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WRECKED IN PORT.
EDMUND YATES'S NOVELS.In boards, 2s. each; in cloth, 2s. 6d. each.RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
WRECKED IN PORT.
A Novel.
BYEDMUND YATES,AUTHOR OF "THE ROCK AHEAD," "BLACK SHEEP," "LAND AT LAST," ETC.
"All things that are SHAKESPEARE.
LONDON: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CONTENTS | |
| CHAPTER | |
| I. | MORIBUND. |
| II. | RETROSPECTIVE. |
| III. | MARIAN. |
| IV. | MARIAN'S CHOICE. |
| V. | WOOLGREAVES. |
| VI. | BREAD-SEEKING. |
| VII. | A NEW FRIEND. |
| VIII. | FLITTING. |
| IX. | THE TENTH EARL. |
| X. | AN INTERIOR. |
| XI. | THE LOUT. |
| XII. | A REMOVAL. |
| XIII. | LIFE AT WESTHOPE. |
| XIV. | LADY CAROLINE. |
| XV. | "NEWS FROM THE HUMMING CITY." |
| XVI. | "HE LOVES ME; HE LOVES ME NOT." |
| XVII. | BECOMING INDISPENSABLE. |
| XVIII. | THE RUBICON. |
| XIX. | MARIAN'S REPLY. |
| XX. | DURING THE INTERVAL. |
| XXI. | SUCCESS ACHIEVED. |
| XXII. | THE GIRLS THEY LEFT BEHIND THEM. |
| XXIII. | WEDNESDAY'S POST. |
| XXIV. | POOR PAPA'S SUCCESSOR. |
| XXV. | CLOUDING OVER. |
| XXVI. | IN HARNESS. |
| XXVII. | RIDING AT ANCHOR. |
| XXVIII. | THE OPPORTUNITY. |
| XXIX. | CANVASSING. |
| XXX. | BAFFLED. |
| XXXI. | AN INCOMPLETE VICTORY. |
| XXXII. | THE SHATTERING OF THE IDOL. |
| XXXIII. | TOO LATE. |
| XXXIV. | FOR ONCE GERTRUDE TAKES THE LEAD. |
| XXXV. | LADY CAROLINE ADVISES ON A DELICATE SUBJECT. |
| XXXVI. | NIGHT AND MORNING. |
| XXXVII. | MARIAN'S RESOLVE. |
| XXXVIII. | THE RESULT. |
WRECKED IN PORT.
CHAPTER I.
MORIBUND.
"I say! Old Ashurst's going to die."
"No! How do you know? Who told you?"
"I heard Dr. Osborne say so to Miss Winter."
"Ah! so likely Dr. Osborne would tell that old beast! Why was its name throughout doctors are the silentest fellows in the world. My uncle Robert is a doctor, and I know all about it."
"Well, I'll take my dick I heard old Osborne say so! I say, Hawkes, if Ashurst does die, we shall break up at once, sha'n't we?"
"I should think so! Stunning!"
"And we sha'n't come back till there's a new head master?"
"Of course not, you young ass! That don't matter much to me; I'm going to leave this term."
"Don't I wish I was, that's all! I say, Hawkes, do you think the governors will give old Ashurst's place to Joyce?"
"Joyce?--that snob! Not they, indeed! They'll get a swell from Oxford, or somewhere, to be head master; and I should think he'll give Master Joyce the sack. Baker, lend me twopence!"
"No--I say, Hawkes, you owe me----"
"I know all about that, you young beggar--pay you on Saturday. Hand out now, or I'll fetch you a lick on the head."
Under the pressure of this awful threat, little Sam Baker produced the required sum from his trousers-pocket, and gave the coins to big Alfred Hawkes, who threw them into the air, caught them over-handed, and walked off, whistling. Little Sam Baker, left to himself, turned out the pocket of his trousers, which he had not yet explored, found a half-melted acidulated drop sticking in one corner, removed it, placed it in his mouth, and enjoyed it with great relish. This refection finished, he leaned his little arms over the park-paling of the cricket-field, where the above-described colloquy had taken place, and surveyed the landscape. Immediately beneath him was a large meadow, from which the hay had been just removed, and which, looking brown and bare and closely shorn as the chin of some retired Indian civilian, remained yet fragrant from its recent treasure. The meadow sloped down to a broad sluggishly-flowing stream, unnavigated and unnavigable, where the tall green flags, standing breast-high, bent and nodded gracefully, under the influence of the gentle summer breeze, to the broad-leaved water-lilies couchant below them. A notion of scuttling across the meadow and having "a bathe" in a sequestered part of the stream which he well knew, faded out of little Sam Baker's mind before it was half formed. Though a determined larker and leader in mischief among his coevals, he was too chivalrous to take advantage of the opportunity which their chief's illness gave him over his natural enemies, the masters. Their chief's illness! And little Sam Baker's eyes were lifted from the river and fixed themselves on a house about a quarter of a mile further on--a low-roofed, one-storeyed, red-brick house, with a thatched roof and little mullioned windows, from one of which a white blind was fluttering in the evening breeze. "That's his room," said little Sam Baker to himself. "Poor old Ashurst! He wasn't half a bad old chap; he often let me off a hundred lines he--poor old Ashurst!" And two large tears burst from the small boy's eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
The boy was right. Where the white blind fluttered was the dominie's bedroom, and there the dominie lay dying. A gaunt, square, ugly 'room with panelled walls, on which the paint had cracked and rubbed and blistered, with such furniture as it possessed old-fashioned, lumbering, and mean, with evidence of poverty everywhere--evidence of poverty which a woman's hand had evidently tried to screen and soften without much effect. The bed, its well-worn red-moreen curtains, with a dirty yellow border, having been tightly bound round each sculptured post for the admittance of air, stood near the window, on which its occupant frequently turned his glazed and sunken eyes. The sun had gone to rest, the invalid had marked its sinking, and so had those who watched him, and the same thought had occurred to all, but not a word had been spoken; but the roseate flush which it leaves behind still lingered in the heavens, and, as if in mockery, lent momentarily to the dying man's cheek a bright healthy hue such as it was not destined to wear in life again. The flush grew fainter, and faded away, and then a glance at the face, robbed of its artificial glory, must have been conclusive as to the inevitable result. For the cheeks were hollow and sunken, yellowish-white in colour, and cold and clammy to the touch; the eyes, with scarcely any fire left in them, seemed set in large bistre rings; the nose was thin and pinched, and the bloodless lips were tightly compressed with an expression of acute pain.
The Rev. James Ashurst was dying. Every one in Helmingham knew that, and nearly every one had a word of kindness and commiseration for the stricken man, and for his wife and daughter. Dr. Osborne had carried the news up to the Park several days previously, and Sir Thomas had hemmed and coughed; and said, "Dear me!" and Lady Churchill had shaken her head piteously on hearing it. "And nothing much to leave in the way of--eh, my dear doctor?" It was the doctor's turn to shake his head then, and he solaced himself with a large pinch of snuff, taken in a flourishing and sonorous manner, before he replied that he believed matters in that way were much worse than people thought; that he did not believe there was a single penny--not a single penny: indeed, it was a thing not to be generally talked of, but he might mention it in the strictest confidence to Sir Thomas and my lady, who had always proved themselves such good friends to the Ashursts--that was, he had mentioned to Mrs. Ashurst that there was one faint hope of saving her husband's life, if he would submit to a certain operation which only one man in England, Godby of St. Vitus's Hospital in London, could perform. But when he had mentioned Godby's probable fee--and you could not expect these eminent men to leave their regular work, and come down such a long distance under a large sum--he saw at once how the land lay, and that it was impossible for them to raise the money. Miss Ashurst--curious girl that, so determined and all that kind of thing--had indeed pressed him so hard that he had sent his man over to the telegraph-office at Brocksopp with a message inquiring what would be Godby's exact charge for running down--it was a mere question of distance with these men, so much a mile, and so much for the operation--but he knew the sum he had named was not far out.
From the Park, Dr. Osborne had driven his very decorous little four-wheeler to Woolgreaves, the residence of the Creswells, his other great patients, and there he had given a modified version of his story, with a very much modified result. For old Mr. Creswell was away in France, and neither of the two young ladies was of an age to feel much sympathy, unless with their intimate relations, and they had been educated abroad, and seen but little of the Helmingham folk; and as for Tom Creswell, he was the imp of the school, having all Sam Baker's love of mischief without any of his good heart, and would not have oared who was ill or who died, provided illness or death afforded occasion for slacking work and making holiday. Every one else in the parish was grieved at the news. The rector--bland, polished, and well endowed with worldly goods--had been most actively compassionate towards his less fortunate brother; the farmers, who looked upon "Master Ashurst" as a marvel of book-learning, the labourers, who had consented to the removal of the village sports, held from time immemorial on the village green, to a remote meadow, whence the noise could not penetrate to the sick man's room, and who had considerately lowered the matter as well as the manner of their singing as they passed the schoolhouse at night in jovial chorus--all these people pitied the old man dying, and the old wife whom he would leave behind. They did not say much about the daughter; when they referred to her it was generally to the effect that she would manage tolerably well for herself, for "she were a right plucked un, Miss Marian were."
They were right. It needed little skill in physiognomy to trace, even under the influence of the special circumstances surrounding her, the pluck and spirit and determination in every feature of Marian Ashurst's face. They were patent to the most ordinary beholder; patent in the brown eye, round rather than elongated, small yet bright as a beryl; in the short sharply curved nose, in the delicately rounded chin, which relieved the jaw of a certain fulness, sufficiently characteristic, but scarcely pretty. Variety of expression was Marian's great charm; her mobile features acting under every impulse of her mind, and giving expression to her every thought. Those who had seen her seldom, or only in one mood, would scarcely have recognised her in another. To the old man, lying stretched on his death-bed, she had been a fairy to be worshipped, a plaything to be for ever prized. In his presence the brown eyes were always bright, the small, sharp, white teeth gleamed between the ripe red lips, and one could scarcely have traced the jaw, that occasionally rose rigid and hard as iron, in the soft expanse of the downy cheek. Had he been able to raise his eyes, he would have seen a very different look in her face as, after bending over the bed and ascertaining that her father slept, she turned to the other occupant of the room, and said, more in the tone of one pondering over and repeating something previously heard than of a direct question----
"A hundred and thirty guineas, mother!"
For a minute Mrs. Ashurst made her no reply. Her thoughts were far away. She could scarcely realise the scene passing round her, though she had pictured it to herself a hundred times in a hundred different phases. Years ago--how many years ago it seemed!--she was delicate and fragile, and thought she should die before her husband, and she would lie awake for hours in the night, rehearsing her own death-bed, and thinking how she should tell James not to grieve after her, but to marry again, anybody except that Eleanor Shaw, the organist's daughter, and she should be sorry to think of that flighty minx going through the linen and china after she was gone. And now the time had really come, and he was going to be taken from her; he, her James, with his big brown eyes and long silky hair, and strong lithe figure, as she first remembered him--going to be taken from her now, and leave her an old woman, poor and lone and forlorn--and Mrs. Ashurst tried to stop the tears which rolled down her face, and to reply to her daughter's strange remark.
"A hundred and thirty guineas! yes, my dear, you're thinking of Mr.---- I forget his name--the surgeon. That was the sum he named."
"You're sure of it, mother?"
"Certain sure, my dear! Mr. Casserly, Dr. Osborne's assistant, a very pleasant-spoken young man, showed me the telegraph message, and I read it for myself. It gave me such a turn that I thought I should have dropped, and Mr. Casserly offered me some sal volatile or peppermint--I mean of his own accord, and never intended to charge for it, I am sure."
"A hundred and thirty guineas! and the one chance of saving his life is to be lost because we cannot command that sum! Good God! to think of our losing him for want of---- Is there no one, mother, from whom we could get it? Think, think! It's of no use sitting crying there! Think, is there no one who could help us in this strait?"
The feeling of dignity which Mrs. Ashurst knew she ought to have assumed was scared by her daughter's earnestness, so the old lady merely fell to smoothing her dress, and, after a minute's pause, said in a tremulous voice--
"I fear there is no one, my dear! The rector, I dare say, would do something, but I'm afraid your father has already borrowed money of him, and I know he has of Mr. King, the chairman of the governors of the school. I don't know whether Mr. Casserly----"
"Mr. Casserly, mother, a parish doctor's drudge! Is it likely that he would be able to assist us?"
"Well, I don't know, my dear, about being able, I'm sure he would be willing! He was so kind about that sal volatile that I am sure he would do what---- Lord! we never thought of Mr. Creswell!"
Set and hard as Marian's face had been throughout the dialogue, it grew even more rigid as she heard these words. Her lips tightened, and her brow clouded as she said, "Do you think that I should have overlooked that chance, mother? Do you not know that Mr. Creswell is away in France? He is the very first person to whom I should have thought of applying."
Under any other circumstances, Mrs. Ashurst would have been excessively delighted at this announcement. As it was, she merely said, "The young ladies are at Woolgreaves, I think."
"The young ladies!" repeated Marian, bitterly--"the young ladies! The young dolls--dolts--dummies to try dresses on! What are Maude and Gertrude Creswell to us, mother? What kindness, courtesy even, have they ever shown us? To get at their uncle's purse is what we most need----"
"Oh, Marian, Marian!" interrupted Mrs. Ashurst, "what are you saying?"
"Saying?" replied Marian calmly--"Saying? The truth! What should I say when I know that if we had the command of Mr. Creswell's purse, father's life might--from what I gather from Dr. Osborne, most probably would--be saved! Are these circumstances under which one should be meek and mild and thankful for one's lot in life! Is this a time to talk of gratitude and---- He's moving! Yes, darling father, Marian is here!"
Two hours afterwards, Marian and Dr. Osborne stood in the porch. There were tears in the eyes of the garrulous but kindly old man; but the girl's eyes were dry, and her face was set harder and more rigid than ever. The doctor was the first to speak.
"Good night, my dear child," said he; "and may God comfort you in your affliction. I have given your poor mother a composing draught, and trust to find her better in the morning. Fortunately, you require nothing of that kind. God bless you, dear! It will be a consolation to you, as it is to me, to know that your father, my dear old friend, went off perfectly placid and peacefully."
"It is a consolation, doctor--more especially as I believe such an ending is rare with people suffering under his disease."
"His disease, child? Why, what do you think your father died of?"
"Think, doctor? I know! Of the want of a hundred and thirty guineas!"
CHAPTER II.
RETROSPECTIVE.
The Reverend James Ashurst had been head master of the Helmingham Grammar School for nearly a quarter of a century. Many old people in the village had a vivid recollection of him as a young man, with his bright brown hair curling over his coat-collar, his frank fearless glances, his rapid jerky walk. They recollected how he was by no means particularly well received by the powers that then were, how he was spoken of as "one of the new school"--a term in itself supposed to convey the highest degree of opprobrium--and how the elders had shaken their heads and prophesied that no good would come of the change, and that it would have been better to have held on to old Dr. Munch, after all. Old Dr. Munch, who had been Mr. Ashurst's immediate predecessor, was as bad a specimen of the old-fashioned, nothing-doing, sinecure-seeking pedagogue as could well be imagined; a rotund, red-faced, gouty-footed divine, with a thick layer of limp white cravat loosely tied round his short neck, and his suit of clerical sables splashed with a culinary spray; a man whose originally small stock of classical learning had gradually faded away, and whose originally large stock of idleness and self-gratification had simultaneously increased. Forty male children, born in lawful wedlock in the parish of Helmingham, and properly presented on the foundation, might have enjoyed the advantages of a free classical and mathematical education at the Grammar School under the will of old Sir Ranulph Clinton, the founder; but, under the lax rule of Dr. Munch, the forty gradually dwindled to twenty, and of these twenty but few attended school in the afternoon, knowing perfectly that for the first few minutes after coming in from dinner the doctor paid but little attention as to which members of the class might be present, and that in a very few minutes he fell into a state of pleasant and unbroken slumber.
This state of affairs was terrible, and, worst of all, it was getting buzzed abroad. The two or three conscientious boys who really wanted to learn shook their heads in despair, and appealed to their parents to "let them leave;" the score of lads who enjoyed the existing state of affairs were, lad-like, unable to keep it to themselves, and went about calling on their neighbours to rejoice with them; so, speedily, every one knew the state of affairs in Helmingham Grammar School. The trustees of the charity, or "governors," as they were called, had not the least notion how to proceed. They were, for the most part, respectable tradesmen of the place, who had vague ideas about "college" as of a sequestered spot where young men walked about in stuff gowns and trencher caps, and were, by some unexplained circumstance, rendered fit and ready for the bishop to convert into clergymen. There must, they thought, probably be in this "college" some one fit to take the place of old Dr. Munch, who must be got rid of, come what may. At first, the resident "governors"--the tradesmen of Helmingham--thought it best to write to two of their colleagues, who were non-resident, and not by any manner of means tradesmen, being, in fact, two distinguished peers of the realm, who, holding property in the neighbourhood, had, for political reasons, thought fit to cause themselves to be elected governors of old Sir Ranulph Clinton's foundation. The letters explaining the state of affairs and asking for advice were duly written; but matters political were at a standstill just then; there was not the remotest chance of an election for years; and so the two private secretaries of the two noble lords pitched their respective letters into their respective wastebaskets, with mutual grins of pity and contempt for the writers. Thrown back on their own resources, the resident governors determined on applying to the rector; acting under the feeling that he, as a clergyman, must have been to this "college," and would doubtless be able to put them in the way of securing such a man as they required. And they were right. The then rector, though an old man, still kept up occasional epistolary intercourse with such of his coevals as remained at the university in the enjoyment of dignities of fellowships; and, being himself both literate and conscientious, was by no means sorry to lend a hand towards the removal of Dr. Munch, whom he looked upon as a scandal to the cloth. A correspondence entered into between the rector of Helmingham and the Principal of St. Beowulph's College, Oxford, resulted in the enforced resignation of Dr. Munch as the head master of Helmingham Grammar School, and the appointment of the Reverend James Ashurst as his successor. The old doctor took his fate very calmly; he knew that for a long time he had been doing nothing, and had been sufficiently well paid for it. He settled down in a pleasant village in Kent, where an old crony of his held the position of warden to a City Company's charity, and this history knows him no more.
When James Ashurst received his appointment he was about eight-and-twenty, had taken a double second class, had been scholar and tutor of his college, and stood well for a fellowship. By nature silent and reserved, and having found it necessary for the achievement of his position to renounce nearly all society--for he was by no means a brilliant man, and his successes had been gained by plodding industry, and constant application rather than by the exercise of any natural talent--James Ashurst had but few acquaintances, and to them he never talked of his private affairs. They wondered when they heard that he had renounced certain prospects, notably those of a fellowship, for so poor a preferment as two hundred pounds a year and a free house: for they did not know that the odd, shy, silent man had found time in the intervals of his reading to win the heart of a pretty trusting girl, and that the great hope of his life, that of being able to marry her and take her to a decent home of which she would be mistress, was about to be accomplished.
On a dreary, dull day, in the beginning of a bitter January, Mr. Ashurst arrived at Helmingham. He found the schoolhouse dirty, dingy, and uncomfortable, bearing traces everywhere of the negligence and squalor of its previous occupant; but the chairman of the governors, who met him on his arrival, told him that it should be thoroughly cleaned and renovated during the Easter holidays, and the mention of those holidays caused James Ashurst's heart to leap and throb with an intensity with which house-painting could not possibly have anything to do. In the Easter holidays he was to make Mary Bridger his wife, and that thought sustained him splendidly during the three dreary intervening months, and helped him to make head against a sea of troubles raging round him. For the task on which he had entered was no easy one. Such boys as had remained in the school under the easy rule of Dr. Munch were of a class much lower than that for which the benefits of the foundation had been contemplated by the benevolent old knight, and having been unaccustomed to any discipline, had arrived at a pitch of lawlessness which required all the new master's energy to combat. This necessary strictness made him unpopular with the boys, and at first with their parents, who made loud complaints of their children being "put upon," and in some cases where bodily punishment had been inflicted had threatened retribution. Then the chief tradespeople and the farmers, among whom Dr. Munch had been a daily and nightly guest, drinking his mug of ale or his tumbler of brandy-and-water, smoking his long clay pipe, taking his hand at whist, and listening, if not with pleasure, at any rate without remonstrance, to language and stories more than sufficiently broad and indecorous, found that Mr. Ashurst civilly, but persistently, refused their proffered hospitality, and in consequence pronounced him "stuck-up." No man was more free from class prejudices, but he had been bred in old Somerset country society, where the squirearchy maintained an almost feudal dignity, and his career in college had not taught him the policy of being on terms of familiarity with those whom Fortune had made his inferiors.
So James Ashurst struggled on during the first three months of his novitiate at Helmingham, earnestly and energetically striving to do his duty, with, it must be confessed, but poor result. The governors of the school had been so impressed by the rector's recommendation, and by the testimonials which the new master had submitted to them, that they expected to find the regeneration of the establishment would commence immediately upon James Ashurst's appearance upon the scene, and were rather disappointed when they found that, while the number of scholars remained much the same as at the time of Dr. Munch's retirement, the general dissatisfaction in the village was much greater than it had ever been during the reign of that summarily-treated pedagogue. The rector, to be sure, remained true to the choice he had recommended, and maintained everywhere that Mr. Ashurst had done very well in the face of the greatest difficulties, and would yet bring Helmingham into notice. But, notwithstanding constant ocular proof to the contrary, the farmers held that in the clerical profession, as in freemasonry, there was a certain occult something beyond the ordinary ken, which bound members of "the cloth" together, and induced them to support each other to the utmost stretch of their consciences--a proceeding which, in the opinion of freethinking Helmingham, allowed for a considerable amount of elasticity.
At length the long-looked-for Easter tide arrived, and James Ashurst hurried away from the dull gray old midland country village to the bright little Thames-bordered town where lived his love. A wedding with the church approach one brilliant pathway of spring flowers, a honeymoon of such happiness as one knows but once in a lifetime, passed in the lovely Lake country, and then Helmingham again. But with a different aspect. The old schoolhouse itself brave in fresh paint and new plaster, its renovated diamond windows, its cleaned slab so classically eloquent on the merits fundatoris nostri let in over the porch, its newly stuccoed fives' wall and fresh-gravelled playground; all this was strange but intelligible. But James Ashurst could not understand yet the change that had come over his inner life. To return after a hard day's grinding in a mill of boys to his own rooms was, during the first three months of his career at Helmingham, merely to exchange active purpose for passive existence. Now, his life did but begin when the labours of the day were over, and he and his wife passed the evenings together, in planning to combat with the present, in delightful anticipations of the future. Mr. Ashurst unwittingly, and without the least intending it, had made a very lucky hit in his selection of a wife, so far as the Helmingham people were concerned. He was "that bumptious" as they expressed it, or as we will more charitably say, he was sufficiently independent, not to care one rap what the Helmingham people thought of anything he did, provided he had, as indeed at that time he always had--for he was conscientious in the highest degree--the knowledge that he was acting rightly according to his light. In a very few weeks the actual sweetness, the quiet frankness, the most enthusiastic charm of Mrs. Ashurst's demeanour had neutralised all the ill-effects of her husband's three months' previous career. She was a small-boned, small-featured, delicate-looking little woman, and as such excited a certain amount of compassion and kindness amid the midland-county ladies, who, as their husbands said of them, "ran big." It was a positive relief to one to hear her soft little treble voice after the booming diapason of the Helmingham ladies, or to see her pretty little fat dimpled hands flashing here and there in some coquetry of needlework after being accustomed to looking on at the steady play of particularly bony and knuckly members in the unremitting torture of eminently utilitarian employment. High and low, gentle and simple, rich and poor, still felt equally kindly disposed towards Mrs. Ashurst. Mrs. Peacock, wife of Squire Peacock, a tremendous magnate and squire of the neighbouring parish, fell so much in love with her that she made her husband send their only son, a magnificent youth destined eventually for Eton, Oxford, Parliament, and a partnership in a brewery, to be introduced to the Muses as a parlour-boarder in Mr. Ashurst's house; and Hiram Brooks, the blacksmith and minister of the Independent Chapel, who was at never-ending war with all the members of the Establishment, made a special exception in Mrs. Ashurst's favour, and doffed his greasy leathern cap to her as she passed the forge.
And his pretty little wife brought him good fortune, as well as domestic happiness? James Ashurst delighted to think so. His popularity in the village, and in the surrounding country, was on the increase; the number of scholars on the foundership had reached its authorised limit (a source of great gratification, though of no pecuniary profit to the head master); and Master Peacock had now two or three fellow-boarders, each of whom paid a fine annual sum. The governors thought better of their head master now, and the old rector had lived long enough to see his recommendation thoroughly accepted, and his prophecy, as regards the improved status of the school, duly fulfilled. Popular, successful in his little way, and happy in his domestic relations, James Ashurst had but one want. His wife was childless, and this was to him a source of discomfort, always felt and occasionally expressed. He was just the man who would have doated on a child, would have suffered himself to have been pleasantly befooled by its gambols, and have worshipped it in every phase of its tyranny. But it was not to be, he supposed; that was to be the one black drop in his draught of happiness: and then, after he had been married for five or six years, Mrs. Ashurst brought him a little daughter. His hopes were accomplished, but he nearly lost his wife in their accomplishment; while he dandled the newly born treasure in his arms, Mrs. Ashurst's life was despaired of; and when the chubby baby had grown up into a strong child, and from that sphere of life had softened down into a peaceful girl, her mother, always slight and delicate, had become a constant invalid, whose ill-health caused her husband the greatest anxiety, and almost did away with the delight he had in anticipating every wish of his darling little Marian.
James Ashurst had longed for a child, and he loved his little daughter dearly when she came; but even then his wife held the deepest and most sacred place in his heart, and as he marked her faded cheek and lustreless eye, he felt a pang of remorse, and accused himself of having set himself up against the just judgment of Providence, and having now received the due reward of his repining. For one who thought his darling must be restored to health, no sacrifice could be too great to accomplish that result; and the Helmingham people, who loved Mrs. Ashurst dearly, but who in their direst straits were never accustomed to look for any other advice than that which could be afforded them by Dr. Osborne, or his village opponent, Mr. Sharood, were struck with admiration when Dr. Langton, the great county physician, the oracle of Brocksopp, was called into consultation. Dr. Langton was a very little man, noted almost as much for his reticence as his skill. He never wasted a word. After a careful examination of Mrs. Ashurst he pronounced it to be a tiresome case, and prescribed a four months' residence at the baths of Ems as the likely treatment to effect a mitigation, if not a cure. Dr. Osborne, after the great man's departure, laughed aloud in his bluff way at the idea of a country schoolmaster sending his wife to Ems.
"Langton is so much in the habit of going about among the country families, and these novi homines of manufacturers who stink of brass, as they say in these parts, that he forgets there is such a thing as having to look carefully at ways and means, my dear Ashurst, and make both dovetail. Baths of Ems, indeed! I'm afraid you've thrown away your ten guineas, my good friend, if that's all you've got out of Langton!"
But Dr. Osborne's smile was suddenly checked when Mr. Ashurst said very quietly that as his wife's health was dearer to him than anything on earth, and that there was no sacrifice which he would not make to accomplish its restoration, he should find means of sending her to Germany, and keeping her there until it was seen what effect the change had on her.
And he did it! For two successive summers Mrs. Ashurst went to Ems with the old nurse who had brought her up, and accompanied her from her pretty river-side home to Helmingham; and at the end of the second season she returned comparatively well and strong. But she needed all her strength and health when she looked at her husband, who came to meet her in London, and found him thin, changed, round-shouldered, and hollow-eyed, the very shadow of his former self. James Ashurst had carried through his plans as regarded his wife at enormous sacrifice. He had no ready money to meet the sudden call upon his purse which such an expedition rendered necessary, and he had recourse to money-lenders to raise the first loans required, then to friends to pay the interest on and obtain renewals of these loans, then to other moneylenders to replace the original sums, and to other friends to repay a portion of the first friendly loans, until by the time his wife returned from the second visit to the Continent he found himself so inextricably involved that he dare not face his position, dare not think of it himself, much less have taken her into his confidence, and so went blindly on, paying interest on interest, and hoping ever with a vague hope for some relief from his troubles.
That relief never came to James Ashurst in his lifetime. He struggled on in the same hopeless, helpless, hand-to-mouth fashion for about eight years more, always impecunious in the highest degree, always intending to retrieve his fallen fortune, always slowly but surely breaking and becoming less and less of a man under the harass of pecuniary troubles, when the illness which for some time had threatened him set in, and, as we have seen, he died.
CHAPTER III.
MARIAN.
The little child who was so long prayed for, and who came at last in answer to James Ashurst's fervent prayers, had nothing during her childhood to distinguish her from ordinary children. It is scarcely worthy of record that her mother had a hundred anecdotes illustrative of her precocity, of her difference from other infants, of certain peculiarities never before noticed in a child of tender years. All mothers say these things whether they believe them or not, and Mrs. Ashurst, stretched on her sick-couch, did believe them, and found in watching what she believed to be the abnormal gambols of her child, a certain relief from the constant, dreary, wearing pain which sapped her strength, and rendered her life void and colourless and unsatisfactory. James Ashurst believed them fervently; even if they had required a greater amount of credulity than that which he was blessed with, he, knowing it gave the greatest pleasure to his wife, would have stuck to the text that Marian was a wonderful, "really, he might say, a very wonderful child." But he had never seen anything of childhood since his own, which he had forgotten, and the awakening of the commonest faculties in his daughter came upon him as extraordinary revelations of subtle character, which, when their possessor had arrived at years of maturity, would astonish the world. The Helmingham people did not subscribe to these opinions. Most of them had children of their own, who, they considered, were quite as eccentric, and odd, and peculiar as Marian Ashurst. "Not that I'm for 'lowin that to be pert and sassy one minute, and sittin' mumchance wi'out sa much as a word to throw at a dog the next, is quite manners," they would say among themselves; "but what's ye to expect? Poor Mrs. Ashurst layin' on the brode of her back, and little enough of that, poor thing, and that poor feckless creature, the schoolmaster, buzzed i' his 'ed wi' book larnin' and that! A pretty pair to bring up such a tyke as Miss Madge!"
That was in the very early days of her life. As the "tyke" grew up she dropped all outward signs of tykishness, and seemed to be endeavouring to prove that eccentricity was the very last thing to be ascribed to her. The Misses Lewin, whose finishing-school was renowned throughout the county, declared they had never had so quick or so hardworking a pupil as Miss Ashurst, or one who had done them so much credit in so short a time. The new rector of Helmingham declared that he should not have known how to get through his class and parish work had it not been for the assistance which he had received from Miss Ashurst at times when--when really--well, other young ladies would, without the slightest harm to themselves, be it said, have been enjoying themselves in the croquet-ground. When the wardrobe woman retired from the school to enter into the bonds of wedlock with the drill-sergeant (whose expansive chest and manly figure, when going through the "exercise without clubs," might have softened Medusa herself), Marian Ashurst at once took upon herself the vacant situation, and resolutely refused to allow any one else to fill it. These may have been put down as eccentricities; they were evidences of odd character certainly not usually found in girls of Marian's age, but they were proofs of a spirit far above tykishness. All her best friends, except, of course, the members of her family whose views regarding her were naturally extremely circumscribed, noticed in the girl an exceedingly great desire for the acquisition of knowledge, a power of industry and application quite unusual, an extraordinary devotion to anything she undertook, which suffered itself to be turned away by no temptation, to be wearied by no fatigue. Always eager to help in any scheme, always bright-eyed and clear-headed and keen-witted, never unduly asserting herself, but always having her own way while persuading her interlocutors that she was following their dictates, the odd shy child grew up into a girl less shy, indeed, but scarcely less odd. And certainly not lovable: those who fought her battles most strongly--and even in that secluded village there were social and domestic battles, strong internecine warfare, carried on with as much rancour as in the great city itself--were compelled to admit there was "a something" in her which they disliked, and which occasionally was eminently repulsive.
This something had developed itself strongly in the character of the child, before she emerged into girlhood; and though it remained vague as to definition, while distinct as to impression in the minds of others, Marian herself understood it perfectly, and could have told any one, had she chosen, what it was that made her unlike the other children, apart from her being brighter and smarter than they, a difference which she also perfectly understood. She would have said, "I am very fond of money, and the others are not; they are content to have food and clothes, but I like to see the money that is paid for them, and to have some of it, all for myself, and to heap it up and look at it, and I am not satisfied as they are, when they have what they want--I want better things, nicer food, and smarter clothes, and more than them, the money. I don't say so, because I know papa hasn't got it, and so he cannot give it to me; but I wish he could. There is no use talking and grumbling about things we cannot have; people laugh at you, and are glad you are so foolish when you do that, so I say nothing about it, but I wish I was rich."
Marian would have made some such answer to any one who should have endeavoured to get at her mind to find out what that was lurking there, never clearly seen, but always plainly felt, which made her "old fashioned," in other than the pathetic and interesting sense in which that expression has come to be used with reference to children, before she had entered upon her teens.
A clever mother would have found out this grave and ominous component of the child's character--would have interpreted the absence of the thoughtless extravagance, so charming, if sometimes so trying, of childhood--would have been quick to have noticed that Marian asked, "What will it cost?" and gravely entered into mental calculation on occasions when other children would have demanded the purchase of a coveted article clamorously, and shrieked if it were refused. But Mrs. Ashurst was not a clever mother--she was only a loving, indulgent, rather helpless one; and the little Marian's careful ways were such a practical comfort to her, while the child was young, that it never occurred to her to investigate their origin, to ask whether such a very desirable and fortunate effect could by possibility have a reprehensible, dangerous, insidious cause. Marian never wasted her pennies, Marian never spoiled her frocks, Marian never lost or broke anything; all these exceptional virtues Mrs. Ashurst carefully noted and treasured in the storehouse of her memory. What she did not notice was, that Marian never gave anything away, never voluntarily shared any of her little possessions with her playfellows, and, when directed to do so, complied with a reluctance which all her pride, all her brave dread of the appearance of being coerced, hardly enabled her to subdue, and suffered afterwards in an unchildlike way. What she did not observe was, that Marian was not to be taken in by glitter and show; that she preferred, from the early days in which her power of exhibiting her preference was limited by the extent of the choice which the toy-merchant---who combined hardbake and hairdressing with ministering to the pleasures of infancy--afforded within the sum of sixpence. If Marian took any one into her confidence, or asked advice on such solemn occasions--generally ensuing on a protracted hoarding of the coin in question--it would not be by the questions, "Is it the prettiest?" "Is it the nicest?" but, "Do you think it is worth sixpence?" and the child would look from the toy to the money, held closely in the shut palm of her chubby hand, with a perturbed countenance, in which the pleasure of the acquisition was almost neutralised by the pain of the payment--a countenance in which the spirit of barter was to be discerned by knowing eyes. But none such took note of Marian's childhood. The illumination of love is rather dazzling than searching in the case of mothers of Mrs. Ashurst's class, and she was dazzled. Marian was perfection in her eyes, and at an age at wthe inversion of the relations between mother and daughter, common enough in later life, would have appeared to others unreasonable, preposterous, Mrs. Ashurst surrendered herself wholly, happily, to the guidance and the care of her daughter. The inevitable self-assertion of the stronger mind took place, the inevitable submission of the weaker. In this instance, a gentle, persuasive, unconscious self-assertion, a joyful yielding, without one traversing thought of humiliation or deposition.
Her daughter was so clever, so helpful, so grave, so good; her economy and management--surely they were wonderful in so young a girl, and must have come to her by instinct?--rendered life such a different, so much easier a thing, delicate as she was, and requiring so disproportionate a share of their small means to be expended on her, that it was not surprising Mrs. Ashurst should see no possibility of evil in the origin of such qualities.
As for Marian's father, he was about as likely to discover a comet or a continent as to discern a flaw in his daughter's moral nature. The child, so longed for, so fervently implored, remained always, in her father's sight, Heaven's best gift to him; and he rejoiced exceedingly, and wondered not a little, as she developed into the girl whom we have seen beside his death-bed. He rejoiced because she was so clever, so quick, so ready, had such a masterly mind and happy faculty of acquiring knowledge; knowledge of the kind he prized and reverenced; of the kind which he felt would remain to her, an inheritance for her life. He wondered why she was so strong, for he knew she did not take the peculiar kind of strength of character from him or from her mother.
It was not to be wondered at that these peculiarities of Marian Ashurst were noticed by the inhabitants of the village where she was born, and where her childish days had been passed; but it was remarkable that they were regarded with anything but admiration. For a keen appreciation of money, and an unfailing determination to obtain their money's worth, had long been held to be eminently characteristic of the denizens of Helmingham. The cheesefactor used to declare that the hardest bargains throughout his county connection were those which Mrs. Croke, and Mrs. Whicher, and, worst of all, old Mrs. M'Shaw (who, though Helmingham born and bred, had married Sandy M'Shaw, a Scotch gardener, imported by old Squire Creswell) drove with him. Not the very best ale to be found in the cellars of the Lion at Brocksopp (and they could give you a good glass of ale, bright, beaming, and mellow, at the Lion, when they choose), not the strongest mahogany-coloured brandy-and-water, mixed in the bar by the fair hands of Miss Parkhurst herself, not even the celebrated rum-punch, the recipe of which, like the songs of the Scandinavian scalds, had never been written out, but had descended orally to old Tilley, the short, stout, rubicund landlord--had ever softened the heart of a Helmingham farmer in the matter of business, or induced him to take a shilling less on a quarter of wheat, or a truss of straw, than he had originally made up his mind to sell it at.
"Canny Helmingham" was its name throughout the county, and its people were proud of it. Mr. ChambrÉ, an earnest clergyman who had succeeded the old rector, had been forewarned of the popular prejudice, and on the second Sunday of his ministry addressed his parishioners in a very powerful and eloquent discourse upon the wickedness of avarice and the folly of heaping up worldly riches; after which, seeing that the only effect his sermon had was to lay him open to palpable rudeness, he wisely concentrated his energies on his translation of Horace's Odes (which has since gained him such great renown, and of which at least forty copies have been sold), and left his parishioners' souls to take care of themselves. But however canny and saving they might be, and however, sharply they might battle with the cheesefactor and look after the dairymaid, as behoved farmers' wives in these awful days of free trade (they had a firm belief in Helmingham that "Cobden," under which generic name they understood it, was a kind of pest, as is the smut in wheat, or the tick in sheep), all the principal dames in the village were greatly shocked at the unnatural love of money which it was impossible to help noticing in Marian Ashurst.
"There was time enow to think o' they things, money and such-like fash, when pipple was settled down," as Mrs. Croke said; "but to see children hardenin' their hearts and scrooin' their pocket-money is unnatural, to say the least of it!" It was unnatural and unpopular in Helmingham. Mrs. Croke put such a screw on the cheesefactor, that in the evening after his dealings with her, that worthy filled the commercial room at the Lion with strange oaths and modern instances of sharp dealing in which Mrs. Croke bore away the palm; but she was highly indignant when Lotty Croke's godmother bought her a savings-bank, a gray edifice, with what theatrical people call a practicable chimney, down which the intended savings should be deposited. Mrs. Whicher's dairymaid, who, being from Ireland, and a Roman Catholic in faith, was looked upon with suspicion, not to say fear, in the village, and who was regarded by the farmers as in constant though secret communication with the Pope of Rome and the Jesuit College generally, declared that her mistress "canthered the life out of her" in the matter of small wages and much work; but Mrs. Whicher's daughter, Emily, had more crimson gowns, and more elegant bonnets, with regular fields of poppies, and perfect harvests of ears of corn growing out of them, than any of her compeers, for which choice articles the heavy bill of Madame Morgan--formerly of Paris, now of Brocksopp--was paid without a murmur. "It's unnat'ral in a gell like Marian Ashurst to think so much o' money and what it brings," would be a frequent remark at one of those private Helmingham institutions known as "thick teas." And then Mrs. Croke would say, "And what like will a gell o' that sort look to marry? Why, a man maun have poun's and poun's before she'd say 'yea' and buckle to!"
But that was a matter which Marian had already decided upon.
CHAPTER IV.
MARIAN'S CHOICE.
At a time when it seemed as though the unchildlike qualities which had distinguished the child from her playmates and coevals were intensifying and maturing in the girl growing up, then, to all appearance, hard, calculating, and mercenary, Marian Ashurst fell in love, and thenceforward the whole current of her being was diverted into healthier and more natural channels. Fell in love is the right and the only description of the process so far as Marian was concerned. Of course she had frequently discussed the great question which racks the hearts of boarding-school misses, and helps to fill up the spare time of middle-aged women, with her young companions, had listened with outward calmness and propriety, but with an enormous amount of unshown cynicism, to their simple gushings, and had said sufficient to lead them to believe that she joined in their fervent admiration of and aspiration for young men with black eyes and white hands, straight noses and curly hair. But all the time Marian was building for herself a castle in the air, the proprietor of which, whose wife she intended to be, was a very different person from the hairdressers' dummies whose regularity of feature caused the hearts of her companions to palpitate. The personal appearance of her future husband had never given her an instant's care; she had no preference in the colour of his eyes or hair, in his height, style, or even of his age, except she thought she would rather he were old. Being old, he was more likely to be generous, less likely to be selfish, more likely to have amassed riches and to be wealthy. His fortune would be made, not to be made; there would be no struggling, no self-denial, no hope required. Marian's domestic experiences caused her to hate anything in which hope was required; she had been dosed with hope without the smallest improvement, and had lost faith in the treatment. Marriage was the one chance possible for her to carry out the dearest, most deeply implanted, longest-cherished aspiration of her heart--the acquisition of money and power. She knew that the possession of the one led to the other; from the time when she had saved her schoolgirl pennies and had noticed the court paid to her by her little friends, to the then moment when the mere fact of her having a small stock of ready money, even more than her sense and shrewdness, gave her position in that impecunious household, she had recognised the impossibility of achieving even a semblance of happiness in poverty. When she married, it should be for money, and for money alone. In the hard school of life in which she had been trained she had learned that the prize she was aiming at was a great one, and one difficult to be obtained; but that knowledge only made her the more determined in its pursuit. The difficulties around her were immense; in the narrow circle in which she lived she had not any present chances of meeting with any person likely to be able to give her the position which she sought, far less of rendering him subservient to her wishes. But she waited and hoped; she was waiting and hoping, calmly and quietly fulfilling the ordinary duties of her very ordinary life, but never losing sight of her fixed intent. Then across the path of her life there came a man who seemed to give promise of eventually fulfilling the requirements she had planned out for herself. It was but a promise; there was nothing tangible; but the promise was so good, and the girl's heart yearned for an occupant, for, with all its hard teaching and its worldly aspirations, it was but human after all. So her human heart and her worldly wisdom come to a compromise in the matter of her acceptance of a lover, and the result of that compromise was her engagement to Walter Joyce.
When the Helmingham Grammar School was under the misrule of old Dr. Munch, then at its lowest ebb, and nominations to the foundation were to be had for the asking, and, indeed, in many cases sent a-begging, it occurred to the old head master to offer one of the vacancies to Mr. Joyce, the principal grocer and maltster of the village, whose son was then just of an age to render him accessible to the benefits of the education which Sir Ranulph Clinton had devised to the youth of Helmingham, and which was being so imperfectly supplied to them under the auspices of Dr. Munch. You must not for an instant imagine that the offer was made by the old doctor out of pure loving-kindness and magnanimity; he looked at it, as he did at most things, from a purely practical point of view: he owed Joyce the grocer so much money, and if Joyce the grocer would write him a receipt in full for all his indebtedness in return for a nomination for Joyce junior, at least he, the doctor, would not have done a bad stroke of business. He would have wiped out an existing score, the value of which proceeding meant, in Dr. Munch's eyes, that he would be enabled at once to commence a fresh one, while the acquisition of young Joyce as a scholar would not cause one atom of difference in the manner in which the school was conducted, or rather, left to conduct itself. The offer was worth making, for the debt was heavy, though the doctor was by no means sure of its being accepted. Andrew Joyce was not Helmingham-born; he had come from Spindleton, one of the large inland capitals, and had purchased the business which he owned. He was not popular among the Helmingham folk, who were all strict church-people so far as morning-service attending, tithe-paying, and parson-respecting were concerned, from the fact that his religious tendencies were suspected to be what the villagers termed "Methodee." He had his seat in the village church, it is true, and put in an appearance there on the Sunday morning; but instead of spending the Sabbath evening in the orthodox way--which at Helmingham consisted in sitting in the best parlour with a very dim light, and enjoying the blessings of sound sleep while Nelson's Fasts and Festivals,or some equally proper work, rested on the sleeper's knee, until it fell off with a crash, and was only recovered to be held upside down until the grateful announcement of the arrival of supper--Mr. Joyce was in the habit of dropping into Salem Chapel, where Mr. Stoker, a shining light from the pottery district, dealt forth the most uncomfortable doctrine in the most forcible manner. The Helmingham people declared, too, that Andrew Joyce was "uncanny" in other ways; he was close-fisted and niggardly, his name was to be found on no subscription-list; he was litigious; he declared that Mr. Prickett, the old-fashioned solicitor of the village, was too slow for him, and he put his law-matters into the hands of Messrs. Sheen and Nasmyth, attorneys at Brocksopp, who levied a distress before other people had served a writ, and who were considered the sharpest practitioners in the county. Old Dr. Munch had heard of the process of Messrs. Sheen and Nasmyth, and the dread of any of it being exercised on him originally prompted his offer to Andrew Joyce. He knew that he might count on an ally in Andrew Joyce's wife, a superior woman, in very delicate health, who had great influence with her husband, and who was devoted to her only son. Mrs. Joyce, when Hester Baines, had been a Bible-class teacher in Spindleton, and had had herself a fair amount of education--would have had more, for she was a very earnest woman in her vocation, over striving to gain more knowledge herself for the mere purpose of imparting it to others, but from her early youth she had been fighting with a spinal disease, to which she was gradually succumbing; so that although sour granite-faced Andrew Joyce was not the exact helpmate that the girl so full of love and trust could have chosen for herself, when he offered her his hand and his home, she was glad to avail herself of the protection thus afforded, and of the temporary peace which she could thus enjoy until called, as she thought she should be, very speedily to her eternal rest.
That call did not come nearly as soon as Hester Baines had anticipated, not, indeed, until nearly a score of years after she gave up Bible-teaching, and became Andrew Joyce's wife. In the second year of her marriage a son was born to her, and thenceforward she lived for him, and for him alone. He was a small, delicate, sallow-faced boy, with enormous liquid eyes, and rich red lips, and a long throat, and thin limbs, and long skinny hands. A shy retiring lad, with an invincible dislike to society of any kind, even that of other boys; with a hatred of games and fun, and an irrepressible tendency to hide away somewhere, anywhere, in an old lumber-room amid the disused trunks, and broken clothes-horses, and general lumber, or under the wide-spreading branches of a tree, and then, extended, prone on his stomach, to lie with his head resting on his hands, and a book flat between his face-supporting arms. He got licked before he had been a week at the school, because he openly stated he did not like half-holidays, a doctrine which when first whispered among his schoolfellows was looked upon as incredible, but which, on proof of its promulgation, brought down upon its holder severe punishment.
Despite of all Dr. Munch's somnolency and neglect, despite of all his class fellows' idleness, ridicule, or contumely, young Joyce would learn, would make progress, would acquire accurate information in a very extraordinary way. When Mr. Ashurst assumed the reins of government at Helmingham Grammar School, the proficiency, promise, and industry of Walter Joyce were the only things that gave the now dominie the smallest gleam of interest in his fresh avocation. With the advent of the new head master Walter Joyce entered upon another career; for the first time in his life he found some one to appreciate him, some one who could understand his work, praise what he had done, and encourage him to greater efforts. This had hitherto been wanting in the young man's life. His father liked to know that the boy "stuck to his book;" but was at last incapable of understanding what that sticking to the book produced; and his mother, though conscious that her son possessed talent such as she had always coveted for him, had no idea of the real extent of his learning. James Ashurst was the only one in Helmingham who could rate his scholar's gifts at their proper value, and the dominie's kind heart yearned with delight at the prospect of raising such a creditable flower of learning in such unpromising soil. He busied himself, not merely with the young man's present but with his future. It was his greatest hope that one of the scholarships at his old college should be gained by a pupil from Helmingham, and that that pupil should be Walter Joyce. Mr. Ashurst had been in communication with the college authorities on the subject; he had obtained a very unwilling assent--an assent that would have been a refusal had it not been for Mrs. Joyce's influence--from Walter's father that he would give his son an adequate sum for his maintenance at the University, and he was looking forward to a quick-coming time when a scholarship should be vacant, for which he was certain Walter had a most excellent chance, when Mrs. Joyce had a fit and died.
From that time forth Andrew Joyce was a changed man. He had loved his wife in his grim, sour, puritanical way, loved her sufficiently to strive against this grimness and puritanism to the extent of his consenting to live for the most part from the ordinary fashion of the world. But when that gentle influence was once removed, when the hard-headed, narrow-minded man had no longer the soft answer to turn away his wrath, the soft face to look appealingly up against his harsh judgment, the quick intellect to combat his one-sided dogmatisms, he fell away at once, and blossomed out as the bitter bigot into which he had gradually but surely been growing. No college education for his son then; no assistance from him for a bloated hierarchy, as he remarked at a public meeting, glancing at Mr. Sifton, the curate, who had eighty pounds a year and four children; no money of his to be spent by his son in a dissolute and debauched career at the University. Mr. Stoker had not been at any university--as, indeed, he had not, having picked up most of his limited education from a travelling tinker, who combined pot-mending and knife-grinding with Bible and tract selling;--and where would you meet with a better preacher of the Gawspel, a more shining light, or a comelier vessel? Mr. Stoker was all in all to Andrew Joyce then, and when Andrew Joyce died, six months afterwards, it was found that, with the exception of the legacy of a couple of hundred pounds to his son, he had left all his money to Mr. Stoker, and to the chapel and charities represented by that erudite divine.
It was a sad blow to Walter Joyce, and almost as sharp a one to James Ashurst. The two men--Walter was a man now--grieved together over the overturned hopes and the extinguished ambition. It was impossible for Walter to attempt to go to college just then. There was no scholarship vacant, and if there had been, the amount to be won might probably have been insufficient even for this modest youth. There was no help for it; he must give up the idea. What, then, was he to do? Mr. Ashurst answered that in his usual impulsive way. Walter should become under master in the school. The number of boys had increased immensely. There was more work than he and Dr. Breitmann could manage; oh yes, he was sure of it--he had thought so a long time; and Walter should become third classical master, with a salary of sixty pounds a year, and board and lodging in Mr. Ashurst's house. It was a rash and wild suggestion, just likely to emanate from such a man as James Ashurst. The number of boys had increased, and Mr. Ashurst's energy had decreased; but there was Dr. Breitmann, a kindly, well-read, well-educated doctor of philosophy, from Leipzig; a fine classical scholar, though he pronounced "amo" as "ahmo," and "Dido" as "Taito," a gentleman, though his clothes were threadbare, and he only ate meat once a week, and sometimes not then unless he were asked out, and a disciplinarian, though he smoked like a limekiln; a habit which in the Helmingham schoolboys' eyes proclaimed the confirmed debauchee of the Giovanni or man-about-town type. Welter Joyce had been a favourite pupil of the doctor's, and was welcomed as a colleague by his old tutor with the utmost warmth. It was understood that his engagement was only temporary; he would soon have enough money to enable him, with a scholarship, to astonish the University, and then---- Meanwhile Mr. Ashurst and all around repeated that his talents were marvellous, and his future success indisputable.
That was the reason why Marian Ashurst fell in love with him. As has before been said, she thought nothing of outward appearance, although Walter Joyce had grown into a sufficiently comely man, small indeed, but with fine eyes and an eloquent mouth, and a neatly turned figure; nor, though a refined and educated girl, did she estimate his talents save for what they would bring. He was to make a success in his future life; that was what she thought of--her father said so, and so far, in matters of cleverness and book-learning, and so on, her father's opinion was worth something. Walter Joyce was to make money and position, the two things of which she thought, and dreamed, and hoped for night and day. There was no one else among her acquaintance with his power. No farmer within the memory of living generations had done more to keep up the homestead bequeathed to him whilst attempting to increase the number or the value of his fields, and even the gratification of her love of money would have been but a poor compensation to a girl of Marian's innate good breeding and refinement for being compelled to pass her life in the society of a boor or a churl. No! Walter Joyce combined the advantage of education and good looks with the prospect of attaining wealth and distinction: he was her father's favourite, and was well thought of by everybody, and--and she loved him very much, and was delighted to comfort herself with the thought that in doing so she had not sacrificed any of what she was pleased to consider the guiding principles of her life.
And he, Walter Joyce, did he reciprocate--was he in love with Marian? Has it ever been your lot to see an ugly or, better still, what is called an ordinary man--for ugliness has become fashionable both in fiction and in society--to see an ordinary-looking man, hitherto politely ignored, if not snubbed, suddenly taken special notice of by a handsome woman, a recognised leader of the set, who, for some special purpose of her own, suddenly discovering that he has brains, or conversational power, or some peculiar fascination, singles him out from the surrounding ruck, steeps him in the sunlight of her eyes, and intoxicates him with the subtle wiles of her address? It does one good, it acts as a moral shower-bath, to see such a man under such circumstances. Your fine fellow simpers and purrs for a moment, and takes it all as real legitimate homage to his beauty; but the ordinary man cannot, so soon as he has got over his surprise at the sensation, cannot be too grateful, cannot find ways and means--cumbrous frequently and ungraceful, but eminently sincere--of showing his appreciation of his patroness. Thus it was with Walter Joyce. The knowledge that he was a grocer's son had added immensely to the original shyness and sensitiveness of his disposition, and the free manner in which his small and delicate personal appearance had been made the butt of outspoken "chaff" of the schoolboys had made him singularly misogynistic. Since the early days of his youth, when he had been compelled to give a very unwilling attendance twice a week at the dancing academy of Mr. Hardy, where the boys of the Helmingham Grammar School had their manners softened, nor were suffered to become brutal, by the study of the Terpsichorean art, in the company of the young ladies from the Misses Lewin's establishment, Walter Joyce had resolutely eschewed any and every charge of mixing in female society. He knew nothing of it, and pretended to despise it. It is needless to say, therefore, that so soon as he was brought into daily communication with a girl like Marian Ashurst, possessed both of beauty and refinement, he fell hopelessly in love with her, and gave up every thought, idea, and hope, save that in which she bore a part. She was his goddess, and he would worship her humbly and at a distance. It would be sufficient for him to touch the hem of her robe, to hear the sound of her voice, to gaze at her with big dilated eyes, which--not that he knew it--were eloquent with love, and tenderness, and worship.