Part 26 (2/2)
”Who gave you the Order?” says Harry, saluting the gentleman: ”did you win it in battle?”
”I won it,” cried the other, ”with my sword and my spear. There was a mousquetaire that had it round his neck--such a big mousquetaire, as big as General Webb. I called out to him to surrender, and that I'd give him quarter: he called me a pet.i.t polisson and fired his pistol at me, and then sent it at my head with a curse. I rode at him, sir, drove my sword right under his arm-hole, and broke it in the rascal's body. I found a purse in his holster with sixty-five Louis in it, and a bundle of love-letters, and a flask of Hungary-water. Vive la guerre! there are the ten pieces you lent me. I should like to have a fight every day;”
and he pulled at his little moustache and bade a servant bring a supper to Captain Esmond.
Harry fell to with a very good appet.i.te; he had tasted nothing since twenty hours ago, at early dawn. Master Grandson, who read this, do you look for the history of battles and sieges? Go, find them in the proper books; this is only the story of your grandfather and his family. Far more pleasant to him than the victory, though for that too he may say meminisse juvat, it was to find that the day was over, and his dear young Castlewood was unhurt.
And would you, sirrah, wish to know how it was that a sedate Captain of Foot, a studious and rather solitary bachelor of eight or nine and twenty years of age, who did not care very much for the jollities which his comrades engaged in, and was never known to lose his heart in any garrison-town--should you wish to know why such a man had so prodigious a tenderness, and tended so fondly a boy of eighteen, wait, my good friend, until thou art in love with thy schoolfellow's sister, and then see how mighty tender thou wilt be towards him. Esmond's general and his Grace the Prince-Duke were notoriously at variance, and the former's friends.h.i.+p was in nowise likely to advance any man's promotion of whose services Webb spoke well; but rather likely to injure him, so the army said, in the favor of the greater man. However, Mr. Esmond had the good fortune to be mentioned very advantageously by Major-General Webb in his report after the action; and the major of his regiment and two of the captains having been killed upon the day of Ramillies, Esmond, who was second of the lieutenants, got his company, and had the honor of serving as Captain Esmond in the next campaign.
My lord went home in the winter, but Esmond was afraid to follow him.
His dear mistress wrote him letters more than once, thanking him, as mothers know how to thank, for his care and protection of her boy, extolling Esmond's own merits with a great deal more praise than they deserved; for he did his duty no better than any other officer; and speaking sometimes, though gently and cautiously, of Beatrix. News came from home of at least half a dozen grand matches that the beautiful maid of honor was about to make. She was engaged to an earl, our gentleman of St. James's said, and then jilted him for a duke, who, in his turn, had drawn off. Earl or duke it might be who should win this Helen, Esmond knew she would never bestow herself on a poor captain. Her conduct, it was clear, was little satisfactory to her mother, who scarcely mentioned her, or else the kind lady thought it was best to say nothing, and leave time to work out its cure. At any rate, Harry was best away from the fatal object which always wrought him so much mischief; and so he never asked for leave to go home, but remained with his regiment that was garrisoned in Brussels, which city fell into our hands when the victory of Ramillies drove the French out of Flanders.
CHAPTER XIII.
I MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN FLANDERS, AND FIND MY MOTHER'S GRAVE AND MY OWN CRADLE THERE.
Being one day in the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, admiring the antique splendor of the architecture (and always entertaining a great tenderness and reverence for the Mother Church, that hath been as wickedly persecuted in England as ever she herself persecuted in the days of her prosperity), Esmond saw kneeling at a side altar an officer in a green uniform coat, very deeply engaged in devotion. Something familiar in the figure and posture of the kneeling man struck Captain Esmond, even before he saw the officer's face. As he rose up, putting away into his pocket a little black breviary, such as priests use, Esmond beheld a countenance so like that of his friend and tutor of early days, Father Holt, that he broke out into an exclamation of astonishment and advanced a step towards the gentleman, who was making his way out of church. The German officer too looked surprised when he saw Esmond, and his face from being pale grew suddenly red. By this mark of recognition, the Englishman knew that he could not be mistaken; and though the other did not stop, but on the contrary rather hastily walked away towards the door, Esmond pursued him and faced him once more, as the officer, helping himself to holy water, turned mechanically towards the altar, to bow to it ere he quitted the sacred edifice.
”My Father!” says Esmond in English.
”Silence! I do not understand. I do not speak English,” says the other in Latin.
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 or bearded;” for the Austrian officer was habited quite in the military manner, and had as warlike a mustachio as any Pandour.
He laughed--we were on the church steps by this time, pa.s.sing through the crowd of beggars that usually is there holding up little trinkets for sale and 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 fifteen years back; he gave Esmond his hand as he spoke.
”Others have changed their coats too, my Father,” says Esmond, glancing at his friend's military decoration.
”Hus.h.!.+ 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 a secret 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 his laughing way; ”I have heard of you at Cambridge and afterwards: we have friends everywhere; and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was as good a fencer as he was a bad theologian.” (So, thinks Esmond, my old maitre d'armes was a Jesuit, as they said.)
”Perhaps you are right,” says the other, reading his thoughts quite as he used to do in old days; ”you were all but killed at Hochstedt of a wound in the left side. You were before that at Vigo, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Ormonde. You got your company the other day after Ramillies; your general and the Prince-Duke are not friends; he is of the Webbs of Lydiard Tregoze, in the county of York, a relation of my Lord St. John.
Your cousin, M. de Castlewood, served his first campaign this year in the Guard; 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 men than, perhaps, almost any person Esmond had ever met, was omniscience; thus in every point he here professed to know, he was nearly right, but not quite. Esmond's wound was in the right side, not the left; his first general was General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out of Wilts.h.i.+re, not out of Yorks.h.i.+re; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his old master in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a knowledge of the other's character, and he smiled to think that this was his oracle of early days; only now no longer infallible or divine.
”Yes,” continues Father Holt, or Captain von Holtz, ”for a man who has not been in England these eight years, I know what goes on in London very well. The old Dean is dead, my Lady Castlewood's father. Do you know that your recusant bishops wanted to consecrate him Bishop of Southampton, and that Collier is Bishop of Thetford by the same imposition? The Princess Anne has the gout and eats too much; when the King returns, Collier will be an archbishop.”
”Amen!” says Esmond, laughing; ”and I hope to see your Eminence no longer in jack-boots, but red stockings, at Whitehall.”
”You are always with us--I know that--I heard of that when you were at Cambridge; so was the late lord; so is the young viscount.”
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