Among the most regular attendants at the Great Queen Street Wesleyan Chapel was Mr. George Powell, who himself alone constituted and comprised the eminent legal firm known throughout Lincoln’s Inn Fields, New Court, the Temple, Broad Street, and Great George Street, as ‘Powells.’ It is not easy, whatever may be said to the contrary, to reconcile the exigencies of the modern solicitor’s profession with the exigencies of active Wesleyan Methodism; but Mr. George Powell succeeded in the difficult attempt, and his fame was, perhaps, due mainly to this success. All Wesleyan solicitors in large practice achieve renown, whether they desire it or not; Wesleyans cannot help talking about them, as one talks about an apparent defiance of natural laws. Most of them are forced into Parliament, and compelled against their wills to accept the honour of knighthood. Mr. George Powell, however, had so far escaped both Parliament and the prefix—a fact which served only to increase his fame. In fine, Mr. George Powell, within the frontiers of Wesleyan Methodism, was a lion of immense magnitude, and even beyond the frontiers, in the vast unregenerate earth, he was no mean figure. Now, when Mr. Powell heard of the death of Henry Knight, whom he said he had always respected as an upright tradesman and a sincere Christian, and of the shorthand speed medal of Henry Shakspere Knight, he benevolently offered the young Henry a situation in his office at twenty-five shillings a week, rising to thirty.
Young Henry’s fortune was made. He was in Powells, and under the protecting aegis of the principal. He shared in the lustre of Powells. When people mentioned him, they also mentioned Powells, as if that settled the matter—whatever the matter was. Mr. Powell invested Mrs. Knight’s two thousand pounds on mortgage or freehold security at five per cent., and upon this interest, with Henry’s salary and Aunt Annie’s income, the three lived in comfort at Dawes Road. Nay, they saved, and Henry travelled second-class between Walham Green and the Temple. The youth was serious, industrious, and trustworthy, and in shorthand incomparable. No one acquainted with the facts was surprised when, after three years, Mr. Powell raised him to the position of his confidential clerk, and his salary to fifty-two shillings and sixpence.
And then Mr. Powell, who had fought for so long against meaningless honours, capitulated and accepted a knighthood. The effect upon Dawes Road was curious and yet very natural. It was almost as though Henry himself had accepted a knighthood. Both Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie seemed to assume that Henry had at least contributed to the knighthood and that the knighthood was in some subtle way the reward of Henry’s talent, rectitude, and strenuousness. ‘Sir George’—those two syllables which slipped smoothly off the tongue with no effort to the speaker—entered largely into all conversations in the house at Dawes Road; and the whole street, beginning with the milkman, knew that Henry was Sir George’s—no, not Sir George’s confidential clerk, no such thing!—private secretary.
His salary was three guineas a week. He had a banking account at Smith, Payne and Smiths, and a pew at the Munster Park Wesleyan Chapel. He was a power at the Regent Street Polytechnic. He bought books, including encyclopaedias and dictionaries. He wrote essays which were read and debated upon at the sessions of the Debating Society. (One of the essays was entitled: ‘The Tendencies of Modern Fiction’; he was honestly irate against the Stream of Trashy Novels Constantly Poured Forth by the Press.) He took out a life insurance policy for two hundred and fifty pounds, and an accident policy which provided enormous sums for all sorts of queer emergencies. Indeed, Henry was armed at every point. He could surely snap his fingers at Chance.
If any young man in London had the right to be bumptious and didactic, Henry had. And yet he remained simple, unaffected, and fundamentally kind. But he was very serious. His mother and aunt strained every nerve, in their idolatrous treatment of him, to turn him into a conceited and unbearable jackanapes—and their failure to do so was complete. They only made him more serious. His temper was, and always had been, what is called even.
And yet, on this particular evening when Sarah had been instructed to put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry’s tone, in greeting his aunt, had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. ‘Don’t worry me!’ he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem, an apparent contradiction, in Henry’s personality.
His aunt, in the passage, and his mother, who had overheard in the dining-room, instantly and correctly solved the problem by saying to themselves that Henry’s tone was a Symptom. They had both been collecting symptoms for four days. His mother had first discovered that he had a cold; Aunt Annie went further and found that it was a feverish cold. Aunt Annie saw that his eyes were running; his mother wormed out of him that his throat tickled and his mouth was sore. When Aunt Annie asked him if his eyes ached as well as ran, he could not deny it. On the third day, at breakfast, he shivered, and the two ladies perceived simultaneously the existence of a peculiar rash behind Henry’s ears. On the morning of the fourth day Aunt Annie, up early, scored one over her sister by noticing the same rash at the roots of his still curly hair. It was the second rash, together with Henry’s emphatic and positive statement that he was perfectly well, which had finally urged his relatives to a desperate step—alist { height:34; width:100%; padding-left:2 } #channel-dropdown { width:80%; margin-top:3px; margin-bottom:5 } form { margin:0 } #videoTitle { overflow: hidden;} #videoTitle a { font-weight:bold; white-space:nowrap} #loadingMsg { position:absolute; background:#fff1a8; width:100px; padding:4px; text-align:center; display:none; font-weight:bold} #yt-thumbnail-plus-play { background-color:black; text-align:center } #videobar-tbl {height:36px } object,embed { height:100%; width:100% } #ytg-share {font-size:12px } #activity { padding-top:4px } .activityEntry { padding-top:5px; clear:left } .activityThumb { width:50px; float:left; padding: 0 6 } a#more-comments { display:block; padding: 8 0 } #yt-activities-list { height:270px; overflow:auto } #yt-activities-list > div { margin: 12px 5px } .yt-shared-video-title { font-size: 13px; font-weight:bold; color:#44c; margin: 5px 0; display:block } .yt-shared-video-thumbnail { width:60px; float:left } .yt-shared-data { margin-left:70px } .yt-shared-action * { font-size:11px } .yt-shared-comment { font-weight: bold } .new { color:red; font-size:9px; position:relative; top:-5px } #ytg-submit-comment { padding:0 }
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