Read Ebook: Wrecked in Port: A Novel by Yates Edmund

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Ebook has 1414 lines and 136956 words, and 29 pages

"Yes," Joyce said; "I am reckoned a tolerable Grecian."

"Indeed!" said the old man, with a grin; "ah! no doubt you were an honour to your college."

"Unfortunately," said Walter, "I have never been to college."

"No, no, my boy not lost, only mislaid it. We never lose hope so long as we're good for anything! Sometimes, when I've been most depressed and down, about the only thing in life that has any interest for me now--and you've no idea what that is, have you, Joyce, eh?"

"No, indeed; unless, perhaps, your children!"

"Children! Thank God, I never had a wife or a child to give me a care. No; the People's cause, my boy, the People's cause! That's what I live for, and sometimes, as I've been saying, I've been downhearted about that. I've seen the blood beating us down on the one side, and the money beating us down on the other, and I've thought that it was useless kicking against the pricks, and that we had better cave in and give up!"

"But you say you never lost hope?"

"Never, entirely. When I've been at my lowest ebb, when I've come home here with the blood in my veins tingling from aristocratic insult, and with worse than that, contempt for my own fellow working-men surging up in my heart, I've looked up at that case there over the mantelshelf, and my pluck's revived. That's a fine bit of work, that is, done by an old pupil of mine, who worked his soul out in the People's cause in '48, and died in a deep decline soon after. But what a fancy the lad had! Look at that heron! Is not it for all the world like one of your long, limp, yaw-yaw, nothing-knowing, nothing-doing young swells? Don't you read 'used-up' in his delicate plumage, drooping wings, lack-lustre eye? And remark how the jolly little hawk has got him! No breed about him; keen of sight, swift of wing, active with beak and talon--that's all he can boast of; but he's got the swell in his grip, mind you! And he's only a prototype of what's to come!"

The old man rose as he spoke, and taking the lamp from the table, raised it towards the glass case. As he set it down again he looked earnestly at Joyce, and said--

"You think I'm off my head, perhaps--and I'm not sure that I'm not when I get upon this topic--and you're thinking that at the first convenient opportunity you'll slip away, with a 'Thank ye!' and leave the old lunatic to his democratic ravings? But, like many other lunatics, I'm only mad on one subject, and when that isn't mentioned I can converse tolerably rationally, can perhaps even be of some use in advising one friendless and destitute. And you, you say, are both."

"I am, indeed; but I scarcely think you can help me, Mr. Byrne, though I don't for an instant doubt your friendship or your wish to be of service. But it happens that the only people from whom I can hope to get anything in the way of employment, employment that brings money, belong to that class against which you have such violent antipathies, the--the 'swells,' as you call them."

"My dear young fellow, you mistake me. If you do as I should like you, as an honest Englishman with a freeman's birthright, to do; if you do as I myself--old Jack Byrne, one of the prisoners of '48; 'Bitter Byrne,' as they call me at the club--if you do as I do, you'll hate the swells with all your heart, but you'll use 'em. When I was a young man, young and foolish, blind and headstrong, as all young men are, I wouldn't take off my cap to a swell, wouldn't take a swell's orders, wouldn't touch a swell's money! Lord bless you, I saw the folly of that years ago! I should have been starved long since if I hadn't. My business is bird-stuffing, as you may have heard or guessed; and where should I have been if I'd had to live upon all the orders for bird-stuffing I got from the labouring classes? They can't stuff themselves enough, let alone their birds! The swells want owls, and hawks, and pheasants, and what not, stuffed with outspread wings for fire-screens, but the poor people want the fire itself, and want it so badly that they never holloa for screens, and wouldn't use 'em if they had 'em. No, no; hate the swells, my boy, but use 'em. What have you been?"

"An usher in a school."

"Of course! I guessed it would be some of those delightful occupations for which the supply is unlimited and the demand nothing, but I scarcely thought it could be so bad as that! Usher in a school! hewer in a coal-pit, stone-breaker on a country road, horse in a mill, anything better than that!"

"What could I do?"

Not since James Ashurst's death, not for some weeks before that event, indeed, when the stricken man had taken leave of his old pupil and friend, had Walter Joyce heard the words of friendship and kindness from any man. Perhaps, a little unmanned by the disappointment and humiliation he had undergone since his arrival in London, he was a little unmanned at this speech from his newly found friend; at all events, the tears stood in his eyes, and his voice was husky as he replied--

"I ought to be very much obliged to you, and indeed, indeed I am; but I fear you'll think me an ungrateful cub when I tell you that I can't possibly go away from England. Possibly is a strong word, but I mean, that I can't think of it until I've exhausted every means, every chance of obtaining the barest livelihood here!"

The old man eyed him from under his bent brows earnestly for a moment, and then said abruptly, "Ties, eh? father?"

"Oh, Lord!" grunted Mr. Byrne, "of course there is; there always is in such cases! Blind old bat I was not to see it at first! Ah, she was left lamenting, and all the rest of it; quite knocks the Australian idea on the head? Now let me think what can be done for you here! There's Buncombe and Co., the publishers, want a smart young man, smart and cheap they said in their letter, to contribute to their new Encyclopaedia, the Naturalist. That'll be one job for you, though it won't be much."

"I don't know how to thank you," commenced Joyce.

"Then don't attempt to learn!" said the old man. "Does it suit you, as a beginning only, mind! do you agree to try it--we shall do better things yet, I hope; but will you try it?"

"I do: good night! I got up at daybreak, and ought to have been in bed long since. Good night!"

Not since he had been in London, had Walter Joyce been so light of heart as when he closed Mr. Byrne's door behind him. Something to do at last! He felt inclined to cry out for joy; he longed for some one to whom he could impart his good fortune.

His good fortune! As he sat upon his wretched bed in his tiny lodging, luxurious words rang in his ears. "And the chance of achieving fame and fortune, keep that in the foreground!" Fame and fortune! And he had been overjoyed because he had obtained a chance of earning a few shillings as a bookseller's hack, a chance for which he was indebted to a handicraftsman. But a poor first step towards fame and fortune, Marian would think! He understood how utter had been her inexperience and his own; he had learned the wide distance between the fulfilment of such hopes as theirs, and the best of the bare possibilities which the future held for them, and the pain which this knowledge brought him, more for the sake of his own share in it, was doubly keen for hers. It was very hard for Walter Joyce to have to suffer the terrible disappointment and disenchantment of experience; but it was far harder for him to have to cause her to share them. Marian would indeed think it a "poor first step." He little knew how much more decisive a one she was about to take herself.

She had often pictured to her fancy what the house might have been made, if there had but been money to make it anything with, money to do anything with; if only they had not always been so helpless, so burdened with the especially painful load of genteel poverty. She had exercised her womanly ingenuity, put forth her womanly tastes, so far as she could, and the house was better than might have been expected under all the circumstances; but ingenuity and taste, which double the effect of money when united to that useful agency, are not of much avail without it, and will not supply curtains and carpet, paint, varnishing, and general upholstery. There was not a superfluous ornament, and there were many in the drawing-rooms at Woolgreaves very offensive to her instinctively correct taste,--whose price would not have materially altered the aspect of Marian Ashurst's home, as she had recognised with much secret bitterness of spirit, on her first visit to the Creswells. She would have made the old house pretty and pleasant, if she could, especially while he lived, to whom its prettiness and pleasantness might have brought refreshment of spirit, and a little cheerfulness in the surroundings of his toilsome life; but she loved it, notwithstanding its dulness and its frigid shabbiness, and the prospect of being obliged to leave it gave her exquisite pain. Marian was surprised when she discovered that her feelings on this point were keener than those of her mother. She had anticipated, with shrinking and reluctance of whose intensity she felt ashamed, the difficulty she should experience when that last worst necessity must arise, when her mother must leave the home of so many years, and the scene of her tranquil happiness. Mrs. Ashurst had been a very happy woman, notwithstanding her delicate health, and the difficulties it had brought upon the little household. In the first place, she was naturally of a placid temperament. In the second, her husband told her as little as possible of the constantly pressing, hopelessly inextricable trouble of his life. And lastly, Mrs. Ashurst's inexperience prevented her realising danger in the future from any source except that one whence it had actually come, fallen in its fullest, fatalmost might--the sickness and death of her husband.

When that tremendous blow fell upon her, it stunned the widow. She could not grieve, she could not care about anything else. She was not a woman of an imaginative turn of mind; feeling had always been powerful and deep in her; but fancy had ever been active, so that when the one awful and overwhelming fact existed, it was quite enough for her, it swamped everything else, it needed not to bring up any reinforcements to her discomfiture. She was ready to go anywhere with Marian, to do anything which Marian advised or directed. The old house was to be left, a new home was to be sought for. A stranger was coming to be the master where her husband's firm but gentle rule had made itself loved, respected, and obeyed for so long; a stranger was to sit in her husband's seat, and move about the house where his step and his voice were heard no more, listened for no longer, not even now, in the first confused moments of waking after the blessed oblivion of sleep.

And in that awful fact all was included. Poor Mrs. Ashurst cared little for the linen and the china now. Whether they should be packed up and removed to the humble lodgings which were to be the next home of herself and her daughter, or whether Mr. Ashurst's successor should be asked to take them at a valuation, were points which she left to Marian's decision. She had not any interest in anything of the kind now. It was time that Marian's mind should be made up on these and other matters; and the girl, notwithstanding her premature gravity and her habit of decision, found her task difficult in fact and sentiment. Her mother was painfully quiescent, hopelessly resigned. In every word and look she expressed plainly that life had come to a standstill for her, that she could no longer feel any interest or take any active part in its conduct; and thus she depressed Marian very much, who had her own sense of impending disappointment and imperative effort, in addition to their common sorrow, to struggle against.

Mrs. Ashurst and her daughter had seen a good deal of the family at Woolgreaves since the day on which Marian's cherished belief in the value and delight of wealth had been strengthened by that visit to the splendid dwelling of her father's old friend. The young ladies had quite "taken to" Mrs. Ashurst, and Mrs. Ashurst had almost "taken to" them. They came into Helmingham frequently, and never without bringing welcome contributions from the large and lavishly kept gardens at Woolgreaves. They tried, in many girlish and unskilful ways, to be intimate with Marian; but they felt they did not succeed, and only their perception of their uncle's wishes prevented their giving up the effort. Marian was very civil, very much obliged for their kindness and attention; but uncordial, "un-getatable," Maude Creswell aptly described it.

It was, then, to him she had to look, in him she had to trust, for the rescue that was to come in time. In how much time? in how little? Ah, there was the ever-present, ever-pressing question, and Marian brought to its perpetual repetition all the importance, all the unreasonable measurement of time, all the ignorance of its exceeding brevity and insignificance inseparable from her youth.

She had nearly completed the preparations for departure from the old home; the few possessions left her and her mother were ready for removal; a lodging in the village had been engaged, and the last few days were dragging themselves heavily over the heads of Mrs. Ashurst and Marian, when Mr. Creswell, having returned to Woolgreaves after a short absence, came to see them.

Mrs. Ashurst was walking in the neglected garden, and had reached the far end of the little extent when Mr. Creswell arrived at the open door of the house. A woman-servant, stolid and sturdy, was passing through the red-tiled square hall.

"Is Mrs. Ashurst in?" asked the visitor. "Mrs. Ashurst is in the garden, I see--don't disturb her."

Marian, who had heard the voice, answered Mr. Creswell's question by appearing on the threshold of the room which had been her father's study, and which, since his death, her mother and she had made their sitting-room. She looked weary; the too bright colour which fatigue brings to some faces was on hers, and her eyelids were red and heavy; her black dress, which had the limp, ungraceful, lustreless look of mourning attire too long unrenewed, hung on her fine upright figure after a fashion which told how little the girl cared how she looked; and the hand she first held out to Mr. Creswell, and then drew back with a faint smile, was covered with dust.

He followed her into the study, and took the seat she pointed out, while she placed herself on a pile of folios which lay on the floor in front of the low wide window. Marian laid her arm upon the window-sill, and leaned her head back against one of the scanty frayed curtains. Her eyes closed for a moment, and a slight shudder passed over her.

"You are very tired, Miss Ashurst, quite worn out," said Mr. Creswell; "you have been doing too much--packing all those books, I suppose."

"Yes," said Marian, "I looked to that myself, and, indeed, there was nobody else to do it. But it is tiring work, and dirty,"--she struck her hands together, and shook her dress, so that a shower of dust fell from it--"and sad work besides. You know, Mr. Creswell"--here her face softened suddenly, and her voice fell--"how much my father loved his books. It is not easy to say good-bye to them; it is like a faint echo, strong enough to pain one, though, of the good-bye to himself."

"But why are you obliged to say good-bye to them?" asked Mr. Creswell, with genuine anxiety and compassion.

"What could we do with them?" said Marian; "there's no place to keep them. We must have taken another room specially for them if we took them to our lodgings, and there is no one to buy them here, so we are going to send them to London to be sold. I suppose they will bring a very small sum indeed--nothing, perhaps, when the expenses are paid. But it is our only means of disposing of them; so I have been dusting and sorting and arranging them all day, and I am tired and dusty and sick--sick at heart."

Marian leaned her head on the arm which lay on the window-sill, and looked very forlorn. She also looked very pretty, and Mr. Creswell thought so. This softened mood, so unusual to her, became her, and the little touch of confidence in her manner, equally unusual, flattered him. He felt an odd sort of difficulty in speaking to her--to this young girl, his old friend's orphan child, one to whom he intended so kindly, towards whom his position was so entirely one of patronage, not in any offensive sense, of course, but still of patronage.

"I--I never thought of this," he said hesitatingly; "I ought to have remembered it, of course; no doubt the books must be a difficulty to you--a difficulty to keep and a harder one to part with. But bless me, my dear Miss Ashurst, you say there is no one here to buy them--you did not remember me? Why did you not remember me? Of course I will buy them. I shall be only too delighted to buy them, to have the books my good friend loved so much--of course I shall."

"I had seen your library at Woolgreaves," said Marian, replying to Mr. Creswell's first impetuous question, "and I could not suppose you wanted more books, or such shabby ones as these."

"You judge of books like a lady, then, though you were your father's companion as well as his pet," said Mr. Creswell, smiling. "Those shabby books are, many of them, much more valuable than my well-dressed shelf-fillers. And even if they were not, I should prize them for the same reason that you do, and almost as much--yes, Miss Ashurst, almost as much. Men are awkward about saying such things, but I may tell his daughter that but for James Ashurst I never should have known the value of books--in other than a commercial sense, I mean."

"I don't know what they are worth," said Marian, "but if you will find out, and buy them, my mother and I will be very thankful. I know it will be a great relief to her to think of them at Woolgreaves, and all together. She has fretted more about my father's books being dispersed, and going into the hands of strangers, than about any other secondary cause of sorrow. The other things she takes quietly enough."

The widow could be seen from the window by them both as she pursued her monotonous walk in the garden, with her head bowed down and her figure so expressive of feebleness.

"Does she?" said Mr. Creswell. "I am very glad to hear that. Then"--and here Mr. Creswell gave a little sigh of relief--"we will look upon the matter of the books as arranged, and to-morrow I will send for them. Give yourself no further trouble about them. Fletcher shall settle it all."

"You will have them valued?" Marian asked with business-like seriousness.

"Certainly," returned Mr. Creswell. "And now tell me what your plans are, and where these lodgings are to which you alluded just now. Maude and Gertrude have not seen you, they tell me, since you took them?"

"No," said Marian, without the least tone of regret in her voice; "we have not met since your visit to Manchester. Miss Creswell's cold has kept her at home, and I have been much too busy to get so far as Woolgreaves."

"Your mother has seen my nieces?"

"Yes; Miss Gertrude Creswell called, and took her for a drive, and she remained to lunch at Woolgreaves. But that was one day when I was lodging-hunting--nothing had then been settled."

"The girls are very fond of Mrs. Ashurst."

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