The Virginians Part 22

"They told me nothing I did not know, sir," said the chaplain "You have had spies about you whom you little suspect-from whom you are much too young and simple to be able to keep your secret."

"Are those stories about Lady f.a.n.n.y, and my cousin Will and his doings, true then?" inquired Harry.

"Yes, they are true," sighed the chaplain. "The house of Castlewood has not been fortunate, sir, since your honour's branch, the elder branch, left it."

"Sir, you don't dare for to breathe a word against my Lady Maria?" Harry cried out.

"Oh, not for worlds!" says Mr. Sampson, with a queer look at his young friend. "I may think she is too old for your honour, and that 'tis a pity you should not have a wife better suited to your age, though I admit she looks very young for hers, and hath every virtue and accomplishment."

"She is too old, Sampson, I know she is," says Mr. Warrington, with much majesty; "but she has my word, and you see, sir, how fond she is of me. Go bring me the letters, sir, which you found, and let me try and forgive you for having seized upon them."

"My benefactor, let me try and forgive myself!" cries Mr. Sampson, and departed towards his chamber, leaving his young patron alone over his wine.

Sampson returned presently, looking very pale. "What has happened, sir?" says Harry, with an imperious air.

The chaplain held out a pocket-book. "With your name in it, sir," he said.

"My brother's name in it," says Harry; "it was George who gave it to me."

"I kept it in a locked chest, sir, in which I left it this morning before I was taken by those people. Here is the book, sir, but the letters are gone. My trunk and valise have also been tampered with. And I am a miserable, guilty man, unable to make you the rest.i.tution which I owe you." Sampson looked the picture of woe as he uttered these sentiments. He clasped his hands together, and almost knelt before Harry in an att.i.tude the most pathetic.

Who had been in the rooms in Mr. Sampson's and Mr. Warrington's absence? The landlady was ready to go on her knees, and declare that n.o.body had come in: nor, indeed, was Mr. Warrington's chamber in the least disturbed, nor anything abstracted from Mr. Sampson's scanty wardrobe and possessions, except those papers of which he deplored the absence.

Whose interest was it to seize them? Lady Maria's? The poor woman had been a prisoner all day, and during the time when the capture was effected.

She certainly was guiltless of the rape of the letters. The sudden seizure of the two-Case, the house-steward's secret journey to London,-Case, who knew the shoemaker at whose house Sampson lodged in London, and all the secret affairs of the Esmond family,-these points, considered together and separately, might make Mr. Sampson think that the Baroness Bernstein was at the bottom of this mischief. But why arrest Lady Maria? The chaplain knew nothing as yet about that letter which her ladys.h.i.+p had lost; for poor Maria had not thought it necessary to confide her secret to him.

As for the pocket-book and its contents, Mr. Harry was so swollen up with self-satisfaction that evening, at winning his three bets, at rescuing his two friends, at the capital premature cold supper of partridges and ancient Burgundy which obsequious Monsieur Barbeau had sent over to the young gentleman's lodgings, that he accepted Sampson's vows of contrition, and solemn promises of future fidelity, and reached his gracious hand to the chaplain, and condoned his offence. When the latter swore his great G.o.ds, that henceforth he would be Harry's truest, humblest friend and follower, and at any moment would be ready to die for Mr. Warrington, Harry said, majestically, "I think, Sampson, you would; I hope you would. My family-the Esmond family-has always been accustomed to have faithful friends round about 'em-and to reward 'em too. The wine's with you, Chaplain. What toast do you call, sir?"

"I call a blessing on the house of Esmond-Warrington!" cries the chaplain, with real tears in his eyes.

"We are the elder branch, sir. My grandfather was the Marquis of Esmond," says Mr. Harry, in a voice n.o.ble but somewhat indistinct. "Here's to you, Chaplain-and I forgive you, sir-and G.o.d bless you, sir-and if you had been took for three times as much, I'd have paid it. Why, what's that I see through the shutters? I am blest if the sun hasn't risen again! We have no need of candles to go to bed, ha, ha!" And once more extending his blessing to his chaplain, the young fellow went off to sleep.

About noon Madame de Bernstein sent over a servant to say that she would be glad if her nephew would come over and drink a dish of chocolate with her, whereupon our young friend rose and walked to his aunt's lodgings. She remarked, not without pleasure, some alteration in his toilette: in his brief sojourn in London he had visited a tailor or two, and had been introduced by my Lord March to some of his lords.h.i.+p's purveyors and tradesmen.

Aunt Bernstein called him "my dearest child," and thanked him for his n.o.ble, his generous behaviour to dear Maria. What a shock that seizure in church had been to her! A still greater shock that she had lost three hundred only on the Wednesday night to Lady Yarmouth, and was quite a sec. "Why," said the Baroness, "I had to send Case to London to my agent to get me money to pay-I could not leave Tunbridge in her debt."

"So Case did go to London?" says Mr. Harry.

"Of course he did: the Baroness de Bernstein can't afford to say she is court d'argent. Canst thou lend me some, child?"

"I can give your ladys.h.i.+p twenty-two pounds," said Harry, blus.h.i.+ng very red: "I have but forty-four left till I get my Virginian remittances. I have bought horses and clothes, and been very extravagant, aunt."

"And rescued your poor relations in distress, you prodigal good boy. No, child, I do not want thy money. I can give thee some. Here is a note upon my agent for fifty pounds, vaurien! Go and spend it, and be merry! I dare say thy mother will repay me, though she does not love me." And she looked quite affectionate, and held out a pretty hand, which the youth kissed.

"Your mother did not love me, but your mother's father did once. Mind, sir, you always come to me when you have need of me."

When bent on exhibiting them, nothing could exceed Beatrix Bernstein's grace or good-humour. "I can't help loving you, child," she continued, "and yet I am so angry with you that I have scarce the patience to speak to you. So you have actually engaged yourself to poor Maria, who is as old as your mother? What will Madam Esmond say? She may live three hundred years, and you will not have wherewithal to support yourselves."

"I have ten thousand pounds from my father, of my own, now my poor brother is gone," said Harry, "that will go some way."

"Why, the interest will not keep you in card-money."

"We must give up cards," says Harry.

"It is more than Maria is capable of. She will p.a.w.n the coat off your back to play. The rage for it runs in all my brother's family-in me too, I own it. I warned you. I prayed you not to play with them, and now a lad of twenty to engage himself to a woman of forty-two!-to write letters on his knees and signed with his heart's blood (which he spells like hartshorn), and say that he will marry no other woman than his adorable cousin, Lady Maria Esmond. Oh! it's cruel-cruel!"

"Great heavens! madam, who showed you my letter?" asked Harry, burning with a blush again.

"An accident. She fainted when she was taken by those bailiffs. Brett cut her laces for her; and when she was carried off, poor thing, we found a little sachet on the floor, which I opened, not knowing in the least what it contained. And in it was Mr. Harry Warrington's precious letter. And here, sir, is the case."

A pang shot through Harry's heart. "Great heavens! why didn't she destroy it?" he thought.

"I-I will give it back to Maria," he said, stretching out his hand for the little locket.

"My dear, I have burned the foolish letter," said the old lady.

"If you choose to betray me I must take the consequence. If you choose to write another, I cannot help thee. But, in that case, Harry Esmond, I had rather never see thee again. Will you keep my secret? Will you believe an old woman who loves you and knows the world better than you do? I tell you, if you keep that foolish promise, misery and ruin are surely in store for you. What is a lad like you in the hands of a wily woman of the world, who makes a toy of you? She has entrapped you into a promise, and your old aunt has cut the strings and set you free. Go back again! Betray me if you will, Harry."

"I am not angry with you, aunt-I wish I were," said Mr. Warrington, with very great emotion. "I-I shall not repeat what you told me."

"Maria never will, child-mark my words!" cried the old lady, eagerly. "She will never own that she has lost that paper. She will tell you that she has it."

"But I am sure she-she is very fond of me; you should have seen her last night," faltered Harry.

"Must I tell more stories against my own flesh and blood?" sobs out the Baroness. "Child, you do not know her past life!"

"And I must not, and I will not!" cries Harry, starting up. "Written or said-it does not matter which! But my word is given; they may play with such things in England, but we gentlemen of Virginia don't break 'em. If she holds me to my word, she shall have me. If we are miserable, as I dare say we shall be, I'll take a firelock, and go join the King of Prussia, or let a ball put an end to me."

"I-I have no more to say. Will you be pleased to ring that bell? I-I wish you a good morning, Mr. Warrington," and dropping a very stately curtsey, the old lady rose on her tortoisesh.e.l.l stick, and turned towards the door. But, as she made her first step, she put her hand to her heart, sank on the sofa again, an shed the first tears that had dropped for long years from Beatrix Esmond's eyes.

Harry was greatly moved, too. He knelt down by her. He seized her cold hand, and kissed it. He told her, in his artless way, how very keenly he had felt her love for him, and how, with all his heart, he returned it. "Ah, aunt!" said he, "you don't know what a villain I feel myself. When you told me, just now how that paper was burned-oh! I was ashamed to think how glad I was." He bowed his comely head over her hand. She felt hot drops from his eyes raining on it. She had loved this boy. For half a century past-never, perhaps, in the course of her whole worldly life, had she felt a sensation so tender and so pure. The hard heart was wounded now, softened, overcome. She put her two hands on his shoulders, and lightly kissed his forehead.

"You will not tell her what I have done, child?" she said.

He declared never! never! And demure Mrs. Brett, entering at her mistress's summons, found the nephew and aunt in this sentimental att.i.tude.

CHAPTER XL. In which Harry pays off an Old Debt, and incurs some New Ones

Our Tunbridge friends were now weary of the Wells, and eager to take their departure. When the autumn should arrive, Bath was Madame de Bernstein's mark. There were more cards, company, life, there. She would reach it after paying a few visits to her country friends. Harry promised, with rather a bad grace, to ride with Lady Maria and the chaplain to Castlewood. Again they pa.s.sed by Oakhurst village, and the hospitable house where Harry had been so kindly entertained. Maria made so many keen remarks about the young ladies of Oakhurst, and their setting their caps at Harry, and the mother's evident desire to catch him for one of them, that, somewhat in a pet, Mr. Warrington said he would pa.s.s his friends' door, as her ladys.h.i.+p disliked and abused them; and was very haughty and sulky that evening at the inn where they stopped, some few miles farther on the road. At supper, my Lady Maria's smiles brought no corresponding good-humour to Harry's face; her tears (which her ladys.h.i.+p had at command) did not seem to create the least sympathy from Mr. Warrington; to her querulous remarks he growled a surly reply; and my lady was obliged to go to bed at length without getting a single tete-a-tete with her cousin,-that obstinate chaplain, as if by order, persisting in staying in the room. Had Harry given Sampson orders to remain? She departed with a sigh. He bowed her to the door with an obstinate politeness, and consigned her to the care of the landlady and her maid.

What horse was that which galloped out of the inn-yard ten minutes after Lady Maria had gone to her chamber? An hour after her departure from their supper-room, Mrs. Betty came in for her lady's bottle of smelling-salts, and found Parson Sampson smoking a pipe alone. Mr. Warrington was gone to bed-was gone to fetch a walk in the moonlight-how should he know where Mr. Harry was? Sampson answered, in reply to the maid's interrogatories. Mr. Warrington was ready to set forward the next morning, and took his place by the side of Lady Maria's carriage. But his brow was black-the dark spirit was still on him. He hardly spoke to her during the journey. "Great heavens! she must have told him that she stole it!" thought Lady Maria within her own mind.

The fact is, that, as they were walking up that steep hill which lies about three miles from Oakhurst, on the Westerham road, Lady Maria Esmond, leaning on her fond youth's arm, and indeed very much in love with him, had warbled into his ear the most sentimental vows, protests, and expressions of affection. As she grew fonder, he grew colder. As she looked up in his face, the sun shone down upon hers, which, fresh and well-preserved as it was, yet showed some of the lines and wrinkles of twoscore years; and poor Harry, with that arm leaning on his, felt it intolerably weighty, and by no means relished his walk up the hill. To think that all his life, that drag was to be upon him! It was a dreary look forward and he cursed the moonlight walk, and the hot evening, and the hot wine which had made him give that silly pledge by which he was fatally bound.

Maria's praises and raptures annoyed Harry beyond measure. The poor thing poured out sc.r.a.ps of the few plays which she knew that had reference to her case, and strove with her utmost power to charm her young companion. She called him, over and over again, her champion, her Henrico, her preserver, and vowed that his Molinda would be ever, ever faithful to him. She clung to him. "Ah, child! have I not thy precious image, thy precious hair, thy precious writing here?" she said, looking in his face. "Shall it not go with me to the grave? It would, sir, were I to meet with unkindness from my Henrico!" she sighed out.

Here was a strange story! Madame Bernstein had given him the little silken case-she had burned the hair and the note which the case contained, and Maria had it still on her heart! It was then, at the start which Harry gave, as she was leaning on his arm-at the sudden movement as if he would drop hers-that Lady Maria felt her first pang of remorse that she had told a fib, or rather, that she was found out in telling a fib, which is a far more cogent reason for repentance. Heaven help us! if some people were to do penance for telling lies, would they ever be out of sackcloth and ashes?

Arrived at Castlewood, Mr. Harry's good-humour was not increased. My lord was from home; the ladies also were away; the only member of the family whom Harry found, was Mr. Will, who returned from partridge-shooting just as the chaise and cavalcade reached the gate, and who turned very pale when he saw his cousin, and received a sulky scowl of recognition from the young Virginian.

Nevertheless, he thought to put a good face on the matter, and they met at supper, where, before my Lady Maria, their conversation was at first civil, but not lively. Mr. Will had been to some races? To several. He had been pretty successful in his bets? Mr. Warrington hopes. Pretty well. "And you have brought back my horse sound?" asked Mr. Warrington.

"Your horse! what horse?" asked Mr. Will.

"What horse? my horse!" says Mr. Harry, curtly.

"Protest I don't understand you," says Will.

"The brown horse for which I played you, and which I won of you the night before you rode away upon it," says Mr. Warrington, sternly. "You remember the horse, Mr. Esmond."

"Mr. Warrington, I perfectly well remember playing you for a horse, which my servant handed over to you on the day of your departure."

"The chaplain was present at our play. Mr. Sampson, will you be umpire between us?" Mr. Warrington said, with much gentleness.

"I am bound to decide that Mr. Warrington played for the brown horse," says Mr. Sampson.

"Well, he got the other one," said sulky Mr. Will, with a grin.

"And sold it for thirty s.h.i.+llings!" said Mr. Warrington, always preserving his calm tone.

Will was waggish. "Thirty s.h.i.+llings? and a devilish good price, too, for the broken-kneed old rip. Ha, ha!"

"Not a word more. 'Tis only a question about a bet, my dear Lady Maria. Shall I serve you some more chicken?" Nothing could be more studiously courteous and gay than Mr. Warrington was, so long as the lady remained in the room. When she rose to go, Harry followed her to the door, and closed it upon her with the most courtly bow of farewell. He stood at the closed door for a moment, and then he bade the servants retire. When those menials were gone, Mr. Warrington locked the heavy door before them, and pocketed the key.

As it clicked in the lock, Mr. Will, who had been sitting over his punch, looking now and then askance at his cousin, asked, with one of the oaths which commonly garnished his conversation, what the-Mr. Warrington meant by that?

"I guess there's going to be a quarrel," said Mr. Warrington, blandly, "and there is no use in having these fellows look on at rows between their betters."

"Who is going to quarrel here, I should like to know?" asked Will, looking very pale, and grasping a knife.

"Mr. Sampson, you were present when I played Mr. Will fifty guineas against his brown horse?"

"Against his horse!" bawls out Mr. Will.

"I am not such a something fool as you take me for," says Mr. Warrington, "although I do come from Virginia!" And he repeated his question: "Mr. Sampson, you were here when I played the Honourable William Esmond, Esquire, fifty guineas against his brown horse?"

"I must own it, sir," says the chaplain, with a deprecatory look towards his lord's brother.

"I don't own no such a thing," says Mr. Will, with rather a forced laugh.

"No, sir: because it costs you no more pains to lie than to cheat," said Mr. Warrington, walking up to his cousin. "Hands off, Mr. Chaplain, and see fair play! Because you are no better than a-ha!--"

No better than a what we can't say, and shall never know, for as Harry uttered the exclamation, his dear cousin flung a wine bottle at Mr. Warrington's head, who bobbed just in time, so that the missile flew across the room, and broke against the wainscot opposite, breaking the face of a pictured ancestor of the Esmond family, and then itself against the wall, whence it spirted a pint of good port wine over the chaplain's face and flowered wig. "Great heavens, gentlemen, I pray you to be quiet!" cried the parson, dripping with gore.

But gentlemen are not inclined at some moments to remember the commands of the Church. The bottle having failed, Mr. Esmond seized the large silver-handled knife and drove at his cousin. But Harry caught up the other's right hand with his left, as he had seen the boxers do at Marybone; and delivered a rapid blow upon Mr. Esmond's nose, which sent him reeling up against the oak panels, and I dare say caused him to see ten thousand illuminations. He dropped his knife in his retreat against the wall, which his rapid antagonist kicked under the table.

Now Will, too, had been at Marybone and Hockley-in-the-Hole, and after a gasp for breath and a glare over his bleeding nose at his enemy, he dashed forward his head as though it had been a battering-ram, intending to project it into Mr. Henry Warrington's stomach.

This manoeuvre Harry had seen, too, on his visit to Marybone, and amongst the negroes upon the maternal estate, who would meet in combat like two concutient cannon-b.a.l.l.s, each harder than the other. But Harry had seen and marked the civilised practice of the white man. He skipped aside, and, saluting his advancing enemy with a tremendous blow on the right ear, felled him, so that he struck his head against the heavy oak table and sank lifeless to the ground.

"Chaplain, you will bear witness that it has been a fair fight!" said Mr. Warrington, still quivering with the excitement of the combat, but striving with all his might to restrain himself and look cool. And he drew the key from his pocket and opened the door in the lobby, behind which three or four servants were gathered. A crash of broken gla.s.s, a cry, a shout, an oath or two, had told them that some violent scene was occurring within, and they entered, and behold two victims bedabbled with red-the chaplain bleeding port wine, and the Honourable William Esmond, Esquire, stretched in his own gore.

"Mr. Sampson will bear witness that I struck fair, and that Mr. Esmond hit the first blow," said Mr. Warrington. "Undo his neckcloth, somebody-he may be dead; and get a fleam, Gumbo, and bleed him. Stop! He is coming to himself! Lift him up, you, and tell a maid to wash the floor."

Indeed, in a minute, Mr. Will did come to himself. First his eyes rolled about, or rather, I am ashamed to say, his eye, one having been closed by Mr. Warrington's first blow. First, then, his eye rolled about; then he gasped and uttered an inarticulate moan or two, then he began to swear and curse very freely and articulately.

"He is getting well," said Mr. Warrington.

"Oh, praise be Mussy!" sighs the sentimental Betty.

"Ask him, Gumbo, whether he would like any more?" said Mr. Warrington, with a stern humour.

"Ma.s.sa Harry say, wool you like any maw?" asked obedient Gumbo, bowing over the prostrate gentleman.

"No, curse you, you black devil!" says Mr. Will, hitting up at the black object before him. ("So he nearly cut my tongue in to in my mouf!" Gumbo explained to the pitying Betty.) "No, that is, yes! You infernal Mohock! Why does not somebody kick him out of the place?"

"Because n.o.body dares, Mr. Esmond," says Mr. Warrington, with great state, arranging his ruffles-his ruffled ruffles.

"And n.o.body won't neither," growled the men. They had all grown to love Harry, whereas Mr. Will had n.o.body's good word.

"We know all's fair, sir. It ain't the first time Master William have been served so."

"And I hope it won't be the last," cries shrill Betty. "To go for to strike a poor black gentleman so!"

Mr. Will had gathered himself up by this time, had wiped his bleeding face with a napkin, and was skulking off to bed.

"Surely it's manners to say good night to the company. Good night, Mr. Esmond," says Mr. Warrington, whose jokes, though few, were not very brilliant; but the honest lad relished the brilliant sally and laughed at it inwardly.

"He's ad his zopper, and he goes to baid!" says Betty, in her native dialect, at which everybody laughed outright, except Mr. William, who went away leaving a black fume of curses, as it were, rolling out of that funnel, his mouth.

It must be owned that Mr. Warrington continued to be witty the next morning. He sent a note to Mr. Will begging to know whether he was for a ride to town or anywheres else. If he was for London, that he would friten the highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, and look a very genteel figar at the Chocolate House. Which letter, I fear, Mr. Will received with his usual violence, requesting the writer to go to some place-not Hounslow.

And, besides the parley between Will and Harry, there comes a maiden simpering to Mr. Warrington's door, and Gumbo advances, holding something white and triangular in his ebon fingers.

Harry knew what it was well enough. "Of course it's a letter," groans he. Molinda greets her Enrico, etc. etc. etc. No sleep has she known that night, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth. Has Enrico slept well in the halls of his fathers? und so weiter, und so weiter. He must never never quaril and be so cruel again. Kai ta loipa. And I protest I shan't quote any more of this letter. Ah, tablets, golden once,-are ye now faded leaves? Where is the juggler who trans.m.u.ted you, and why is the glamour over?

After the little scandal with cousin Will, Harry's dignity would not allow him to stay longer at Castlewood: he wrote a majestic letter to the lord of the mansion, explaining the circ.u.mstances which had occurred, and, as he called in Parson Sampson to supervise the doc.u.ment, no doubt it contained none of those eccentricities in spelling which figured in his ordinary correspondence at this period. He represented to poor Maria, that after blackening the eye and damaging the nose of a son of the house, he should remain in it with a very bad grace; and she was forced to acquiesce in the opinion that, for the present, his absence would best become him. Of course, she wept plentiful tears at parting with him. He would go to London, and see younger beauties: he would find none, none who would love him like his fond Maria. I fear Mr. Warrington did not exhibit any profound emotion on leaving her: nay, he cheered up immediately after he crossed Castlewood Bridge, and made his horses whisk over the road at ten miles an hour: he sang to them to go along: he nodded to the pretty girls by the roadside: he chucked my landlady under the chin: he certainly was not inconsolable. Truth is, he longed to be back in London again, to make a figure at St. James's, at Newmarket, wherever the men of fas.h.i.+on congregated. All that petty Tunbridge society of women and card-playing seemed child's-play to him now he had tasted the delight of London life.