Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch - Hetty Wesley

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"You certainly may _not_ ask, Mr. Wright." The danger-signal
twinkled for a moment under the Rector's brows; but he repressed it
and turned towards a cupboard in the wall, where in a drawer lay
fifteen pounds, ten of which he had designed to send to Oxford.
"Twelve pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence, I think you said?"

"Never mind the bill, sir, for a moment. And about Miss Hetty I'll
ask ye no questions if you forbid it: but something I came to say,
and it'll have to be said. First of all I want to be clear with you
that I had no hand in this affair. On the contrary, I saw it coming
and warned her against the fellow."

"I have not the least need of your assurance. I did not even know
you were acquainted--"

"No, you don't need it; but I need to give it. _Very_ well: now
comes my point. Here's a young lady beautiful as roses, _and_ that
accomplished, _and_ that thoroughbred she makes an honest tradesman
feel like dirt to look upon her. Oh, you needn't to stare, sir!
William Wright knows breeding when he sees it, in man or beast; and
as for feeling like dirt, why there's a sort of pleasure in it, if
you understand me."

"I do not."

"No: I don't suppose you do. You're not the sort of man to feel like
dirt before anyone--not before King George on his throne. But you
may take my word for it there's a kind of man that likes it: when he
looks at a woman, I mean. 'Take care, my lady,' I said; 'you're
delicate and proud now, and as dainty as a bit of china. But once
you fall off the shelf--well, down you go, and 'tis all over but the
broom and the dust-heap. There you'll lie, with no man to look at
you; worse than the coarsest pint-pot a man will drink out of.'
You understand me now, Mr. Wesley?"

"I do, sir, to my sorrow, but--"

"But that's just where you're wrong--you _don't_!" Mr. Wright cried
triumphantly, and pursued with an earnestness which held Mr. Wesley
still in his chair. "I'll swear to you, sir, that if I could have
stopped this, I would: ay, though it killed my only chance. But I
couldn't. The thing's done. And I tell you, sir"--his face was
flushed now, and his voice shaking--"broken as she is, I do worship
Miss Hetty beyond any woman in the world. I do worship her as if she
had tumbled slap out of heaven. I--I--there you have it, any way: so
if you'll leave talking about the little account between us--"

Mr. Wesley stood up, drew out his keys, opened the cupboard and began
counting the sum out upon the table.

"You misunderstand me, sir: indeed you do!" Mr. Wright protested.

"Maybe," answered the Rector grimly. "But I happen to be consulting
my own choice. Twelve pounds seventeen and sixpence, I think you
said? You had best sit down and write out a receipt."

"But why interrupt a man, sir, when he's thinking of higher things,
and with his hand 'most too shaky to hold a pen?"

The Rector walked to the window and stood waiting while the receipt
was made out: then took the paper, went to the cupboard and filed it,
locked the door and resumed his seat.

"Now, sir, let me understand your further business. You desire, I
gather, to marry my daughter Mehetabel?"

Mr. Wright gasped and swallowed something in his throat. Put into
words, his audacity frightened him. "That's so, sir," he managed to
answer.

"Knowing her late conduct?"

"If I didn't," Mr. Wright answered frankly, "I shouldn't ha' been
fool enough to come."

"You are a convinced Christian?"

"I go to church off and on, if that's what you mean, sir."

"'Tis not in the least what I mean, Mr. Wright."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't go oftener."

"There is every reason why you should. You are able to maintain my
daughter?"

"I pay my way, sir; though hard enough it is for an honest tradesman
in these times." Insensibly he dropped into the tone of one pressing
for payment. The Rector regarded him with brows drawn down and the
angry light half-veiled, but awake in his eyes now and growing.
Mr. Wright, looking up, read danger and misread it as threatening
_him_. "Indeed, sir," he broke out, courageously enough, "I feel for
you: I do, indeed. It seems strange enough to _me_ to be standing
here and asking you for such a thing. But when a man feels as I do
t'ards Miss Hetty he don't know himself: he'll go and do that for
which he'd call another man a fool. Kick me to doors if you want to:
I can't help it. All I tell you is, I worship her from the top of
her pretty head to her shoe-strings; and if she were wife of mine she
should neither wash nor scrub, cook nor mend; but a room I would make
for her, and chairs and cushions she should have to sit on, and books
to read, and pens and paper to write down her pretty thoughts; and
not a word of the past, but me looking up to her and proud all the
days of my life, and studying to make her comfortable, like the lady
she is!"

During this remarkable speech Mr. Wesley sat without a smile. At the
end of it, he lifted a small handbell from the writing-table and rang
it twice.

Mr. Wright made sure that this was a signal for his dismissal.
He mopped his face. "Well, it can't be helped. I've been a fool, no
doubt: but you've had it straight from me, as between man and man."

He picked up his hat and was turning to go, when the door opened and
Mrs. Wesley appeared.

"My dear," said the Rector, "the name of this honest man is Wright--
Mr. William Wright, a plumber, of Lincoln. To my surprise he has
just done me the honour of offering to marry Mehetabel."

Mrs. Wesley turned from the bowing Mr. Wright and fastened on her
husband a look incredulous but scared.

"I need scarcely say he is aware of--of the event which makes his
offer an extremely generous one."

The signal in the Rector's eyes was blazing now. His wife rested her
hand on a chair-back to gain strength against she knew not what.
Mr. Wright smiled, vaguely apologetic; and the smile made him look
exceedingly foolish; but she saw that the man was in earnest.

"I think," pursued Mr. Wesley, aware of her terror, aware of the pain
he took from his own words, but now for the moment fiercely enjoying
both--"I think," he pursued slowly, "there can be no question of our
answer. I must, of course, make inquiry into your circumstances, and
assure myself that I am not bestowing Mehetabel on an evil-liver.
Worthless as she is, I owe her this precaution, which you must
pardon. I will be prompt, sir. In two days, if you return, you
shall have my decision; and if my inquiries have satisfied me--as I
make no doubt they will--my wife and I can only accept your offer and
express our high sense of your condescension."

Mr. Wright gazed, open-mouthed, from husband to wife. He saw that
Mrs. Wesley was trembling, but her eyes held no answer for him.
He was trembling too.

"You mean that I'm to come along?" he managed to stammer.

"I do, sir. On the day after to-morrow you may come for my answer.
Meanwhile--"

Mr. Wright never knew what words the Rector choked down. They would
have surprised him considerably. As it was, reading his dismissal in
a slight motion of Mrs. Wesley's hand, he made his escape; but had to
pull himself up on the front doorstep to take his bearings and assure
himself that he stood on his feet.

CHAPTER VII.

"She graced my humble roof and blest my life,
Blest me by a far greater name than wife;
Yet still I bore an undisputed sway,
Nor was't her task, but pleasure, to obey;
Scarce thought, much less could act, what I denied.
In our low house there was no room for pride:" etc.
The Rev. Samuel Wesley's Verses of his Wife.

"It is an unhappiness almost peculiar to our family that your
father and I seldom think alike. . . ."

"I am, I believe, got on the right side of fifty, infirm and
weak; yet, old as I am, since I have taken my husband 'for
better, for worse,' I'll take my residence with him: where he
lives, I will live: and where he dies, will I die: and there
will I be buried. God do so unto me and more also, if aught
but death part him and me."
Mrs. Wesley's Letters.

Mrs. Wesley guessed well enough what manner of words her husband had
choked down. She stood and watched his face, waiting for him to lift
his eyes. But he refused obstinately to lift them, and went on
rearranging with aimless fingers the pens and papers on his
writing-table. At length she plucked up her courage. "Husband," she
said, "let us take counsel together. We are in a plight that wrath
will not cure: but, be angry as you will, we cannot give Hetty to
this man."

It needed but this. He fixed his eyes on hers now, and the light in
them first quivered, then grew steady as a beam. "Did you hear me
give my promise?" he demanded.

"You had no right to promise it."

"I do not break promises. And I take others at their word. Has she,
or has she not, vowed herself ready to marry the first honest man who
will take her; ay, and to thank him?"

"She was beside herself. We cannot take advantage of such a vow."

"You are stripping her of the last rag of honour. I prefer to credit
her with courage at least: to believe that she hands me the knife and
says, 'cut out this sore.' But wittingly or no she has handed it to
me, and by heaven, ma'am, I will use it!"

"It will kill her."

"There are worse things than death."

"But if--if the _other_ should seek her and offer atonement--"

Mr. Wesley pacing the room with his hands beneath his coat-tails,
halted suddenly and flung up both arms, as a man lifts a stone to
dash it down.

"What! Accept a favour from _him_! Have you lived with me these
years and know me so little? And can you fear God and think to save
your daughter out of hell by giving her back her sin, to rut in it?"

Mrs. Wesley shook her head helplessly. "Let her be punished, then,
in God's natural way! Vengeance is His, dear: ah, do not take it out
of His hands in your anger, I beseech you!"

"God for my sins made me her father, and gave me authority to
punish." He halted again and cried suddenly, "Do you think this is
not hurting me!"

"Pause then, for it is His warning. Who _is_ this man? What do you
know of him? To think of him and Hetty together makes my flesh
creep!"

"Would you rather, then, see her--" But at sound of a sobbing cry
from her, he checked the terrible question. "You are trying to
unnerve me. 'Who is he?' you ask. That is just what I am going to
find out." At the door he turned. "We have other children to think
of, pray you remember. I will harbour no wantons in my house."

CHAPTER VIII.

At first Hetty walked swiftly across the fields, not daring to look
back. "Is it he?" she kept asking herself, and as often cried out
against the hope. She had no right to pray as she was praying: it
was suing God to make Himself an accomplice in sin. She ought to
hate the man, yet--God forgive her!--she loved him still. Was it
possible to love and despise together? If he should come. . . .
She caught herself picturing their meeting. He would follow across
the fields in search of her. She would hear his footstep. Yet she
would not turn at once--he should not see how her heart leapt.
He would overtake her, call her by name. . . . She must not be proud:
just proud enough to let him see how deep the wrong had been.
But she would be humble too. . . .

She heard no footsteps. No voice called her. Unable to endure it
longer, she came to a standstill and looked back. Between her and
the parsonage buildings the wide fields were empty. She could see
the corner of the woodstack. No one stood there. Away to the left
two figures diminished by distance followed a footpath arm-in-arm--
John Lambert and Nancy.

A great blackness fell on her. She had no pride now; she turned and
went slowly back, not to the parsonage, but aslant by the bank of a
dyke leading to the highroad along which, a few hours ago, she had
returned so wearily. She must watch and discover what man it was who
had come with John Lambert.

Before she reached the low bridge by the road, she heard a tune
whistled and a man's footfall approaching--not _his_. She supposed
it to be one of the labourers, and in a sudden terror hid herself
behind an ash-bole on the brink.

The man went by, still whistling cheerfully. She peered around the
tree and watched him as he retreated--a broad-shouldered man,
swinging a cudgel. A hundred yards or less beyond her tree he
halted, with his back to her, in the middle of the road, and stayed
his whistling while he made two or three ludicrous cuts with his
cudgel at the empty air. This pantomime over, he resumed his way.

She recognised him by so much of his back as showed over the dwarf
hedge. It was William Wright.

Was it _he_, then, who had come with John Lambert? Hetty sat down by
the tree, and, with her eyes on the slow water in the dyke, began to
think.

To be sure, this man might have come to Wroote merely for his money.
Yet (as she firmly believed) it was he who had written the letter
which in effect had led to her running away. He might have used the
debt to-day as a pretext. His motive, she felt certain, was
curiosity to learn what his letter had brought about.

She bore him no grudge. He had fired the train--oh, no doubt!
But she was clear-sighted now, saw that the true fault after all was
hers, and would waste no time in accusing others. Very soon she
dismissed him from her mind. In all the blank hopelessness of her
fall from hope she put aside self-pity, and tasked herself to face
the worst. To Emilia and Nancy she had spoken lightly, as if
scarcely alive to her dreadful position, still less alive to her sin.
They had misunderstood her: but in truth she had spoken so on the
instinct of self-defence. Real defence she had none.

She knew she had none. And let it be said here that she saw no
comfortable hope in religion. She had listened to a plenty of
doctrine from her early childhood: but somehow the mysteries of God
had seldom occupied her thoughts, never as bearing directly on the
questions of daily life. If asked, for example, "did she believe in
the Trinity?" or "did she believe in justification by faith?" she
would have answered "yes," without hesitating for a moment. But in
fact these high teachings lay outside her private religion, which
amounted to this--"God is all-seeing and omnipotent. To please Him I
must be good; and being good gives me pleasure in turn, for I feel
that His eye is upon me and He approves. He is terribly stern: but
all-merciful too. If, having done wrong, I go to Him contritely, and
repent, He will give me a chance to amend my ways, and if I honestly
strive to amend them, He will forgive." In short--and perhaps
because the word "Father" helped to mislead--she had made for herself
an image of God by exalting and magnifying all that she saw best in
her parents. And this view of Him her parents had confirmed
insensibly, in a thousand trifles, by laying constant daily stress
upon good conduct, and by dictating it and judging her lapses with an
air of calm authority, which took for granted that what pleased them
was exactly what would please God.

So now, having done that which her mother and father could not
forgive, at first she hardly dared to hope that God could by any
means forgive it. In the warm sunlight of loving she had seen for a
while that her father and mother were not always wise; nay, long
beforehand in her discontent she had been groping towards this
discovery. But now that the sunshine had proved a cruel cheat, she
ran back in dismay upon the old guide-posts, and they pointed to a
hell indeed.

She had been wicked. She craved to be good. She remembered Mary
Magdalene, whom Christ had forgiven, and caught at a hope for
herself. But why had Christ forgiven Mary? Because she had been
sorry, and turned and walked the rest of her life in goodness?
Because He had foreseen her long atonement? So Hetty believed.
For her, too, then the way back to forgiveness lay through conduct--
always through conduct; and for her the road stretched long, for not
until death could she reach assurance. Of a way to forgiveness
through faith (though she must have heard of it a hundred times) she
scarcely thought; still less of a way through faith to instant
assurance. To those who have not travelled by that road its end--
though promised on the honour of God and proclaimed incessantly by
those who have travelled and found it--seems merely incredible.
Hardly can man or woman, taught from infancy to suspect false guides,
trust these reports of a country where to believe and to have are
one.

Hetty sat by the tree and saw the road beyond her, that it was steep
and full of suffering. But for this she did not refuse it: she
desired it rather. She saw also, that along it was no well of
forgiveness to refresh her; the thirst must endure till she reached
the end and went down in darkness to the river. This, too, she must
endure, God in mercy helping her. What daunted her was conscience
whispering that she had as yet no right to that mercy, no right even
to tread the road. For though her sin was abhorrent, in her heart
she loved her fellow-sinner yet. A sound of hoofs aroused her.
Still screened by her tree, she saw her father trot by on the filly.
In spite of the warm settled weather he carried his cloak before him
strapped across the holsters. His ride, therefore, would be a long
one; to Gainsborough at least--or to Lincoln?

She lifted her head and sat erect in a sharp terror. Was her father
going to seek _him_? She had not thought of this as possible.
And if so--

Leaping up she ran into the open and gazed after him, as though the
sight of his bobbing figure could resolve her crowding surmises.
For a minute and more she stood, gazing so; and then, turning, was
aware of her mother coming slowly towards her across the wide field.

A number of shallow ditches, dry at this season, crossed the fields
in parallels; and at each of these Mrs. Wesley picked up her skirts.
"How young she is!" was Hetty's thought as she came nearer, and it
rose--purely from habit--above her own misery. Hetty was one of
those women who admire other women ungrudgingly. She knew herself to
be beautiful, yet in her eyes her mother had always the mien of a
goddess.

For her mother's character, too, she had the deepest, tenderest
respect. But it was the respect of a critic rather than of a child,
and touched with humorous wonder. She knew her firmness of judgment,
her self-control, her courage in poverty, the secret ardent piety
illuminating her commonest daily actions; she knew how perfectly
designed that character was for masculine needs, how strong for
guidance the will even in yielding--but alas! how feeble to help a
daughter!

"Your father is riding to Lincoln," said Mrs. Wesley as she drew
near. Hetty scanned her closely, but read no encouragement in her
face. She fell back on the tone she had used with Emilia and Nancy;
knowing, however, that this time it would not be misunderstood.
"I saw that he had taken his cloak with him," she answered.
"Be frank with me, mother. You would be frank, you know, with Jacky
or Charles, if they were in trouble; whereas now you are not looking
me in the face, and your own is white."

Mrs. Wesley did not answer, but walked with Hetty back to the tree
and, at a sign, seated herself on the bank beside her, with her eyes
on the road.

"I have been sitting here for quite a long time," began Hetty, after
a pause, and went on lightly. "Before father passed a tradesman went
by--a man called Wright." She paused again as Mrs. Wesley's hands
made an involuntary movement in her lap. "He has a bill against
father; he called with it on the evening you came back from London.
Is father riding after him to pay it?"

"What do you know of that man?" Mrs. Wesley muttered, with her head
turned aside and her hands working.

"Very little; yet enough to suspect more than you guess," said Hetty
calmly.

But her mother showed her now a face she had not looked to see.

"You know, then?--but no, you cannot!"

It was Hetty's turn to show a face of alarm. "What is it, dear? I
thought--indeed I know--he had a notion about me--how I was
behaving--and wrote a letter to father. But that cannot matter now.
Is there anything worse? I understood he had merely an account
against father; an ordinary bill. It _is_ something worse--oh, tell
me! Father is riding after him! I see it in your face. What is
this trouble which I have added to?"

"The debt is paid, I believe," answered Mrs. Wesley; but she shook as
she said it.

"Yet father is riding after him. What is the matter? Let me see
your eyes!"

But her mother would not. In the long silence, looking at her,
slowly--very slowly--Hetty understood. After understanding there
followed another long silence, until Hetty drew herself up against
the bole of the tree and shivered.

"Come back to the house, mother. You had best take my arm."

CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Wesley slept that night at Lincoln, and rode back the next
afternoon, reaching Wroote a little before nightfall. After stabling
the filly he went straight to his study. Thither, a few minutes
later, Mrs. Wesley carried his supper on a tray. He kissed her, but
she saw at once from his manner that he would not talk, that he
wished to be alone.

Hetty and Molly sat upstairs in the dusk of the garret, speaking
little. Molly had exhausted her strength for the while and argued no
more, but leaned back in her chair with a hand laid on Hetty's
forehead, who--crouching on the floor against her knee--drew down the
nerveless fingers, fondled them one by one against her cheek, and
kissed them, thinking her own thoughts.

Downstairs a gloom, a breathless terror almost, brooded over the
circle by the kitchen hearth. They knew of Hetty's probable fate--
the sentence to be pronounced to-morrow; they had whispered it one to
another, and while they condemned her it awed them.

Soon after nine Johnny Whitelamb came in from the fields where for
two hours he had been walking fiercely but quite aimlessly.
Great drops of sweat stood out on his temples, over which his hair
fell lank and clammy. His shoes and stockings were dusted over with
fine earth. He did not speak, but lit his candle and went off to his
bed-cupboard under the stairs.

Before ten o'clock the rest of the family crept away to bed.
Mr. Wesley sat on in his study. This was the night of the week on
which he composed his Sunday morning's sermon. He wrote at it
steadily until midnight.

Next morning, about an hour after breakfast, Mrs. Wesley heard the
hand-bell rung in the study--the sound for which (it seemed to her)
she had been listening in affright for two long days. She went at
once. In the passage she met Johnny Whitelamb coming out.

"I am to fetch Miss Hetty," he whispered with a world of dreadful
meaning.

But for once Johnny was not strictly obedient. Instead of seeking
Hetty he went first across the farmyard and through a small gate
whence a path took him to a duck-pond at an angle of the kitchen
garden, and just outside its hedge. A pace or two from the brink
stood a grindstone in a wooden frame; and here, on the grindstone
handle, sat Molly watching the ducks.

"He has sent for her," announced Johnny, and glanced towards the
kitchen-garden. "Is she there?"

Molly rose with a set face. She did not answer his question.

"You must give me ten minutes," she said. "Ten minutes; on no
account must you bring her sooner."

She limped off towards the house.

So it happened that as Mr. and Mrs. Wesley stood and faced each other
across the writing-table they heard a gentle knock, and, turning with
a start, saw the door open and Molly walk boldly into the room.

"We are busy," said the Rector sharply, recovering himself. "I did
not send for you."

"I know it," Molly answered; "but I am come first to explain."

"If you are here to speak for your sister, I wish to hear no
explanations."

"I know it," Molly answered again; "but I need to give them; and,
please you, father, you will listen to me."

Mr. Wesley gasped. Of all his daughters this deformed one had
rendered him the most absolute obedience; of her alone he could say
that, apart from her bodily weakness, she had never given him a
moment's distress. In a family where high courage was the rule her
timidity was a by-word; she would turn pale at the least word of
anger. But she was brave now, as a dove to defend her brood.

"You are using a secret"--her voice trembled, but almost at once grew
steady again--"a secret between me and Hetty which I had no right to
betray. If I told it to mother, it was because she seemed to doubt
of Hetty's despair; because I believed, if only she knew, she would
come to Hetty and help her--the more eagerly the worse the need.
Mother will tell you that was my only reason. I was very foolish.
Mother would not help: or perhaps she could not. She went straight
to you with the tale--this poor pitiful tale of an oath taken in
passion by the unhappiest girl on earth. Yes, and the dearest, and
the noblest! . . . But why do I tell you this? You are her father
and her mother, and it is nothing to you; you prefer to be her
judges. Only I say that you have no right to my secret. Give it
back to me! You shall not use it to do this wickedness!"

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