My Lord Mohun (of whose exploits and fame some of the gentlemen of the University had brought down but ugly reports) was once more a guest at Castlewood, and seemingly more intimately allied with my lord even than before. Once in the spring those two noblemen had ridden to Cambridge from Newmarket, whither they had gone for the horse-racing, and had honored Harry Esmond with a visit at his rooms; after which Doctor Montague, the master of the College, who had treated Harry somewhat haughtily, seeing his familiarity with these great folks, and that my Lord Castlewood laughed and walked with his hand on Harry’s shoulder, relented to Mr. Esmond, and condescended to be very civil to him; and some days after his arrival, Harry, laughing, told this story to Lady Esmond, remarking how strange it was that men famous for learning and renowned over Europe, should, nevertheless, so bow down to a title, and cringe to a nobleman ever so poor. At this Mistress Beatrix flung up her head, and said it became those of low origin to respect their betters; that the parsons made themselves a great deal too proud, she thought; and that she liked the way at Lady Sark’s best, where the chaplain, though he loved pudding, as all parsons do, always went away before the custard.
“And when I am a parson,” says Mr. Esmond, “will you give me no custard, Beatrix?”
“You — you are different,” Beatrix answered. “You are of our blood.”
“My father was a parson, as you call him,” said my lady.
“But mine is a peer of Ireland,” says Mistress Beatrix, tossing her head. “Let people know their places. I suppose you will have me go down on my knees and ask a blessing of Mr. Thomas Tusher, that has just been made a curate and whose mother was a waiting-maid.”
And she tossed out of the room, being in one of her flighty humors then.
When she was gone, my lady looked so sad and grave, that Harry asked the cause of her disquietude. She said it was not merely what he said of Newmarket, but what she had remarked, with great anxiety and terror, that my lord, ever since his acquaintance with the Lord Mohun especially, had recurred to his fondness for play, which he had renounced since his marriage.
“But men promise more than they are able to perform in marriage,” said my lady, with a sigh. “I fear he has lost large sums; and our property, always small, is dwindling away under this reckless dissipation. I heard of him in London with very wild company. Since his return, letters and lawyers are constantly coming and going: he seems to me to have a constant anxiety, though he hides it under boisterousness and laughter. I looked through — through the door last night, and — and before,” said my lady, “and saw them at cards after midnight; no estate will bear that extravagance, much less ours, which will be so diminished that my son will have nothing at all, and my poor Beatrix no portion!”
“I wish I could help you, madam,” said Harry Esmond, sighing, and wishing that unavailingly, and for the thousandth time in his life.
“Who can? Only God,” said Lady Esmond —“only God, in whose hands we are.” And so it is, and for his rule over his family, and for his conduct to wife and children — subjects over whom his power is monarchical — any one who watches the world must think with trembling sometimes of the account which many a man will have to render. For in our society there’s no law to control the King of the Fireside. He is master of property, happiness — life almost. He is free to punish, to make happy or unhappy — to ruin or to torture. He may kill a wife gradually, and be no more questioned than the Grand seignior who drowns a slave at midnight. He may make slaves and hypocrites of his children; or friends and freemen; or drive them into revolt and enmity against the natural law of love. I have heard politicians and coffee-house wiseacres talking over the newspaper, and railing at the tyranny of the French King, and the Emperor, and wondered how these (who are monarchs, too, in their way) govern their own dominions at home, where each man rules absolute. When the annals of each little reign are shown to the Supreme Master, under whom we hold sovereignty, histories will be laid bare of household tyrants as cruel as Amurath, and as savage as Nero, and as reckless and dissolute as Charles.
If Harry Esmond’s patron erred, ’twas in the latter way, from a disposition rather self-indulgent than cruel; and he might have been brought back to much better feelings, had time been given to him to bring his repentance to a lasting reform.
As my lord and his friend Lord Mohun were such close companions, Mistress Beatrix chose to be jealous of the latter; and the two gentlemen often entertained each other by laughing, in their rude boisterous way, at the child’s freaks of anger and show of dislike. “When thou art old enough, thou shalt marry Lord Mohun,” Beatrix’s father would say: on which the girl would pout and say, “I would rather marry Tom Tusher.” And because the Lord Mohun always showed an extreme gallantry to my Lady Castlewood, whom he professed to admire devotedly, one day, in answer to this old joke of her father’s, Beatrix said, “I think my lord would rather marry mamma than marry me; and is waiting till you die to ask her.”
The words were said lightly and pertly by the girl one night before supper, as the family party were assembled near the great fire. The two lords, who were at cards, both gave a start; my lady turned as red as scarlet, and bade Mistress Beatrix go to her own chamber; whereupon the girl, putting on, as her wont was, the most innocent air, said, “I am sure I meant no wrong; I am sure mamma talks a great deal more to Harry Esmond than she does to papa — and she cried when Harry went away, and she never does when papa goes away! and last night she talked to Lord Mohun for ever so long, and sent us out of the room, and cried when we came back, and —”
“D— n!” cried out my Lord Castlewood, out of all patience. “Go out of the room, you little viper!” and he started up and flung down his cards.
“Ask Lord Mohun what I said to him, Francis,” her ladyship said, rising up with a scared face, but yet with a great and touching dignity and candor in her look and voice. “Come away with me, Beatrix.” Beatrix sprung up too; she was in tears now.
“Dearest mamma, what have I done?” she asked. “Sure I meant no harm.” And she clung to her mother, and the pair went out sobbing together.
“I will tell you what your wife said to me, Frank,” my Lord Mohun cried. “Parson Harry may hear it; and, as I hope for heaven, every word I say is true. Last night, with tears in her eyes, your wife implored me to play no more with you at dice or at cards, and you know best whether what she asked was not for your good.”
“Of course, it was, Mohun,” says my lord in a dry hard voice. “Of course you are a model of a man: and the world knows what a saint you are.”
My Lord Mohun was separated from his wife, and had had many affairs of honor: of which women as usual had been the cause.
“I am no saint, though your wife is — and I can answer for my actions as other people must for their words,” said my Lord Mohun.
“By G—, my lord, you shall,” cried the other, starting up.
“We have another little account to settle first, my lord,” says Lord Mohun. Whereupon Harry Esmond, filled with alarm for the consequences to which this disastrous dispute might lead, broke out into the most vehement expostulations with his patron and his adversary. “Gracious heavens!” he said, “my lord, are you going to draw a sword upon your friend in your own house? Can you doubt the honor of a lady who is as pure as heaven, and would die a thousand times rather than do you a wrong? Are the idle words of a jealous child to set friends at variance? Has not my mistress, as much as she dared do, besought your lordship, as the truth must be told, to break your intimacy with my Lord Mohun; and to give up the habit which may bring ruin on your family? But for my Lord Mohun’s illness, had he not left you?”
“‘Faith, Frank, a man with a gouty toe can’t run after other men’s wives,” broke out my Lord Mohun, who indeed was in that way, and with a laugh and a look at his swathed limb so frank and comical, that the other dashing his fist across his forehead was caught by that infectious good-humor, and said with his oath, “—— it, Harry, I believe thee,” and so this quarrel was over, and the two gentlemen, at swords drawn but just now, dropped their points, and shook hands.
Beati pacifici. “Go, bring my lady back,” said Harry’s patron. Esmond went away only too glad to be the bearer of such good news. He found her at the door; she had been listening there, but went back as he came. She took both his hands, hers were marble cold. She seemed as if she would fall on his shoulder. “Thank you, and God bless you, my dear brother Harry,” she said. She kissed his hand, Esmond felt her tears upon it: and leading her into the room, and up to my lord, the Lord Castlewood, with an outbreak of feeling and affection such as he had not exhibited for many a long day, took his wife to his heart, and bent over and kissed her and asked her pardon.
“’Tis time for me to go to roost. I will have my gruel a-bed,” said my Lord Mohun: and limped off comically on Harry Esmond’s arm. “By George, that woman is a pearl!” he said; “and ’tis only a pig that wouldn’t value her. Have you seen the vulgar traipsing orange-girl whom Esmond”— but here Mr. Esmond interrupted him, saying, that these were not affairs for him to know.
My lord’s gentleman came in to wait upon his master, who was no sooner in his nightcap and dressing-gown than he had another visitor whom his host insisted on sending to him: and this was no other than the Lady Castlewood herself with the toast and gruel, which her husband bade her make and carry with her own hands in to her guest.
Lord Castlewood stood looking after his wife as she went on this errand, and as he looked, Harry Esmond could not but gaze on him, and remarked in his patron’s face an expression of love, and grief, and care, which very much moved and touched the young man. Lord Castlewood’s hands fell down at his sides, and his head on his breast, and presently he said,—
“You heard what Mohun said, parson?”
“That my lady was a saint?”
“That there are two accounts to settle. I have been going wrong these five years, Harry Esmond. Ever since you brought that damned small-pox into the house, there has been a fate pursuing me, and I had best have died of it, and not run away from it like a coward. I left Beatrix with her relations, and went to London; and I fell among thieves, Harry, and I got back to confounded cards and dice, which I hadn’t touched since my marriage — no, not since I was in the Duke’s Guard, with those wild Mohocks. And I have been playing worse and worse, and going deeper and deeper into it; and I owe Mohun two thousand pounds now; and when it’s paid I am little better than a beggar. I don’t like to look my boy in the face; he hates me, I know he does. And I have spent Beaty’s little portion: and the Lord knows what will come if I live; the best thing I can do is to die, and release what portion of the estate is redeemable for the boy.”
Mohun was as much master at Castlewood as the owner of the Hall itself; and his equipages filled the stables, where, indeed, there was room and plenty for many more horses than Harry Esmond’s impoverished patron could afford to keep. He had arrived on horseback with his people; but when his gout broke out my Lord Mohun sent to London for a light chaise he had, drawn by a pair of small horses, and running as swift, wherever roads were good, as a Laplander’s sledge. When this carriage came, his lordship was eager to drive the Lady Castlewood abroad in it, and did so many times, and at a rapid pace, greatly to his companion’s enjoyment, who loved the swift motion and the healthy breezes over the downs which lie hard upon Castlewood, and stretch thence towards the sea. As this amusement was very pleasant to her, and her lord, far from showing any mistrust of her intimacy with Lord Mohun, encouraged her to be his companion — as if willing by his present extreme confidence to make up for any past mistrust which his jealousy had shown — the Lady Castlewood enjoyed herself freely in this harmless diversion, which, it must be owned, her guest was very eager to give her; and it seemed that she grew the more free with Lord Mohun, and pleased with his company, because of some sacrifice which his gallantry was pleased to make in her favor.
Seeing the two gentlemen constantly at cards still of evenings, Harry Esmond one day deplored to his mistress that this fatal infatuation of her lord should continue; and now they seemed reconciled together, begged his lady to hint to her husband that he should play no more.
But Lady Castlewood, smiling archly and gayly, said she would speak to him presently, and that, for a few nights more at least, he might be let to have his amusement.
“Indeed, madam,” said Harry, “you know not what it costs you; and ’tis easy for any observer who knows the game, to see that Lord Mohun is by far the stronger of the two.”
“I know he is,” says my lady, still with exceeding good-humor; “he is not only the best player, but the kindest player in the world.”
“Madam, madam!” Esmond cried, transported and provoked. “Debts of honor must be paid some time or other; and my master will be ruined if he goes on.”
“Harry, shall I tell you a secret?” my lady replied, with kindness and pleasure still in her eyes. “Francis will not be ruined if he goes on; he will be rescued if he goes on. I repent of having spoken and thought unkindly of the Lord Mohun when he was here in the past year. He is full of much kindness and good; and ’tis my belief that we shall bring him to better things. I have lent him ‘Tillotson’ and your favorite ‘Bishop Taylor,’ and he is much touched, he says; and as a proof of his repentance —(and herein lies my secret)— what do you think he is doing with Francis? He is letting poor Frank win his money back again. He hath won already at the last four nights; and m............