After quitting Mons and the army, and as he was waiting for a packet at Ostend, Esmond had a letter from his young kinsman Castlewood at Bruxelles, conveying intelligence whereof Frank besought him to be the bearer to London, and which caused Colonel Esmond no small anxiety.
The young scapegrace, being one-and-twenty years old, and being anxious to sow his “wild otes,” as he wrote, had married Mademoiselle de Wertheim, daughter of Count de Wertheim, Chamberlain to the Emperor, and having a post in the Household of the Governor of the Netherlands. “P.S.,” the young gentleman wrote: “Clotilda is OLDER THAN ME, which perhaps may be objected to her: but I am so OLD A RAIK that the age makes no difference, and I am DETERMINED to reform. We were married at St. Gudule, by Father Holt. She is heart and soul for the GOOD CAUSE. And here the cry is Vif-le-Roy, which my mother will JOIN IN, and Trix TOO. Break this news to ’em gently: and tell Mr. Finch, my agent, to press the people for their rents, and send me the RYNO anyhow. Clotilda sings, and plays on the Spinet BEAUTIFULLY. She is a fair beauty. And if it’s a son, you shall stand GODFATHER. I’m going to leave the army, having had ENUF OF SOLDERING; and my Lord Duke RECOMMENDS me. I shall pass the winter here: and stop at least until Clo’s lying in. I call her OLD CLO, but nobody else shall. She is the cleverest woman in all Bruxelles: understanding painting, music, poetry, and perfect at COOKERY AND PUDDENS. I borded with the Count, that’s how I came to know her. There are four Counts her brothers. One an Abbey — three with the Prince’s army. They have a lawsuit for AN IMMENCE FORTUNE: but are now in a PORE WAY. Break this to mother, who’ll take anything from YOU. And write, and bid Finch write AMEDIATELY. Hostel de l’Aigle Noire, Bruxelles, Flanders.”
So Frank had married a Roman Catholic lady, and an heir was expected, and Mr. Esmond was to carry this intelligence to his mistress at London. ’Twas a difficult embassy; and the Colonel felt not a little tremor as he neared the capital.
He reached his inn late, and sent a messenger to Kensington to announce his arrival and visit the next morning. The messenger brought back news that the Court was at Windsor, and the fair Beatrix absent and engaged in her duties there. Only Esmond’s mistress remained in her house at Kensington. She appeared in court but once in the year; Beatrix was quite the mistress and ruler of the little mansion, inviting the company thither, and engaging in every conceivable frolic of town pleasure. Whilst her mother, acting as the young lady’s protectress and elder sister, pursued her own path, which was quite modest and secluded.
As soon as ever Esmond was dressed (and he had been awake long before the town), he took a coach for Kensington, and reached it so early that he met his dear mistress coming home from morning prayers. She carried her prayer-book, never allowing a footman to bear it, as everybody else did: and it was by this simple sign Esmond knew what her occupation had been. He called to the coachman to stop, and jumped out as she looked towards him. She wore her hood as usual, and she turned quite pale when she saw him. To feel that kind little hand near to his heart seemed to give him strength. They were soon at the door of her ladyship’s house — and within it.
With a sweet sad smile she took his hand and kissed it.
“How ill you have been: how weak you look, my dear Henry,” she said.
’Tis certain the Colonel did look like a ghost, except that ghosts do not look very happy, ’tis said. Esmond always felt so on returning to her after absence, indeed whenever he looked in her sweet kind face.
“I am come back to be nursed by my family,” says he. “If Frank had not taken care of me after my wound, very likely I should have gone altogether.”
“Poor Frank, good Frank!” says his mother. “You’ll always be kind to him, my lord,” she went on. “The poor child never knew he was doing you a wrong.”
“My lord!” cries out Colonel Esmond. “What do you mean, dear lady?”
“I am no lady,” says she; “I am Rachel Esmond, Francis Esmond’s widow, my lord. I cannot bear that title. Would we never had taken it from him who has it now. But we did all in our power, Henry: we did all in our power; and my lord and I— that is —”
“Who told you this tale, dearest lady?” asked the Colonel.
“Have you not had the letter I writ you? I writ to you at Mons directly I heard it,” says Lady Esmond.
“And from whom?” again asked Colonel Esmond — and his mistress then told him that on her death-bed the Dowager Countess, sending for her, had presented her with this dismal secret as a legacy. “’Twas very malicious of the Dowager,” Lady Esmond said, “to have had it so long, and to have kept the truth from me.” “Cousin Rachel,” she said,— and Esmond’s mistress could not forbear smiling as she told the story —“Cousin Rachel,” cries the Dowager, “I have sent for you, as the doctors say I may go off any day in this dysentery; and to ease my conscience of a great load that has been on it. You always have been a poor creature and unfit for great honor, and what I have to say won’t, therefore, affect you so much. You must know, Cousin Rachel, that I have left my house, plate, and furniture, three thousand pounds in money, and my diamonds that my late revered Saint and Sovereign, King James, presented me with, to my Lord Viscount Castlewood.”
“To my Frank?” says Lady Castlewood; “I was in hopes —”
To Viscount Castlewood, my dear; Viscount Castlewood and Baron Esmond of Shandon in the Kingdom of Ireland, Earl and Marquis of Esmond under patent of his Majesty King James the Second, conferred upon my husband the late Marquis — for I am Marchioness of Esmond before God and man.”
“And have you left poor Harry nothing, dear Marchioness?” asks Lady Castlewood (she hath told me the story completely since with her quiet arch way; the most charming any woman ever had: and I set down the narrative here at length, so as to have done with it). “And have you left poor Harry nothing?” asks my dear lady: “for you know, Henry,” she says with her sweet smile, “I used always to pity Esau — and I think I am on his side — though papa tried very hard to convince me the other way.”
“Poor Harry!” says the old lady. “So you want something left to poor Harry: he,— he! (reach me the drops, cousin). Well, then, my dear, since you want poor Harry to have a fortune, you must understand that ever since the year 1691, a week after the battle of the Boyne, where the Prince of Orange defeated his royal sovereign and father, for which crime he is now suffering in flames (ugh! ugh!) Henry Esmond hath been Marquis of Esmond and Earl of Castlewood in the United Kingdom, and Baron and Viscount Castlewood of Shandon in Ireland, and a Baronet — and his eldest son will be, by courtesy, styled Earl of Castlewood — he! he! What do you think of that, my dear?”
“Gracious mercy! how long have you known this?” cries the other lady (thinking perhaps that the old Marchioness was wandering in her wits).
“My husband, before he was converted, was a wicked wretch,” the sick sinner continued. “When he was in the Low Countries he seduced a weaver’s daughter; and added to his wickedness by marrying her. And then he came to this country and married me — a poor girl — a poor innocent young thing — I say,”—“though she was past forty, you know, Harry, when she married: and as for being innocent”—“Well,” she went on, “I knew nothing of my lord’s wickedness for three years after our marriage, and after the burial of our poor little boy I had it done over again, my dear: I had myself married by Father Holt in Castlewood chapel, as soon as ever I heard the creature was dead — and having a great illness then, arising from another sad disappointment I had, the priest came and told me that my lord had a son before our marriage, and that the child was at nurse in England; and I consented to let the brat be brought home, and a queer little melancholy child it was when it came.
“Our intention was to make a priest of him: and he was bred for this, until you perverted him from it, you wicked woman. And I had again hopes of giving an heir to my lord, when he was called away upon the King’s business, and died fighting gloriously at the Boyne water.
“Should I be disappointed — I owed your husband no love, my dear, for he had jilted me in the most scandalous way and I thought there would be time to declare the little weaver’s son for the true heir. But I was carried off to prison, where your husband was so kind to me — urging all his friends to obtain my release, and using all his credit in my favor — that I relented towards him, especially as my director counselled me to be silent; and that it was for the good of the King’s service that the title of our family should continue with your husband the late viscount, whereby his fidelity would be always secured to the King. And a proof of this is, that a year before your husband’s death, when he thought of taking a place under the Prince of Orange, Mr. Holt went to him, and told him what the state of the matter was, and obliged him to raise a large sum for his Majesty; and engaged him in the true cause so heartily, that we were sure of his support on any day when it should be considered advisable to attack the usurper. Then his sudden death came; and there was a thought of declaring the truth. But ’twas determined to be best for the King’s service to let the title still go with the younger branch; and there’s no sacrifice a Castlewood wouldn’t make for that cause, my dear.
“As for Colonel Esmond, he knew the truth already.” (“And then, Harry,” my mistress said, “she told me of what had happened at my dear husband’s death-bed”). “He doth not intend to take the title, though it belongs to him. But it eases my conscience that you should know the truth, my dear. And your son is lawfully Viscount Castlewood so long as his cousin doth not claim the rank.”
This was the substance of the Dowager’s revelation. Dean Atterbury had knowledge of it, Lady Castlewood said, and Esmond very well knows how: that divine being the clergyman for whom the late lord had sent on his death-bed: and when Lady Castlewood would instantly have written to her son, and conveyed the truth to him, the Dean’s advice was that a letter should be writ to Colonel Esmond rather; that the matter should be submitted to his decision, by which alone the rest of the family were bound to abide.
“And can my dearest lady doubt what that will be?” says the Colonel.
“It rests with you, Harry, as the head of our house.”
“It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord’s bedside,” says Colonel Esmond. “The children must know nothing of this. Frank and his heirs after him must bear our name. ’Tis his rightfully; I have not even a proof of that marriage of my father and mother, though my poor lord, on his death-bed, told me that Father Holt had brought such a proof to Castlewood. I would not seek it when I was abroad. I went and looked at my poor mother’s grave in her convent. What matter to her now? No court of law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive my Lord Viscount and set me up. I am the head of the house, dear lady; but Frank is Viscount of Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would turn monk, or disappear in America.”
As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such as could not but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that God had given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to bestow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred upon a man — and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity, could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?
“Dearest saint,” says he —“purest soul, that has had so much to suffer, that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. ’Tis for me to kneel, not for you: ’tis for me to be thankful that I can make you happy. Hath my life any other aim? Blessed be God that I can serve you! What pleasure, think you, could all the world give me compared to that?”
“Don’t raise me,” she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who would have lifted her. “Let me kneel — let me kneel, and — and — worship you.”
Before such a partial judge as Esmond’s dear mistress owned herself to be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given in his favor; and accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling her to the news whereof he was bearer, of her son’s marriage to a foreign lady, Papist though she was. Lady Castlewood never could be brought to think so ill of that religion as other people in England thought of it: she held that ours was undoubtedly a branch of the Catholic church, but that the Roman was one of the main stems on which, no doubt, many errors had been grafted (she was, for a woman, extraordinarily well versed in this controversy, having acted, as a girl, as secretary to her father, the late dean, and written many of his sermons, under his dictation); and if Frank had chosen to marry a lady of the church of south Europe, as she would call the Roman communion, there was no need why she should not welcome her as a daughter-inlaw: and accordingly she wrote to her new daughter a very pretty, touching letter (as Esmond thought, who had cognizance of it before it went), in which the only hint of reproof was a gentle remonstrance that her son had not written to herself, to ask a fond mother’s blessing for that step which he was about taking. “Castlewood knew very well,” so she wrote to her son, “that she never denied him anything in her power to give, much less would she think of opposing a marriage that was to make his happiness, as she trusted, and keep him out of wild courses, which had alarmed her a good deal:” and she besought him to come quickly to England, to settle down in his family house of Castlewood (“It is his family house,” says she, to Colonel Esmond, “though only his own house by your forbearance”) and to receive the accompt of her stewardship during his ten years’ minority. By care and frugality, she had got the estate into a better condition than ever it had been since the Parliamentary wars; and my lord was now master of a pretty, small income, not encumbered of debts, as it had been, during his father’s ruinous time. “But in saving my son’s fortune,” says she, “I fear I have lost a great part of my hold on him.” And, indeed, this was the case: her ladyship’s daughter complaining that their mother did all for Frank, and nothing for her; and Frank himself being dissatisfied at the narrow, simple way of his mother’s living at Walcote, where he had been brought up more like a poor parson’s son than a young nobleman that was to make a figure in the world. ’Twas this mistake in his early training, very likely, that set him so eager upon pleasure when he had it in his power; nor is he the first lad that has been spoiled by the over-careful fondness of women. No training is so useful for children, great or small, as the company of their betters in rank or natural parts; in whose society they lose the overweening sense of their own importance, which stay-at-home people very commonly learn.
But, as a prodigal that’s sending in a schedule of his ............