The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  CHAPTER I.

  I AM IN PRISON, AND VISITED, BUT NOT CONSOLED THERE.

  Those may imagine, who have seen death untimely strike down personsrevered and beloved, and know how unavailing consolation is, what wasHarry Esmond's anguish after being an actor in that ghastly midnightscene of blood and homicide. He could not, he felt, have faced his dearmistress, and told her that story. He was thankful that kind Atterburyconsented to break the sad news to her; but, besides his grief, whichhe took into prison with him, he had that in his heart which secretlycheered and consoled him.

  A great secret had been told to Esmond by his unhappy stricken kinsman,lying on his death-bed. Were he to disclose it, as in equity and honorhe might do, the discovery would but bring greater grief upon those whomhe loved best in the world, and who were sad enough already. Should hebring down shame and perplexity upon all those beings to whom he wasattached by so many tender ties of affection and gratitude? degrade hisfather's widow? impeach and sully his father's and kinsman's honor? andfor what? for a barren title, to be worn at the expense of an innocentboy, the son of his dearest benefactress. He had debated this matter inhis conscience, whilst his poor lord was making his dying confession. Onone side were ambition, temptation, justice even; but love, gratitude,and fidelity, pleaded on the other. And when the struggle was over inHarry's mind, a glow of righteous happiness filled it; and it was withgrateful tears in his eyes that he returned thanks to God for thatdecision which he had been enabled to make.

  "When I was denied by my own blood," thought he, "these dearest friendsreceived and cherished me. When I was a nameless orphan myself, andneeded a protector, I found one in yonder kind soul, who has gone to hisaccount repenting of the innocent wrong he has done."

  And with this consoling thought he went away to give himself up at theprison, after kissing the cold lips of his benefactor.

  It was on the third day after he had come to the Gatehouse prison,(where he lay in no small pain from his wound, which inflamed and achedseverely,) and with those thoughts and resolutions that have been justspoke of, to depress, and yet to console him, that H. Esmond's keepercame and told him that a visitor was asking for him, and though he couldnot see her face, which was enveloped in a black hood, her whole figure,too, being veiled and covered with the deepest mourning, Esmond knew atonce that his visitor was his dear mistress.

  He got up from his bed, where he was lying, being very weak; andadvancing towards her as the retiring keeper shut the door upon him andhis guest in that sad place, he put forward his left hand (for the rightwas wounded and bandaged), and he would have taken that kind one of hismistress, which had done so many offices of friendship for him for somany years.

  But the Lady Castlewood went back from him, putting back her hood, andleaning against the great stanchioned door which the gaoler had justclosed upon them. Her face was ghastly white, as Esmond saw it, lookingfrom the hood; and her eyes, ordinarily so sweet and tender, were fixedon him with such a tragic glance of woe and anger, as caused the youngman, unaccustomed to unkindness from that person, to avert his ownglances from her face.

  "And this, Mr. Esmond," she said, "is where I see you; and 'tis to thisyou have brought me!"

  "You have come to console me in my calamity, madam," said he (though, intruth, he scarce knew how to address her, his emotions at beholding herso overpowered him).

  She advanced a little, but stood silent and trembling, looking outat him from her black draperies, with her small white hands claspedtogether, and quivering lips and hollow eyes.

  "Not to reproach me," he continued after a pause. "My grief issufficient as it is."

  "Take back your hand--do not touch me with it!" she cried. "Look!there's blood on it!"

  "I wish they had taken it all," said Esmond; "if you are unkind to me."

  "Where is my husband?" she broke out. "Give me back my husband, Henry.Why did you stand by at midnight and see him murdered? Why did thetraitor escape who did it? You, the champion of your house, who offeredto die for us! You that he loved and trusted, and to whom I confidedhim--you that vowed devotion and gratitude, and I believed you--yes, Ibelieved you--why are you here, and my noble Francis gone? Why didyou come among us? You have only brought us grief and sorrow; andrepentance, bitter, bitter repentance, as a return for our love andkindness. Did I ever do you a wrong, Henry? You were but an orphan childwhen I first saw you--when HE first saw you, who was so good, and noble,and trusting. He would have had you sent away, but, like a foolishwoman, I besought him to let you stay. And you pretended to love us, andwe believed you--and you made our house wretched, and my husband's heartwent from me: and I lost him through you--I lost him--the husband of myyouth, I say. I worshipped him: you know I worshipped him--and he waschanged to me. He was no more my Francis of old--my dear, dear soldier.He loved me before he saw you; and I loved him. Oh, God is my witnesshow I loved him! Why did he not send you from among us? 'Twas onlyhis kindness, that could refuse me nothing then. And, young as youwere--yes, and weak and alone--there was evil, I knew there was evil inkeeping you. I read it in your face and eyes. I saw that they boded harmto us--and it came, I knew it would. Why did you not die when you hadthe small-pox--and I came myself and watched you, and you didn't know mein your delirium--and you called out for me, though I was there at yourside? All that has happened since, was a just judgment on my wickedheart--my wicked jealous heart. Oh, I am punished--awfully punished!My husband lies in his blood--murdered for defending me, my kind, kind,generous lord--and you were by, and you let him die, Henry!"

  These words, uttered in the wildness of her grief, by one who wasordinarily quiet, and spoke seldom except with a gentle smile and asoothing tone, rung in Esmond's ear; and 'tis said that he repeated manyof them in the fever into which he now fell from his wound, and perhapsfrom the emotion which such passionate, undeserved upbraidings causedhim. It seemed as if his very sacrifices and love for this lady and herfamily were to turn to evil and reproach: as if his presence amongstthem was indeed a cause of grief, and the continuance of his life butwoe and bitterness to theirs. As the Lady Castlewood spoke bitterly,rapidly, without a tear, he never offered a word of appeal orremonstrance: but sat at the foot of his prison-bed, stricken only withthe more pain at thinking it was that soft and beloved hand which shouldstab him so cruelly, and powerless against her fatal sorrow. Her wordsas she spoke struck the chords of all his memory, and the whole ofhis boyhood and youth passed within him; whilst this lady, so fondand gentle but yesterday--this good angel whom he had loved andworshipped--stood before him, pursuing him with keen words and aspectmalign.

  "I wish I were in my lord's place," he groaned out. "It was not my faultthat I was not there, madam. But Fate is stronger than all of us, andwilled what has come to pass. It had been better for me to have diedwhen I had the illness."

  "Yes, Henry," said she--and as she spoke she looked at him with a glancethat was at once so fond and so sad, that the young man, tossing up hisarms, wildly fell back, hiding his head in the coverlet of the bed. Ashe turned he struck against the wall with his wounded hand, displacingthe ligature; and he felt the blood rushing again from the wound. Heremembered feeling a secret pleasure at the accident--and thinking,"Suppose I were to end now, who would grieve for me?"

  This hemorrhage, or the grief and despair in which the luckless youngman was at the time of the accident, must have brought on a deliquiumpresently; for he had scarce any recollection afterwards, save of someone, his mistress probably, seizing his hand--and then of the buzzingnoise in his ears as he awoke, with two or three persons of the prisonaround his bed, whereon he lay in a pool of blood from his arm.

  It was now bandaged up again by the prison surgeon, who happened to bein the place; and the governor's wife and servant, kind people both,were with the patient. Esmond saw his mistress still in the room whenhe awoke from his trance; but she went away without a word; thoughthe governor's wife told him that she sat in her room for some timeafterward, and did not leave the prison until
she heard that Esmond waslikely to do well.

  Days afterwards, when Esmond was brought out of a fever which he had,and which attacked him that night pretty sharply, the honest keeper'swife brought her patient a handkerchief fresh washed and ironed, and atthe corner of which he recognized his mistress's well-known cipherand viscountess's crown. "The lady had bound it round his arm when hefainted, and before she called for help," the keeper's wife said. "Poorlady! she took on sadly about her husband. He has been buried to-day,and a many of the coaches of the nobility went with him--my LordMarlborough's and my Lord Sunderland's, and many of the officers of theGuards, in which he served in the old King's time; and my lady has beenwith her two children to the King at Kensington, and asked for justiceagainst my Lord Mohun, who is in hiding, and my Lord the Earl of Warwickand Holland, who is ready to give himself up and take his trial."

  Such were the news, coupled with assertions about her own honesty andthat of Molly her maid, who would never have stolen a certain trumperygold sleeve-button of Mr. Esmond's that was missing after his faintingfit, that the keeper's wife brought to her lodger. His thoughts followedto that untimely grave, the brave heart, the kind friend, the gallantgentleman, honest of word and generous of thought, (if feeble ofpurpose, but are his betters much stronger than he?) who had given himbread and shelter when he had none; home and love when he needed them;and who, if he had kept one vital secret from him, had done thatof which he repented ere dying--a wrong indeed, but one followed byremorse, and occasioned by almost irresistible temptation.

  Esmond took his handkerchief when his nurse left him, and very likelykissed it, and looked at the bauble embroidered in the corner. "Ithas cost thee grief enough," he thought, "dear lady, so loving and sotender. Shall I take it from thee and thy children? No, never! Keep it,and wear it, my little Frank, my pretty boy. If I cannot make a name formyself, I can die without one. Some day, when my dear mistress sees myheart, I shall be righted; or if not here or now, why, elsewhere; whereHonor doth not follow us, but where Love reigns perpetual."

  'Tis needless to relate here, as the reports of the lawyers already havechronicled them, the particulars or issue of that trial which ensuedupon my Lord Castlewood's melancholy homicide. Of the two lords engagedin that sad matter, the second, my Lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland,who had been engaged with Colonel Westbury, and wounded by him, wasfound not guilty by his peers, before whom he was tried (under thepresidence of the Lord Steward, Lord Somers); and the principal, theLord Mohun, being found guilty of the manslaughter, (which, indeed, wasforced upon him, and of which he repented most sincerely,) pleaded hisclergy, and so was discharged without any penalty. The widow of theslain nobleman, as it was told us in prison, showed an extraordinaryspirit; and, though she had to wait for ten years before her son was oldenough to compass it, declared she would have revenge of her husband'smurderer. So much and suddenly had grief, anger, and misfortune appearedto change her. But fortune, good or ill, as I take it, does not changemen and women. It but develops their characters. As there are a thousandthoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up thepen to write, so the heart is a secret even to him (or her) who has itin his own breast. Who hath not found himself surprised into revenge, oraction, or passion, for good or evil, whereof the seeds lay within him,latent and unsuspected, until the occasion called them forth? With thedeath of her lord, a change seemed to come over the whole conduct andmind of Lady Castlewood; but of this we shall speak in the right seasonand anon.

  The lords being tried then before their peers at Westminster, accordingto their privilege, being brought from the Tower with state processionsand barges, and accompanied by lieutenants and axe-men, the commonersengaged in that melancholy fray took their trial at Newgate, as becamethem; and, being all found guilty, pleaded likewise their benefitof clergy. The sentence, as we all know in these cases, is, that theculprit lies a year in prison, or during the King's pleasure, and isburned in the hand, or only stamped with a cold iron; or this part ofthe punishment is altogether remitted at the grace of the Sovereign. SoHarry Esmond found himself a criminal and a prisoner at two-and-twentyyears old; as for the two colonels, his comrades, they took the mattervery lightly. Duelling was a part of their business; and they could notin honor refuse any invitations of that sort.

  But the case was different with Mr. Esmond. His life was changed bythat stroke of the sword which destroyed his kind patron's. As he lay inprison, old Dr. Tusher fell ill and died; and Lady Castlewood appointedThomas Tusher to the vacant living; about the filling of which she hada thousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never shouldpart; how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, likesaintly George Herbert or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiest and greatestlot in life; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for herpart, she owned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishopshould have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she wouldfind a good wife for Harry Esmond: and so on, with a hundred prettyprospects told by fireside evenings, in fond prattle, as the childrenplayed about the hall. All these plans were overthrown now. ThomasTusher wrote to Esmond, as he lay in prison, announcing that hispatroness had conferred upon him the living his reverend father hadheld for many years; that she never, after the tragical events which hadoccurred (whereof Tom spoke with a very edifying horror), could seein the revered Tusher's pulpit, or at her son's table, the man who wasanswerable for the father's life; that her ladyship bade him to say thatshe prayed for her kinsman's repentance and his worldly happiness; thathe was free to command her aid for any scheme of life which he mightpropose to himself; but that on this side of the grave she would see himno more. And Tusher, for his own part, added that Harry should have hisprayers as a friend of his youth, and commended him whilst he was inprison to read certain works of theology, which his Reverence pronouncedto be very wholesome for sinners in his lamentable condition.

  And this was the return for a life of devotion--this the end of years ofaffectionate intercourse and passionate fidelity! Harry would have diedfor his patron, and was held as little better than his murderer: he hadsacrificed, she did not know how much, for his mistress, and she threwhim aside; he had endowed her family with all they had, and she talkedabout giving him alms as to a menial! The grief for his patron's loss;the pains of his own present position, and doubts as to the future: allthese were forgotten under the sense of the consummate outrage which hehad to endure, and overpowered by the superior pang of that torture.

  He writ back a letter to Mr. Tusher from his prison, congratulatinghis Reverence upon his appointment to the living of Castlewood:sarcastically bidding him to follow in the footsteps of his admirablefather, whose gown had descended upon him; thanking her ladyship for heroffer of alms, which he said he should trust not to need; and beseechingher to remember that, if ever her determination should change towardshim, he would be ready to give her proofs of a fidelity which had neverwavered, and which ought never to have been questioned by that house."And if we meet no more, or only as strangers in this world," Mr. Esmondconcluded, "a sentence against the cruelty and injustice of which Idisdain to appeal; hereafter she will know who was faithful to her,and whether she had any cause to suspect the love and devotion of herkinsman and servant."

  After the sending of this letter, the poor young fellow's mind was moreat ease than it had been previously. The blow had been struck, and hehad borne it. His cruel goddess had shaken her wings and fled: and lefthim alone and friendless, but virtute sua. And he had to bear him up, atonce the sense of his right and the feeling of his wrongs, his honorand his misfortune. As I have seen men waking and running to arms at asudden trumpet, before emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute;meets the threatening danger with undaunted countenance; and, whetherconquered or conquering, faces it always. Ah! no man knows his strengthor his weakness, till occasion proves them. If there be some thoughtsand actions of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks withshame, sure there are some which he may be proud to own a
nd remember;forgiven injuries, conquered temptations (now and then) and difficultiesvanquished by endurance.

  It was these thoughts regarding the living, far more than any greatpoignancy of grief respecting the dead, which affected Harry Esmondwhilst in prison after his trial: but it may be imagined that he couldtake no comrade of misfortune into the confidence of his feelings,and they thought it was remorse and sorrow for his patron's loss whichaffected the young man, in error of which opinion he chose to leavethem. As a companion he was so moody and silent that the two officers,his fellow-sufferers, left him to himself mostly, liked little verylikely what they knew of him, consoled themselves with dice, cards, andthe bottle, and whiled away their own captivity in their own way. Itseemed to Esmond as if he lived years in that prison: and was changedand aged when he came out of it. At certain periods of life we liveyears of emotion in a few weeks--and look back on those times, as ongreat gaps between the old life and the new. You do not know how muchyou suffer in those critical maladies of the heart, until the disease isover and you look back on it afterwards. During the time, the sufferingis at least sufferable. The day passes in more or less of pain, and thenight wears away somehow. 'Tis only in after days that we see what thedanger has been--as a man out a-hunting or riding for his life looks ata leap, and wonders how he should have survived the taking of it. O darkmonths of grief and rage! of wrong and cruel endurance! He is old nowwho recalls you. Long ago he has forgiven and blest the soft hand thatwounded him: but the mark is there, and the wound is cicatrized only--notime, tears, caresses, or repentance, can obliterate the scar. We areindocile to put up with grief, however. Reficimus rates quassas: wetempt the ocean again and again, and try upon new ventures. Esmondthought of his early time as a novitiate, and of this past trial asan initiation before entering into life--as our young Indians undergotortures silently before they pass to the rank of warriors in the tribe.

  The officers, meanwhile, who were not let into the secret of the griefwhich was gnawing at the side of their silent young friend, and beingaccustomed to such transactions, in which one comrade or another wasdaily paying the forfeit of the sword, did not, of course, bemoanthemselves very inconsolably about the fate of their late companion inarms. This one told stories of former adventures of love, or war,or pleasure, in which poor Frank Esmond had been engaged; t'otherrecollected how a constable had been bilked, or a tavern-bully beaten:whilst my lord's poor widow was sitting at his tomb worshipping him asan actual saint and spotless hero--so the visitors said who had news ofLady Castlewood; and Westbury and Macartney had pretty nearly had allthe town to come and see them.

  The duel, its fatal termination, the trial of the two peers and thethree commoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement in thetown. The prints and News Letters were full of them. The three gentlemenin Newgate were almost as much crowded as the bishops in the Tower, ora highwayman before execution. We were allowed to live in the Governor'shouse, as hath been said, both before trial and after condemnation,waiting the King's pleasure; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrelknown, so closely had my lord and the two other persons who knew it keptthe secret, but every one imagined that the origin of the meeting wasa gambling dispute. Except fresh air, the prisoners had, upon payment,most things they could desire. Interest was made that they should notmix with the vulgar convicts, whose ribald choruses and loud laughterand curses could be heard from their own part of the prison, where theyand the miserable debtors were confined pell-mell.