From “Essay on Nature.”
TWO EXTRACTS FROM “HENRY ESMOND.”
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
For a sketch of the life of Thackeray, see Book VI, page 28.
I.
MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE RESTORATION OF KING JAMES II.
Not having been able to sleep for thinking of some lines for eels which he had placed the night before, the lad was lying in his little bed, waiting for the hour when the gate would be open, and he and his comrade, Job Lockwood, the porter’s son, might go to the pond and see what fortune had brought them. At daybreak Job was to awaken him, but his own eagerness for the sport had served as a réveillé long since—so long that it seemed to him as if the day never would come.
It might have been four o’clock when he heard the door of the opposite chamber, the chaplain’s room, open, and the voice of a man coughing in the passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for certain it was a robber, or hoping perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging open his own door, saw before him the chaplain’s door open, and a light inside, and a figure standing in the doorway, in the midst of a great smoke which issued from the room.
“Who’s there?” cried out the boy, who was of a good spirit.
“Silence!” whispered the other; “ ’tis I, my boy!” and, holding his hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognizing his master and friend, Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the chaplain’s room that looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke came from a great flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the chaplain’s room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed to see his tutor, the father continued the burning of his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which Harry had never seen before.
Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad’s attention fixed at once on this hole. “That is right, Harry,” he said; “faithful little friend, see all and say nothing. You are faithful, I know.”