brazier, they examined them eagerly enough, and their young guide was a little amused at their perplexity.
“What are these?” says one.
“They're written in a foreign language,” says the lawyer. “What are you laughing at, little whelp?” adds he, turning round as he saw the boy smile.
“Mr. Holt said they were sermons,” Harry said, “and bade me to burn them;” which indeed was true of those papers.
“Sermons, indeed—it's treason, I would lay a wager,” cries the lawyer.
“Egad! it's Greek to me,” says Captain Westbury. “Can you read it, little boy?”
“Yes, sir, a little,” Harry said.
“Then read, and read in English, sir, on your peril,” said the lawyer. And Harry began to translate:—
“Hath not one of your own writers said, ‘The children of Adam are now labouring as much as he himself ever did, about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, shaking the boughs thereof, and seeking the fruit, being for the most part unmindful of the tree of life.’ O blind generation! 'tis this tree of knowledge to which the serpent has led you”—and here the boy was obliged to stop, the rest of the page being charred by the fire: and asked of the lawyer—“Shall I go on, sir?”
The lawyer said—“This boy is deeper than he seems: who knows that he is not laughing at us?”
“Let's have in Dick the Scholar,” cried Captain Westbury, laughing; and he called to a trooper out of the window—“Ho, Dick, come in here and construe.”
A thick-set soldier, with a square good-humoured face, came in at the summons, saluting his officer.
“Tell us what is this, Dick,” says the lawyer.
“My name is Steele, sir,” says the soldier. “I may be Dick for my friends, but I don't name gentlemen of your cloth amongst them.”
[pg 063]“Well then, Steele.”
“Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you address a gentleman of his Majesty's Horse Guards, be pleased not to be so familiar.”
“I didn't know, sir,” said the lawyer.
“How should you? I take it you are not accustomed to meet with gentlemen,” says the trooper.
“Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper,” says Westbury.
“'Tis Latin,” says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his officer, “and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth's,” and he translated the words pretty much as Henry Esmond had rendered them.
“What a young scholar you are,” says the captain to the boy.
“Depend on't, he knows more than he tells,” says the lawyer. “I think we will pack him off in the coach with old Jezebel.”
“For construing a bit of Latin?” said the captain very good-naturedly.
“I would as lief go there as anywhere,” Harry Esmond said, simply, “for there is nobody to care for me.”
There must have been something touching in the child's voice, or in this description of his solitude—for the captain looked at him very good-naturedly, and the trooper, called Steele, put his hand kindly on the lad's head, and said some words in the Latin tongue.
“What does he say?” says the lawyer.
“Faith, ask Dick himself,” cried Captain Westbury.
“I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to succour the miserable, and that's not your trade, Mr. Sheepskin,” said the trooper.
“You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbet,” the captain said. And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind face and kind word, felt very grateful to this good-natured champion.
The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach; and the countess and Victoire came down and were put into the vehicle. This woman, who quarrelled with Harry Esmond all day, was melted at parting with him, and called him “dear angel”, and “poor infant”, and a hundred other names.
The viscountess, giving him her lean hand to kiss, bade him always be faithful to the house of Esmond. “If evil [pg 064] should happen to my lord,” says she, “his successor I trust will be found, and give you protection. Situated as I am, they will not dare wreak their vengeance on me now.” And she kissed a medal she wore with great fervour, and Henry Esmond knew not in the least what her meaning was; but hath since learned that, old as she was, she was for ever expecting, by the good offices of saints and relics, to have an heir to the title of Esmond.
Harry Esmond was too young to have been introduced into the secrets of politics in which his patrons were implicated; for they put but few questions to the boy (who was little of stature, and looked much younger than his age), and such questions as they put he answered cautiously enough, and professing even more ignorance than he had, for which his examiners willingly enough gave him credit. He did not say a word about the window or the cupboard over the fireplace; and these secrets quite escaped the eyes of the searchers.
So then my lady was consigned to her coach, and sent off to Hexton, with her woman and the man of law to bear her company, a couple of troopers riding on either side of the coach. And Harry was left behind at the Hall, belonging as it were to nobody, and quite alone in the world. The captain and a guard of men remained in possession there; and the soldiers, who were very good-natured and kind, ate my lord's mutton and drank his wine, and made themselves comfortable, as they well might do, in such pleasant quarters.
The captains had their dinner served in my lord's tapestry parlour, and poor little Harry thought his duty was to wait upon Captain Westbury's chair, as his custom had been to serve his lord when he sat there.
After the departure of the countess, Dick the Scholar took Harry Esmond under his special protection, and would examine him in his humanities, and talk to him both of French and Latin, in which tongues the lad found, and his new friend was willing enough to acknowledge, that he was even more proficient than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned them from a Jesuit, in the praise of whom and whose goodness Harry was never tired of speaking, Dick, rather to the boy's surprise, who began to have an early shrewdness, like many children bred up alone, showed a great deal of theological science, and knowledge of the [pg 065] points at issue between the two Churches; so that he and Harry would have hours of controversy together, in which the boy was certainly worsted by the arguments of this singular trooper. “I am no common soldier,” Dick would say, and indeed it was easy to see by his learning, breeding, and many accomplishments, that he was not. “I am of one of the most ancient families in the Empire; I have had my education at a famous school, and a famous university; I learned my first rudiments of Latin near to Smithfield, in London, where the martyrs were roasted.”
“You hanged as many of ours,” interposed Harry; “and, for the matter of persecution, Father Holt told me that a young gentleman of Edinburgh, eighteen years of age, student at the college there, was hanged for heresy only last year, though he recanted, and solemnly asked pardon for his errors.”
“Faith! there has been too much persecution on both sides: but 'twas you taught us.”
“Nay, 'twas the pagans began it,” cried the lad, and began to instance a number of saints of the Church, from the Protomartyr downwards—“this one's fire went out under him: that one's oil cooled in the cauldron: at a third holy head the executioner chopped three times and it would not come off. Show us martyrs in your Church for whom such miracles have been done.”
“Nay,” says the trooper gravely, “the miracles of the first three centuries belong to my Church as well as yours, Master Papist,” and then added, with something of a smile upon his countenance, and a queer look at Harry—“And yet, my little catechizer, I have sometimes thought about those miracles, that there was not much good in them, since the victim's head always finished by coming off at the third or fourth chop, and the cauldron, if it did not boil one day, boiled the next. Howbeit, in our times, the Church has lost that questionable advantage of respites. There never was a shower to put out Ridley's fire, nor an angel to turn the edge of Campion's axe. The rack tore the limbs of Southwell the Jesuit and Sympson the Protestant alike. For faith, everywhere multitudes die willingly enough. I have read in Monsieur Rycaut's History of the Turks, of thousands of Mahomet's followers rushing upon death in battle as upon certain Paradise; and in the Great Mogul's dominions people fling themselves by hundreds [pg 066] under the cars of the idols annually, and the widows burn themselves on their husbands' bodies, as 'tis well known. 'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry—every man of every nation has done that—'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost,” he added, with a sigh. “And ah!” he added, “my poor lad, I am not strong enough to convince thee by my life—though to die for my religion would give me the greatest of joys—but I had a dear friend in Magdalen College in Oxford; I wish Joe Addison were here to convince thee, as he quickly could—for I think he's a match for the whole College of Jesuits; and what's more, in his life too. In that very sermon of Dr. Cudworth's which your priest was quoting from, and which suffered martyrdom in the brazier,” Dick added, with a smile, “I had a thought of wearing the black coat (but was ashamed of my life you see, and took to this sorry red one)—I have often thought of Joe Addison—Doctor Cudworth says, ‘A good conscience is the best looking-glass of Heaven’—and there's a serenity in my friend's face which always reflects it—I wish you could see him, Harry.”
“Did he do you a great deal of good?” asked the lad, simply.
“He might have done,” said the other—“at least he taught me to see and approve better things. 'Tis my own fault, deteriora sequi.”
“You seem very good,” the boy said.
“I'm not what I seem, alas!” answered the trooper—and indeed, as it turned out, poor Dick told the truth—for that very night, at supper in the hall, where the gentlemen of the troop took their repasts, and passed most part of their days dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and cursing, over the Castlewood ale—Harry Esmond found Dick the Scholar in a woful state of drunkenness. He hiccuped out a sermon; and his laughing companions bade him sing a hymn, on which Dick, swearing he would run the scoundrel through the body who insulted his religion, made for his sword, which was hanging on the wall, and fell down flat on the floor under it, saying to Harry, who ran forward to help him, “Ah, little Papist, I wish Joseph Addison was here!”
Though the troopers of the king's Life Guards were all gentlemen, yet the rest of the gentlemen seemed ignorant [pg 067] and vulgar boors to Harry Esmond, with the exception of this good-natured Corporal Steele the Scholar, and Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant, who were always kind to the lad. They remained for some weeks or months encamped in Castlewood, and Harry learned from them, from time to time, how the lady at Hexton Castle was treated, and the particulars of her confinement there. 'Tis known that King William was disposed to deal very leniently with the gentry who remained faithful to the old king's cause; and no prince usurping a crown, as his enemies said he did (righteously taking it as I think now), ever caused less blood to be shed. As for women-conspirators, he kept spies on the least dangerous, and locked up the others. Lady Castlewood had the best rooms in Hexton Castle, and the gaoler's garden to walk in; and though she repeatedly desired to be led out to execution, like Mary Queen of Scots, there never was any thought of taking her painted old head off, or any desire to do aught but keep her person in security.
And it appeared she found that some were friends in her misfortune, whom she had, in her prosperity, considered as her worst enemies. Colonel Francis Esmond, my lord's cousin and her ladyship's, who had married the Dean of Winchester's daughter, and, since King James's departure out of England, had lived not very far away from Hexton town, hearing of his kinswoman's strait, and being friends with Colonel Brice, commanding for King William in Hexton, and with the Church dignitaries there, came to visit her ladyship in prison, offering to his uncle's daughter any friendly services which lay in his power. And he brought his lady and little daughter to see the prisoner, to the latter of whom, a child of great beauty, and many winning ways, the old viscountess took not a little liking, although between her ladyship and the child's mother there was little more love than formerly. There are some injuries which women never forgive one another; and Madam Francis Esmond, in marrying her cousin, had done one of those irretrievable wrongs to Lady Castlewood. But as she was now humiliated, and in misfortune, Madam Francis could allow a truce to her enmity, and could be kind for a while, at least, to her husband's discarded mistress. So the little Beatrix, her daughter, was permitted often to go and visit the imprisoned viscountess, who, in so far as the child and [pg 068] its father were concerned, got to abate in her anger towards that branch of the Castlewood family. And the letters of Colonel Esmond coming to light, as has been said, and his conduct being known to the king's council, the colonel was put in a better position with the existing Government than he had ever before been; any suspicions regarding his loyalty were entirely done away; and so he was enabled to be of more service to his kinswoman than he could otherwise have been.
And now there befell an event by which this lady recovered her liberty, and the house of Castlewood got a new owner, and fatherless little Harry Esmond a new and most kind protector and friend. Whatever that secret was which Harry was to hear from my lord, the boy never heard it; for that night when Father Holt arrived, and carried my lord away with him, was the last on which Harry ever saw his patron. What happened to my lord may be briefly told here. Having found the horses at the place where they were lying, my lord and Father Holt rode together to Chatteris, where they had temporary refuge with one of the father's penitents in that city; but the pursuit being hot for them, and the reward for the apprehension of one or the other considerable, it was deemed advisable that they should separate; and the priest betook himself to other places of retreat known to him, whilst my lord passed over from Bristol into Ireland, in which kingdom King James had a Court and an army. My lord was but a small addition to this; bringing, indeed, only his sword and the few pieces in his pocket; but the king received him with some kindness and distinction in spite of his poor plight, confirmed him in his new title of marquis, gave him a regiment, and promised him further promotion. But titles or promotion were not to benefit him now. My lord was wounded at the fatal battle of the Boyne, flying from which field (long after his master had set him an example), he lay for a while concealed in the marshy country near to the town of Trim, and more from catarrh and fever caught in the bogs than from the steel of the enemy in the battle, sank and died. May the earth lie light upon Thomas of Castlewood! He who writes this must speak in charity, though this lord did him and his two grievous wrongs: for one of these he would have made amends, perhaps, had life been spared him; but the other lay beyond his power to repair, though [pg 069] 'tis to be hoped that a greater Power than a priest has absolved him of it. He got the comfort of this absolution, too, such as it was: a priest of Trim writing a letter to my lady to inform her of this calamity.
But in those days letters were slow of travelling, and our priest's took two months or more on its journey from Ireland to England: where, when it did arrive, it did not find my lady at her own house; she was at the king's house of Hexton Castle when the letter came to Castlewood, but it was opened for all that by the officer in command there.
Harry Esmond well remembered the receipt of this letter, which Lockwood brought in as Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant were on the green playing at bowls, young Esmond looking on at the sport, or reading his book in the arbour.
“Here's news for Frank Esmond,” says Captain Westbury; “Harry, did you ever see Colonel Esmond?” And Captain Westbury looked very hard at the boy as he spoke.
Harry said he had seen him but once when he was at Hexton, at the ball there.
“And did he say anything?”
“He said what I don't care to repeat,” Harry answered. For he was now twelve years of age: he knew what his birth was and the disgrace of it; and he felt no love towards the man who had most likely stained his mother's honour and his own.
“Did you love my Lord Castlewood?”
“I wait until I know my mother, sir, to say,” the boy answered, his eyes filling with tears.
“Something has happened to Lord Castlewood,” Captain Westbury said, in a vary grave tone—“something which must happen to us all. He is dead of a wound received at the Boyne, fighting for King James.”
“I am glad my lord fought for the right cause,” the boy said.
“It was better to meet death on the field like a man, than face it on Tower Hill, as some of them may,” continued Mr. Westbury. “I hope he has made some testament, or provided for thee somehow. This letter says, he recommends unicum filium suum dilectissimum to his lady. I hope he has left you more than that.”
Harry did not know, he said. He was in the hands of [pg 070] Heaven and Fate; but more lonely now, as it seemed to him, than he had been all the rest of his life; and that night, as he lay in his little room which he still occupied, the boy thought with many a pang of shame and grief of his strange and solitary condition:—how he had a father and no father; a nameless mother that had been brought to ruin, perhaps, by that very father whom Harry could only acknowledge in secret and with a blush, and whom he could neither love nor revere. And he sickened to think how Father Holt, a stranger, and two or three soldiers, his acquaintances of the last six weeks, were the only friends he had in the great wide world, where he was now quite alone. The soul of the boy was full of love, and he longed as he lay in the darkness there for some one upon whom he could bestow it. He remembers, and must to his dying day, the thoughts and tears of that long night, the hours tolling through it. Who was he and what? Why here rather than elsewhere? I have a mind, he thought, to go to that priest at Trim, and find out what my father said to him on his death-bed confession. Is there any child in the whole world so unprotected as I am? Shall I get up and quit this place, and run to Ireland? With these thoughts and tears the lad passed that night away until he wept himself to sleep.
The next day, the gentlemen of the guard who had heard what had befallen him were more than usually kind to the child, especially his friend Scholar Dick, who told him about his own father's death, which had happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not quite five years of age. “That was the first sensation of grief,” Dick said, “I ever knew. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling papa; on which my mother caught me in her arms, and told me in a flood of tears papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again. And this,” said Dick kindly, “has made me pity all children ever since; and caused me to love thee, my poor fatherless, motherless lad. And if ever thou wantest a friend, thou shalt have one in Richard Steele.”
Harry Esmond thanked him, and was grateful. But what could Corporal Steele do for him? take him to ride a spare horse, and be servant to the troop? Though there might [pg 071] be a bar in Harry Esmond's shield, it was a noble one. The counsel of the two friends was, that little Harry should stay where he was, and abide his fortune: so Esmond stayed on at Castlewood, awaiting with no small anxiety the fate, whatever it was, which was over him.