Matthew Wesley flung up his hands. ""Tis a conspiracy of folly!
Upon my professional word, you ought all to be strait-waistcoated!"
He glared around, found speech again, and pounced upon Sam.
"A pretty success _you"ve_ made of your father"s ambitions--you, with your infatuation for that rogue Atterbury, and your born gift of choosing the cold side of favour! You might have been Freind"s successor, Head Master of Westminster School! Where"s your chance now? You"ll not even get the under-mastership, I doubt.
Some country grammar school is your fate--I see it; and all for lack of sense. If you lacked learning, lacked piety, lacked--"
"Excuse me, sir, but these are matters I have no mind to discuss with you. When Freind retires Nicoll will succeed him, and Nicoll deserves it. Whether I get Nicoll"s place or no, G.o.d will decide, who knows if I deserve it. Let it rest in His hands. But when you speak of Bishop Atterbury, and when I think of that great heart breaking in exile, why then, sir, you defeat yourself and steel me against my little destinies by the example of a martyr."
He said it awkwardly, pulling the while at his bony knuckles; but he said it with a pa.s.sion which cowed his uncle for the moment, and drew from his mother a startled, almost expectant, look. Yet she knew that Sam"s eyes could never hold (for her joy and terror) the underlying fire which had shone in her youngest boy"s that morning, and which mastered her--strong woman though she was--in her husband"s. And this was the tragic note in her love for Sam--the more tragic because never sounded. Sam had learning, diligence, piety, a completely honest mind; he had never caused her an hour"s reasonable anxiety; only--to this eldest son she had not transmitted his father"s genius, that one divine spark which the Epworth household claimed for its sons as a birthright. An exorbitant, a colossal claim! Yet these Wesleys made it as a matter of course.
Did the father know that one of his sons had disappointed it?
Sam knew, at any rate; and Sam"s mother knew; and each, aware of the other"s knowledge, tried pitifully to ignore it.
Matthew Wesley bounced from his chair, unlocked the glazed doors of a bookcase behind him and pulled forth a small volume.
"Here you have it, sir, "_Maggots: by a Scholar_"--that"s my brother.
"_Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled,_"--that"s the man all over. You may wager that if any man of sense had ever hit on these subjects, my brother had never come within a mile of "em.
Listen: "The Grunting of a Hog," "To my Gingerbread Mistress,"
"A Box like an Egg," "Two Soldiers killing one another for a Groat,"
"A Pair of Breeches," "A Cow"s Tail"--there"s t.i.tles for you!
Cow"s tail, indeed! And here, look you, is the author"s portrait for a frontispiece, with a laurel-wreath in his hair and a maggot in place of a parting! "Maggots"! He began with "em and he"ll end with "em. Maggots!" He slammed the two covers of the book together and tossed it across the table.
Mr. Garrett Wesley, during this tirade, had fallen back upon the att.i.tude of a well-bred man who has dropped in upon a painful family quarrel and cannot well escape. He had taken his hat and stood with his gaze for the most part fastened on the carpet, but lifted now and then when directly challenged by the apothecary"s harangue.
The contemned volume skimmed across the table and toppled over at his feet. With much gravity he stooped and picked it up; and as he did so, heard Mrs. Wesley addressing him.
"And the curious part of it is," she was saying calmly, "that my brother-in-law means all this in kindness!"
"No, I don"t," snapped Matthew; and in the next breath, "well, yes, I do then. Susanna, I beg your pardon, but you"d provoke a saint."
He dropped into his chair. "You know well enough that if I lose my temper, "tis for your sake and the girls"."
"I know," she said softly, covering his hand with hers. "But you must e"en let us go our f.e.c.kless way. Sir,"--she looked up-- "must this decision be made to-night?"
"Not at all, ma"am, not at all. The lad, if you will, may choose when he comes of age; I have another string to my bow, should he refuse the offer. But meantime, and while "tis uncertain to which of us he"ll end by belonging, I hope I may bear my part in his school fees."
"But that, to some extent, must bind him."
"No: for I propose to keep my share of it dark, with your leave.
But you shall hear further of this by letter. May I say, that if I chose his father"s son, I have come to-day to set my heart on his mother"s? I wish you good night, ma"am! Good night, sirs!"
CHAPTER IV.
In a corner of the Isle of Axholme, in Lincolnshire, and on the eastern slope of a knoll a few feet above the desolate fenland, six sisters were seated. The eldest, a woman of thirty-three, held a book open in her lap and was reading aloud from it; reading with admirable expression and a voice almost masculine, rich as a deep-mouthed bell. And, while she read, the glory of the verse seemed to pa.s.s into her handsome, peevish face.
Her listeners heard her contentedly--all but one, who rested a little lower on the slope, with one knee drawn up, her hands clasped about it, and her brows bent in a frown as she gazed from under her sun-bonnet across the level landscape to the roofs and church-tower of Epworth, five miles away, set on a rise and facing the evening sun. Across the field below, hemmed about and intersected with d.y.k.es of sluggish water, two wagons moved slowly, each with a group of labourers about it: for to-night was the end of the oat-harvest, and they were carrying the last sheaves of Wroote glebe. After the carrying would come supper, and the worn-out cart-horse which had brought it afield from the Parsonage stood at the foot of the knoll among the unladen kegs and baskets, patiently whisking his tail to keep off the flies, and serenely indifferent that a lean and lanky youth, seated a few yards away with a drawing-board on his knee, was attempting his portrait.
The girl frowned as she gazed over this group, over the harvesters, the fens, the d.y.k.es, and away toward Epworth: and even her frown became her mightily. Her favourite sister, Molly, seated beside her, and glancing now and again at her face, believed that the whole world contained nothing so beautiful. But this was a fixed belief of Molly"s. She was a cripple, and in spite of features made almost angelic by the ineffable touch of goodness, the family as a rule despised her, teased her, sometimes went near to torment her; for the Wesleys, like many other people of iron const.i.tution, had a healthy impatience of deformity and weakness. Hetty alone treated her always gently and made much of her, not as one who would soften a defect, but as seeing none; Hetty of the high spirits, the clear eye, the springing gait; Hetty, the wittiest, cleverest, mirthfullest of them all; Hetty, glorious to look upon.
All the six were handsome. Here they are in their order: Emilia, aged thirty-three (it was she who held the book); Molly, twenty-eight; Hetty, twenty-seven; Nancy, twenty-two, l.u.s.ty, fresh-complexioned, and the least bit stupid; Patty, nearing eighteen, dark-skinned and serious, the one of the Wesleys who could never be persuaded to see a joke; and Kezzy, a lean child of fifteen, who had outgrown her strength. By baptism, Molly was Mary; Hetty, Mehetabel; Nancy, Anne; Patty, Martha; and Kezzy, Kezia. But the register recording most of these names had perished at Epworth in the Parsonage fire, so let us keep the familiar ones. Grown women and girls, all the six were handsome. They had an air of resting there aloof; with a little fancy you might have taken them, in their plain print frocks, for six G.o.ddesses reclining on the knoll and watching the harvesters at work on the plain below--poor drudging mortals and unmannerly:
"High births and virtue equally they scorn, As a.s.ses dull, on dunghills born; Impervious as the stones their heads are found, Their rage and hatred steadfast as the ground."
(The lines were Hetty"s.) When the Wesleys descended and walked among these churls, it was as beings of another race; imperious in pride and strength of will. They meant kindly. But the country-folk came of an obstinate stock, fierce to resent what they could not understand. Half a century before, a Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden by name, had arrived and drained their country for them; in return they had cursed him, fired his crops, and tried to drown out his settlers and workmen by smashing the dams and laying the land under water. Fierce as they were, these fenmen read in the Wesleys a will to match their own and beat it; a scorn, too, which cowed, but at the same time turned them sullen. Parson Wesley they frankly hated.
Thrice they had flooded his crops and twice burnt the roof over his head.
If the six sisters were handsome, Hetty was glorious. Her hair, something browner than auburn, put Emilia"s in the shade; her brows, darker even than dark Patty"s, were broader and more n.o.bly arched; her transparent skin, her colour--she defied the sunrays carelessly, and her cheeks drank them in as potable gold clarifying their blood-- made Nancy"s seem but a dairymaid"s complexion. Add that this colouring kept an April freshness; add, too, her mother"s height and more than her mother"s grace of movement, an outline virginally severe yet flexuous as a palm-willow in April winds; and you have Hetty Wesley at twenty-seven--a queen in a country frock and cobbled shoes; a scholar, a lady, amongst hinds; above all, a woman made for love and growing towards love surely, though repressed and thwarted.
Emilia read:
"So spake our general mother, and, with eyes Of conjugal attraction unreproved, And meek surrender, half-embracing leaned On our first father; half her swelling breast Naked met his, under the flowing gold Of her loose tresses hid; he, in delight Both of her beauty and submissive charms, Smiled with superior love (as Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed May flowers), and pressed her matron lip With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned For envy, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance; and to himself thus plained:-- "Sight hateful, sight tormenting!" . . ."
Molly interrupted with a cry; so fiercely Hetty had gripped her wrist of a sudden. Emily broke off:
"What on earth"s the matter, child?"
"Is it an adder?" asked Patty, whose mind was ever practical.
"Johnny Whitelamb warned us--"
"An adder?" Hetty answered her, cool in a moment and deliberate.
"Nothing like it, my dear; "tis the old genuine Serpent."
"What do you mean, Hetty? Where is it?"
"Sit down, child, and don"t distress yourself. Having rendered everybody profoundly uncomfortable within a circuit of two miles and almost worried itself to a sun-stroke, it has now gone into the house to write at a commentary on the Book of Job, to be ill.u.s.trated with cuts, for one of which--to wit, the War-horse which saith, "Ha, ha,"
among the trumpets--you observe Johnny Whitelamb making a study at this moment."
"I think you must mean papa," said Patty; "and I call it very disrespectful to compare him with Satan; for "twas Satan sister Emmy was reading about."
"So she was: but if you had read Plutarch every morning with papa, as I have, you would know that the best authors (whom I imitate) sometimes use comparisons for the sake of contrast. Satan, you heard, eyed our first parents askance: papa would have stepped in earlier and forbidden Adam the house. Proceed, Emilia! How goes Milton on?--
"Adam and Eve and Pinch-me Went to the river to bathe: Adam and Eve were drown"d, And who do you think was saved? . . ."
Molly drew her wrist away hurriedly. "Hetty!" she cried, as Emilia withdrew into her book in dudgeon. "Hetty, dear! I cannot bear you to be flippant. It hurts me, it is so unworthy of you."
"Hurts you, my mouse?"--this was one of Hetty"s tender, fantastic names for her. "Why then, I ask your pardon and must try to amend.
You are right. I _was_ flippant; you might even have said vulgar.
Proceed, Emilia,--do you hear? I beg your pardon. Tell us more of the Arch-Rebel--
"And courage never to submit or yield And what is else not to be overcome . . ."
Say it over in your great voice, Emmy, and purge us poor rebels of vulgarity."
"Pardon me," Emilia answered icily, "I am not conscious of being a rebel--nor of any temptation to be vulgar."
Molly shot an imploring glance at Hetty: but it was too late, and she knew it.
"Hoity-toity! So we are not rebellious--not even Emilia when she thinks of her Leybourne!" Emilia bit her lip. "Nor Patty when she thinks of Johnny Romley? And we are never vulgar? Ah, but forgive your poor sister, who goes into service next week! You must allow her to practise the accomplishments which will endear her to the servants" hall, and which Mr. Grantham will pay for and expect.
Indeed--since Milton is denied us--I have some lines here; a pet.i.tion to be handed to mother to-night when she returns. She may not grant it, but she must at least commend her daughter"s attempt to catch the tone." And drawing a folded paper from her waistband, she drawled the following, in the broadest Lincolnshire accent: