William Makepeace Thackeray

“ She never at that time could be brought to think but of the world and her beauty; and seemed to have no more sense of devotion than some people have of music, that cannot distinguish one air from another. Esmond saw this fault in her, as he saw many others—a bad wife would Beatrix Esmond make, he thought, for any man under the degree of a Prince. She was born to shine in great assemblies, and to adorn palaces, and to command everywhere—to conduct an intrigue of politics, or to glitter in a queen's train. ”

“ You are my son, too, Harry. You should know the truth about your sister. I thought you might cure yourself of your passion,” my lady added, fondly. “Other people can cure themselves of that folly, you know. But I see you are still as infatuated as ever. When we read your name in the Gazette, I pleaded for you, my poor boy. Poor boy, indeed! You are growing a grave old gentleman, now, and I am an old woman. She likes your fame well enough, and she likes your person. She says you have wit, and fire, and good-breeding, and are more natural than the fine gentlemen of the Court. ”

“ Captain Westbury said. “Your woman will show me where I am to look;” and Madame Victoire, chattering in her half French and half English jargon, opened while the Captain examined one drawer after another; but, as Harry Esmond thought, rather carelessly, with a smile on his face, as if he was only conducting the examination for form's sake.
Before one of the cupboards Victoire flung herself down, stretching out her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, cried, “Non, jamais, monsieur l'officier! Jamais! I will rather die than let you see this wardrobe.” ”

“ Promise me that you will be true to them—as—as I think I have been to you—and a mother's fond prayer and blessing go with you.”
“So help me God, madam, I will,” said Harry Esmond, falling on his knees, and kissing the hand of his dearest mistress. “If you will have me stay now, I will. What matters whether or no I make my way in life, or whether a poor bastard dies as unknown as he is now? 'Tis enough that I have your love and kindness surely; and to make you happy is duty enough for me.” ”

“ What was the real cause of the Duke Hamilton's death?—a paltry quarrel that might easily have been made up, and with a ruffian so low, base, profligate, and degraded with former crimes and repeated murders, that a man of such renown and princely rank as my Lord Duke might have disdained to sully his sword with the blood of such a villain. But his spirit was so high that those who wished his death knew that his courage was like his charity, and never turned any man away; and he died by the hands of Mohun, and the other two cut-throats that were set on him. ”

“ 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 mantel-piece, 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. ”

“ Beatrix would scorn it. Ah! Henry, 'tis not with you the fault lies, 'tis with her. I know you both, and love you: need I be ashamed of that love now? No, never, never, and 'tis not you, dear Harry, that is unworthy. 'Tis for my poor Beatrix I tremble—whose headstrong will frightens me; whose jealous temper (they say I was jealous too, but, pray God, I am cured of that sin) and whose vanity no words or prayers of mine can cure—only suffering, only experience, and remorse afterwards. Oh! Henry, she will make no man happy who loves her. ”

“ Waking up from dreams, books, and visions of college honors, in which for two years, Harry Esmond had been immersed, he found himself, instantly, on his return home, in the midst of this actual tragedy of life, which absorbed and interested him more than all his tutor had taught him. The persons whom he loved best in the world, and to whom he owed most, were living unhappily together. The gentlest and kindest of women was suffering ill usage and shedding tears in secret: the man who made her wretched by neglect, if not by violence, was Harry's benefactor and patron. ”

“ Hath tipsy Frank Esmond come by the way of all flesh?”
“My lord, my lord,” cried Harry, his face flushing and his eyes filling as he spoke, “I never had a mother, but I love this lady as one. I worship her as a devotee worships a saint. To hear her name spoken lightly seems blasphemy to me. Would you dare think of your own mother so, or suffer any one so to speak of her? It is a horror to me to fancy that any man should think of her impurely. I implore you, I beseech you, to leave her. Danger will come out of it.” ”

“ Then forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past—oh so bright and clear!—oh so longed after!—because they are out of reach; as holiday music from withinside a prison wall—or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable—more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.
All the notice, then, which Lady Castlewood seemed to take of Harry Esmond's melancholy, upon Tom Tusher's departure, was, by a gayety unusual to her, to attempt to dispel his gloom. ”

“ What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart of a part of its own pain? Day after day he would seek his dear mistress, pour insane hopes, supplications, rhapsodies, raptures, into her ear. She listened, smiled, consoled, with untiring pity and sweetness. Esmond was the eldest of her children, so she was pleased to say; and as for her kindness, who ever had or would look for aught else from one who was an angel of goodness and pity? After what has been said, 'tis needless almost to add that poor Esmond's suit was unsuccessful. ”

“ Why should I not own that I am ambitious, Harry Esmond; and if it be no sin in a man to covet honor, why should a woman too not desire it? Shall I be frank with you, Harry, and say that if you had not been down on your knees, and so humble, you might have fared better with me? A woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry, and not by sighs and rueful faces. ”

“ Esmond's father's widow.
He made her such a profound bow as her dignity and relationship merited, and advanced with the greatest gravity, and once more kissed that hand, upon the trembling knuckles of which glittered a score of rings—remembering old times when that trembling hand made him tremble. “Marchioness,” says he, bowing, and on one knee, “is it only the hand I may have the honor of saluting?” For, accompanying that inward laughter, which the sight of such an astonishing old figure might well produce in the young man, there was good will too, and the kindness of consanguinity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a companion he was so moody and silent that the two officers, his fellow-sufferers, left him to himself mostly, liked little very likely what they knew of him, consoled themselves with dice, cards, and the bottle, and whiled away their own captivity in their own way. It seemed to Esmond as if he lived years in that prison: and was changed and aged when he came out of it. At certain periods of life we live years of emotion in a few weeks—and look back on those times, as on great gaps between the old life and the new. ”

“ I know her temper—and now I've lost her, by heaven I love her ten thousand times more than ever I did—yes, when she was as young and as beautiful as an angel—when she smiled at me in her old father's house, and used to lie in wait for me there as I came from hunting—when I used to fling my head down on her little knees and cry like a child on her lap—and swear I would reform, and drink no more and play no more, and follow women no more; when all the men of the Court used to be following her—when she used to look with her child more beautiful, by George, than the Madonna in the Queen's Chapel. ”

“ To her Esmond could say nothing in regard to the breaking of this match; and, asking his mistress about it, all Lady Castlewood answered was: “do not speak to me about it, Harry. I cannot tell you how or why they parted, and I fear to inquire. I have told you before, that with all her kindness, and wit, and generosity, and that sort of splendor of nature she has, I can say but little good of poor Beatrix, and look with dread at the marriage she will form. Her mind is fixed on ambition only, and making a great figure; and, this achieved, she will tire of it as she does of everything. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Frank is as vain as a girl, cousin. Talk of us girls being vain, what are WE to you? It was easy to see that the first woman who chose would make a fool of him, or the first robe—I count a priest and a woman all the same. We are always caballing; we are not answerable for the fibs we tell; we are always cajoling and coaxing, or threatening; and we are always making mischief, Colonel Esmond—mark my word for that, who know the world, sir, and have to make my way in it. I see as well as possible how Frank's marriage hath been managed. ”

“ The poor fellow had half the town in his confidence; everybody knew everything about his loves and his debts, his creditors or his mistress's obduracy. When Esmond first came on to the town, honest Dick was all flames and raptures for a young lady, a West India fortune, whom he married. In a couple of years the lady was dead, the fortune was all but spent, and the honest widower was as eager in pursuit of a new paragon of beauty, as if he had never courted and married and buried the last one. ”

“ But we two cared no longer to live in England: and Frank formally and joyfully yielded over to us the possession of that estate which we now occupy, far away from Europe and its troubles, on the beautiful banks of the Potomac, where we have built a new Castlewood, and think with grateful hearts of our old home. In our Transatlantic country we have a season, the calmest and most delightful of the year, which we call the Indian summer: I often say the autumn of our life resembles that happy and serene weather, and am thankful for its rest and its sweet sunshine. ”

“ Esmond's mistress had a thousand faults beside her charms; he knew both perfectly well! She was imperious, she was light-minded, she was flighty, she was false, she had no reverence in her character; she was in everything, even in beauty, the contrast of her mother, who was the most devoted and the least selfish of women. Well, from the very first moment he saw her on the stairs at Walcote, Esmond knew he loved Beatrix. There might be better women—he wanted that one. He cared for none other. ”

“ What wrong have I done you that you should wound me so, cruel woman?”
“What wrong?” she said, looking at Esmond with wild eyes. “Well, none—none that you know of, Harry, or could help. Why did you bring back the small-pox,” she added, after a pause, “from Castlewood village? You could not help it, could you? Which of us knows whither fate leads us? But we were all happy, Henry, till then.” And Harry went away from this colloquy, thinking still that the estrangement between his patron and his beloved mistress was remediable, and that each had at heart a strong attachment to the other. ”

“ 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 honor 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. ”

“ 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. ”