Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/16

 at any rate without remonstrance, to language and stories more than sufficiently broad and indecorous, found that Mr. Ashurst civilly, but persistently, refused their proffered hospitality, and in consequence pronounced him "stuck-up." No man was more free from class prejudices, but he had been bred in old Somerset country society, where the squirearchy maintained an almost feudal dignity, and his career in college had not taught him the policy of being on terms of familiarity with those whom Fortune had made his inferiors.

So James Ashurst struggled on during the first three months of his novitiate at Helmingham, earnestly and energetically striving to do his duty, with, it must be confessed, but poor result. The governors of the school had been so impressed by the rector's recommendation, and by the testimonials which the new master had submitted to them, that they expected to find the regeneration of the establishment would commence immediately upon James Ashurst's appearance upon the scene, and were rather disappointed when they found that, while the number of scholars remained much the same as at the time of Dr. Munch's retirement, the general dissatisfaction in the village was much greater than it had ever been during the reign of that summarily-treated pedagogue. The rector, to be sure, remained true to the choice he had recommended, and maintained everywhere that Mr. Ashurst had done very well in the face of the greatest difficulties, and would yet bring Helmingham into notice. Notwithstanding constant ocular proof to the contrary, the farmers held that in the clerical profession, as in freemasonry, there was a certain occult something beyond the ordinary ken, which bound members of "the cloth" together, and induced them to support each other to the utmost stretch of their consciences—a proceeding which, in the opinion of free-thinking Helmingham, allowed of a considerable amount of elasticity.

At length the long looked for Easter tide arrived, and James Ashurst hurried away from the dull grey old midland-country village, to the bright little Thames-bordered town where lived his love. A wedding with the church approach one brilliant pathway of spring flowers, a honeymoon of such happiness as one knows but once in a lifetime, passed in the lovely lake country, and then Helmingham again. But with a different aspect. The old schoolhouse itself, brave in fresh paint and new plaster, its renovated diamond windows, its cleaned slab, so classically eloquent on the merits fundatoris nostri, let in over the porch, its newly stuccoed fives' wall and fresh gravelled playground; all this was strange but intelligible. But James Ashurst could not understand yet the change that had come over his inner life. To return after a hard day's grinding in a mill of boys to his own rooms, was, during the first three months of his career at Helmingham merely to exchange active purpose for passive existence. Now, his life did but begin when the labours of the day were over, and he and his wife passed the evenings together, in planning to combat with the present, in delightful anticipations of the future. Mr. Ashurst unwittingly and without the least intending it, had made a very lucky hit in his selection of a wife, so far as the Helmingham people were concerned. He was "that bumptious" as they expressed it, or as we will more charitably say, he was so independent, as not to care one rap what the Helmingham people thought of anything he did, provided he had, as indeed at that time he always had—for he was conscientious in the highest degree—the knowledge that he was acting rightly according to his light. In a very few weeks the sweetness, the quiet frankness, the prepossessing charm of Mrs. Ashurst's demeanour, had neutralised all the ill-effects of her husband's three months' previous career. She was a small-boned, small-featured, delicate-looking little woman, and, as such, excited a certain amount of compassion and kindness amid the midland-county ladies, who, as their husbands said of them, "ran big." It was a positive relief to one to hear her soft little treble voice after the booming diapason of the Helmingham ladies, or to see her pretty little fat dimpled hands flashing here and there in some coquetry of needle-work, after being accustomed to looking on at the steady play of particularly bony and knuckly members, in the unremitting torture of eminently utilitarian employment. High and low, gentle and simple, rich and poor, felt equally kindly disposed towards Mrs. Ashurst. Mrs. Peacock, wife of Squire Peacock, a tremendous magnate and squire of the neighbouring parish, fell so much in love with her that she made her husband send their only son, a magnificent youth destined eventually for Eton, Oxford, Parliament, and a partnership in a brewery, to be introduced to the Muses as a