Boys and Girls from Thackeray

by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

As for my Lord Castlewood, he was good-humoured, of a temper naturally easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to receive the tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could perform to perfection—shooting at a mark, breaking horses, riding at the ring, pitching the quoit, playing at all games with great skill. He was fond of the parade of dress, and also fond of having his lady well dressed; who spared no pains in that matter to please him. Indeed, she would dress her head or cut it off if he had bidden her.

My Lord Viscount took young Esmond into his special favour, luckily for the lad. A very few months after my lord's coming to Castlewood in the winter time, little Frank being a child in petticoats, trotting about, it happened that little Frank was with his father after dinner, who fell asleep, heedless of the child, who crawled to the fire. As good fortune would have it, Esmond was sent by his mistress for the boy, just as the poor little screaming urchin's coat was set on fire by a log. Esmond, rushing forward, tore the dress off, so that his own hands were burned more than the little boy's, who was frightened rather than hurt by the accident. As my lord was sleeping heavily, it certainly was providential that a resolute person should have come in at that instant, or the child would have been burned to death.

Ever after this, the father was loud in his expressions of remorse, and of admiration for Harry Esmond, and had the tenderest regard for his son's preserver. His burns were tended with the greatest care by his kind mistress, who said that Heaven had sent him to be the guardian of her children, and that she would love him all her life.

And it was after this, and from the very great love and tenderness which grew up in this little household, that Harry came to be quite of the religion of his house, and his dear mistress, of which he has ever since been a professing member.

My lady had three idols: her lord, the good Viscount of Castlewood,—her little son, who had his father's looks and curly, brown hair,—and her daughter Beatrix, who had his eyes—were there ever such beautiful eyes in the world?

A pretty sight it was to see the fair mistress of Castlewood, her little daughter at her knee, and her domestics gathered around her, reading the Morning Prayer of the English Church. Esmond long remembered how she looked and spoke, kneeling reverently before the sacred book, the sun shining upon her golden hair until it made a halo round about her, a dozen of the servants of the house kneeling in a line opposite their mistress. For a while Harry Esmond as a good papist kept apart from these mysteries, but Dr. Tusher, showing him that the prayers read were those of the Church of all ages, he came presently to kneel down with the rest of the household in the parlour; and before a couple of years my lady had made a thorough convert. Indeed, the boy loved her so much that he would have subscribed to anything she bade him at that time, and the happiest period of all his life was this: when the young mother, with her daughter and son, and the orphan lad whom she protected, read and worked and played, and were children together.

But as Esmond grew, and observed for himself, he found much to read and think of outside that fond circle of kinsfolk. He read more books than they cared to study with him; was alone in the midst of them many a time, and passed nights over labours, useless perhaps, but in which they could not join him. His dear mistress divined his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness of affection; began to forebode a time when he would escape from his home nest; and at his eager protestations to the contrary, would only sigh and shake her head, knowing that some day her predictions would come true.

Meanwhile evil fortune came upon the inmates of Castlewood Hall; brought thither by no other than Harry himself. In those early days, before Lady Mary Wortley Montague brought home the custom of inoculation from Turkey, smallpox was considered, as indeed it was, the most dreadful scourge of the world. The pestilence would enter a village and destroy half its inhabitants. At its approach not only the beautiful, but the strongest were alarmed, and those fled who could.

One day in the year 1694 Dr. Tusher ran into Castlewood House with a face of consternation, saying that the malady had made its appearance in the village, that a child at the Inn was down with the smallpox.

Now there was a pretty girl at this Inn, Nancy Sievewright, the blacksmith's daughter, a bouncing, fresh-looking lass, with whom Harry Esmond in his walks and rambles often happened to fall in; or, failing to meet her, he would discover some errand to be done at the blacksmith's, or would go to the Inn to find her.