Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges. William Makepeace Thackeray
when Tusher dies you shall have the living here, if you are not better provided by that time. We'll furnish the dining-room and buy the horses another year. I'll give thee a nag out of the stable: take any one except my hack and the bay gelding and the coach-horses; and God speed thee, my boy!”
“Have the sorrel, Harry; 'tis a good one. Father says 'tis the best in the stable,” says little Frank, clapping his hands, and jumping up. “Let's come and see him in the stable.” And the other, in his delight and eagerness, was for leaving the room that instant to arrange about his journey.
The Lady Castlewood looked after him with sad penetrating glances. “He wishes to be gone already, my lord,” said she to her husband.
The young man hung back abashed. “Indeed, I would stay for ever, if your ladyship bade me,” he said.
“And thou wouldst be a fool for thy pains, kinsman,” said my lord. “Tut, tut, man. Go and see the world. Sow thy wild oats; and take the best luck that Fate sends thee. I wish I were a boy again that I might go to college, and taste the Trumpington ale.”
“Ours indeed is but a dull home,” cries my lady, with a little of sadness, and maybe of satire, in her voice: “an old glum house, half ruined, and the rest only half furnished; a woman and two children are but poor company for men that are accustomed to better. We are only fit to be your worship's handmaids, and your pleasures must of necessity lie elsewhere than at home.”
“Curse me, Rachel, if I know now whether thou art in earnest or not,” said my lord.
“In earnest, my lord!” says she, still clinging by one of [pg 104] her children. “Is there much subject here for joke?” And she made him a grand curtsy, and, giving a stately look to Harry Esmond, which seemed to say, “Remember; you understand me, though he does not,” she left the room with her children.
“Since she found out that confounded Hexton business,” my lord said—“and be hanged to them that told her!—she has not been the same woman. She, who used to be as humble as a milkmaid, is as proud as a princess,” says my lord. “Take my counsel, Harry Esmond, and keep clear of women. Since I have had anything to do with the jades, they have given me nothing but disgust. I had a wife at Tangier, with whom, as she couldn't speak a word of my language, you'd have thought I might lead a quiet life. But she tried to poison me, because she was jealous of a Jew girl. There was your aunt, for aunt she is—aunt Jezebel, a pretty life your father led with her, and here's my lady. When I saw her on a pillion riding behind the dean her father, she looked and was such a baby, that a sixpenny doll might have pleased her. And now you see what she is—hands off, highty-tighty, high and mighty, an empress couldn't be grander. Pass us the tankard, Harry, my boy. A mug of beer and a toast at morn, says my host. A toast and a mug of beer at noon, says my dear. D——n it, Polly loves a mug of ale, too, and laced with brandy, by Jove!” Indeed, I suppose they drank it together; for my lord was often thick in his speech at mid-day dinner; and at night at supper, speechless altogether.
Harry Esmond's departure resolved upon, it seemed as if the Lady Castlewood, too, rejoiced to lose him; for more than once, when the lad, ashamed perhaps at his own secret eagerness to go away (at any rate stricken with sadness at the idea of leaving those from whom he had received so many proofs of love and kindness inestimable), tried to express to his mistress his sense of gratitude to her, and his sorrow at quitting those who had so sheltered and tended a nameless and houseless orphan, Lady Castlewood cut short his protests of love and his lamentations, and would hear of no grief, but only look forward to Harry's fame and prospects in life. “Our little legacy will keep you for four years like a gentleman. Heaven's Providence, your own genius, industry, honour, must do the rest for you. Castlewood will always be a home for you; and these [pg 105] children, whom you have taught and loved, will not forget to love you. And Harry,” said she (and this was the only time when she spoke with a tear in her eye, or a tremor in her voice), “it may happen in the course of nature that I shall be called away from them: and their father—and—and they will need true friends and protectors. Promise me that you will be true to them—as—as I think I have been to you—and a mother's fond prayer and blessing go with you.”
“So help me God, madam, I will,” said Harry Esmond, falling on his knees, and kissing the hand of his dearest mistress. “If you will have me stay now, I will. What matters whether or no I make my way in life, or whether a poor bastard dies as unknown as he is now? 'Tis enough that I have your love and kindness surely; and to make you happy is duty enough for me.”
“Happy!” says she; “but indeed I ought to be, with my children, and——”
“Not happy!” cried Esmond (for he knew what her life was, though he and his mistress never spoke a word concerning it). “If not happiness, it may be ease. Let me stay and work for you—let me stay and be your servant.”
“Indeed, you are best away,” said my lady, laughing, as she put her hand on the boy's head for a moment. “You shall stay in no such dull place. You shall go to college and distinguish yourself as becomes your name. That is how you shall please me best; and—and if my children want you, or I want you, you shall come to us; and I know we may count on you.”
“May Heaven forsake me if you may not,” Harry said, getting up from his knee.
“And my knight longs for a dragon this instant that he may fight,” said my lady, laughing; which speech made Harry Esmond start, and turn red; for indeed the very thought was in his mind, that he would like that some chance should immediately happen whereby he might show his devotion. And it pleased him to think that his lady had called him “her knight”, and often and often he recalled this to his mind, and prayed that he might be her true knight, too.
My lady's bedchamber window looked out over the country, and you could see from it the purple hills beyond Castlewood village, the green common betwixt that and the [pg 106] Hall, and the old bridge which crossed over the river. When Harry Esmond went away for Cambridge, little Frank ran alongside his horse as far as the bridge, and there Harry stopped for a moment, and looked back at the house where the best part of his life had been passed. It lay before him with its grey familiar towers, a pinnacle or two shining in the sun, the buttresses and terrace walls casting great blue shades on the grass. And Harry remembered all his life after how he saw his mistress at the window looking out on him, in a white robe, the little Beatrix's chestnut curls resting at her mother's side. Both waved a farewell to him, and little Frank sobbed to leave him. Yes, he would be his lady's true knight, he vowed in his heart; he waved her an adieu with his hat. The village people had good-bye to say to him too. All knew that Master Harry was going to college, and most of them had a kind word and a look of farewell. I do not stop to say what adventures he began to imagine, or what career to devise for himself, before he had ridden three miles from home. He had not read Monsieur Galland's ingenious Arabian tales as yet; but be sure that there are other folks who build castles in the air, and have fine hopes, and kick them down too, besides honest Alnaschar.
Chapter X. I Go To Cambridge, And Do But Little Good There
My lord, who said he should like to revisit the old haunts of his youth, kindly accompanied Harry Esmond in his first journey to Cambridge. Their road lay through London, where my lord viscount would also have Harry stay a few days to show him the pleasures of the town, before he entered upon his University studies, and whilst here Harry's patron conducted the young man to my lady dowager's house at Chelsey near London: the kind lady at Castlewood having specially ordered that the young gentleman and the old should pay a respectful visit in that quarter.
Her ladyship the viscountess dowager occupied a handsome new house in Chelsey, with a garden behind it, and facing the river, always a bright and animated sight with [pg 107] its swarms of sailors, barges, and wherries. Harry laughed at recognizing in the parlour the well-remembered old piece of Sir Peter Lely, wherein his father's widow was represented as a virgin huntress, armed with a gilt bow and arrow, and encumbered only with that small