Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges

by William Makepeace Thackeray

And my lord again slapped the table, and took a great draught from the tankard. Harry Esmond admired as he listened to him, and thought how the poor preacher of [pg 129] this self-sacrifice had fled from the small-pox, which the lady had borne so cheerfully, and which had been the cause of so much disunion in the lives of all in this house. “How well men preach,” thought the young man, “and each is the example in his own sermon. How each has a story in a dispute, and a true one, too, and both are right, or wrong as you will!” Harry's heart was pained within him, to watch the struggles and pangs that tore the breast of this kind, manly friend and protector.

“Indeed, sir,” said he, “I wish to God that my mistress could hear you speak as I have heard you; she would know much that would make her life the happier, could she hear it.” But my lord flung away with one of his oaths, and a jeer; he said that Parson Harry was a good fellow; but that as for women, all women were alike—all jades and heartless. So a man dashes a fine vase down and despises it for being broken. It may be worthless—true: but who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it?

Harry, who would have given his life to make his benefactress and her husband happy, bethought him, now that he saw what my lord's state of mind was, and that he really had a great deal of that love left in his heart, and ready for his wife's acceptance if she would take it, whether he could not be a means of reconciliation between these two persons, whom he revered the most in the world. And he cast about how he should break a part of his mind to his mistress, and warn her that in his, Harry's opinion, at least, her husband was still her admirer, and even her lover.

But he found the subject a very difficult one to handle, when he ventured to remonstrate, which he did in the very gravest tone (for long confidence and reiterated proofs of devotion and loyalty had given him a sort of authority in the house, which he resumed as soon as ever he returned to it); and with a speech that should have some effect, as, indeed, it was uttered with the speaker's own heart, he ventured most gently to hint to his adored mistress, that she was doing her husband harm by her ill opinion of him, and that the happiness of all the family depended upon setting her right.

She, who was ordinarily calm and most gentle, and full of smiles and soft attentions, flushed up when young Esmond so spoke to her, and rose from her chair, looking at him with a haughtiness and indignation that he had never before [pg 130] known her to display. She was quite an altered being for that moment; and looked an angry princess insulted by a vassal.

“Have you ever heard me utter a word in my lord's disparagement?” she asked hastily, hissing out her words, and stamping her foot.

“Indeed, no,” Esmond said, looking down.

“Are you come to me as his ambassador—You?” she continued.

“I would sooner see peace between you than anything else in the world,” Harry answered, “and would go of any embassy that had that end.”

“So you are my lord's go-between?” she went on, not regarding this speech. “You are sent to bid me back into slavery again, and inform me that my lord's favour is graciously restored to his handmaid? He is weary of Covent Garden, is he, that he comes home and would have the fatted calf killed?”