Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Story of Wild Will Enderby

Chapter III. Sister Sarah's Son

page 85

Chapter III. Sister Sarah's Son.

"Wild Will Enderby!" Yes; that was his soubriquet—bestowed upon him in sportive mood by his schoolmates in those young days when, in rural Somersetshire, he led the way in all feats of "derring-do" and mischief. Was there a "barring-out," or a "breaking of bounds," or an orchard to be plundered, or a fight to be got up, or any other matter of fun or devilry on, be sure Master Will Enderby was to the fore.72

He was the only child of John Grey's only sister—a pale-faced, characterless woman—who, having spent much of her short life in unmerited adoration of the sinner—her husband—devoted the remnant thereof to the worship of her son. When quite young she had married one of that indefinite class, the members of which, hovering between commercial respectability and landed gentility, were known by the vague and much-abused title of "gentlemen." Gentlemen with a few hundreds a year, who aped the traditional absurdities, and, in a small way, imitated the traditional wickednesses of the Fourth Georgian era; who chatted familiarly with grooms and their congeners, contemned the shopkeepers, condescended to the farmers, patronised the miller and the brewer, nodded to the doctor and the lawyer, and bowed obsequiously to the squire and the page 86rector. Forty years ago these drones of society were numerous in the rural districts of England. But in this, as in other matters, "the whirligig of time hath brought about its revenges," and it would, I think, be difficult to find many such in the "Merrie England" of to-day. Like flies, when summer time has passed, they have disappeared from the surface of society by the mere force of circumstances. I fancy the first blow to their inconsequential existence was given by the penny post. I am sure that the railway has annihilated them. For which let us be thankful.

At the time to which I now refer, these "one-horse gentry," (as my friend Mr. George Washington Pratt would rightfully have termed them,) were in the full swing of their underbred village importance.73 And to one of these, poor Sarah Grey, while yet a mere child, had yielded the treasures of her loving heart. To do her parents justice, they objected to the match, but they offered no positive resistance. Mr. Enderby's dashing assumption of mosaic gentility dazzled their eyes somewhat, and their daughter's tearful pleadings had borne down the scale. So at seventeen Sarah Grey became the bride of William Enderby, to find herself—the brief delirium of the honeymoon past—the neglected wife of a heartless scamp. Heaven, in its mercy, decreed that her trials should be but of short continuance. Within three years she became a widow. A career of unbridled dissipation had done its work. He died, bitterly bewept by the woman whose life his own life had desolated. Cards and dice, wine and—(yes, I must write it) women, had stript him of nearly all his possessions, so that scarcely enough page 87remained to scantily furnish the table for his much enduring and still loving widow.

Women, the cynics say, love best those who treat them worst. I cannot go the length of fully endorsing this saying, but I have known many verifications thereof. Truth is often found in most startling paradoxes. When strong affection really exists in either man or women, there is a luxury in suffering for the beloved object, which renders pain a pleasure. Mostly, however, is this antithesis exhibited in the passive principle—the female. The male, or active principle, revolts from such effects of such causes, or when it yields we rise superior, and term it—"effeminacy," thus showing that we recognize it as an attribute of woman only.

Mrs. Enderby suffered none to blame her husband. She resolutely closed her eyes to his thousand and one sins of omission and commission, and quarrelled—so far as such a meek little thing could quarrel—with every one who ventured to whisper a disparaging reflection on the memory of the departed. She even caused her blind reverential love to be carved in stone, and recorded on his tombstone that he was "a kind and loving husband. and an affectionate father."

He a kind and loving husband! He, who had left his wife to the lonely solitude of her chamber, whilst he wasted the hours in fierce revelry with boon companions and unholy jades? He an affectionate father, who had never noticed his son, save to curse him for crying? Let us charitably hope that Heaven has pardoned the graven lie, born of so much love.

There was only one child, fortunately, and this child page 88named after his father, now became the object of his mother's idolatry. For him she pinched and starved that he might have every luxury her limited means could procure. For him she went without fire in the cold winter nights, and often without meat during the day. For him she turned and re-turned her gown, and denied herself new flannel, and darned her gloves, and kept a stiff upper lip withal to the outer world; so that amongst her short-sighted neighbors she got the name of 'Proud Madam Enderby.' When young Will grew old enough she pinched yet harder to provide the funds for his education; and I verily believe she would have been starved to death but for the delicate kindness of the few friends with whom she still maintained intercourse. She never complained. Why should she? Had she not Will? And was he not all the world to her.

So Will passed his boyhood unchecked and unrestrained. With much of his father's wilfulness, he had all his mother's kindness of heart. Had the current of his energies been skilfully directed then, the latter quality might have so modified the former as to have rendered him a useful member of society—possibly a great man, certainly a good one. But no fault could his mother see in her darling, any more than she had seen fault in that other darling—her husband. The natural result followed. Will Enderby grew up self-willed, passionate, impatient of control; but also kind, affectionate, and unselfish. He could not deny himself anything whatsoever which he desired and could by possibility obtain. But he would place his slenderly-provided purse or his personal services, even to the page 89risking of life itself, at the disposal of anyone whom he loved or cared for. And withal he maintained a proud sense of honour, which stood him in good stead in the hour of temptation; enabling him to steer clear of many of the rocks and shoals, and sunken reefs, wherewith the Sea of Life abounds.

To mould and fashion the conflicting elements of such a nature, so as to fit it for encounter with the fiery ordeal of the world, stern lessons were necessary. The first came early. When Will was only sixteen years of age his mother died, leaving him the poor salvage of his father's fortune, and with her last breath enjoining him to seek the aid of her Brother John.

So it happened that one morning, as John Grey sat in his counting-house in Melbourne, a strange youth, with a manner curiously compounded of shyness and audacity, presented himself to the astonished merchant. He further presented a small letter of credit, and a large letter of love, indited by the trembling fingers of his dying mother.

Therein she intimated her approaching end, and committed the orphan to her brother's charge, adjuring him, by the ties of childhood, to be a father to the fatherless. And honest John Grey unhesitatingly accepted the charge. Thenceforth Will Enderby was to him as a son. Finding him averse to office work, he placed him, as cadet, on a cattle station in which he held an interest. The free gipsy life of the bush suited Will—as he phrased it—"to a T." Never was he happier than when, mounted on an unbroken colt—the equine parallel of himself—he strove for mastery, till the panting animal was reduced to obedience and sub-page 90mission to the will of his fiery rider; or when, as at mustering seasons, madly galloping over the plains, he chased the wild cattle, waking the echoes with the crack of the long stockman's whip, which none could more dexterously flourish than he. But such an existence was ill-calculated to fit him for the real battles of life. The sense of power gained over the brute creation rendered Will Enderby yet more masterful towords humanity; and the respect, even in-born of the admiration of physical excellence, (howsoever exerted or displayed) wherewith his bush comrades treated him, completed the dangerous lesson.

Perhaps it was well for him that he paid frequent visits to his Uncle's house at St. Kilda. The quiet tone of civilised society, the enforced abandonment of boots and breeches for more conventional costume, the presence of ladies, and the thousand and one refining influences which tend to humanize and elevate—(sometimes, alas! to enervate)—were intensely beneficial. But from these visits Will ever returned to the station with renewed zest for the freer life of the bush.

Say what we may, there is a strong tendency to savagery inherent in the human race. "If you scratch a Russian," says the proverb, "you will find a Tartar underneath the skin."74 But is the proverb only applicable to the Russian? How say you, gentlemen, the learned expounders of psychological profundities?

72 Derring-do, barring-out, breaking of bounds - Derring-do refers to a heroic act, derives from the word daring. Barring-out was the locking out of the headmaster of a school as a prank.

73 “One-horse gentry” - Wealthy enough to rise above middle-class, but as Pyke scathingly determines them under the “much-abused” title of “gentlemen.”

74 “If you scratch a Russian, you will find a Tartar underneath the skin” - Proverb that has been attributed to Napoleon and was a rather narrow view of the Russian people.