As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such as could not but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that God had given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to bestow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred upon a man—and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity, could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?
“Dearest saint,” says he—“purest soul, that has had so much to suffer, that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. ’Tis for me to kneel, not for you: ’tis for me to be thankful that I can make you happy. Hath my life any other aim? Blessed be God that I can serve you! What pleasure, think you, could all the world give me compared to that?”
“Don’t raise me,” she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who would have lifted her. “Let me kneel—let me kneel, and—and—worship you.”
Before such a partial judge as Esmond’s dear mistress owned herself to be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given in his favor; and accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling her to the news whereof he was bearer, of her son’s marriage to a foreign lady, Papist though she was. Lady Castlewood never could be brought to think so ill of that religion as other people in England thought of it: she held that ours was undoubtedly a branch of the Catholic church, but that the Roman was one of the main stems on which, no doubt, many errors had been grafted (she was, for a woman, extraordinarily well versed in this controversy, having acted, as a girl, as secretary to her father, the late dean, and written many of his sermons, under his dictation); and if Frank had chosen to marry a lady of the church of south Europe, as she would call the Roman communion, there was no need why she should not welcome her as a daughter-in-law: and accordingly she wrote to her new daughter a very pretty, touching letter (as Esmond thought, who had cognizance of it before it went), in which the only hint of reproof was a gentle remonstrance that her son had not written to herself, to ask a fond mother’s blessing for that step which he was about taking. “Castlewood knew very well,” so she wrote to her son, “that she never denied him anything in her power to give, much less would she think of opposing a marriage that was to make his happiness, as she trusted, and keep him out of wild courses, which had alarmed her a good deal:” and she besought him to come quickly to England, to settle down in his family house of Castlewood (“It is his family house,” says she, to Colonel Esmond, “though only his own house by your forbearance”) and to receive the accompt of her stewardship during his ten years’ minority. By care and frugality, she had got the estate into a better condition than ever it had been since the Parliamentary wars; and my lord was now master of a pretty, small income, not encumbered of debts, as it had been, during his father’s ruinous time. “But in saving my son’s fortune,” says she, “I fear I have lost a great part of my hold on him.” And, indeed, this was the case: her ladyship’s daughter complaining that their mother did all for Frank, and nothing for her; and Frank himself being dissatisfied at the narrow, simple way of his mother’s living at Walcote, where he had been brought up more like a poor parson’s son than a young nobleman that was to make a figure in the world. ’Twas this mistake in his early training, very likely, that set him so eager upon pleasure when he had it in his power; nor is he the first lad that has been spoiled by the overcareful fondness of women. No training is so useful for children, great or small, as the company of their betters in rank or natural parts; in whose society they lose the overweening sense of their own importance, which stay-at-home people very commonly learn.
But, as a prodigal that’s sending in a schedule of his debts to his friends, never puts all down, and, you may be sure, the rogue keeps back some immense swingeing bill, that he doesn’t dare to own; so the poor Frank had a very heavy piece of news to break to his mother, and which he hadn’t the courage to introduce into his first confession. Some misgivings Esmond might have, upon receiving Frank’s letter, and knowing into what hands the boy had fallen; but whatever these misgivings were, he kept them to himself, not caring to trouble his mistress with any fears that might be groundless.
However, the next mail which came from Bruxelles, after Frank had received his mother’s letters there, brought back a joint composition from himself and his wife, who could spell no better than her young scapegrace of a husband, full of expressions of thanks, love, and duty to the Dowager Viscountess, as my poor lady now was styled; and along with this letter (which was read in a family council, namely, the Viscountess, Mistress Beatrix, and the writer of this memoir, and which was pronounced to be vulgar by the maid of honor, and felt to be so by the other two), there came a private letter for Colonel Esmond
