Hetty Wesley. Arthur Quiller-Couch
This has three windows directly under the big poop-lantern. I was sitting, that afternoon, at the head of the mahogany swing table (just as you might be sitting now, sir) with my back to the light and the midmost of the three windows wide open behind me, for air. I had the ship's chart spread before me when my second mate, Mr. Orchard, knocked at the door with word that all was ready to cast off. I asked him a few necessary questions, and while he stood there chatting I heard a splash just under my window. Well, that might have been anything—a warp cast off and the slack of it striking the water, we'll say. Whatever it was, I heard it, turned about, and with one knee on the window-locker (I remember it perfectly) took a glance out astern. I saw nothing to account for the sound: but I knew of a dozen things which might account for it—anything, in fact, down to some lazy cabin-boy heaving the dinner-scraps overboard: and having, as you'll understand, a dozen matters on my mind at the moment, I thought no more of it, but turned to Mr. Orchard again and picked up our talk. To this day I don't know that there was anything in the sound, but 'tis fair to tell you all I can."—Captain Bewes took a sip at his grog, and over the rim looked down the table towards Samuel, who nodded.
The Captain nodded back, set down his glass, and resumed. "Quite so. The next thing is that Mr. Orchard, returning to deck two minutes later and having to pass the door of Mr. Annesley's cabin on his way, ran against an old Hindu beggar crouching there, fingering the door-handle and about to enter—or so Orchard supposed, and kicked him up the companion. He told me about it himself, next day, when we found the cabin empty and I began to make inquiries. 'Now here,' says you, 'here's a clue,' and I'm not denying but it may be one. Only when you look into it, what does it amount to? Mr. Annesley—saving your presence—was known for a stern man: you may take it for certain he'd made enemies over there, and these Hindus are the devil (saving your presence again, ma'am) for nursing a grudge. 'Keep a stone in your pocket seven years: turn it, keep it for another seven; 'twill be ready at hand for your enemy'—that's their way. But, to begin with, an old jogi is nothing strange to meet on a ship before she clears. These beggars in the East will creep in anywhere. And, next, you'll hardly maintain that an old beggarman ('seventy years old if a day,' said Orchard) was going to take an active man like Mr. Annesley and cram him bodily through a cabin window? 'Tis out of nature. And yet when we broke into his cabin, twenty-four hours later, there was not a trace of him: only his boxes neatly packed, his watch hanging to the beam and just running down, a handful of gold and silver tossed on to the bunk—just as he might have emptied it from his pockets—nothing else, and the whole cabin neat as a pin."
"But," objected Mr. Matthew Wesley, "if this jogi—or whatever you call him—had entered the cabin for no good, he would hardly have missed the money lying on the bunk."
"Sir, you must not judge these eastern mendicants by your London beggars. They are not thieves, nor avaricious, but religious men practising self-denial, who collect alms merely to support life, and believe that money so bestowed blesses the giver."
"A singularly perverted race!" was the apothecary's comment.
Captain Bewes turned towards Mr. Samuel, who next spoke from the penumbra at the far end of the table. "I believe, Captain," said he, "that these mendicants are as a rule the most harmless of men?"
"Wouldn't hurt a fly, sir. I have known some whose charity extended to the vermin on their own bodies."
Mrs. Wesley sat tapping the mahogany gently with her finger-tips. "To my thinking, the key of this mystery, if there be one, lies at Surat. My brother had powerful enemies: his letters make that clear. We must inquire into them—their numbers and the particular grudge they bore him—and also into the state of his mind. He was not the sort of person to be kidnapped in open day."
—"By a Thames waterman, for instance, madam?" said Captain Bewes, jocularly, but instantly changed his tone. "You suggest that he may have disappeared on his own account? To avoid his enemies, you mean?"
"As to his motives, sir, I say nothing: but it certainly looks to me as if he had planned to give you the slip."
"Tut-tut!" exclaimed Matthew. "And left his money behind?
Not likely!"
"We have still his boxes to search—"
"Under power of attorney," Sam suggested. "We must see about getting it to-morrow."
"Well, madam"—Captain Bewes knocked out his pipe, drained his glass, and rose—"the boxes shall be delivered up as soon as you bring me authority: and I trust, for my own sake as well as yours, the contents will clear up this mystery for us. I shall be tied to my ship for the next three days, possibly for another week—"
He was holding out his hand to Mrs. Wesley when the door opened behind him, and Sally appeared.
"If you please," she announced, "there's a gentleman without, wishes to see the company. He calls himself Mr. Wesley."
"It cannot be Charles?" Mrs. Wesley turned towards her son Sam.
"But Charles must be at Westminster and in bed these two hours!"
"Surely," said he.
"'Tis not young Master Charles, ma'am, nor anyone like him: but a badger-faced old gentleman who snaps up a word before 'tis out of your mouth."
"Show him in," commanded Matthew: and the words were scarcely out before the visitor stood in the doorway. Mrs. Wesley recognised him at once as the old gentleman who had stood beside her that morning and watched the fight.
"Good evening, ma'am. I learned your address at Westminster: or, to be precise, at the Reverend Samuel Wesley's. You are he, I suppose?"—here he swung round upon Sam—"Your amiable wife told me I should find you here: and so much the better, my visit being on family business. Eh? What? I hope I'm not turning out this gentleman?"—indicating Captain Bewes—"No? Well, if you were leaving, sir, I won't detain you: since, as I say, mine is family business. Mr. Matthew Wesley, I presume?"—with a quick turn towards his host as Captain Bewes slipped away—"And brother of this lady's husband? Quite so. No, I thank you, I do not smoke; but will take snuff, if the company allows. I have heard reports of your skill, sir. My name is Wesley also: Garrett Wesley, of Dangan, County Meath, in Ireland: I sit for my county in Parliament and pass in this world for a respectable person. You'll excuse these details, ma'am; but when a man breaks in upon a family party at this hour of the night, he ought to give some account of himself."
Mrs. Wesley rose from her chair and dropped him a stately curtsey. "The name suffices for us, sir. I make my compliments to one of my husband's family."
"I'm obliged to you, ma'am, and pleased to hear the kinship acknowledged. A good family, as families go, though I say it. We have held on to Dangan since Harry Fifth's time; and to our name since Guy of Welswe was made a thane by Athelstan. We have a knack, ma'am, of staying the course: small in the build but sound in the wind. It did me good, to-day, to see that son of yours step out for the last round."
"Excuse me—" put in Samuel, pushing a candle aside and craning forward (he was short-sighted) for a better look at the visitor.
"Ha? You have not heard? Well, well—oughtn't to tell tales out of school, and certainly not to the Usher: but your mother and I, sir, had the fortune, this morning, to witness a bout of fisticuffs—Whig against Tory—and perhaps it will not altogether distress you to learn that the Whig took a whipping. I like that boy of yours, ma'am: he has breed. I do not forget"—with another bow—"his mother's descent from the Annesleys of Anglesea and Valentia: but she will forgive me that, while watching him, I thought rather of his blood derived from my own great-great-grandfather Robert, and of our common ancestors—Walter, the king's standard-bearer, Edward, who carried the heart of the Bruce to Palestine—but I weary Mr. Matthew perhaps?"
"Not at all, sir," the apothecary protested: rubbing a lump of sugar on the rind of a lemon. "You will suffer me to mix you a glass of punch while I listen? I am a practical man, who has been forced to make his own way in the world, and has made it, I thank God. I never found these ancestors of any use to me; but if one of them had time and leisure to carry the heart of the Bruce to Jerusalem I hope I have the leisure to hear about it. Did he return, may I