The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

table after the supper. Many and many a night, the Baroness said, she had drunk at that table by her father's side. “That was his place,” she pointed to the place where the Countess now sat. She saw none of the old plate. That was all melted to pay his gambling debts. She hoped, “Young gentlemen, that you don't play.”

“Never, on my word,” says Castlewood.

“Never, 'pon honour,” says Will—winking at his brother.

The Baroness was very glad to hear they were such good boys. Her face grew redder with the punch; and she became voluble, might have been thought coarse, but that times were different, and those critics were inclined to be especially favourable.

She talked to the boys about their father, their grandfather—other men and women of the house. “The only man of the family was that,” she said, pointing (with an arm that was yet beautifully round and white) towards the picture of the military gentleman in the red coat and cuirass, and great black periwig.

“The Virginian? What is he good for? I always thought he was good for nothing but to cultivate tobacco and my grandmother,” says my lord, laughing.

She struck her hand upon the table with an energy that made the glasses dance. “I say he was the best of you all. There never was one of the male Esmonds that had more brains than a goose, except him. He was not fit for this wicked, selfish old world of ours, and he was right to go and live out of it. Where would your father have been, young people, but for him?”

“Was he particularly kind to our papa?” says Lady Maria.

“Old stories, my dear Maria!” cries the Countess. “I am sure my dear Earl was very kind to him in giving him that great estate in Virginia.”

“Since his brother's death, the lad who has been here to-day is heir to that. Mr. Draper told me so! Peste! I don't know why my father gave up such a property.”

“Who has been here to-day?” asked the Baroness, highly excited.

“Harry Esmond Warrington, of Virginia,” my lord answered: “a lad whom Will nearly pitched into the river, and whom I pressed my lady the Countess to invite to stay here.”

“You mean that one of the Virginian boys has been to Castlewood, and has not been asked to stay here?”

“There is but one of them, my dear creature,” interposes the Earl. “The other, you know, has just been——”

“For shame, for shame!”

“Oh! it ain't pleasant, I confess, to be se——”

“Do you mean that a grandson of Henry Esmond, the master of this house, has been here, and none of you have offered him hospitality?”

“Since we didn't know it, and he is staying at the Castles?” interposes Will.

“That he is staying at the Inn, and you are sitting there!” cries the old lady. “This is too bad—call somebody to me. Get me my hood—I'll go to the boy myself. Come with me this instant, my Lord Castlewood.”

The young man rose up, evidently in wrath. “Madame the Baroness of Bernstein,” he said, “your ladyship is welcome to go; but as for me, I don't choose to have such words as 'shameful' applied to my conduct. I won't go and fetch the young gentleman from Virginia, and I propose to sit here and finish this bowl of punch. Eugene! Don't Eugene me, madam. I know her ladyship has a great deal of money, which you are desirous should remain in our amiable family. You want it more than I do. Cringe for it—I won't.” And he sank back in his chair.

The Baroness looked at the family, who held their heads down, and then at my lord, but this time without any dislike. She leaned over to him and said rapidly in German, “I had unright when I said the Colonel was the only man of the family. Thou canst, if thou willest, Eugene.” To which remark my lord only bowed.

“If you do not wish an old woman to go out at this hour of the night, let William, at least, go and fetch his cousin,” said the Baroness.

“The very thing I proposed to him.”

“And so did we—and so did we!” cried the daughters in a breath.

“I am sure, I only wanted the dear Baroness's consent!” said their mother, “and shall be charmed for my part to welcome our young relative.”

“Will! Put on thy pattens and get a lantern, and go fetch the Virginian,” said my lord.

“And we will have another bowl of punch when he comes,” says William, who by this time had already had too much. And he went forth—how we have seen; and how he had more punch; and how ill he succeeded in his embassy.

The worthy lady of Castlewood, as she caught sight of young Harry Warrington by the river-side, must have seen a very handsome and interesting youth, and very likely had reasons of her own for not desiring his presence in her family. All mothers are not eager to encourage the visits of interesting youths of nineteen in families where there are virgins of twenty. If Harry's acres had been in Norfolk or Devon, in place of Virginia, no doubt the good Countess would have been rather more eager in her welcome. Had she wanted him she would have given him her hand readily enough. If our people of ton are selfish, at any rate they show they are selfish; and, being cold-hearted, at least have no hypocrisy of affection.

Why should Lady Castlewood put herself out of the way to welcome the young stranger? Because he was friendless? Only a simpleton could ever imagine such a reason as that. People of fashion, like her ladyship, are friendly to those who have plenty of friends. A poor lad, alone, from a distant country, with only very moderate means, and those not as yet in his own power, with uncouth manners very likely, and coarse provincial habits; was a great lady called upon to put herself out of the way for such a youth? Allons donc! He was quite as well at the alehouse as at the castle.

This, no doubt, was her ladyship's opinion, which her kinswoman, the Baroness Bernstein, who knew her perfectly well, entirely understood. The Baroness, too, was a woman of the world, and, possibly, on occasion, could be as selfish as any other person of fashion. She fully understood the cause of the deference which all the Castlewood family showed to her—mother, and daughter, and sons,—and being a woman of great humour, played upon the dispositions of the various members of this family, amused herself with their greedinesses, their humiliations, their artless respect for her money-box, and clinging attachment to her purse. They were not very rich; Lady Castlewood's own money was settled on her children. The two elder had inherited nothing but flaxen heads from their German mother, and a pedigree of prodigious distinction. But those who had money, and those who had none, were alike eager for the Baroness's; in this matter the rich are surely quite as greedy as the poor.

So if Madam Bernstein struck her hand on the table, and caused the glasses