Boys and Girls From Thackeray | Page 7

into the one church and receive his
first communion, but when he might join that wonderful brotherhood,
which numbered the wisest, the bravest, the highest born, the most
eloquent of men among its members. Father Holt bade him keep his
views secret, and to hide them as a great treasure which would escape
him if it was revealed; and, proud of this confidence and secret vested
in him, the lad became fondly attached to the master who initiated him
into a mystery so wonderful and 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