 Book 1, Chapter 5 of THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMUND ESQUIRE, by William Make-Peace-Stackeray. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Book 1, Chapter 5. My superiors are engaged in plots for the restoration of King James II. Not having been able to sleep, for thinking of some lines for eels which he had placed the night before, the lad was lying in his little bed, waiting for the hour when the gate would be open, and he and his comrade, John Lockwood, the porter's son, might go to the pond and see what fortune had brought them. At daybreak John was to awaken him, but his own eagerness for the sport had served as a revelé long since, so long that it seemed to him as if the day would never 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. "'Silence' him,' 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 the 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 whole. "'That is right, Harry,' he said. "'Faithful little family, see all and say nothing. You are faithful, I know.' "'I know I would go to the stake for you,' said Harry. "'I don't want your head,' said the father, patting it kindly. "'All you have to do is 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, he 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 gentleman 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 peruchs 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 at 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 where a Father Holt was a member, his pupil, Harry Esmond, remains in entire ignorance. The rest of his goods, his small wardrobe, etc., Holt left untouched on his shelves and in this 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 opened 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 bookshelf, and if any ask for it, say I keep it there, and told you where to find it, if you had need to go to my room. The descent is easy down the wall into the ditch, and so once more farewell, until I see thee again, my dear son. And with this the intrepid father mounted the buffet with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window, lifting up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only leaving room for Harry Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his hand before the casement closed. The bars fixing as firmly as ever, seemingly, in the stone arch overhead. When Father Holt next arrived at Cattlewood, 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 away 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 in 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 Dr. Tusher in his best cassock, although the roads were muddy, and he never was known to wear his silk, only his stuffed one, a horse-back. With a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and Nahum, his clerk, ornamented with a like decoration. The doctor was walking up and down in front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw him, and heard him say he was going to pay his duty to his highness the Prince, as he mounted his pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The village people had orange cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith's laughing daughter pinned one into Harry's old hat, which he tore out indignantly when they bade him to cry, God save the Prince of Orange and the Protestant religion! But the people only laughed, for they liked the boy in the village, where his solitary condition moved the general pity, and where he found friendly welcomes and faces in many houses. Father Holt had many friends there too, for he not only would fight the blacksmith at theology, never losing his temper, but laughing the whole time in his pleasant way, but he cured him of an egg with quinquina, and was always ready with a kind word for any man that asked it, so that they said in the village was 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. Dr. Tusher and the ladies' 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, whether 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 afterward 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 majesties, and my lords, and my ladies, the doctor said gravely, it should not be for him to disturb or disquiet him. It was far from him to say that his majesties' 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 scarves, and courted in Castlewood, and some of them came up to the hall where they took possession, robbing nothing, however, beyond the hen-house and the beer-seller, 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 ladieship 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 church-hills, the judices, who kiss their master and betray him. We know how to suffer, how even to forgive and the royal cause. No doubt it was to that fatal business of losing the place of groom of the posset to which her ladieship eluded, as she did half a dozen times in a day. Let the tyrant of Orange bring his wrack and his odious Dutch tortures, the beast, the wretch, I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay his 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 page, a hundred times at least, of the particulars of the last interview which she had with His Majesty. I flung myself before my legious 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 it was not I that knelt. At least he spoke to me with a voice that reminded me of days gone by. "'E' Gad,' 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 a groom to a traitor's posthet.' 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 had ever been since their courtship. My lord Viscount had shown both loyalty and spirit. Even 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 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 lookout 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. It was lucky 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 Ed DeCamp. He remembers he was bitten 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 Newberry 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 country. Of late he had taken a greater lead in affairs than before, having the indefatigable Mr. Holt at his elbow, and by Lady Vicontess 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 country for the affairs of the king. It was arranged that the regiment of Scots, Greys and Dragoons, then courted at Newberry, 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 Newberry, march upon the Dutch troops at Red Ink under Ginkel, and these overthrown, and their indomitable little master away in Ireland, was 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, 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 had never used before. Father Holt blessed him too, and then they took lead of my lady Vicontess, who came from her apartment with a pocket handker shift 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 Marchanesse's hand, said 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 a dress, 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 cowboy coming at milking-time riding one of our horses which he had found grazing at the outer park wall. All night my lady by contest was in a very quiet and subdued mood. She scarce found fault with anybody. She played at carts 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 gray of the morning when the porter's 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 to Wonsey Down, my lord all of a sudden pulled up and the party came to a halt at the cross-way. Sir, says he to the officer, we are four to two, will you be so kind as to take that road and leave me 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 and 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 them to hold their hands, the fellow got away. Mr. Holt, qui pensait 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 moquis. Why did he say moquis to monsieur le vic-conte? We must drink it. The poor gentleman's horse was a better one than I rode. Blaise continues, Mr. Holt bids me get on him, and so I gave a cut to Whitefoot, and she trod at home. We rode on towards Newbury, we heard firing towards mid-day. 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 ecocé declared an hour too soon, General Jingle 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. 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 reverences' 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 lady-ship's chamber. She told him, from behind her nuptial curtains, to bid the coach begot ready, and that she would ride away anon. But the mysteries of her lady-ship'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 vicontesse stepped forth from her room, ready for departure, young John Lockwood comes running up from the village with news that a lawyer, three officers, and twenty or four and twenty soldiers were marching vents upon the house. John had but two minutes the start of them, and, ere he had well told his story, the troop rode into our courtyard. End of Chapter 5, Recorded by Rachel Ellen, July 11th, 2007. The History of Henry S. Mendezquire by William Makepeace Takare, Book 1, Chapter 6. The issue of the plots, the death of Thomas, third vicont of Castlewood, and the imprisonment of his vicontes. First my lady was for dying like Mary, Queen of Scots, to whom she fancied she bore her semblance 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, without 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 S. Mendezquire saw them from the window of the tapestry parlor. A couple of centenilles were posted at the gate, a half dozen more walked towards this table, and some others, preceded by the 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 a lawyer, came through the enter room to the tapestry parlor, and where now was nobody but young Harry S. Mendezquire, the page. Tell your mistress, little man, says the captain kindly, that we must speak to her. My mistress is ill a bed, said the page. What complaint has she asked the captain? The boy said, the rheumatism. Rheumatism, that's a sad complaint, continues the good nature of the 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. With father Holt? With Mr. Holt. And which way did they travel, asks the lawyer. They traveled without me, says the page. We must see Lady Castlewood. I have orders that nobody goes into her ladyship. She's sick, says the page. But at this moment, Victoire came out. Hush, says she. And, as if not knowing that anyone 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 knife cap on her head, and propped up by her pillows, looking none the less ghastly because of the red which was still in her cheeks, and which she could not afford to forego. Is that the doctor, she said? There's 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 non-jewing 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 the Majesty's 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 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 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 cry, No, jamais, Monsieur l'Officer, jamais, I will either died and let you see this world to 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 ladys' 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 not 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 with concerns to government as yet, only the weapons, with which beauties authorize to kill, as he, pointing to a wick 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 front of my men to lift you off in the sheet. I must examine this bed in a word. Papers may be hidden in the bed elsewhere. We know that very well, and here it was her ladyship's turn to shriek for the Captain with his fists 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? It is a pillow stuffed with paper. Some villainous betrayers cried out my lady, sitting up in the bed, showing herself full rest under her night rail. 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 tonight. 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's 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 banding talk. And without more to do, 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 clock-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 enter 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 when Esmond could make a pretty shrewd guess in aftertimes, when Dr. Tussier complained that King William's government had basely treated him for services done in that course. 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 Count in Father Hall's handwriting, Mr. Freeman's, King James' friends, a similar paper being found amongst those of Sir John Fenwick and Mr. Copleystone, who suffered death for this conspiracy. There was a patent conferring the title of Marquis of Esmond on my Lord Castlewood and the heirs' mail of his body, his appointment as Lord Lieutenant of the County and Major General. Note, to have this rank of Marquis restored in the family had always been my Lady Viscountess's ambition, and a role made in aunt, Barbara Topham, the goldsmith's daughter, dying about this time and leaving all her property to Lady Castlewood. I have heard that her ladyship sent almost the whole of the money to King James, a proceeding which so irritated my Lord Castlewood that he actually went to the parish church and was only appeased by the Marquis' title, which his exiled majesty sent to him in return for the 15,000 pounds his faithful subject lent him. End of note. 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 the house of Walcott 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 age 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 kinsmen 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 Castlewoods 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 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 officer, so King William. The seizure of the papers affected. The gentlemen did not pursue their further search through Castlewood house very rigorously. They examined Mr. Holts room, being led thither by his pupil, who showed as the father had been 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 bracer, they examined them eagerly enough and the young guide was a little amused at their perplexity. What are these, says one. They are written in a foreign language, says the lawyer. What are you laughing at, little whelp, at sea, turning around as he saw the boy smile. Mr. Holts said there 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, Christ the lawyer. Hey, God, it's Greek to me. Hey, God, 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. Had not one of your own writers said, the children of Adam are now laboring as much as he himself ever did about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, shaking the bows thereof, and seeking the fruit, being for the most part unmindful of the tree of life, a blind generation. 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 the lawyer, shall I go on, sir? The lawyer said, this boy is deeper than he seems. Who knows that he's not laughing at us? Let's have him, Dick, the scholar, cried Captain Westbury, laughing. And he called to a trooper out of the window. How, 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 Steel, sir, says the soldier. I may be Dick for my friends, but I don't name gentlemen of your cloth amongst them. Well done, Steel. Mr. Steel, sir, if you please. When you address a gentleman of his Majesty's horseguards, be pleased not to be so familiar. I didn't know, sir, said the lawyer. How should you? I take it you're not accustomed to meet with gentlemen, says the trooper. Hold, I pray, and read that bit of paper, says Westbury. This Latin, says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his officer. And from a sermon on Mr. Cudwards, and he translated the words pretty much as Harry 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 leave 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 steel, 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, asked Dick himself, cried Captain Westbury. I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to secure the miserable, and that's not your trade, Mr. Sheepskin, said the trooper. You had better leave Dick the scholar alone, Mr. Corbett, the captain said, and Harry Esmond, always touched by the kind face and the kind word, felt very grateful to this good-natured champion. The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach, and Countess and Victua 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 derangel, and poor infant, and a hundred other names. The viscountess, giving him her lean hand to kiss, made him always be faithful to the house of Esmond. If evil 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 the vengeance on me now, and she kissed the medal she wore with great fervour, and Henry Esmond knew not in the least what her meaning was, but had things learned that, all that she was, she was forever expecting, that a good officer's who's saint 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 their 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 the 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 parlor, 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, began to have an early shrewdness, like many children brought up alone, showed a great deal of theological science and knowledge of the points that he showed 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've had my education at the famous school, and the 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 in the post, Harry, and for the matter of persecution, Father Holt told me that a young gentleman of Edinburgh, 18 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 was you taught us? Nay, it was the pagans began it, cried the lad, and began to instance a number of saints of the church from the Proto-Martyr downwards. This one's fire went out under him. That one's oil cooled in the cauldron. At the third hole he had the executioner chopped three times, and it could not come off. Show us martyrs in your church, for whom such miracles have been done. Nay, said the trooper gravely, the miracles of the first three centuries belonged to my church as well as yours, Master Papist, and then added, with something of a smile upon his countenance and a clear look at Harry. And yet, my little catatizer, I have sometimes thought about these miracles, that there was not much good in them, since the victims had always finished by coming off at the third or fourth chop, and the cauldron, if it did not boil one day, boiled the next. How great, in our times, the church has lost that questionable advantage of respites. There never was a shower to put out or at least fire, nor an angel to turn the edge of the campion's axe. The rack tore the limbs of Southworld Jesuit and simps on the Protestant alike. For faith, everywhere multitudes die willingly enough. I've read in Monsieur Ricott's History of the Turks, of thousands of Mahomet's followers rushing upon death in battle as upon certain paradise, and in the great Moghul's dominions, people fling themselves by hundreds under the cars to the idols annually. And the widows burn themselves on their husband's bodies, as this well-known. This not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry, every man of every nation has done that. It is the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost, he added with a sigh. I know, he added, my poor lad, I'm 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 wished 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 and abrasion, decadent with a smile, I had the thought of wearing the black coat, but was ashamed for my life, you see, and took to this sorry red one. I've often thought of Joe Addison, like Dr. Cudworth says, at good conscience is the best looking glass of heaven, and there's 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 thought me to see and approve better things. There's my own fault, the teriora, sequie. You seem very good, the boy said. I'm not what I see, my lass, 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 troops took their repasts and pasts, most of their days, dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and cursing over the castle with ale. Harry Esmond found Dick the scholar in a woeful state of drunkenness. He hiccupped out a sermon and his laughing companions made 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 pappist, I wish Joseph Addison was here. Though the troopers of the king's lifeguards were all gentlemen, yet the rest of the gentlemen seemed ignorant and vulgar boars to Harry Esmond, with the exception of this good-natured corporal stealer scholar. And the captain Westbury and Luton and Trent 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 Axton Castle was treated, and the particulars of her confinement there. It is 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 is hoping a crown, as his enemies said he did, rightfully 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 Axton Castle, and the galler's garden to walk in, and though she repeatedly decided 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 all but keep her person in security. And it appeared that 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 ladyships, 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 kin's woman's straight and being friends with Colonel Bryce, commanding for King William and Hexton, and with the church dignitaries there, came to visit her ladyship in prison, offering to her uncle's daughter many 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 formally. There are some injuries which women never forgive one another, and Madame 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, Madame 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 as far as the child and his father were concerned, got to abating her anger towards that branch of the Castlewood family. And the letters of Colonel Esmond coming to light, as had 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, and his 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, the 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 carrying 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 Chatteries 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 but took 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 on his sword and a few pieces in his pocket. But the king received him with some kindness and distinction in spite of his porplight, confirmed him in his new title of Marquis, gave him a regiment and promised him further promotion. But titles of promotion were not to benefit him now. My Lord was wounded at the fatal battle of the Boine, 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 Qatar 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 and his life inspired him. But the other lay beyond his power to repair, though it is 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 priests 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 open for all that by the officers in command there. Harry has meant well remembered the receipt of this letter, which Lockwood brought in as Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trent were on the green playing at Bowles, young Esmond looking on at the sport or reading his book in the other. 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 12 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 honor 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 very grave tone, something which must happen to us all. He is dead of a wound received at the boy 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 sum delectissimum to his lady. I hope he has left you more than that. Harry did not know, he said. He was in the hands of heaven and faith but not lonely now, as it seemed to him. And 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 is 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 and 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 someone upon whom he could bestow it. He remembers and musters dying day, the thoughts and tears of that long night, the hours tolling through it. Who was he and what? Why here, rather than in 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 deathbed 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 gentleman 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 of Dublin at 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 battle door in my hand and fell up 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 on the ground once 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's steel. Harry Esmond thanked him and was grateful. But what could corporal steel do for him? Take him to ride a spare horse and be servant to the troop? Though there might be a bar in Harry Esmond's shield, it was a noble one. The council 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. And a book one, chapter six. Recording by Mones Brew, Helsing Forrest, Finland. Book one, chapter seven of the history of Henry Esmond Esquire, by William Makepeace Thackeray. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gemma Blythe. I am left at Castlewood and often and find most kind protectors there by William Makepeace Thackeray, book one, chapter seven. During the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, Honest Dick the scholar was the consonant companion of the lonely little orphan lad, Henry Esmond. And they read together and they played bowls together. And when the other troopers or their officers who were free-spoken over their cups as was the way of that day, when neither men nor women were overnight, talked unbecomingly of their amours and gallantries before the child, Dick, who very likely was sitting the whole company laughing, would stop their jokes with a maximum of a duperous reverential. And one's offered to lug out against another trooper called Hulking Dom, who wanted to ask Henry Esmond a ribald question. Also, Dick seeing that the child had, as he said, a sensibility above his ears and a great and praiseworthy discretion, confided to Harry his love for the Vittner's daughter, near to the Dollyard, Westminster, whom Dick addressed as Zacharisa in many verses of his composition. And without whom he said it would be impossible that he could continue to live. He vowed this a thousand times in a day. Though Harry smiled to see the loved lawns waning and his health and appetite as well as the most heart-hold trooper in the regiment, and he swore Harry to see Chrissy too, which vowed the loud religiously kept until he found that officers and privates were all taken into Dick's confidence and had the benefit of his verses, and it must be owned likewise, that while Dick was sighing after Zacharisa in London, he had consolations in the country. For there came a wench out of Castlewood Village who had washed his linen and who cried sadly when she heard he was gone, and without paying a bill to which Harry Esmond took upon himself to discharge by giving the girl a silver pocketpiece which Scholar Dick had presented to him. When, with many embraces and braves for his prosperity, Dick parted from him, the garrison of Castlewood being ordered away, Dick the Scholar said he would never forget his young friend, nor indeed did he, and Harry was sorry when the kind soldiers vacated Castlewood, looking forward with no small anxiety, for care and solitude had made him thoughtful beyond his years to his fate when the new lord and lady of the house came to live there. He had lived to be past twelve years old now, and had never had a friend save this wild trooper, perhaps, and father old, and had a bond and affectionate art tender to weakness that would feign attach itself to somebody and did not seem at rest and let it found a friend who would take charge of it. The instinct which led Esmond to admire and love the gracious person, the fair apparition of whose beauty and kindness had so moved him when he first be held, became, soon, a devoted affection and passion of gratitude, which entirely filled his young art that is yet, except in the case of dear father old, had had very little kindness for which to be thankful. Oh, dear Goday, thought he, remembering the lines out of the inass, which Mr. Holt had taught him, as themed as the boy thought, in every look or gesture of this fair creature an angelical softness and bright pity, in motion or repose, she seemed gracious alike, the tone of her voice, though she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted almost to anguish. It could not be called love, that a lad of twelve years of age, little more than a menial, self-porting, salted lady, his mistress, but it was worship to catch her glance, to divine her errand and run on it before she had spoken it, to watch, follow, adore her, became the business of his life, meanwhile, as is the way often, his idol had idols of her own, never thought of, or suspected, the admiration of her little pygmy adora. The lady had on her side her three idols, first and foremost, Joven, supreme ruler, was her lord, Harry's patron, the good vicarant of Castlewood. All wishes of his were laws with her, if he had a headache, she was ill, if he frowned, she trembled, if he joked, she smiled and was charmed, if he went hunting, she was always at the window to see him right away, her little son growing on her arm, or on the watch till his return, she made dishes for his dinner, spiced wine for him, made the toast for his tankard at breakfast, hushed the house when he slept in his chair, and watched for a look when he woke. If my lord was not a little proud of his beauty, my lady adored it, she glung to his arm as he paced the terrace, her two fair little aunts glass-browned his great one, her eyes were never tired of looking in his face and wondering at its perfection, her little son was his son, and had his father's look and curly brown hair, her daughter Beatrix was his daughter, and had his eyes, were there ever such beautiful eyes in the world, all the house was arranged so as to bring him ease and give him pleasure. She liked the small gentry roundabout to come and pay him court, never caring for admiration for herself. Those who wanted to be well with the lady must admire him, not regarding her dress. She would wear a gown to rags because he had once liked it, and if he brought her a brooch or a ribbon, would prefer it to all the most costly articles of her wardrobe. My lord went to London every year for six weeks and the family being too poor to appear at court with any figure. He went alone. It was not until he was out of sight that her face showed any sorrow, and what a joy when he came back, what preparation before his return. The farmed creature had his arm-chair at the chimney side, delighting to put the children in it and look at them there. Nobody took his place at the table, but his silver tankards were there as when the lord was present. A pretty sight it was to see during the lord's absence. Or on those many mornings when sleep or headache kept him a bed, his fair young lady of Castlewood, her little daughter at her knee, and her domestics gathered round her, reading the morning prayer of the English church. Esmond Long remembered how she looked and spoke, kneeling reverently before the sacred book, the sun shining upon her golden hair until it made a halo round about her. A dozen of the servants of the house kneeled in a line opposite their mistress. For a while Harry Esmond kept apart from these mysteries, but Dr. Tushar is showing him that the prayers read were those of the Church of All Ages and the boy's own inclination, prompting him to be always as near as he might to his mistress and to think all things she did right, from listening to the prayers in the antechamber. He came presently to kneel down with the rest of the household in the parlor, and before a couple of years my lady had made a thorough convert. Indeed the boy loved his catechizer so much that he would have subscribed to anything she bade him and was never tired of listening to her fond discourse and simple comments upon the book, which he read to him in a voice of which it was difficult to resist the sweet persuasion and end her appealing kindness, this friendly controversy and the intimacy which had occasioned bound the lad more fondly than ever to his mistress. The happiest period of all his life was this and the young mother with her daughter and son and the orphan lad whom she protected, read and worked and played, and were children together. If the lady looked forward as what fond woman does not, towards the future she had no plans from which Harry Esmond was left out. And a thousand and a thousand times in his passionate and impetuous way, he vowed that no power should separate him from his mistress and only asked for some chance to happen by which he might show his fidelity to her. Now at the close of his life, as he sits and recalls in tranquillity the happy and busy scenes of it, he can think not ungratefully that he has been faithful to that early vow. Such a life is so simple that years may be chronicled in a few lines, but few men's life voyages are destined to be all prosperous, and this calm of which we are speaking was soon to come to an end. As Esmond grew and observed for himself, he found of necessity much to read and think of outside that fond circle of Ginsburg who had admitted him to join a hand with them. He read more books than they cared to study with him, was alone in the midst of them many a time and fast nights over labors, futile perhaps, but in which they could not join him. His dear mistress divined his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness of affection, began to forebode a time when he would escape from his own nest and at his eager protestations to the contrary would only sigh and shake her head before those fatal decrees in life are executed. There are always secret provisions and warning omens. When everything yet seems calm, we are aware that the storm is coming. And other happy days were over, too at least of that home party felt that they were drawing to a close and were uneasy and on the lookout for the cloud which was to obscure their calm. It was easy for Harry to see however much his lady persisted in obedience and admiration for her husband, that my Lord died of his quiet life and grew weary and then testy at those gentle bonds with which his wife would have held him. As they say, the ground llama of Tibet is very much fatigued by his character of divinity and yawns on his altar as his bonds as kneel and worship him. Many a umgaid grows heartily sick of the reverence with which his family devotee is pursuing him and sighs for freedom and for his old life and to be off the pedestal on which his dependents would have him sit forever whilst they adore him and fly him with flowers and hymns and incense and flattery. So after a few years of his marriage, my honest Lord Castlewood began to tire. All the high-flown raptures and devotional ceremonies with which his wife, his cheap priestess, treated him, first sent him to sleep. And then drove him out of doors, for the truth must be told that my Lord was a jolly gentleman with very little of the august or divine in his nature, though his fond wife persisted in revering it. And besides, he had to pay a penalty for this love, which persons of his disposition seldom like to defray. And in a word, if he had a loving wife, had a very jealous and exacting one, then he worried of this jealousy. Then he broke away from it. Then came, no doubt, complaints and recriminations. Then, perhaps, promises of amendment not fulfilled, then upradings not the more pleasant because they were silent, then only sad looks and tearful eyes conveyed them. Then, perhaps, the bear reached the other's stage, which is not uncommon in married life, when the woman perceives that the guard of the honeymoon is a gardener more, only a mortal like the rest of us, and so she looks into her art and lo, and vacuously it's aired in an air, like Anna. And, supposing our lady to have a fine genius and a brilliant wit of her own, and the magic spell in infatuation removed from her, which had led her to worship as a guard, a very ordinary mortal. And what follows? They live together and they dine together and they say, my dear, and my love, as here to fall. But the man is himself and the woman herself. Their dream of love is over as everything else is over in life, as flowers and fury and griefs and pleasures are over. Very likely the lady, Gazzlewood, had ceased to adore her husband herself long before she got off her knees, or would allow her household to discontinue worshipping him. To do him justice, my lord never exacted this observance. He laughed and joked and drank his bottle and swore when he was angry, much to the mill your life or anyone pretending to sublimity. And it is best to destroy the ceremonial with which his wife chose to surround him. And it required no great conceit on young Esmond's part to see that his own brains were better than his patrons, who indeed never assumed any as of superiority over the lad or over any dependent of his save when he was displeased, in which case he would express his mind and oaths very freely, and who on the contrary perhaps spoiled Parson Harry as he called young Esmond by constantly praising his parts and admiring his boyish stock of learning. It may seem gracious in one who has received a hundred favors from his patron to speak in any better reverential manner of his elders, but the present writer has had descendants of his own, whom he has brought up with as little as possible of the civility at present, exacted by parents from children, under which mask of duty there often lurks indifference, contempt, or rebellion, and as he would have his grandsons believe or represent him to be not an inch taller than nature has made him, though with regard to his past acquaintances he would speak without anger, but with truth, as far as he knows it, neither extenuating nor sitting down awed in malice. So long then, as the world moved according to Lord Castlewood's wishes, he was good-humored enough of a temper naturally sprightly and easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors and charm to receive the tribute of their laughter, all exercises of the body he could perform to perfection, shooting at a mark and flying, breaking horses, riding at the ring, bitching the quite, playing at all games with great skill, and not only did he do these things well, but he thought he did them to perfection, and he was often tricked about horses, which he pretended to know better than any jockey, was made to play at ball and billiards by shoppers, who took his money and came back from London woefully poorer each time that he went, as the state of his affairs testified when the sudden accident came by which his career was brought to an end. He was fond of the parade of dress and past as many hours daily at his toilet as an elderly cooket. A dent part of his day was spent in the brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was curling and brown, and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig, such as almost everybody of that time wore. We have the liberty of our hair back now, but powder and palmitin along with it. When, I wonder, will these monstrous pole taxes of our age be withdrawn and men allow to carry their colors black, red, or gray as nature made them, and as he liked her to be well-dressed? His lady spared no pains in that matter to please him. Indeed, she would dress her head or cut it off if he had bitten her. It was a wonder to young Esmond, serving as page to Milord and Lady to hear day after day to such company as came. The same boys' stories told by Milord, at which his lady never failed to smile or hold down her head, and Dr. Tasha to burst out laughing at the proper point or cry, fire Milord, remember my cloth, but with such a faint show of resistance that it only provoked Milord further. Lord Castlewood's stories rose by degrees and became stronger after the aleat dinner and the bottle afterwards. The lady always taking flight after the very first glass to church and king, and leaving the gentlemen to drink the rest of the toasts by themselves. And as Henry Esmond was her page, she also was called from duty at this time. Milord has lived in the army and with soldiers, she would say to the lad, amongst whom great license is allowed. You have had a different nurture and I trust these things will change as you grow older, not that any fault attaches to Milord, who is one of the best and most religious men in this kingdom, and very likely, she believes so. It is strange what a man may do and a woman yet, think him, men angel, and as Esmond had taken truth for his motto, it must be owned even with regard to that other angel, his mistress, that she had a fault of character which flawed her perfections, but the other sex perfectly tolerant and kindly, of her own she was invariably jealous and a proof that she had this vice is, that though she would have knowledge, a thousand faults that she had not, to this which she had, she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong and that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old, my lady's own waiting woman squinted and was marked with a small box. The housemaids in Skullion were ordinary country wenches. June Lady Castlewood was kind as her nature made her to everybody, almost. But as soon as ever she had to do with a pretty woman, she was cold, retiring and haughty. The country ladies found this fault in her and though the men all admired her, their wives and daughters complained of her coldness and aims and said that Castlewood was pleasanter in Lady Jezebel's time as the dowager was called, then at present. Some few were on my mistress's side, old Lady Blinkensop, jointure, who had been at court in King James the first time, always took her side and so did old mistress Crookshank, Bishop Crookshank's daughter of Hexton, who, with some more of their like, pronounced my lady an angel. But the pretty women were not of this mind and the opinion of the country was that my lord was tied to his wife's apron strings and that she ruled over him. The second fight which Ari has meant add was at 14 years of age with Brian Hawkshaw, Sir John Hawkshaw's son of Bramblebrook, who, advancing this opinion that my lady was jealous and henpecked, my lord, put Ari in such a fury that Ari fell on him and with such rage that the other boy, who was two years older and by far bigger than he, had by far the worst of the assault until it was interrupted by Dr. Tasha walking out of the dinner room. Brian Hawkshaw got up bleeding at the nose, having indeed been surprised as many a stronger man might have been, but the fury of the assault upon him, you little bastard beggar, he said, I'll murder you for this. And indeed he was big enough. Bastard or not, said the other, grinding his teeth. I have a couple of swords and if you'd like to meet me as a man I'll let deris tonight. And ere the doctor coming up, the colloquy of the young champions ended, very likely, big as he was, Hawkshaw did not care to continue a fight with such a ferocious opponent as this had been. End of Book One, Chapter Seven, recording by Gemma Blythe. Book One, Chapter Eight, the History of Henry Asmond Asquire by William McPhee's Zachary. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gemma Blythe. After Good Fortune Comes Evil. Book One, Chapter Eight. Since my lady, Mary Whatley Montague, brought him the custom of inoculation from Turkey, a perilous practice many deem it and only a useless rushing into the jaws of danger. I think the severity of the smallpox, that dreadful scourge of the world, has somewhat been abated in our part of it. And remember in my time, hundreds of the young and beautiful who have been carried to the grave or have only risen from their pillows, frightfully scarred and disfigured by this melody. Many a sweet face hath left its roses on the bed on which this dreadful and withering blight has laid them in my early days. His pestilence would enter a village and destroy off its inhabitants at its approach. It may well be imagined, not only the beautiful, but the strongest were alarmed and those fled who could. One day in the year sixteen-hundred-ninety-and-four, I have good reason to remember it. Dr. Tazher ran into Castlewood House with a face of consternation, saying that the melody had made its appearance at the blacksmith's house in the village and that one of the maids there was down in the small box. The blacksmith, besides his forge and iron for horses, had an ale house for men which his wife kept and his company sat on benches before the indoor, looking at the smithy while they drank their beer. Now there was a pretty girl at this inn, the landlord's men called Nancy Severight, a bouncing, fresh-looking lass whose face was as red as the hollyhocks over the pales of the garden behind the inn. At this time Ariasman was a lad of sixteen and somehow in his walks and rambles it often happened that he fell in with Nancy Severight's bonny face. If he did not want something done at the blacksmith's, he would go and drink ale at the three castles or find some pretext for seeing this poor Nancy. Poor thing. Harry meant or imagined no harm and she, no doubt, as little. But the truth is they were always meeting in the lanes or by the brook or at the garden pailings or about Castlewood. It was Lord Mr. Henry. And how do you do Nancy? Many and many a time in the week to surprising the magnetic attraction which draws people together from ever so far. I blush as I think of poor Nancy now in a red bodice and bucks and verbal cheeks and a canvas petticoat and that I devised schemes and set traps and made speeches in my heart which I seldom had courage to say when in presence of that humble enchantress who knew nothing beyond milking a cow and opened her black eyes with wonder when I made one of my fine speeches out of Walla or Ovid. Poor Nancy. From the midst of far off years thine honest country face beams out and I remember thy kind voice as if I had heard it yesterday. When Dr. Tasha brought the news that the smallpox was at the three castles wither a trampa, it was said, had brought the malady. Henry Esmond's first thought was of alarm but poor Nancy and then of shame and disquiet for the Castlewood family, lest he might have brought this infection. For the truth is that Mr. Harry had been sitting in a back room for an hour that day where Nancy C. Bright was with a little brother who complained of headache and was lying stupefied and crying either in a chair by the corner of the fire or in Nancy's lap or on mine. Little lady Beatrix screamed out at Dr. Tasha's news and my lord cried out, God bless me. He was a brave man and not afraid of death in any shape but this. He was very proud of its pink complexion and fair hair but the idea of death by smallpox scared him beyond all other ends. We will take the children right away tomorrow to Walcott. This was my lord's small house inherited from his mother next to Winchester. That is the best refuge in case the disease spreads, said Dr. Tasha. It is awful to think of it beginning at the ale house. Half the people of the village have visited that today or the blacksmiths, which is the same thing. My clerk name lodges with them. I can never go into my reading desk and have that fellow's own near me. I won't have that man near me. If a parishioner dying in the smallpox sent to you, would you not go? Asked my lady, looking up from her frame of work with her calm blue eyes. By the lord I wouldn't, said my lord. We are not in a popish country and a sick man doth not absolutely need absolution and confession, said the doctor. It is true. They are a comfort and a help to him when attainable and to be administered with hope of good. But in a case where the life of a parish priest in the midst of his flock is highly valuable to them, he is not called upon to risk it. And there with the lives, future prospects and temporal, even spiritual welfare of his own family for the sake of a single person who is not very likely in a condition even to understand the religious message whereof the priest is the bringer being uneducated and likewise stupefied or delirious by disease. If your ladyship or his lordship, my excellent good friend and patron were to take it, God forbid, cried my lord. Amen, continued Dr. Tasha. Amen to that prayer, my very good lord. For your sake I would lay my life down and to judge from the alarm look on the doctor's purple face, you would have thought that that sacrifice was about to be called for instantly to love children and be gentle with them was an instinct rather than a merit in Henry Esmond, so much so that he thought almost with the sort of shame of his liking for them and of the softness into which it betrayed him. And on this day the poor fellow had not only at his young friend the milkmaid's brother on his knee, but had been drawing pictures and telling stories to the little Frank Castlewood who had occupied the same place for an hour after dinner and was never tired of Henry's tales in his pictures of soldiers and horses. As luck would have it, Beatrix had not on that evening taken her usual place, which generally she was glad enough to have upon her duty to slap. For Beatrix from the earliest time was jealous of every caress which was given to her little brother Frank. She would fling away even from the maternal arms if she saw Frank had been there before her. Insomuch that Lady Esmond was obliged not to show her love for her son in the presence of the little girl and embraced one or the other alone. She would turn pale and red with rage if she caught signs of intelligence or affection between Frank and his mother, would sit apart and not speak for a whole night if she thought the boy had a better fruit or a larger cake than hers, would fling away a ribbon if he had one and from the earliest age, sitting up in her little chair by the great fireplace, opposite to the corner where Lady Casselwood commonly sat at her embroidery, would utter infantile sarcasm about the favor shown to her brother. These, if spoken in the presence of Lord Casselwood, tickled and amused his humor, he would pretend to love Frank best and dangle and kiss him and roar would laugh to Beatrix's jealousy. But the truth is, my Lord did not often witness these scenes nor very much trouble the quiet fireside at which his lady passed in many long evenings. My Lord was hunting all day when the season admitted. He frequented all the cockfights and fares in the country and would ride 20 miles to see a main fort or two clowns break their heads at a cuddling match. And he liked better to sit in his boiler-tricking ale in punch with Jack and Tom than in his wife's drawing room. Wither, if he came, he brought only too often bloodshed eyes, a hiccuping voice and a reeling gait, the management of the house and the property, the care of the few tenants and the village poor and the accounts of the estate were in the hands of his lady and her young secretary, Harry Esmond. My Lord took charge of the stables, the kennel and the cellar, and he filled this and emptied it too. So a chance that upon this very day, when poor Harry Esmond had had the blacksmith's son and the pier's son alike upon his knee, little Beatrix, who had come to her tutor willingly enough with her book and arriving, had refused him. Seeing the place occupied by her brother and luckily for her, had sat at the further end of the room away from him, playing with the spaniel dog which he had and for which, by fits and starts, she would take a great affection and talking at Harry Esmond over her shoulder as she pretended to caress the dog, saying that Fido would love her and she would love Fido and nothing but Fido all her life. When then the news was brought that the little boy at the three castles was ill with the smallpox, poor Harry Esmond felt a shock of alarm, not so much for himself as for his mistress's son, whom he might have brought into peril, Beatrix, who had pouted sufficiently and who, whenever a stranger appeared, began from infancy almost to play off little graces to catch his attention. Her brother, being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee, for though the doctor was very obsequious to her, she did not like him. Because he had thick boots and dirty hands, the poor young miss said, and because she hated learning the catechism. But she advanced towards Esmond from the corner where she had been sulking. He started back and placed a great chair on which he was sitting between him and her, saying in the French language to Lady Castlewood, with whom the young lad had read much and whom he had perfected in his tongue, Madam, the child must not approach me. I must tell you that I was at the blacksmith's today and had his little boy upon my lap. Where you took my son afterwards, Lady Castlewood said very angry and turning red, I thank you, sir, for giving him such company. Beatrix, she said in English, I forbid you to touch, Mr. Esmond. Come away, child, come to your room, come to your room. I wish your reverence could knight and you, sir, had you not better go back to your friends at the ale house. Her eyes ordinarily so kind, dotted flashes of anger as she spoke, and she tossed up her head, which hung down commonly, with the mien of a princess. Hey, day, says my lord, it was standing by the fireplace. Indeed, he was in the position to which he generally came by that hour of the evening. Hey, day, Rachel, what are you in a passion about? Ladies ought never to be in a passion, ought they, Dr. Tasha. Though it does good to see Rachel in a passion. Damn, Lady Castlewood, you look devilish, handsome in a passion. It is, my lord, because Mr. Henry Esmond, having nothing to do with his time here and not having a taste for our company, has been to the ale house, where he has some friends. My lord burst out with a laugh and an oath. You young sly boots, you've been at Nancy Severeight. Damn, the young hypocrite. Who'd have thought it didn't him? I say, Tasha, he's been after. Enough, my lord, said my lady, don't insult me with this talk. Upon my word, said boy, are you trying to cry with shame and mortification. The honor of that young person is perfectly unstained for me. Oh, of course, of course, is my lord. More and more laughing in tipsy. Upon his honor, doctor, Nancy Severeight, take Mistress Beatrix to bed. My lady cried at this moment to Mrs. Tucker, a woman, who came in with her Lady Ship's tea. Put her into my room. No, into yours, she added quickly. Go, my child, go, I say, not a word. And Beatrix, quite surprised, it's a sudden turn of authority from one who was seldom accustomed to raise her voice, went out of the room with a scared countenance and waited even to burst out of crying until she got to the door with Mrs. Tucker. For once, her mother took little heed of her sobbing and continued to speak eagerly. My lord, she said, this young man, you're dependent, told me just now in French. He was ashamed to speak in his own language, that he had been at the ale house all day, where he has had that little wretch who was now ill of the smallpox on his knee. And he comes home wreaking from that place, yes, wreaking from it, and takes my boy into his lap without shame and sits down by me. Yes, by me. He may have killed Frank for what I know, killed our child. Why was he brought in to disgrace our house? Why is he here? Let him go, let him go, I say, to night and pollute the place no more. She had never once uttered a syllable of unkindness to Ari Esmond, and her cruel words smote the poor boy, so that he stood for some moments bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice of such a stab from such a hand. He turned quite white from red, which he had been. I cannot help my birth, madam, he said, nor my other misfortune. And as for your boy, if my coming nigh to him pollutes him now, it was not so always. Good night, my lord. Heaven bless you and yours for your goodness to me. I have tired her ladyship's kindness out, and I will go, and sinking down on his knee. Ari Esmond took the rough hand of his benefactor and kissed it. He wants to go to the LLs. Let him go, cried my lady. I'm damned if he shall, said my lord. I didn't think you could be so damned ungrateful, Rachel. Her reply was diverse into a flood of tears, and to quit the room with a rapid glance at Ari Esmond, as my lord, not heeding them, and still in great good humor, raised up his young client from his kneeling posture. For a thousand kindnesses had caused the lad to revere my lord as a father, and put his broad hand on Ari Esmond's shoulder. She was always so, my lord, said, of a notion of a woman drives her mad. I took to look her on that very account, by Jove, for no other reason than that. Or she can't be jealous of a beer barrel or a bottle of rum, can she, doctor? Damn it, look at the maids. Just look at the maids in the house. My lord pronounced all the words together. Just look at the maids in the house. Jever, see such a maids? She wouldn't take her wife out of castle would now, would you, doctor? And my lord burst out laughing. The doctor, who had been looking at my lord castle would from under his eyelid, said, but joking apart, I'm a lord as a divine. I cannot treat the subject in a jocular light, nor, as a pastor of this congregation, look with anything but sorrow at the idea of so very young as she, going astray. Sir, said young Esmond, bursting out indignantly. She told me that you yourself were a hard old man and had offered to kiss her in the dairy. For shame, Henry, cried doctor Tasha, turning as red as a turkey cock, while my lord continued to roar with laughter. If you listen to the falsehoods of an abandoned girl, she is as honest as any woman in England and as pure for me, cried out Henry, and as kind and as good, for shame on you, to malign her. Far be it from me to do so, cried the doctor. Heaven grant, I may be mistaken in the girl and in user, who have a truly precocious genius, but that is not the point at issue at present. It appears that the smallpox broke out in the little boy at the three castles. That it was on him when you visited the owl house for your own reasons, and that you sat with the child for some time and immediately afterwards with my young lord, the doctor raised his voice as he spoke and looked towards me lady, who had now come back looking very pale with a handkerchief in her hand. This is all very true, sir, said lady Esmond, looking at the young man, tis to be feared that he may have brought the infection with him. From the owl house, yes, said my lady. Damn it, I forgot when I called you boy, cried my lord. Stepping back, keep off, Harry, my boy. There's no good in running into the wolf's jaws, you know. My lady looked at him with some surprise and instantly advancing to Henry Esmond took his hand. I beg your pardon, Henry, she said. I spoke very unkindly. I have no right to interfere with you, with your... My lord broke out into an oath. Can't you leave the boy alone, my lady? She looked a little red and faintly pressed the lads hand as she dropped it. There is no use, my lord, she said. Frank was on his knee as he was making pictures and was running constantly from Henry to me. The evil is done, if any. Not with me. Damn, cried my lord. I've been smoking and he lighted his pipe again with a coal and it keeps off infection and as the disease is in the village, plague, take it, I would have you leave it. We'll go tomorrow to Walcott, my lady. I have no fear, said my lady. I may have had it as an infant. It broke out in our house then and when four of my sisters had it at home two years before our marriage, I escaped it and two of my dear sisters died. I won't run the risk, said my lord. I'm as bold as any man, but I'll not bear that. Take betricks with you and go, said my lady. For us the mischief is done and Tucker can wait upon us who has had the disease. You take care to choose him ugly enough, said my lord, at which her ladyship hung down her head and looked foolish and my lord, calling away Tasha, bade him come to the oak parlor and have a pipe. The doctor made a low bow to her ladyship, of which salams he was profuse and walked off on his creaking square toes after his patron. When the lady and the young man were alone, there was a silence of some moments during which he stood at the fire, looking rather vacantly at the dying embers, whilst her ladyship busied herself with a tambour frame and needles. I am sorry, she said, after a pause in a hard dry voice. I repeat, I am sorry that I showed myself so ungrateful for the safety of my son. It was not at all my wish that you should leave us. I am sure, unless you found pleasure elsewhere, but you must perceive, Mr. Esmond, that at your age and with your tastes, it is impossible that you can continue to stay upon the intimate footing in which you have been in this family. You have wished to go to the university and I think just quite as well that you should be sent there, though. I did not press this matter, thinking you were child as you are indeed in years, quite a child. And I should never have thought of treating you otherwise until, until these circumstances came to light and I shall beg my Lord to dispatch you as quick as possible and we'll go on with Frank's learning as well as I can. I owe my father thanks for a little grounding and you, I'm sure, for much that you have taught me and I wish you a good night, Mr. Esmond. And with this, she dropped a stately curtsy and taking her candle, went away through the tapestry door which led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, his girl seemed to see until she was gone and then her image was impressed upon him and remained forever fixed upon his memory. He saw her retreating, the taper lighting up her marble face, a scarlet lip quivering, and a shining golden air. He went to his own room into bed where he tried to read as his custom was but he never knew what he was reading until afterwards he remembered the appearance of the letters of the book. It was in Montaigne's essays and the events of the day passed before him. That is, of the last hour of the day for as for the morning and the four milkmaid yonder, he never so much at one start and he could not get to sleep until daylight and woke with a violent headache and quite unrefreshed. He had brought the contagion with him from the three castles sure enough and was presently laid up with the smallpox which spared the whole no more than it did the cottage. End of book one, chapter eight, recording by Gemma Blythe.