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And clearly again, as when I heard Uncle Esmond's voice that night on the tableland above the valley of the Santa Fé, I heard his gentle words: "Sometimes the things we long for in our dreams we must fight for, and even die for, that those who come after us may be the better for our having them."
Esmond's general and his Grace the Prince-Duke were notoriously at variance, and the former's friendship was in nowise likely to advance any man's promotion of whose services Webb spoke well; but rather likely to injure him, so the army said, in the favor of the greater man. However, Mr.
Esmond, looking calmly at the other, who did not, however, show the least sign of intelligence in his impenetrable gray eyes how well Harry remembered them and their look! only crows' feet were wrinkled round them marks of black old Time had settled there. Esmond's face chose to show no more sign of meaning than the Father's.
Tired of the political struggles in which he had been engaged, and annoyed by family circumstances in Europe, he preferred to establish himself in Virginia, where he took possession of a large estate conferred by King Charles I. upon his ancestor. Here Mr. Esmond's daughter and grandsons were born, and his wife died.
Under-Secretary would have stepped in and taken t'other bottle at the Colonel's lodging, had the latter invited him, but Esmond's mood was none of the gayest, and he bade his friend an inhospitable good-night at the door. "I have done the deed," thought he, sleepless, and looking out into the night; "he is here, and I have brought him; he and Beatrix are sleeping under the same roof now.
It was Colonel Esmond's nature, as he has owned in his own biography, always to be led by a woman; and, his wife dead, he coaxed and dandled and spoiled his daughter; laughing at her caprices, but humouring them; making a joke of her prejudices, but letting them have their way; indulging, and perhaps increasing, her natural imperiousness of character, though it was his maxim that we can't change dispositions by meddling, and only make hypocrites of our children by commanding them over-much.
"He's one of them usefulest men that keeps things going everywhere." "I saw a real Mexican come up out of the ravine awhile ago and go straight over toward Uncle Esmond's store. What do you suppose he came here for? Is he a soldier from down there?" I asked.
The management of the house of Castlewood had been in the hands of the active little lady long before the Colonel slept the sleep of the just. She now exercised a rigid supervision over the estate; dismissed Colonel Esmond's English factor and employed a new one; built, improved, planted, grew tobacco, appointed a new overseer, and imported a new tutor.
All the notice, then, which Lady Castlewood seemed to take of Harry Esmond's melancholy, upon Tom Tusher's departure, was, by a gayety unusual to her, to attempt to dispel his gloom. "For who knows," said the lady, "what may happen, and whether we may be able to keep such a learned tutor long?"
And it was we who fought with such weapons, and enlisted these allies! Now, the Indian panic over, Madam Esmond's courage returned: and she began to be seriously and not unjustly uneasy at the danger which I ran myself, and which I brought upon others, by remaining in Virginia. "What harm can they do me," says she, "a poor woman?
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