Chapter I. I Am In Prison, And Visited, But Not Consoled There
Those may imagine, who have seen death untimely strike down personsrevered and beloved, and know how unavailing consolation is, what wasHarry Esmond's anguish after being an actor in that ghastly midnight sceneof blood and homicide. He could not, he felt, have faced his dearmistress, and told her that story. He was thankful that kind Atterburyconsented to break the sad news to her; but, besides his grief, which hetook into prison with him, he had that in his heart which secretly cheeredand consoled him.
A great secret had been told to Esmond by his unhappy stricken kinsman,lying on his death-bed. Were he to disclose it, as in equity and honour hemight do, the discovery would but bring greater grief upon those whom heloved best in the world, and who were sad enough already. Should he bringdown shame and perplexity upon all those beings to whom he was attached byso many tender ties of affection and gratitude? degrade his father'swidow? impeach and sully his father's and kinsman's honour? and for what?for a barren title, to be worn at the expense of an innocent boy, the sonof his dearest benefactress. He had debated this matter in his conscience,whilst his poor lord was making his dying confession. On one side wereambition, temptation, justice even; but love, gratitude, and fidelity,pleaded on the other. And when the struggle was over in Harry's mind, aglow of righteous happiness filled it; and it was with grateful tears inhis eyes that he returned thanks to God for that decision which he hadbeen enabled to make.
"When I was denied by my own blood," thought he; "these dearest friendsreceived and cherished me. When I was a nameless orphan myself, and neededa protector, I found one in yonder kind soul, who has gone to his accountrepenting of the innocent wrong he has done."
And with this consoling thought he went away to give himself up at theprison, after kissing the cold lips of his benefactor.
It was on the third day after he had come to the Gatehouse prison (wherehe lay in no small pain from his wound, which inflamed and achedseverely); and with those thoughts and resolutions that have been justspoke of, to depress, and yet to console him, that H. Esmond's keeper cameand told him that a visitor was asking for him, and though he could notsee her face, which was enveloped in a black hood, her whole figure, too,being veiled and covered with the deepest mourning, Esmond knew at oncethat his visitor was his dear mistress.
He got up from his bed, where he was lying, being very weak; and advancingtowards her, as the retiring keeper shut the door upon him and his guestin that sad place, he put forward his left hand (for the right was woundedand bandaged), and he would have taken that kind one of his mistress,which had done so many offices of friendship for him for so many years.
But the Lady Castlewood went back from him, putting back her hood, andleaning against the great stanchioned door which the gaoler had justclosed upon them. Her face was ghastly white, as Esmond saw it, lookingfrom the hood; and her eyes, ordinarily so sweet and tender, were fixed athim with such a tragic glance of woe and anger, as caused the young man,unaccustomed to unkindness from that person, to avert his own glances fromher face.
"And this, Mr. Esmond," she said, "is where I see you; and 'tis to thisyou have brought me!"
"You have come to console me in my calamity, madam," said he (though, intruth, he scarce knew how to address her, his emotions at beholding her,so overpowered him).
She advanced a little, but stood silent and trembling, looking out at himfrom her black draperies, with her small white hands clasped together, andquivering lips and hollow eyes.
"Not to reproach me," he continued, after a pause, "My grief is sufficientas it is."
"Take back your hand--do not touch me with it!" she cried. "Look! there'sblood on it!"
"I wish they had taken it all," said Esmond; "if you are unkind to me."
"Where is my husband?" she broke out. "Give me back my husband, Henry? Whydid you stand by at midnight and see him murdered? Why did the traitorescape who did it? You, the champion of your house, who offered to die forus! You that he loved and trusted, and to whom I confided him--you thatvowed devotion and gratitude, and I believed you--yes, I believed you--whyare you here, and my noble Francis gone? Why did you come among us? Youhave only brought us grief and sorrow; and repentance, bitter, bitterrepentance, as a return for our love and kindness. Did I ever do you awrong, Henry? You were but an orphan child when I first saw you--when _he_first saw you, who was so good, and noble, and trusting. He would have hadyou sent away, but, like a foolish woman, I besought him to let you stay.And you pretended to love us, and we believed you--and you made our housewretched, and my husband's heart went from me: and I lost him throughyou--I lost him--the husband of my youth, I say. I worshipped him: you knowI worshipped him--and he was changed to me. He was no more my Francis ofold--my dear, dear soldier. He loved me before he saw you; and I loved him;oh, God is my witness how I loved him! Why did he not send you from amongus? 'Twas only his kindness, that could refuse me nothing then. And, youngas you were--yes, and weak and alone--there was evil, I knew there was evilin keeping you. I read it in your face and eyes. I saw that they bodedharm to us--and it came, I knew it would. Why did you not die when you hadthe small-pox--and I came myself and watched you, and you didn't know me inyour delirium--and you called out for me, though I was there at your side.All that has happened since, was a just judgement on my wicked heart--mywicked jealous heart. Oh, I am punished--awfully punished! My husband liesin his blood--murdered for defending me, my kind, kind, generous lord--andyou were by, and you let him die, Henry!"
These words, uttered in the wildness of her grief, by one who wasordinarily quiet, and spoke seldom except with a gentle smile and asoothing tone, rung in Esmond's ear; and 'tis said that he repeated manyof them in the fever into which he now fell from his wound, and perhapsfrom the emotion which such passionate, undeserved upbraidings caused him.It seemed as if his very sacrifices and love for this lady and her familywere to turn to evil and reproach: as if his presence amongst them wasindeed a cause of grief, and the continuance of his life but woe andbitterness to theirs. As the Lady Castlewood spoke bitterly, rapidly,without a tear, he never offered a word of appeal or remonstrance; but satat the foot of his prison-bed, stricken only with the more pain atthinking it was that soft and beloved hand which should stab him socruelly, and powerless against her fatal sorrow. Her words as she spokestruck the chords of all his memory, and the whole of his boyhood andyouth passed within him; whilst this lady, so fond and gentle butyesterday--this good angel whom he had loved and worshipped--stood beforehim, pursuing him with keen words and aspect malign.
"I wish I were in my lord's place," he groaned out. "It was not my faultthat I was not there, madam. But Fate is stronger than all of us, andwilled what has come to pass. It had been better for me to have died whenI had the illness."
"Yes, Henry," said she--and as she spoke she looked at him with a glancethat was at once so fond and so sad, that the young man, tossing up hisarms, wildly fell back, hiding his head in the coverlet of the bed. As heturned he struck against the wall with his wounded hand, displacing theligature; and he felt the blood rushing again from the wound. Heremembered feeling a secret pleasure at the accident--and thinking,"Suppose I were to end now, who would grieve for me?"
This haemorrhage, or the grief and despair in which the luckless young manwas at the time of the accident, must have brought on a deliquiumpresently; for he had scarce any recollection afterwards, save of someone, his mistress probably, seizing his hand--and then of the buzzing noisein his ears as he awoke, with two or three persons of the prison aroundhis bed, whereon he lay in a pool of blood from his arm.
It was now bandaged up again by the prison surgeon, who happened to be inthe place; and the governor's wife and servant, kind people both, werewith the patient. Esmond saw his mistress still in the room when he awokefrom his trance; but she went away without a word; though the governor'swife told him that she sat in her room for some time afterward, and didnot leave the prison until she heard
that Esmond was likely to do well.
Days afterwards, when Esmond was brought out of a fever which he had, andwhich attacked him that night pretty sharply, the honest keeper's wifebrought her patient a handkerchief fresh washed and ironed, and at thecorner of which he recognized his mistress's well-known cipher andviscountess's crown. "The lady had bound it round his arm when he fainted,and before she called for help," the keeper's wife said; "poor lady; shetook on sadly about her husband. He has been buried to-day, and a many ofthe coaches of the nobility went with him,--my Lord Marlborough's and myLord Sunderland's, and many of the officers of the Guards, in which heserved in the old king's time; and my lady has been with her two childrento the king at Kensington, and asked for justice against my Lord Mohun,who is in hiding, and my lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland, who isready to give himself up and take his trial."
Such were the news, coupled with assertions about her own honesty and thatof Molly her maid, who would never have stolen a certain trumpery goldsleeve-button of Mr. Esmond's that was missing after his fainting fit,that the keeper's wife brought to her lodger. His thoughts followed tothat untimely grave, the brave heart, the kind friend, the gallantgentleman, honest of word and generous of thought (if feeble of purpose,but are his betters much stronger than he?) who had given him bread andshelter when he had none; home and love when he needed them; and who, ifhe had kept one vital secret from him, had done that of which he repentedere dying--a wrong indeed, but one followed by remorse, and occasioned byalmost irresistible temptation.
Esmond took his handkerchief when his nurse left him, and very likelykissed it, and looked at the bauble embroidered in the corner. "It hascost thee grief enough," he thought, "dear lady, so loving and so tender.Shall I take it from thee and thy children? No, never! Keep it, and wearit, my little Frank, my pretty boy. If I cannot make a name for myself, Ican die without one. Some day, when my dear mistress sees my heart, Ishall be righted; or if not here or now, why, elsewhere; where Honour dothnot follow us, but where Love reigns perpetual."
'Tis needless to narrate here, as the reports of the lawyers already havechronicled them, the particulars or issue of that trial which ensued uponmy Lord Castlewood's melancholy homicide. Of the two lords engaged in thatsaid matter, the second, my lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland, who hadbeen engaged with Colonel Westbury, and wounded by him, was found notguilty by his peers, before whom he was tried (under the presidence of theLord Steward, Lord Somers); and the principal, the Lord Mohun, being foundguilty of the manslaughter (which, indeed, was forced upon him, and ofwhich he repented most sincerely), pleaded his clergy; and so wasdischarged without any penalty. The widow of the slain nobleman, as it wastold us in prison, showed an extraordinary spirit; and, though she had towait for ten years before her son was old enough to compass it, declaredshe would have revenge of her husband's murderer. So much and suddenly hadgrief, anger, and misfortune appeared to change her. But fortune, good orill, as I take it, does not change men and women. It but develops theircharacters. As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that hedoes not know till he takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secreteven to him (or her) who has it in his own breast. Who hath not foundhimself surprised into revenge, or action, or passion, for good or evil;whereof the seeds lay within him, latent and unsuspected, until theoccasion called them forth? With the death of her lord, a change seemed tocome over the whole conduct and mind of Lady Castlewood; but of this weshall speak in the right season and anon.
The lords being tried then before their peers at Westminster, according totheir privilege, being brought from the Tower with state processions andbarges, and accompanied by lieutenants and axe-men, the commoners engagedin that melancholy fray took their trial at Newgate, as became them; and,being all found guilty, pleaded likewise their benefit of clergy. Thesentence, as we all know, in these cases is, that the culprit lies a yearin prison, or during the king's pleasure, and is burned in the hand, oronly stamped with a cold iron; or this part of the punishment isaltogether remitted at the grace of the sovereign. So Harry Esmond foundhimself a criminal and a prisoner at two-and-twenty years old; as for thetwo colonels, his comrades, they took the matter very lightly. Duellingwas a part of their business; and they could not in honour refuse anyinvitations of that sort.
But the case was different with Mr. Esmond. His life was changed by thatstroke of the sword which destroyed his kind patron's. As he lay inprison, old Dr. Tusher fell ill and died; and Lady Castlewood appointedThomas Tusher to the vacant living; about the filling of which she had athousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never should part;how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, like saintlyGeorge Herbert, or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiness and greatest lot inlife; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her part, sheowned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishop should have nowife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would find a good wife forHarry Esmond: and so on, with a hundred pretty prospects told by firesideevenings, in fond prattle, as the children played about the hall. Allthese plans were overthrown now. Thomas Tusher wrote to Esmond, as he layin prison, announcing that his patroness had conferred upon him the livinghis reverend father had held for many years; that she never, after thetragical events which had occurred (whereof Tom spoke with a very edifyinghorror), could see in the revered Tusher's pulpit, or at her son's table,the man who was answerable for the father's life; that her ladyship badehim to say that she prayed for her kinsman's repentance and his worldlyhappiness; that he was free to command her aid for any scheme of lifewhich he might propose to himself; but that on this side of the grave shewould see him no more. And Tusher, for his own part, added that Harryshould have his prayers as a friend of his youth, and commended him whilsthe was in prison to read certain works of theology, which his reverencepronounced to be very wholesome for sinners in his lamentable condition.
And this was the return for a life of devotion--this the end of years ofaffectionate intercourse and passionate fidelity! Harry would have diedfor his patron, and was held as little better than his murderer: he hadsacrificed, she did not know how much, for his mistress, and she threw himaside--he had endowed her family with all they had, and she talked aboutgiving him alms as to a menial! The grief for his patron's loss: the painsof his own present position, and doubts as to the future: all these wereforgotten under the sense of the consummate outrage which he had toendure, and overpowered by the superior pang of that torture.
He writ back a letter to Mr. Tusher from his prison, congratulating hisreverence upon his appointment to the living of Castlewood: sarcasticallybidding him to follow in the footsteps of his admirable father, whose gownhad descended upon him--thanking her ladyship for her offer of alms, whichhe said he should trust not to need; and beseeching her to remember that,if ever her determination should change towards him, he would be ready togive her proofs of a fidelity which had never wavered, and which oughtnever to have been questioned by that house. "And if we meet no more, oronly as strangers in this world," Mr. Esmond concluded, "a sentenceagainst the cruelty and injustice of which I disdain to appeal; hereaftershe will know who was faithful to her, and whether she had any cause tosuspect the love and devotion of her kinsman and servant."
After the sending of this letter, the poor young fellow's mind was more atease than it had been previously. The blow had been struck, and he hadborne it. His cruel goddess had shaken her wings and fled: and left himalone and friendless, but _virtute sua_. And he had to bear him up, atonce the sense of his right and the feeling of his wrongs, his honour andhis misfortune. As I have seen men waking and running to arms at a suddentrumpet; before emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute; meets thethreatening danger with undaunted countenance; and, whether conquered orconquering, faces it always. Ah! no man knows his strength or hisweakness, till occasion proves them. If there be some thoughts and actionsof his life from the memory of which a man shrinks with shame, sure thereare some which he may be proud to ow
n and remember; forgiven injuries,conquered temptations (now and then), and difficulties vanquished byendurance.
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It was these thoughts regarding the living, far more than any greatpoignancy of grief respecting the dead, which affected Harry Esmond whilstin prison after his trial: but it may be imagined that he could take nocomrade of misfortune into the confidence of his feelings, and theythought it was remorse and sorrow for his patron's loss which affected theyoung man, in error of which opinion he chose to leave them. As acompanion he was so moody and silent that the two officers, his fellowsufferers, left him to himself mostly, liked little very likely what theyknew of him, consoled themselves with dice, cards, and the bottle, andwhiled away their own captivity in their own way. It seemed to Esmond asif he lived years in that prison: and was changed and aged when he cameout of it. At certain periods of life we live years of emotion in a fewweeks--and look back on those times, as on great gaps between the old lifeand the new. You do not know how much you suffer in those criticalmaladies of the heart, until the disease is over and you look back on itafterwards. During the time, the suffering is at least sufferable. The daypasses in more or less of pain, and the night wears away somehow. 'Tisonly in after-days that we see what the danger has been--as a man outa-hunting or riding for his life looks at a leap, and wonders how heshould have survived the taking of it. O dark months of grief and rage! ofwrong and cruel endurance! He is old now who recalls you. Long ago he hasforgiven and blest the soft hand that wounded him: but the mark is there,and the wound is cicatrized only--no time, tears, caresses, or repentance,can obliterate the scar. We are indocile to put up with grief, however._Reficimus rates quassas_: we tempt the ocean again and again, and tryupon new ventures. Esmond thought of his early time as a novitiate, and ofthis past trial as an initiation before entering into life--as our youngIndians undergo tortures silently before they pass to the rank of warriorsin the tribe.
The officers, meanwhile, who were not let into the secret of the griefwhich was gnawing at the side of their silent young friend, and beingaccustomed to such transactions, in which one comrade or another was dailypaying the forfeit of the sword, did not of course bemoan themselves veryinconsolably about the fate of their late companion in arms. This one toldstories of former adventures of love, or war, or pleasure, in which poorFrank Esmond had been engaged; t'other recollected how a constable hadbeen bilked, or a tavern-bully beaten: whilst my lord's poor widow wassitting at his tomb worshipping him as an actual saint and spotlesshero--so the visitors said who had news of Lady Castlewood; and Westburyand Macartney had pretty nearly had all the town to come and see them.
The duel, its fatal termination, the trial of the two peers and the threecommoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement in the town. Theprints and News Letters were full of them. The three gentlemen in Newgatewere almost as much crowded as the bishops in the Tower, or a highwaymanbefore execution. We were allowed to live in the governor's house, as hathbeen said, both before trial and after condemnation, waiting the king'spleasure; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrel known, so closelyhad my lord and the two other persons who knew it kept the secret, butevery one imagined that the origin of the meeting was a gambling dispute.Except fresh air, the prisoners had, upon payment, most things they coulddesire. Interest was made that they should not mix with the vulgarconvicts, whose ribald choruses and loud laughter and curses could beheard from their own part of the prison, where they and the miserabledebtors were confined pell-mell.