Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/17

 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 tho forge.

And his pretty little wife brought him good fortune, as well as domestic happiness. James Ashurst delighted to think so. His popularity in the village, and in the surrounding country was on the increase; the number of scholars on tho foundership had reached its authorised limit (a source of great gratification, though of no pecuniary profit, to the head master); and Master Peacock had now two or three fellow-boarders, each of whom paid a fine annual sum. The governors thought better of their head master now, and the old rector had lived long enough to see his recommendation thoroughly accepted, and his prophecy, as regarded the improved status of the school, duly fulfilled. Popular, successful in his little way, and happy in his domestic relations, James Ashurst had but one want. His wife was childless, and this was to him a source of discomfort, always felt and occasionally expressed. He was just the man who would have doated on a child, would have suffered himself to have been pleasantly befooled by its gambols, and have worshipped it in every phase of its tyranny. But it was not to be, he supposed; that was to be the one black drop in his draught of happiness: and then, he had been married for five or six years, Mrs. Ashurst brought him a little daughter. His hopes were accomplished, but he nearly lost his wife in their accomplishment; while he dandled the newly born treasure in his arms, Mrs. Ashurst's life was despaired of, and when the chubby baby had grown up into a strong child, and from that sphere of life had softened down into a peaceful girl, her mother, always slight and delicate, had become a constant invalid, whose ill health caused her husband the greatest anxiety, and almost did away with the delight he had in anticipating every wish of his darling little Marian.

James Ashurst had longed for a child, and he loved his little daughter dearly when she came, but even then his wife held the deepest and most sacred place in his heart, and as he marked her faded cheek and lustreless eye, he felt a pang of remorse, and accused himself of having set himself up against the just judgment of Providence, and of having now received the due reward of his repining. For one who thought his darling must be restored to health, no sacrifice could be too great to accomplish that result; and the Helmingham people, who loved Mrs. Ashurst dearly, but who in their direst straits were never accustomed to look for any other advice than that which could be afforded them by Dr. Osborne, or his village opponent, Mr. Sharood, were struck with admiration when Dr. Langton, the great county physician, the oracle of Brocksopp, was called into consultation. Dr. Langton was a very little man, noted almost as much for his reticence as for his skill. He never wasted a word. After a careful examination of Mrs. Ashurst he pronounced it to be a tiresome case, and prescribed a four months' residence at the baths of Ems, as the likely treatment to effect a mitigation, if not a cure. Dr. Osborne, after the great man's departure, laughed aloud in his bluff way at the idea of a country schoolmaster sending his wife to Ems. "Langton is so much in the habit of going about among the country families, and these novi homines of manufacturers who stink of brass, as they say in these parts, that he forgets there is such a thing as having to look carefully at ways and means, my dear Ashurst, and make both dovetail! Baths of Ems, indeed! I'm afraid you've thrown away your ten guineas, my good friend, if that's all you've got out of Langton!" But Dr. Osborne's smile was suddenly checked when Mr. Ashurst said very quietly that as his wife's health was dearer to him than anything on earth, and that as there was no sacrifice which he would not make to accomplish its restoration, he should find means of sending her to Germany, and of keeping her there until it was seen what effect the change had on her.

And he did it! For two successive summers Mrs. Ashurst went to Ems with the old nurse who had brought her up, and accompanied her from her pretty river-side home to Helmingham; and at the end of the second season she returned comparatively well and strong. But she needed all her strength and health when she looked at her husband when he came to meet her in London, and found him thin, changed, round-shouldered, and hollow-eyed, the very shadow of his former self. James Ashurst had carried through his plans as regarded his wife at enormous sacrifice. He had no ready money to meet the sudden call upon his purse which such an