Hetty Wesley. Arthur Quiller-Couch
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 feckless 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 pass 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 dykes 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 dykes, 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 constitution, 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, lusty, 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 goddesses 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 asses 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 nobly 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 illustrated 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