Hetty Wesley. Arthur Quiller-Couch
"I beg yours, sir." She withdrew her hand from his arm.
"If he can swallow that down, he may win yet."
"Please God!"
She stood almost a head taller than he, and he gazed up into a singularly noble face, proud and strong, somewhat pinched about the lips, but having such eyes and brows as belong to the few accustomed to confront great thoughts. It gave her the ineffable touch of greatness which more than redeemed her shabby black gown and antique bonnet; and, on an afterthought, the old gentleman decided that it must have been beautiful in its day. Just now it was pale, and one hand clutched the silk shawl crossed upon her bosom. He noted, too, that the hand was shapely, though roughened with housework where the mitten did not hide it.
She had scarcely glanced at him, and after a while he dropped his scrutiny and gazed with her across the ring.
"H'm," said he, "dander up, this time!"
"Yes," the lady answered, "I know that look, sir, though I have never seen it on him. And I trust to see him wear it, one day, in a better cause."
"Tut, madam, the cause is good enough. You don't tell me I'm talking to a Whig?—not that I'd dispute with a lady, Whig or Tory."
"A Whig?" She fetched up a smile: she had evidently a reserve of mirth. "Indeed, no: but I was thinking, sir, of the cause of Christ."
"Oh!" said the old gentleman shortly, and took snuff.
They were right. Young Wesley stepped out this time with a honeyed smile, but with a new-born light in his hazel eyes—a demoniac light, lambent and almost playful. Master Randall, caressed by them, read the danger signal a thought too late. A swift and apparently reckless feint drew another of his slogging strokes, and in a flash the enemy was under his guard. Even so, for the fraction of a second, victory lay in his arms, a clear gift to be embraced: a quick crook of the elbow, and Master Wesley's head and neck would be snugly in Chancery. Master Wesley knew it—knew, further, that there was no retreat, and that his one chance hung on getting in his blow first and disabling with it. He jabbed it home with his right, a little below the heart: and in a second the inclosing fore-arm dragged limp across his neck. He pressed on, aiming for the point of the jaw; but slowly lowered his hands as Randall tottered back two steps with a face of agony, dropped upon one knee, clutching at his breast, and so to the turf, where he writhed for a moment and fainted.
As the ring broke up, cheering, and surged across the green, the old gentleman took snuff again and snapped down the lid of his box.
"Good!" said he; then to the lady, "Are you a relative of his?"
"I am his mother, sir."
CHAPTER II.
She moved across the green to the corner where Charles was coolly sponging his face and chest over a basin. "In a moment, ma'am!" said he, looking up with a twinkle in his eye as the boys made way for her.
She read the meaning of it and smiled at her own mistake as she drew back the hand she had put out to take the sponge from him. He was her youngest, and she had seen him but twice since, at the age of eight, he had left home for Westminster School. In spite of the evidence of her eyes he was a small child still—until his voice warned her.
She drew back her hand at once. Boys scorn any show of feeling, even between mother and son; and Charles should not be ridiculed on her account. So he sponged away and she waited, remembering how she had taught him, when turned a year old, to cry softly after a whipping. Ten children she had brought up in a far Lincolnshire parsonage, and without sparing the rod; but none had been allowed to disturb their father in his study where he sat annotating the Scriptures or turning an heroic couplet or adding up his tangled household accounts.
A boy pushed through the group around the basin, with news that Butcher Randall had come-to from his swoon and wished to shake hands: and almost before Charles could pick up a towel and dry himself the fallen champion appeared with a somewhat battered grin.
"No malice," he mumbled: "nasty knock—better luck next time."
"Come, I say!" protested Charles, shaking hands and pulling a mock face, "Is there going to be a next time?"
"Well, you don't suppose I'm convinced—" Randall began: but Mrs. Wesley broke in with a laugh.
"There's old England for you!" She brought her mittened palms together as if to clap them, but they rested together in the very gesture of prayer. "'Won't be convinced,' you say? but oh, when it's done you are worth it! Nay—don't hide your face, sir! Wounds for an honest belief are not shameful, and I can only hope that in your place my son would have shown so fair a temper."
"Whe-ew!" one of the taller boys whistled. "It's Wesley's mother!"
"She was watching, too: the last two rounds at any rate. I saw her."
"And I."
"—And so cool it might have been a dog-fight in Tuttle Fields. Your servant, ma'am!" The speaker made her a boyish bow and lifted his voice: "Three cheers for Mrs. Wesley!"
They were given—the first two with a will. The third tailed off; and Mrs. Wesley, looking about her, laughed again as the boys, suddenly turned shy or overtaken by a sense of delicacy, backed away sheepishly and left her alone with her son.
"Put on your shirt," said she, and again her hand went out to help him. "I want you to take a walk with me."
Charles nodded. "Have you seen Sam?"
"Yes. You may kiss me now, dear—there's nobody looking. I left him almost an hour ago: his leg is mending, but he cannot walk with us. He promises, though, to come to Johnson's Court this evening—I suppose, in a sedan-chair—and greet your uncle Annesley, whom I have engaged to take back to supper. You knew, of course, that I should be lodging there?"
"Sammy—we call him Sammy—told me on Sunday, but could not say when you would be arriving here."
"I reached London last night, and this morning your uncle Matthew came to my door with word that the Albemarle had entered the river. I think you are well enough to walk to the Docks with me."
"Well enough? Of course I am. But why not take a waterman from the stairs here?"
"'Twill cost less to walk and hire a boat at Blackwall, if necessary. Your father could give me very little money, Charles. We seem to be as poorly off as ever."
"And this uncle Annesley—" he began, but paused with a glance at his mother, whose face had suddenly grown hot. "What sort of a man is he?"
"My boy," she said with an effort, "I must not be ashamed to tell my child what I am not ashamed to hope. He is rich: he once promised to do much for Emmy and Sukey, and these promises came to nothing. But now that his wife is dead and he comes home with neither chick nor child, I see no harm in praying that his heart may be moved towards his sister's children. At least I shall be frank with him and hide not my hope, let him treat it as he will." She was silent for a moment. "Are all women unscrupulous when they fight for their children? They cannot all be certain, as I am, that their children were born for greatness: and yet, I wonder sometimes—" She wound up with a smile which held something of a playful irony, but more of sadness.
"Jacky could not come with you?"
"No, and he writes bitterly about it. He is tied to Oxford—by lack of pence, again."
By this time Charles had slipped on his jacket, and the pair stepped out into the streets and set their faces eastward. Mrs. Wesley was cockney-bred and delighted in the stir and rush of life. She, the mother of many children, kept a well-poised figure and walked with the elastic step of a maid; and as she went she chatted, asking a score of shrewd questions about Westminster—the masters, the food, the old dormitory in which Charles slept, the