Hetty Wesley Part 2

"Yes. You may kiss me now, dear--there's n.o.body 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 c.o.c.kney-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 new one then rising to replace it; breaking off to recognise some famous building, or to pause and gaze after a company of his Majesty's guards. Her own masterful carriage and unembarra.s.sed mode of speech--"as if all London belonged to her," Charles afterwards described it--drew the stares of the pa.s.sers-by; stares which she misinterpreted, for in the gut of the Strand, a few paces beyond Somerset House, she suddenly twirled the lad about and "Bless us, child, your eye's enough to frighten the town! 'Tis to be hoped brother Sam has not turned Quaker in India; or that Sally the cook-maid has a beefsteak handy."

Mr. Matthew Wesley, apothecary and by courtesy "surgeon," to whose house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, they presently swerved aside, had not returned from his morning's round of visits. He was a widower and took his meals irregularly. But Sally had two covers laid, with a pot of freshly drawn porter beside each; and here, after Charles's eye had been attended to and the swelling reduced, they ate and drank and rested for half an hour before resuming their walk.

So far, and until they reached the Tower, their road was familiar enough; but from Smithfield onwards they had to halt and inquire their way again and again in intervals of threading the traffic which poured out of cross-streets and to and from the docks on their right--wagons empty, wagons laden with hides, jute, sc.r.a.p-iron, tallow, indigo, woollen bales, ochre, sugar; trollies and pack-horses; here and there a cordon of porters and warehous.e.m.e.n trundling barrels as nonchalantly as a child his hoop. The business of piloting his mother through these cross-tides left Charles little time for observation; but one incident of that walk he never forgot.

They were pa.s.sing Shadwell when they came on a knot of people and two watchmen posted at the corner of a street across which a reek of smoke mingled with clouds of gritty dust. Twice or thrice they heard a crash or dull rumble of falling masonry. A distillery had been blazing there all night and a gang of workmen was now clearing the ruins. But as Charles and his mother came by the corner, the knot of people parted and gave pa.s.sage to a line of stretchers--six stretchers in all, and on each a body, which the bearers had not taken the trouble to cover from view. A bystander said that these were men who had run back into the building to drink the flaming spirit, and had dropped insensible, and been crushed when the walls fell in. The boy had never seen death before; and at the sight of it thrust upon him in this brutal form, he put out a hand towards his mother to find that she too was swaying.

"Hallo!" cried the same bystander, "look out there! the lady's fainting."

But Mrs. Wesley steadied herself. "'Tis not _that_," she gasped, at the same time waving him off; "'tis the fire--the fire!"

And stepping by the crossing she fled along the street with Charles at her heels, nor ceased running for another hundred yards.

"You do not remember," she began, turning at length; "no, of course you do not. You were a babe, not two years old; nurse s.n.a.t.c.hed you out of bed--"

The odd thing was that, despite the impossibility, Charles seemed to remember quite clearly. As a child he had heard his sisters talk so often of the fire at Epworth Rectory that the very scene--and especially Jacky's escape--was bitten on the blank early pages as a real memory. He had half a mind now to question his mother about it and startle her with details, but her face forbade him.

She recovered her colour in bargaining with a waterman at Blackwall Stairs. Two stately Indiamen lay out on the river below, almost flank by flank; and, as it happened, the farther one was at that moment weighing her anchor, indeed had it tripped on the cathead.

A cloud of boats hung about her, trailing astern as her head-sails drew and she began to gather way on the falling tide.

The waterman, a weedy loafer with a bottle nose and watery blue eyes, agreed to pull across for threepence; but no sooner were they embarked and on the tide-way, than he lay on his oars and jerked his thumb towards the moving ship. "Make it a crown, ma'am, and I'll overhaul her," he hiccupped.

Mrs. Wesley glanced towards the two ships and counted down threepence deliberately upon the thwart facing her, at the same time pursing up her lips to hide a smile. For the one ship lay moored stem and stern with her bows pointed up the river, and the other, drifting past, at this moment swung her tall p.o.o.p into view with her windows flashing against the afternoon sun, and beneath them her name, the _Josiah Childs_, in tall gilt letters.

"Better make it a crown, ma'am," the waterman repeated with a drunken chuckle.

Mrs. Wesley rose in her seat. Her hand went up, and Charles made sure she meant to box the man's ears. He could not see the look on her face, but whatever it was it cowed the fellow, who seized his oars again and began to pull for dear life, as she sat back and laid her hand on the tiller.

"Easy, now," she commanded, after twenty strokes or so. "Easy, and ship your oar, unless you want it broken!" But for answer he merely stared at her, and a moment later his starboard oar snapped its tholepin like a carrot, and hurled him back over his thwart as the boat ran alongside the _Albemarle's_ ladder.

"My friend," said Mrs. Wesley coolly, "you have a pestilent habit of not listening. I hired you to row me to the _Albemarle_, and this, I believe, is she." Then, with a glance up at the half-dozen grinning faces above the bulwarks, "Can I see Captain Bewes?"

"Your servant, ma'am." The captain appeared at the head of the ladder; a red apple-cheeked man in shirt-sleeves and clean white nankeen breeches, who looked like nothing so much as an overgrown schoolboy.

"Is Mr. Samuel Annesley on board?"

Captain Bewes rubbed his chin. He had grown suddenly grave. "I beg your pardon," said he, "but are you a kinswoman of Mr. Annesley's?"

"I am his sister, sir."

"Then I'll have to ask you to step on board, ma'am. You may dismiss that rascal, and one of my boats shall put you ash.o.r.e."

He stepped some way down the ladder to meet her and she took his hand with trepidation, while the _Albemarle's_ crew leaned over and taunted the cursing waterman.

"There--that will do, my man. I don't allow swearing here.

Steady, ma'am, that's right; and now give us a hand, youngster."

"Is--is he ill?" Mrs. Wesley stammered.

"Who? Mr. Annesley? Not to my knowledge, ma'am."

"Then he is on board? We heard he had taken pa.s.sage with you."

"Why, so he did; and, what's more, to the best of my knowledge, he sailed. It's a serious matter, ma'am, and we're all at our wits'

ends over it; but the fact is--Mr. Annesley has disappeared."

CHAPTER III.

That same evening, in Mr. Matthew Wesley's parlour, Johnson's Court, Captain Bewes told the whole story--or so much of it as he knew.

The disappearance from on board his ship of a person so important as Mr. Samuel Annesley touched his prospects in the Company's service, and he did not conceal it. He had already reported the affair at the East India House and was looking forward to a highly uncomfortable interview with the Board of Governors: but he was concerned, too, as an honest man; and had jumped at Mrs. Wesley's invitation to sup with her in Johnson's Court and tell what he could.

Mr. Matthew Wesley, as host, sat at the head of his table and puffed at a churchwarden pipe; a small, narrow-featured man, in a chocolate-coloured suit, with steel b.u.t.tons, and a wig of professional amplitude. On his right sat his sister-in-law, her bonnet replaced by a tall white cap: on his left the Captain in his sh.o.r.e-going clothes. He and the apothecary had mixed themselves a gla.s.s apiece of Jamaica rum, hot, with sugar and lemon-peel.

At the foot of the table, with his injured leg supported on a cushion, reclined the Reverend Samuel Wesley, Junior, Usher of Westminster School, his gaunt cheeks (he was the plainest-featured of the Wesleys) wan with recent illness, and his eyes fixed on Captain Bewes's chubby face.

"Well, as I told you, Mr. Annesley's cabin lay beside my state-room, with a window next to mine in the stern: and, as I showed Mrs. Wesley to-day, my stateroom opens on the 'captain's cabin' (as they call it), where I have dined as many as two dozen before now, and where I do the most of my work. This has three windows directly under the big p.o.o.p-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-sc.r.a.ps 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 gla.s.s, and resumed. "Quite so.

The next thing is that Mr. Orchard, returning to deck two minutes later and having to pa.s.s 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."