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

“Let us have another bottle of riches,” says Harry, with a laugh. “Encore du cachet jaune, mon bon Monsieur Barbeau!” and exit Monsieur Barbeau to the caves below.

“Another bottle of riches! Capital, capital! How beautifully you speak French, Mr. Harry!”

“I do speak it well,” says Harry. “At least, when I speak, Monsieur Barbeau understands me well enough.”

“You do everything well, I think. You succeed in whatever you try. That is why they have fancied here you have won the hearts of so many women, sir.”

“There you go again about the women! I tell you I don't like these stories about women. Confound me, Sampson, why is a gentleman's character to be blackened so?”

“Well, at any rate, there is one, unless my eyes deceive me very much indeed, sir!” cries the chaplain.

“Whom do you mean?” asked Harry, flushing very red.

“Nay, I name no names. It isn't for a poor chaplain to meddle with his betters' doings, or to know their thoughts,” says Mr. Sampson.

“Thoughts! what thoughts, Sampson?”

“I fancied I saw, on the part of a certain lovely and respected lady at Castlewood, a preference exhibited. I fancied, on the side of a certain distinguished young gentleman, a strong liking manifested itself: but I may have been wrong, and ask pardon.”

“Oh, Sampson, Sampson!” broke out the young man. “I tell you I am miserable. I tell you I have been longing for some one to confide in, or ask advice of. You do know, then, that there has been something going on—something between me and—help Mr. Sampson, Monsieur Barbeau—and—and some one else?”

“I have watched it this month past,” says the chaplain.

“Confound me, sir, do you mean you have been a spy on me?” says the other hotly.

“A spy! You made little disguise of the matter, Mr. Warrington, and her ladyship wasn't a much better hand at deceiving. You were always together. In the shrubberies, in the walks, in the village, in the galleries of the house,—you always found a pretext for being together, and plenty of eyes besides mine watched you.”

“Gracious powers! What did you see, Sampson?” cries the lad.

“Nay, sir, 'tis forbidden to kiss and tell. I say so again,” says the chaplain.

The young man turned very red. “Oh, Sampson!” he cried, “can I—can I confide in you?”

“Dearest sir—dear generous youth—you know I would shed my heart's blood for you!” exclaimed the chaplain, squeezing his patron's hand, and turning a brilliant pair of eyes ceilingwards.

“Oh, Sampson! I tell you I am miserable. With all this play and wine, whilst I have been here, I tell you I have been trying to drive away care. I own to you that when we were at Castlewood there were things passed between a certain lady and me.”

The parson gave a slight whistle over his glass of Bordeaux.

“And they've made me wretched, those things have. I mean, you see, that if a gentleman has given his word, why, it's his word, and he must stand by it, you know. I mean that I thought I loved her,—and so I do very much, and she's a most dear, kind, darling, affectionate creature, and very handsome, too,—quite beautiful; but then, you know, our ages, Sampson! Think of our ages, Sampson! She's as old as my mother!”

“Who would never forgive you.”

“I don't intend to let anybody meddle in my affairs, not Madam Esmond nor anybody else,” cries Harry: “but you see, Sampson, she is old—and, oh, hang it! Why did Aunt Bernstein tell me——?”

“Tell you what?”

“Something I can't divulge to anybody, something that tortures me!”

“Not about the—the——” the chaplain paused: he was going to say about her ladyship's little affair with the French dancing-master; about other little anecdotes affecting her character. But he had not drunk wine enough to be quite candid, or too much, and was past the real moment of virtue.

“Yes, yes, every one of 'em false—every one of 'em!” shrieks out Harry.

“Great powers, what do you mean?” asks his friend.

“These, sir, these!” says Harry, beating a tattoo on his own white teeth. “I didn't know it when I asked her. I swear I didn't know it. Oh, it's horrible—it's horrible! and it has caused me nights of agony, Sampson. My dear old grandfather had a set a Frenchman at Charleston made them for him, and we used to look at 'em grinning in a tumbler, and when they were out, his jaws used to fall in—I never thought she had 'em.”

“Had what, sir?” again asked the chaplain.

“Confound it, sir, don't you see I mean teeth?” says Harry, rapping the table.

“Nay, only two.”

“And how the devil do you know, sir?” asks the young man, fiercely.

“I—I had it from her maid. She had two teeth knocked out by a stone which cut her lip a little, and they have been replaced.”

“Oh, Sampson, do you mean to say they ain't all sham ones?” cries the boy.

“But two, sir, at least so Peggy told me, and she would just as soon have blabbed about the whole two-and-thirty—the rest are as sound as yours, which are beautiful.”

“And her hair, Sampson, is that all right, too?” asks the young gentleman.

“'Tis lovely—I have seen that. I can take my oath to that. Her ladyship can sit upon it; and her figure is very fine; and her skin is as white as snow; and her heart is the kindest that ever was; and I know, that is I feel sure, it is very tender about you, Mr. Warrington.”

“Oh, Sampson! Heaven, Heaven bless you! What a weight you've taken off my mind with those—those—never mind them! Oh, Sam! How happy—that is, no, no—ob, how miserable I am! She's as old as Madam Esmond—by George she is—she's as old as my mother. You wouldn't have a fellow marry a woman as old as his mother? It's too bad: by George it is. It's too bad.” And here, I am sorry to say, Harry Esmond Warrington, Esquire, of Castlewood, in Virginia, began to cry. The delectable point, you see, must have been passed several glasses ago.

“You don't want to marry her, then?” asks the chaplain.

“What's that to you, sir? I've promised her, and an Esmond—a Virginia Esmond mind that—Mr. What's-your-name—Sampson—has but his word!” The sentiment was noble, but delivered by Harry with rather a doubtful articulation.

“Mind you, I said a Virginia Esmond,” continued poor Harry, lifting up his finger. “I don't mean the younger branch here. I don't mean Will, who robbed me about the horse, and whose bones I'll break. I give you