“At least you own to your worldliness, my poor Trix,” says her mother.
“Worldliness. Oh, my pretty lady! Do you think that I am a child in the nursery, and to be frightened by Bogey! Worldliness, to be sure; and pray, madam, where is the harm of wishing to be comfortable? When you are gone, you dearest old woman, or when I am tired of you and have run away from you, where shall I go? Shall I go and be head nurse to my Popish sister-in-law, take the children their physic, and whip ’em, and put ’em to bed when they are naughty? Shall I be Castlewood’s upper servant, and perhaps marry Tom Tusher? Merci! I have been long enough Frank’s humble servant. Why am I not a man? I have ten times his brains, and had I worn the—well, don’t let your ladyship be frightened—had I worn a sword and periwig instead of this mantle and commode to which nature has condemned me—(though ’tis a pretty stuff, too—Cousin Esmond! you will go to the Exchange tomorrow, and get the exact counterpart of this ribbon, sir; do you hear?)—I would have made our name talked about. So would Graveairs here have made something out of our name if he had represented it. My Lord Graveairs would have done very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very decent, grave speaker.” And here she began to imitate Esmond’s way of carrying himself and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature.
“Yes,” says she, “I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that I want a good husband. Where’s the harm of one? My face is my fortune. Who’ll come?—buy, buy, buy! I cannot toil, neither can I spin, but I can play twenty-three games on the cards. I can dance the last dance, I can hunt the stag, and I think I could shoot flying. I can talk as wicked as any woman of my years, and know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for at least one thousand and one nights. I have a pretty taste for dress, diamonds, gambling, and old China. I love sugarplums, Malines lace (that you brought me, cousin, is very pretty), the opera, and everything that is useless and costly. I have got a monkey and a little black boy—Pompey, sir, go and give a dish of chocolate to Colonel Graveairs—and a parrot and a spaniel, and I must have a husband. Cupid, you hear?”
“Iss, Missis!” says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborrow gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his mistress’s name on it.
“Iss, Missis!” says Beatrix, imitating the child. “And if husband not come, Pompey must go fetch one.”
And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray as Miss Beatrix ran up to her mother and ended her sally of mischief in her common way, with a kiss—no wonder that upon paying such a penalty her fond judge pardoned her.
When Mr. Esmond came home, his health was still shattered; and he took a lodging near to his mistresses, at Kensington, glad enough to be served by them, and to see them day after day. He was enabled to see a little company—and of the sort he liked best. Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison both did him the honor to visit him; and drank many a glass of good claret at his lodging, whilst their entertainer, through his wound, was kept to diet drink and gruel. These gentlemen were Whigs, and great admirers of my Lord Duke of Marlborough; and Esmond was entirely of the other party. But their different views of politics did not prevent the gentlemen from agreeing in private, nor from allowing, on one evening when Esmond’s kind old patron, Lieutenant-General Webb, with a stick and a crutch, hobbled up to the Colonel’s lodging (which was prettily situate at Knightsbridge, between London and Kensington, and looking over the Gardens), that the Lieutenant-General was a noble and gallant soldier—and even that he had been hardly used in the Wynendael affair. He took his revenge in talk, that must be confessed; and if Mr. Addison had had a mind to write a poem about Wynendael, he might have heard from the commander’s own lips the story a hundred times over.
Mr. Esmond, forced to be quiet, betook himself to literature for a relaxation, and composed his comedy, whereof the prompter’s copy lieth in my walnut escritoire, sealed up and docketed, The Faithful Fool, a Comedy, as It Was Performed by Her Majesty’s Servants. ’Twas a very sentimental piece; and Mr. Steele, who had more of that kind of sentiment than Mr. Addison, admired it, whilst the other rather sneered
