Hetty Wesley Part 7

Emilia, on a visit with her uncle Matthew in London, had fallen pa.s.sionately in love with a young Oxonian named Leybourne. But Sam's wife had discovered something to his discredit and had spoken to Sam, and Sam to the Rector. The match was broken off, and Emilia renounced her love, though she never forgave the mischief-maker.

Patty again had formed an attachment for John Romley, who had been a pupil of Sam's, had afterwards graduated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was now the ambitious young master of the Free School at Epworth.

Again the Rector interfered, and Patty sighed and renounced her romance. Would Hetty, too, renounce and acquiesce? Mrs. Wesley doubted: nay, was even afraid. Hetty alone had never been overawed by her father, had never acknowledged the _patria potestas_ with all its exorbitant claims. She had never actually revolted, but she defied, somehow, the spell he had cast upon the others: and somehow-- here was the marvel--Mrs. Wesley, who more than any other of the family had yielded to the illusion and fostered it, understood Hetty the better for her independence. The others, under various kinds of pressure, had submitted: but here was the very woman she might have been, but for her own submission! And she feared for that woman.

Hetty must leave Wroote, or there was no knowing how it might end.

"Mother, I believe you are afraid of what I may do."

Mrs. Wesley, incapable of a lie or anything resembling it, bent her head. "I have been afraid, once or twice," she said.

"So you send me away? That seems to me neither very brave nor very wise. Will there be less danger at Kelstein?"

Her mother started. "Does _he_ know of your going? You don't tell me he means to visit you there?"

"Forgive me, dearest mother, but your first question is a little foolish--eh?" Hetty laughed and quoted:

"But if she whom Love doth honour Be conceal'd from the day-- Set a thousand guards upon her, Love will find out the way."

She put up her chin defiantly.

"I wish, child, you would tell me if--if this is much to you," said Mrs. Wesley wistfully, with a sudden craving to put her arms around her daughter and have her confidence.

Hetty hesitated for a fatal moment, then laughed again. "I am not a child precisely; and we read one another, dear, much better than we allow. Your second question you have no right to ask. You are sending me away--"

"No right, Hetty?"

"You are sending me away," Hetty repeated, and seemed to be considering. After a pause she added slowly: "You others are all under papa's thumb, and you make me a coward. But I will promise you this"--here her words began to drag--"and to strengthen me no less than to ease your fears, I promise it, mother. If the worst come to the worst, it shall not be at Kelstein that I choose it, but here among you all. I think you will gain little by sending me to Kelstein, mother: but you need not be afraid for me there."

"You speak in enigmas."

"And my tone, you would say, is something too theatrical for your taste? Well, well, dear mother, 'tis the privilege of a house with a doom upon it to talk tragedy: for, you know, Molly declares we have a doom upon us, though we cannot agree what 'tis. I uphold it to be debt, or papa's tantrums, or perhaps Old Jeffrey [apparently the Wesley family ghost] but she will have it to be something deeper, and that one day we shall awake and see that it includes all three."

"It appears to be my doom," said Mrs. Wesley, her face relaxing, "to listen to a deal of nonsense from my daughters."

"And who's to blame, dear? You chose to marry at twenty, and here you have a daughter unmarried at seven and twenty. Now I respect and love you, as you well know: but every now and then reason steps in and proves to me that I am seven years your senior--which is absurd, and the absurder for the grave wise face you put upon it. So come along, sweet-and-twenty, and help me pack my buskins." Hetty led the way upstairs humming an air which (though her mother did not recognise it) was Purcell's setting of a song in _Twelfth Night_:

"Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know."

CHAPTER VII.

On the day fixed, and at nine in the morning, d.i.c.k Ellison, who had promised to drive Hetty over to Kelstein, arrived with his gig.

Sukey accompanied him, to join in the farewells and spend a few hours at the parsonage pending his return.

Now these visits of Sukey's were a trial to her no less than to her mother and sisters. She knew that they detested her husband, and (what was worse) she had enough of the Wesley in her to perceive why and how: nevertheless, being a Wesley, she kept a steady face on her pain. Stung at times to echo d.i.c.k's sentiments and opinions, as it were in self-defence, she tried to soften them down and present them in a form at least tolerable to her family. It was heroic, but uncomfortable; and they set aside the best parlour for it.

Sukey would have preferred the kitchen. In person she was short and plump, and her face expressed a desire to be cheerful. She had little or none of that grace by which her sisters walked in the commonest cotton frocks as queens. In childhood she had been noted for her carelessness in attire, and now obediently flaunted her husband's taste in bonnets.

Her headdress to-day had a dreadful coquettishness. d.i.c.k had found it at Lincoln and called on the company to admire. It consisted of three large mock water-lilies on a little mat of muslin, and was perched on her piled hair so high aloft that their gaze, as they scanned it, seemed to pa.s.s far over her head. She longed to tear it down, cast it on the floor, and be the Sukey they knew.

The plate of cake and biscuits on the table gave the parlour a last funereal touch. d.i.c.k was boisterously talkative. The others scarcely spoke. At length Hetty, who had been struggling to swallow a biscuit, and well-nigh choking over it, rose abruptly, kissed her mother, and went straight to her father's room.

He sat at his writing-table, busy as usual with his commentary upon the Book of Job. At another table by the window Johnny Whitelamb bent over a map, with his back to the light. He glanced up as she entered: she could not well read his eyes for the shadow, and perhaps for some dimness in her own: but he rose, gathered his papers together, and slipped from the room.

"Papa, d.i.c.k Ellison is in the parlour."

"So my ears inform me."

"He wishes to see you."

"Then you may take him my compliments and a.s.sure him that he will not."

"But, papa, the gig is at the door. I have come to say good-bye."

"Ah, in that case I will step out to the door and see you off; but I will not be b.u.t.ton-holed by d.i.c.k Ellison." He rose and stood eyeing her, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger. "You have something to say to me, I suspect."

"I am going to Kelstein," Hetty began firmly. "I would like to obey you there, sir, as the others do at home. I do not mean outwardly: but to feel, while I am absent, that I am earning--" She paused and cast about for a word.

"You will be earning, of course. There is always satisfaction in that."

"I am not thinking of money."

"Of my approval, then? Your employer, Mr. Grantham, is an honest gentleman: I shall trust his report of you."

"Papa, I came to beg you for more than that. Will you not let me feel that I am earning something more?--that if, as times goes on, my conduct pleases you, you will be more disposed to consider--to grant me--"

"Mehetabel!"

"I love him, papa! I cannot help it. Sir--!"

She put out both hands to him, her eyes welling. But he had turned sharply away from her cry, and strode across the room in his irritation. Her hands fell, and one caught at the edge of the table for support while she leaned, bowing her head.

He came abruptly back. "Are you aware, Mehetabel, that you have proposed a bargain to me? I do not bargain with my children: I expect obedience. Nor as a father am I obliged to give my reasons.

But since you are leaving us, and I would not dismiss you harshly, let me say that I have studied this man for whom you avow a fondness; and apart from his calling--which I detest--I find him vain, foppish, insincere. He has _levitas_ with _levitas_: I believe his heart to be as shallow as his head. I know him to be no fit mate for one of my daughters; least of all for you who have gifts above your sisters--gifts which I have recognised and tried to improve.

Child, summon your pride to you, and let it help your obedience."

He broke off and gazed out of the window. "If," said he more softly, "our fate be not offered to us, we must make it. If, while our true fate delays, there come to us unworthy phantoms simulating it, we should test them; lest impatient we run to embrace vanity, and betray, not our hopes alone, but the purpose G.o.d had in mind for us from the beginning."

Hetty looked up. She might have thought that she was twenty-seven, and asked herself how long was it likely to be before a prince came across those dreary fields to the thatched parsonage, seeking her.

But her heart was full of the man she loved, and she thought only that her father did him bitter injustice.

She shivered and lifted her face. "Good-bye, papa," she said coldly.

He kissed her on the cheek, and took a step to follow her to the door; but thought better of it and returned to the window. He heard the door close upon her, and five minutes later saw her whisked away in the gig by d.i.c.k Ellison's side.

CHAPTER VIII.