Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges Part 11

When Thomas Tusher was gone, a feeling of no small depression and disquiet fell upon young Esmond, of which, though he did not complain, his kind mistress must have divined the cause: for soon after she showed not only that she understood the reason of Harry's melancholy, but could provide a remedy for it. Her habit was thus to watch, un.o.bservedly, those to whom duty or affection bound her, and to prevent their designs, or to fulfil them, when she had the power. It was this lady's disposition to think kindnesses, and devise silent bounties, and to scheme benevolence for those about her. We take such goodness, for the most part, as if it was our due; the Marys who bring ointment for our feet get but little thanks.

Some of us never feel this devotion at all, or are moved by it to grat.i.tude or acknowledgement; others only recall it years after, when the days are past in which those sweet kindnesses were spent on us, and we offer back our return for the debt by a poor tardy payment of tears. Then forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past-oh, so bright and clear!-oh, so longed after!-because they are out of reach; as holiday music from withinside a prison wall-or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable-more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.

All the notice, then, which Lady Castlewood seemed to take of Harry Esmond's melancholy, upon Tom Tusher's departure, was, by a gaiety unusual to her, to attempt to dispel his gloom. She made his three scholars (herself being the chief one) more cheerful than ever they had been before, and more docile too, all of them learning and reading much more than they had been accustomed to do. "For who knows," said the lady, "what may happen, and whether we may be able to keep such a learned tutor long?"

Frank Esmond said he for his part did not want to learn any more, and Cousin Harry might shut up his book whenever he liked, if he would come out a-fishing; and little Beatrix declared she would send for Tom Tusher, and _he_ would be glad enough to come to Castlewood, if Harry chose to go away.

At last comes a messenger from Winchester one day, bearer of a letter with a great black seal from the dean there, to say that his sister was dead, and had left her fortune of 2,000_l._ among her six nieces, the dean's daughters; and many a time since has Harry Esmond recalled the flushed face and eager look wherewith, after this intelligence, his kind lady regarded him. She did not pretend to any grief about the deceased relative, from whom she and her family had been many years parted.

When my lord heard of the news, he also did not make any very long face.

"The money will come very handy to furnish the music-room and the cellar, which is getting low, and buy your ladyship a coach and a couple of horses that will do indifferent to ride or for the coach. And Beatrix, you shall have a spinet: and Frank, you shall have a little horse from Hexton Fair; and Harry, you shall have five pounds to buy some books," said my lord, who was generous with his own, and indeed with other folks' money. "I wish your aunt would die once a year, Rachel; we could spend your money, and all your sisters', too."

"I have but one aunt-and-and I have another use for the money, my lord,"

says my lady, turning very red.

"Another use, my dear; and what do you know about money?" cries my lord.

"And what the devil is there that I don't give you which you want?"

"I intend to give this money-can't you fancy how, my lord?"

My lord swore one of his large oaths that he did not know in the least what she meant.

"I intend it for Harry Esmond to go to college.-Cousin Harry," says my lady, "you mustn't stay longer in this dull place, but make a name to yourself, and for us too, Harry."

"D--n it, Harry's well enough here," says my lord, for a moment looking rather sulky.

"Is Harry going away? You don't mean to say you will go away?" cry out Frank and Beatrix at one breath.

"But he will come back: and this will always be his home," cries my lady, with blue eyes looking a celestial kindness: "and his scholars will always love him; won't they?"

"By G--d, Rachel, you're a good woman!" says my lord, seizing my lady's hand, at which she blushed very much, and shrank back, putting her children before her. "I wish you joy, my kinsman," he continued, giving Harry Esmond a hearty slap on the shoulder. "I won't balk your luck. Go to Cambridge, boy; and when Tusher dies you shall have the living here, if you are not better provided by that time. We'll furnish the dining-room and buy the horses another year. I'll give thee a nag out of the stable: take any one except my hack and the bay gelding and the coach-horses; and G.o.d speed thee, my boy!"

"Have the sorrel, Harry; 'tis a good one. Father says 'tis the best in the stable," says little Frank, clapping his hands, and jumping up. "Let's come and see him in the stable." And the other, in his delight and eagerness, was for leaving the room that instant to arrange about his journey.

The Lady Castlewood looked after him with sad penetrating glances. "He wishes to be gone already, my lord," said she to her husband.

The young man hung back abashed. "Indeed, I would stay for ever, if your ladyship bade me," he said.

"And thou wouldst be a fool for thy pains, kinsman," said my lord. "Tut, tut, man. Go and see the world. Sow thy wild oats; and take the best luck that Fate sends thee. I wish I were a boy again that I might go to college, and taste the Trumpington ale."

"Ours indeed is but a dull home," cries my lady, with a little of sadness, and maybe of satire, in her voice: "an old glum house, half ruined, and the rest only half furnished; a woman and two children are but poor company for men that are accustomed to better. We are only fit to be your worship's handmaids, and your pleasures must of necessity lie elsewhere than at home."

"Curse me, Rachel, if I know now whether thou art in earnest or not," said my lord.

"In earnest, my lord!" says she, still clinging by one of her children.

"Is there much subject here for joke?" And she made him a grand curtsy, and, giving a stately look to Harry Esmond, which seemed to say, "Remember; you understand me, though he does not," she left the room with her children.

"Since she found out that confounded Hexton business," my lord said-"and be hanged to them that told her!-she has not been the same woman. She, who used to be as humble as a milkmaid, is as proud as a princess," says my lord. "Take my counsel, Harry Esmond, and keep clear of women. Since I have had anything to do with the jades, they have given me nothing but disgust. I had a wife at Tangier, with whom, as she couldn't speak a word of my language, you'd have thought I might lead a quiet life. But she tried to poison me, because she was jealous of a Jew girl. There was your aunt, for aunt she is-aunt Jezebel, a pretty life your father led with _her_, and here's my lady. When I saw her on a pillion riding behind the dean her father, she looked and was such a baby, that a sixpenny doll might have pleased her. And now you see what she is-hands off, highty-tighty, high and mighty, an empress couldn't be grander. Pa.s.s us the tankard, Harry, my boy. A mug of beer and a toast at morn, says my host. A toast and a mug of beer at noon, says my dear. D--n it, Polly loves a mug of ale, too, and laced with brandy, by Jove!" Indeed, I suppose they drank it together; for my lord was often thick in his speech at mid-day dinner; and at night at supper, speechless altogether.

Harry Esmond's departure resolved upon, it seemed as if the Lady Castlewood, too, rejoiced to lose him; for more than once, when the lad, ashamed perhaps at his own secret eagerness to go away (at any rate stricken with sadness at the idea of leaving those from whom he had received so many proofs of love and kindness inestimable), tried to express to his mistress his sense of grat.i.tude to her, and his sorrow at quitting those who had so sheltered and tended a nameless and houseless orphan, Lady Castlewood cut short his protests of love and his lamentations, and would hear of no grief, but only look forward to Harry's fame and prospects in life. "Our little legacy will keep you for four years like a gentleman. Heaven's Providence, your own genius, industry, honour, must do the rest for you. Castlewood will always be a home for you; and these children, whom you have taught and loved, will not forget to love you. And Harry," said she (and this was the only time when she spoke with a tear in her eye, or a tremor in her voice), "it may happen in the course of nature that I shall be called away from them: and their father-and-and they will need true friends and protectors. Promise me that you will be true to them-as-as I think I have been to you-and a mother's fond prayer and blessing go with you."

"So help me G.o.d, madam, I will," said Harry Esmond, falling on his knees, and kissing the hand of his dearest mistress. "If you will have me stay now, I will. What matters whether or no I make my way in life, or whether a poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d dies as unknown as he is now? 'Tis enough that I have your love and kindness surely; and to make you happy is duty enough for me."

"Happy!" says she; "but indeed I ought to be, with my children, and--"

"Not happy!" cried Esmond (for he knew what her life was, though he and his mistress never spoke a word concerning it). "If not happiness, it may be ease. Let me stay and work for you-let me stay and be your servant."

"Indeed, you are best away," said my lady, laughing, as she put her hand on the boy's head for a moment. "You shall stay in no such dull place. You shall go to college and distinguish yourself as becomes your name. That is how you shall please me best; and-and if my children want you, or I want you, you shall come to us; and I know we may count on you."

"May Heaven forsake me if you may not," Harry said, getting up from his knee.

"And my knight longs for a dragon this instant that he may fight," said my lady, laughing; which speech made Harry Esmond start, and turn red; for indeed the very thought was in his mind, that he would like that some chance should immediately happen whereby he might show his devotion. And it pleased him to think that his lady had called him "her knight", and often and often he recalled this to his mind, and prayed that he might be her true knight, too.

My lady's bedchamber window looked out over the country, and you could see from it the purple hills beyond Castlewood village, the green common betwixt that and the Hall, and the old bridge which crossed over the river. When Harry Esmond went away for Cambridge, little Frank ran alongside his horse as far as the bridge, and there Harry stopped for a moment, and looked back at the house where the best part of his life had been pa.s.sed. It lay before him with its grey familiar towers, a pinnacle or two shining in the sun, the b.u.t.tresses and terrace walls casting great blue shades on the gra.s.s. And Harry remembered all his life after how he saw his mistress at the window looking out on him, in a white robe, the little Beatrix's chestnut curls resting at her mother's side. Both waved a farewell to him, and little Frank sobbed to leave him. Yes, he _would_ be his lady's true knight, he vowed in his heart; he waved her an adieu with his hat. The village people had good-bye to say to him too. All knew that Master Harry was going to college, and most of them had a kind word and a look of farewell. I do not stop to say what adventures he began to imagine, or what career to devise for himself, before he had ridden three miles from home. He had not read Monsieur Galland's ingenious Arabian tales as yet; but be sure that there are other folks who build castles in the air, and have fine hopes, and kick them down too, besides honest Alnaschar.

Chapter X. I Go To Cambridge, And Do But Little Good There

My lord, who said he should like to revisit the old haunts of his youth, kindly accompanied Harry Esmond in his first journey to Cambridge. Their road lay through London, where my lord viscount would also have Harry stay a few days to show him the pleasures of the town, before he entered upon his University studies, and whilst here Harry's patron conducted the young man to my lady dowager's house at Chelsey near London: the kind lady at Castlewood having specially ordered that the young gentleman and the old should pay a respectful visit in that quarter.

Her ladyship the viscountess dowager occupied a handsome new house in Chelsey, with a garden behind it, and facing the river, always a bright and animated sight with its swarms of sailors, barges, and wherries. Harry laughed at recognizing in the parlour the well-remembered old piece of Sir Peter Lely, wherein his father's widow was represented as a virgin huntress, armed with a gilt bow and arrow, and enc.u.mbered only with that small quant.i.ty of drapery which it would seem the virgins in King Charles's day were accustomed to wear.

My lady dowager had left off this peculiar habit of huntress when she married. But though she was now considerably past sixty years of age, I believe she thought that airy nymph of the picture could still be easily recognized in the venerable personage who gave an audience to Harry and his patron.

She received the young man with even more favour than she showed to the elder, for she chose to carry on the conversation in French, in which my Lord Castlewood was no great proficient, and expressed her satisfaction at finding that Mr. Esmond could speak fluently in that language. "'Twas the only one fit for polite conversation," she condescended to say, "and suitable to persons of high breeding."

My lord laughed afterwards, as the gentlemen went away, at his kinswoman's behaviour. He said he remembered the time when she could speak English fast enough, and joked in his jolly way at the loss he had had of such a lovely wife as that.

My lady viscountess deigned to ask his lordship news of his wife and children; she had heard that Lady Castlewood had had the small-pox; she hoped she was not so _very_ much disfigured as people said.

At this remark about his wife's malady, my lord viscount winced and turned red; but the dowager, in speaking of the disfigurement of the young lady, turned to her looking-gla.s.s and examined her old wrinkled countenance in it with such a grin of satisfaction, that it was all her guests could do to refrain from laughing in her ancient face.

She asked Harry what his profession was to be; and my lord, saying that the lad was to take orders, and have the living of Castlewood when old Dr.

Tusher vacated it; she did not seem to show any particular anger at the notion of Harry's becoming a Church of England clergyman, nay, was rather glad than otherwise, that the youth should be so provided for. She bade Mr. Esmond not to forget to pay her a visit whenever he pa.s.sed through London, and carried her graciousness so far as to send a purse with twenty guineas for him, to the tavern at which my lord put up (the "Greyhound", in Charing Cross); and, along with this welcome gift for her kinsman, she sent a little doll for a present to my lord's little daughter Beatrix, who was growing beyond the age of dolls by this time, and was as tall almost as her venerable relative.

After seeing the town, and going to the plays, my Lord Castlewood and Esmond rode together to Cambridge, spending two pleasant days upon the journey. Those rapid new coaches were not established as yet, that performed the whole journey between London and the University in a single day; however, the road was pleasant and short enough to Harry Esmond, and he always gratefully remembered that happy holiday, which his kind patron gave him.

Mr. Esmond was entered a pensioner of Trinity College in Cambridge, to which famous college my lord had also in his youth belonged. Dr. Montague was master at this time, and received my lord viscount with great politeness: so did Mr. Bridge, who was appointed to be Harry's tutor. Tom Tusher, who was of Emmanuel College, and was by this time a junior soph, came to wait upon my lord, and to take Harry under his protection; and comfortable rooms being provided for him in the great court close by the gate, and near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings, Harry's patron took leave of him with many kind words and blessings, and an admonition to him to behave better at the University than my lord himself had ever done.

'Tis needless in these memoirs to go at any length into the particulars of Harry Esmond's college career. It was like that of a hundred young gentlemen of that day. But he had the ill fortune to be older by a couple of years than most of his fellow students; and by his previous solitary mode of bringing up, the circ.u.mstances of his life, and the peculiar thoughtfulness and melancholy that had naturally engendered, he was, in a great measure, cut off from the society of comrades who were much younger and higher-spirited than he. His tutor, who had bowed down to the ground, as he walked my lord over the college gra.s.s-plats, changed his behaviour as soon as the n.o.bleman's back was turned, and was-at least Harry thought so-harsh and overbearing. When the lads used to a.s.semble in their _greges_ in hall, Harry found himself alone in the midst of that little flock of boys; they raised a great laugh at him when he was set on to read Latin, which he did with the foreign p.r.o.nunciation taught to him by his old master, the Jesuit, than which he knew no other. Mr. Bridge, the tutor, made him the object of clumsy jokes, in which he was fond of indulging.

The young man's spirit was chafed, and his vanity mortified; and he found himself, for some time, as lonely in this place as ever he had been at Castlewood, whither he longed to return. His birth was a source of shame to him, and he fancied a hundred slights and sneers from young and old, who, no doubt, had treated him better had he met them himself more frankly. And as he looks back, in calmer days, upon this period of his life, which he thought so unhappy, he can see that his own pride and vanity caused no small part of the mortifications which he attributed to others' ill will. The world deals good-naturedly with good-natured people, and I never knew a sulky misanthropist who quarrelled with it, but it was he, and not it, that was in the wrong. Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty of good advice on this subject, for Tom had both good sense and good humour; but Mr. Harry chose to treat his senior with a great deal of superfluous disdain and absurd scorn, and would by no means part from his darling injuries, in which, very likely, no man believed but himself. As for honest Doctor Bridge, the tutor found, after a few trials of wit with the pupil, that the younger man was an ugly subject for wit, and that the laugh was often turned against him. This did not make tutor and pupil any better friends; but had, so far, an advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridge was induced to leave him alone; and so long as he kept his chapels, and did the college exercises required of him, Bridge was content not to see Harry's glum face in his cla.s.s, and to leave him to read and sulk for himself in his own chamber.

A poem or two in Latin and English, which were p.r.o.nounced to have some merit, and a Latin oration (for Mr. Esmond could write that language better than p.r.o.nounce it), got him a little reputation both with the authorities of the University and amongst the young men, with whom he began to pa.s.s for more than he was worth. A few victories over their common enemy Mr. Bridge, made them incline towards him, and look upon him as the champion of their order against the seniors. Such of the lads as he took into his confidence, found him not so gloomy and haughty as his appearance led them to believe; and Don Dismallo, as he was called, became presently a person of some little importance in his college, and was, as he believes, set down by the seniors there as rather a dangerous character.

Don Dismallo was a stanch young Jacobite, like the rest of his family; gave himself many absurd airs of loyalty; used to invite young friends to burgundy, and give the king's health on King James's birthday; wore black on the day of his abdication; fasted on the anniversary of King William's coronation; and performed a thousand absurd antics, of which he smiles now to think.

These follies caused many remonstrances on Tom Tusher's part, who was always a friend to the powers that be, as Esmond was always in opposition to them. Tom was a Whig, while Esmond was a Tory. Tom never missed a lecture, and capped the proctor with the profoundest of bows. No wonder he sighed over Harry's insubordinate courses, and was angry when the others laughed at him. But that Harry was known to have my lord viscount's protection, Tom no doubt would have broken with him altogether. But honest Tom never gave up a comrade as long as he was the friend of a great man.