Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch - Hetty Wesley
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Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Hetty Wesley
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19 HETTY WESLEY.
by
ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH.
TO ANDREW LANG. A GOOD CHAMPION OF HETTY.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
BOOK III.
PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
EPILOGUE.
BOOK I.
PROLOGUE.
"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul?"
At Surat, by a window of his private office in the East India
Company's factory, a middle-aged man stared out upon the broad river
and the wharves below. Business in the factory had ceased for the
day: clerks and porters had gone about their own affairs, and had
left the great building strangely cool and empty and silent.
The wharves, too, were deserted--all but one, where a Hindu sat in
the shade of a pile of luggage, and the top of a boat's mast wavered
like the index of a balance above the edge of the landing-stairs.
The luggage belonged to the middle-aged man at the window: the boat
was to carry him down the river to the _Albemarle_, East Indiaman,
anchored in the roads with her Surat cargo aboard. She would sail
that night for Bombay and thence away for England.
He was ready; dressed for his journey in a loose white suit, which,
though designed for the East, was almost aggressively British.
A Cheapside tailor had cut it, and, had it been black or gray or
snuff-coloured instead of white, its wearer might have passed all the
way from the Docks to Temple Bar for a solid merchant on 'Change--a
self-respecting man, too, careless of dress for appearance' sake, but
careful of it for his own, and as part of a habit of neatness.
He wore no wig (though the date was 1723), but his own gray hair,
brushed smoothly back from a sufficiently handsome forehead and tied
behind with a fresh black ribbon. In his right hand he held a straw
hat, broad-brimmed like a Quaker's, and a white umbrella with a green
lining. His left fingered his clean-shaven chin as he gazed on the
river.
The ceremonies of leave-taking were done with and dismissed; so far
as he could, he had avoided them. He had ever been a hard man and
knew well enough that the clerks disliked him. He hated humbug.
He had come to India, almost forty years ago, not to make friends,
but to make a fortune. And now the fortune was made, and the room
behind him stood ready, spick and span, for the Scotsman who would
take his chair to-morrow. Drawers had been emptied and dusted, loose
papers and memoranda sorted and either burnt or arranged and
docketed, ledgers entered up to the last item in his firm
handwriting, and finally closed. The history of his manhood lay shut
between their covers, written in figures terser than a Roman classic:
his grand _coup_ in Nunsasee goods, Abdul Guffere's debt commuted for
500,000 rupees, the salvage of the _Ramillies_ wreck, his commercial
duel with Viltul Parrak . . . And the record had no loose ends.
He owed no man a farthing.
The door behind him opened softly and a small gray-headed man peered
into the room.
"Mr. Annesley, if I might take the liberty--"
"Ah, MacNab?" Samuel Annesley swung round promptly.
"I trust, sir, I do not intrude?"
"'Intrude,' man? Why?"
"Oh, nothing, sir," answered the little man vaguely, with a dubious
glance at Mr. Annesley's eyes. "Only I thought perhaps--at such a
moment--old scenes, old associations--and you leaving us for ever,
sir!"
"Tut, nonsense! You have something to say to me. Anything
forgotten?"
"Nothing in the way of business, sir. But it occurred to me--"
Mr. MacNab lowered his voice, "--Your good lady, up at the
burial-ground. You will excuse me--at such a time: but it may be
years before I am spared to return home, and if I can do anything in
the way of looking after the grave, I shall be proud. Oh no--" he
went on hurriedly with a flushed face: "for _love_, sir; for love, of
course: or, as I should rather say, for old sake's sake, if that's
not too bold. It would be a privilege, Mr. Annesley."
Samuel Annesley stood considering his late confidential clerk with
bent brows. "I am much obliged to you, MacNab; but in this matter
you must do as you please. You are right in supposing that I was
sincerely attached to my wife--"
"Indeed yes, sir."
"But I have none of the sentiment you give me credit for. 'Let the
dead bury the dead'--that is a text to which I have given some
attention of late, and I hope to profit by it in--in the future."
"Well, God bless you, Mr. Annesley!"
"I thank you. We are delaying the boat, I fear. No"--as Mr. MacNab
made an offer to accompany him--"I prefer to go alone. We have
shaken hands already. The room is ready for Mr. Menzies, when he
comes to-morrow. Good-bye."
A minute later Mr. MacNab, lingering by the window, saw him cross the
road to the landing-stage and stand for a moment in talk with the
Hindu, Bhagwan Dass. Then his straw hat disappeared down the steps.
The boat was pushed off; and Bhagwan Dass, after watching it for a
while, turned without emotion and came strolling across to the
factory.
On board the _Albemarle_ Mr. Annesley found the best cabin prepared
for him, as became his importance. He went below at once and was
only seen at meal-times during the short voyage to Bombay, a town
that of late years had almost eclipsed Surat in trade and importance.
Here Captain Bewes was to take in the bulk of his passengers and
cargo, and brought his vessel close alongside the Bund. During the
three days occupied in lading and stowing little order was
maintained, and the decks lay open to a promiscuous crowd of coolies
and porters, waterside loafers, beggars and thieves. The officers
kept an eye open for these last: the rest they tolerated until the
moment came for warping out, when the custom was to pipe all hands
and clear the ship of intruders by a general rush.
The first two days Mr. Annesley spent upon the poop, watching the mob
with a certain scornful interest. On the third he did not appear,
but was served with _tiffin_ in his cabin. At about six o'clock, the
second mate--a Mr. Orchard--sought the captain to report that all
was ready and waiting the word to cast off. His way led past
Mr. Annesley's cabin, and there he came upon an old mendicant
stooping over the door handle and making as if to enter and beg; whom
he clouted across the shoulders and cuffed up the companion-ladder.
Mr. Orchard afterwards remembered to have seen this same beggar man,
or the image of him, off and on during the two previous days, seated
asquat against a post on the Bund, and watching the _Albemarle_,
with his crutch and bowl beside him.
When the rush came, this old man, bent and blear-eyed, was swept
along the gangway like a chip on the tide. In pure lightness of
heart a sailor, posted at the head of the plank, expedited him with a
kick. "That'll do for good-bye to India," said he, grinning.
The old man showed no resentment, but was borne along bewildered,
gripping his bowl to his breast. On the quay's edge he seemed to
find his feet, and shuffled off towards the town, without once
looking back at the ship.
CHAPTER I.
"MILL--mill! A mill!"
At the entrance of Dean's Yard, Westminster, a small King's Scholar,
waving his gown and yelling, collided with an old gentleman hobbling
round the corner, and sat down suddenly in the gutter with a squeal,
as a bagpipe collapses. The old gentleman rotated on one leg like a
dervish, made an ineffectual stoop to clutch his gouty toe and wound
up by bringing his rattan cane smartly down on the boy's shoulders.
"Owgh! Owgh! Stand up, you young villain! My temper's hasty, and
here's a shilling-piece to cry quits. Stand up and tell me now--is
it Fire, Robbery, or Murder?"
The youngster pounced at the shilling, shook off the hand on his
collar, and darted down Little College Street to Hutton's Boarding
House, under the windows of which he pulled up and executed a
derisive war-dance.
"Hutton's, Hutton's,
Put up your buttons,
Hutton's are rottenly Whigs--"
"Mill--mill! Come out and carry home your Butcher Randall!
You'll be wanted when Wesley has done with him."
He was speeding back by this time, and flung this last taunt from a
safe distance. The old gentleman collared him again by the entry.
"Stop, my friend--here, hold hard for a moment! A fight, you said:
and Wesley--was it Wesley?"
The boy nodded.
"Charles Wesley?"
"Well, it wouldn't be Samuel--at _his_ age: now would it?" The boy
grinned. The Reverend Samuel Wesley was the respected Head Usher of
Westminster School.
"And what will Charles Wesley be fighting about?"
"How should I know? Because he wants to, belike. But I was told it
began up school, with Randall's flinging a book at young Murray for a
lousy Scotch Jacobite."
"H'm: and where will it be?"
The boy dropped his voice to a drawl. "In Fighting-green, I believe,
sir: they told me Poets' Corner was already bespoke for a turn-up
between the Dean and Sall the charwoman, with the Head Verger for
bottle-holder--"
"Now, look here, young jackanapes--" But young jackanapes, catching
sight of half a dozen boys--the vanguard of Hutton's--at the street
corner, ducked himself free and raced from vengeance across the yard.
The old gentleman followed; and the crowd from Hutton's, surging
past, showed him the way to Fighting-green where a knot of King's
Scholars politely made room for him, perceiving that in spite of his
small stature, his rusty wig and countrified brown suit, he was a
person of some dignity and no little force of character. They read
it perhaps in the set of his mouth, perhaps in the high aquiline arch
of his nose, which he fed with snuff as he gazed round the ring while
the fighters rested, each in his corner, after the first round: for a
mill at Westminster was a ceremonious business, and the Head Master
had been known to adjourn school for one.
"H'm," said the newcomer; "no need to ask which is Wesley."
His eyes set deep beneath brows bristling like a wire-haired
terrier's--were on the boy in the farther corner, who sat on his
backer's knee, shoeless, stripped to the buff, with an angry red mark
on the right breast below the collar-bone; a slight boy and a trifle
undersized, but lithe, clear-skinned, and in the pink of condition; a
handsome boy, too. By his height you might have guessed him under
sixteen, but his face set you doubting. There are faces almost
uncannily good-looking: they charm so confidently that you shrink
from predicting the good fortune they claim, and bethink you that the
gods' favourites are said to die young: and Charles Wesley's was such
a face. He tightened the braces about his waist and stepped forward
for the second round with a sweet and serious smile. Yet his mouth
meant business.
Master Randall--who stood near three inches taller--though nicknamed
"Butcher," was merely a dull heavy-shouldered Briton, dogged, hard to
beat; the son of a South Sea merchant, retired and living at Barnet,
who swore by Walpole and King George. But at Westminster these
convictions--and, confound it! they were the convictions of England,
after all--met with scurrilous derision; and here Master Randall
nursed a dull and inarticulate resentment in a world out of joint,
where the winning side was a butt for epigrams. To win, and be
laughed at! To have the account reopened in lampoons and witticisms,
contemptible but irritating, when it should be closed by the mere act
of winning! It puzzled him, and he brooded over it, turning sulky in
the end, not vicious. It was in no viciousness that he had flung a
book at young Murray's head and called him a lousy Jacobite, but
simply to provoke Wesley and get his grievance settled by
intelligible weapons, such as fists.
He knew his to be the unpopular side, and that even Freind, the Head
Master, would chuckle over the defeat of a Whig. Outside of
Hutton's, who cheered him for the honour of their house, he had few
well-wishers; but among them was a sprinkling of boys bearing the
great Whig names--Cowpers, Sackvilles, Osborns--for whose sake and
for its own tradition the ring would give him fair play.
The second round began warily, Wesley sparring for an opening,
Randall defensive, facing round and round, much as a bullock fronts a
terrier. He knew his game; to keep up his guard and wait for a
chance to get in with his long left. He was cunning, too; appeared
slower than he was, tempting the other to take liberties, and,
towards the end of the round, to step in a shade too closely. It was
but a shade. Wesley, watching his eye, caught an instant's warning,
flung his head far back and sprang away--not quickly enough to avoid
a thud on the ribs. It rattled him, but did no damage, and it taught
him his lesson.
Round 3. Tempted in turn by his slight success, Randall shammed slow
again. But once bitten is twice shy, and this time he overreached
himself, in two senses. His lunge, falling short, let in the little
one, who dealt him a double knock--rap, rap, on either side of the
jaw--before breaking away. Stung out of caution he rushed and
managed to close, but took a third rap which cut his upper lip.
First blood to Wesley. The pair went to grass together, Randall on
top. But it was the Tories who cheered.
Round 4. Randall, having bought his experience, went back to sound
tactics. This and the next two rounds were uninteresting and quite
indecisive, though at the end of them Wesley had a promising black
eye and Randall was bleeding at mouth and nose. The old gentleman
rubbed his chin and took snuff. This Fabian fighting was all against
the lighter weight, who must tire in time.
Yet he did not look like tiring, but stepped out for Round 7 with the
same inscrutable smile. Randall met it with a shame-faced grin--
really a highly creditable, good-natured grin, though the blood about
his mouth did its meaning some injustice. And with this there
happened that which dismayed many and puzzled all. Wesley's fists
went up, but hung, as it were impotent for the moment, while his eyes
glanced aside from his adversary's and rested, with a stiffening of
surprise, on the corner of the ring where the old gentleman stood.
A cry went up from the King's Scholars--a groan and a warning.
At the sound he flung back his head instinctively--as Randall's left
shot out, caught him on the apple of the throat, and drove him
staggering back across the green.
The old gentleman snapped down the lid of his snuffbox, and at the
same moment felt a hand gripping him by the elbow. "Now, how the--"
he began, turning as he supposed to address a Westminster boy, and
found himself staring into the face of a lady.
He had no time to take stock of her. And although her fingers
pinched his arm, her eyes were all for the fight.
It had been almost a knock-down; but young Wesley just saved himself
by touching the turf with his fingertips and, resting so, crouched
for a spring. What is more, he timed it beautifully; helped by
Randall himself, who followed up at random, demoralised by the happy
fluke and encouraged by the shouts of Hutton's to "finish him off."
In the fall Wesley had most of his remaining breath thumped out of
him; but this did not matter. He had saved the round.
The old gentleman nodded. "Well recovered: very pretty--very pretty
indeed!" He turned to the lady. "I beg your pardon, madam--"
"I beg yours, sir." She withdrew her hand from his arm.
"If he can swallow that down, he may win yet."
"Please God!"
She stood almost a head taller than he, and he gazed up into a
singularly noble face, proud and strong, somewhat pinched about the
lips, but having such eyes and brows as belong to the few accustomed
to confront great thoughts. It gave her the ineffable touch of
greatness which more than redeemed her shabby black gown and antique
bonnet; and, on an afterthought, the old gentleman decided that it
must have been beautiful in its day. Just now it was pale, and one
hand clutched the silk shawl crossed upon her bosom. He noted, too,
that the hand was shapely, though roughened with housework where the
mitten did not hide it.
She had scarcely glanced at him, and after a while he dropped his
scrutiny and gazed with her across the ring.
"H'm," said he, "dander up, this time!"
"Yes," the lady answered, "I know that look, sir, though I have never
seen it on _him_. And I trust to see him wear it, one day, in a
better cause."
"Tut, madam, the cause is good enough. You don't tell me I'm talking
to a Whig?--not that I'd dispute with a lady, Whig or Tory."
"A Whig?" She fetched up a smile: she had evidently a reserve of
mirth. "Indeed, no: but I was thinking, sir, of the cause of
Christ."
"Oh!" said the old gentleman shortly, and took snuff.
They were right. Young Wesley stepped out this time with a honeyed
smile, but with a new-born light in his hazel eyes--a demoniac light,
lambent and almost playful. Master Randall, caressed by them, read
the danger signal a thought too late. A swift and apparently
reckless feint drew another of his slogging strokes, and in a flash
the enemy was under his guard. Even so, for the fraction of a
second, victory lay in his arms, a clear gift to be embraced: a quick
crook of the elbow, and Master Wesley's head and neck would be snugly
in Chancery. Master Wesley knew it--knew, further, that there was no
retreat, and that his one chance hung on getting in his blow first
and disabling with it. He jabbed it home with his right, a little
below the heart: and in a second the inclosing fore-arm dragged limp
across his neck. He pressed on, aiming for the point of the jaw; but
slowly lowered his hands as Randall tottered back two steps with a
face of agony, dropped upon one knee, clutching at his breast, and so
to the turf, where he writhed for a moment and fainted.
As the ring broke up, cheering, and surged across the green, the old
gentleman took snuff again and snapped down the lid of his box.
"Good!" said he; then to the lady, "Are you a relative of his?"
"I am his mother, sir."
CHAPTER II.
She moved across the green to the corner where Charles was coolly
sponging his face and chest over a basin. "In a moment, ma'am!" said
he, looking up with a twinkle in his eye as the boys made way for
her.
She read the meaning of it and smiled at her own mistake as she drew
back the hand she had put out to take the sponge from him. He was
her youngest, and she had seen him but twice since, at the age of
eight, he had left home for Westminster School. In spite of the
evidence of her eyes he was a small child still--until his voice
warned her.
She drew back her hand at once. Boys scorn any show of feeling, even
between mother and son; and Charles should not be ridiculed on her
account. So he sponged away and she waited, remembering how she had
taught him, when turned a year old, to cry softly after a whipping.
Ten children she had brought up in a far Lincolnshire parsonage, and
without sparing the rod; but none had been allowed to disturb their
father in his study where he sat annotating the Scriptures or turning
an heroic couplet or adding up his tangled household accounts.
A boy pushed through the group around the basin, with news that
Butcher Randall had come-to from his swoon and wished to shake hands:
and almost before Charles could pick up a towel and dry himself the
fallen champion appeared with a somewhat battered grin.
"No malice," he mumbled: "nasty knock--better luck next time."
"Come, I say!" protested Charles, shaking hands and pulling a mock
face, "Is there going to be a next time?"
"Well, you don't suppose I'm _convinced_--" Randall began: but Mrs.
Wesley broke in with a laugh.
"There's old England for you!" She brought her mittened palms
together as if to clap them, but they rested together in the very
gesture of prayer. "'Won't be convinced,' you say? but oh, when it's
done you are worth it! Nay--don't hide your face, sir! Wounds for
an honest belief are not shameful, and I can only hope that in your
place my son would have shown so fair a temper."
"Whe-ew!" one of the taller boys whistled. "It's Wesley's mother!"
"She was watching, too: the last two rounds at any rate. I saw her."
"And I."
"--And so cool it might have been a dog-fight in Tuttle Fields.
Your servant, ma'am!" The speaker made her a boyish bow and lifted
his voice: "Three cheers for Mrs. Wesley!"
They were given--the first two with a will. The third tailed off;
and Mrs. Wesley, looking about her, laughed again as the boys,
suddenly turned shy or overtaken by a sense of delicacy, backed away
sheepishly and left her alone with her son.
"Put on your shirt," said she, and again her hand went out to help
him. "I want you to take a walk with me."
Charles nodded. "Have you seen Sam?"
"Yes. You may kiss me now, dear--there's nobody looking. I left him
almost an hour ago: his leg is mending, but he cannot walk with us.
He promises, though, to come to Johnson's Court this evening--I
suppose, in a sedan-chair--and greet your uncle Annesley, whom I have
engaged to take back to supper. You knew, of course, that I should
be lodging there?"
"Sammy--we call him Sammy--told me on Sunday, but could not say when
you would be arriving here."
"I reached London last night, and this morning your uncle Matthew
came to my door with word that the _Albemarle_ had entered the river.
I think you are well enough to walk to the Docks with me."
"Well enough? Of course I am. But why not take a waterman from the
stairs here?"
"'Twill cost less to walk and hire a boat at Blackwall, if necessary.
Your father could give me very little money, Charles. We seem to be
as poorly off as ever."
"And this uncle Annesley--" he began, but paused with a glance at his
mother, whose face had suddenly grown hot. "What sort of a man is
he?"
"My boy," she said with an effort, "I must not be ashamed to tell my
child what I am not ashamed to hope. He is rich: he once promised to
do much for Emmy and Sukey, and these promises came to nothing.
But now that his wife is dead and he comes home with neither chick
nor child, I see no harm in praying that his heart may be moved
towards his sister's children. At least I shall be frank with him
and hide not my hope, let him treat it as he will." She was silent
for a moment. "Are _all_ women unscrupulous when they fight for
their children? They cannot all be certain, as I am, that their
children were born for greatness: and yet, I wonder sometimes--"
She wound up with a smile which held something of a playful irony,
but more of sadness.
"Jacky could not come with you?"
"No, and he writes bitterly about it. He is tied to Oxford--by lack
of pence, again."
By this time Charles had slipped on his jacket, and the pair stepped
out into the streets and set their faces eastward. Mrs. Wesley was
cockney-bred and delighted in the stir and rush of life. She, the
mother of many children, kept a well-poised figure and walked with
the elastic step of a maid; and as she went she chatted, asking a
score of shrewd questions about Westminster--the masters, the food,
the old dormitory in which Charles slept, the new one then rising to
replace it; breaking off to recognise some famous building, or to
pause and gaze after a company of his Majesty's guards. Her own
masterful carriage and unembarrassed mode of speech--"as if all
London belonged to her," Charles afterwards described it--drew the
stares of the passers-by; stares which she misinterpreted, for in the
gut of the Strand, a few paces beyond Somerset House, she suddenly
twirled the lad about and "Bless us, child, your eye's enough to
frighten the town! 'Tis to be hoped brother Sam has not turned
Quaker in India; or that Sally the cook-maid has a beefsteak handy."
Mr. Matthew Wesley, apothecary and by courtesy "surgeon," to whose
house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, they presently swerved aside,
had not returned from his morning's round of visits. He was a
widower and took his meals irregularly. But Sally had two covers
laid, with a pot of freshly drawn porter beside each; and here, after
Charles's eye had been attended to and the swelling reduced, they ate
and drank and rested for half an hour before resuming their walk.
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