Thomas Chettle

“ Chettle seems to have followed the literary career usual in his time; he composed many dramas alone [290] or in collaboration; he was perpetually borrowing money from the notorious Henslowe, and he was occasionally lodged in Her Majesty's prisons. In 1595 he published his "Piers Plainnes seaven yeres prentiship," [291] in which we find, mingled together, Sidney's Arcady, Greene's romantic heroes, and the customary incidents of picaresque novels. The scene is laid in Tempe; there are Menalcas and Corydons; there are sheep who are poetically invited by their keeper to eat their grass ”

“ QUEKETT, JOHN THOMAS (1815–1861) , histologist, born at Langport, Somerset, on 11 Aug. 1815, was the youngest son of William Quekett and Mary, daughter of John Bartlett. The father was at Cockermouth grammar school with William and Christopher Wordsworth, and from 1790 till his death in 1842 was master of Langport grammar school. He educated his sons at home, and each of them was encouraged to collect specimens in some branch of natural history. ”

“ Chet would have come to the aid of beauty in distress as quickly as Don Quixote. Any man with a blue shirt as clean and a shave as smooth and a haircut as round as Chet Ball's has no meanness in him. A certain daredeviltry went hand in hand with his work—a calling in which a careless load dispatcher, a cut wire, or a faulty strap may mean instant death. Usually the girls laughed and called back to them or went on more quickly, the color in their cheeks a little higher. ”

“ They were the names of two brothers. One is well known to you. It is that of the African explorer of whom this gentleman was just speaking. I mean the Earl of Chetney. The other was the name of his brother. Lord Arthur Chetney.”
The men at the table fell back as though a trapdoor had fallen open at their feet.
“Lord Chetney?” they exclaimed, in chorus. They glanced at each other and back to the American, with every expression of concern and disbelief.
“It is impossible!” cried the Baronet. “Why, my dear sir, young Chetney only arrived from Africa yesterday. ”

“ Either way we would never get back: no leaky hull would ever let us make the trip home!"
Chet was right: Harkness knew it in a moment. He knew the folly of what he would have done, yet knew, too, that desperate measures were needed and needed quickly. The eyes of a devil had held his own from the darkness of the rocks, and the same rock wall came close to where they stood. He was in command; it was up to him—
he moment of indecision ended as a mass of viscous fluid splashed heavily against the ship. ”

“ They were a little ahead of time and Chet asked them to wait a little. He had been picking apples in the orchard behind the shed and he took them out there to see the full barrels of firm fruit. Job went out into the orchard with them and no one of the men noticed that the dog slipped away beyond the barn toward the woods.
When a little later they were ready to start Chet missed the dog. He is a profane man, and he swore and whistled and called. Hayes, the man who had come with Gunther, winked at the doctor and asked Chet: “Is he a self-hunter? Has he gone off on his own?” ”

“ Chet saw them dead ahead; he saw the out-thrust heads, each ending in a great suction-cup, the row of disks that were eyes blazing above, and the gaping maw below. He altered their course not a hair's breadth as he bore down upon them, while the monsters swelled prodigiously before his eyes. And the thunderous roar from astern came with never a break, while the ship itself ceased its trembling protest [179] against the sudden blast and drove smoothly on and into the waiting beasts. ”

“ More often, those to whom he speaks seek to reassure him, for it is plain to any man that there is no murder in Chet, nor any malice nor anything but a very human large-heartedness toward every man and beast.
In Tantry’s time Chet was a bachelor living alone at his farm above Fraternity, cooking and caring for himself, managing well enough. He had been a granite cutter, a fisherman upon the Banks, a keeper of bees. Now he farmed his rocky hillside farm. He was a man of middle age—a small man with a firm jaw and a pair of bushy eyebrows and deep-set piercing eyes. ”

“ And Miss Kate began to read in her clear young voice, there in the sunshine and scent of the centuries-old English garden.
It marked an epoch in Chet's life—that letter. It reached out across the Atlantic Ocean from the Chester Ball of his Chicago days, before he had even heard of English gardens.
Your true lineman has a daredevil way with the women, as have all men whose calling is a hazardous one. Chet was a crack workman. He could shinny up a pole, strap his emergency belt, open his tool kit, wield his pliers with expert deftness, and climb down again in record time. ”

“ Chet knew in some corner of his brain that Schwartzmann was watching from an under lookout with a powerful glass, and he heard his excited command:
"Down—go slowly, down!... They are landing.... They have entered the hangar. Now, down with it, Max! Down! down!"
he plunging fall of the ship roused Chet from his stupor. He felt the jolt of the clumsy landing despite the snow-cushioned ground; he heard plainly the exclamations from beyond an open port—the startled oath in Walter Harkness' voice, and the stinging scorn in the words of Diane Delacouer. ”

“ Once, it was long ago, the shop had belonged to the Egsons, but speculation had swamped them. Then Cheevers. as he occasionally reminded them, rescued them. As the business spread, Mr. Cheevers took himself more and more seriously. He joined every available committee. He spoke in public whenever he had the chance, and sometimes when he had not. The affairs of his suburb were deep in his heart. One day, possibly, he might rise to higher things; but only to his wife, who was a good woman, did he darkly hint of his ambition. ”

“ I also blame myself for not mentioning one or two circumstances that have occurred since your departure; but I really felt frightened.”
“Has Romney made an attempt to see you again?” asked Chetwynd.
“More than once,” she replied. “He annoys me dreadfully. When my father is with me, he keeps out of the way; but I cannot always have a protector at my side. This is one reason why I have resolved to go into service. I shall be secure from my tormentor.”
“I hope he won't trouble you much longer,” remarked Chetwynd.
Just then a knock was heard at the door. ”

“ I have no prospects that are worth the name. I am like a being thrown from another planet on this dark terrestrial ball, an alien, a pilgrim ... and life is to me like a pathless, a waste, and a howling wilderness. ”

“ He couldn't even ask for some more of the creamed potatoes without choking up—with her all the time using her eyes on him, and telling him how a great rough man like him scared 'poor little me.' Chet's tan bleaches out a mite by the end of winter, but she kept his face exactly the shade of that new mahogany sideboard I got, and she told him several times that he ought to go see a throat specialist right off about that choking of his. ”

“ The dark vapours and thick clouds of the sky, curling in dense and lowering masses, suddenly hiss forth the forked lightning, and the heaven is rent by the deafening roar of the voice of God. Hail, and fire mingled with hail, pour down upon them, and they are destroyed from the face of the land. ”

“ With a woman’s natural instinct she sometimes exerted her coquetry over me when we were alone, and by that I felt assured she was by no means averse to my companionship.
Often I gave young Chetwode a passing thought. I hated the prig, and thanked the Fates that he was not there. Sometimes his name was mentioned by one or other of the guests, and always in a manner that showed how her engagement to him was accepted by all her friends. Thus any mention of him caused me a sharp twinge. ”

“ Another ship in this zone of danger?—it seemed incredible. But more incredible was the scream that rang shrilly from the cone. "Help! Oh, help me!" a feminine voice implored.
Harkness sprang for the instrument where the voice was calling. "We aren't the only fools up here," he exclaimed; "and that's a woman's voice, too!" He pressed a button, and a needle swung instantly to point the direction whence the radio waves were coming.
"Hard a-port!" he ordered. "Ten degrees, and hold her level. No—two points down."
But Chet's steady hand had anticipated the order. ”

“ Such glory, or brightness, so beautifully represented by Ezekiel and John, will clothe the saints, as well as the Lord Jesus, when they shall appear in the kingdom of God: as it is written "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." ”

“ No one is in the dining-room. Please to go in there. I want to have a few words with you—to reason with you.”
And he tried to draw him towards the room in question; but Chetwynd resisted.
“Reason with me!” he exclaimed. “I know what you'll say, Norris. You'll advise me to make it up with my father, and bow the knee to my stepmother; but I'll die rather!”
“Mr. Chetwynd, it's a chance if your father is alive to-morrow morning. Think of that, and what your feelings will be when he's gone. You'll reproach yourself then, sir, for I know you've a good heart. ”

“ He declared one of the fellows had played a trick on him—set him afire, you know.
“So he got mad,” continued Chet, “and went off by himself. But going through Laurel Street he burst into flames again, so to speak, and if it hadn’t been that he was right near the fire station, I guess we’d have had a bigger conflagration at that end of the town than there was in Mr. Sharp’s office.”
“But I don’t understand!” cried Laura, puzzled.
“Neither did the fireman, who turned a chemical extinguisher on Pretty Sweet and messed him all up again. It was a serious matter to Pretty, I tell you. ”

“ Chet did not chain him. There was no need, he thought. Tantry could scarce walk at all, much less follow him to the fringe of woodland down the hill.
When he was ready he and Mac went through{68} the barn and across the garden into the meadow and across this meadow and the wall beyond till the hill dropped steeply toward the river. Repeated commands kept Mac to heel, though the dog was fretting with impatience. Not till they were at the edge of the wood did Chet wave his hand and bid the dog go on.
“Now find a bird, Mac,” Chet commanded. “Go find a bird.” ”

“ But when Mr Rainscourt insisted that the heart of the deceased should be embalmed, and directed it to be enshrined in an urn of massive gold, then all Cheltenham began to think that he was sincere,—at least all the ladies did; and the gentlemen, married or single, were either too wise or too polite to offer any negative remark, when his conduct was pronounced to be a pattern for all husbands. ”

“ And he answered in words that echoed Chet's real thoughts and that took the smile from his lips.
"But, no," said Herr Kreiss; "it is the contrary that I desire. Here we are; here we stay for the rest of our lives. I would wish those years to be undisturbed. I have no wish to quarrel with what primitive inhabitants this globe may hold. There is much to study, to learn. I shall pass the years so.
"And now," he questioned, "where is it that we go? Where shall be our home?"
Chet, too, looked inquiringly at Harkness. ”

“ When the doctor had gone, Cheevers said—
"Thought we should never get rid of him! It 's a long time since we had a bit of a crack, old lady. You don't look a day older, for that matter, than you did when that photograph was taken. And, by the way, where is that photograph?"
Next day Mr. Cheevers went to business as usual. He has explained that there was nothing inconsistent whatever in his attitude regarding the gipsies whose immediate expulsion he now demanded. It took the eloquence and the argument of Cheevers to make this clear; but it has been done. The business is prospering ”

“ Chetwynd was educated at Westminster, from which he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1708, and was appointed resident at Genoa in 1708, through the influence of his brother Walter, who was a member of the whig administration and had powerful parliamentary connections after his succession to the great estate of Ingestre. In 1712, after the accession of Harley and St. John to power, Chetwynd was recalled from Genoa, but in 1714 he was elected M.P. for Stafford, again through the influence of his brother, and in 1717 he became a junior lord of the admiralty in the whig administration. ”

“ For they are like to have their house here, the earth, bound fast on their backs for ever, and not to walk with it where they will, as the snail creepeth about with hers, but to lie fast bound in the midst of it with the foul fire of hell about them. ”

“ And yet for the short while that we be upward and aloft—Lord, how lusty and how proud we be, buzzing above busily, as a bumblebee flieth about in summer, never aware that she shall die in winter! And so fare many of us, God help us. ”

“ They were leading the pack on a long journey; Chet wanted to be sure they were following and had not turned back. He left a plain mark of his boot from time to time, and knew that this mark would be shown to Schwartzmann. With that to lead him there would be no stopping the man: he would drive his army of blacks despite their superstitious fears.
The short days and nights formed an endless succession to Chet. Only once did he see a familiar place, as they passed a valley and he saw where their ship had rested on that earlier voyage. ”

“ I must not offend old Norris, or I shall arouse another enemy. He must be kept in the background as much as possible. So far, my letters have been very satisfactory. Here is another, and I think it is from Sir Bridgnorth Charlton. Let us see what he says.”
“Since Chetwynd does not seem disposed to return, I must come to Ouselcroft. Have you room for me for two or three days?”
“Plenty of room, and shall be delighted to see him!” remarked Mrs. Calverley. “Here's a note from Captain Danvers,” she added, with indifference. “They all seem resolved to come here. ”