Boys and Girls From Thackeray | Page 7

awful. And when little Tom Tusher, his neighbour, came from school for his holiday, and said how he, too; like Harry, was to be bred up for an English priest, and would get a college scholarship and fellowship from his school, and then a good living--it tasked young Harry Esmond's powers of reticence not to say to his young companion, "Church! priesthood! fat living! My dear Tommy, do you call yours a church and a priesthood? What is a fat living compared to converting a hundred thousand heathens by a single sermon? What is a scholarship at Trinity by the side of a crown of martyrdom, with angels awaiting you as your head is taken off? Could your master at school sail over the Thames on his gown? Have you statues in your church that can bleed, speak, walk, and cry? My good Tommy, in dear Father Holt's church these things take place every day. You know Saint Philip of the Willows appeared to Lord Castlewood, and caused him to turn to the one true church. No saints ever come to you." And Harry Esmond, because of his promise to Father Holt, hiding away these treasures of faith from T. Tusher, delivered himself of them nevertheless simply to Father Holt; who stroked his head, smiled at him with his inscrutable look, and told him that he did well to meditate on these great things, and not to talk of them except under direction.
Had time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been properly nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest ere he was a dozen years older, and might have finished his days a martyr in China or a victim on Tower Hill; for, in the few months they spent together at Castlewood, Mr. Holt obtained an entire mastery over the boy's intellect and affections, and had brought him to think, as indeed Father Holt thought, with all his heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so desirable, as that which many brethren of his famous order were ready to undergo. By love, by a brightness of wit and good humour that charmed all, by an authority which he knew how to assume, by a mystery and silence about him which increased the child's reverence for him, he won Harry's absolute fealty, and would have kept it, doubtless, if schemes greater and more important than a poor little boy's admission into orders had not called him away.
After being at home for a few months in tranquillity, my Lord Castlewood and Lady Isabella left the country for London, taking Father Holt with them: and his little pupil scarce ever shed more bitter tears in his life than he did for nights after the first parting with his dear friend, as he lay in the lonely chamber next to that which the Father used to occupy. He and a few domestics were left as the only tenants of the great house: and, though Harry sedulously did all the tasks which the Father set him, he had many hours unoccupied, and read in the library, and bewildered his little brain with the great books he found there.
After a while, however, the little lad grew accustomed to the loneliness of the place; and in after days remembered this part of his life as a period not unhappy. When the family was at London the whole of the establishment travelled thither with the exception of the porter and his wife and children. These had their lodging in the gate-house hard by. with a door into the court. That with a window looking out on the green was the Chaplain's room; and next to this was a small chamber where Father Holt had his books, and Harry Esmond his sleeping-closet. The side of the house facing the east had escaped the guns of the Cromwellians, whose battery was on the height facing the western court; so that this eastern end bore few marks of demolition, save in the chapel, where the painted windows surviving Edward the Sixth had been broke by the Commonwealthmen. When Father Holt was at Castlewood little Harry Esmond acted as his familiar little servitor, beating his clothes, folding his vestments, fetching his water from the well long before daylight, ready to run anywhere for the service of his beloved priest. When the Father was away, he locked his private chamber; but the room where the books were was left to little Harry.
Great public events were happening at this time, of which the simple young page took little count. But one day, before the family went to London, riding into the neighbouring town on the step of my lady's coach, his lordship and she and Father Holt being inside, a great mob of people came hooting and jeering round