"But I don't understand this game," put in Kezzy. "A moment ago it was Blue Beard, and now it seems to be Beauty and the Beast. Which is it?"
"We may need Molly's mirror to tell us," Hetty answered lightly: and with that she glanced up as a shadow darkened the golden sky above the mound, and a voice addressed the sisters all. "Good evening, young ladies!"
CHAPTER V.
A broad-shouldered man looked down on them from the summit of the knoll, which he had climbed on its westward side; a tradesman to all appearance, clad in a dusty, ill-fitting suit. So far as they could judge—for he stood with the waning light at his back—he was not ill-featured; but, by his manner of mopping his brow, he was most ungracefully hot, and Molly declared ever afterwards that his thick worsted stockings, seen against the ball of the sun, gave his calves a hideous hairiness. She used to add that he was more than half drunk. His manner of accosting them—half uneasy, half familiar— froze the Wesley sisters.
"Good evening, young ladies! And nice and cool you look, I will say.
Can any of you tell me if Parson Wesley's at home?"
"He is not," Emilia answered. "He has gone towards Bawtry."
"Well now, that's what the maid told me at the parsonage: but I thought, maybe, 'twas a trick—a sort of slip-out-by-the-back and not-at-home to a creditor. I've heard of parsons playing that game, and no harm to their conscience, because no lie told."
"Sir!" Emilia rose and faced him.
"Oh, no offence, miss! I believe you; and for that matter the wench seemed fair-spoken enough, and gave me a drink of cider. 'Tis the matter of a debt, you see." He drew a scrap of dirty paper from his pocket. "Twelve-seventeen-six, for repairs done to Wroote Parsonage; new larder, fifteen; lead for window-casements, eight-six; new fireplace to parlour, one-four-six: ancettera. I'm a plumber by trade—plumber and glazier—and in business at Lincoln. William Wright's my name, and Right by nature." Here he grinned. "Your father would have everything of the best; Epworth tradesman not worth a damn, excuse me, and meaning no offence. So he said, or words to that effect. A very particular gentleman, and his nose at the time into everything. But a man likes to be paid, you understand? So, having a job down Owston way, I thought I'd walk over and jog his reverence's memory."
"The money will be paid, sir, in due course, I make no doubt," said
Emilia bravely. Some of her sisters were white in the face.
Hetty alone seemed to ignore the man's presence, and gazed over the
fields towards Epworth.
"Ah, 'in due course!' Let me tell you, miss, that if all the money owing to me was paid, I'd—I'd—" He broke off. "I have ambitions, I have: and a head on my shoulders. London's the only place for a man like me. Gad, if these were only full"—he slapped his pockets—"there's no saying I wouldn't up and ask one of you to come along o' me! There's that beauty, yonder," he jerked his thumb at Hetty. "She's the pick. My word, and you are a beauty, bridling to yourself there, and thinking dirt of me. Go on, I like you for it: you can't show too much spirit for William Wright." Molly's hand closed over Hetty's two, clasped and lying in her lap: Hetty sat motionless as a statue. "If only your father would trade you off against an honest debt—But you're gentry: I knows the sort. Well, well, 'tis a long tramp back to Owston: so here's wishing you good night, missies all. If I take back no money, and no pay but a pint of sour cider, I've seen the prettiest picter in all Lincolnshire; so we'll count it a holiday."
He was gone. With the dropping of the sun a chilly shadow had fallen on the mound, and for some moments the sisters remained motionless, agonised, each in her own way distraught.
"The brute!" said Kezzy at length, drawing a long breath.
Hetty rose deliberately. "Child," she said, and her voice was hard, "don't be a goose! The poor creature came for his money. He had the right to insult us."
She smoothed the dew from her skirt and walked swiftly down the slope.
At the foot of it Johnny Whitelamb had risen and was holding his drawing aslant, in some hope, perhaps, that the angle might correct the perspective of old Mettle's portrait. Certainly it was a villainous portrait, as he acknowledged to himself with a sigh. Parts of it must be rubbed out, and his right hand rummaged in his pocket and found a crust. But Johnny, among other afflictions, suffered from an unconscionable appetite. While he doubted where to begin, his teeth met in the bread, and he started guiltily, for it was more than half eaten when Hetty swooped down on him.
"Quick, Johnny! run you to the woodstack while I unpack the baskets. Mother will be arriving in an hour, and we are to give her supper out here, with baked potatoes. Run, that's a good soul: and on your way get Jane to give you a tin of oatmeal—tell her I must have it if she has to scrape the bottom of the bin; and a gridiron, and a rolling-pin. We will have griddle-cakes. Run—and whatever you do, don't forget the rolling-pin!"
Johnny ran with long ungainly strides, his coat-tails flapping like a scarecrow's. The coat, in fact, was a cast-off one of Mr. Wesley's, narrow in the chest, short in the sleeves, but inordinately full in the skirts. The Rector had found and taken Johnny from the Charity School at Wroote to help him with the maps and drawings for his great work, the Dissertationes in Librum Jobi, and in return the lad found board and lodging and picked up what scraps he could of Greek and Latin. He wrote a neat hand and transcribed carefully; his drawings were atrocious, and he never attempted a woodcut without gashing himself. But he kept a humble heart, and for all the family a devotion almost canine. To him the Rector, with his shovel-hat and stores of scholarship, was a god-like man; with his air, too, of apostolical authority—for Johnny, whom all Epworth set down as good for nothing, reflected the Wesley notions of the Church's majesty. In his dreams—but only in his dreams—he saw himself such a man, an Oxford scholar, treading that beatific city of which the Rector disclosed a glimpse at times; his brows bathed by her ineffable aura, and he—he, Johnny Whitelamb—baptized into her mysteries, a participant with the Rector's second son John, now at Christ Church— of whom (he noted) the family spoke but seldom and with a constraint which hinted at hopes too dear to be other than fearful. Meanwhile he did his poor tasks, stayed his stomach when he could, and rewarded his employers with love.
He loved them all: but Hetty he worshipped.
He knew his place. For an hour past he had been sitting, as became a servant, beyond earshot of the sisters' talk, yet within call, should they summon him. Now the goddess had descended from her mountain with a command, and he ran toward the woodstack as he would have run and plunged into the water-dyke, had she bidden him.
He returned to find her waiting with her sleeves tucked above her elbows.
"Oh, Johnny—I forgot the tinder-box!" she cried.
He dropped his burdens and produced it triumphantly from his tail pocket.
"I thought of that!"
"But you must not!"—as he dropped on his knees and began to unbind and break up the sticks. "This is my business. I am going into service, in ten days—at Kelstein: and you must watch and tell me what I do amiss."
She pulled the faggot towards her, broke up the sticks, and built the fragments daintily into a heap, with a handful of dry leaves as basis. The twilight deepened around them as she built. Next she struck flint on steel, caught the spark on tinder, and blew. Johnny watched the glow on her cheeks wakening and fading, and, watching, fell into a brown study.
"There!" she exclaimed, straightening herself upon her knees as the blaze caught. "Is that a good omen for Kelstein?"
Her eyes were on the sticks, and in their crackling she did not listen for his answer, but commanded him to take a pitcher of water and pour, while she mixed and kneaded the meal. To the making of bread, cakes, pastry, Hetty brought a born gift; a hand so light, quick, and cool, that Johnny could have groaned for his own fumbling fingers. A dozen cakes were finished and banked in the wood-ashes as the fire died down to a steadily glowing mass. By this time the landscape about them lay flat to the eye and gray, touched with the faint gold of moonrise, and just then Emilia called down from the mound that the travellers were in sight on the Bawtry road.
The others ran to meet them: but Hetty remained by her task, silent, and Johnny silent beside her. Together they spread the two meals, one beside the fire for the family, the other some fifty yards off for the harvesters, now moving towards the rick-yard with the last load.
Hetty was not her mother's favourite. Emilia and Patty divided that honour by consent, though the balance appeared now and then to incline towards Patty. But between Mrs. Wesley and her fairest daughter there rested always a shadow of restraint, curious enough in its origin, which was that they knew each other better than the rest. Often and quite casually Hetty would guess some thought in her mother's mind hidden from her sisters. She made no parade of this insight, set up no claim upon it; merely gave proof of it in passing, and fell back on her attitude of guarded affection. And Mrs. Wesley seemed to draw back uneasily from these reflections of herself, and take refuge in Patty, who, of all her children, understood her the least.
So now when the others brought their mother to the feast in triumph, Hetty swept her a curtsey with skirt held wide, then went straight and kissed her on both cheeks.
"Ah, what a dear truant 'tis! and how good 'tis to have her home again!"
She did not ask (as Nancy or Patty would assuredly have asked) what had become of her father. She noted, even in the half-light, a flush on her mother's temples, and guessed at once that there had been a duel of tempers on the road, and that, likely enough, papa had bounced into the house in a huff. The others had, in fact, witnessed this exit. Hetty, who divined it, went the swiftest way to efface the memory. She alone, on occasion, could treat her mother playfully, as an equal in years; and she did so now, taking her by the hand, and conducting her with mock solemnity to the seat of honour.
"It is good to be home," Mrs. Wesley admitted as they seated her, dusted her worn shoes, and plied her with milk and hot griddle-cakes, potatoes slit and sprinkled with salt upon appetising lumps of butter. She forgot her vexation. Even the Wroote labourers seemed less surly than usual. One or two, as they gathered, stepped forward to welcome her and wish her health before ranging themselves at their separate meal: and soon a pleasant murmur of voices went up from either group at supper in the broad meadow under the moon.
"But where have you left uncle Annesley?" asked Kezzy. "And are we all to be rich and live in comfort at last?"
Mrs. Wesley shook her head. "He was not on board the Albemarle." She told of her visit to the ship and the captain's story; adding that their uncle's boxes, when handed over and examined, contained no papers at all, no will, no bonds, not so much as a scrap to throw light on the mystery. And as they sat silent in dismay, she went on to tell of Garrett Wesley and the fortune unexpectedly laid at Charles's feet.
Emilia was the first to find speech. "So," she commented bitterly "yet another of our brothers is in luck's way. Always our brothers! Westminster and Oxford for them, and afterwards, it seems, a fortune: while we sit at home in rags, or drudge and eat the bread of service. Oh, why, mother? You and we suffer together—do you believe it can be God's will?"
Hetty drew a long breath. "Perhaps," she said drearily, "Charles will clothe us when he gets this money. Perhaps he will even find us wooers in place of those to whom papa has shown the door."
"I am not sure your father will allow Charles to accept," said Mrs. Wesley gently; "though I may persuade him to let the lad decide for himself when he comes of age. Until then the offer stands open."
"I sometimes wonder," Emilia mused, "if our father be not staring mad."
"Hush, child! That is neither for you to say nor for me to hear. You know it has been almost a vow with him to dedicate your three brothers to God's service."
"Charles might inherit Dangan Castle and serve God too. There is no law that an Irish squire must spend all his time cock-fighting."
"These vows!" murmured Hetty, flinging herself back in her favourite attitude and nursing her knee. "If folks will not obey Christ's command and swear not at all, they might at least choose a vow which only hurts themselves. Now, papa"—Hetty shot a glance at her mother, who felt it, even in the dusk, and bent her eyes on the smouldering fire. The girl had heard (for it was kitchen gossip) that Mr. Wesley had once quarrelled with his wife over politics, and left Epworth rectory vowing never to return to her until she acknowledged William III. for her rightful king; nor indeed had returned until William's death made the vow idle and released him. "Now, papa"—after a pause—"has an unfortunate habit, like Jephthah, of swearing to another's hurt. For instance, since Sukey married Dick Ellison, he seems to have vowed that none of us shall have a lover; and, so, dear mother, you might have found us just now, like six daughters of Jephthah, bewailing our fates upon a hill."
"He has no fault to find with my John Lambert," put in Nancy.
Hetty did not heed. "I have no patience with these swearers. A man, or a woman for that matter, should have the courage to outbrave an oath when it hurts the innocent. Did God require the blood of Jephthah's daughter? or of the sons of Rizpah? Think, mother, if this fire were lit in the fields here, and you sitting by it to scare the beasts from your three sons! I cannot like that David. Saul, now, was a man and a king, every inch of him, even in his dark hours. David had no breeding—a pretty, florid man, with his curls and pink cheeks; one moment dancing and singing, and the next weeping on his bed. Some women like that kind of man: but his complexion wears off. In the end he grows nasty, and from the first he is disgustingly underbred."
"Hetty!"
"I cannot help it, mother. Had I been Michal, and Saul's daughter, and had seen that man capering before the ark, I should have scorned him as she did."
And Hetty stood up and strode away into the darkness.
In the darkness, almost an hour later, Molly found her by the edge of a dyke. She had a handkerchief twisted between her fingers, and kept wringing it as she paced to and fro. Why had she given way to passion? Why, on this night of all nights, had she saddened her mother? And why by an outburst against David, of all people in the world?
She could not tell. When the temper is overcharged it overflows, nine times out of ten, into a channel absurdly irrelevant.
What on earth had David to do with it? She halted and laughed while Molly entreated her. In the dyke the black water crawled at her feet, and upon it a star shone.
"Star Mary—stella maris, if only you will shine steadily and guide me! Kiss me now, and hear that I am sorry."
But it was Molly who, later that night, put out both arms in the bed where they slept together: and with a wail which lasted until Hetty enfolded her and held her close.
"I was dreaming," she muttered. "I dreamt—of that man."
CHAPTER VI.
For six months of the year, sometimes for longer, the thatched parsonage at Wroote rose out of a world of waters, forlorn as a cornstack in a flood, and the Rector of Epworth journeyed between his two parishes by boat, often in soaked breeches, and sometimes with a napkin tied over his hat and wig. But in this harvest weather, while the sun shone and the meadow-breezes overcame the odours of damp walls and woodwork, of the pig-sty at the back and of rotting weed beyond, the Wesley household lived cheerfully enough, albeit pinched for room; more cheerfully than at Epworth, where the more spacious rectory, rebuilt by Mr. Wesley at a cost of 400 pounds, remained half-furnished after fourteen years—a perpetual reminder of debt.
Here at any rate, although Wroote tithe brought in a bare 50 pounds a year, they could manage to live and pay their way, and feel meanwhile that they were lessening the burden. For Dick Ellison, Sukey's husband, had undertaken to finance Epworth tithe, and was renting the rectory for a while with the purpose of bringing his father-in-law's affairs to order—a filial offer which Mr. Wesley perforce accepted while hating Dick from the bottom of his heart, and the deeper because of this necessity.
Dick was his "wen," "more unpleasant to him than all his physic"—a red-faced, uneducated squireen, with money in his pockets (as yet), a swaggering manner due to want of sense rather than deliberate offensiveness, and a loud patronising laugh which drove the Rector mad. Comedy presided over their encounters; but such comedy as only the ill-natured can enjoy. And the Rector, splenetic, exacting, jealous of authority, after writhing for a time under Dick's candid treatment of him as a child, usually cut short the scene by bouncing off to his library and slamming the door behind him.
Even Mrs. Wesley detested her son-in-law, and called him "a coarse, vulgar, immoral man "; but confessed (in his absence) that they were all the better off for his help. Ease from debt she had never known; but here at Wroote the clouds seemed to be breaking. Duns had been fewer of late. With her poultry-yard and small dairy she was earning a few pounds, and this gave her a sense of helpfulness she had not known at Epworth; a pound saved may be a pound gained, but a pound earned can be held in the hand, and the touch makes a wonderful difference. The girls had flung themselves heartily into the farm-work: they talked of it, at night, around the kitchen hearth (for of the two sitting-rooms one had been given up to their father for his library, and the other Hetty vowed to be "too grand for the likes of dairy-women." Also the marsh-vapours in the Isle of Axholme can be agueish after sunset, even in summer, and they found the fire a comfort). Hetty had described these rural economies in a long letter to Samuel at Westminster, and been answered by an "Heroick Poem," pleasantly facetious:
"The spacious glebe around the house
Affords full pasture to the cows,
Whence largely milky nectar flows,
O sweet and cleanly dairy!"
"Unless or Moll, or Anne, or you,
Your duty should neglect to do,
And then 'ware haunches black and blue
By pinching of a fairy."
—With much in the same easy vein about "sows and pigs and porkets," and the sisters' housewifely duties:
"Or lusty Anne, or feeble Moll,
Sage Pat or sober Hetty."
And the sisters were amused by the lines and committed them to heart.
They had learnt of the pleasures of life mainly through books; and now their simple enjoyment was, as it were, more real to them because it could be translated into verse. In circumstances, then, they were happier than they had been for many years: nor was poverty the real reason for Hetty's going into service at Kelstein; since Emilia had been fetched home from Lincoln (where for five years she had been earning her livelihood as teacher in a boarding-school) expressly to enjoy the family's easier fortune, and with a promise of pleasant company to be met in Bawtry, Doncaster and the country around Wroote.
This promise had not been fulfilled, and Emilia's temper had soured in consequence. Nor had the Rector's debts melted at the rate expected. The weight of them still oppressed him and all the household: but Mrs. Wesley knew in her heart that, were poverty the only reason, Hetty need not go. Hetty knew it, too, and rebelled. She was happy at Wroote; happier at least than she would be at Kelstein. She did not wish to be selfish: she would go, if one of the sisters must. But why need any of them go?
She asked her mother this, and Mrs. Wesley fenced with the question while hardening her heart. In truth she feared what might happen if Hetty stayed. They had made some new acquaintances at Wroote and at Bawtry there was a lover, a young lawyer . . . a personable young man, reputed to be clever in his profession. . . . Mrs. Wesley knew nothing to his discredit . . . and sure, Hetty's face might attract any lover. So her thoughts ran, without blaming the girl, whose heart she believed to be engaged, though she could not tell how deeply. But the Rector must be considered, and he had taken an instant and almost frantic dislike for the youth. There was nothing unusual in this: for, like many another uxorious man (with all his faults of temper he was uxorious), Mr. Wesley hated that anyone should offer love to his daughters. This antipathy of his had been a nuisance for ten years past; since the girls were, when all was said, honest healthy girls with an instinct for mating, and not to be blamed for making their best of the suitors which Epworth and its neighbourhood provided. But since Sukey's marriage it had deepened into something like a mania, and now, in Hetty's case, flared up with a passion incomprehensible if not quite insane. He declared his hatred of lawyers—and certainly he had suffered at their hands: he forbade the young man to visit the house, to correspond with Hetty, even to see her.
Mrs. Wesley watched her daughter and was troubled. The Rector's veto had been effective enough once or twice with Hetty's sisters. Emilia, on a visit with her uncle Matthew in London, had fallen passionately in love with a young Oxonian named Leybourne. But Sam's wife had discovered something to his discredit and had spoken to Sam, and Sam to the Rector. The match was broken off, and Emilia renounced her love, though she never forgave the mischief-maker. Patty again had formed an attachment for John Romley, who had been a pupil of Sam's, had afterwards graduated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was now the ambitious young master of the Free School at Epworth. Again the Rector interfered, and Patty sighed and renounced her romance. Would Hetty, too, renounce and acquiesce? Mrs. Wesley doubted: nay, was even afraid. Hetty alone had never been overawed by her father, had never acknowledged the patria potestas with all its exorbitant claims. She had never actually revolted, but she defied, somehow, the spell he had cast upon the others: and somehow— here was the marvel—Mrs. Wesley, who more than any other of the family had yielded to the illusion and fostered it, understood Hetty the better for her independence. The others, under various kinds of pressure, had submitted: but here was the very woman she might have been, but for her own submission! And she feared for that woman. Hetty must leave Wroote, or there was no knowing how it might end.
"Mother, I believe you are afraid of what I may do."
Mrs. Wesley, incapable of a lie or anything resembling it, bent her head. "I have been afraid, once or twice," she said.
"So you send me away? That seems to me neither very brave nor very wise. Will there be less danger at Kelstein?"
Her mother started. "Does he know of your going? You don't tell me he means to visit you there?"
"Forgive me, dearest mother, but your first question is a little foolish—eh?" Hetty laughed and quoted:
"But if she whom Love doth honour
Be conceal'd from the day—
Set a thousand guards upon her,
Love will find out the way."
She put up her chin defiantly.
"I wish, child, you would tell me if—if this is much to you," said Mrs. Wesley wistfully, with a sudden craving to put her arms around her daughter and have her confidence.
Hetty hesitated for a fatal moment, then laughed again. "I am not a child precisely; and we read one another, dear, much better than we allow. Your second question you have no right to ask. You are sending me away—"
"No right, Hetty?"
"You are sending me away," Hetty repeated, and seemed to be considering. After a pause she added slowly: "You others are all under papa's thumb, and you make me a coward. But I will promise you this"—here her words began to drag—"and to strengthen me no less than to ease your fears, I promise it, mother. If the worst come to the worst, it shall not be at Kelstein that I choose it, but here among you all. I think you will gain little by sending me to Kelstein, mother: but you need not be afraid for me there."
"You speak in enigmas."
"And my tone, you would say, is something too theatrical for your taste? Well, well, dear mother, 'tis the privilege of a house with a doom upon it to talk tragedy: for, you know, Molly declares we have a doom upon us, though we cannot agree what 'tis. I uphold it to be debt, or papa's tantrums, or perhaps Old Jeffrey [apparently the Wesley family ghost] but she will have it to be something deeper, and that one day we shall awake and see that it includes all three."
"It appears to be my doom," said Mrs. Wesley, her face relaxing, "to listen to a deal of nonsense from my daughters."
"And who's to blame, dear? You chose to marry at twenty, and here you have a daughter unmarried at seven and twenty. Now I respect and love you, as you well know: but every now and then reason steps in and proves to me that I am seven years your senior—which is absurd, and the absurder for the grave wise face you put upon it. So come along, sweet-and-twenty, and help me pack my buskins." Hetty led the way upstairs humming an air which (though her mother did not recognise it) was Purcell's setting of a song in Twelfth Night:
"Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know."
CHAPTER VII.
On the day fixed, and at nine in the morning, Dick Ellison, who had promised to drive Hetty over to Kelstein, arrived with his gig. Sukey accompanied him, to join in the farewells and spend a few hours at the parsonage pending his return.
Now these visits of Sukey's were a trial to her no less than to her mother and sisters. She knew that they detested her husband, and (what was worse) she had enough of the Wesley in her to perceive why and how: nevertheless, being a Wesley, she kept a steady face on her pain. Stung at times to echo Dick's sentiments and opinions, as it were in self-defence, she tried to soften them down and present them in a form at least tolerable to her family. It was heroic, but uncomfortable; and they set aside the best parlour for it.
Sukey would have preferred the kitchen. In person she was short and plump, and her face expressed a desire to be cheerful. She had little or none of that grace by which her sisters walked in the commonest cotton frocks as queens. In childhood she had been noted for her carelessness in attire, and now obediently flaunted her husband's taste in bonnets.
Her headdress to-day had a dreadful coquettishness. Dick had found it at Lincoln and called on the company to admire. It consisted of three large mock water-lilies on a little mat of muslin, and was perched on her piled hair so high aloft that their gaze, as they scanned it, seemed to pass far over her head. She longed to tear it down, cast it on the floor, and be the Sukey they knew.
The plate of cake and biscuits on the table gave the parlour a last funereal touch. Dick was boisterously talkative. The others scarcely spoke. At length Hetty, who had been struggling to swallow a biscuit, and well-nigh choking over it, rose abruptly, kissed her mother, and went straight to her father's room.
He sat at his writing-table, busy as usual with his commentary upon the Book of Job. At another table by the window Johnny Whitelamb bent over a map, with his back to the light. He glanced up as she entered: she could not well read his eyes for the shadow, and perhaps for some dimness in her own: but he rose, gathered his papers together, and slipped from the room.
"Papa, Dick Ellison is in the parlour."
"So my ears inform me."
"He wishes to see you."
"Then you may take him my compliments and assure him that he will not."
"But, papa, the gig is at the door. I have come to say good-bye."
"Ah, in that case I will step out to the door and see you off; but I will not be button-holed by Dick Ellison." He rose and stood eyeing her, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger. "You have something to say to me, I suspect."
"I am going to Kelstein," Hetty began firmly. "I would like to obey you there, sir, as the others do at home. I do not mean outwardly: but to feel, while I am absent, that I am earning—" She paused and cast about for a word.
"You will be earning, of course. There is always satisfaction in that."
"I am not thinking of money."
"Of my approval, then? Your employer, Mr. Grantham, is an honest gentleman: I shall trust his report of you."
"Papa, I came to beg you for more than that. Will you not let me feel that I am earning something more?—that if, as times goes on, my conduct pleases you, you will be more disposed to consider—to grant me—"
"Mehetabel!"
"I love him, papa! I cannot help it. Sir—!"
She put out both hands to him, her eyes welling. But he had turned sharply away from her cry, and strode across the room in his irritation. Her hands fell, and one caught at the edge of the table for support while she leaned, bowing her head.
He came abruptly back. "Are you aware, Mehetabel, that you have proposed a bargain to me? I do not bargain with my children: I expect obedience. Nor as a father am I obliged to give my reasons. But since you are leaving us, and I would not dismiss you harshly, let me say that I have studied this man for whom you avow a fondness; and apart from his calling—which I detest—I find him vain, foppish, insincere. He has levitas with levitas: I believe his heart to be as shallow as his head. I know him to be no fit mate for one of my daughters; least of all for you who have gifts above your sisters—gifts which I have recognised and tried to improve. Child, summon your pride to you, and let it help your obedience." He broke off and gazed out of the window. "If," said he more softly, "our fate be not offered to us, we must make it. If, while our true fate delays, there come to us unworthy phantoms simulating it, we should test them; lest impatient we run to embrace vanity, and betray, not our hopes alone, but the purpose God had in mind for us from the beginning."
Hetty looked up. She might have thought that she was twenty-seven, and asked herself how long was it likely to be before a prince came across those dreary fields to the thatched parsonage, seeking her. But her heart was full of the man she loved, and she thought only that her father did him bitter injustice.
She shivered and lifted her face. "Good-bye, papa," she said coldly.
He kissed her on the cheek, and took a step to follow her to the door; but thought better of it and returned to the window. He heard the door close upon her, and five minutes later saw her whisked away in the gig by Dick Ellison's side.
CHAPTER VIII.
He continued to stare out of the window long after the gig had disappeared over the low horizon: a small, nervous, indomitable figure of a man close upon his sixty-second birthday, standing for a while with his back turned upon his unwieldy manuscripts and his jaw thrust forward obstinately as he surveyed the blank landscape. He had the scholar's stoop, but this thrust of the jaw was habitual and lifted his face at an angle which gave an "up-sighted" expression to his small eyes, set somewhat closely together above a long straight nose. Nose, eyes, jaw announced obstinacy, and the eyes, quick and fiery, warned you that it was of the aggressive kind which not only holds to its purpose, but never ceases nagging until it be attained. In build he was lean and wiry: in carriage amazingly dignified for one who (to be precise) stood but 5 feet 5 and a half inches high.
His father had been a non-juring clergyman, one of the many ejected from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662; and he himself had been educated as a Nonconformist at Mr. Morton's famous academy on Newington Green, where Daniel Defoe had preceded him as a pupil, and where he had heard John Bunyan preach. At the conclusion of his training there he was pitched upon to answer some pamphlets levelled against the Dissenters, and this set him on a course of reading which produced an effect he was far from intending: for instead of writing the answer he determined to renounce Dissent and attach himself to the Established Church. He dwelt at that time with his mother and an old aunt, themselves ardent Dissenters, to whom he could not tell his design. So he arose before daybreak one morning, tramped sixty miles to Oxford, and entered himself at Exeter College as a poor scholar. This was in August, 1683.
He took up his residence in Oxford with forty-five shillings in his pocket. He studied there five years, and during that time received from his family and friends just five shillings; obtained his Bachelor's degree, and departed seven pounds and fifteen shillings richer than when he entered the University. The winter of 1683 was a hard beginning for a scholar too poor to buy fuel, the cold being so severe in the Thames valley that coaches plied as freely on the river from the Temple to Westminster as if they had gone upon the land. Yet "I tarried," he afterwards wrote, "in Exeter College, though I met with some hardships I had before been unacquainted with, till I was of standing sufficient to take my Bachelor's degree; and not being able to subsist there afterwards, I came to London during the time of my Lord Bishop of London's suspension by the High Commission, and was instituted into deacon's orders by my Lord Bishop of Rochester, at his palace at Bromley, August 7th, 1688."
He had maintained himself by instructing wealthier undergraduates and writing their exercises for them (as a servitor he had to black their boots and run their errands); also by scribbling for John Dunton, the famous London bookseller, whose acquaintance he had made during his last year at Mr. Morton's. With all this he found time and the will to be charitable, and had visited the poor creatures imprisoned in the Castle at Oxford—many for debt. He lived to take the measure of this kindness, and to see it repeated by his sons.
Maggots: or Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled was no very marketable book of rhymes. Yet it served its purpose and helped him, through Dunton, to become acquainted with a few men of letters and learning. He had something better, too, to cheer his start in London. Dunton in 1682 had married Elizabeth, one of the many daughters of Dr. Samuel Annesley, the famous Dissenter, then preaching at a Nonconformist church which he had opened in Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. Young Wesley, a student at Newington Green, had been present at the wedding, with a copy of verses in his pocket: and there, in a corner of the Doctor's gloomy house in Spital Yard, he came on the Doctor's youngest daughter, a slight girl of fourteen, seated and watching the guests.
She was but a child, and just then an unhappy one, though with no childish trouble. Minds ripened early in Annesley House, where scholars and divines resorted to discuss the battle raging between Church and Dissent. Susanna Annesley had listened and brooded upon what she heard; and now her convictions troubled her, for she saw, or thought she saw, the Church to be in the right, and herself an alien in her father's house, secretly rebellious against those she loved and preparing to disappoint them cruelly. She knew her father's beliefs to be as strong and deep as they were temperately expressed.
So it happened that Samuel Wesley, halting awkwardly (as a hobbledehoy will) before this slip of a girl and stammering some words meant to comfort her for losing her sister, presently found himself answering strange questions, staring into young eyes which had somehow surprised his own doubts of Dissent, and beyond them into a mind which had come to its own decision and quietly, firmly, invited him to follow. It startled him so that love dawned at the same moment with a lesser shock. He seated himself on the window cushion beside her, and after this they talked a very little, but watched the guests, feeling like two conspirators in the crowd, feeling also that the world was suddenly changed for them both.
And thus it came about that Samuel Wesley dropped his pen, packed his books, and tramped off to Oxford. He was back again now, after five years, with his degree, but no money as yet to marry on. He started with a curacy at 28 pounds a year; was appointed chaplain on board a man-of-war, when his income rose to 70 pounds; and began an epic poem on the Life of Christ, scribbling (since he had leisure) at the rate of two hundred couplets a day; but soon returned to London, where he obtained a second curacy and 30 pounds year. His pen earned him another 30 pounds, and on this he decided to marry.
Between him and Susanna Annesley there had been little talk of love, but no doubt at all. She was now close upon twenty, and ready to marry him when he named the day. So married they were, in 1689. Less than a year later their first child, Samuel, was born in their London lodgings, and soon after came an offer, from the Massingberd family, through the Marquis of Normanby, of the living of South Ormsby in Lincolnshire. Thither accordingly they journeyed on Midsummer Day, 1690, and there resided until the spring of 1697 in a vicarage little better than a mud-built hut. There Mrs. Wesley bare Emilia, Susannah and Molly, besides other children who died in infancy, and there the Rector put forth his Life of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. A heroic poem in ten books: besides such trifles as "The Young Student's Library: containing Extracts and Abridgments of the most Valuable Books printed in England and in the Foreign Journals from the year '65 to this time. To which is added A New Essay upon all sorts of Learning."
Close by the parish church stood the Hall, the great house of the Lord Marquis of Normanby who in 1694 made Mr. Wesley his domestic chaplain. The Marquis was a rake, and he and his mistresses gave the poor clergyman many searchings of heart. There was one who took a fancy to Mrs. Wesley and would be intimate with her. Coming home one day and finding this visitor seated with his wife, Mr. Wesley went up to her, took her by the hand and very fairly handed her out. It cost him his living: but the Marquis, being what is called a good fellow in the main, bore him no grudge; nay, rather liked his spirit, and afterwards showed himself a good friend to the amount of twenty guineas, to which the Marchioness (but this is more explicable) added five from her own purse.
By good fortune the living of Epworth fell vacant just then, and in accordance with some wish or promise of the late Queen Mary, to whom he had dedicated his Life of Christ, Mr. Wesley was presented to it, a decent preferment, worth about 200 pounds a year in the currency of those times. But by this time his family was large; he was in debt; the fees to be paid before taking up the living ate farther into his credit; a larger house had to be maintained, with three acres of garden and farm-buildings; and his new parishioners hated his politics and made life as miserable for him as they could. They were savage fighters, but they found their match. In 1702 they set fire secretly to the parsonage-house, and burned down two-thirds of it. In the winter of 1704 they destroyed a great part of his crop of flax. This was the year of Blenheim, and upon news of the victory Mr. Wesley sat down to commemorate it in heroic verse. The poem (published in the early days of 1705), if inferior to Mr. Addison's on the same occasion, ran to five hundred and ninety-four lines, and contained compliments enough to please the great Duke of Marlborough, who sent for its author, rewarded him with the chaplaincy of Colonel Lepelle's regiment, and promised him a prebend's stall. The Dissenters, who (with some excuse, perhaps) looked upon Mr. Wesley as that worst of foes, a deserter from their own ranks, using their influence in Parliament and at Court, had him deprived of his regiment and denied the stall. In April Queen Anne dissolved Parliament, and in May the late Tory members for the county of Lincoln, Sir John Thorold—and the Dymoke who then held—as his descendant holds to-day—the dignity of Royal Champion, fought and lost an election with the Whig candidates, Colonel Whichcott and Mr. Albert Bertie. The Dissenters of course supported these; and Mr. Wesley, scorning insults and worse, the unpopular side: with what results we may read in these extracts from letters to the Archbishop of York.
Epworth, June 7th, 1705.
I went to Lincoln on Tuesday night, May 29th, and the election began on Wednesday, 30th. A great part of the night our Isle people kept drumming, shouting, and firing of pistols and guns under the window where my wife lay, who had been brought to bed not three weeks. I had put the child to nurse over against my own house; the noise kept his nurse waking till one or two in the morning. Then they left off, and the nurse being heavy with sleep, overlaid the child. She waked, and finding it dead, ran over with it to my house almost distracted, and calling my servants, threw it into their arms. They, as wise as she, ran up with it to my wife and, before she was well awake, threw it cold and dead into hers. She composed herself as well as she could, and that day got it buried.
A clergyman met me in the castle yard and told me to withdraw, for the Isle men intended me a mischief. Another told me he had heard near twenty of them say, "if they got me in the castle yard, they would squeeze my guts out." My servant had the same advice. I went by Gainsbro', and God preserved me.
When they knew I was got home, they sent the drum and mob, with guns etc. as usual, to compliment me till after midnight. One of them, passing by on Friday evening and seeing my children in the yard, cried out "O ye devils! We will come and turn ye all out of doors a-begging shortly." God convert them, and forgive them!
All this, thank God, does not in the least sink my wife's spirits. For my own, I feel them disturbed and disordered. . . .
The rebuilding of the parsonage and some unhappy essays in farming his glebe had run the Rector still farther in debt: and now, not satisfied with winning the election, his enemies struck at him privily. His next letter is dated not three weeks later from the debtors' ward in Lincoln.
Lincoln Castle, June 25th, 1705.
My Lord,—Now I am at rest, for I am come to the haven where I have long expected to be. On Friday last (June 23rd), when I had been, in christening a child, at Epworth, I was arrested in my churchyard by one who had been my servant, and gathered my tithe last year, at the suit of one of Mr. Whichcott's relations and zealous friends (Mr Pinder) according to their promise when they were in the Isle before the election. The sum was not thirty pounds, but it was as good as five hundred. Now they knew the burning of my flax, my London journey, and their throwing me out of my regiment had both sunk my credit and exhausted my money. My adversary was sent to, when I was on the road, to meet me, that I might make some proposals to him. But all his answer was that 'I must immediately pay the whole sum, or go to prison.' Thither I went, with no great concern to myself: and find much more civility and satisfaction here than in brevibus gyaris of my own Epworth. I thank God, my wife was pretty well recovered and churched some days before I was taken from her; and hope she'll be able to look to my family, if they don't turn them out of doors as they have often threatened to do. One of my biggest concerns was my being forced to leave my poor lambs in the midst of so many wolves. But the great Shepherd is able to provide for them and to preserve them. My wife bears it with that courage which becomes her, and which I expected from her.
I don't despair of doing some good here (and so I sha'n't quite lose the end of living), and it may be, do more in this new parish than in my old one: for I have leave to read prayers every morning and afternoon here in the prison, and to preach once a Sunday, which I choose to do in the afternoon when there is no sermon at the minster. And I'm getting acquainted with my brother jail-birds as fast as I can; and shall write to London next post, to the Society for propagating Christian Knowledge, who, I hope, will send me some books to distribute among them. . . .
The next letter, dated from prison on September 12th, proves that he had reasons only too good to be fearful.
The other matter is concerning the stabbing of my cows in the night since I came hither, but a few weeks ago; and endeavouring thereby to starve my forlorn family in my absence; my cows being all dried by it, which was their chief subsistence; though I hope they had not the power to kill any of them outright. . . .
The same night the iron latch of my door was twined off, and the wood hacked in order to shoot back the lock, which nobody will think was with an intention to rob my family. My housedog, who made a huge noise within doors, was sufficiently punished for his want of politics and moderation, for the next day but one his leg was almost chopped off by an unknown hand. 'Tis not every one could bear these things; but, I bless God, my wife is less concerned with suffering them that I am in the writing, or than I believe your Grace will be in reading them. . . . Oh, my lord! I once more repeat it, that I shall some time have a more equal Judge than any in this world.
Most of my friends advise me to leave Epworth, if e'er I should get from hence. I confess I am not of that mind, because I may yet do good there; and 'tis like a coward to desert my post because the enemy fire thick upon me. They have only wounded me yet and, I believe, can't kill me. I hope to be home by Xmass. God help my poor family! . . .
By the end of the year (the Archbishop and other friends assisting) a good part of his debts had been paid and Mr. Wesley was at home again. From Epworth he refused to budge; and there, for three years and more, the rage of his enemies slumbered and his affairs grew easier. John (if we do not count the poor infant overlaid) had been the last child born before his imprisonment. Now arrived Patty, in the autumn of 1706, and Charles, in December, 1707. A third was expected, and shortly, when in the night of February 9th, 1709, the parsonage took fire again and burned to the ground in fifteen minutes.
On Wednesday last, at half an hour after eleven at night, in a quarter of an hour's time or less, my house at Epworth was burned down to the ground—I hope by accident; but God knows all. We had been brewing, but had done all; every spark of fire quenched before five o'clock that evening—at least six hours before the house was on fire. Perhaps the chimney above might take fire (though it had been swept not long since) and break through into the thatch. Yet it is strange I should neither see nor smell anything of it, having been in my study in that part of the house till above half an hour after ten. Then I locked the doors of that part of the house where my wheat and other corn lay, and went to bed.
The servants had not been in bed a quarter of an hour when the fire began. My wife being near her time, and very weak, I lay in the next chamber. A little after eleven I heard "Fire!" cried in the street, next to which I lay. If I had been in my own chamber, as usual, we had all been lost. I threw myself out of bed, got on my waistcoat and nightgown, and looked out of window; saw the reflection of the flame, but knew not where it was; ran to my wife's chamber with one stocking on and my breeches in my hand; would have broken open the door, which was bolted within, but could not. My two eldest children were with her. They rose, and ran towards the staircase, to raise the rest of the house. There I saw it was my own house, all in a light blaze, and nothing but a door between the flame and the staircase.
I ran back to my wife, who by this time had got out of bed, naked, and opened the door. I bade her fly for her life. We had a little silver and some gold—about 20 pounds. She would have stayed for it, but I pushed her out; got her and my two eldest children downstairs (where two of the servant were now got), and asked for the keys. They knew nothing of them. I ran upstairs and found them, came down, and opened the street door. The thatch was fallen in all on fire. The north-east wind drove all the sheets of flame in my face, as if reverberated in a lamp. I got twice to the step and was drove down again. I ran to the garden door and opened it. The fire there was more moderate. I bade them all follow, but found only two with me, and the maid with another in her arms that cannot go; but all naked. I ran with them to an outhouse in the garden, out of the reach of the flames; put the least in the other's lap; and not finding my wife follow me, ran back into the house to seek her, but could not find her. The servants and two of the children were got out at the window. In the kitchen I found my eldest daughter, naked, and asked her for her mother. She could not tell me where she was. I took her up and carried her to the rest in the garden; came in the second time and ran upstairs, the flame breaking through the wall at the staircase; thought all my children were safe, and hoped my wife was some way got out. I then remembered my books, and felt in my pocket for the key of the chamber which led to my study. I could not find the key, though I searched a second time. Had I opened that door, I must have perished.
I ran down and went to my children in the garden, to help them over the wall. When I was without, I heard one of my poor lambs, left still above-stairs, about six years old, cry out, dismally, "Help me!" I ran in again, to go upstairs, but the staircase was now all afire. I tried to force up through it a second time, holding my breeches over my head, but the stream of fire beat me down. I thought I had done my duty; went out of the house to that part of my family I had saved, in the garden, with the killing cry of my child in my ears. I made them all kneel down, and we prayed to God to receive his soul.
I tried to break down the pales, and get my children over into the street, but could not; then went under the flame and got them over the wall. Now I put on my breeches and leaped after them. One of my maidservants that had brought out the least child, got out much at the same time. She was saluted with a hearty curse by one of the neighbours, and told that we had fired the house ourselves, the second time, on purpose! I ran about inquiring for my wife and other children; met the chief man and chief constable of the town going from my house, not towards it to help me. I took him by the hand and said "God's will be done!" His answer was, "Will you never have done your tricks? You fired your house once before; did you not get enough by it then, that you have done it again?" This was cold comfort. I said, "God forgive you! I find you are chief man still." But I had a little better soon after, hearing that my wife was saved; and then I fell on mother earth and blessed God.
I went to her. She was alive, and could just speak.
She thought I had perished, and so did all the rest, not having
seen me nor any share of eight children for a quarter of an
hour; and by this time all the chambers and everything was
consumed to ashes, for the fire was stronger than a furnace, the
violent wind beating it down on the house. She told me
afterwards how she escaped. When I went first to open the
back-door, she endeavoured to force through the fire at the
fore-door, but was struck back twice to the ground. She thought
to have died there, but prayed to Christ to help her. She found
new strength, got up alone and waded through two or three yards
of flame, the fire on the ground being up to her knees. She had
nothing on but her shoes and a wrapping gown, and one coat on
her arm. This she wrapped about her breast, and got through
safe into the yard, but no soul yet to help her. She never
looked up or spake till I came; only when they brought her last
child to her, bade them lay it on the bed. This was the lad
whom I heard cry in the house, but God saved him almost by a
miracle. He only was forgot by the servants, in the hurry.
He ran to the window towards the yard, stood upon a chair and
cried for help. There were now a few people gathered, one of
whom, who loves me, helped up another to the window. The child
seeing a man come into the window, was frightened, and ran away
to get to his mother's chamber. He could not open the door, so
ran back again. The man was fallen down from the window, and
all the bed and hangings in the room where he was were blazing.
They helped up the man a second time, and poor Jacky leaped into
his arms and was saved. I could not believe it till I had
kissed him two or three times. My wife then said unto me,
"Are your books safe?" I told her it was not much, now she and
all the rest were preserved. . . .
Mr. Smith of Gainsborough, and others, have sent for some of my children. . . . I want nothing, having above half my barley saved in my barns unthreshed. I had finished my alterations in the Life of Christ a little while since, and transcribed three copies of it. But all is lost. God be praised!
I hope my wife will recover, and not miscarry, but God will give me my nineteenth child. She has burnt her legs, but they mend. When I came to her, her lips were black. I did not know her. Some of the children are a little burnt, but not hurt or disfigured. I only got a small blister on my hand. The neighbours send us clothes, for it is cold without them.
The child (Kezzy) was born and lived. The Rectory was rebuilt within a year, at a cost of 400 pounds. The day after the fire, as he groped among the ruins in the garden, Mr. Wesley had picked up a torn leaf of his Polyglot Bible, on which these words alone were legible: Vade; vende omnia quot habes; et attolle crucem, et sequere me. He had come to Epworth a poor man: and now, after fifteen years, he stood as poor as then; poorer, perhaps. He had served his parishioners only to earn their detestation. But he stood unbeaten: and as he stared out of his window there gripped him—not for the first time—a fierce ironical affection for the hard landscape, the fields of his striving, even the folk who had proved such good haters. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field—ay, and learn to relish it as no other food. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. Ah, but to go and surrender that ground to others—there lay the sting! With him, as with many another true man disappointed in his fate, his hopes passed from himself to fasten the more eagerly on his sons. He wanted them to be great and eminent soldiers of Christ, and he divined already that, if for one above the others, this eminence was reserved for John. But he wanted also a son of his loins to succeed him at Epworth, to hold and improve what painful inches he had gained; and again he could only think of John. Could a man devote his life to this forsaken parish and yet be a light set on a hill for the world? Had not his own life taught the folly of that hope?
He sighed and turned from the window. He had quite forgotten Hetty.
He stepped to the door to summon Johnny Whitelamb: but the sound of voices drew him across the passage to the best parlour, and there at the threshold his eyes fell on Sukey's headdress.
"Susannah!"
"Yes, father." Sukey stepped forward to be kissed.
"Take off that—that thing!"
"Yes, father." She untied the strings obediently.
"If your husband chooses to dress and carry you about the country like a figure of fun, I cannot prevent him. But in my house remember that I am your father, and take my assurance that, although Jezebel tired her head, she had the saving grace of not looking like a fool."
Mr. Wesley turned on his heel and strode back to his books.
"Why don't you stand up to him?" asked Mr. Dick Ellison suddenly, on the road to Kelstein.
"To father?" Hetty came out of her day-dreams with a start.
"Yes: you've been having a tiff this morning, anyone can see. Young man is poison to him, hey? Why don't you take a leaf out of my book? 'Paternal authority'—and a successor of the apostles into the bargain—that's his ground. Well, I don't allow him to take it. 'Beggars can't be choosers' is mine, and I pin him to it. Oh, yes, I'm poison to him, but it does him good. 'That cock won't crow,' I say. He's game enough on his own dunghill, but a high-blooded lass like you ought to be his master by this time. Hint that you'll cut the painter, kick over the traces—you needn't do it, y'know. Threaten you'll run and join the stage—nothing unlikely in that— and, by George, it'd bring him up with a clove hitch! Where's your invention?"
Hetty gazed at the horse's ears and considered. "It's easy for you,
Dick, who have nothing in common with him, not even affection."
"Oh, I like the old fellow well enough, for all his airs with me," said Mr. Dick Ellison graciously.
"If they annoyed you more, you might understand him better—and me," replied Hetty.
Silence fell between them again and the gig bowled on.