“ ’Tis a fair creature and my very Polly!” he said to himself, and later, with a sigh, “God be good to the poor child!”
’Twas not wholly selfish at heart.
CHAPTER III
RS. DIANA had much to consider as the chairmen bumped her along the ill-lit streets leading to Charing Cross. To be candid, she had been swayed by an impulse in thus presenting herself and the matter remained to be broke with Mrs. Fenton. She was a good girl to her mother, and her father counts not, though if good looks and a certain seductive way be reckoned, she was the more indebted to him for her inheritance. In these qualities her mother was not preeminent and it is a melancholy consequence that Mr. Beswick, retiring from the Royal Navy, betook himself to the American colonies and the society of a lady who pleased him better in those respects. He returned however once or twice on business and expected notwithstanding to be received with the veneration due to a husband and father, and oddly enough was so received and appears to have excited a romantic interest in young Mrs. Diana’s tender bosom. ’Twas something to have a parent who sinned in the high sentimental strain and not with the creeping hypocrisy of other people’s parents who indulged their vices under the guise of all that was respectable—as was very well known to Miss. She even entreated him on his last visit to take her with him to the colonies and doubtless imagined herself a fair Pocahontas in moccasins and wampum chasing the flying deer. Mr. Beswick, however, who had some humour, did but laugh consumedly at the pretty picture and recommended attention to her sampler. ’Tis to be thought he might prefer a duo to a trio. In any case he returned to the deputy ruler of his heart and his wife and daughter saw him no more.
In a year his relict married Mr. Fenton, of whom more hereafter, and thus became Mistress of the Savannah Coffee House. It had been a prosperous business and a resort of many wits and beaux—such famous dramatists as Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar and many more. Sir Richard Steele had leaned frayed velvet elbows on the table, while he argued, half maudlin with wine and good-temper, and Swift drew his harsh eyebrows together and felled his flimsiness with a word.
But Mr. Fenton drank to excess and there was an ugly scandal one night when he drove a bottle at a guest he had insulted and the watch was called in, and it got about and men fought shy of the resort and betook themselves to pastures new. ’Twas a very inferior set of persons came there now, and had Mrs. Beswick enquired into the circumstances as narrowly as became her prudence she had never become Mrs. Fenton.
A good easy woman, it perhaps weighed with her that Mr. Fenton was so cordial in welcoming her daughter and she stayed not to consider his motive.