We know, my dear children, from our favourite fairy story-books, how at all christenings and marriages some one is invariably disappointed, and vows vengeance; and so need not wonder that good cousin Will should curse and rage energetically at the news of his brother’s engagement with the colonial heiress. At first, Will fled the house, in his wrath, swearing he would never return. But nobody, including the swearer, believed much in Master Will’s oaths; and this unrepentant prodigal, after a day or two, came back to the paternal house. The fumes of the marriage-feast allured him: he could not afford to resign his knife and fork at Castlewood table. He returned, and drank and ate there in token of revenge. He pledged the young bride in a bumper, and drank perdition to her under his breath. He made responses of smothered maledictions as her father gave her away in the chapel, and my lord vowed to love, honour and cherish her. He was not the only grumbler respecting that marriage, as Mr. Warrington knew: he heard, then and afterwards, no end of abuse of my lady and her grandfather. The old gentleman’s City friends, his legal adviser, the Dissenting clergyman at whose chapel they attended on their first arrival in England, and poor Jack Lambert, the orthodox young divine, whose eloquence he had fondly hoped had been exerted over her in private, were bitter against the little lady’s treachery, and each had a story to tell of his having been enslaved, encouraged, jilted, by the young American. The lawyer, who had had such an accurate list of all her properties, estates, moneys, slaves, ships, expectations, was ready to vow and swear that he believed the whole account was false; that there was no such place as New York or Virginia; or at any rate, that Mr. Van den Bosch had no land there; that there was no such thing as a Guinea trade, and that the negroes were so many black falsehoods invented by the wily old planter. The Dissenting pastor moaned over his stray lambling — if such a little, wily, mischievous monster could be called a lamb at all. Poor Jack Lambert ruefully acknowledged to his mamma the possession of a lock of black hair, which he bedewed with tears and apostrophised in quite unclerical language: and, as for Mr. William Esmond, he, with the shrieks and curses in which he always freely indulged, even at Castlewood, under his sister-inlaw’s own pretty little nose, when under any strong emotion, called Acheron to witness, that out of that region there did not exist such an artful young devil as Miss Lydia. He swore that she was an infernal female Cerberus, and called down all the wrath of this world and the next upon his swindling rascal of a brother, who had cajoled him with fair words, and filched his prize from him.
“Why,” says Mr. Warrington (when Will expatiated on these matters with him), “if the girl is such a she-devil as you describe her, you are all the better for losing her. If she intends to deceive her husband, and to give him a dose of poison, as you say, how lucky for you, you are not the man! You ought to thank the gods, Will, instead of cursing them, for robbing you of such a fury, and can’t be better revenged on Castlewood than by allowing him her sole possession.”
“All this was very well,” Will Esmond said; but — not unjustly, perhaps — remarked that his brother was not the less a scoundrel for having cheated him out of the fortune which he expected to get, and which he had risked his life to win, too.
George Warrington was at a loss to know how his cousin had been made so to risk his precious existence (for which, perhaps, a rope’s end had been a fitting termination), on which Will Esmond, with the utmost candour, told his kinsman how the little Cerbera had actually caused the meeting between them, which was interrupted somehow by Sir John Fielding’s men; how she was always saying that George Warrington was a coward for ever sneering at Mr. Will, and the latter doubly a poltroon for not taking notice of his kinsman’s taunts; how George had run away and nearly died of fright in Braddock’s expedition; and “Deuce take me,” says Will, “I never was more surprised, cousin, than when you stood to your ground so coolly in Tottenham Court Fields yonder, for me and my second offered to wager that you would never come!”
Mr. Warrington laughed, and thanked Mr. Will for this opinion of him.
“Though,” says he, “cousin, ’twas lucky for me the constables came up, or you would have whipped your sword through my body in another minute. Didn’t you see how clumsy I was as I stood before you? And you actually turned white and shook with anger!”
“Yes, curse me,” says Mr. Will (who turned very red this time), “that’s my way of showing my rage; and I was confoundedly angry with you, cousin! But now ’tis my brother I hate, and that little devil of a Countess — a countess! a pretty countess, indeed!” And with another rumbling cannonade of oaths, Will saluted the reigning member of his family.
“Well, cousin,” says George, looking him queerly in the face, “you let me off easily, and I dare say I owe my life to you, or at any rate a whole waistcoat, and I admire your forbearance and spirit. What a pity that a courage like yours should be wasted as a mere court usher! You are a loss to his Majesty’s army. You positively are!”
“I never know whether you are joking or serious, Mr. Warrington,” growls Will.
“I should think very few gentlemen would dare to joke with you, cousin, if they had a regard for their own lives or ears! cries Mr. Warrington, who loved this grave way of dealing with his noble kinsman, and used to watch, with a droll interest, the other choking his curses, grinding his teeth because afraid to bite, and smothering his cowardly anger.
“And you should moderate your expressions, cousin, regarding the dear Countess and my lord your brother,” Mr. Warrington resumed. “Of you they always speak most tenderly. Her ladyship has told me everything.”
“What everything?” cries Will, aghast.
“As much as women ever do tell, cousin. She owned that she thought you had been a little epris with her. What woman can help liking a man who has admired her?”
“Why, she hates you, and says you were wild about her, Mr. Warrington!” says Mr. Esmond.
“Spretae injuria formae, cousin!”
“For me — what’s for me?” asks the other.
“I never did care for her, and hence, perhaps, she does not love me. Don’t you remember that case of the wife of the Captain of the Guard?”
“Which Guard?” asks Will.
“My Lord Potiphar,” says Mr. Warrington.
“Lord Who? My Lord Falmouth is Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, and my Lord Berkeley of the Pensioners. My Lord Hobart had ’em before. Suppose you haven’t been long enough in England to know who’s who, cousin!” remarks Mr. William.
But Mr. Warrington explained that he was speaking of a Captain of the Guard of the King of Egypt, whose wife had persecuted one Joseph for not returning her affection for him. On which Will said that, as for Egypt, he believed it was a confounded long way off; and that if Lord What-d’ye-call’s wife told lies about him, it was like her sex, who he supposed were the same everywhere.
Now the truth is, that when he paid his marriage-visit to Castlewood, Mr. Warrington had heard from the little Countess her version of the story of differences between Will Esmond and herself. And this tale differed, in some respects, though he is far from saying it is more authentic than the ingenuous narrative of Mr. Will. The lady was grieved to think how she had been deceived in her brother-inlaw. She feared that his life about the court and town had injured those high principles which all the Esmonds are known to be born with; that Mr. Will’s words were not altogether to be trusted; that a loose life and pecuniary difficulties had made him mercenary, blunted his honour, perhaps even impaired the high chivalrous courage “which we Esmonds, cousin,” the little lady said, tossing her head, “which we Esmonds must always possess — leastways, you and me, and my lord, and my cousin Harry have it, I know!” says the Countess. “Oh, cousin George! and must I confess that I was led to doubt of yours, without which a man of ancient and noble family like ours isn’t worthy to be called a man! I shall try, George, as a Christian lady, and the head of one of the first families in this kingdom and the whole world, to forgive my brother William for having spoke ill of a member of our family, though a younger branch and by the female side, and made me for a moment doubt of you. He did so. Perhaps he told me ever so many bad things you had said of me.”
“I, my dear lady!” cries Mr. Warrington.
“Which he said you said of me, cousin, and I hope you didn’t, and heartily pray you didn’t; and I can afford to despise ’em. And he paid me his court, that’s a fact; and so have others, and that I’m used to; and he might have prospered better than he did perhaps (for I did not know my dear lord, nor come to vally his great and eminent qualities, as I do out of the fulness of this grateful heart now!), but, oh! I found William was deficient in courage, and no man as wants that can ever have the esteem of Lydia, Countess of Castlewood, no more he can! He said ’twas you that wanted for spirit, cousin, and angered me by telling me that you was always abusing of me. But I forgive you, George, that I do! And when I tell you that it was he was afraid — the mean skunk! — and actually sent for them constables to prevent the match between you and he, you won’t wonder I wouldn’t vally a feller like that — no, not that much!” and her ladyship snapped her little fingers. “I say, noblesse oblige, and a man of our family who hasn’t got courage, I don’t care not this pinch of snuff for him — there, now, I don’t! Look at our ancestors, George, round these walls! Haven’t the Esmonds always fought for their country and king? Is there one of us that, when the moment arrives, ain’t ready to show that he’s an Esmond and a nobleman? If my eldest son was to show the white feather, ‘My Lord Esmond!’ I would say to him (for that’s the second title in our family), ‘I disown your lordship!’” And so saying, the intrepid little woman looked round at her ancestors, whose effigies, depicted by Lely and Kneller, figured round the walls of her drawing-room at Castlewood.
Over that apartment, and the whole house, domain, and village, the new Countess speedily began to rule with an unlimited sway. It was surprising how quickly she learned the ways of command; and, if she did not adopt those methods of precedence usual in England among great ladies, invented regulations for herself, and promulgated them, and made others submit. Having been bred a Dissenter, and not being over-familiar with the Established Church service, Mr. Warrington remarked that she made a blunder or two during the office (not knowing, for example, when she was to turn her face towards the east, a custom not adopted, I believe, in other Reforming churches besides the English); but between Warrington’s first bridal visit to Castlewood and his second, my lady had got to be quite perfect in that part of her duty, and sailed into chapel on her cousin’s arm, her two footmen bearing her ladyship’s great Prayer-book behind her, as demurely as that delightful old devotee with her lackey, in Mr. Hogarth’s famous picture of “Morning,” and as if my Lady Lydia had been accustomed to have a chaplain all her life. She seemed to patronise not only the new chaplain, but the service and the church itself, as if she had never in her own country heard a Ranter in a barn. She made the oldest established families in the country — grave baronets and their wives — worthy squires of twenty descents, who rode over to Castlewood to pay the bride and bridegroom honour — know their distance, as the phrase is, and give her the pas. She got an old heraldry book; and a surprising old maiden lady from Winton, learned in politeness and genealogies, from whom she learned the court etiquette (as the old Winton lady had known it in Queen Anne’s time); and ere long she jabbered gules and sables, bends and saltires, not with correctness always, but with a wonderful volubility and perseverance. She made little progresses to the neighbouring towns in her gilt coach-and-six, or to the village in her chair, and asserted a quasi-regal right of homage from her tenants and other clodpoles. She lectured the parson on his divinity; the bailiff on his farming; instructed the astonished housekeeper how to preserve and pickle; would have taught the great London footmen to jump behind the carriage, only it was too high for her little ladyship to mount; gave the village gossips instructions how to nurse and take care of their children long before she had one herself; and as for physic, Madam Esmond in Virginia was not more resolute about her pills and draughts than Miss Lydia, the earl’s new bride. Do you remember the story of the Fisherman and the Genie, in the Arabian Nights? So one wondered with regard to this lady, how such a prodigious genius could have been corked down into such a little bottle as her body. When Mr. Warrington returned to London after his first nuptial visit, she brought him a little present for her young friends in Dean Street, as she called them (Theo being older, and Hetty scarce younger than herself), and sent a trinket to one and a book to the other — G. Warrington always vowing that Theo’s present was a doll, while Hetty’s share was a nursery-book with words of one syllable. As for Mr. Will, her younger brother-inlaw, she treated him with a maternal gravity and tenderness, and was in the habit of speaking of and to him with a protecting air, which was infinitely diverting to Warrington, although Will’s usual curses and blasphemies were sorely increased by her behaviour.
As for old age, my Lady Lydia had little respect for that accident in the life of some gentlemen and gentlewomen; and, once the settlements were made in her behalf, treated the ancient Van den Bosch and his large periwig with no more ceremony than Dinah her black attendant, whose great ears she would pinch, and whose woolly pate she would pull without scruple, upon offence given — so at least Dinah told Gumbo, who told his master. All the household trembled before my lady the Countess: the housekeeper, of whom even my lord and the dowager had been in awe; the pampered London footmen, who used to quarrel if they were disturbed at their cards, and grumbled as they swilled the endless beer, now stepped nimbly about their business when they heard her ladyship’s call; even old Lockwood, who had been gate-porter for half a century or more, tried to rally his poor old wandering wits when she came into his lodge to open his window, inspect his wood-closet, and turn his old dogs out of doors. Lockwood bared his old bald head before his new mistress, turned an appealing look towards his niece, and vaguely trembled before her little ladyship’s authority. Gumbo, dressing his master for dinner, talked about Elisha (of whom he had heard the chaplain read in the morning), “and his bald head and de boys who call um names, and de bars eat em up, and serve um right,” says Gumbo. But as for my lady, when discoursing with her cousin about the old porter, “Pooh, pooh! Stupid old man!” says she; “past his work, he and his dirty old dogs! They are as old and ugly as those old fish in the pond!” (Here she pointed to two old monsters of carp that had been in a pond in Castlewood gardens for centuries, according to tradition, and had their backs all covered with a hideous grey mould.) “Lockwood must pack off; the workhouse is the place for him; and I shall have a smart, good-looking, tall fellow in the lodge that will do credit to our livery.”
“He was my grandfather’s man, and served him in the wars of Queen Anne,” interposed Mr. Warrington. On which my lady cried, petulantly, “O Lord! Queen Anne’s dead, I suppose, and we ain’t a-going into mourning for her.”
This matter of Lockwood was discussed at the family dinner, when her ladyship announced her intention of g............