Thus, for a third time, Beatrix’s ambitious hopes were circumvented, and
she might well believe that a special malignant fate watched and pursued
her, tearing her prize out of her hand just as she seemed to grasp it, and
leaving her with only rage and grief for her portion. Whatever her
feelings might have been of anger or of sorrow (and I fear me that the
former emotion was that which most tore her heart), she would take no
confidant, as people of softer natures would have done under such a
calamity; her mother and her kinsman knew that she would disdain their
pity, and that to offer it would be but to infuriate the cruel wound which
fortune had inflicted. We knew that her pride was awfully humbled and
punished by this sudden and terrible blow; she wanted no teaching of ours
to point out the sad moral of her story. Her fond mother could give but
her prayers, and her kinsman his faithful friendship and patience to the
unhappy stricken creature; and it was only by hints, and a word or two
uttered months afterwards, that Beatrix showed she understood their silent
commiseration, and on her part was secretly thankful for their
forbearance. The people about the Court said there was that in her manner
which frightened away scoffing and condolence: she was above their triumph
and their pity, and acted her part in that dreadful tragedy greatly and
courageously; so that those who liked her least were yet forced to admire
her. We, who watched her after her disaster, could not but respect the
indomitable courage and majestic calm with which she bore it. “I would
rather see her tears than her pride,” her mother said, who was accustomed
to bear her sorrows in a very different way, and to receive them as the
stroke of God, with an awful submission and meekness. But Beatrix’s nature
was different to that tender parent’s; she seemed to accept her grief, and
to defy it; nor would she allow it (I believe not even in private, and in
her own chamber) to extort from her the confession of even a tear of
humiliation or a cry of pain. Friends and children of our race, who come
after me, in which way will you bear your trials? I know one that prays
God will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eye all-seeing
shall find you in the humble place. Not that we should judge proud spirits
otherwise than charitably. ’Tis nature hath fashioned some for ambition
and dominion, as it hath formed others for obedience and gentle
submission. The leopard follows his nature as the lamb does, and acts
after leopard law; she can neither help her beauty, nor her courage, nor
her cruelty; nor a single spot on her shining coat; nor the conquering
spirit which impels her; nor the shot which brings her down.

                  -------------------------------------

During that well-founded panic the Whigs had, lest the queen should
forsake their Hanoverian prince, bound by oaths and treaties as she was to
him, and recall her brother, who was allied to her by yet stronger ties of
nature and duty; the Prince of Savoy, and the boldest of that party of the
Whigs, were for bringing the young Duke of Cambridge over, in spite of the
queen and the outcry of her Tory servants, arguing that the electoral
prince, a peer and prince of the blood-royal of this realm too, and in the
line of succession to the crown, had a right to sit in the Parliament
whereof he was a member, and to dwell in the country which he one day was
to govern. Nothing but the strongest ill will expressed by the queen, and
the people about her, and menaces of the royal resentment, should this
scheme be persisted in, prevented it from being carried into effect.

The boldest on our side were, in like manner, for having our prince into
the country. The undoubted inheritor of the right divine; the feelings of
more than half the nation, of almost all the clergy, of the gentry of
England and Scotland with him; entirely innocent of the crime for which
his father suffered—brave, young, handsome, unfortunate—who in England
would dare to molest the prince should he come among us, and fling himself
upon British generosity, hospitality, and honour? An invader with an army
of Frenchmen behind him, Englishmen of spirit would resist to the death,
and drive back to the shores whence he came; but a prince, alone, armed
with his right only, and relying on the loyalty of his people, was sure,
many of his friends argued, of welcome, at least of safety, among us. The
hand of his sister the queen, of the people his subjects, never could be
raised to do him a wrong. But the queen was timid by nature, and the
successive ministers she had, had private causes for their irresolution.
The bolder and honester men, who had at heart the illustrious young
exile’s cause, had no scheme of interest of their own to prevent them from
seeing the right done, and, provided only he came as an Englishman, were
ready to venture their all to welcome and defend him.

St. John and Harley both had kind words in plenty for the prince’s
adherents, and gave him endless promises of future support; but hints and
promises were all they could be got to give; and some of his friends were
for measures much bolder, more efficacious, and more open. With a party of
these, some of whom are yet alive, and some whose names Mr. Esmond has no
right to mention, he found himself engaged the year after that miserable
death of Duke Hamilton, which deprived the prince of his most courageous
ally in this country. Dean Atterbury was one of the friends whom Esmond
may mention, as the brave bishop is now beyond exile and persecution, and
to him, and one or two more, the colonel opened himself of a scheme of his
own, that, backed by a little resolution on the prince’s part, could not
fail of bringing about the accomplishment of their dearest wishes.

My young Lord Viscount Castlewood had not come to England to keep his
majority, and had now been absent from the country for several years. The
year when his sister was to be married and Duke Hamilton died, my lord was
kept at Bruxelles by his wife’s lying-in. The gentle Clotilda could not
bear her husband out of her sight; perhaps she mistrusted the young
scapegrace should he ever get loose from her leading-strings; and she kept
him by her side to nurse the baby and administer posset to the gossips.
Many a laugh poor Beatrix had had about Frank’s uxoriousness: his mother
would have gone to Clotilda when her time was coming, but that the
mother-in-law was already in possession, and the negotiations for poor
Beatrix’s marriage were begun. A few months after the horrid catastrophe
in Hyde Park, my mistress and her daughter retired to Castlewood, where my
lord, it was expected, would soon join them. But, to say truth, their
quiet household was little to his taste; he could be got to come to
Walcote but once after his first campaign; and then the young rogue spent
more than half his time in London, not appearing at Court, or in public
under his own name and title, but frequenting plays, bagnios, and the very
worst company, under the name of Captain Esmond (whereby his innocent
kinsman got more than once into trouble); and so under various pretexts,
and in pursuit of all sorts of pleasures, until he plunged into the lawful
one of marriage, Frank Castlewood had remained away from this country, and
was unknown, save amongst the gentlemen of the army, with whom he had
served abroad. The fond heart of his mother was pained by this long
absence. ’Twas all that Henry Esmond could do to soothe her natural
mortification, and find excuses for his kinsman’s levity.

In the autumn of the year 1713, Lord Castlewood thought of returning home.
His first child had been a daughter; Clotilda was in the way of gratifying
his lordship with a second, and the pious youth thought that, by bringing
his wife to his ancestral home, by prayers to St. Philip of Castlewood,
and what not, Heaven might be induced to bless him with a son this time,
for whose coming the expectant mamma was very anxious.

The long-debated peace had been proclaimed this year at the end of March;
and France was open to us. Just as Frank’s poor mother had made all things
ready for Lord Castlewood’s reception, and was eagerly expecting her son,
it was by Colonel Esmond’s means that the kind lady was disappointed of
her longing, and obliged to defer once more the darling hope of her heart.

Esmond took horses to Castlewood. He had not seen its ancient grey towers
and well-remembered woods for nearly fourteen years, and since he rode
thence with my lord, to whom his mistress with her young children by her
side waved an adieu, what ages seem to have passed since then, what years
of action and passion, of care, love, hope, disaster! The children were
grown up now, and had stories of their own. As for Esmond, he felt to be a
hundred years old; his dear mistress only seemed unchanged; she looked and
welcomed him quite as of old. There was the fountain in the court babbling
its familiar music, the old hall and its furniture, the carved chair my
late lord used, the very flagon he drank from. Esmond’s mistress knew he
would like to sleep in the little room he used to occupy; ’twas made ready
for him, and wall-flowers and sweet herbs set in the adjoining chamber,
the chaplain’s room.

In tears of not unmanly emotion, with prayers of submission to the awful
Dispenser of death and life, of good and evil fortune, Mr. Esmond passed a
part of that first night at Castlewood, lying awake for many hours as the
clock kept tolling (in tones so well remembered), looking back, as all men
will, that revisit their home of childhood, over the great gulf of time,
and surveying himself on the distant bank yonder, a sad little melancholy
boy, with his lord still alive—his dear mistress, a girl yet, her children
sporting around her. Years ago, a boy on that very bed, when she had
blessed him and called him her knight, he had made a vow to be faithful
and never desert her dear service. Had he kept that fond boyish promise?
Yes, before Heaven; yes, praise be to God! His life had been hers; his
blood, his fortune, his name, his whole heart ever since had been hers and
her children’s. All night long he was dreaming his boyhood over again, and
waking fitfully; he half fancied he heard Father Holt calling to him from
the next chamber, and that he was coming in and out from the mysterious
window.

Esmond rose up before the dawn, passed into the next room, where the air
was heavy with the odour of the wall-flowers; looked into the brasier
where the papers had been burnt, into the old presses where Holt’s books
and papers had been kept, and tried the spring, and whether the window
worked still. The spring had not been touched for years, but yielded at
length, and the whole fabric of the window sank down. He lifted it and it
relapsed into its frame; no one had ever passed thence since Holt used it
sixteen years ago.

Esmond remembered his poor lord saying, on the last day of his life, that
Holt used to come in and out of the house like a ghost, and knew that the
father liked these mysteries, and practised such secret disguises,
entrances, and exits; this was the way the ghost came and went, his pupil
had always conjectured. Esmond closed the casement up again as the dawn
was rising over Castlewood village; he could hear the clinking at the
blacksmith’s forge yonder among the trees, across the green, and past the
river, on which a mist still lay sleeping.

Next Esmond opened that long cupboard over the woodwork of the
mantelpiece, big enough to hold a man, and in which Mr. Holt used to keep
sundry secret properties of his. The two swords he remembered so well as a
boy, lay actually there still, and Esmond took them out and wiped them,
with a strange curiosity of emotion. There were a bundle of papers here,
too, which no doubt had been left at Holt’s last visit to the place, in my
lord viscount’s life, that very day when the priest had been arrested and
taken to Hexham Castle. Esmond made free with these papers, and found
treasonable matter of King William’s reign, the names of Charnock and
Perkins, Sir John Fenwick and Sir John Friend, Rookwood and Lodwick, Lords
Montgomery and Ailesbury, Clarendon and Yarmouth, that had all been
engaged in plots against the usurper; a letter from the Duke of Berwick
too, and one from the king at St. Germains, offering to confer upon his
trusty and well-beloved Francis Viscount Castlewood the titles of Earl and
Marquis of Esmond, bestowed by patent royal, and in the fourth year of his
reign, upon Thomas Viscount Castlewood and the heirs male of his body, in
default of which issue the ranks and dignities were to pass to Francis
aforesaid.

This was the paper, whereof my lord had spoken, which Holt showed him the
very day he was arrested, and for an answer to which he would come back in
a week’s time. I put these papers hastily into the crypt whence I had
taken them, being interrupted by a tapping of a light finger at the ring
of the chamber-door: ’twas my kind mistress, with her face full of love
and welcome. She, too, had passed the night wakefully, no doubt; but
neither asked the other how the hours had been spent. There are things we
divine without speaking, and know though they happen out of our sight.
This fond lady hath told me that she knew both days when I was wounded
abroad. Who shall say how far sympathy reaches, and how truly love can
prophesy? “I looked into your room,” was all she said; “the bed was
vacant, the little old bed! I knew I should find you here.” And tender and
blushing faintly with a benediction in her eyes, the gentle creature
kissed him.

They walked out, hand-in-hand, through the old court, and to the
terrace-walk, where the grass was glistening with dew, and the birds in
the green woods above were singing their delicious choruses under the
blushing morning sky. How well all things were remembered! The ancient
towers and gables of the hall darkling against the east, the purple
shadows on the green slopes, the quaint devices and carvings of the dial,
the forest-crowned heights, the fair yellow plain cheerful with crops and
corn, the shining river rolling through it towards the pearly hills
beyond; all these were before us, along with a thousand beautiful memories
of our youth, beautiful and sad, but as real and vivid in our minds as
that fair and always-remembered scene our eyes beheld once more. We forget
nothing. The memory sleeps, but awakens again; I often think how it shall
be when, after the last sleep of death, the réveillé shall arouse us for
ever, and the past in one flash of self-consciousness rush back, like the
soul, revivified.

The house would not be up for some hours yet (it was July, and the dawn
was only just awake), and here Esmond opened himself to his mistress, of
the business he had in hand, and what part Frank was to play in it. He
knew he could confide anything to her, and that the fond soul would die
rather than reveal it; and bidding her keep the secret from all, he laid
it entirely before his mistress (always as stanch a little loyalist as any
in the kingdom), and indeed was quite sure that any plan of his was secure
of her applause and sympathy. Never was such a glorious scheme to her
partial mind, never such a devoted knight to execute it. An hour or two
may have passed whilst they were having their colloquy. Beatrix came out
to them just as their talk was over; her tall beautiful form robed in
sable (which she wore without ostentation ever since last year’s
catastrophe), sweeping over the green terrace, and casting its shadows
before her across the grass.

She made us one of her grand curtsies smiling, and called us “the young
people”. She was older, paler, and more majestic than in the year before;
her mother seemed the youngest of the two. She never once spoke of her
grief, Lady Castlewood told Esmond, or alluded, save by a quiet word or
two, to the death of her hopes.

When Beatrix came back to Castlewood she took to visiting all the cottages
and all the sick. She set up a school of children, and taught singing to
some of them. We had a pair of beautiful old organs in Castlewood Church,
on which she played admirably, so that the music there became to be known
in the country for many miles round, and no doubt people came to see the
fair organist as well as to hear her. Parson Tusher and his wife were
established at the vicarage, but his wife had brought him no children
wherewith Tom might meet his enemies at the gate. Honest Tom took care not
to have many such, his great shovel-hat was in his hand for everybody. He
was profuse of bows and compliments. He behaved to Esmond as if the
colonel had been a commander-in-chief; he dined at the hall that day,
being Sunday, and would not partake of pudding except under extreme
pressure. He deplored my lord’s perversion, but drank his lordship’s
health very devoutly; and an hour before at church sent the colonel to
sleep, with a long, learned, and refreshing sermon.

Esmond’s visit home was but for two days; the business he had in hand
calling him away and out of the country. Ere he went, he saw Beatrix but
once alone, and then she summoned him out of the long tapestry room, where
he and his mistress were sitting, quite as in old times, into the
adjoining chamber, that had been Viscountess Isabel’s sleeping-apartment,
and where Esmond perfectly well remembered seeing the old lady sitting up
in the bed, in her night-rail, that morning when the troop of guard came
to fetch her. The most beautiful woman in England lay in that bed now,
whereof the great damask hangings were scarce faded since Esmond saw them
last.

Here stood Beatrix in her black robes, holding a box in her hand; ’twas
that which Esmond had given her before her marriage, stamped with a
coronet which the disappointed girl was never to wear; and containing his
aunt’s legacy of diamonds.

“You had best take these with you, Harry,” says she; “I have no need of
diamonds any more.” There was not the least token of emotion in her quiet
low voice. She held out the black shagreen-case with her fair arm, that
did not shake in the least. Esmond saw she wore a black velvet bracelet on
it, with my lord duke’s picture in enamel; he had given it her but three
days before he fell.

Esmond said the stones were his no longer, and strove to turn off that
proffered restoration with a laugh: “Of what good,” says he, “are they to
me? The diamond loop to his hat did not set off Prince Eugene, and will
not make my yellow face look any handsomer.”

“You will give them to your wife, cousin,” says she. “My cousin, your wife
has a lovely complexion and shape.”

“Beatrix,” Esmond burst out, the old fire flaming out as it would at
times, “will you wear those trinkets at your marriage? You whispered once
you did not know me: you know me better now: how I sought, what I have
sighed for, for ten years, what forgone!”

“A price for your constancy, my lord!” says she; “such a _preux chevalier_
wants to be paid. Oh fie, cousin!”

“Again,” Esmond spoke out, “if I do something you have at heart; something
worthy of me and you; something that shall make me a name with which to
endow you; will you take it? There was a chance for me once, you said; is
it impossible to recall it? Never shake your head, but hear me: say you
will hear me a year hence. If I come back to you and bring you fame, will
that please you? If I do what you desire most—what he who is dead desired
most—will that soften you?”

“What is it, Henry?” says she, her face lighting up; “what mean you?”

“Ask no questions,” he said, “wait, and give me but time; if I bring back
that you long for, that I have a thousand times heard you pray for, will
you have no reward for him who has done you that service? Put away those
trinkets, keep them: it shall not be at my marriage, it shall not be at
yours, but if man can do it, I swear a day shall come when there shall be
a feast in your house, and you shall be proud to wear them. I say no more
now; put aside these words, and lock away yonder box until the day when I
shall remind you of both. All I pray of you now is, to wait and to
remember.”

“You are going out of the country?” says Beatrix, in some agitation.

“Yes, to-morrow,” says Esmond.

“To Lorraine, cousin?” says Beatrix, laying her hand on his arm; ’twas the
hand on which she wore the duke’s bracelet. “Stay, Harry!” continued she,
with a tone that had more despondency in it than she was accustomed to
show. “Hear a last word. I do love you. I do admire you—who would not,
that has known such love as yours has been for us all? But I think I have
no heart; at least, I have never seen the man that could touch it; and,
had I found him, I would have followed him in rags had he been a private
soldier, or to sea, like one of those buccaneers you used to read to us
about when we were children. I would do anything for such a man, bear
anything for him: but I never found one. You were ever too much of a slave
to win my heart; even my lord duke could not command it. I had not been
happy had I married him. I knew that three months after our engagement—and
was too vain to break it. O Harry! I cried once or twice, not for him, but
with tears of rage because I could not be sorry for him. I was frightened
to find I was glad of his death; and were I joined to you, I should have
the same sense of servitude, the same longing to escape. We should both be
unhappy, and you the most, who are as jealous as the duke was himself. I
tried to love him; I tried, indeed I did: affected gladness when he came:
submitted to hear when he was by me, and tried the wife’s part I thought I
was to play for the rest of my days. But half an hour of that complaisance
wearied me, and what would a lifetime be? My thoughts were away when he
was speaking; and I was thinking, Oh that this man would drop my hand, and
rise up from before my feet! I knew his great and noble qualities, greater
and nobler than mine a thousand times, as yours are, cousin, I tell you, a
million and a million times better. But ’twas not for these I took him. I
took him to have a great place in the world, and I lost it. I lost it, and
do not deplore him—and I often thought, as I listened to his fond vows and
ardent words, Oh, if I yield to this man, and meet _the other_, I shall
hate him and leave him! I am not good, Harry: my mother is gentle and good
like an angel. I wonder how she should have had such a child. She is weak,
but she would die rather than do a wrong; I am stronger than she, but I
would do it out of defiance. I do not care for what the parsons tell me
with their droning sermons: I used to see them at Court as mean and as
worthless as the meanest woman there. Oh, I am sick and weary of the
world! I wait but for one thing, and when ’tis done, I will take Frank’s
religion and your poor mother’s, and go into a nunnery, and end like her.
Shall I wear the diamonds then?—they say the nuns wear their best trinkets
the day they take the veil. I will put them away as you bid me; farewell,
cousin, mamma is pacing the next room, racking her little head to know
what we have been saying. She is jealous, all women are. I sometimes think
that is the only womanly quality I have.”

“Farewell. Farewell, brother!” She gave him her cheek as a brotherly
privilege. The cheek was as cold as marble.

Esmond’s mistress showed no signs of jealousy when he returned to the room
where she was. She had schooled herself so as to look quite inscrutably,
when she had a mind. Amongst her other feminine qualities she had that of
being a perfect dissembler.

He rid away from Castlewood to attempt the task he was bound on, and stand
or fall by it; in truth his state of mind was such, that he was eager for
some outward excitement to counteract that gnawing malady which he was
inwardly enduring.

Chapter VIII. I Travel To France And Bring Home A Portrait Of Rigaud

Mr. Esmond did not think fit to take leave at Court, or to inform all the
world of Pall Mall and the coffee-houses, that he was about to quit
England; and chose to depart in the most private manner possible. He
procured a pass as for a Frenchman, through Dr. Atterbury, who did that
business for him, getting the signature even from Lord Bolingbroke’s
office, without any personal application to the secretary. Lockwood, his
faithful servant, he took with him to Castlewood, and left behind there:
giving out ere he left London that he himself was sick, and gone to
Hampshire for country air, and so departed as silently as might be upon
his business.

As Frank Castlewood’s aid was indispensable for Mr. Esmond’s scheme, his
first visit was to Bruxelles (passing by way of Antwerp, where the Duke of
Marlborough was in exile), and in the first-named place Harry found his
dear young Benedict, the married man, who appeared to be rather out of
humour with his matrimonial chain, and clogged with the obstinate embraces
which Clotilda kept round his neck. Colonel Esmond was not presented to
her; but Monsieur Simon was, a gentleman of the Royal Cravat (Esmond
bethought him of the regiment of his honest Irishman, whom he had seen
that day after Malplaquet, when he first set eyes on the young king); and
Monsieur Simon was introduced to the Viscountess Castlewood, _née_
Comptesse Wertheim; to the numerous counts, the Lady Clotilda’s tall
brothers; to her father the chamberlain; and to the lady his wife, Frank’s
mother-in-law, a tall and majestic person of large proportions, such as
became the mother of such a company of grenadiers as her warlike sons
formed. The whole race were at free quarters in the little castle nigh to
Bruxelles which Frank had taken; rode his horses; drank his wine; and
lived easily at the poor lad’s charges. Mr. Esmond had always maintained a
perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue; and if this
family (that spoke French with the twang which the Flemings use)
discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon’s pronunciation, ’twas to be
attributed to the latter’s long residence in England, where he had married
and remained ever since he was taken prisoner at Blenheim. His story was
perfectly pat; there were none there to doubt it save honest Frank, and he
was charmed with his kinsman’s scheme, when he became acquainted with it;
and, in truth, always admired Colonel Esmond with an affectionate
fidelity, and thought his cousin the wisest and best of all cousins and
men. Frank entered heart and soul into the plan, and liked it the better
as it was to take him to Paris, out of reach of his brothers, his father,
and his mother-in-law, whose attentions rather fatigued him.

Castlewood, I have said, was born in the same year as the Prince of Wales;
had not a little of the prince’s air, height, and figure; and, especially
since he had seen the Chevalier de St. George on the occasion before
named, took no small pride in his resemblance to a person so illustrious;
which likeness he increased by all the means in his power, wearing fair
brown periwigs, such as the prince wore, and ribbons, and so forth, of the
chevalier’s colour. This resemblance was, in truth, the circumstance on
which Mr. Esmond’s scheme was founded; and, having secured Frank’s secrecy
and enthusiasm, he left him to continue his journey, and see the other
personages on whom its success depended. The place whither Mr. Simon next
travelled was Bar, in Lorraine, where that merchant arrived with a
consignment of broadcloths, valuable laces from Malines, and letters for
his correspondent there.

Would you know how a prince, heroic from misfortunes, and descended from a
line of kings, whose race seemed to be doomed like the Atridae of
old—would you know how he was employed, when the envoy who came to him
through danger and difficulty beheld him for the first time? The young
king, in a flannel jacket, was at tennis with the gentlemen of his suite,
crying out after the balls, and swearing like the meanest of his subjects.
The next time Mr. Esmond saw him, ’twas when Monsieur Simon took a packet
of laces to Miss Oglethorpe; the prince’s antechamber in those days, at
which ignoble door men were forced to knock for admission to his Majesty.
The admission was given, the envoy found the king and the mistress
together; the pair were at cards, and his Majesty was in liquor. He cared
more for three honours than three kingdoms; and a half-dozen glasses of
ratafia made him forget all his woes and his losses, his father’s crown,
and his grandfather’s head.

Mr. Esmond did not open himself to the prince then. His Majesty was scarce
in a condition to hear him; and he doubted whether a king who drank so
much could keep a secret in his fuddled head; or whether a hand that shook
so, was strong enough to grasp at a crown. However at last, and after
taking counsel with the prince’s advisers, amongst whom were many
gentlemen, honest and faithful, Esmond’s plan was laid before the king,
and her actual Majesty Queen Oglethorpe, in council. The prince liked the
scheme well enough; ’twas easy and daring, and suited to his reckless
gaiety and lively youthful spirit. In the morning after he had slept his
wine off, he was very gay, lively, and agreeable. His manner had an
extreme charm of archness, and a kind simplicity; and, to do her justice,
her Oglethorpean Majesty was kind, acute, resolute, and of good counsel;
she gave the prince much good advice that he was too weak to follow, and
loved him with a fidelity which he returned with an ingratitude quite
royal.

Having his own forebodings regarding his scheme should it ever be
fulfilled, and his usual sceptic doubts as to the benefit which might
accrue to the country by bringing a tipsy young monarch back to it,
Colonel Esmond had his audience of leave and quiet. Monsieur Simon took
his departure. At any rate the youth at Bar was as good as the older
Pretender at Hanover; if the worst came to the worst, the Englishman could
be dealt with as easy as the German. Monsieur Simon trotted on that long
journey from Nancy to Paris, and saw that famous town, stealthily and like
a spy, as in truth he was; and where, sure, more magnificence and more
misery is heaped together, more rags and lace, more filth and gilding,
than in any city in this world. Here he was put in communication with the
king’s best friend, his half-brother, the famous Duke of Berwick; Esmond
recognized him as the stranger who had visited Castlewood now near twenty
years ago. His grace opened to him when he found that Mr. Esmond was one
of Webb’s brave regiment, that had once been his grace’s own. He was the
sword and buckler indeed of the Stuart cause: there was no stain on his
shield except the bar across it, which Marlborough’s sister left him. Had
Berwick been his father’s heir, James the Third had assuredly sat on the
English throne. He could dare, endure, strike, speak, be silent. The fire
and genius, perhaps, he had not (that were given to baser men), but except
these he had some of the best qualities of a leader. His grace knew
Esmond’s father and history; and hinted at the latter in such a way as
made the colonel to think he was aware of the particulars of that story.
But Esmond did not choose to enter on it, nor did the duke press him. Mr.
Esmond said, “No doubt he should come by his name if ever greater people
came by theirs.”

What confirmed Esmond in his notion that the Duke of Berwick knew of his
case was, that when the colonel went to pay his duty at St. Germains, her
Majesty once addressed him by the title of Marquis. He took the queen the
dutiful remembrances of her goddaughter, and the lady whom, in the days of
her prosperity, her Majesty had befriended. The queen remembered Rachel
Esmond perfectly well, had heard of my Lord Castlewood’s conversion, and
was much edified by that act of Heaven in his favour. She knew that others
of that family had been of the only true Church too: “Your father and your
mother, _monsieur le marquis_,” her Majesty said (that was the only time
she used the phrase). Monsieur Simon bowed very low, and said he had found
other parents than his own who had taught him differently; but these had
only one king: on which her Majesty was pleased to give him a medal
blessed by the Pope, which had been found very efficacious in cases
similar to his own, and to promise she would offer up prayers for his
conversion and that of the family: which no doubt this pious lady did,
though up to the present moment, and after twenty-seven years, Colonel
Esmond is bound to say that neither the medal nor the prayers have had the
slightest known effect upon his religious convictions.

As for the splendour of Versailles, Monsieur Simon, the merchant, only
beheld them as a humble and distant spectator, seeing the old king but
once, when he went to feed his carps; and asking for no presentation at
his Majesty’s Court.

By this time my Lord Viscount Castlewood was got to Paris, where, as the
London prints presently announced, her ladyship was brought to bed of a
son and heir. For a long while afterwards she was in a delicate state of
health, and ordered by the physicians not to travel; otherwise ’twas well
known that the Viscount Castlewood proposed returning to England, and
taking up his residence at his own seat.

Whilst he remained at Paris, my Lord Castlewood had his picture done by
the famous French painter Monsieur Rigaud, a present for his mother in
London; and this piece Monsieur Simon took back with him when he returned
to that city, which he reached about May, in the year 1714, very soon
after which time my Lady Castlewood and her daughter, and their kinsman,
Colonel Esmond, who had been at Castlewood all this time, likewise
returned to London; her ladyship occupying her house at Kensington, Mr.
Esmond returning to his lodgings at Knightsbridge, nearer the town, and
once more making his appearance at all public places, his health greatly
improved by his long stay in the country.

The portrait of my lord, in a handsome gilt frame, was hung up in the
place of honour in her ladyship’s drawing-room. His lordship was
represented in his scarlet uniform of Captain of the Guard, with a
light-brown periwig, a cuirass under his coat, a blue ribbon, and a fall
of Bruxelles lace. Many of her ladyship’s friends admired the piece beyond
measure, and flocked to see it; Bishop Atterbury, Mr. Lesly, good old Mr.
Collier, and others amongst the clergy, were delighted with the
performance, and many among the first quality examined and praised it;
only I must own that Dr. Tusher happening to come up to London, and seeing
the picture (it was ordinarily covered by a curtain, but on this day Miss
Beatrix happened to be looking at it when the doctor arrived), the Vicar
of Castlewood vowed he could not see any resemblance in the piece to his
old pupil, except perhaps, a little about the chin and the periwig; but we
all of us convinced him, that he had not seen Frank for five years or
more; that he knew no more about the fine arts than a ploughboy, and that
he must be mistaken; and we sent him home assured that the piece was an
excellent likeness. As for my Lord Bolingbroke, who honoured her ladyship
with a visit occasionally, when Colonel Esmond showed him the picture he
burst out laughing, and asked what devilry he was engaged on? Esmond owned
simply that the portrait was not that of Viscount Castlewood, besought the
secretary on his honour to keep the secret, said that the ladies of the
house were enthusiastic Jacobites, as was well known; and confessed that
the picture was that of the Chevalier St. George.

The truth is, that Mr. Simon, waiting upon Lord Castlewood one day at
Monsieur Rigaud’s, whilst his lordship was sitting for his picture,
affected to be much struck with a piece representing the chevalier,
whereof the head only was finished, and purchased it of the painter for a
hundred crowns. It had been intended the artist said, for Miss Oglethorpe,
the prince’s mistress, but that young lady quitting Paris, had left the
work on the artist’s hands; and taking this piece home, when my lord’s
portrait arrived, Colonel Esmond, alias Monsieur Simon, had copied the
uniform and other accessories from my lord’s picture to fill up Rigaud’s
incomplete canvas: the colonel all his life having been a practitioner of
painting, and especially followed it during his long residence in the
cities of Flanders, among the masterpieces of Vandyck and Rubens. My
grandson hath the piece, such as it is, in Virginia now.

At the commencement of the month of June, Miss Beatrix Esmond, and my lady
viscountess, her mother, arrived from Castlewood; the former to resume her
service at Court, which had been interrupted by the fatal catastrophe of
Duke Hamilton’s death. She once more took her place, then, in her
Majesty’s suite and at the maids’ table, being always a favourite with
Mrs. Masham, the queen’s chief woman, partly perhaps on account of her
bitterness against the Duchess of Marlborough, whom Miss Beatrix loved no
better than her rival did. The gentlemen about the Court, my Lord
Bolingbroke amongst others, owned that the young lady had come back
handsomer than ever, and that the serious and tragic air, which her face
now involuntarily wore, became her better than her former smiles and
archness.

All the old domestics at the little house of Kensington Square were
changed; the old steward that had served the family any time these
five-and-twenty years, since the birth of the children of the house, was
dispatched into the kingdom of Ireland to see my lord’s estate there: the
housekeeper, who had been my lady’s woman time out of mind, and the
attendant of the young children, was sent away grumbling to Walcote, to
see to the new painting and preparing of that house, which my lady dowager
intended to occupy for the future, giving up Castlewood to her
daughter-in-law, that might be expected daily from France. Another servant
the viscountess had was dismissed too—with a gratuity—on the pretext that
her ladyship’s train of domestics must be diminished; so, finally, there
was not left in the household a single person who had belonged to it
during the time my young Lord Castlewood was yet at home.

For the plan which Colonel Esmond had in view, and the stroke he intended,
’twas necessary that the very smallest number of persons should be put in
possession of his secret. It scarce was known, except to three or four out
of his family, and it was kept to a wonder.

On the 10th of June, 1714, there came by Mr. Prior’s messenger from Paris,
a letter from my Lord Viscount Castlewood to his mother, saying that he
had been foolish in regard of money matters, that he was ashamed to own he
had lost at play, and by other extravagances; and that instead of having
great entertainments as he had hoped at Castlewood this year, he must live
as quiet as he could, and make every effort to be saving. So far every
word of poor Frank’s letter was true, nor was there a doubt that he and
his tall brothers-in-law had spent a great deal more than they ought, and
engaged the revenues of the Castlewood property, which the fond mother had
husbanded and improved so carefully during the time of her guardianship.

His “Clotilda”, Castlewood went on to say, “was still delicate, and the
physicians thought her lying-in had best take place at Paris. He should
come without her ladyship, and be at his mother’s house about the 17th or
18th day of June, proposing to take horse from Paris immediately, and
bringing but a single servant with him; and he requested that the lawyers
of Gray’s Inn might be invited to meet him with their account, and the
land-steward come from Castlewood with his, so that he might settle with
them speedily, raise a sum of money whereof he stood in need, and be back
to his viscountess by the time of her lying-in.” Then his lordship gave
some of the news of the town, sent his remembrance to kinsfolk, and so the
letter ended. ’Twas put in the common post, and no doubt the French police
and the English there had a copy of it, to which they were exceeding
welcome.

Two days after another letter was dispatched by the public post of France,
in the same open way, and this, after giving news of the fashion at Court
there, ended by the following sentences, in which, but for those that had
the key, ’twould be difficult for any man to find any secret lurked at
all:—

    (The king will take) medicine on Thursday. His Majesty is better
    than he hath been of late, though incommoded by indigestion from
    his too great appetite. Madame Maintenon continues well. They have
    performed a play of Mons. Racine at St. Cyr. The Duke of
    Shrewsbury and Mr. Prior, our envoy, and all the English nobility
    here were present at it. (The Viscount Castlewood’s passports)
    were refused to him, ’twas said; his lordship being sued by a
    goldsmith for _Vaisselle plate_, and a pearl necklace supplied to
    Mademoiselle Meruel of the French Comedy. ’Tis a pity such news
    should get abroad (and travel to England) about our young nobility
    here. Mademoiselle Meruel has been sent to the Fort l’Evesque;
    they say she has ordered not only plate, but furniture, and a
    chariot and horses (under that lord’s name), of which extravagance
    his unfortunate viscountess knows nothing.

    (His majesty will be) eighty-two years of age on his next
    birthday. The Court prepares to celebrate it with a great feast.
    Mr. Prior is in a sad way about their refusing at home to send him
    his plate. All here admired my lord viscount’s portrait, and said
    it was a masterpiece of Rigaud. Have you seen it? It is (at the
    Lady Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square). I think no English
    painter could produce such a piece.

    Our poor friend the abbé hath been at the Bastille, but is now
    transported to the Conciergerie (where his friends may visit him.
    They are to ask for) a remission of his sentence soon. Let us hope
    the poor rogue will have repented in prison.

    (The Lord Castlewood) has had the affair of the plate made up, and
    departs for England.

    Is not this a dull letter? I have a cursed headache with drinking
    with Mat and some more overnight, and tipsy or sober am

    Thine ever ——.

All this letter, save some dozen of words which I have put above between
brackets, was mere idle talk, though the substance of the letter was as
important as any letter well could be. It told those that had the key,
that _the king will take the Viscount Castlewood’s passports and travel to
England under that lord’s name. His Majesty will be at the Lady
Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square, where his friends may visit him;
they are to ask for the Lord Castlewood_. This note may have passed under
Mr. Prior’s eyes, and those of our new allies the French, and taught them
nothing; though it explains sufficiently to persons in London what the
event was which was about to happen, as ’twill show those who read my
memoirs a hundred years hence, what was that errand on which Colonel
Esmond of late had been busy. Silently and swiftly to do that about which
others were conspiring, and thousands of Jacobites all over the country,
clumsily caballing; alone to effect that which the leaders here were only
talking about; to bring the Prince of Wales into the country openly in the
face of all, under Bolingbroke’s very eyes, the walls placarded with the
proclamation signed with the secretary’s name, and offering five hundred
pounds reward for his apprehension: this was a stroke, the playing and
winning of which might well give any adventurous spirit pleasure: the loss
of the stake might involve a heavy penalty, but all our family were eager
to risk that for the glorious chance of winning the game.

Nor should it be called a game, save perhaps with the chief player, who
was not more or less sceptical than most public men with whom he had
acquaintance in that age. (Is there ever a public man in England that
altogether believes in his party? Is there one, however doubtful, that
will not fight for it?) Young Frank was ready to fight without much
thinking, he was a Jacobite as his father before him was; all the Esmonds
were Royalists. Give him but the word, he would cry, “God save King
James!” before the palace guard, or at the Maypole in the Strand; and with
respect to the women, as is usual with them, ’twas not a question of party
but of faith; their belief was a passion; either Esmond’s mistress or her
daughter would have died for it cheerfully. I have laughed often, talking
of King William’s reign, and said I thought Lady Castlewood was
disappointed the king did not persecute the family more; and those who
know the nature of women may fancy for themselves, what needs not here be
written down, the rapture with which these neophytes received the mystery
when made known to them; the eagerness with which they looked forward to
its completion; the reverence which they paid the minister who initiated
them into that secret Truth, now known only to a few, but presently to
reign over the world. Sure there is no bound to the trustingness of women.
Look at Arria worshipping the drunken clodpate of a husband who beats her;
look at Cornelia treasuring as a jewel in her maternal heart the oaf her
son; I have known a woman preach Jesuit’s bark, and afterwards Dr.
Berkeley’s tar-water, as though to swallow them were a divine decree, and
to refuse them no better than blasphemy.

On his return from France Colonel Esmond put himself at the head of this
little knot of fond conspirators. No death or torture he knew would
frighten them out of their constancy. When he detailed his plan for
bringing the king back, his elder mistress thought that that restoration
was to be attributed under Heaven to the Castlewood family and to its
chief, and she worshipped and loved Esmond, if that could be, more than
ever she had done. She doubted not for one moment of the success of his
scheme, to mistrust which would have seemed impious in her eyes. And as
for Beatrix, when she became acquainted with the plan, and joined it, as
she did with all her heart, she gave Esmond one of her searching bright
looks: “Ah, Harry,” says she, “why were you not the head of our house? You
are the only one fit to raise it; why do you give that silly boy the name
and the honour? But ’tis so in the world; those get the prize that don’t
deserve or care for it. I wish I could give you _your_ silly prize,
cousin, but I can’t; I have tried and I can’t.” And she went away, shaking
her head mournfully, but always, it seemed to Esmond, that her liking and
respect for him was greatly increased, since she knew what capability he
had both to act and bear; to do and to forgo.

Chapter IX. The Original Of The Portrait Comes To England

’Twas announced in the family that my Lord Castlewood would arrive, having
a confidential French gentleman in his suite, who acted as secretary to
his lordship, and who being a Papist, and a foreigner of a good family,
though now in rather a menial place, would have his meals served in his
chamber, and not with the domestics of the house. The viscountess gave up
her bedchamber contiguous to her daughter’s, and having a large convenient
closet attached to it, in which a bed was put up, ostensibly for Monsieur
Baptiste, the Frenchman; though, ’tis needless to say, when the doors of
the apartments were locked, and the two guests retired within it, the
young viscount became the servant of the illustrious prince whom he
entertained, and gave up gladly the more convenient and airy chamber and
bed to his master. Madam Beatrix also retired to the upper region, her
chamber being converted into a sitting-room for my lord. The better to
carry the deceit, Beatrix affected to grumble before the servants, and to
be jealous that she was turned out of her chamber to make way for my lord.

No small preparations were made, you may be sure, and no slight tremor of
expectation caused the hearts of the gentle ladies of Castlewood to
flutter, before the arrival of the personages who were about to honour
their house. The chamber was ornamented with flowers; the bed covered with
the very finest of linen; the two ladies insisting on making it
themselves, and kneeling down at the bedside and kissing the sheets out of
respect for the web that was to hold the sacred person of a king. The
toilet was of silver and crystal; there was a copy of _Eikon Basilike_
laid on the writing-table; a portrait of the martyred king hung always
over the mantel, having a sword of my poor Lord Castlewood underneath it,
and a little picture or emblem which the widow loved always to have before
her eyes on waking, and in which the hair of her lord and her two children
was worked together. Her books of private devotions, as they were all of
the English Church, she carried away with her to the upper apartment which
she destined for herself. The ladies showed Mr. Esmond, when they were
completed, the fond preparations they had made. ’Twas then Beatrix knelt
down and kissed the linen sheets. As for her mother, Lady Castlewood made
a curtsy at the door, as she would have done to the altar on entering a
church, and owned that she considered the chamber in a manner sacred.

The company in the servants’ hall never for a moment supposed that these
preparations were made for any other person than the young viscount, the
lord of the house, whom his fond mother had been for so many years without
seeing. Both ladies were perfect housewives, having the greatest skill in
the making of confections, scented waters, &c., and keeping a notable
superintendence over the kitchen. Calves enough were killed to feed an
army of prodigal sons, Esmond thought, and laughed when he came to wait on
the ladies, on the day when the guests were to arrive, to find two pairs
of the finest and roundest arms to be seen in England (my Lady Castlewood
was remarkable for this beauty of her person), covered with flour up above
the elbows, and preparing paste, and turning rolling-pins in the
housekeeper’s closet. The guest would not arrive till supper-time, and my
lord would prefer having that meal in his own chamber. You may be sure the
brightest plate of the house was laid out there, and can understand why it
was that the ladies insisted that they alone would wait upon the young
chief of the family.

Taking horse, Colonel Esmond rode rapidly to Rochester, and there awaited
the king in that very town where his father had last set his foot on the
English shore. A room had been provided at an inn there for my Lord
Castlewood and his servant; and Colonel Esmond timed his ride so well that
he had scarce been half an hour in the place, and was looking over the
balcony into the yard of the inn, when two travellers rode in at the
inn-gate, and the colonel running down, the next moment embraced his dear
young lord.

My lord’s companion, acting the part of a domestic, dismounted, and was
for holding the viscount’s stirrup; but Colonel Esmond, calling to his own
man, who was in the court, bade him take the horses and settle with the
lad who had ridden the post along with the two travellers, crying out in a
cavalier tone in the French language to my lord’s companion, and affecting
to grumble that my lord’s fellow was a Frenchman, and did not know the
money or habits of the country:—“My man will see to the horses, Baptiste,”
says Colonel Esmond: “do you understand English?” “Very leetle.” “So,
follow my lord and wait upon him at dinner in his own room.” The landlord
and his people came up presently bearing the dishes; ’twas well they made
a noise and stir in the gallery, or they might have found Colonel Esmond
on his knee before Lord Castlewood’s servant, welcoming his Majesty to his
kingdom, and kissing the hand of the king. We told the landlord that the
Frenchman would wait on his master; and Esmond’s man was ordered to keep
sentry in the gallery without the door. The prince dined with a good
appetite, laughing and talking very gaily, and condescendingly bidding his
two companions to sit with him at table. He was in better spirits than
poor Frank Castlewood, who Esmond thought might be wobegone on account of
parting with his divine Clotilda; but the prince wishing to take a short
siesta after dinner, and retiring to an inner chamber where there was a
bed, the cause of poor Frank’s discomfiture came out; and bursting into
tears, with many expressions of fondness, friendship, and humiliation, the
faithful lad gave his kinsman to understand that he now knew all the
truth, and the sacrifices which Colonel Esmond had made for him.

Seeing no good in acquainting poor Frank with that secret, Mr. Esmond had
entreated his mistress also not to reveal it to her son. The prince had
told the poor lad all as they were riding from Dover: “I had as lief he
had shot me, cousin,” Frank said: “I knew you were the best and the
bravest, and the kindest of all men” (so the enthusiastic young fellow
went on); “but I never thought I owed you what I do, and can scarce bear
the weight of the obligation.”

“I stand in the place of your father,” says Mr. Esmond kindly, “and sure a
father may dispossess himself in favour of his son. I abdicate the
twopenny crown, and invest you with the kingdom of Brentford; don’t be a
fool and cry; you make a much taller and handsomer viscount than ever I
could.” But the fond boy with oaths and protestations, laughter and
incoherent outbreaks of passionate emotion, could not be got, for some
little time, to put up with Esmond’s raillery; wanted to kneel down to
him, and kissed his hand; asked him and implored him to order something,
to bid Castlewood give his own life up or take somebody else’s; anything,
so that he might show his gratitude for the generosity Esmond showed him.

“The k——, _he_ laughed,” Frank said, pointing to the door where the
sleeper was, and speaking in a low tone, “I don’t think he should have
laughed as he told me the story. As we rode along from Dover, talking in
French, he spoke about you, and your coming to him at Bar; he called you
‘_le grand sérieux_’, Don Bellianis of Greece, and I don’t know what
names; mimicking your manner” (here Castlewood laughed himself)—“and he
did it very well. He seems to sneer at everything. He is not like a king:
somehow, Harry, I fancy you are like a king. He does not seem to think
what a stake we are all playing. He would have stopped at Canterbury to
run after a barmaid there, had I not implored him to come on. He hath a
house at Chaillot where he used to go and bury himself for weeks away from
the queen, and with all sorts of bad company,” says Frank, with a demure
look; “you may smile, but I am not the wild fellow I was; no, no, I have
been taught better,” says Castlewood devoutly, making a sign on his
breast.

“Thou art my dear brave boy,” says Colonel Esmond, touched at the young
fellow’s simplicity, “and there will be a noble gentleman at Castlewood so
long as my Frank is there.”

The impetuous young lad was for going down on his knees again, with
another explosion of gratitude, but that we heard the voice from the next
chamber of the august sleeper, just waking, calling out:—“_Eh, La-Fleur,
un verre d’eau_”; his Majesty came out yawning:—“A pest,” says he, “upon
your English ale; ’tis so strong that, _ma foi_, it hath turned my head.”

The effect of the ale was like a spur upon our horses, and we rode very
quickly to London, reaching Kensington at nightfall. Mr. Esmond’s servant
was left behind at Rochester, to take care of the tired horses, whilst we
had fresh beasts provided along the road. And galloping by the prince’s
side the colonel explained to the Prince of Wales what his movements had
been; who the friends were that knew of the expedition; whom, as Esmond
conceived, the prince should trust; entreating him, above all, to maintain
the very closest secrecy until the time should come when his royal
highness should appear. The town swarmed with friends of the prince’s
cause; there were scores of correspondents with St. Germains; Jacobites
known and secret; great in station and humble; about the Court and the
queen; in the Parliament, Church, and among the merchants in the City. The
prince had friends numberless in the army, in the Privy Council, and the
officers of state. The great object, as it seemed, to the small band of
persons who had concerted that bold stroke, who had brought the queen’s
brother into his native country, was, that his visit should remain unknown
till the proper time came, when his presence should surprise friends and
enemies alike; and the latter should be found so unprepared and disunited,
that they should not find time to attack him. We feared more from his
friends than from his enemies. The lies, and tittle-tattle sent over to
St. Germains by the Jacobite agents about London, had done an incalculable
mischief to his cause, and wofully misguided him, and it was from these
especially, that the persons engaged in the present venture were anxious
to defend the chief actor in it.(16)

The party reached London by nightfall, leaving their horses at the
Posting-House over against Westminster, and being ferried over the water
where Lady Esmond’s coach was already in waiting. In another hour we were
all landed at Kensington, and the mistress of the house had that
satisfaction which her heart had yearned after for many years, once more
to embrace her son, who on his side, with all his waywardness, ever
retained a most tender affection for his parent.

She did not refrain from this expression of her feeling, though the
domestics were by, and my Lord Castlewood’s attendant stood in the hall.
Esmond had to whisper to him in French to take his hat off. Monsieur
Baptiste was constantly neglecting his part with an inconceivable levity:
more than once on the ride to London, little observations of the stranger,
light remarks, and words betokening the greatest ignorance of the country
the prince came to govern, had hurt the susceptibility of the two
gentlemen forming his escort; nor could either help owning in his secret
mind that they would have had his behaviour otherwise, and that the
laughter and the lightness, not to say licence, which characterized his
talk, scarce befitted such a great prince, and such a solemn occasion. Not
but that he could act at proper times with spirit and dignity. He had
behaved, as we all knew, in a very courageous manner on the field. Esmond
had seen a copy of the letter the prince writ with his own hand when urged
by his friends in England to abjure his religion, and admired that manly
and magnanimous reply by which he refused to yield to the temptation.
Monsieur Baptiste took off his hat, blushing at the hint Colonel Esmond
ventured to give him, and said:—“_Tenez, elle est jolie, la petite mère;
Foi-de-Chevalier! elle est charmante; mais l’autre, qui est cette nymphe,
cet astre qui brille, cette Diane qui descend sur nous?_” And he started
back, and pushed forward, as Beatrix was descending the stair. She was in
colours for the first time at her own house; she wore the diamonds Esmond
gave her; it had been agreed between them, that she should wear these
brilliants on the day when the king should enter the house, and a queen
she looked, radiant in charms, and magnificent and imperial in beauty.

Castlewood himself was startled by that beauty and splendour; he stepped
back and gazed at his sister as though he had not been aware before (nor
was he, very likely) how perfectly lovely she was, and I thought blushed
as he embraced her. The prince could not keep his eyes off her; he quite
forgot his menial part, though he had been schooled to it, and a little
light portmanteau prepared expressly that he should carry it. He pressed
forward before my lord viscount. ’Twas lucky the servants’ eyes were busy
in other directions, or they must have seen that this was no servant, or
at least a very insolent and rude one.

Again Colonel Esmond was obliged to cry out, “Baptiste”, in a loud
imperious voice, “have a care to the valise”; at which hint the wilful
young man ground his teeth together with something very like a curse
between them, and then gave a brief look of anything but pleasure to his
Mentor. Being reminded, however, he shouldered the little portmanteau, and
carried it up the stair, Esmond preceding him, and a servant with lighted
tapers. He flung down his burden sulkily in the bedchamber:—“A prince that
will wear a crown must wear a mask,” says Mr. Esmond, in French.

“_Ah, peste!_ I see how it is,” says Monsieur Baptiste, continuing the
talk in French. “The Great Serious is seriously”—“alarmed for Monsieur
Baptiste,” broke in the colonel. Esmond neither liked the tone with which
the prince spoke of the ladies, nor the eyes with which he regarded them.

The bedchamber and the two rooms adjoining it, the closet and the
apartment which was to be called my lord’s parlour, were already lighted
and awaiting their occupier; and the collation laid for my lord’s supper.
Lord Castlewood and his mother and sister came up the stair a minute
afterwards, and, so soon as the domestics had quitted the apartment,
Castlewood and Esmond uncovered, and the two ladies went down on their
knees before the prince, who graciously gave a hand to each. He looked his
part of prince much more naturally than that of servant, which he had just
been trying, and raised them both with a great deal of nobility, as well
as kindness in his air. “Madam,” says he, “my mother will thank your
ladyship for your hospitality to her son; for you, madam,” turning to
Beatrix, “I cannot bear to see so much beauty in such a posture. You will
betray Monsieur Baptiste if you kneel to him; sure ’tis his place rather
to kneel to you.”

A light shone out of her eyes; a gleam bright enough to kindle passion in
any breast. There were times when this creature was so handsome, that she
seemed, as it were, like Venus revealing herself a goddess in a flash of
brightness. She appeared so now; radiant, and with eyes bright with a
wonderful lustre. A pang, as of rage and jealousy, shot through Esmond’s
heart, as he caught the look she gave the prince; and he clenched his hand
involuntarily and looked across to Castlewood, whose eyes answered his
alarm-signal, and were also on the alert. The prince gave his subjects an
audience of a few minutes, and then the two ladies and Colonel Esmond
quitted the chamber. Lady Castlewood pressed his hand as they descended
the stair, and the three went down to the lower rooms, where they waited
awhile till the travellers above should be refreshed and ready for their
meal.

Esmond looked at Beatrix, blazing with her jewels on her beautiful neck.
“I have kept my word,” says he: “And I mine,” says Beatrix, looking down
on the diamonds.

“Were I the Mogul emperor,” says the colonel, “you should have all that
were dug out of Golconda.”

“These are a great deal too good for me,” says Beatrix, dropping her head
on her beautiful breast,—“so are you all, all:” and when she looked up
again, as she did in a moment, and after a sigh, her eyes, as they gazed
at her cousin, wore that melancholy and inscrutable look which ’twas
always impossible to sound.

When the time came for the supper, of which we were advertised by a
knocking overhead, Colonel Esmond and the two ladies went to the upper
apartment, where the prince already was, and by his side the young
viscount, of exactly the same age, shape, and with features not
dissimilar, though Frank’s were the handsomer of the two. The prince sat
down, and bade the ladies sit. The gentlemen remained standing; there was,
indeed, but one more cover laid at the table:—“Which of you will take it?”
says he.

“The head of our house,” says Lady Castlewood, taking her son’s hand, and
looking towards Colonel Esmond with a bow and a great tremor of the voice;
“the Marquis of Esmond will have the honour of serving the king.”

“I shall have the honour of waiting on his royal highness,” says Colonel
Esmond, filling a cup of wine, and, as the fashion of that day was, he
presented it to the king on his knee.

“I drink to my hostess and her family,” says the prince, with no very
well-pleased air; but the cloud passed immediately off his face, and he
talked to the ladies in a lively, rattling strain, quite undisturbed by
poor Mr. Esmond’s yellow countenance, that I dare say looked very glum.

When the time came to take leave, Esmond marched homewards to his
lodgings, and met Mr. Addison on the road that night, walking to a cottage
he had at Fulham, the moon shining on his handsome serene face:—“What
cheer, brother?” says Addison, laughing; “I thought it was a footpad
advancing in the dark, and behold ’tis an old friend. We may shake hands,
colonel, in the dark, ’tis better than fighting by daylight. Why should we
quarrel, because I am a Whig and thou art a Tory? Turn thy steps and walk
with me to Fulham, where there is a nightingale still singing in the
garden, and a cool bottle in a cave I know of; you shall drink to the
Pretender if you like, and I will drink my liquor my own way: I have had
enough of good liquor?—no, never! There is no such word as enough as a
stopper for good wine. Thou wilt not come? Come any day, come soon. You
know I remember _Simois_ and the _Sigeia tellus_, and the _praelia mixta
mero, mixta mero_,” he repeated, with ever so slight a touch of _merum_ in
his voice, and walked back a little way on the road with Esmond, bidding
the other remember he was always his friend, and indebted to him for his
aid in the _Campaign_ poem. And very likely Mr. Under Secretary would have
stepped in and taken t’other bottle at the colonel’s lodgings, had the
latter invited him, but Esmond’s mood was none of the gayest, and he bade
his friend an inhospitable good-night at the door.

“I have done the deed,” thought he, sleepless, and looking out into the
night; “he is here, and I have brought him; he and Beatrix are sleeping
under the same roof now. Whom did I mean to serve in bringing him? Was it
the prince, was it Henry Esmond? Had I not best have joined the manly
creed of Addison yonder, that scouts the old doctrine of right divine,
that boldly declares that Parliament and people consecrate the sovereign,
not bishops, nor genealogies, nor oils, nor coronations.” The eager gaze
of the young prince, watching every movement of Beatrix, haunted Esmond
and pursued him. The prince’s figure appeared before him in his feverish
dreams many times that night. He wished the deed undone, for which he had
laboured so. He was not the first that has regretted his own act, or
brought about his own undoing. Undoing? Should he write that word in his
late years? No, on his knees before Heaven, rather be thankful for what
then he deemed his misfortune, and which hath caused the whole subsequent
happiness of his life.

Esmond’s man, honest John Lockwood, had served his master and the family
all his life, and the colonel knew that he could answer for John’s
fidelity as for his own. John returned with the horses from Rochester
betimes the next morning, and the colonel gave him to understand that on
going to Kensington, where he was free of the servants’ hall, and indeed
courting Mrs. Beatrix’s maid, he was to ask no questions, and betray no
surprise, but to vouch stoutly that the young gentleman he should see in a
red coat there was my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and that his attendant in
grey was Monsieur Baptiste the Frenchman. He was to tell his friends in
the kitchen such stories as he remembered of my lord viscount’s youth at
Castlewood; what a wild boy he was; how he used to drill Jack and cane
him, before ever he was a soldier; everything, in fine, he knew respecting
my lord viscount’s early days. Jack’s ideas of painting had not been much
cultivated during his residence in Flanders with his master; and, before
my young lord’s return, he had been easily got to believe that the picture
brought over from Paris, and now hanging in Lady Castlewood’s
drawing-room, was a perfect likeness of her son, the young lord. And the
domestics having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a
momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their
arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait; and
next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited exactly as he
was represented in the painting, with the same periwig, ribbon, and
uniform of the Guard, quite naturally addressed the gentleman as my Lord
Castlewood, my lady viscountess’s son.

The secretary of the night previous was now the viscount; the viscount
wore the secretary’s grey frock; and John Lockwood was instructed to hint
to the world below stairs that my lord being a Papist, and very devout in
that religion, his attendant might be no other than his chaplain from
Bruxelles; hence, if he took his meals in my lord’s company there was
little reason for surprise. Frank was further cautioned to speak English
with a foreign accent, which task he performed indifferently well, and
this caution was the more necessary because the prince himself scarce
spoke our language like a native of the island; and John Lockwood laughed
with the folks below stairs at the manner in which my lord, after five
years abroad, sometimes forgot his own tongue and spoke it like a
Frenchman. “I warrant,” says he, “that with the English beef and beer, his
lordship will soon get back the proper use of his mouth;” and, to do his
new lordship justice, he took to beer and beef very kindly.

The prince drank so much, and was so loud and imprudent in his talk after
his drink, that Esmond often trembled for him. His meals were served as
much as possible in his own chamber, though frequently he made his
appearance in Lady Castlewood’s parlour and drawing-room, calling Beatrix
“sister”, and her ladyship “mother”, or “madam”, before the servants. And,
choosing to act entirely up to the part of brother and son, the prince
sometimes saluted Mrs. Beatrix and Lady Castlewood with a freedom which
his secretary did not like, and which, for his part, set Colonel Esmond
tearing with rage.

The guests had not been three days in the house when poor Jack Lockwood
came with a rueful countenance to his master, and said: “My lord, that
is—the gentleman, has been tampering with Mrs. Lucy” (Jack’s sweetheart),
“and given her guineas and a kiss.” I fear that Colonel Esmond’s mind was
rather relieved than otherwise, when he found that the ancillary beauty
was the one whom the prince had selected. His royal tastes were known to
lie that way, and continued so in after-life. The heir of one of the
greatest names, of the greatest kingdoms, and of the greatest misfortunes
in Europe, was often content to lay the dignity of his birth and grief at
the wooden shoes of a French chambermaid, and to repent afterwards (for he
was very devout) in ashes taken from the dustpan. ’Tis for mortals such as
these that nations suffer, that parties struggle, that warriors fight and
bleed. A year afterwards gallant heads were falling, and Nithsdale in
escape, and Derwentwater on the scaffold; whilst the heedless ingrate, for
whom they risked and lost all, was tippling with his seraglio of
mistresses in his _petite maison_ of Chaillot.

Blushing to be forced to bear such an errand, Esmond had to go to the
prince and warn him that the girl whom his highness was bribing, was John
Lockwood’s sweetheart, an honest resolute man, who had served in six
campaigns, and feared nothing, and who knew that the person, calling
himself Lord Castlewood, was not his young master: and the colonel
besought the prince to consider what the effect of a single man’s jealousy
might be, and to think of other designs he had in hand, more important
than the seduction of a waiting-maid, and the humiliation of a brave man.
Ten times, perhaps, in the course of as many days, Mr. Esmond had to warn
the royal young adventurer of some imprudence or some freedom. He received
these remonstrances very testily, save perhaps in this affair of poor
Lockwood’s, when he deigned to burst out a-laughing, and said, “What! the
_soubrette_ has peached to the _amoureux_, and Crispin is angry, and
Crispin has served, and Crispin has been a corporal, has he? Tell him we
will reward his valour with a pair of colours, and recompense his
fidelity.”

Colonel Esmond ventured to utter some other words of entreaty, but the
prince, stamping imperiously, cried out, “_Assez, milord: je m’ennuye à la
prêche_; I am not come to London to go to the sermon.” And he complained
afterwards to Castlewood, that “_le petit jaune, le noir colonel, le
Marquis Misanthrope_” (by which facetious names his royal highness was
pleased to designate Colonel Esmond), “fatigued him with his grand airs
and virtuous homilies.”

The Bishop of Rochester, and other gentlemen engaged in the transaction
which had brought the prince over, waited upon his royal highness,
constantly asking for my Lord Castlewood on their arrival at Kensington,
and being openly conducted to his royal highness in that character, who
received them either in my lady’s drawing-room below, or above in his own
apartment; and all implored him to quit the house as little as possible,
and to wait there till the signal should be given for him to appear. The
ladies entertained him at cards, over which amusement he spent many hours
in each day and night. He passed many hours more in drinking, during which
time he would rattle and talk very agreeably, and especially if the
colonel was absent, whose presence always seemed to frighten him; and the
poor “_Colonel Noir_” took that hint as a command accordingly, and seldom
intruded his black face upon the convivial hours of this august young
prisoner. Except for those few persons of whom the porter had the list,
Lord Castlewood was denied to all friends of the house who waited on his
lordship. The wound he had received had broke out again from his journey
on horseback, so the world and the domestics were informed. And Doctor
A——,(17) his physician (I shall not mention his name, but he was physician
to the Queen, of the Scots nation, and a man remarkable for his
benevolence as well as his wit), gave orders that he should be kept
perfectly quiet until the wound should heal. With this gentleman, who was
one of the most active and influential of our party, and the others before
spoken of, the whole secret lay; and it was kept with so much
faithfulness, and the story we told so simple and natural, that there was
no likelihood of a discovery except from the imprudence of the prince
himself, and an adventurous levity that we had the greatest difficulty to
control. As for Lady Castlewood, although she scarce spoke a word, ’twas
easy to gather from her demeanour, and one or two hints she dropped, how
deep her mortification was at finding the hero whom she had chosen to
worship all her life (and whose restoration had formed almost the most
sacred part of her prayers), no more than a man, and not a good one. She
thought misfortune might have chastened him; but that instructress had
rather rendered him callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite
real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humour,
gaiety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in his acts and words that
he had brought from among those libertine devotees with whom he had been
bred, and that shocked the simplicity and purity of the English lady,
whose guest he was. Esmond spoke his mind to Beatrix pretty freely about
the prince, getting her brother to put in a word of warning. Beatrix was
entirely of their opinion; she thought he was very light, very light and
reckless; she could not even see the good looks Colonel Esmond had spoken
of. The prince had bad teeth, and a decided squint. How could we say he
did not squint? His eyes were fine, but there was certainly a cast in
them. She rallied him at table with wonderful wit; she spoke of him
invariably as of a mere boy; she was more fond of Esmond than ever,
praised him to her brother, praised him to the prince, when his royal
highness was pleased to sneer at the colonel, and warmly espoused his
cause: “And if your Majesty does not give him the Garter his father had,
when the Marquis of Esmond comes to your Majesty’s Court, I will hang
myself in my own garters, or will cry my eyes out.” “Rather than lose
those,” says the prince, “he shall be made archbishop and colonel of the
Guard” (it was Frank Castlewood who told me of this conversation over
their supper).

“Yes,” cries she, with one of her laughs,—(I fancy I hear it now; thirty
years afterwards I hear that delightful music)—“yes, he shall be
Archbishop of Esmond and Marquis of Canterbury.”

“And what will your ladyship be?” says the prince; “you have but to choose
your place.”

“I,” says Beatrix, “will be mother of the maids to the queen of his
Majesty King James the Third—_Vive le Roy!_” and she made him a great
curtsy, and drank a part of a glass of wine in his honour.

“The prince seized hold of the glass and drank the last drop of it,”
Castlewood said, “and my mother, looking very anxious, rose up and asked
leave to retire. But that ’Trix is my mother’s daughter, Harry,” Frank
continued, “I don’t know what a horrid fear I should have of her. I wish—I
wish this business were over. You are older than I am, and wiser, and
better, and I owe you everything, and would die for you—before George I
would; but I wish the end of this were come.”

Neither of us very likely passed a tranquil night; horrible doubts and
torments racked Esmond’s soul; ’twas a scheme of personal ambition, a
daring stroke for a selfish end—he knew it. What cared he, in his heart,
who was king? Were not his very sympathies and secret convictions on the
other side—on the side of People, Parliament, Freedom? And here was he,
engaged for a prince, that had scarce heard the word “liberty”; that
priests and women, tyrants by nature both, made a tool of. The misanthrope
was in no better humour after hearing that story, and his grim face more
black and yellow than ever.

Chapter X. We Entertain A Very Distinguished Guest At Kensington

Should any clue be found to the dark intrigues at the latter end of Queen
Anne’s time, or any historian be inclined to follow it, ’twill be
discovered, I have little doubt, that not one of the great personages
about the queen had a defined scheme of policy, independent of that
private and selfish interest which each was bent on pursuing; St. John was
for St. John, and Harley for Oxford, and Marlborough for John Churchill,
always; and according as they could get help from St. Germains or Hanover,
they sent over proffers of allegiance to the princes there, or betrayed
one to the other: one cause, or one sovereign, was as good as another to
them, so that they could hold the best place under him; and like Lockit
and Peachem, the Newgate chiefs in the _Rogues’ Opera_ Mr. Gay wrote
afterwards, had each in his hand documents and proofs of treason which
would hang the other, only he did not dare to use the weapon, for fear of
that one which his neighbour also carried in his pocket. Think of the
great Marlborough, the greatest subject in all the world, a conqueror of
princes, that had marched victorious over Germany, Flanders, and France,
that had given the law to sovereigns abroad, and been worshipped as a
divinity at home, forced to sneak out of England—his credit, honours,
places, all taken from him; his friends in the army broke and ruined; and
flying before Harley, as abject and powerless as a poor debtor before a
bailiff with a writ. A paper, of which Harley got possession, and showing
beyond doubt that the duke was engaged with the Stuart family, was the
weapon with which the treasurer drove Marlborough out of the kingdom. He
fled to Antwerp, and began intriguing instantly on the other side, and
came back to England, as all know, a Whig and a Hanoverian.

Though the treasurer turned out of the army and office every man, military
or civil, known to be the duke’s friend, and gave the vacant posts among
the Tory party; he, too, was playing the double game between Hanover and
St. Germains, awaiting the expected catastrophe of the queen’s death to be
master of the state, and offer it to either family that should bribe him
best, or that the nation should declare for. Whichever the king was,
Harley’s object was to reign over him; and to this end he supplanted the
former famous favourite, decried the actions of the war which had made
Marlborough’s name illustrious, and disdained no more than the great
fallen competitor of his, the meanest arts, flatteries, intimidations,
that would secure his power. If the greatest satirist the world ever hath
seen had writ against Harley, and not for him, what a history had he left
behind of the last years of Queen Anne’s reign! But Swift, that scorned
all mankind, and himself not the least of all, had this merit of a
faithful partisan, that he loved those chiefs who treated him well, and
stuck by Harley bravely in his fall, as he gallantly had supported him in
his better fortune.

Incomparably more brilliant, more splendid, eloquent, accomplished, than
his rival, the great St. John could be as selfish as Oxford was, and could
act the double part as skilfully as ambidextrous Churchill. He whose talk
was always of liberty, no more shrunk from using persecution and the
pillory against his opponents, than if he had been at Lisbon and Grand
Inquisitor. This lofty patriot was on his knees at Hanover and St.
Germains too; notoriously of no religion, he toasted Church and queen as
boldly as the stupid Sacheverel, whom he used and laughed at; and to serve
his turn, and to overthrow his enemy, he could intrigue, coax, bully,
wheedle, fawn on the Court favourite, and creep up the back-stair as
silently as Oxford who supplanted Marlborough, and whom he himself
supplanted. The crash of my Lord Oxford happened at this very time whereat
my history is now arrived. He was come to the very last days of his power,
and the agent whom he employed to overthrow the conqueror of Blenheim, was
now engaged to upset the conqueror’s conqueror, and hand over the staff of
government to Bolingbroke, who had been panting to hold it.

In expectation of the stroke that was now preparing, the Irish regiments
in the French service were all brought round about Boulogne in Picardy, to
pass over if need were with the Duke of Berwick; the soldiers of France no
longer, but subjects of James the Third of England and Ireland King. The
fidelity of the great mass of the Scots (though a most active, resolute,
and gallant Whig party, admirably and energetically ordered and
disciplined, was known to be in Scotland too) was notoriously unshaken in
their king. A very great body of Tory clergy, nobility, and gentry, were
public partisans of the exiled prince; and the indifferents might be
counted on to cry King George or King James, according as either should
prevail. The queen, especially in her latter days, inclined towards her
own family. The prince was lying actually in London, within a stone’s-cast
of his sister’s palace; the first minister toppling to his fall, and so
tottering that the weakest push of a woman’s finger would send him down;
and as for Bolingbroke, his successor, we know on whose side his power and
his splendid eloquence would be on the day when the queen should appear
openly before her council and say:—“This, my lords, is my brother; here is
my father’s heir, and mine after me.”

During the whole of the previous year the queen had had many and repeated
fits of sickness, fever, and lethargy, and her death had been constantly
looked for by all her attendants. The Elector of Hanover had wished to
send his son, the Duke of Cambridge—to pay his court to his cousin the
queen, the Elector said;—in truth, to be on the spot when death should
close her career. Frightened perhaps to have such a _memento mori_ under
her royal eyes, her Majesty had angrily forbidden the young prince’s
coming into England. Either she desired to keep the chances for her
brother open yet; or the people about her did not wish to close with the
Whig candidate till they could make terms with him. The quarrels of her
ministers before her face at the Council board, the pricks of conscience
very likely, the importunities of her ministers, and constant turmoil and
agitation round about her, had weakened and irritated the princess
extremely; her strength was giving way under these continual trials of her
temper, and from day to day it was expected she must come to a speedy end
of them. Just before Viscount Castlewood and his companion came from
France, her Majesty was taken ill. The St. Anthony’s fire broke out on the
royal legs; there was no hurry for the presentation of the young lord at
Court, or that person who should appear under his name; and my lord
viscount’s wound breaking out opportunely, he was kept conveniently in his
chamber until such time as his physician should allow him to bend his knee
before the queen. At the commencement of July, that influential lady, with
whom it has been mentioned that our party had relations, came frequently
to visit her young friend, the maid of honour, at Kensington, and my lord
viscount (the real or supposititious), who was an invalid at Lady
Castlewood’s house.

On the 27th day of July, the lady in question, who held the most intimate
post about the queen, came in her chair from the palace hard by, bringing
to the little party in Kensington Square, intelligence of the very highest
importance. The final blow had been struck, and my Lord of Oxford and
Mortimer was no longer treasurer. The staff was as yet given to no
successor, though my Lord Bolingbroke would undoubtedly be the man. And
now the time was come, the queen’s Abigail said: and now my Lord
Castlewood ought to be presented to the sovereign.

After that scene which Lord Castlewood witnessed and described to his
cousin, who passed such a miserable night of mortification and jealousy as
he thought over the transaction; no doubt the three persons who were set
by nature as protectors over Beatrix came to the same conclusion, that she
must be removed from the presence of a man whose desires towards her were
expressed only too clearly; and who was no more scrupulous in seeking to
gratify them than his father had been before him. I suppose Esmond’s
mistress, her son, and the colonel himself, had been all secretly debating
this matter in their minds, for when Frank broke out, in his blunt way,
with:—“I think Beatrix had best be anywhere but here,”—Lady Castlewood
said:—“I thank you, Frank, I have thought so too”; and Mr. Esmond, though
he only remarked that it was not for him to speak, showed plainly, by the
delight on his countenance, how very agreeable that proposal was to him.

“One sees that you think with us, Henry,” says the viscountess, with ever
so little of sarcasm in her tone: “Beatrix is best out of this house
whilst we have our guest in it, and as soon as this morning’s business is
done, she ought to quit London.”

“What morning’s business?” asked Colonel Esmond, not knowing what had been
arranged, though in fact the stroke next in importance to that of bringing
the prince, and of having him acknowledged by the queen, was now being
performed at the very moment we three were conversing together.

The Court-lady with whom our plan was concerted, and who was a chief agent
in it, the Court-physician, and the Bishop of Rochester, who were the
other two most active participators in our plan, had held many councils in
our house at Kensington and elsewhere, as to the means best to be adopted
for presenting our young adventurer to his sister the queen. The simple
and easy plan proposed by Colonel Esmond had been agreed to by all
parties, which was that on some rather private day, when there were not
many persons about the Court, the prince should appear there as my Lord
Castlewood, should be greeted by his sister-in-waiting, and led by that
other lady into the closet of the queen. And according to her Majesty’s
health or humour, and the circumstances that might arise during the
interview; it was to be left to the discretion of those present at it, and
to the prince himself, whether he should declare that it was the queen’s
own brother, or the brother of Beatrix Esmond, who kissed her royal hand.
And this plan being determined on, we were all waiting in very much
anxiety for the day and signal of execution.

Two mornings after that supper, it being the 27th day of July, the Bishop
of Rochester breakfasting with Lady Castlewood and her family, and the
meal scarce over, Dr. A——’s coach drove up to our house at Kensington, and
the doctor appeared amongst the party there, enlivening a rather gloomy
company; for the mother and daughter had had words in the morning in
respect to the transactions of that supper, and other adventures perhaps,
and on the day succeeding. Beatrix’s haughty spirit brooked remonstrances
from no superior, much less from her mother, the gentlest of creatures,
whom the girl commanded rather than obeyed. And feeling she was wrong, and
that by a thousand coquetries (which she could no more help exercising on
every man that came near her, than the sun can help shining on great and
small) she had provoked the prince’s dangerous admiration, and allured him
to the expression of it, she was only the more wilful and imperious the
more she felt her error.

To this party, the prince being served with chocolate in his bedchamber,
where he lay late sleeping away the fumes of his wine, the doctor came,
and by the urgent and startling nature of his news, dissipated instantly
that private and minor unpleasantry under which the family of Castlewood
was labouring.

He asked for the guest; the guest was above in his own apartment: he bade
_Monsieur Baptiste_ go up to his master instantly, and requested that _my
Lord Viscount Castlewood_ would straightway put his uniform on, and come
away in the doctor’s coach now at the door.

He then informed Madam Beatrix what her part of the comedy was to be:—“In
half an hour,” says he, “her Majesty and her favourite lady will take the
air in the cedar-walk behind the new banqueting-house. Her Majesty will be
drawn in a garden-chair, Madam Beatrix Esmond and _her brother_, _my Lord
Viscount Castlewood_, will be walking in the private garden (here is Lady
Masham’s key), and will come unawares upon the royal party. The man that
draws the chair will retire, and leave the queen, the favourite, and the
maid of honour and her brother together; Mrs. Beatrix will present her
brother, and then!—and then, my lord bishop will pray for the result of
the interview, and his Scots clerk will say Amen! Quick, put on your hood,
Madam Beatrix; why doth not his Majesty come down? Such another chance may
not present itself for months again.”

The prince was late and lazy, and indeed had all but lost that chance
through his indolence. The queen was actually about to leave the garden
just when the party reached it; the doctor, the bishop, the maid of honour
and her brother went off together in the physician’s coach, and had been
gone half an hour when Colonel Esmond came to Kensington Square.

The news of this errand, on which Beatrix was gone, of course for a moment
put all thoughts of private jealousy out of Colonel Esmond’s head. In half
an hour more the coach returned; the bishop descended from it first, and
gave his arm to Beatrix, who now came out. His lordship went back into the
carriage again, and the maid of honour entered the house alone. We were
all gazing at her from the upper window, trying to read from her
countenance the result of the interview from which she had just come.

She came into the drawing-room in a great tremor and very pale; she asked
for a glass of water as her mother went to meet her, and after drinking
that and putting off her hood, she began to speak:—“We may all hope for
the best,” says she; “it has cost the queen a fit. Her Majesty was in her
chair in the cedar-walk accompanied only by Lady ——, when we entered by
the private wicket from the west side of the garden, and turned towards
her, the doctor following us. They waited in a side-walk hidden by the
shrubs, as we advanced towards the chair. My heart throbbed so I scarce
could speak; but my prince whispered, ‘Courage, Beatrix’, and marched on
with a steady step. His face was a little flushed, but he was not afraid
of the danger. He who fought so bravely at Malplaquet fears nothing.”
Esmond and Castlewood looked at each other at this compliment, neither
liking the sound of it.

“The prince uncovered,” Beatrix continued, “and I saw the queen turning
round to Lady Masham, as if asking who these two were. Her Majesty looked
very pale and ill, and then flushed up; the favourite made us a signal to
advance, and I went up, leading my prince by the hand, quite close to the
chair: ‘Your Majesty will give my lord viscount your hand to kiss,’ says
her lady, and the queen put out her hand, which the prince kissed,
kneeling on his knee, he who should kneel to no mortal man or woman.

“ ‘You have been long from England, my lord,’ says the queen: ‘why were
you not here to give a home to your mother and sister?’

“ ‘I am come, madam, to stay now, if the queen desires me,’ says the
prince, with another low bow.

“ ‘You have taken a foreign wife, my lord, and a foreign religion; was not
that of England good enough for you?’

“ ‘In returning to my father’s Church,’ says the prince, ‘I do not love my
mother the less, nor am I the less faithful servant of your Majesty.’

“Here,” says Beatrix, “the favourite gave me a little signal with her hand
to fall back, which I did, though I died to hear what should pass; and
whispered something to the queen, which made her Majesty start and utter
one or two words in a hurried manner, looking towards the prince, and
catching hold with her hand of the arm of her chair. He advanced still
nearer towards it; he began to speak very rapidly; I caught the words,
‘Father, blessing, forgiveness,’—and then presently the prince fell on his
knees; took from his breast a paper he had there, handed it to the queen,
who, as soon as she saw it, flung up both her arms with a scream, and took
away that hand nearest the prince, and which he endeavoured to kiss. He
went on speaking with great animation of gesture, now clasping his hands
together on his heart, now opening them as though to say: ‘I am here, your
brother, in your power.’ Lady Masham ran round on the other side of the
chair, kneeling too, and speaking with great energy. She clasped the
queen’s hand on her side, and picked up the paper her Majesty had let
fall. The prince rose and made a further speech as though he would go; the
favourite on the other hand urging her mistress, and then, running back to
the prince, brought him back once more close to the chair. Again he knelt
down and took the queen’s hand, which she did not withdraw, kissing it a
hundred times; my lady all the time, with sobs and supplications, speaking
over the chair. This while the queen sat with a stupefied look, crumpling
the paper with one hand, as my prince embraced the other; then of a sudden
she uttered several piercing shrieks, and burst into a great fit of
hysteric tears and laughter. ‘Enough, enough, sir, for this time,’ I heard
Lady Masham say; and the chairman, who had withdrawn round the
banqueting-room, came back, alarmed by the cries: ‘Quick,’ says Lady
Masham, ‘get some help,’ and I ran towards the doctor, who, with the
Bishop of Rochester, came up instantly. Lady Masham whispered the prince
he might hope for the very best; and to be ready to-morrow; and he hath
gone away to the Bishop of Rochester’s house, to meet several of his
friends there. And so the great stroke is struck,” says Beatrix, going
down on her knees, and clasping her hands, “God save the King: God save
the King!”

Beatrix’s tale told, and the young lady herself calmed somewhat of her
agitation, we asked with regard to the prince, who was absent with Bishop
Atterbury, and were informed that ’twas likely he might remain abroad the
whole day. Beatrix’s three kinsfolk looked at one another at this
intelligence; ’twas clear the same thought was passing through the minds
of all.

But who should begin to break the news? Monsieur Baptiste, that is Frank
Castlewood, turned very red, and looked towards Esmond; the colonel bit
his lips, and fairly beat a retreat into the window: it was Lady
Castlewood that opened upon Beatrix with the news which we knew would do
anything but please her.

“We are glad,” says she, taking her daughter’s hand, and speaking in a
gentle voice, “that the guest is away.”

Beatrix drew back in an instant, looking round her at us three, and as if
divining a danger. “Why glad?” says she, her breast beginning to heave;
“are you so soon tired of him?”

“We think one of us is devilishly too fond of him,” cries out Frank
Castlewood.

“And which is it—you, my lord, or is it mamma, who is jealous because he
drinks my health? or is it the head of the family” (here she turned with
an imperious look towards Colonel Esmond), “who has taken of late to
preach the king sermons?”

“We do not say you are too free with his Majesty.”

“I thank you, madam,” says Beatrix, with a toss of the head and a curtsy.

But her mother continued, with very great calmness and dignity—“At least
we have not said so, though we might, were it possible for a mother to say
such words to her own daughter, your father’s daughter.”

“_Eh! mon père_,” breaks out Beatrix, “was no better than other persons’
fathers;” and again she looked towards the colonel.

We all felt a shock as she uttered those two or three French words; her
manner was exactly imitated from that of our foreign guest.

“You had not learned to speak French a month ago, Beatrix,” says her
mother, sadly, “nor to speak ill of your father.”

Beatrix, no doubt, saw that slip she had made in her flurry, for she
blushed crimson: “I have learnt to honour the king,” says she, drawing up,
“and ’twere as well that others suspected neither his Majesty nor me.”

“If you respected your mother a little more,” Frank said, “’Trix, you
would do yourself no hurt.”

“I am no child,” says she, turning round on him; “we have lived very well
these five years without the benefit of your advice or example, and I
intend to take neither now. Why does not the head of the house speak?” she
went on; “he rules everything here. When his chaplain has done singing the
psalms, will his lordship deliver the sermon? I am tired of the psalms.”
The prince had used almost the very same words, in regard to Colonel
Esmond, that the imprudent girl repeated in her wrath.

“You show yourself a very apt scholar, madam,” says the colonel; and,
turning to his mistress, “Did your guest use these words in your
ladyship’s hearing, or was it to Beatrix in private that he was pleased to
impart his opinion regarding my tiresome sermon?”

“Have you seen him alone?” cries my lord, starting up with an oath: “by
God, have you seen him alone?”

“Were he here, you wouldn’t dare so to insult me; no, you would not dare!”
cries Frank’s sister. “Keep your oaths, my lord, for your wife; we are not
used here to such language. ’Till you came, there used to be kindness
between me and mamma, and I cared for her when you never did, when you
were away for years with your horses, and your mistress, and your Popish
wife.”

“By ——,” says my lord, rapping out another oath, “Clotilda is an angel;
how dare you say a word against Clotilda?”

Colonel Esmond could not refrain from a smile, to see how easy Frank’s
attack was drawn off by that feint:—“I fancy Clotilda is not the subject
in hand,” says Mr. Esmond, rather scornfully; “her ladyship is at Paris, a
hundred leagues off, preparing baby-linen. It is about my Lord
Castlewood’s sister, and not his wife, the question is.”

“He is not my Lord Castlewood,” says Beatrix, “and he knows he is not; he
is Colonel Francis Esmond’s son, and no more, and he wears a false title;
and he lives on another man’s land, and he knows it.” Here was another
desperate sally of the poor beleaguered garrison, and an _alerte_ in
another quarter. “Again, I beg your pardon,” says Esmond. “If there are no
proofs of my claim, I have no claim. If my father acknowledged no heir,
yours was his lawful successor, and my Lord Castlewood hath as good a
right to his rank and small estate as any man in England. But that again
is not the question, as you know very well: let us bring our talk back to
it, as you will have me meddle in it. And I will give you frankly my
opinion, that a house where a prince lies all day, who respects no woman,
is no house for a young unmarried lady; that you were better in the
country than here; that he is here on a great end, from which no folly
should divert him; and that having nobly done your part of this morning,
Beatrix, you should retire off the scene awhile, and leave it to the other
actors of the play.”

As the colonel spoke with a perfect calmness and politeness, such as ’tis
to be hoped he hath always shown to women,(18) his mistress stood by him
on one side of the table, and Frank Castlewood on the other, hemming in
poor Beatrix, that was behind it, and, as it were, surrounding her with
our approaches.

Having twice sallied out and been beaten back, she now, as I expected,
tried the _ultima ratio_ of women, and had recourse to tears. Her
beautiful eyes filled with them; I never could bear in her, nor in any
woman, that expression of pain:—“I am alone,” sobbed she; “you are three
against me—my brother, my mother, and you. What have I done, that you
should speak and look so unkindly at me? Is it my fault that the prince
should, as you say, admire me? Did I bring him here? Did I do aught but
what you bade me, in making him welcome? Did you not tell me that our duty
was to die for him? Did you not teach me, mother, night and morning, to
pray for the king, before even ourselves? What would you have of me,
cousin, for you are the chief of the conspiracy against me; I know you
are, sir, and that my mother and brother are acting but as you bid them;
whither would you have me go?”

“I would but remove from the prince,” says Esmond gravely, “a dangerous
temptation; Heaven forbid I should say you would yield: I would only have
him free of it. Your honour needs no guardian, please God, but his
imprudence doth. He is so far removed from all women by his rank, that his
pursuit of them cannot but be unlawful. We would remove the dearest and
fairest of our family from the chance of that insult, and that is why we
would have you go, dear Beatrix.”

“Harry speaks like a book,” says Frank, with one of his oaths, “and, by
——, every word he saith is true. You can’t help being handsome, ’Trix; no
more can the prince help following you. My council is that you go out of
harm’s way; for, by the Lord, were the prince to play any tricks with you,
king as he is, or is to be, Harry Esmond and I would have justice of him.”

“Are not two such champions enough to guard me?” says Beatrix, something
sorrowfully; “sure, with you two watching, no evil could happen to me.”

“In faith, I think not, Beatrix,” says Colonel Esmond; “nor if the prince
knew us would he try.”

“But does he know you?” interposed Lady Esmond, very quiet: “he comes of a
country where the pursuit of kings is thought no dishonour to a woman. Let
us go, dearest Beatrix. Shall we go to Walcote or to Castlewood? We are
best away from the city; and when the prince is acknowledged, and our
champions have restored him, and he hath his own house at St. James’s or
Windsor, we can come back to ours here. Do you not think so, Harry and
Frank?”

Frank and Harry thought with her, you may be sure.

“We will go, then,” says Beatrix, turning a little pale; “Lady Masham is
to give me warning to-night how her Majesty is, and to-morrow——”

“I think we had best go to-day, my dear,” says my Lady Castlewood; “we
might have the coach and sleep at Hounslow, and reach home to-morrow. ’Tis
twelve o’clock; bid the coach, cousin, be ready at one.”

“For shame!” burst out Beatrix, in a passion of tears and mortification.
“You disgrace me by your cruel precautions; my own mother is the first to
suspect me, and would take me away as my gaoler. I will not go with you,
mother; I will go as no one’s prisoner. If I wanted to deceive, do you
think I could find no means of evading you? My family suspects me. As
those mistrust me that ought to love me most, let me leave them; I will
go, but I will go alone: to Castlewood, be it. I have been unhappy there
and lonely enough; let me go back, but spare me at least the humiliation
of setting a watch over my misery, which is a trial I can’t bear. Let me
go when you will, but alone, or not at all. You three can stay and triumph
over my unhappiness, and I will bear it as I have borne it before. Let my
gaoler-in-chief go order the coach that is to take me away. I thank you,
Henry Esmond, for your share in the conspiracy. All my life long I’ll
thank you, and remember you; and you, brother, and you, mother, how shall
I show my gratitude to you for your careful defence of my honour?”

She swept out of the room with the air of an empress, flinging glances of
defiance at us all, and leaving us conquerors of the field, but scared,
and almost ashamed of our victory. It did indeed seem hard and cruel that
we three should have conspired the banishment and humiliation of that fair
creature. We looked at each other in silence; ’twas not the first stroke
by many of our actions in that unlucky time, which, being done, we wished
undone. We agreed it was best she should go alone, speaking stealthily to
one another, and under our breaths, like persons engaged in an act they
felt ashamed in doing.

In a half-hour, it might be, after our talk she came back, her countenance
wearing the same defiant air which it had borne when she left us. She held
a shagreen-case in her hand; Esmond knew it as containing his diamonds
which he had given to her for her marriage with Duke Hamilton, and which
she had worn so splendidly on the inauspicious night of the prince’s
arrival. “I have brought back,” says she, “to the Marquis of Esmond the
present he deigned to make me in days when he trusted me better than now.
I will never accept a benefit or a kindness from Henry Esmond more, and I
give back these family diamonds, which belonged to one king’s mistress, to
the gentleman that suspected I would be another. Have you been upon your
message of coach-caller, my lord marquis; will you send your valet to see
that I do not run away?” We were right, yet, by her manner, she had put us
all in the wrong; we were conquerors, yet the honours of the day seemed to
be with the poor oppressed girl.

That luckless box containing the stones had first been ornamented with a
baron’s coronet, when Beatrix was engaged to the young gentleman from whom
she parted, and afterwards the gilt crown of a duchess figured on the
cover, which also poor Beatrix was destined never to wear. Lady Castlewood
opened the case mechanically and scarce thinking what she did; and behold,
besides the diamonds, Esmond’s present, there lay in the box the enamelled
miniature of the late duke, which Beatrix had laid aside with her mourning
when the king came into the house; and which the poor heedless thing very
likely had forgotten.

“Do you leave this, too, Beatrix?” says her mother, taking the miniature
out and with a cruelty she did not very often show; but there are some
moments when the tenderest women are cruel, and some triumphs which angels
can’t forgo.(19)

Having delivered this stab, Lady Esmond was frightened at the effect of
her blow. It went to poor Beatrix’s heart; she flushed up and passed a
handkerchief across her eyes, and kissed the miniature, and put it into
her bosom:—“I had forgot it,” says she; “my injury made me forget my
grief, my mother has recalled both to me. Farewell, mother, I think I
never can forgive you; something hath broke between us that no tears nor
years can repair. I always said I was alone; you never loved me, never—and
were jealous of me from the time I sat on my father’s knee. Let me go
away, the sooner the better; I can bear to be with you no more.”

“Go, child,” says her mother, still very stern; “go and bend your proud
knees and ask forgiveness; go, pray in solitude for humility and
repentance. ’Tis not your reproaches that make me unhappy, ’tis your hard
heart, my poor Beatrix; may God soften it, and teach you one day to feel
for your mother!”

If my mistress was cruel, at least she never could be got to own as much.
Her haughtiness quite overtopped Beatrix’s; and, if the girl had a proud
spirit, I very much fear it came to her by inheritance.

Chapter XI. Our Guest Quits Us As Not Being Hospitable Enough

Beatrix’s departure took place within an hour, her maid going with her in
the post-chaise, and a man armed on the coach-box to prevent any danger of
the road. Esmond and Frank thought of escorting the carriage, but she
indignantly refused their company, and another man was sent to follow the
coach, and not to leave it till it had passed over Hounslow Heath on the
next day. And these two forming the whole of Lady Castle wood’s male
domestics, Mr. Esmond’s faithful John Lockwood came to wait on his
mistress during their absence, though he would have preferred to escort
Mrs. Lucy, his sweetheart, on her journey into the country.

We had a gloomy and silent meal; it seemed as if a darkness was over the
house, since the bright face of Beatrix had been withdrawn from it. In the
afternoon came a message from the favourite to relieve us somewhat from
this despondency. “The queen hath been much shaken,” the note said; “she
is better now, and all things will go well. Let _my Lord Castlewood_ be
ready against we send for him.”

At night there came a second billet: “There hath been a great battle in
Council; lord treasurer hath broke his staff, and hath fallen never to
rise again; no successor is appointed. Lord B—— receives a great Whig
company to-night at Golden Square. If he is trimming, others are true; the
queen hath no more fits, but is abed now, and more quiet. Be ready against
morning, when I still hope all will be well.”

The prince came home shortly after the messenger who bore this billet had
left the house. His royal highness was so much the better for the bishop’s
liquor, that to talk affairs to him now was of little service. He was
helped to the royal bed; he called Castlewood familiarly by his own name;
he quite forgot the part upon the acting of which his crown, his safety,
depended. ’Twas lucky that my Lady Castlewood’s servants were out of the
way, and only those heard him who would not betray him. He inquired after
the adorable Beatrix, with a royal hiccup in his voice; he was easily got
to bed, and in a minute or two plunged in that deep slumber and
forgetfulness with which Bacchus rewards the votaries of that god. We
wished Beatrix had been there to see him in his cups. We regretted,
perhaps, that she was gone.

One of the party at Kensington Square was fool enough to ride to Hounslow
that night, _coram latronibus_, and to the inn which the family used
ordinarily in their journeys out of London. Esmond desired my landlord not
to acquaint Madam Beatrix with his coming, and had the grim satisfaction
of passing by the door of the chamber where she lay with her maid, and of
watching her chariot set forth in the early morning. He saw her smile and
slip money into the man’s hand who was ordered to ride behind the coach as
far as Bagshot. The road being open, and the other servant armed, it
appeared she dispensed with the escort of a second domestic; and this
fellow, bidding his young mistress adieu with many bows, went and took a
pot of ale in the kitchen, and returned in company with his brother
servant, John Coachman, and his horses, back to London.

They were not a mile out of Hounslow when the two worthies stopped for
more drink, and here they were scared by seeing Colonel Esmond gallop by
them. The man said in reply to Colonel Esmond’s stern question, that his
young mistress had sent her duty; only that, no other message: she had had
a very good night, and would reach Castlewood by nightfall. The colonel
had no time for further colloquy, and galloped on swiftly to London,
having business of great importance there, as my reader very well knoweth.
The thought of Beatrix riding away from the danger soothed his mind not a
little. His horse was at Kensington Square (honest Dapple knew the way
thither well enough) before the tipsy guest of last night was awake and
sober.

The account of the previous evening was known all over the town early next
day. A violent altercation had taken place before the queen in the
Council-chamber; and all the coffee-houses had their version of the
quarrel. The news brought my lord bishop early to Kensington Square, where
he awaited the waking of his royal master above stairs, and spoke
confidently of having him proclaimed as Prince of Wales and heir to the
throne before that day was over. The bishop had entertained on the
previous afternoon certain of the most influential gentlemen of the true
British party. His royal highness had charmed all, both Scots and English,
Papists and Churchmen: “Even Quakers,” says he, “were at our meeting; and,
if the stranger took a little too much British punch and ale, he will soon
grow more accustomed to those liquors; and my Lord Castlewood,” says the
bishop, with a laugh, “must bear the cruel charge of having been for once
in his life a little tipsy. He toasted your lovely sister a dozen times,
at which we all laughed,” says the bishop, “admiring so much fraternal
affection.—Where is that charming nymph, and why doth she not adorn your
ladyship’s tea-table with her bright eyes?” Her ladyship said, drily, that
Beatrix was not at home that morning; my lord bishop was too busy with
great affairs to trouble himself much about the presence or absence of any
lady, however beautiful.

We were yet at table when Dr. A—— came from the Palace with a look of
great alarm; the shocks the queen had had the day before had acted on her
severely; he had been sent for, and had ordered her to be blooded. The
surgeon of Long Acre had come to cup the queen, and her Majesty was now
more easy and breathed more freely. What made us start at the name of Mr.
Aymé? “_Il faut être aimable pour être aimé_,” says the merry doctor;
Esmond pulled his sleeve, and bade him hush. It was to Aymé’s house, after
his fatal duel, that my dear Lord Castlewood, Frank’s father, had been
carried to die.

No second visit could be paid to the queen on that day at any rate; and
when our guest above gave his signal that he was awake, the doctor, the
bishop, and Colonel Esmond waited upon the prince’s levee, and brought him
their news, cheerful or dubious. The doctor had to go away presently, but
promised to keep the prince constantly acquainted with what was taking
place at the palace hard by. His counsel was, and the bishop’s, that as
soon as ever the queen’s malady took a favourable turn, the prince should
be introduced to her bedside; the Council summoned; the guard at
Kensington and St. James’s, of which two regiments were to be entirely
relied on, and one known not to be hostile, would declare for the prince,
as the queen would before the lords of her Council, designating him as the
heir to her throne.

With locked doors, and Colonel Esmond acting as secretary, the prince and
his lordship of Rochester passed many hours of this day composing
Proclamations and Addresses to the Country, to the Scots, to the Clergy,
to the People of London and England; announcing the arrival of the exile
descendant of three sovereigns, and his acknowledgement by his sister as
heir to the throne. Every safeguard for their liberties the Church and
People could ask was promised to them. The bishop could answer for the
adhesion of very many prelates, who besought of their flocks and brother
ecclesiastics to recognize the sacred right of the future sovereign, and
to purge the country of the sin of rebellion.

During the composition of these papers, more messengers than one came from
the Palace regarding the state of the august patient there lying. At
midday she was somewhat better; at evening the torpor again seized her,
and she wandered in her mind. At night Dr. A—— was with us again, with a
report rather more favourable: no instant danger at any rate was
apprehended. In the course of the last two years her Majesty had had many
attacks similar, but more severe.

By this time we had finished a half-dozen of Proclamations (the wording of
them so as to offend no parties, and not to give umbrage to Whigs or
Dissenters, required very great caution), and the young prince, who had
indeed shown, during a long day’s labour, both alacrity at seizing the
information given him, and ingenuity and skill in turning the phrases
which were to go out signed by his name, here exhibited a good humour and
thoughtfulness that ought to be set down to his credit.

“Were these papers to be mislaid,” says he, “or our scheme to come to
mishap, my Lord Esmond’s writing would bring him to a place where I
heartily hope never to see him; and so, by your leave, I will copy the
papers myself, though I am not very strong in spelling; and if they are
found they will implicate none but the person they most concern;” and so,
having carefully copied the Proclamations out, the prince burned those in
Colonel Esmond’s handwriting: “And now, and now, gentlemen,” says he, “let
us go to supper, and drink a glass with the ladies. My Lord Esmond, you
will sup with us to-night; you have given us of late too little of your
company.”

The prince’s meals were commonly served in the chamber which had been
Beatrix’s bedroom, adjoining that in which he slept. And the dutiful
practice of his entertainers was to wait until their royal guest bade them
take their places at table before they sat down to partake of the meal. On
this night, as you may suppose, only Frank Castlewood and his mother were
in waiting when the supper was announced to receive the prince; who had
passed the whole of the day in his own apartment, with the bishop as his
minister of state, and Colonel Esmond officiating as secretary of his
Council.

The prince’s countenance wore an expression by no means pleasant; when
looking towards the little company assembled, and waiting for him, he did
not see Beatrix’s bright face there as usual to greet him. He asked Lady
Esmond for his fair introducer of yesterday: her ladyship only cast her
eyes down, and said quietly, Beatrix could not be of the supper that
night; nor did she show the least sign of confusion, whereas Castlewood
turned red, and Esmond was no less embarrassed. I think women have an
instinct of dissimulation; they know by nature how to disguise their
emotions far better than the most consummate male courtiers can do. Is not
the better part of the life of many of them spent in hiding their
feelings, in cajoling their tyrants, in masking over with fond smiles and
artful gaiety their doubt, or their grief, or their terror?

Our guest swallowed his supper very sulky; it was not till the second
bottle his highness began to rally. When Lady Castlewood asked leave to
depart, he sent a message to Beatrix, hoping she would be present at the
next day’s dinner, and applied himself to drink, and to talk afterwards,
for which there was subject in plenty.

The next day, we heard from our informer at Kensington that the queen was
somewhat better, and had been up for an hour, though she was not well
enough yet to receive any visitor.

At dinner a single cover was laid for his royal highness; and the two
gentlemen alone waited on him. We had had a consultation in the morning
with Lady Castlewood, in which it had been determined that, should his
highness ask further questions about Beatrix, he should be answered by the
gentlemen of the house.

He was evidently disturbed and uneasy, looking towards the door
constantly, as if expecting some one. There came, however, nobody, except
honest John Lockwood, when he knocked with a dish, which those within took
from him; so the meals were always arranged, and I believe the council in
the kitchen were of opinion that my young lord had brought over a priest,
who had converted us all into Papists, and that Papists were like Jews,
eating together, and not choosing to take their meals in the sight of
Christians.

The prince tried to cover his displeasure; he was but a clumsy dissembler
at that time, and when out of humour could with difficulty keep a serene
countenance; and having made some foolish attempts at trivial talk, he
came to his point presently, and in as easy a manner as he could, saying
to Lord Castlewood, he hoped, he requested, his lordship’s mother and
sister would be of the supper that night. As the time hung heavy on him,
and he must not go abroad, would not Miss Beatrix hold him company at a
game of cards?

At this, looking up at Esmond, and taking the signal from him, Lord
Castlewood informed his royal highness(20) that his sister Beatrix was not
at Kensington; and that her family had thought it best she should quit the
town.

“Not at Kensington!” says he; “is she ill? she was well yesterday;
wherefore should she quit the town? Is it at your orders, my lord, or
Colonel Esmond’s, who seems the master of this house?”

“Not of this, sir,” says Frank very nobly, “only of our house in the
country, which he hath given to us. This is my mother’s house, and Walcote
is my father’s, and the Marquis of Esmond knows he hath but to give his
word, and I return his to him.”

“The Marquis of Esmond!—the Marquis of Esmond,” says the prince, tossing
off a glass, “meddles too much with my affairs, and presumes on the
service he hath done me. If you want to carry your suit with Beatrix, my
lord, by blocking her up in gaol, let me tell you that is not the way to
win a woman.”

“I was not aware, sir, that I had spoken of my suit to Madam Beatrix to
your royal highness.”

“Bah, bah, monsieur! we need not be a conjurer to see that. It makes
itself seen at all moments. You are jealous, my lord, and the maid of
honour cannot look at another face without yours beginning to scowl. That
which you do is unworthy, monsieur; is inhospitable—is, is _lâche_, yes
_lâche_:” (he spoke rapidly in French, his rage carrying him away with
each phrase:) “I come to your house; I risk my life; I pass it in ennui; I
repose myself on your fidelity; I have no company but your lordship’s
sermons or the conversations of that adorable young lady, and you take her
from me; and you, you rest! _Merci, monsieur!_ I shall thank you when I
have the means; I shall know to recompense a devotion a little
importunate, my lord—a little importunate. For a month past your airs of
protector have annoyed me beyond measure. You deign to offer me the crown,
and bid me take it on my knees like King John—eh! I know my history,
monsieur, and mock myself of frowning barons. I admire your mistress, and
you send her to a Bastile of the Province; I enter your house, and you
mistrust me. I will leave it, monsieur; from to-night I will leave it. I
have other friends whose loyalty will not be so ready to question mine. If
I have Garters to give away, ’tis to noblemen who are not so ready to
think evil. Bring me a coach and let me quit this place, or let the fair
Beatrix return to it. I will not have your hospitality at the expense of
the freedom of that fair creature.”

This harangue was uttered with rapid gesticulations such as the French
use, and in the language of that nation. The prince striding up and down
the room; his face flushed, and his hands trembling with anger. He was
very thin and frail from repeated illness and a life of pleasure. Either
Castlewood or Esmond could have broke him across their knee, and in half a
minute’s struggle put an end to him; and here he was insulting us both,
and scarce deigning to hide from the two, whose honour it most concerned,
the passion he felt for the young lady of our family. My Lord Castlewood
replied to the prince’s tirade very nobly and simply.

“Sir,” says he, “your royal highness is pleased to forget that others risk
their lives, and for your cause. Very few Englishmen, please God, would
dare to lay hands on your sacred person, though none would ever think of
respecting ours. Our family’s lives are at your service, and everything we
have except our honour.”

“Honour! bah, sir, who ever thought of hurting your honour?” says the
prince, with a peevish air.

“We implore your royal highness never to think of hurting it,” says Lord
Castlewood, with a low bow. The night being warm, the windows were open
both towards the gardens and the square. Colonel Esmond heard through the
closed door the voice of the watchman calling the hour, in the square on
the other side. He opened the door communicating with the prince’s room;
Martin, the servant that had rode with Beatrix to Hounslow, was just going
out of the chamber as Esmond entered it, and when the fellow was gone, and
the watchman again sang his cry of “Past ten o’clock, and a starlight
night,” Esmond spoke to the prince in a low voice, and said—“Your royal
highness hears that man?”

“_Après, monsieur?_” says the prince.

“I have but to beckon him from the window, and send him fifty yards, and
he returns with a guard of men, and I deliver up to him the body of the
person calling himself James the Third, for whose capture Parliament hath
offered a reward of 5,000_l._, as your royal highness saw on our ride from
Rochester. I have but to say the word, and, by the Heaven that made me, I
would say it if I thought the prince, for his honour’s sake, would not
desist from insulting ours. But the first gentleman of England knows his
duty too well to forget himself with the humblest, or peril his crown for
a deed that were shameful if it were done.”

“Has your lordship anything to say,” says the prince, turning to Frank
Castlewood, and quite pale with anger; “any threat or any insult, with
which you would like to end this agreeable night’s entertainment?”

“I follow the head of our house,” says Castlewood, bowing gravely. “At
what time shall it please the prince that we should wait upon him in the
morning?”

“You will wait on the Bishop of Rochester early, you will bid him bring
his coach hither; and prepare an apartment for me in his own house, or in
a place of safety. The king will reward you handsomely, never fear, for
all you have done in his behalf. I wish you a good night, and shall go to
bed, unless it pleases the Marquis of Esmond to call his colleague, the
watchman, and that I should pass the night with the Kensington guard. Fare
you well, be sure I will remember you. My Lord Castlewood, I can go to bed
to-night without need of a chamberlain.” And the prince dismissed us with
a grim bow, locking one door as he spoke, that into the supping-room, and
the other through which we passed, after us. It led into the small chamber
which Frank Castlewood or _Monsieur Baptiste_ occupied, and by which
Martin entered when Colonel Esmond but now saw him in the chamber.

At an early hour next morning the bishop arrived, and was closeted for
some time with his master in his own apartment, where the prince laid open
to his counsellor the wrongs which, according to his version, he had
received from the gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came
out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man
full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of