William Makepeace Thackeray

“ Dear Harry, I am George the Unlucky, though you have ceased to be Harry the Fortunate. Florac would have done much better not to pass his sword through that Indian's body, and to have left my scalp as an ornament for the fellow's belt. I say he would, sir! At White's the people would have respected you. Our mother would have wept over me, as a defunct angel, instead of being angry with me for again supplanting her favourite—you are her favourite, you deserve to be her favourite: everybody's favourite: only, if I had not come back, your favourite, Maria, would have insisted on marrying you ”

“ Return thanks to the gods that they have left you so much of consolation. What gentleman is not more or less a Prometheus? Who has not his rock (ai, ai) , his chain (ea, ea) , and his liver in a deuce of a condition? But the sea-nymphs come—the gentle, the sympathising; they kiss our writhing feet; they moisten our parched lips with their tears; they do their blessed best to console us Titans; they don't turn their backs upon us after our overthrow.
Now Theo and her mother were full of pity for Harry; but Hetty's heart was rather hard and seemingly savage towards him. ”

“ When you are a great man will you forget us, Mr. Warrington?”
“Yes, when I am a great man I will, Miss Lambert.”
“Well! Mr. George, then——”
“—Mr. George!”
“When papa and mamma are here, I suppose there need be no mistering,” says Theo, looking out of the window, ever so little frightened. “And what have you been doing, sir? Reading books, or writing more of your tragedy? Is it going to be a tragedy to make us cry, as we like them, or only to frighten us, as you like them?”
“There is plenty of killing, but, I fear, not much crying. I have not met many women. ”

“ No man can be for ever bound by words uttered at such a time; and, what is more, no man of honour or humanity, Mr. Lambert, would try to bind him.”
“Dishonour to me! sir,” exclaims the General.
“Yes, if the phrase is to be shuttlecocked between us!” I answered, hotly. “There can be no question about love, or mutual regard, or difference of age, when that word is used: and were you my own father—and I love you better than a father, Uncle Lambert,—I would not bear it! What have I done? I have seen the woman whom I consider my wife before God and man, and if she calls me I will see her again. ”

“ With the music Maria knows Madame de Bernstein will waken: with the candles she must be back to the tea-table and the cards. Never mind. Here is a minute. It may be my love is dead, but here is a minute to kneel over the grave and pray by it. He certainly was not thinking about her: he was startled and did not even know her. He was laughing and talking with Jack Morris and my Lord March. He is twenty years younger than she. Never mind. To-day is to-day in which we are all equal. This moment is ours. Come, let us walk a little way over the heath, Harry. ”

“ In fine, when you have been in love and are so no more, when the King of France, with twenty thousand men, with colours flying, music playing, and all the pomp of war, having marched up the hill, then proceeds to march down again, he and you are in an absurd position.
This is what Harry Warrington, no doubt, felt when he went to Kensington and encountered the melancholy, reproachful eyes of his cousin. Yes! it is a foolish position to be in; but it is also melancholy to look into a house you have once lived in, and see black casements and emptiness where once shone the fires of welcome. ”

“ I never did look through the keyhole, George. It's a shame you should say so! I, who have watched, and tended, and nursed you, like a mother; who have sate up whole weeks with you in fevers, and carried you from your bed to the sofa in these arms. There, sir, I don't want you there now. My dear Mountain, indeed! Don't tell me! You fly into a passion, and, call names, and wound my feelings, who have loved you like your mother—like your mother?—I only hope she may love you half as well. I say you are all ungrateful. ”

“ I sometimes would remonstrate with Madam Harry, and ask her was she a Red Indian, that she tortured her victims so? “Have not I had torture enough in my time?” says the young lady, and looked as though she was determined to pay back the injuries inflicted on her.
“Nay,” says I, “you were bred in our wigwam, and I don't remember anything but kindness!”
“Kindness!” cries she. “No slave was ever treated as I was. The blows which wound most, often are those which never are aimed. The people who hate us are not those we have injured.” ”

“ As for the Baroness de Bernstein, when that lady took the pains of making a grand toilette, she appeared as an object, handsome still, and magnificent, but melancholy, and even somewhat terrifying to behold. You read the past in some old faces, while some others lapse into mere meekness and content. The fires go quite out of some eyes, as the crow's-feet pucker round them; they flash no longer with scorn, or with anger, or love; they gaze, and no one is melted by their sapphire glances; they look, and no one is dazzled. ”

“ When a knight of old found a friend in want, did he turn his back upon him, or an unprotected damsel, did he delude her and leave her? When a nobleman of the early time received a young kinsman, did he get the better of him at dice, and did the ancient chivalry cheat in horseflesh? Can it be that this wily woman of the world, as my aunt has represented, has inveigled my poor Harry into an engagement, that her tears are false, and that as soon as she finds him poor she will desert him? ”

“ Madam Esmond was very jealous?—Yes, that Harry owned. She was fond of Colonel Washington? She liked him, but only as a friend, Harry declared. A hundred times he had heard his mother vow that she had no other feeling towards him. He was ashamed to have to own that he himself had been once absurdly jealous of the Colonel. “Well, you will see that my half-sister will never forgive him,” said Madam Beatrix. “And you need not be surprised, sir, at women taking a fancy to men younger than themselves; for don't I dote upon you; and don't all these Castlewood people crevent with jealousy?” ”

“ If English landscape is pleasant to the American of the present day, who must needs contrast the rich woods and glowing pastures, and picturesque ancient villages of the old country with the rough aspect of his own, how much pleasanter must Harry Warrington's course have been, whose journeys had lain through swamps and forest solitudes from one Virginian ordinary to another log-house at the end of the day's route, and who now lighted suddenly upon the busy, happy, splendid scene of English summer? And the highroad, a hundred years ago, was not that grass-grown desert of the present time. ”

“ Who would not like to be master of a good house and a good estate? But can Gumbo shut the hall-door upon blue devils, or lay them always in a red sea of claret? Does a man sleep the better who has four-and-twenty hours to doze in? Do his intellects brighten after a sermon from the dull old vicar; a ten minutes' cackle and flattery from the village apothecary; or the conversation of Sir John and Sir Thomas with their ladies, who come ten moonlight muddy miles to eat a haunch, and play a rubber? ”

“ I was not jolly enough for the officers, and didn't care for their drinking-bouts, dice-boxes, and swearing. I was too sarcastic for the ladies, and their tea and tattle stupefied me almost as much as the men's blustering and horse-talk. I cannot tell thee, Harry, how lonely I felt in that place, amidst the scandal and squabbles: I regretted my prison almost, and found myself more than once wishing for the freedom of thought, and the silent ease of Duquesne. I am very shy, I suppose: I can speak unreservedly to very few people. ”

“ Warrington!—that is, I mean, I beg your pardon!” cries Hester.
“No pardon, my dear! I never was angry yet or surprised that any one should like my Harry better than me. He deserves all the liking that any man or woman can give him. See, it is his turn to blush now,” says George.
“Go on, Georgy, and tell them about the escape out of Duquesne!” cries Harry, and he said to Mrs. Lambert afterwards in confidence, “You know he is always going on saying that he ought never to have come to life again, and declaring that I am better than he is. The idea of my being better than George, Mrs. Lambert! ”

“ Lambert felt inclined to give the boy a kiss. His little accident, illness and recovery, the kindness of the people round about him, had softened Harry Warrington's heart, and opened it to better influences than those which had been brought to bear on it for some six weeks past. He was breathing a purer air than that tainted atmosphere of selfishness, and worldliness, and corruption, into which he had been plunged since his arrival in England. Sometimes the young man's fate, or choice, or weakness, leads him into the fellowship of the giddy and vain ”

“ I have my own opinion about Madame Bernstein's. A hundred years ago people of the great world were not so straitlaced as they are now, when everybody is good, pure, moral, modest; when there is no skeleton in anybody's closet; when there is no scheming; no slurring over old stories; when no girl tries to sell herself for wealth, and no mother abets her. Suppose my Lady Maria tries to make her little game, wherein is her ladyship's great eccentricity?
On these points no doubt the Baroness de Bernstein thought, as she communed with herself in her private apartment. ”

“ But I shan't tell Theo that you are unwell. She hasn't left off caring for you. She can't walk out of a room, break her solemn engagements, and go into the world the next day as if nothing had happened! That is left for men, our superiors in courage and wisdom; and to desert an angel—yes, an angel ten thousand times too good for you; an angel who used to love me till she saw you, and who was the blessing of life and of all of us—is what you call honour? Don't tell me, sir! ”

“ Fielding, I think, was the name, were the greatest geniuses in England; and often used to say, that when we came to Europe, his first pilgrimage would be to Mr. Richardson,” cried Harry, always impetuous, honest, and tender, when he spoke of the dearest friend.
“Your brother spoke like a man,” cried Mr. Wolfe, too, his pale face likewise flushing up. “I would rather be a man of genius, than a peer of the realm.”
“Every man to his taste, Colonel,” says my lord, much amused. “Your enthusiasm—I don't mean anything personal—refreshes me, on my honour it does.” ”

“ No wonder the old man's society was not pleasant to the poor victim, and that he gladly slunk away from his own fine house, to feast at the club when he had money, or at least to any society save that which he found at home. To lead a bear, as I did, was no very pleasant business, to be sure: to wait in a bookseller's anteroom until it should please his honour to finish his dinner and give me audience, was sometimes a hard task for a man of my name and with my pride; but would I have exchanged my poverty against Castlewood's ignominy, or preferred his miserable dependence to my own? ”

“ We are a match for most men, we are,” resumed the boy.
Lord Castlewood did not laugh. His eyebrows only arched for a moment, and his grey eyes turned towards the ground. “So you can bet fifty guineas, and afford to lose them? So much the better for you, cousin. Those great Virginian estates yield a great revenue, do they?”
“More than sufficient for all of us—for ten times as many as we are now,” replied Harry. (“What, he is pumping me,” thought the lad.)
“And your mother makes her son and heir a handsome allowance?”
“As much as ever I choose to draw, my lord!” cried Harry. ”

“ It is you who were for ever sneering at him: it is you who are always envious because I happen—at least, because gentlemen imagine that I am not ill-looking, and prefer me to some folks, in spite of all their learning and wit!” cries Flora, tossing her head over her shoulder, and looking at the glass.
“Why are you always looking there, sister?” says the artless Miles junior. “Sure, you must know your face well enough!”
“Some people look at it just as often, child, who haven't near such good reason,” says papa, gallantly.
“If you mean me, Sir Miles, I thank you,” cries Dora. ”

“ I think with awe still, of those rapid words, uttered in the shadow of the canopy, as my pallid wife sits by her, her Prayer-book on her knee; as the attendants move to and fro noiselessly; as the clock ticks without, and strikes the fleeting hours; as the sun falls upon the Kneller picture of Beatrix in her beauty, with the blushing cheeks, the smiling lips, the waving auburn tresses, and the eyes which seem to look towards the dim figure moaning in the bed. I could not for a while understand why our aunt's attendants were so anxious that we should quit it. ”

“ How strange the feeling was as we landed from our boat at Richmond! A coach and a host of negroes were there in waiting to receive us; and hard by a gentleman on horseback, with negroes in our livery, too, who sprang from his horse and rushed up to embrace us. Not a little charmed were both of us to see our dearest Hal. He rode with us to our mother's door. Yonder she stood on the steps to welcome us; and Theo knelt down to ask her blessing.
Harry rode in the coach with us as far as our mother's house; but would not, as he said, spoil sport by entering with us. ”

“ That's one affair with young Mr. George Warrington. Mr. Harry, of course, as a young man of spirit, will stand by his brother. That's two. Between Grace and the Colonel apology is impossible. And, now—run me through the body!—you call an officer of my regiment—of Halkett's, sir!—a hog before my face! Great heavens, sir! Mr. Washington, are you all like this in Virginia? Excuse me, I would use no offensive personality, as, by George! I will suffer none from any man! but, by Gad, Colonel! give me leave to tell you that you are the most quarrelsome man I ever saw in my life. ”

“ But the feeling and agitation displayed by the old lady touched her nephew's heart when, jolting through the dark streets towards the house of his brother's captivity, George came to think of his aunt's behaviour. “She does feel my poor Harry's misfortune,” he thought to himself, “I have been too hasty in judging her.” Again and again, in the course of his life, Mr. George had to rebuke himself with the same crime of being too hasty. How many of us have not? And, alas, the mischief done, there's no repentance will mend it. ”

“ Nor did my Aunt Bernstein much like the engagement which I had made, or the family with which I passed so much of my time. Their simple ways wearied, and perhaps annoyed, the old woman of the world, and she no more relished their company than a certain person (who is not so black as he is painted) likes holy water. The old lady chafed at my for ever dangling at my sweetheart's lap. Having risen mightily in her favour, I began to fall again: and once more Harry was the favourite, and his brother, Heaven knows, not jealous. ”

“ Here was money enough, friends enough, a good position, and the respect of the world; a house stored with all manner of plenty, and good things, and poor Harry Warrington was glad to leave them all behind him. Happy! Who is happy? What good in a stalled ox for dinner every day, and no content therewith? Is it best to be loved and plagued by those you love, or to have an easy, comfortable indifference at home; to follow your fancies, live there unmolested, and die without causing any painful regrets or tears? ”

“ Do you suppose Society is going to take out its pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable when you die? Why should it care very much, then, whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces yourself? Whatever happens it talks, meets, jokes, yawns, has its dinner, pretty much as before. Therefore don't be so conceited about yourself as to fancy your private affairs of so much importance, mi fili. Whereas Mr. Harry Warrington chafed and fumed as though all the world was tingling with the touch of that hand which had been laid on his sublime shoulder. ”