LI b RARY OF THE UNIVER.S1TY or ILLINOIS 823 YaTw AUTHOR OF gentleman;' idin^, or 2S. in Picture Boards. ^GES, 'on. ■«hing to take up a work of fiction, ioH o« the number and magmrude of ss on those more le^itira itc grounds raised das clasi of liter atute to a de- USBAND. Htten, nar*MCtrptions the writer evinces at once a fine and subtle imagination, and that perception of minute cha- racceristicii which giv<;s to fiction the life-like trutit of b o^iaphy. No* doss she want die pcwor to relieve her more serious vtewbjr one of genial and well-directed huniour." — Athmttum. CEAMAfTHAILrT93, Piccadilly. ' mw ri %^crw % j lii T %aHum f^ p ,< | r-i r,^a|-i f;^^,^-^ yn ^ r-i r | ^jW » -n Q^j^^i- t %_W*^ SELECT LIBRARY EDITION 1 OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS. Price 2j. Picture Boards^ or is. Gd, in Roxhurghe. SEISE AID SEISIBILITT. I PEESTJASIOI, AM) IfORTHAUeM AEBEY. . lAISnELB PAUK, ^ PRIDE hM PEEJTTDICE. ^ i EMMA. V '^ ' Miss Austen's novels/ says Southey, * are more true to nature, and have for my sympathies passages of finer feeling than any others of this age.' Sir Walter Scott and Archbishop Whately, in the earlier numbers of the Quarterly Review^ called the attention of the public to their surpassing excellence." — Qiuarterly RevieWy Jan., 1870. " Shakespeare has neither equal nor second. But among the writers who have approached nearest t^ the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud." — Lord Macaulay, \ London: CHAPMAN & HALL. \ SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS, AND AT BOOKSTALLS, \ ^@V 2)N» 7' WRECKED IN PORT, LOXDOK : ROBSOJT AKD S0Js3. PRINTERS, P^VNCRAS ROAD, V.'^. WRECKED IN PORT. % iofael. BY EDMUND YATES, AUTHOR or " THE ROCK AHEAD," " BLACK SHEEP," " LAN'D AT LAST," ETC. "All things that are Are more with spirit chasdd than enjoyed." SHAKESPEARE. EST THREE VOLUMES. YOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 1869. lAU rights reserved.'] Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/wreckedinportnov13yate 4 TO FEANK lYES SCUDAMOKE IS YEEY COEDIALLY INSCEIBED. COXTEXTS OF YOL. I. CHAP. PAGE I. Moribund i II. Retrospective i8 m. Marian 39 IV. Marian's Choice 56 V. Woolgreaves 85 VI. Bread-seeking 114 VII. A NEW Friend 143 viii. Flitting 164 IX. The tenth Earl 187 X. An Interior 213 XI. The Lout 236 XII. A PiEMOVAL 265 XIII. Life at Westhope 297 WRECKED IN PORT. CHAPTER 1. MORIBUXD. "I SAY ! Old Ashurst's e^oino: 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, doctors are the si- lentest fellows in the world. My uncle Eobert 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 VOL. I. B Z WRECKED m PORT. 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 o-oino^ to leave this term." " Don't I wish I was, that's all ! I say, Hawkes, do you thmk the governors will give old Ashurst's place to Joyce?" " Joyce ? — that snob ! Not they, indeed ! They'll get a SAvell from Oxford, or some- where, to be head master ; and I should think he'll give Master Joyce the sack. Baker, lend me twopence !" " M) — I say, Hawkes, you owe me — " "I know all about that, you young beg- gar — 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-j^ocket, and gave the ^[ORIBUND. 6 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 ex- plored, 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 col- loquy 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, re- mained yet fragrant from its recent trea- sure. 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 4 WRECKED IN PORT. summer iDreeze, to the broad-leaved water- lilies couchant below them. A notion of scuttling across tbe 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 chiefs illness gave him over his natural enemies, the masters. Their chiefs 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 T^indows, 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 MORIBUND. O 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 dymg. A gaunt, square, ugly room with panelled walls, on which the paint had cracked and rubbed and blistered, with such furniture as it pos- sessed old-fashioned, lumbering, and mean, with evidence of poverty everywhere — e\T.- dence 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 admit- tance 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 6 WKECKED IX PORT. flush which it leaves behind still hngered 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 des- tined to wear in hfe 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 in- evitable 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. Everyone in Helmingham knew that, and nearly everyone had a word of kindness and commiseration for the stricken man, and for his wife and daughter. Dr. Os- borne had caiTied the news up to the Park several days previously, and Sir Thomas MORIBUND. 7 had hemmed and coughed, and said, " Dear me !" and Lady Churchill had shaken her head piteously on hearing it. '' And no- thing 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 him- self 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 8 WEECKED m rORT. fee — and you could not expect these emi- nent men to leave their regular work, and come doAvn 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 tele- graph-office at Brocksopp with a message inquiring what w^ould be Godby's exact charge for runnmg 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 Cres- wells, 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 MORIBUND. y 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 Cres- well, 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 cared who was ill or who died, provided illness or death afforded occasion for slack- ing work and making holiday. Everyone else in the parish was grieved at the news. The rector — bland, polished, and well en- dowed with worldly goods — had been most actively compassionate towards his less for- tunate brother; the farmers, who looked upon "Master Ashurst'' as a marvel of book-learning, the labourers, who had con- sented to the removal of the village sports, held from time immemorial on the ^-illage green, to a remote meadow, whence the noise could not penetrate to the sick man's room, and who had considerately lowered 10 WKECKED IN PORT. the matter as well as tlie manner of their singing as they passed the school-house 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 sur- rounding her, the pluck and spirit and de- termination 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 MOEIBUND. 11 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 dif- ferent look in her face as, after bending over the bed and ascertaining that her father slept, she turned to the other occu- pant of the room, and said, more in the tone of one pondering over and repeating something previously heard than of a direct question : 12 WEECKED IN FORT. " A hundred and thirty guineas, mo- ther!" For a minute Mrs. Ashurst made her no reply. Her thoughts were far away. She coukl scarcely realise the scene passing round her, though she had pictured it to herself a hundred times in a hundred dif- ferent 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 MORIBUND. 13 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 tele- graph 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 salvolatile or peppermint — I mean of his own accord, and never in- tended to charge for it, T 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 losino- him for 14 WRECKED IN PORT. 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 daresay, 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. Cas- serly — " " 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 ! MOl^IBUND. 15 He was so kind about that salvolatile that I am sure he would do what — Lord! we never thought of Mr. Creswell I" Set and hard as Marian's face had been throughout the dialogue, it grew even more rigid as she heard these words. Her hps 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 de- lighted at this announcement. As it was, she merely said, " The young ladies are at "Woolgreaves, I think." "The young ladies I" 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 16 WBECKED IN PORT. at their uncle's purse is what we most need—" "0, Marian, Marian!" interrupted Mrs. Ashurst, ''what are you saying?" "Saying?" repHed Marian cahnly — " 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 grati- tude 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. MORIBUND. 17 "Good-night, my dear child," said he; " and may God comfort you in your afflic- tion! 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 suiFering under his dis- ease." "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 !" VOL. I. CHAPTER II. EETPvOSPECTIVE. The Reverend James Ashurst had been head master of the Helmmgham Grammar School for nearly a quarter of a century. Many old people m 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 RETEOSPECTIVE. 19 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- seek- ing 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 culi- nary 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 chil- dren, 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 mathe- matical 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 at- 20 WRECKED IN PORT. tended school in the afternoon, knowing perfectly that for the first few minutes after coining 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 alFan's 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 m despair, and appealed to their parents to '4et them leave;" the score of lads who en- joyed 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, everyone 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 RETROSPECTIVE. 21 vague ideas about "college" as of a seques- tered 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" someone 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 explain- ing 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 22 WRECKED IX POET. years; and so the two private secretaries of the two noble lords pitched their respective letters into their respective waste-baskets, with mutual grins of pity and contempt for the writers. Thrown back on their own resources, the resident governors deter- mined 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 epis- tolary intercourse with such of his coevals as remained at the university in the enjoy- ment 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 corre- spondence entered into between the rector of Helmingham and the Principal of St. Beowulph's College, Oxford, resulted in the RETROSPECTIVE. 23 enforced resignation of Dr. Munch as the head master of Helmingham Grammar School, and the appointment of the Rever- end 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 ap- pointment 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 24 WEECKED IN PORT. any natural talent — James Ashurst had but few acquaintances, and to them he never talked of his private alFairs. 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 in- tervals 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, m 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 RETROSPECTIVE. 25 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 pos- sibly have anything to do. In the Easter holidays he was to make Mary Bridger his wife, and that thought sustained him splen- didly during the three dreary intervening months, and helped him to make head ao^ainst a sea of troubles ramio' 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 founda- tion had been contemplated by the bene- volent old knight, and having been unac- customed 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 26 WRECKED IN PORT. 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, amono: whom Dr. ]\Iunch had been a dailv 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 lan- guage and stories more than sufficiently broad and indecorous, found that Mr. Ashurst civilly, but persistently, refused their proffered hospitahty, and in conse- quence pronounced him " stuck-up." 'No man was more free from class prejudices, but he had been bred in old Somerset coun- try 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 mth those whom Fortune had made his inferiors. RETROSPECTIVE. 27 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 he confessed, but poor result. The governors of the school had been so impressed by the rector's recommendation, and by the testi- monials which the new master had sub- mitted to them, that they expected to find the regeneration of the establishment would commence immediately upon James Ash- urst's appearance upon the scene, and were rather disappointed when they foimd that, while the number of scholars remained much the same as at the time of Dr. Munch's retirement, the general dissatis- faction in the xillage 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 main- tained everywhere that Mr. Ashurst had done very well in the face of the greatest 28 WRECKED IN PORT difficulties, and would yet bring Helming- ham 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 oc- cult something beyond the ordinary ken, which bound members of " the cloth" to- gether, and induced them to support each other to the utmost stretch of their con- sciences — a proceeding which, in the opinion of freethinkino; Helmino^ham, allowed for a considerable amount of elasticity. At leno^th the lono^-looked for Easter tide arrived, and James Ashurst hurried away from the dull gray old midland coun- try village to the bright little Thames-bor- dered town where lived his love. A wed- ding 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 KETROSPECTIVE. 29 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-gra- velled playground; all this was strange but intelligible. But James Ashurst could not understand yet the change that had come over his inner fife. 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 ex- change 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 Hel- mingham people were concerned. He was " that bumptious" as they expressed it, or 30 WRECKED IX PORT. as Tre will more charitably say, he was sufficiently independent, not to care one rap what the Helminghani people thought of anything he did, provided he had, as indeed at that time he always had — for he was conscientious in the hioiiest deo-ree — the knowledge that he was acting rightly according to his light. In a very few weeks the actual sweetness, the quiet frank- ness, 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, dehcate-looking Httle wo- man, and as such excited a certain amount of compassion and kindness amid the mid- land-county ladies, who, as their husbands said of them, " ran big." It was a positive rehef 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 RETROSPECTn^E. 31 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 mth her that she made her husband send their only son, a magnificent youth destined eventually for Eton, Oxford, Par- liament, 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 happi- 32 WRECKED IN PORT. ness? James Ashurst delighted to think so. His popularity in the village, and in the surrounding country, was on the in- crease ; the number of scholars on the foun- der ship 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 fel- low-boarders, each of whom paid a fine an- nual sum. The governors thought better of their head master now, and the old rec- tor had lived long enough to see his recom- mendation thoroughly accepted, and his prophecy, as regards the improved status of the school, duly fulfilled. Popular, suc- cessful 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 sufi'ered himself to have been pleasantly befooled by its gambols, EETEOSPECTIVE. 33 and have worshipped it in every phase of its tyranny. Bnt it was not to be, he snp- posed; 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 daugh- ter. His hopes were accomplished, but he nearly lost his wife in their accomplish- ment; 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 do^\'n into a peaceful girl, her mother, always slio^ht and delicate, had become a constant invalid, whose ill -health caused her hus- band the greatest anxiety, and almost did away mth the delight he had in anticipat- ing every wish of his darling little Ma- rian. James Ashurst had longed for a child, and he loved his little daughter dearly when she came; but even then his ^^^fe VOL. I. D 34 WRECKED IN PORT. 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 re- morse, and accused himself of havuig set himself up against the just judgment of Providence, and having now received the due reward of his repining. For one who thought his darhng must be restored to health, no sacrifice could be too great to accomplish that result; and the Helming- ham 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. Ash- urst he pronounced it to be a tiresome RETROSPECTIVE. 35 case, and prescribed a four months' resi- dence 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 bluiFway at the idea of a country schoolmaster send- ing his wife to Ems. " Langton is so much in the habit of gomg 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 thro^vn away your ten guineas, my good friend, if that's all you've o-ot out of Lano;ton !" But Dr. Osborne's smile was suddenly checked when Mr. Ashurst said very quietly that as his ^vife's health was dearer to him than anything on earth, and that there was no sacrifice which he would oG WEECKED IN PORT. not make to accomplish its restoration, he should find means of sending her to Germany, and keepmg 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 compara- tively 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 hol- low-eyed, the very shadow of his former self. James Ashurst had carried through his plans as regarded his wife at enor- mous sacrifice. He had no ready money to meet the sudden call upon his purse which such an expedition rendered ne- cessarv, and he had recourse to monev- RETROSPECTIVE. 87 lenders to raise the first loans required, then to friends to pay the interest on and obtain renewals of these loans, then to other money-lenders to replace the original sums, and to other friends to re- pay a portion of the first friendb; 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, pay- ing interest on interest, and hoping ever with a vague hope for some relief from his troubles. That rehef never came to James Ash- urst in his lifethne. He struo-orled on in CO 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, al- ways slowly but surely breaking and be- comins: less and less of a man under the 38 \\"RECKED IN PORT. harass of pecuniary troubles, when the illness which for some time had threat- ened bim 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 no- thing 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 pre- cocity, 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 ab- normal gambols of her child, a certain relief from the constant, dreary, wearing 40 WRECKED IN PORT. pain which sapped her strength, and ren- dered her hfe void and colourless and un- satisfactory. James Ashurst believed them fervently ; even if they had required a greater amount of credulity than that which he was blessed with, he, knosving 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 pos- sessor 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' mum- MARIAN. 41 chance wi'out sa much as a Avord to throw at a doo^ the next, is quite manners," they Avould say among themselves; "but what's ye to expect ? Poor Mrs. Ashurst layin' on the brode of her back, and httle enough of that, poor thing, and that poor feckless creature, the schoolmaster, buzzed i' his 'ed Avi' 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 eccen- tricity was the very last thing to Ije as- cribed 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 42 WEECKED IX POKT. 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 her- self), Marian Ashurst at once took upon herself the vacant situation, and resolutely refused to allow anyone else to fill it. These may have been put down as eccentricities ; they were evidences of odd character cer- tainly not usually found in gu-ls 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 MARIAX. 43 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 - ^vitted, never unduly asserting herself, but always having her own way while persuading her interlocutors that she was following then' 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 villao'e 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 dis- liked, and which occasionally was eminently repulsive. This something had developed itself 44 WRECKED IN FORT. 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 per- fectly, and could have told anyone, 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 under- stood. 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 my- self, 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 MAEIAN. 45 grumbling about things we cannot have ; people laugh at you, and are glad you are so foolish when you do that, so I say no- thing about it, but I wish I was rich." Marian would have made some such answer to anyone who should have endea- voured 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 expres- sion 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 extrava- gance, 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 46 WRECKED IN POET. children would have demanded the pur- chase 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 fortu- nate 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 volun- tarily 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 ap- MARIAN. 47 pearance of being coerced, hardly enabled her to subdue, and suffered afterwards in an unchildlike way. What she did not observe was, that Marian w^as not to l^e 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 hairdressino; with ministerino; to the pleasures of infancy — afforded within the sum of sixpence. If Marian took anyone into her confidence, or asked ad^dce 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 counten- ance, in which the pleasure of the acquisi- tion was almost neutralised by the pain of 48 WRECKED IN PORT. 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 which the inversion of the relations be- tween mother and daughter, common enough in later life, would have appeared to others unreasonable, preposterous, Mrs. Ashurst surrendered herself wholly, hap- pily, 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-asser- tion, a joyful yielding, without one tra- versing thought of humiliation or deposi- tion. Her daughter was so clever, so helpful, so grave, so good, her economy and manage- MARIAN. 49 ment — 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 requirmg 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 ori- gin 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 fer- vently 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 l^eside 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 reve- renced ; of the kind which he felt would VOL. I. E 50 WRECKED IN PORT. remain to her, an inheritance for her life. He wondered why she was so strong, for he knew she did not take the peculiar kmd of strength of character from him or from her mother. It was not to be wondered at that these peculiarities ofMarian 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 ad- miration. For a keen appreciation of money, and an unfailing determmation to obtain their money's worth, had long been held to be eminently characteristic of the denizens of Helmingham. The cheese- factor used to declare that the hardest bar- gains 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 gar- dener, imported by old Squire Creswell) MAKIAX. 51 drove with him. Xot the very best ale to be found in the cellars of the Lion at Brock- sopp (and they could give you a good glass of ale, bright, beaming, and mellow, at the Lion, when they chose), not the strong- est 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 busi- ness, 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. Chambre, an earnest cler- gyman who had succeeded the old rector, had been forwarned of the popular preju- UBRART 52 WRECKED IN PORT. dice, and on the second Sunday of his min- istry addressed his parishioners in a very powerful and eloquent discourse upon the wickedness of avarice and the folly of heap- ing up worldly riches ; after which, seeing that the only effect his sermon had Vv^as 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 Avhich at least forty copies have been sold), and left his parishioners' souls to take care of them- selves. But however canny and saving they might be, and however sharply they might battle with the cheesefactor, and look after the dairymaid, as behoved flir- mers' wives in these awful days of free trade (they had a firm belief in Helming- ham 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 vil- lage were greatly shocked at the unnatural MARIAX. 53 love of money which it was imj^ossible 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 I" It was unnatural and unpopular in Helmingham. Mrs. Croke put such a screw on the cheese- factor, that in the evening after his deal- ings with her, that worthy filled the com- mercial room at the Lion with strange oaths and modern instances of sharp deal- ing in which Mrs. Croke bore away the palm; l^ut 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 54 WKECKED IN PORT. 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 Col- lege 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 Ma- dame Morgan — formerly of Paris, now of Brocksopp — was paid without a murmur. ''It's unnatralin 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 insti- tutions 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 MARIAN. 55 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 unchilclhke quahties 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 con- cerned. Of course she had frequently dis- cussed the great question Avhich racks the hearts of boarding-school misses, and helj)s to fill up the spare time of middle-aged women, with her young companions, had Marian's choice. 57 listened with outward calmness and pro- priety, but with an enormous amount of unshown cynicism, to their simple gush- ings, 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 58 WRECKED IN PORT. 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. Mar- riage was the one chance possible for her to carry out the dearest, most deeply-im- planted, 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 no- ticed 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 im- pecunious household, she had recognised the impossibility of achieving even a sem- blance of happiness in poverty. When she married, it should be for money, and for Marian's cnoiCE. 59 money alone. In the hard school of life m which she had been trained she had learned that the prize she was aiming at was a great one, and one difficnlt 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 wait- ing and hoping, calmly and quietly ful- filling the ordinary duties of her very or- dinary 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 require- ments 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 occu- 60 WEECKED IN PORT. pant, for, with all its hard teaching and its worldly aspirations, it was bnt human after all. So her human heart and her worldly wisdom come to a compromise in the mat- ter of her acceptance of a lover, and the result of that compromise was her engage- ment 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 ask- ing, and, indeed, in many cases sent a-beg- ging, 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 educa- tion which Sir Eanulph 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 MARIAN'S CHOICE. 61 pure lovingkindness 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 Aviped out an existing score, the value of which proceeding meant, in Dr. Munch's eyes, that he would be enabled at once to com- mence a fresh one, while the acquisition of young Joyce as a scholar would not cause one atom of difference m 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 62 WKECKED IN PORT. owned. He was not popular among the Helmingham folk, who were all strict church - people so far as mormng - service attending, tithe-paying, and parson-respect- ino: 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 Kelson'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 shming light from the pottery district, dealt forth the most uncomfortable Marian's choice. 63 doctrine in the most forcible manner. The Hehningham people declared, too, that Andrew Joyce was "micanny" in other ways ; he was close-fisted and niggardly, his name was to be found on no subscrip- tion-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 ]\Iessrs. Sheen and Nasmyth, attorneys at Brocksopp, who levied a distress before other people had served a writ, and who were considered the sharpest practition- ers in the county. Old Dr. Munch had heard of the process of Messrs. Sheen and Nasmyth, and the dread of any of it be- ing 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 64 WEECKED IN POET. Baines, had been a Bible-class teacher m Spmdleton, and had had herself a fair amount of education, would have had more, for she was a very earnest woman in her vocation, ever strivino; to o;ain more know- ledge herself for the mere purpose of im- parting it to others, but from her early youth she had been fighting with a spinal disease, to which she was gradually suc- cumbing, 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, in- deed, until nearly a score of years after she gave up Bible-teaching, and became Andrew Marian's choice. 65 Joyce's wife. In the second year of her marriage a son was born to her, and thence- forward 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 re- tiring 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 schoolfel- lows was looked upon as incredi1)le, but VOL. I. F Q6 WRECKED IN PORT. 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. Ash- urst assumed the reins of government at Helmingham Grammar School, the pro- ficiency, promise, and industry of Walter Joyce were the only things that gave the new 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 someone to appreciate him, someone who could understand his work, praise what he had done, and en- courage 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 MARIAN'S CHOICE. 67 incapable of understanding what that stick- ing 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 v\'as the only one in Helmino^ham who could rate his scholar s gifts at their proper value, and the dominie's kind heart yearned with delight at the pro- spect 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 scholar- ships 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 o-ive his son an ade- 68 WRECKED IN PORT. quate sum for his maintenance at the Uni- versity, 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 consent- ing to live for the most part from the ordi- nary 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 intel- lect to combat his one-sided dogmatisms, he fell away at once, and blossomed out as the bitter bigot into which he had gradu- ally but surely been growing. Xo college education for his son then; no assistance makian's choice. 69 from him for a bloated hierarchy, as he remarked at a public meeting, glancing at Mr. Sifton, the cm^ate, who had eighty pomids 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 travel- ling tinker, who combined pot-mendmg and knife-grinding with Bible and tract selling ; — and where would you meet with a better preacher of the Gawspel, a more shining lio'ht, or a comelier vessel? Mr. Stoker was all in all to Andrew Joyce then, and when Andrew Joyce died, six months after- wards, it was found that, with the excep- tion 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 '70 WEECKED IN PORT. almost as sharp a one to James Asliurst. 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 scholar- Bhip 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 impul- sive 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; 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 lodg- ing in Mr. Ashurst' s house. It was a rash and wild suggestion, just likely to emanate from such a man as James Ashurst. The Marian's choice. 71 number of boys had increased, and Mr. Ashursf s energy had decreased ; but there -svas Dr. Breitmann, a kindl}^, 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 dis- ciplinarian, though he smoked like a lime- kiln ; a habit which in the Helmingham schoolboys' eyes proclaimed the confirmed debauchee of the Giovanni or man-about- town type. Walter Joyce had been a favourite pupil of the doctor's, and was welcomed as a colleague by his old tutor with the utmost wamrth. It was under- stood that his engagement was only tempo- rary; he would soon have enough money to enable him, with a scholarship, to as- tonish the University, and then — Mean- while Mr. Ashurst and all around repeated 72 WEECKED IN TOKT. that his talents were marvellouSj and his future success indisputable. That was the reason wh}^ Marian Ash- urst 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 Hfe ; 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 v^as worth something. Walter Joyce was to make money and posi- tion, the two things of which she thought, and dreamed, and hoped for night and da}'. There was no one else among her acquaint- ance with his power. No farmer within the memory of hving generations had done more to keep up the homestead bequeathed makian's choice. 73 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 i^ood breedino^ and refine- ment 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 recipro- cate, 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 uo^liness has become fashionable both in fiction and in society — to see an ordinary- 74 WRECKED IN POET. 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 sj^ecial purpose of her own, suddenly discovering that he has brams, 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 circum- stances. 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 appre- ciation of his patroness. Thus it was with Walter Joyce. The knowledge that he was a grocer's son had added immensely to the Marian's choice. 75 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 Gram- mar School had their manners softened, nor were suffered to become l^rutal, by the study of the Terpsichorean art, in the com- pany of the young ladies from the Misses Lewins' estal^lishment, "Walter Joyce had resolutely eschewed any and every charge of mixing in female society. He knew no- thing 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 hope- lessly in love with her, and gave up ever}* 76 WRECKED m PORT. 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 dis- tance. 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. Their love was kno"svai to each other, and to but very few else. Mr. Ashurst, looking up from his newspaper in the blessed interval between the departure of the boys to bed and the modest little supj)er, the only meal which the family — in which Joyce was included — had in private, may have noticed the figures of his daughter and his usher, not his favourite pujDil, lingering in the deepening twilight round the lawn, or seen "their plighted shadows blended into one" in the soft rays of the moonlight. But, if he thought anything about it, he never made any remark. Life was very Marian's choice. 77 hard and very earnest with James Ashurst, and he may have found something soften- ing and pleasing in this Httle bit of romance, something which he may have wished to leave undisturbed by worldly suggestions or practical hints. Or, he may have had his idea of what was actually going on. A man with an incipient disease beginning to tell upon him, with a sickly wife, and a per- petual striving not merely to make both ends meet, but to prevent them bursting so wide asunder as to leave a gap through which he must inevitably fall into ruin be- tween them, has but little time, or oppor- tunity, or inclination, for observing nar- rowly the conduct even of those near and dear to him. Mrs. Ashurst, in her invalid state, was only too glad to think that the few hours which Marian took in respite for attendance on her mother were pleasantly employed, to inquire where or in whose society they were passed — neither Marian's family nor Joyce kept any company by / O WEECKED IN POET. whom their absence would be missed; and as for the villagers, they had fully made up their minds on the one side that Marian was determined to make a splendid match ; on the other, that the mere fact of Walter Joyce's scholarship was so great as to in- capacitate him from the pursuit of ordinary human frailties : so that not the ghost of a speculation as to the relative position of the couple had arisen amongst them. And the two young people loved, and hoped, and erected their little castles in the air, which were palatial indeed as hope-depicted by Marian, though less ambitious as limned l^y Walter Joyce, when Mr. Ashurst's death came upon them like a thunderbolt, and blew their unsubstantial edifices into the air. See them here on this calm summer evening, pacing round and round the lawn, as they used to do, in the old days already ages ago as it seems, when James Ashurst, newspaper in hand, would throw occasional Marian's choice. 79 glances at them from the study window. Marian, mstead of letting her fingers lightly touch her companion's wrist, as is her wont, has passed her arms through his, and her fingers are clasped together round it, and she looks up in his face, as they come to a standstill l^eneath the big outspread branches of the old oak, with an earnest tearful gaze such as she has seldom, if ever, worn before. There must be matter of moment between these two just now, for Joyce's face looks wan and worn ; there are deep hollows beneath his large eyes, and he strives ineiFectually to conceal, with an occasional movement of his hand, the rapid anxious play of the muscles round his mouth. Marian is the first to speak. " And so you take Mr. BenthalPs deci- sion as final, Walter, and are determined to go to London?" " Darling, what else can I do? Here is Mr. Benthall's letter, in which he tells me that, without the least wish to disturb me 80 WRECKED IN PORT. — a mere polite phrase that — he shall bring his o^ATL assistant master to Helmingham. He writes and means kindly, I've no doubt —but here's the fact!" "0, yes, I'm sure he's a gentleman, Walter; his letter to mamma proves that, offering to defer his arrival at the school- house until our own time. Of course that is impossible, and we go into Mrs. Swain- son's lodgings at once." " My dearest Marian, my own pet, I hate to think of you in lodgmgs ; I cannot bear to picture you so!" "You must make haste to get your position, and take me to share it, then, Walter!" said the girl with a half-melan- choly smile; "you must do great things, Walter. Dear papa always said you Avould, and you must prove how right he was." "Dearest, your poor father calculated on my success at college for the furtherance of my fortune, and now all that chance is over 1 Whatever I do now must be — " Marian's choice. 81 ''By the aid of your own talent and industry, exactly the same appliances which you had to rely on if you had gone to the University, Walter. You don't fear the result ? you're not alarmed and desponding at the turn which affairs have taken? It's impossible you can fail to attain distinction, and — and money and — and position, Walter — you must, — don't you feel it? — you must!" "Yes, dear, I feel it; I hope — I think; perhaps not so strongly, so enthusiastically as you do. You see, — don't be downcast, Marian, but it's best to look these things in the face, darhng ! — all I can try to get is a tutor's, or an usher's, or a secretary's place, and in any of these the want of the University stamp is heavily against me. There's no disives us confidence in each other, all will be well, and it Avill be impossible to shut out hope. It is only when a shadow crosses that love — a catastrophe which seems impossible, but which we should pray God to avert — that hope can in the smallest degree duninish. Marian, my love, my life, think of this as I place it before you ! We are both young, both gifted with health and strength and powers of endurance. If we fight the battle side by side, if we are not led away by envy and induced to fix the standard of our desires too high, we shall, we must succeed in attaining what we have so often hopefully discussed — the happiness of being all in all to each other, and leading our lives together, ' for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.' I con- fess I can imagine no greater bliss — can you?" He had had no ansAver to this letter, but that had not troubled him much. He knew LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 309 that Marian was not fond of correspond- ence, that in her last letter she had given a full account of her new life, and that she could have but little to say ; and he was further aware that a certain feeling of pride would prevent her from too readily indors- ing his comments on her views ; that she agreed with those comments, or that they would commend themselves to her natural sound sense on reflection, he had no doubt ; and he was content to await cahnly the issue of events. The party assembled were waiting the announcement of dinner in the library, and when Joyce entered the room Lord Hether- ington left the rug where he had been standing with two other gentlemen, and, advancing towards his secretary, took his hand and said : " I am glad her ladyship has persuaded you to come out of seclusion, Mr. Joyce. Too much — what is it ? — books, and work, and that kind of thing, is — is — the deuce, 310 "WRECKED IN POET. in point of fact !" And then his lordship went back to the rug, and Joyce having received a sufficiently distant bow from Lady Hetherington, retreated into a darkish corner of the room, into which the flicker- ing firelight did not penetrate, and glanced around him. Lady Hetherington looked splendidly handsome, he thought. She was dressed in maroon - coloured velvet, the hues of which lit up wonderfully in the firelight, and showed her classically-shaped head and head-dress of velvet and black lace. Joyce had read much of Juno -looking women, but he had never realised the idea until he gazed upon that calm, majestic, imperious face, so clearly cold in outline, those large, solemnly - radiant eyes, that splendidly- moulded figure. The man who was bend- ing over her chair as he addressed her, not deferentially, as Joyce felt that — not from her rank, but rather her splendid beauty — she should be addressed, on the contrary, LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 311 rather flippantly, had a palpable curh^ ^sig, shaved cheeks, waxed moustache, and small white hands, which he rubbed gently to- gether in front of him. He was Colonel Tapp, a Crimean hero, a very Paladin in war, but who had been worn by time, not into slovenry, but into coxcombry. Mr. Biscoe, the rector of the parish — a l^ig. broad-shouldered, 1)ull- headed man, with clean-cut features, wholesome complexion, and l^reezy whiskers : excellent parson as well as good cross-country man, and as kind of heart as keen at sport — stood b}^ her ladyship's side, and threw an occasional remark into the conversation. Joyce could not see Lady Caroline Mansergh, but he heard her voice coming from a recess in the far side of the fireplace, and mingled with its bright, ringing Irish accent came the deep growling bass of Captain Framp- ton, adjutant of the depot battalion, and a noted amateur singer. The two gentlemen chatting with Lord Hetherington on the rug 312 WRECKED IN PORT. were magnates of the neighbourhood, re- presentatives of county families centuries old. Mr. Boyd, a very good-looking young gentleman, with crisp wavy hair and pink- and- white complexion, was staring hard at nothing through his eyeglass, and wonder- ing whether he could fasten one of his studs, which had come undone, without anyone noticing him ; and Mr. Biscoe was in conversation with a foxy -looking gentle- man with sunken eyes, sharp nose, and keen, gleaming teeth, in whom Joyce re- cognised ]\Ir. Gould, Lord Hetherington's London agent, who was in the habit of frequently running down on business mat- ters, and whose room was always kept ready for him. Dinner announced and general move- ment of the company. At the table Joyce found himself seated by Lady Caroline Man- sergh, her neighbour on the other side being Captain Frampton. After bowing and smiling at Mr. Joyce, Lady Caroline said : LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 313 " Now, Captain Frampton, continue, if you please !" " Let me see !" said the Captain, a good soldier and a good singer, but not bur- dened with more brains than are necessary for these professions — " let me see ! Gad — 'shamed to say. Lady Car'line, forgot what we were talkin' of !" "Mr. Chennery — you remember now?" " Yas, yas, course, thousand par- dons ! Well, several people who heard him at Carabas House think him wonderful." "A tenor, you say?" " Pure tenor, one of the richest, purest tenor voices ever heard ! Man's fortune's made — if he only behaves himself!" " How do you mean, ' behaves himself,' Captain Frampton?" asked Lady Caroline, raising her eyebrows. " Well, I mean sassiety, and all that kind of thing. Lady Caroline ! Man not accustomed to sassiety might, as they say, put his foot in it !" 314 ^VRECKED IX PORT. " 1 see/' said Lady Caroline, with an assumption of gravity. " Exactly ! and that would indeed be dreadful. But is this gentleman not accustomed to society ?" " Not in the least ; and in point of fact not a gentleman, so far as I'm led to under- stand. Father's a shepherd ; outdoor la- bouring something down at Lord Weston- hanger's place in Wiltshire ; boy w^as ap- prenticed to a stonemason, but j)eople stay- ing at the house heard of his singing, sent for him, and Lord Westonhanger was so charmed Avith his voice, had him sent to Italy and taught. That's the story !" " Surely one that reflects great credit on all concerned," said Lady Caroline. '' But I yet fail to see why Mr. Chennery should not behave himself!" "Well, you see, Lady Caroline, Carabas House, and that sort of thing — people he'll meet there, you know, different from any- thing he's ever seen before." " But he can but be a gentleman, Cap- LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 31 -J tain FramjDton. If he were a prince, he could be no more !" " No, exactly, course not ; but pardon me, that's just it, don't you see, the diffi- culty is for the man to be a gentleman." " Not at all; not the slightest difficulty!" And here Lady Caroline almost imper- ceptibly turned a little towards Joyce. " If Mr. Chennery is thrown into different society from that to which he has beeu hitherto accustomed, and is at all nervous about his reception or his conduct in it, he has merely to be natural and just as he always has been, to avoid any affectation, and he cannot fail to please. The art which he possesses, and the education he has re- ceived, are humanising influences, and he certainly contributes more than the average quota toAvards the enjoyment of what people call society." Whether Captain Frampton was uncon- vinced by the argument, whether he found a difficulty in pursuing it, or whether he 316 WRECKED IX rORT. had by this tmie realised the fact that the soup was of suj)erior quality, and worth paying attention to, are moot points; at all events, the one thing certain was, that he bowed and slightly shrugged his shoulders, and relapsed into silence, while Lady Caro- line, with a half smile of victory, which somehow seemed to include Walter Joyce in its expanding ripple, replied across the table to a polite query of Mr. Biscoe's in reference to their recent ride. She certainly was very beautiful! Joyce had thought so before, as he had caught transient glimpses of her flitting about the house ; but now that he had, unnoticed and unseen, the opportunity of quietly studying her, he was astonished at her beauty. Her face was very pale, with an impertinent little nose, and deej) - violet eyes, and a small rosebud of a mouth ; but perhaps her greatest charm lay in her hair, which lay in heavy thick chestnut clumps over her white forehead. Across it she wore the LIIE AT WESTHOPE. 317 daintiest bit of precious lace, white lace, the merest apology for a cap, two long lappels pinned together by a diamond brooch, while the huge full clump at the ])ack, unmistakably real, was studded with small diamond stars. She was dressed in a blue-satin gown, set off with a profusion of white lace, and on her arm she wore a large heavy gold bracelet. Walter Joyce found himself gazing at her in an odd indescribable Avay. He had never seen anything like her, never realised such a combination of ]3eauty, set off by the ad- vantages of dress and surroundings. Her voice too, so bright and clear and ring- ing, and her manner to him — to him? Was it not to him that she had really addressed these words of advice, although they were surely said in apparent reply to Captain Frampton's comments? If that were so, it was indeed kind of Lady Caro- line, true noble-hearted kindness: he must Avrite and teU Marian of it. 318 WRECKED IX POET. He was thinking of this, and had in his mind a picture, confused indeed, but full of small details which had a strange in- terest for him, and a vivid sadness too, of the contrast between the scene of which he formed at this moment a part, and those familiar to himself and to Marian. He was thinking of the homely simple life of the village, of the dear dead friend, so much a better man, so much a truer gentleman than any of these people, who were of so much importance in a world where he had been of so little ; of the old house, the familiar routine of life, not Avearisome with all its sameness, the sweetness of his first love. He was thinking of the splendour, the enervating bewildering luxury of his present surroundings, among which he sat so strange, so solitary, save for the subtle reassuring influence, the strange, unac- countable support and something like com- panionship in the tones of that fair and gi^acious ladv's voice, in the light of her LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 319 swift, flitting smile, in which he thought he read an admission that the company was little more to her taste than to his, had as little in common with her intellec- tual calibre as with his. He could not have told how she conveyed this impression to him, if he had tried to explain his feel- ings to any third person; he could not explain it to himself, when he thought over the events of the evening, alone in his room, which was a ding}^ apartment when compared with the rest of the house, but far better than any which had ever called him master ; but there it was, strong and strangely attractive, mingling with the sights and sounds around him, and with the dull dead pain at his heart which had been caused by Marian's letter, and which he had never quite succeeded in conquer- ing. There were unshed but not unseen tears in his eyes, and a slight tremulous motion in his lips, which one pair of eyes at the table, quick with all their languor, 320 WRECKED IN PORT. keen witli all tlieir disdainful slowness, did not fail to see. Tlie owner of those beautiful eyes did not quite understand, could not " fatliom" the meaning of the sudden glitter in his — " idle tears," indeed, on such an occasion, and in such company! — but, with the tine unfailing instinct of a coquette, she discerned, more clearly than Walter Joyce himself had felt it, that she counted for somethino; in the orioin and meaning of those unshed tears and of that nervous twitching. Lady Caroline had just removed her eyes mth well -feigned carelessness from Walter's face, after a covert glance, appa- rently casual, but in reality searching, in order to effect which she had leaned for- Avard and plucked some geranium-leaves from a bouquet near her on the table ; and AValter was removing himself still farther from the scene around, into the land of reverie, when a name spoken by Mr. Gould, and making an odd accidental harmony LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 321 with his thoughts, fixed his wandering at- tention. " AYhat sort of weather had you in Hampshire?" asked Lord Hetherington, in one of those irksome pauses usually se- lected by some individual who is at once commonplace and good-natured enough to distinguish himself by uttering an inane sentiment, or asking an awkward question. "Awful, I should fancy," said Lady Hetherington, in the most languid of her languid tones. " Awful, if it has been like the weather here, ^^ere you really obliged to travel, Mr. Gould? I can't fancy any- one going anywhere in such weather." "As it hajDpened," said Mr. Gould, with a rather impatient glance towards her lady- ship — for he could not always smile com- placently when she manifested her normal unconsciousness that anybody could have anything to do not entirely dependent on his or her own pleasure and convenience — "as it hajDpened, I had not to go. A few VOL. I. T 322 WRECKED IN POET. days after I told his lordship the parti- culars of the sale of land, I had a letter informing me that the matter was all oif for the present." "Indeed!" said Lord Hetherington ; "a doosed bore for Langiey, isn't it ? He has been wantmg to pick up something in that neighbourhood for a long time. But the sale will ultimately come off, 1 suppose, unless someone buys the land over Lang- ley's head by private contract." " There's no fear of that, I think," said Mr. Gould; "but I took precautions. I should not like Sir John to lose the slice off Woolgreaves he wants. The place is in a famous hunting country, and the plans are settled upon — like Sir John, isn't it ? — for his hunting-box." " I don't know that part of Hampshire at all," said Lord Hetherington, delighted at finding a subject on which he could in- duce one of his guests to talk without his being particularly bound to listen. " Very LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 323 rich and rural, isn't it? Why didn't the — ah, the person sell the land Langley wanted there ?" " For rather a melancholy reason," re plied Mr. Gould, while Lady Hetherington and the others looked bored by anticipa- tion. Rather inconsiderate and bad taste of Mr. Gould to talk about "melancholy reasons" in a society which only his pre- sence and that of the secretary rendered at all " mixed." But Mr. Gould, who was rather full of the subject, and who had the characteristic — so excellent in a man of business in business hours, but a little tiresome in social moments — of believing that nothing could equal in interest his clients' affairs, or in importance his clients themselves, went on, quite regardless of the strong apathy in the face of the coun- tess. "The letter which prevented my going down to Woolgreaves on the ap- pointed day was ^vritten by a lady resid- ing in the house, to inform me that the 324 WRECKED IN POET. owner of the property, a Mr. Creswell, very well known in tliose parts, had lost his only son, and was totally unfit to attend to any business. The boy was killed, I understand, by a fall from his pony." "Tom Creswell kiUed !" exclaimed Wal- ter Joyce, in a tone which directed the attention of everyone at the table to the " secretary.'' "I beg your pardon," Joyce went on, '• but will you kindly tell me all you know of this matter ? I know Mr. Creswell, and I knew this boy well. Are you sure of the fact of his death?" The paleness of Walter's face, the in- tensity of his tone, held Lady Caroline's attention fixed upon him. How hand- some he was ! and the man could evidently feel too ! How nice it would be to make him feel, to see the face pale, and to hear the voice deepen, like that, for her! It would be quite neiv. She had any amount of flirtation always at hand, whenever she LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 325 chose to summon its aid in passing the time ; but feeling did not come at call, and she had never had much of that given her. These were the thoughts of only a moment, flashino; throuo^h her mind before Mr. Gould had time to answer Joyce's appeal. "I am sorry I mentioned the fact at so inappropriate a time," said Mr. Gould, " but still more sorry that there is no doubt whatever of its truth. Indeed, I think I can show you the letter." Mr. Gould wore a dress-coat, of course, but he could not have dined comfortably if he had not transferred a mass of papers from his morning-coat to its pockets. This mass he extricated Avith some difficulty, and selecting one, methodically indorsed with the date of its receipt, from the number, he handed it to Walter. Lady Hetherington was naturally shocked at the infringement of the hien- seances caused by this unfortunate inci- dent, and was glancing from Mr. Gould 326 WEECKED IX PORT. to Mr. Joyce — from one element of the "mixture" in the assembled society to the other, with no pleasant expression of coun- tenance — when Lady Caroline came to the rescue, with gracefulness, deftness, light- ness all her own, and by starting an easy unembarrassed conversation with the gen- tleman opposite to her, in which she skilfully included her immediate neigh- bours, she dissipated all the restraints which had temporarily fallen upon the party. Something interesting to the ele- vated minds of the party, something dif- ferent from the unpleasantness of a boy's being killed whom nobody knew anything about, at a place which did not belong to anybody, — and the character of the dinner- party, momentarily threatened, was trium- phantly retrieved. Walter saw that the letter which Mr. Gould handed him was in Marian's writ- ing. It contained an announcement of the calamity which had occurred, and an- LIFE AT WESTHOPE. 327 intimation that Mr. Creswell could not attend to any matters of business at pre- sent. That was all. Walter read the brief letter with sincere concern, commiseration for the childless rich man, and also with the thrill, half of curiosity, half of painless jealousy, with which one regards the familiar and beloved handwriting, when addressed, however formally, to another. He returned the letter to Mr. Gould, T\dth a simple expression of thanks, and sat silent. Xo one noticed him. Everyone had forgotten the dismal occurrence about somebody whom nobody knew, doAvn in some place that did not belong to any- body. He had time to think unquestioned. "I wonder she has not ^vritten to me. The accident occurred four days ago," he thought. "I suppose she has too much to do for them all. God bless her, she will be their best comfort." Though unversed in the minor arts and smaller tactics of society, Walter was 328 WEECKED IN POET. not SO dull or awkward as to be ignorant of the skill and kindness with which Lady Caroline had acted on his behalf. When the ladies were to leave the room, as she passed him, their eyes met, and each looked at the other steadily. In her glance there was undisguised interest, in his — gratitude. END OF VOL. T. LOKDOX : ROBSOX AND SOSS, PK1>TERS, P^1^'CRAS ROAD, X.W. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CBAP, I. Lady Caroline II. " News feom the humming City" III. " He loves me, he loves me not" IV. Becoming indispensable V. The Rubicon . VI. Majrian's Reply . VII. During the Interval vni. Success achieved IX. The Girls they left behin] X. Wednesday's Post XI. Poor Papa's Successor XII. Clouding over PAGB I 17 40 66 89 120 147 177 207 233 268 296 WRECKED IN PORT. CHAPTER I. LADY CAROLINE. The Lady Caroline liked late hours. She was of a restless temperament, and hated solitude, though she was also intolerant of anything like dulness in her associates, and had sufficient taste for the accomplishments which she possessed to render her inde- pendent of society. Nevertheless she un- derwent an immense deal of boredom rather than be alone, and whenever she found herself in a country house, she set to work to form a coterie of late sitters, in order to avoid the early hours which were her VOL. II. B ^ WRECKED IX PORT. abhorrence. She was not an empty-headed woman — far from it. She had a good deal more knowledge than most women of her class, and a great deal of appreciation, some native humour, and much of the kind of tact and knowledge ofsociety which require the possession and the exercise of brains. Nobody would have pronounced her stupid, but everyone agreed that she was super- cilious and superficial. The truth was that she was empty-hearted, and where that void exists, no qualities of head will fill it ; and even those who do not know what it is they miss in the individual are impressed by the eff'ect of the deficiency. The Lady Caroline loved no one in the world except herself, and sometimes she took that sohtary object of afi*ection in disgust, which, if tran- sient, was deep. She had arrived at West- hope in one of those passing fits of ennui^ mingled with impatience and disgust of her- self and irritation ^\\t\\ everybody around her. She never at any time liked Westhope LADY CAROLINE. O particularly, and her brother and his wife had no more interest for her, no more share in her affections, than any other dull lord and lady among the number of dull lords and ladies with whom she was acquainted. Her brother loved her rather more than other people loved her, and Lady Hether- ington and she, though they " got on" charmingly, knew perfectly ^vell that the very tepid regard which they entertained for each other had nothing in it resembling sympathy or companionship. When the Lady Caroline retired to her own rooms after the dinner-party at which Walter Joyce had learned the news from Woolgreaves, she was no more inclined than usual to try the efficacy of a "beauty" sleep ; but she was much less inclined to grumble at the dulness of Westhope, to vdsh. the countess could contrive to have another woman or two whom she mif^rht talk to of an evening, and Avho Avould not want such a lot of sleep to be resorted to so 4 WEECKED IIS' POET. absurdly early, and to scold her maid, than usual. The maid perceived the felicitous alteration in her ladyship's mood imme- diately. It made an important diiFerence to her. Lady Caroline allowed her to remove all her ornaments and to brush her hair without finding fault with her, and surprised the patient Abigail, who must have had it ''made very Avell worth her while" to endure the fatigues of her office, by telling her she should not require her any longer, and that she was sure she must be tired. Left to herself, the Lady Caroline did not feel so impatient of her solitude as usual, but fell into a reverie which occupied her mind com.pletely. We have seen this nobly-born and, in some respects (chiefly external), highly-gifted woman as she ap- peared among her brother's guests. AYhile she sat by the fire in her dressing-room — with which she never dispensed, at any season, in "the odious English climate," as she was wont to call it — let us look LADY CAROLIXE. into lier life and see her as she really was. Lady Caroline Mansergh had married, or rather, her mother had married her to, a gentleman of considerable importance, wealth, and more than mature years, when she was just seventeen. Very fair and very sweet seventeen, whom it had been somewhat difficult to convince of the de- lights and advantages of being " an old man's darling." But Lady Hetherington had not accustomed her children to gentle or affectionate treatment, or to having their inclinations consulted in any way. She no more recognised Lady Caroline's right to choose her own husband than she would have consulted her taste in her babyhood about her own sashes ; and the girl's feeble attempt at remonstrance in opposition to the solid advantages of the proposals made by Mr. Mansergh did not produce the least effect at the time. Her ladyship carried her point triumphantly, and the girl found G TrEECKED IX POET. her fiite more endurable, on the whole, than she had expected. But she never forgave her mother, and that was rather odd, though not, when looked mto, very unreasonable ; Mr. Mansergh never forgave her either. The countess had accomplished his wishes for him, the countess had be- stowed upon him the wife he coveted, but she had deceived him, and when he won his wife's confidence he found her mother out. He had not been so foolish as to think the girl loved him, but he had believed she was willing to become his mfe — he had never had a suspicion of the domestic scenes which had preceded that pretty tableau vivant at St. George's, Han- over-square, in which eveiy emotion proper to the occasion had been represented to perfection. Fortunately for Lady Caroline, her elderly husband was a perfect gentle- man, and treated her Avith indulgence, consideration, and respect, which appealed successfully to her feelings, and were re- LADY CAEOLIXE. 7 ^yarded by a degree of confidence on her part, which insured her safety and his peace in the hazardous experiment of their unequal marriage. She told him frankly all about herself, her tastes, her feelings — the estrangement, almost amounting to dislike, which existed betw^een herself and her mother — the attempt she had made to avoid her marriage ; in short, the whole story of her brief life, in which there had been much to deplore. Mr. Mansergh possessed much firmness of character and good sense, which, though it had not pre- served him from the folly of marrying a girl young enough to be his daughter, came to his aid in making the best (and that much better than could have been ex- pected) of the perilous position. Lady Caroline did not, indeed, learn to love her husband in the sense in which alone any woman can be justified in becoming the wife of any man, but she liked him better than she liked anyone in the world, and « WRECKED IX PORT. she regarded him with real and active respect, a sentiment which she had never entertained j^i'eviously for anyone. Thus it fell out — contrary to the expectations of " society," which would have acted in the aggregate precisely as Lady Hetherington had done, but which would also have con- gratulated itself on its discernment, and exulted hugely had the matrimonial sj^ecu- lation turned out a failure — that Lady Caroline Manser gh was happy and respect- able. She never gave cause for the smallest scandal ; she was constantly with her hus- band, and Avas so naturally unaffectedly cheerful and content in his company, that not the most censorious observer could discover that he was used as a shield or a pretence. There was a perfectly good understanding between Mr. Mansergh and his young wife on all points; but if there was more complete accord on one in par- ticular than on others, it was in keeping the countess at a distance. The manoeu- LADY CAEOLIXE. " 9 vring motlier profited little by the success of her scheme. To be sure she got rid of her daughter at the comparatively trifling expense of a splendid trousseau^ and the unconsidered risk of the welfare and the reputation of the daughter in question, and she had the advantage over the majority of her friends of having married her advan- tageously in her first season. But the profit of the transaction terminated there. In her daughter's house Lady Hetherington remained on the same ceremonious footing as any other visiting acquaintance, and every attempt she made either to interfere or advise was met by a polite and resolute coldness, against the silent obstinacy of which she would have striven unsuccessfully had she not been much too wise to strive at all. If the barrier had been reared by Lady Caroline's hands alone, though they were no longer feeble, the countess would have flung it down by the force of her imperious will; but when she found that 10 TTRECKED IN POET. her daughter had her husband's opmion and authority to back her, Lady Hethering- ton executed the strategic movement of retreat with celerity and discretion, and would never have been suspected of dis- comfiture had she not spoken of her daugh- ter henceforth with suspicious effusion. Then " society" smiled, and knew all about it, and felt that Mr. Mansergh had been foolish indeed, but not immoderately, not unpardonably so. Lady Caroline was very popular and very much admired, and had her only friend's life been prolonged for a few years, until she had passed the dan- gerous period of youth, she might have l^een as worthy of esteem and affection as she was calculated to inspire admiration. But Mr. Mansergh died before his wife was twenty-three years old, and left her with a large fortune, brilliant beauty, and just sufficient knowledge of the world to enable her to detect and despise its most salient snares, but Avith a mind still but half edu- LADY CAROLIXE. 11 cated, desultory habits, and a wholly un- occupied heart. Her grief for her hus- band's loss, if not poignant and torturing, was at least sincere, deep, and well founded. When he died, she had said to herself that she should never again have so true, so wise, and so constant a friend, and she was right. Life had many pleasant and some good things in store for Lady Caroline Mansergh, but such a love as that witli which her husband had loved her was not among them. She acknowledged this al- ways ; the impression did not fade away with the first vehemence of grief — it lasted, and was destined to deepen. She strayed into a bad " set" before long, and to her youth and impulsiveness, with her ten- dency to ennui^ and her sad freedom from all ties of attachment, the step from feeling that no one was so good as her husband had been, to believing that no one else was good at all, was very easy. And so Lady Caroline acquired a dangerous and de- 12 WRECKED IX PORT. moralising trick of contempt for her fel- lows, which she hid under a mask of light and careless good-nature indeed, and which was seriously oifensive to no one, but which condemned her, nevertheless, to much in- terior solitude and dreariness. That she ^s'ixs not of the world she lived in, was due less to any exceptional elevation of senti- ment than to a capricious and disdainful humour, which caused her to grow bored very readily, and to dismiss her associates from her thoughts after a brief scrutiny, in which their follies and foibles came into strong light, and the qualities which would have required time and patience to find out remained undiscovered. It had occurred to Lady Caroline Man- sergh, on several occasions of late, to wonder whether she was destined ever to experience the passion called love. She had not remained ignorant of the science of flirtation up to her present time of life, but she had not been beguiled, ever so LADY CAROLINE. 13 briefly, into mistaking any of her flirta- tions for love. So she was accustomed to wonder wearily, when in an unusually desultory mood, whether she should ever feel that there existed in the world a human being for whom she should be willing to suffer, with whom life would be happy, without whom it would be into- lerable, and whose welfare she could deli- berately and practically prefer to her own. Of late she had begun to think that Fate was against her in this particular. The idea of the possibility of feeling love for one of the men whom she was in the habit of meeting was quite preposterous ; she did not hold her favourite followers half so dear as Hassan, her black barb, or like them half so well as Gelert, her greyhound. Her life would doubtless continue to be the bright, fashionable, flimsy, careless, rather ennuye existence it had hitherto been, and she should never know anything of the power, the pain, the engrossing in- 14 WEECKED IN POET. iluence of love. So much the better, she would think, m her more hopeful moods ; it must be a narrowing kind of influence, bounding all one's horizon within such small limits, shutting up one's mortal vista with one figure. When the Lady Caroline dismissed her maid, and resigned herself to reverie, on this night, it was not, after her accustomed fashion, to dwell in her thoughts on the dulness, staleness, flatness, and unprofit- ableness of the world in general, and the section of it in which she lived in particular. She had quite a distinct subject for thought, she had a figure and a face in her fancy, a voice in her memory which filled them wholly. What if she had been ^M?ong, if not only love were coming to her, to fill her life vnth delight, and turn its weariness with purpose and meaning, but love at first sight? A ridiculous notion, entertained by school-girls, housemaids, novelists, and poets, but scouted by all reasonable people LADY CAEOLINE. 15 of the world, and in " society." She knew this, but she did not care ; there was a strange delicious thrill about her heart ; and in the swift flight of her thoughts she swept the beams of happy possibilities, and felt that she could, and would, and did despise society and its notions on this point. What did she know about Walter Joyce ? Absolutely nothing, but that he was young, handsome, brightly intelligent, presumably poor, and socially insignificant, or he would not be her silly brother's secretary. Her attention had been directed to him at first, because she felt a compassionate curiosity about the person whom circumstances had oppressed so cruelly as to oblige him to purvey ideas, and language in which to ex- press them, for Lord Hetherington. Curi- osity and compassion had been replaced, within a few minutes, by admiration, which the difierence between the manners and bearing of Walter, and those of the men with whom she was accustomed to associate, 16 WRECKED IN POET. rather tended to increase. There was no awkwardness about Walter, but neither was there the slightest pretence. He was at ease in the unaccustomed company he found himself among, but he did not aiFect to be other than an observant stranger in it. " He has an intellect and a heart," said Lady Caroline half aloud, as she rose from her seat by the fireside, and brought her reverie to a conclusion, " and why should I care for the world's opinion? It could not make me happy, if I conciliated it ; but I think he could, if I defied it for his sake." CHAPTER 11. " NEWS FROM THE HUMMING CITY." After the ladies left the dining-room, Walter Joyce, in the general re-arrange- ment of seats thereon ensuing, found him- self placed next to Mr. Gould. It was soon obvious that his propinquity was not acci- dental on Mr. Gould's part. That keen- looking gentleman at once wheeled round in his chair, helped himself to a few olives and a glass of the driest sherry within his reach, and then fixing his bright steel-blue eyes on his neighbour, said, " That was news for you, that about young Creswell's accident, Mr. Joyce?" ^'It was indeed," replied AValter; " and — to a certain extent — sad news." VOL. II. c 18 WRECKED IX POET. '' You knew the l3oy who was killed, and his father ?" " Both. I knew the boy well ; he was a pupil in the school where I was an usher, and I knew the father — ^by sight — as a man in my position would know a man in his." ''Ah — of course!" and Mr. Gould glanced more keenly than ever at his inter- locutor, to see whether he was speaking earnestly or contemptuously. Earnestly, he thought, after a glance, and Joyce fell a little in the worldly man's opinion. He sucked an olive slowly, made a little pattern on his plate with the stones, and then said : "Do you think this aifair will make any difference in ]\Ir. Creswell's future?" " In his future ? Will the loss of his son make any diiference in his future ? Are you serious in asking such a question, Mr. Gould? Will it not leave his life a blank, a vague misery without — " "news from the Hu:^niixG city." 19 "Yes, yes, of course ; I know all about that. You'll pardon me, Mr. Joyce, I'm a much older man than you, and therefore you won't mind my experiencmg a certahi amount of delight in your perfect fresh- ness and simplicity. As to lea^ing the man's life blank, and all that — nonsense, my dear sir, sheer nonsense. He'll find plenty of distraction, even at his age, to fill up the blank. Xow, 1 was not considering the question from a domestic point of view in the least ; what I meant was, do you think that it will alter any of his intentions as regards public life ?" " Public life?— Mr. Creswell?" " Yes, indeed, public life, Mr. Creswell ! I suppose now there's no harm in telling you that the Conservative authorities in London, the wire-pullers in Westminster, have long had it in their minds to wrest the seat for Brocksopp from tlie Liberals, that at the next general election they have determined to make the fi