upon the person whom they were designed to move. Esmond's ambassador came [pg 178] back from the mission with which the poor young gentleman had charged him, with a sad blank face and a shake of the head, which told that there was no hope for the prisoner; and scarce a wretched culprit in that prison of Newgate ordered for execution, and trembling for a reprieve, felt more cast down than Mr. Esmond, innocent and condemned.
As had been arranged between the prisoner and his counsel in their consultations, Mr. Steele had gone to the dowager's house in Chelsey, where it has been said the widow and her orphans were, had seen my lady viscountess and pleaded the cause of her unfortunate kinsman. “And I think I spoke well, my poor boy,” says Mr. Steele; “for who would not speak well in such a cause, and before so beautiful a judge? I did not see the lovely Beatrix (sure her famous namesake of Florence was never half so beautiful), only the young viscount was in the room with the Lord Churchill, my Lord of Marlborough's eldest son. But these young gentlemen went off to the garden, I could see them from the window tilting at each other with poles in a mimic tournament (grief touches the young but lightly, and I remember that I beat a drum at the coffin of my own father). My lady viscountess looked out at the two boys at their game, and said—‘You see, sir, children are taught to use weapons of death as toys, and to make a sport of murder’; and as she spoke she looked so lovely, and stood there in herself so sad and beautiful an instance of that doctrine whereof I am a humble preacher, that had I not dedicated my little volume of the Christian Hero (I perceive, Harry, thou hast not cut the leaves of it. The sermon is good, believe me, though the preacher's life may not answer it)—I say, hadn't I dedicated the volume to Lord Cutts, I would have asked permission to place her ladyship's name on the first page. I think I never saw such a beautiful violet as that of her eyes, Harry. Her complexion is of the pink of the blush-rose, she hath an exquisite turned wrist and dimpled hand, and I make no doubt——”
“Did you come to tell me about the dimples on my lady's hand?” broke out Mr. Esmond, sadly.
“A lovely creature in affliction seems always doubly beautiful to me,” says the poor captain, who indeed was but too often in a state to see double, and so checked he resumed the interrupted thread of his story. “As I spoke [pg 179] my business,” Mr. Steele said, “and narrated to your mistress what all the world knows, and the other side hath been eager to acknowledge—that you had tried to put yourself between the two lords, and to take your patron's quarrel on your own point; I recounted the general praises of your gallantry, besides my Lord Mohun's particular testimony to it; I thought the widow listened with some interest, and her eyes—I have never seen such a violet, Harry—looked up at mine once or twice. But after I had spoken on this theme for a while she suddenly broke away with a cry of grief. ‘I would to God, sir,’ she said, ‘I had never heard that word gallantry which you use, or known the meaning of it. My lord might have been here but for that; my home might be happy; my poor boy have a father. It was what you gentlemen call gallantry came into my home, and drove my husband on to the cruel sword that killed him. You should not speak the word to a Christian woman, sir—a poor widowed mother of orphans, whose home was happy until the world came into it—the wicked godless world, that takes the blood of the innocent, and lets the guilty go free.’
“As the afflicted lady spoke in this strain, sir,” Mr. Steele continued, “it seemed as if indignation moved her, even more than grief. ‘Compensation!’ she went on passionately, her cheeks and eyes kindling; ‘what compensation does your world give the widow for her husband, and the children for the murderer of their father? The wretch who did the deed has not even a punishment. Conscience! what conscience has he, who can enter the house of a friend, whisper falsehood and insult to a woman that never harmed him, and stab the kind heart that trusted him? My lord—my Lord Wretch, my Lord Villain's, my Lord Murderer's peers meet to try him, and they dismiss him with a word or two of reproof, and send him into the world again, to pursue women with lust and falsehood, and to murder unsuspecting guests that harbour him. That day, my lord—my Lord Murderer—(I will never name him)—was let loose, a woman was executed at Tyburn for stealing in a shop. But a man may rob another of his life, or a lady of her honour, and shall pay no penalty! I take my child, run to the throne, and on my knees ask for justice, and the king refuses me. The king! he is no king of [pg 180] mine—he never shall be. He, too, robbed the throne from the king his father—the true king—and he has gone unpunished, as the great do.’
“I then thought to speak for you,” Mr. Steele continued, “and I interposed by saying, ‘There was one, madam, who, at least, would have put his own breast between your husband's and my Lord Mohun's sword. Your poor young kinsman, Harry Esmond, hath told me that he tried to draw the quarrel on himself.’
“ ‘Are you come from him?’ asked the lady” (so Mr. Steele went on), “rising up with a great severity and stateliness. ‘I thought you had come from the princess. I saw Mr. Esmond in his prison, and bade him farewell. He brought misery into my house. He never should have entered it.’
“ ‘Madam, madam, he is not to blame,’ I interposed,” continued Mr. Steele.
“ ‘Do I blame him to you, sir?’ asked the widow. ‘If 'tis he who sent you, say that I have taken counsel, where’—she spoke with a very pallid cheek now, and a break in her voice—‘where all who ask may have it;—and that it bids me to part from him, and to see him no more. We met in the prison for the last time—at least for years to come. It may be, in years hence, when—when our knees and our tears and our contrition have changed our sinful hearts, sir, and wrought our pardon, we may meet again—but not now. After what has passed, I could not bear to see him. I wish him well, sir; but I wish him farewell, too; and if he has that—that regard towards us which he speaks of, I beseech him to prove it by obeying me in this.’
“ ‘I shall break the young man's heart, madam, by this hard sentence,’ ” Mr. Steele said.
“The lady shook her head,” continued my kind scholar. “ ‘The hearts of young men, Mr. Steele, are not so made,’ she said. ‘Mr. Esmond will find other—other friends. The mistress of this house has relented very much towards the late lord's son,’ she added, with a blush, ‘and has promised me, that is, has promised that she will care for his fortune. Whilst I live in it, after the horrid, horrid deed which has passed, Castlewood must never be a home to him—never. Nor would I have him write to me—except—no—I would have him never write to me, nor see [pg 181] him more. Give him, if you will, my parting—Hush! not a word of this before my daughter.’
“Here the fair Beatrix entered from the river, with her cheeks flushing with health, and looking only the more lovely and fresh for the mourning habiliments which she wore. And my lady viscountess said—
“ ‘Beatrix, this is Mr. Steele, gentleman-usher to the prince's highness. When does your new comedy appear, Mr. Steele?’ I hope thou wilt be out of prison for the first night, Harry.”
The sentimental captain concluded his sad tale, saying, “Faith, the beauty of Filia pulcrior drove pulcram matrem out of my head; and yet as I came down the river, and thought about the pair, the pallid dignity and exquisite grace of the matron had the uppermost, and I thought her even more noble than the virgin!”
The party of prisoners lived very well in Newgate, and with comforts very different to those which were awarded to the poor wretches there (his insensibility to their misery, their gaiety still more frightful, their curses and blasphemy, hath struck with a kind of shame since—as proving how selfish, during his imprisonment, his own particular grief was, and how entirely the thoughts of it absorbed him): if the three gentlemen lived well under the care of the warden of Newgate, it was because they paid well: and indeed the cost at the dearest ordinary or the grandest tavern in London could not have furnished a longer reckoning, than our host of the “Handcuff Inn”—as Colonel Westbury called it. Our rooms were the three in the gate over Newgate—on the second story looking up Newgate Street towards Cheapside and
