Chapter XIII. I Meet An Old Acquaintance In Flanders, And Find My Mother'sGrave And My Own Cradle There
Being one day in the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, admiring theantique splendour of the architecture (and always entertaining a greattenderness and reverence for the Mother Church, that hath been as wickedlypersecuted in England as ever she herself persecuted in the days of herprosperity), Esmond saw kneeling at a side altar, an officer in a greenuniform coat, very deeply engaged in devotion. Something familiar in thefigure and posture of the kneeling man struck Captain Esmond, even beforehe saw the officer's face. As he rose up, putting away into his pocket alittle black breviary, such as priests use, Esmond beheld a countenance solike that of his friend and tutor of early days, Father Holt, that hebroke out into an exclamation of astonishment and advanced a step towardsthe gentleman, who was making his way out of church. The German officertoo looked surprised when he saw Esmond, and his face from being pale grewsuddenly red. By this mark of recognition, the Englishman knew that hecould not be mistaken; and though the other did not stop, but on thecontrary rather hastily walked away towards the door, Esmond pursued himand faced him once more, as the officer helping himself to holy water,turned mechanically towards the altar to bow to it ere he quitted thesacred edifice.
"My father!" says Esmond in English.
"Silence! I do not understand. I do not speak English," says the other inLatin.
Esmond smiled at this sign of confusion, and replied in the same language."I should know my father in any garment, black or white, shaven orbearded," for the Austrian officer was habited quite in the militarymanner, and had as warlike a moustachio as any Pandour.
He laughed--we were on the church steps by this time, passing through thecrowd of beggars that usually is there holding up little trinkets for saleand whining for alms. "You speak Latin," says he, "in the English way,Harry Esmond; you have forsaken the old true Roman tongue you once knew."His tone was very frank, and friendly quite; the kind voice of fifteenyears back; he gave Esmond his hand as he spoke.
"Others have changed their coats too, my father," says Esmond, glancing athis friend's military decoration.
"Hush! I am Mr. or Captain von Holtz, in the Bavarian Elector's service,and on a mission to his highness the Prince of Savoy. You can keep asecret I know from old times."
"Captain von Holtz," says Esmond, "I am your very humble servant."
"And you, too, have changed your coat," continues the other, in hislaughing way; "I have heard of you at Cambridge and afterwards: we havefriends everywhere; and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was as gooda fencer as he was a bad theologian." (So, thinks Esmond, my old _maitred'armes_ was a Jesuit as they said.)
"Perhaps you are right," says the other, reading his thoughts quite as heused to do in old days: "you were all but killed at Hochstedt of a woundin the left side. You were before that at Vigo, aide de camp to the Dukeof Ormonde. You got your company the other day after Ramillies; yourgeneral and the prince-duke are not friends; he is of the Webbs of LydiardTregoze, in the county of York, a relation of my Lord St. John. Yourcousin, Monsieur de Castlewood, served his first campaign this year in theGuard; yes, I do know a few things as you see."
Captain Esmond laughed in his turn. "You have indeed a curious knowledge,"he says. A foible of Mr. Holt's, who did know more about books and menthan, perhaps, almost any person Esmond had ever met, was omniscience;thus in every point he here professed to know, he was nearly right, butnot quite. Esmond's wound was in the right side, not the left, his firstgeneral was General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out of Wiltshire, not out ofYorkshire; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his oldmaster in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a knowledgeof the other's character, and he smiled to think that this was his oracleof early days; only now no longer infallible or divine.
"Yes," continues Father Holt, or Captain von Holtz, "for a man who has notbeen in England these eight years, I know what goes on in London verywell. The old dean is dead, my Lady Castlewood's father. Do you know thatyour recusant bishops wanted to consecrate him Bishop of Southampton, andthat Collier is Bishop of Thetford by the same imposition? The PrincessAnne has the gout and eats too much; when the king returns, Collier willbe an archbishop."
"Amen!" says Esmond, laughing; "and I hope to see your eminence no longerin jack-boots, but red stockings, at Whitehall."
"You are always with us--I know that--I heard of that when you were atCambridge; so was the late lord; so is the young viscount."
"And so was my father before me," said Mr. Esmond, looking calmly at theother, who did not, however, show the least sign of intelligence in hisimpenetrable grey eyes--how well Harry remembered them and their look! onlycrows' feet were wrinkled round them--marks of black old Time had settledthere.
Esmond's face chose to show no more sign of meaning than the father's.There may have been on the one side and the other just the faintestglitter of recognition, as you see a bayonet shining out of an ambush; buteach party fell back, when everything was again dark.
"And you, _mon capitaine_, where have you been?" says Esmond, turning awaythe conversation from this dangerous ground, where neither chose toengage.
"I may have been in Pekin," says he, "or I may have been in Paraguay--whoknows where? I am now Captain von Holtz, in the service of his electoralhighness, come to negotiate exchange of prisoners with his highness ofSavoy."
'Twas well known that very many officers in our army were well-affectedtowards the young king at St. Germains, whose right to the throne wasundeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by farthe greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the havinga petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity,boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current.It wounded our English pride to think, that a shabby High-Dutch duke,whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princesof our ancient English nobility, who could not speak a word of ourlanguage, and whom we chose to represent as a sort of German boor, feedingon train-oil and sauerkraut, with a bevy of mistresses in a barn, shouldcome to reign over the proudest and most polished people in the world.Were we, the conquerors of the Grand Monarch, to submit to that ignobledomination? What did the Hanoverian's Protestantism matter to us? Was itnot notorious (we were told and led to believe so) that one of thedaughters of this Protestant hero was being bred up with no religion atall, as yet, and ready to be made Lutheran or Roman, according as thehusband might be, whom her parents should find for her? This talk, veryidle and abusive much of it was, went on at a hundred mess-tables in thearmy; there was scarce an ensign that did not hear it, or join in it, andeverybody knew, or affected to know, that the commander-in-chief himselfhad relations with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick ('twas by anEnglishman, thank God, that we were beaten at Almanza), and that his gracewas most anxious to restore the royal race of his benefactors, and torepair his former treason.
This is certain, that for a considerable period no officer in the duke'sarmy lost favour with the commander-in-chief for entertaining orproclaiming his loyalty towards the exiled family. When the Chevalier deSt. George, as the King of England called himself, came with the dukes ofthe French blood royal, to join the French army under Vendosme, hundredsof ours saw him and cheered him, and we all said he was like his father inthis, who, seeing the action of La Hogue fought between the French shipsand ours, was on the side of his native country during the battle. Butthis, at least the chevalier knew, and every one knew, that, however wellour troops and their general might be inclined towards the princepersonally, in the face of the enemy there was no question at all.Wherever my lord duke found a French army, he would fight and beat it, ashe did at Oudenarde, two years after Ramillies, where his grace achievedanother of his transcendent victories; and the noble young prince, whocharged gallantly along with the magnificent Maison-du-Roy, sent tocompliment his conquerors after the action.
In this battle,
where the young Electoral Prince of Hanover behavedhimself very gallantly, fighting on our side, Esmond's dear General Webbdistinguished himself prodigiously, exhibiting consummate skill andcoolness as a general, and fighting with the personal bravery of a commonsoldier. Esmond's good luck again attended him; he escaped without a hurt,although more than a third of his regiment was killed, had again thehonour to be favourably mentioned in his commander's report, and wasadvanced to the rank of major. But of this action there is little need tospeak, as it hath been related in every _Gazette_, and talked of in everyhamlet in this country. To return from it to the writer's private affairs,which here, in his old age, and at a distance, he narrates for hischildren who come after him. Before Oudenarde, and after that chancerencontre with Captain von Holtz at Brussels, a space of more than a yearelapsed, during which the captain of Jesuits and the captain of Webb'sFusiliers were thrown very much together. Esmond had no difficulty infinding out (indeed, the other made no secret of it to him, being assuredfrom old times of his pupil's fidelity), that the negotiator of prisonerswas an agent from St. Germains, and that he carried intelligence betweengreat personages in our camp and that of the French. "My business," saidhe, "and I tell you, both because I can trust you, and your keen eyes havealready discovered it, is between the King of England and his subjects,here engaged in fighting the French king. As between you and them, all theJesuits in the world will not prevent your quarrelling: fight it out,gentlemen. St. George for England, I say--and you know who says so,wherever he may be."
I think Holt loved to make a parade of mystery, as it were, and wouldappear and disappear at our quarters as suddenly as he used to return andvanish in the old days at Castlewood. He had passes between both armies,and seemed to know (but with that inaccuracy which belonged to the goodfather's omniscience) equally well what passed in the French camp and inours. One day he would give Esmond news of a great _feste_ that took placein the French quarters, of a supper of Monsieur de Rohan's, where therewas play and violins, and then dancing and masques: the king drove thitherin Marshal Villar's own guinguette. Another day he had the news of hisMajesty's ague, the king had not had a fit these ten days, and might besaid to be well. Captain Holtz made a visit to England during this time,so eager was he about negotiating prisoners; and 'twas on returning fromthis voyage that he began to open himself more to Esmond, and to make him,as occasion served, at their various meetings, several of thoseconfidences which are here set down all together.
The reason of his increased confidence was this: upon going to London, theold director of Esmond's aunt, the dowager, paid her ladyship a visit atChelsey, and there learnt from her that Captain Esmond was acquainted withthe secret of his family, and was determined never to divulge it. Theknowledge of this fact raised Esmond in his old tutor's eyes, so Holt waspleased to say, and he admired Harry very much for his abnegation.
"The family at Castlewood have done far more for me than my own ever did,"Esmond said. "I would give my life for them. Why should I grudge the onlybenefit that 'tis in my power to confer on them?" The good father's eyesfilled with tears at this speech, which to the other seemed very simple:he embraced Esmond, and broke out into many admiring expressions; he saidhe was a _noble coeur_, that he was proud of him, and fond of him as hispupil and friend--regretted more than ever that he had lost him, and beenforced to leave him in those early times, when he might have had aninfluence over him, have brought him into that only true Church to whichthe father belonged, and enlisted him in the noblest army in which a manever engaged--meaning his own Society of Jesus, which numbers (says he) inits troops the greatest heroes the world ever knew;--warriors, brave enoughto dare or endure anything, to encounter any odds, to die anydeath;--soldiers that have won triumphs a thousand times more brilliantthan those of the greatest general; that have brought nations on theirknees to their sacred banner, the Cross; that have achieved glories andpalms incomparably brighter than those awarded to the most splendidearthly conquerors--crowns of immortal light, and seats in the high placesof Heaven.
Esmond was thankful for his old friend's good opinion, however little hemight share the Jesuit father's enthusiasm. "I have thought of thatquestion, too," says he, "dear father," and he took the other'shand--"thought it out for myself, as all men must, and contrive to do theright, and trust to Heaven as devoutly in my way as you in yours. Anothersix months of you as a child, and I had desired no better. I used to weepupon my pillow at Castlewood as I thought of you, and I might have been abrother of your order; and who knows," Esmond added, with a smile, "apriest in full orders, and with a pair of moustachios, and a Bavarianuniform."
"My son," says Father Holt, turning red, "in the cause of religion andloyalty all disguises are fair."
"Yes," broke in Esmond, "all disguises are fair, you say; and alluniforms, say I, black or red,--a black cockade or a white one--or a lacedhat, or a sombrero, with a tonsure under it. I cannot believe that St.Francis Xavier sailed over the sea in a cloak, or raised the dead--I tried;and very nearly did once, but cannot. Suffer me to do the right, and tohope for the best in my own way."
Esmond wished to cut short the good father's theology, and succeeded; andthe other, sighing over his pupil's invincible ignorance, did not withdrawhis affection from him, but gave him his utmost confidence--as much, thatis to say, as a priest can give: more than most do; for he was naturallygarrulous, and too eager to speak.
Holt's friendship encouraged Captain Esmond to ask, what he long wished toknow, and none could tell him, some history of the poor mother whom he hadoften imagined in his dreams, and whom he never knew. He described to Holtthose circumstances which are already put down in the first part of thisstory--the promise he had made to his dear lord, and that dying friend'sconfession; and he besought Mr. Holt to tell him what he knew regardingthe poor woman from whom he had been taken.
"She was of this very town," Holt said, and took Esmond to see the streetwhere her father lived, and where, as he believed, she was born. "In 1676,when your father came hither in the retinue of the late king, then Duke ofYork, and banished hither in disgrace, Captain Thomas Esmond becameacquainted with your mother, pursued her, and made a victim of her; hehath told me in many subsequent conversations, which I felt bound to keepprivate then, that she was a woman of great virtue and tenderness, and inall respects a most fond, faithful creature. He called himself CaptainThomas, having good reason to be ashamed of his conduct towards her, andhath spoken to me many times with sincere remorse for that, as with fondlove for her many amiable qualities. He owned to having treated her veryill; and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, andpoverty. She became with child of you; was cursed by her own parents atthat discovery; though she never upbraided, except by her involuntarytears, and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of herwretchedness and ruin.
"Thomas Esmond--Captain Thomas, as he was called--became engaged in agaming-house brawl, of which the consequence was a duel, and a wound sosevere that he never--his surgeon said--could outlive it. Thinking his deathcertain, and touched with remorse, he sent for a priest of the very Churchof St. Gudule where I met you; and on the same day, after his makingsubmission to our Church, was married to your mother a few weeks beforeyou were born. My Lord Viscount Castlewood, Marquis of Esmond, by KingJames's patent, which I myself took to your father, your lordship waschristened at St. Gudule by the same cure who married your parents, and bythe name of Henry Thomas, son of E. Thomas, officier Anglais, and GertrudeMaes. You see you belong to us from your birth, and why I did not christenyou when you became my dear little pupil at Castlewood.
"Your father's wound took a favourable turn--perhaps his conscience waseased by the right he had done--and to the surprise of the doctors herecovered. But as his health came back, his wicked nature, too, returned.He was tired of the poor girl, whom he had ruined; and receiving someremittance from his uncle, my lord the old viscount then in England, hepretended business, promised return, and never saw your poor mother more.
r /> "He owned to me, in confession first, but afterwards in talk before youraunt, his wife, else I never could have disclosed what I now tell you,that on coming to London he writ a pretended confession to poor GertrudeMaes--Gertrude Esmond--of his having been married in England previously,before uniting himself with her; said that his name was not Thomas; thathe was about to quit Europe for the Virginia plantations, where, indeed,your family had a grant of land from King Charles the First; sent her asupply of money, the half of the last hundred guineas he had, entreatedher pardon, and bade her farewell.
"Poor Gertrude never thought that the news in this letter might be untrueas the rest of your father's conduct to her. But though a young man of herown degree, who knew her history, and whom she liked before she saw theEnglish gentleman who was the cause of all her misery, offered to marryher, and to adopt you as his own child, and give you his name, she refusedhim. This refusal only angered her father, who had taken her home; shenever held up her head there, being the subject of constant unkindnessafter her fall; and some devout ladies of her acquaintance offering to paya little pension for her, she went into a convent, and you were put out tonurse.
"A sister of the young fellow, who would have adopted you as his son, wasthe person who took charge of you. Your mother and this person werecousins. She had just lost a child of her own, which you replaced, yourown mother being too sick and feeble to feed you; and presently your nursegrew so fond of you, that she even grudged letting you visit the conventwhere your mother was, and where the nuns petted the little infant, asthey pitied and loved its unhappy parent. Her vocation became strongerevery day, and at the end of two years she was received as a sister of thehouse.
"Your nurse's family were silk-weavers out of France, whither theyreturned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your mother took hervows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old. 'Twas atown, before the late vigorous measures of the French king, full ofProtestants, and here your nurse's father, old Pastoureau, he with whomyou afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines, pervertingall his house with him. They were expelled thence by the edict of his mostChristian Majesty, and came to London, and set up their looms inSpittlefields. The old man brought a little money with him, and carried onhis trade, but in a poor way. He was a widower; by this time his daughter,a widow too, kept house for him, and his son and he laboured together attheir vocation. Meanwhile your father had publicly owned his conversionjust before King Charles's death (in whom our Church had much such anotherconvert), was reconciled to my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and married, asyou know, to his daughter.
"It chanced that the younger Pastoureau, going with a piece of brocade tothe mercer, who employed him, on Ludgate Hill, met his old rival comingout of an ordinary there. Pastoureau knew your father at once, seized himby the collar, and upbraided him as a villain, who had seduced hismistress, and afterwards deserted her and her son. Mr. Thomas Esmond alsorecognized Pastoureau at once, besought him to calm his indignation, andnot to bring a crowd round about them; and bade him to enter into thetavern, out of which he had just stepped, when he would give him anyexplanation. Pastoureau entered, and heard the landlord order the drawerto show Captain Thomas to a room; it was by his Christian name that yourfather was familiarly called at his tavern haunts, which, to say thetruth, were none of the most reputable.
"I must tell you that Captain Thomas, or my lord viscount afterwards, wasnever at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman or a dun with avolubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time, of which many acreditor of his has been the dupe. His tales used to gather verisimilitudeas he went on with them. He strung together fact after fact with awonderful rapidity and coherence. It required, saving your presence, avery long habit of acquaintance with your father to know when his lordshipwas l----,--telling the truth or no.
"He told me with rueful remorse when he was ill--for the fear of death sethim instantly repenting, and with shrieks of laughter when he was well,his lordship having a very great sense of humour--how in half an hour'stime, and before a bottle was drunk, he had completely succeeded in bitingpoor Pastoureau. The seduction he owned too: that he could not help: hewas quite ready with tears at a moment's warning, and shed them profuselyto melt his credulous listener. He wept for your mother even more thanPastoureau did, who cried very heartily, poor fellow, as my lord informedme; he swore upon his honour that he had twice sent money to Brussels, andmentioned the name of the merchant with whom it was lying for poorGertrude's use. He did not even know whether she had a child or no, orwhether she was alive or dead; but got these facts easily out of honestPastoureau's answers to him. When he heard that she was in a convent, hesaid he hoped to end his days in one himself, should he survive his wife,whom he hated, and had been forced by a cruel father to marry; and when hewas told that Gertrude's son was alive, and actually in London, 'Istarted,' says he; 'for then, damme, my wife was expecting to lie-in, andI thought should this old Put, my father-in-law, run rusty, here would bea good chance to frighten him.'
"He expressed the deepest gratitude to the Pastoureau family for theircare of the infant; you were now near six years old; and on Pastoureaubluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see thedarling child, that they never wished to see his ill-omened face againwithin their doors; that he might have the boy, though they should all bevery sorry to lose him; and that they would take his money, they beingpoor, if he gave it; or bring him up, by God's help, as they had hithertodone, without: he acquiesced in this at once, with a sigh, said, 'Well,'twas better that the dear child should remain with friends who had beenso admirably kind to him'; and in his talk to me afterwards, honestlypraised and admired the weaver's conduct and spirit; owned that theFrenchman was a right fellow, and he, the Lord have mercy upon him, a sadvillain.
"Your father," Mr. Holt went on to say, "was good-natured with his moneywhen he had it; and having that day received a supply from his uncle, gavethe weaver ten pieces with perfect freedom, and promised him furtherremittances. He took down eagerly Pastoureau's name and place of abode inhis table-book, and when the other asked him for his own, gave, with theutmost readiness, his name as Captain Thomas, New Lodge, Penzance,Cornwall; he said he was in London for a few days only on businessconnected with his wife's property; described her as a shrew, though awoman of kind disposition; and depicted his father as a Cornish squire, inan infirm state of health, at whose death he hoped for something handsome,when he promised richly to reward the admirable protector of his child,and to provide for the boy. 'And by Gad, sir,' he said to me in hisstrange laughing way, 'I ordered a piece of brocade of the very samepattern as that which the fellow was carrying, and presented it to my wifefor a morning wrapper, to receive company after she lay-in of our littleboy.'
"Your little pension was paid regularly enough; and when your fatherbecame Viscount Castlewood on his uncle's demise, I was employed to keep awatch over you, and 'twas at my instance that you were brought home. Yourfoster-mother was dead; her father made acquaintance with a woman whom hemarried, who quarrelled with his son. The faithful creature came back toBrussels to be near the woman he loved, and died, too, a few months beforeher. Will you see her cross in the convent cemetery? The superior is anold penitent of mine, and remembers Soeur Marie Madeleine fondly still."
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Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst athousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the grassy mounds,that particular one which marked his mother's resting-place. Many more ofthose poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name, with whichsorrow had rebaptized her, and which fondly seemed to hint theirindividual story of love and grief. He fancied her in tears and darkness,kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her cares were buried.
Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so muchas in awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her), and in pityfor the pangs which the
gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. Tothis cross she brought them; for this heavenly bridegroom she exchangedthe husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousandsuch hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of thegrass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiledin black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister's bedside (so freshmade, that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it);beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and thespires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, andlit first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew awaypresently with a leaf in its mouth: then came a sound as of chanting, fromthe chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place,which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall,and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart hadfound consolation. Might she sleep in peace--might she sleep in peace; andwe, too, when our struggles and pains are over! But the earth is theLord's as the heaven is; we are alike His creatures here and yonder. Itook a little flower off the hillock, and kissed it, and went my way, likethe bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the worldagain. Silent receptacle of death! tranquil depth of calm, out of reach oftempest and trouble! I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, andtreading amidst the bones of shipwrecks.