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WRECKED IN PORT.
EDMUND YATES'S NOVELS.
_In boards, 2s. each; in cloth, 2s. 6d. each_.
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
KISSING THE ROD.
ROCK AHEAD.
BLACK SHEEP.
RIGHTED WRONG.
YELLOW FLAG.
IMPENDING SWORD.
A WAITING RACE.
BROKEN TO HARNESS.
TWO BY TRICKS.
A SILENT WITNESS.
DR. WAINWRIGHT'S PATIENTS.
NOBODY'S FORTUNE.
WRECKED IN PORT.
THE BUSINESS OF PLEASURE.
WRECKED IN PORT.
A Novel.
BY
EDMUND YATES,
AUTHOR OF "THE ROCK AHEAD," "BLACK SHEEP," "LAND AT LAST," ETC.
"All things that are
Are more with spirit chased than enjoyed."
SHAKESPEARE.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL.
NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET.
1879.
TO
FRANK IVES SCUDAMORE
This Book
IS VERY CORDIALLY INSCRIBED.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. MORIBUND.
II. RETROSPECTIVE.
III. MARIAN.
IV. MARIAN'S CHOICE.
V. WOOLGREAVES.
VI. BREAD-SEEKING.
VII. A NEW FRIEND.
VIII. FLITTING.
IX. THE TENTH EARL.
X. AN INTERIOR.
XI. THE LOUT.
XII. A REMOVAL.
XIII. LIFE AT WESTHOPE.
XIV. LADY CAROLINE.
XV. "NEWS FROM THE HUMMING CITY."
XVI. "HE LOVES ME; HE LOVES ME NOT."
XVII. BECOMING INDISPENSABLE.
XVIII. THE RUBICON.
XIX. MARIAN'S REPLY.
XX. DURING THE INTERVAL.
XXI. SUCCESS ACHIEVED.
XXII. THE GIRLS THEY LEFT BEHIND THEM.
XXIII. WEDNESDAY'S POST.
XXIV. POOR PAPA'S SUCCESSOR.
XXV. CLOUDING OVER.
XXVI. IN HARNESS.
XXVII. RIDING AT ANCHOR.
XXVIII. THE OPPORTUNITY.
XXIX. CANVASSING.
XXX. BAFFLED.
XXXI. AN INCOMPLETE VICTORY.
XXXII. THE SHATTERING OF THE IDOL.
XXXIII. TOO LATE.
XXXIV. FOR ONCE GERTRUDE TAKES THE LEAD.
XXXV. LADY CAROLINE ADVISES ON A DELICATE SUBJECT.
XXXVI. NIGHT AND MORNING.
XXXVII. MARIAN'S RESOLVE.
XXXVIII. THE RESULT.
WRECKED IN PORT.
CHAPTER I.
MORIBUND.
"I say! Old Ashurst's going to die."
"No! How do you know? Who told you?"
"I heard Dr. Osborne say so to Miss Winter."
"Ah! so likely Dr. Osborne would tell that old beast! Why was its name
throughout doctors are the silentest fellows in the world. My uncle
Robert is a doctor, and I know all about it."
"Well, I'll take my dick I heard old Osborne say so! I say, Hawkes, if
Ashurst does die, we shall break up at once, sha'n't we?"
"I should think so! Stunning!"
"And we sha'n't come back till there's a new head master?"
"Of course not, you young ass! That don't matter much to me; I'm going
to leave this term."
"Don't I wish I was, that's all! I say, Hawkes, do you think the
governors will give old Ashurst's place to Joyce?"
"Joyce?--that snob! Not they, indeed! They'll get a swell from Oxford,
or somewhere, to be head master; and I should think he'll give Master
Joyce the sack. Baker, lend me twopence!"
"No--I say, Hawkes, you owe me----"
"I know all about that, you young beggar--pay you on Saturday. Hand
out now, or I'll fetch you a lick on the head."
Under the pressure of this awful threat, little Sam Baker produced the
required sum from his trousers-pocket, and gave the coins to big
Alfred Hawkes, who threw them into the air, caught them over-handed,
and walked off, whistling. Little Sam Baker, left to himself, turned
out the pocket of his trousers, which he had not yet explored, found a
half-melted acidulated drop sticking in one corner, removed it, placed
it in his mouth, and enjoyed it with great relish. This refection
finished, he leaned his little arms over the park-paling of the
cricket-field, where the above-described colloquy had taken place, and
surveyed the landscape. Immediately beneath him was a large meadow,
from which the hay had been just removed, and which, looking brown and
bare and closely shorn as the chin of some retired Indian civilian,
remained yet fragrant from its recent treasure. The meadow sloped down
to a broad sluggishly-flowing stream, unnavigated and unnavigable,
where the tall green flags, standing breast-high, bent and nodded
gracefully, under the influence of the gentle summer breeze, to the
broad-leaved water-lilies couchant below them. A notion of scuttling
across the meadow and having "a bathe" in a sequestered part of the
stream which he well knew, faded out of little Sam Baker's mind before
it was half formed. Though a determined larker and leader in mischief
among his coevals, he was too chivalrous to take advantage of the
opportunity which their chief's illness gave him over his natural
enemies, the masters. Their chief's illness! And little Sam Baker's
eyes were lifted from the river and fixed themselves on a house about
a quarter of a mile further on--a low-roofed, one-storeyed, red-brick
house, with a thatched roof and little mullioned windows, from one of
which a white blind was fluttering in the evening breeze. "That's his
room," said little Sam Baker to himself. "Poor old Ashurst! He wasn't
half a bad old chap; he often let me off a hundred lines he--poor old
Ashurst!" And two large tears burst from the small boy's eyes and
rolled down his cheeks.
The boy was right. Where the white blind fluttered was the dominie's
bedroom, and there the dominie lay dying. A gaunt, square, ugly 'room
with panelled walls, on which the paint had cracked and rubbed and
blistered, with such furniture as it possessed old-fashioned,
lumbering, and mean, with evidence of poverty everywhere--evidence of
poverty which a woman's hand had evidently tried to screen and soften
without much effect. The bed, its well-worn red-moreen curtains, with
a dirty yellow border, having been tightly bound round each sculptured
post for the admittance of air, stood near the window, on which its
occupant frequently turned his glazed and sunken eyes. The sun had
gone to rest, the invalid had marked its sinking, and so had those who
watched him, and the same thought had occurred to all, but not a word
had been spoken; but the roseate flush which it leaves behind still
lingered in the heavens, and, as if in mockery, lent momentarily to
the dying man's cheek a bright healthy hue such as it was not destined
to wear in life again. The flush grew fainter, and faded away, and
then a glance at the face, robbed of its artificial glory, must have
been conclusive as to the inevitable result. For the cheeks were
hollow and sunken, yellowish-white in colour, and cold and clammy to
the touch; the eyes, with scarcely any fire left in them, seemed set
in large bistre rings; the nose was thin and pinched, and the
bloodless lips were tightly compressed with an expression of acute
pain.
The Rev. James Ashurst was dying. Every one in Helmingham knew that,
and nearly every one had a word of kindness and commiseration for the
stricken man, and for his wife and daughter. Dr. Osborne had carried
the news up to the Park several days previously, and Sir Thomas had
hemmed and coughed; and said, "Dear me!" and Lady Churchill had shaken
her head piteously on hearing it. "And nothing much to leave in the
way of--eh, my dear doctor?" It was the doctor's turn to shake his
head then, and he solaced himself with a large pinch of snuff, taken
in a flourishing and sonorous manner, before he replied that he
believed matters in that way were much worse than people thought; that
he did not believe there was a single penny--not a single penny:
indeed, it was a thing not to be generally talked of, but he might
mention it in the strictest confidence to Sir Thomas and my lady, who
had always proved themselves such good friends to the Ashursts--that
was, he had mentioned to Mrs. Ashurst that there was one faint hope of
saving her husband's life, if he would submit to a certain operation
which only one man in England, Godby of St. Vitus's Hospital in
London, could perform. But when he had mentioned Godby's probable
fee--and you could not expect these eminent men to leave their regular
work, and come down such a long distance under a large sum--he saw at
once how the land lay, and that it was impossible for them to raise
the money. Miss Ashurst--curious girl that, so determined and all that
kind of thing--had indeed pressed him so hard that he had sent his man
over to the telegraph-office at Brocksopp with a message inquiring
what would be Godby's exact charge for running down--it was a mere
question of distance with these men, so much a mile, and so much for
the operation--but he knew the sum he had named was not far out.
From the Park, Dr. Osborne had driven his very decorous little
four-wheeler to Woolgreaves, the residence of the Creswells, his other
great patients, and there he had given a modified version of his
story, with a very much modified result. For old Mr. Creswell was away
in France, and neither of the two young ladies was of an age to feel
much sympathy, unless with their intimate relations, and they had been
educated abroad, and seen but little of the Helmingham folk; and as
for Tom Creswell, he was the imp of the school, having all Sam Baker's
love of mischief without any of his good heart, and would not have
oared who was ill or who died, provided illness or death afforded
occasion for slacking work and making holiday. Every one else in the
parish was grieved at the news. The rector--bland, polished, and well
endowed with worldly goods--had been most actively compassionate
towards his less fortunate brother; the farmers, who looked upon
"Master Ashurst" as a marvel of book-learning, the labourers, who had
consented to the removal of the village sports, held from time
immemorial on the village green, to a remote meadow, whence the noise
could not penetrate to the sick man's room, and who had considerately
lowered the matter as well as the manner of their singing as they
passed the schoolhouse at night in jovial chorus--all these people
pitied the old man dying, and the old wife whom he would leave behind.
They did not say much about the daughter; when they referred to her it
was generally to the effect that she would manage tolerably well for
herself, for "she were a right plucked un, Miss Marian were."
They were right. It needed little skill in physiognomy to trace, even
under the influence of the special circumstances surrounding her, the
pluck and spirit and determination in every feature of Marian
Ashurst's face. They were patent to the most ordinary beholder; patent
in the brown eye, round rather than elongated, small yet bright as a
beryl; in the short sharply curved nose, in the delicately rounded
chin, which relieved the jaw of a certain fulness, sufficiently
characteristic, but scarcely pretty. Variety of expression was
Marian's great charm; her mobile features acting under every impulse
of her mind, and giving expression to her every thought. Those who had
seen her seldom, or only in one mood, would scarcely have recognised
her in another. To the old man, lying stretched on his death-bed, she
had been a fairy to be worshipped, a plaything to be for ever prized.
In his presence the brown eyes were always bright, the small, sharp,
white teeth gleamed between the ripe red lips, and one could scarcely
have traced the jaw, that occasionally rose rigid and hard as iron, in
the soft expanse of the downy cheek. Had he been able to raise his
eyes, he would have seen a very different look in her face as, after
bending over the bed and ascertaining that her father slept, she
turned to the other occupant of the room, and said, more in the tone
of one pondering over and repeating something previously heard than of
a direct question----
"A hundred and thirty guineas, mother!"
For a minute Mrs. Ashurst made her no reply. Her thoughts were far
away. She could scarcely realise the scene passing round her, though
she had pictured it to herself a hundred times in a hundred different
phases. Years ago--how many years ago it seemed!--she was delicate and
fragile, and thought she should die before her husband, and she would
lie awake for hours in the night, rehearsing her own death-bed, and
thinking how she should tell James not to grieve after her, but to
marry again, anybody except that Eleanor Shaw, the organist's
daughter, and she _should_ be sorry to think of that flighty minx
going through the linen and china after she was gone. And now the time
had really come, and he was going to be taken from her; he, her James,
with his big brown eyes and long silky hair, and strong lithe figure,
as she first remembered him--going to be taken from her now, and leave
her an old woman, poor and lone and forlorn--and Mrs. Ashurst tried to
stop the tears which rolled down her face, and to reply to her
daughter's strange remark.
"A hundred and thirty guineas! yes, my dear, you're thinking of
Mr.---- I forget his name--the surgeon. That was the sum he named."
"You're sure of it, mother?"
"Certain sure, my dear! Mr. Casserly, Dr. Osborne's assistant, a very
pleasant-spoken young man, showed me the telegraph message, and I read
it for myself. It gave me such a turn that I thought I should
have dropped, and Mr. Casserly offered me some sal volatile or
peppermint--I mean of his own accord, and never intended to charge for
it, I am sure."
"A hundred and thirty guineas! and the one chance of saving his life
is to be lost because we cannot command that sum! Good God! to think
of our losing him for want of---- Is there no one, mother, from whom
we could get it? Think, think! It's of no use sitting crying there!
Think, is there no one who could help us in this strait?"
The feeling of dignity which Mrs. Ashurst knew she ought to have
assumed was scared by her daughter's earnestness, so the old lady
merely fell to smoothing her dress, and, after a minute's pause, said
in a tremulous voice--
"I fear there is no one, my dear! The rector, I dare say, would do
something, but I'm afraid your father has already borrowed money of
him, and I know he has of Mr. King, the chairman of the governors of
the school. I don't know whether Mr. Casserly----"
"Mr. Casserly, mother, a parish doctor's drudge! Is it likely that he
would be able to assist us?"
"Well, I don't know, my dear, about being able, I'm sure he would be
willing! He was so kind about that sal volatile that I am sure he
would do what---- Lord! we never thought of Mr. Creswell!"
Set and hard as Marian's face had been throughout the dialogue, it
grew even more rigid as she heard these words. Her lips tightened, and
her brow clouded as she said, "Do you think that I should have
overlooked that chance, mother? Do you not know that Mr. Creswell is
away in France? He is the very first person to whom I should have
thought of applying."
Under any other circumstances, Mrs. Ashurst would have been
excessively delighted at this announcement. As it was, she merely
said, "The young ladies are at Woolgreaves, I think."
"The young ladies!" repeated Marian, bitterly--"the young ladies! The
young dolls--dolts--dummies to try dresses on! What are Maude and
Gertrude Creswell to us, mother? What kindness, courtesy even, have
they ever shown us? To get at their uncle's purse is what we most
need----"
"Oh, Marian, Marian!" interrupted Mrs. Ashurst, "what are you saying?"
"Saying?" replied Marian calmly--"Saying? The truth! What should I say
when I know that if we had the command of Mr. Creswell's purse,
father's life might--from what I gather from Dr. Osborne, most
probably would--be saved! Are these circumstances under which one
should be meek and mild and thankful for one's lot in life! Is this a
time to talk of gratitude and---- He's moving! Yes, darling father,
Marian is here!"
Two hours afterwards, Marian and Dr. Osborne stood in the porch. There
were tears in the eyes of the garrulous but kindly old man; but the
girl's eyes were dry, and her face was set harder and more rigid than
ever. The doctor was the first to speak.
"Good night, my dear child," said he; "and may God comfort you in your
affliction. I have given your poor mother a composing draught, and
trust to find her better in the morning. Fortunately, you require
nothing of that kind. God bless you, dear! It will be a consolation to
you, as it is to me, to know that your father, my dear old friend,
went off perfectly placid and peacefully."
"It is a consolation, doctor--more especially as I believe such an
ending is rare with people suffering under his disease."
"His disease, child? Why, what do you think your father died of?"
"Think, doctor? I know! Of the want of a hundred and thirty guineas!"