Chapter THE TENTH: First Antagonism (1)

The extensive oblong enclosure known as Ardwick Green, situated at the south-eastern extremity of the town, on the left-hand side of the highway to Stockport and London, was in 1809 part of a suburban village, and from Piccadilly to a blacksmith’s forge a little beyond Ardwick Bridge, fields and hedges were interspersed with the newly-erected houses along Bank Top.

The Green, studded here and there with tall poplars and other trees, was fenced round with quite an army of stumpy wooden posts some six feet apart, connected by squared iron rods, a barrier against cattle only. A long, slightly serpentine lake spread its shining waters from end to end within the soft circlet of green; and this grassy belt served as a promenade for the fashionable inhabitants. And there must have been such in that village of Ardwick early in the century, as now, for the one bell in the tiny turret of St. Thomas’s small plain red-brick chapel, rang a fashionable congregation into its neat pews, to listen to the well-toned organ and the devoutly-toned voice of the perpetual curate, the Reverend R. Tweddle, if we may credit an historian of the time.

Red-brick church, red-brick houses, hard and cold outside, solid and roomy and comfortable within as Georgian architecture ever was, overlooked green and pond, but, luckily, overlooked them from a reasonable distance, and, moreover, did not elbow each other too closely, but were individually set in masses of foliage, which toned down the staring brickwork, Time and smoke have done so more effectually since.

One of the best, and best-looking, of these houses, near the church, was the one in which the delicate Mrs. Aspinall had presided for a few brief years. An iron palisade, enclosing a few shrubs and evergreens, separated it from the wide roadway, but behind the screen of brick ran a formal but extensive garden and orchard, well-kept and well stocked, with a fish-pond as formal in the midst.

Fish-ponds encourage damp, and damp encourages frogs, efts, and their kin. Here they abounded, and Master Laurence had a sort of instinctive belief that they were created solely for his sport and amusement. Mr. Aspinall, his father, immersed in business during the day, and occupied with friends at home or abroad until late hours at night, saw very little of his son, who was thus consigned to servants during those hours not spent, or supposed to be spent, at a preparatory school close at hand.

The boy was quick and intelligent, had his mother’s amber curls and azure eyes, her delicate skin and brilliant colour, but the handsome face had more of the father therein, and was too unformed to brook description here.

What he might have been with other training is not to be told, but under the supposition that he inherited his mother’s fragile constitution, he had been woefully spoiled and pampered. Opposition to his will was forbidden.

“Bear with him, Kitty, for my sake, and do not thwart him, or you will break his fine spirit,” had been Mrs. Aspinall’s dying charge to her old nurse; and as every demonstration of temper was ascribed by both parents to this same “fine spirit,” what wonder that he grew up masterful—and worse?

His imperious disposition early ingratiated him into the favour of Bob, his father’s groom; and this man, thinking no evil, ignorantly sowed the seeds of cruelty in his young heart.

When the horses were singed, the boy was allowed to be a spectator; if a whelp had his ears cropped, or the end of its tail bitten off, he was treated to a sight. If a brood of kittens or a litter of puppies had to be drowned, Master Laurence was sure to be in at the death. He was taken to surreptitious cock-fights and rat-hunts; and though, when too late, Mr. Aspinall turned the man away for inclining his son to “low pursuits,” nothing was said or done to counteract these lessons of cruelty! No wonder, then, that to him the sight of pain inflicted brought pleasure, or that inhumanity went hand-in-hand with self-will.

One incident—a real one—will suffice to show what Laurence Aspinall was, when Jabez Clegg shed tears over the snake he had killed perforce.

Kitty was in the kitchen alone. The maids were in other parts of the house. She was sitting close to a blazing fire on account of her “rheumatics,” and was in a doze. The evening was drawing in. Master Laurence, coming direct from the garden and the fish-pond, burst open the kitchen door with a whoop which made Kitty start from her nap in a fright. Thereupon he set up a loud laugh as the poor old woman held her hand to her side, and panted for breath. In his hand was his pocket-handkerchief, tied like a bundle, in which something living seemed to move and palpitate. They were young frogs in various stages of development.

“Now, Kitty,” said he, “I’ll show you some rare sport!” and taking one of the live frogs out of the handkerchief deliberately threw it into the midst of the glowing fire.

“There, Kitty; did you hear that?” cried he in rapture, as the poor animal uttered a cry of agony almost human, whilst he danced on the hearth like a frantic savage round a sacrificial fire.

“Oh, Master Laurence! Master Laurence! don’t do that—don’t be so cruel!” appealed Kitty, piteously.

But he had drawn another forth, and crying, “Cruel! It’s fun, Kitty—fun!” tore it limb from limb, and threw it piecemeal into the blaze.

“There’s another! and there’s another!” he shouted in glee, as the rest followed in swift succession; and Kitty, shrieking in pain and horror, ran from the kitchen, bringing the cook and housemaid downstairs with her cries.

For the first time in his life Mr. Aspinall administered a sound castigation to his son, regretting that he had not done it earlier.

No more was said of his son’s fine spirit; but, prompt to act, he lost no time in seeking his admission into the Free Grammar School; and either to spare him the long daily walk in tenderness for his health (Ardwick was more than a mile away), or to place him under strict supervision, boarded Laurence with one of the masters.

Yet he gave that master no clue to his son’s besetting sin; so he was left free to tantalise and torment every weaker creature within his orbit, from the schoolmaster’s cat, which he shod with walnut-shells, to the youngest school-boy, whose books he tore and hid, whose hair he pulled, whose cap and frills he soused in the mud.

It was a misfortune for himself and others that his pocket money was more abundant than that of his fellows. Never had the apple-woman or Mrs. Clowes a more lavish customer, or one who distributed his purchases more freely. Boys incapable of discriminating between generosity and profusion dubbed him generous; and that, coupled with his handsome face and spirited bearing which they mistook for courage, brought him partisans.

Thus, long before his first year expired, and he was drafted from the lower school to the room above, where he came under the keen eye and heavy ferule of Joshua Brookes, he had a body of lads at his beck (many older than himself), ready for any mischief he might propose.

As may well be supposed, there was a natural antagonism between the boys of the Grammar School and of Chetham’s Hospital. As at the confluence of two streams the waters chafe and foam and fret each other, so it is scarcely possible for two separate communities, similar, yet differing in their constitutions, to have their gateways close together at right angles without frequent collision between the rival bodies.

In the great gate of the College, only open on special occasions, was a small door or wicket, for ordinary use; and some of the Grammar School boys, under pretence of shortening their route homeward, finding it open, would make free to cross the College Yard at a noisy canter, and let themselves out at the far gate on Hunt’s Bank. It was a clear trespass. They were frequently admonished by one official or another; their passage was disputed by the Blue-coat boys; but they persisted in setting up a right of road, and opposition only gave piquancy to their bravado.

That which began with individual assumption soon attained the character of boldly-asserted party aggression, and, as the Blue-coat boys were as determined to preserve their rights as the others were to invade them, many and well-contested were the consequent fights and struggles. And thus the two boys, Jabez Clegg and Laurence Aspinall, brought together first at the church door and the baptismal font, came into collision again. But now there was no deferential stepping aside of the humble foundling to make way for the merchant’s son. They stood upon neutral ground, strangers to each other, equal in their respective participation in the benefits of a charitable foundation. Nay, if anything, Jabez had the higher standpoint. His orphanhood and poverty had given him a right to his position in Humphrey Chetham’s Hospital; the very wealth of the gentleman’s son made Laurence little better than a usurper in Hugh Oldham’s Grammar School.

But it is no part of the novelist’s province to prate of the use or abuse of charitable institutions, or to set class in opposition against class. It is only individual character and action as they bear upon one another with which we have to deal.

On more than one occasion Jabez—since his conquest of the snake, the recognised champion of his form—had stopped Laurence Aspinall at the head of a file of boys, and had done his best to bar their passage through the quadrangle.

Success depended on which school was first released.

If in time, Jabez planted himself by the little wicket with one or two companions, and, like Leonidas at Thermopylæ, fought bravely for possession of the pass, and generally contrived to beat off the intruders. Sometimes the Blue-coat boys made a sortie from the yard, and, falling upon the others pell-mell, left and bore away marks of the contest in swollen lips and black eyes.

At length matters were brought to a crisis. Thrice had Laurence and his clique been repulsed, and the shame of their defeat heightened by derisive shouts from a tribe of Millgate urchins—“Yer’s th’ Grammar Skoo’ lads beat by th’ yaller petticoats agen!” “Yaller petticoats fur iver!” “College boys agen Skoo’! Hoorray!”

Master Laurence might have ground his teeth, and harangued his followers, without obtaining an additional recruit, or spurring them to a fresh attempt, but for the taunts of the rabble. But the ignominy of defeat by petticoated College boys was too much for the blood of the Grammar School, and youngsters threw themselves into the party quarrel who had hitherto stood aloof.

Laurence Aspinall was superseded. A big, raw-boned fellow named Travis, took the lead, and rallied round him not only the lads from the lower school, but the bulk of the juniors in the upper room. It is only fair to add that the senior students were in no wise cognisant of the league, or, being so, carefully shut their eyes and ears.

As the result of this organism, on a set day, towards the close of October, when the dusk gathered as the school dispersed, the boys who ran down the wide steps from the upper, and the juveniles who ran up from the lower room, instead of darting forward with a “Whoop!” and “Halloo!” through the iron gate on their homeward way, clustered together within the school-yard, and made way for seniors and masters to pass out before them.

“Get off home with you, and don’t loiter there!” cried Joshua Brookes, as he turned in at his own gate, and saw the crowd massing together in the outer playground.

“Get home yourself, St. Crispin!” shouted Laurence, but not before the house door had closed upon the irascible master.

All books and slates not purposely left in school were consigned to three or four of the smallest boys, duly instructed to carry them to Hunt’s Bank in readiness for their owners.

For a week or more the College boys had been unmolested; not a forbidden foot had stepped within the wicket. The school-master had remarked to the governor, in the presence of his pupils, that he thought Dr. Smith must have prohibited further intrusion.

All the greater was the surprise that dusky October afternoon when a troop of young ruffians, who had stolen quietly one by one through the wicket, and kept under the cavernous shade of the deep gateway until all were within, rushed, with vociferous shouts, from under cover, and tore across the large yard in the direction of the other gate, daring anyone to check them.

The College boys, just emerging from their school-room door in the corner, were, for the moment, taken aback. Then, from the mouth of Joshua Brookes’s new Latin scholar, rang, clear and distinct, Humphrey Chetham’s motto—“Quod tuum tene!” (What you have, hold!) and the Blue-coat boys, with one George Pilkington for their leader, threw themselves, at that rallying cry, like a great wave, headlong upon the intruders.

They met the shock as a rock meets a wave, and down went many a gallant Blue-coat in the dust. Up they were in an instant, face to face with the besiegers; and then, each singling out an opponent, fought or wrestled for the mastery with all the courage and animosity, if not the skill, of practised combatants. Ben Travis and George Pilkington fought hand to hand, and Jabez—not for the first time—measured his strength with Laurence.

Heavier, stronger, older by a few months, Jabez might have overmatched his antagonist; but Laurence had profited by the lessons of Bob the discarded groom, and every blow was planted skilfully, and told. Then Bob’s teaching had been none of the most chivalrous, and Laurence took unfair advantages. He “struck below the belt,” and then tripping Jabez up, like the coward that he was, kicked him as he lay prostrate, with the fury of a savage.

Governor, schoolmaster, librarian, and porter had hastened to the scene; but the assailants nearly doubled the number of the College boys, and set lawful authority at defiance, hurling at them epithets such as only schoolboys could devise.

Fortunately, their own Blue-coat boys were amenable to discipline, and, called off, one by one, retreated to the house, often with pursuers close at their heels. Then the Grammar School tribe set up a scornful, triumphant shout, and, with Ben Travis and Laurence Aspinall at their head, marched out of the College Yard at the Hunt’s Bank gate, exulting in their victory, even though they left one of their bravest little antagonists insensible behind them.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.

THE BLUE-COAT BOY.

Those were rough days, when an occasional brawl was supposed essential to test the mettle of man or boy, so that bruises and black eyes (the result of an encounter for the honour of the school) were passed over with much lighter penalties than would be dealt out now-a-days, if young gentlemen in a public academy descended to blackguardism.

At that time, too, the pupils of the Grammar School assembled at seven in the morning, and sure punishment awaited the laggard who failed to present himself for prayers. There were few loiterers on that drear October morning. Conscience, and perhaps a dread of consequences, had kept the preceding day’s war-party sufficiently awake even where sore limbs did not. But, with the exception of a few smart raps with the ferule, to warm cold fingers, and a general admonition—little heeded—the early hours of the morning passed quietly enough, and whispers ran along classes, and from form to form, more congratulatory than prophetic.

That day went by, and the next. Laurence Aspinall, whose “science” had saved his head from more damage than a cut lip, was especially boastful, and, after his own underhand fashion, strove to stir big Ben Travis to fresh demonstrations.

Then a cloud loomed in the horizon, and darkened every master’s brow. Another whisper was in circulation that Governor Terry had been seen to enter the head-master’s ancient black and white old house, and had been closeted with Dr. Smith for more than an hour. Still the quiet was unbroken, and, to the wise, the very calm was ominous.

The second of November brought a revelation. On the slightly-raised floor of the high school, at the Millgate end of the room, sat, not only Dr. Jeremiah Smith, but the trustees of the school, the Reverend Joshua Brookes, and the assistant masters; and with them was Governor Terry, of the Chetham Hospital—all grave and stern. Dr. Smith’s mild face was unusually severe, and Joshua’s shaggy brows lowered menacingly over his angry eyes. The senior pupils, chiefly young men preparing for college, were ranged on either side.

As the last of these awful personages filed in through the two-leaved door, and took his place, the palpitating hearts of the delinquents beat audibly, and courage oozed from many a clammy palm.

The boys were summoned from the lower school, and one by one, name by name, Ben Travis and his followers were called to take their stand before this formidable tribunal, Laurence Aspinall shrinking edgeways, as if to screen himself from observation.

There was little need for Dr. Smith to strike his ferule on the table to command attention, silence was so profound. Even nervous feet forgot to shuffle. Dr. Smith’s commanding eye swept the trembling rank from end to end, as he stood with impressive dignity to address them.

After a brief exordium, in which he recounted the several charges brought against the boys by Governor Terry, he proceeded to say that the good character of the Manchester Grammar School was imperilled by lawless conduct such as the boys before him had exhibited the previous Tuesday, in forcibly entering, and then rioting within, the College Yard.

One of the youths—most likely Ben Travis—blurted forth that they had a right to go through the College Yard, and that the College boys stopped them.

“You mistake,” said the doctor, sternly, “there is no public right of road through the College Yard. Permission is courteously granted, but there is no _right_. There is a right for the public to pass to and from the College and its library on business, within the hours the gates are open; but even that must be in order and decency. Your conduct was that of barbarians, not gentlemen.”

At this point of the proceedings Jabez Clegg came into the school-room, leaning on the arm of George Pilkington. The face of the latter was bruised and swollen, but Jabez looked deplorable. His long overcoat was rent in more than one place; he walked with a limp: a white bandage round his head made his white face whiter still, showing more distinctly the livid and discoloured patches under the half-closed eyes. In obedience to a nod from Governor Terry, George Pilkington led his Blue-coat brother to a seat beside him; but Dr. Smith, drawing the boy gently to his side, removed the bandage, and showed Jabez to the school with one deeply-cut eyebrow plastered up.

“What boy among you has been guilty of this outrage?” he asked, sternly.

There was no answer. Some of the little ones took out their handkerchiefs and began to whimper, fearing condign punishment. The doctor repeated his question. The boys looked from one to another, but there was still no reply. Laurence Aspinall edged farther behind his coadjutor, but he had not the manliness either to confess or regret. His only fear was detection, or betrayal by a traitor. There was little fear of that; grammar-school boys have a detestation of a “sneak.”

“Boys, we cannot permit the perpetrator of such an outrage to remain in your midst; he must be expelled!”

Still no one spoke.

“Do you think you could recognise your assailant—the boy who kicked you after you were down?” (a murmur ran round the school as the classes were ordered to defile slowly past Dr. Smith’s desk).

Ben Travis walked with head erect—he would have scorned such a deed—and Laurence tried to do the same, but his cruel blue eyes could not meet those of his possible accuser.

There was a struggle going on in the heart of Jabez. It was in his power to revenge himself for many taunts and sarcasms, and much previous abuse. He called to mind—for thought is swift—that Shrove Tuesday when Laurence and his friends caught him as he descended Mrs. Clowes’s steps with a penny-worth of humbugs in his hand, and snatching his cap from his head, kicked it about Half Street and the churchyard as a football. And he seemed to feel again the twitch at his dark hair and the dreadful pain in his spine and loins, as they bent him backwards over the coping of the low wall, in order to wrest his sweets from him, and held him there perforce till stout Mrs. Clowes, armed with a rolling-pin, came to his rescue, laying about her vigorously, and kept him in her back parlour until he revived.

“Forgive and forget” are words for the angels, and Jabez was not an angel, but a boy with quick beating pulses, and a vivid memory. There was a fight going on in his breast fiercer than either that in Half Street or that in the College Yard. His sore, stiff limbs and smarting brow urged him like voices to “pay him off for all,” and revenge began to have a sweet savour in his mouth.

As he hesitated, watching the slow approach of his foe among his nobler mates, a harsh voice behind him called out “Jabez, why do you not answer Dr. Smith?”

The emphasis Joshua Brookes had laid upon the “Jabez” recalled the boy’s better self. The oft-repeated text flashed across his mind, “Jabez was an honourable man,” and it shaped his reply.

“Well, sir, it was almost dark, and—and”—he was going to add too dark to distinguish features, but he recollected that that would be a falsehood, and lying was no more honourable than malice.

“And you could not recognise him, you mean?” suggested Dr. Smith.

His lip quivered.

“No, sir, I do not mean that. It was very dark, but I think I should know him again. But, oh! if you please, sir, I should not like to turn him out of school. You see, we were all fighting together, and we were all in a passion, and—and—it would be very mean of me to turn him out of school because he hurt me in a fight” (Jabez did not say a fair fight).

“Ah!” said Dr. Smith, and, turning to Mr. Terry asked, “Are all the Chetham lads reared on the same principle?”

Then there was a low-voiced discussion amongst trustees and masters. Finally, Dr. Smith turned round. His clear eye had detected the culprit as he winced beneath the gaze of Jabez. But the injured boy had forgiven, and it was not for him to condemn.

Again he spoke—proclaimed how Jabez had magnanimously declined to single out his cowardly antagonist; and that the boy, whoever he might be, had to thank his most honourable victim that he was not ignominiously expelled. Then quietly but emphatically he pronounced the decision of the trustees that instant expulsion should follow any or every repetition of the offence which had called them together—not only the expulsion of the ringleaders, but of all concerned; and that even a fair fight between a Grammar School, and a Blue-coat boy should be visited with suspension pending enquiry, the offender to be expelled whether from school or College.

“Good lad, Jabez!—good lad!” said Joshua Brookes to him, as George Pilkington helped his limping steps from the room.

On the broad flat step outside the door they encountered big Ben Travis, who caught the hand of Jabez in a rough grip, with the exclamation, “Give us your fist, my young buck! You’ve more pluck in your finger than that carroty Aspinall in his whole carcase, the mean cur! an’ look you, my lad, if any of them set on you again, I’ll stand by and see fair play; or I’ll fight for you if it’s a big chap, or my name’s not Ben Travis.”

“Who talks of fighting? Haven’t you had enough for one while, you great raw-boned brute? You’d better keep your ready fists in your pockets Travis, if you don’t want to be kicked out of school!” After which gruff reminder Joshua left them, and Jabez went back to the College with one more friend in the world; but that friend was not Laurence Aspinall.

He, smarting under a sense of obligation, shrunk away to bite his nails and vent his spleen in private, conscious that he was shunned by his classmates, and despised by honest Ben Travis.

As months and seasons sped onwards, they plucked the hairs from Simon Clegg’s crown, and left a bald patch to tell of care or coming age; they stole the roundness from Bessy’s figure, the hope from her heart and eyes. There was less vigour in the beat of her batting-wand, less elasticity in her step. The periodical holidays and cheering visits of Jabez were the only pleasant breaks in the monotonous life of the Cleggs. Beyond the knowledge obtained at the billeting office in King Street that Tom Hulme had entered the army and gone abroad with his regiment, no tidings of the self-exiled soldier had come to them. In the great vortex of war his name had been swallowed up and lost. But she never said “Ay” to Matthew Cooper, though he waited and waited, smoking his Sunday pipe by the fireside even till his own Molly was old enough to have a sweetheart, and to want to leave her father’s crowded hearth for a quieter one of her own.

Those same months and years added alike to the stature and attainments of Jabez Clegg and Laurence Aspinall, though in very unequal ratio. The former, though he had long since astonished Simon with his fluent rendering of the big Bible, was but a plodding scholar of average ability, the range of whose studies was limited, notwithstanding Parson Joshua’s voluntary Latin lessons. The latter had an aptitude for learning, which made his masters press him forward; and Joshua Brookes forgave the tricks he played, his translations were so clear and so correct. Yet, when he wrote stinging couplets or “St. Crispin” on the Parson’s door, or put cobblers’-wax on the pedagogue’s chair, the covert reference to his parentage, stung the irascible man more than the damage to kerseymere, and in his wrath he birched his pupil into penitence.

His penitence took a peculiar form. A discovery was made that a general dance in the school-room would shake the pewter platters and crockery down from dresser and corner cupboard in Joshua’s house adjoining. Whenever the dominie had growled over bad lessons with least cause, Laurence was sure to propose a grand hornpipe after school hours. Back would rush Joshua fast as his short legs would carry him, spluttering with passion; but the nimbler lads disappeared when they heard the crash, and, as a rule Joshua’s temper cooled before morning.

Laurence Aspinall’s chief source of amusement from his first entrance into the Grammar School had been the crippled father of Joshua Brookes. As the old fellow staggered home drunk, the street-boys would hoot at him, pull him about, pelt him with mud, and mock at him, till his impotent fury found vent in a storm of vile and opprobrious language. Laurence was sure to enjoy a scene of this kind, but he was generally sly enough to act as prompter, not as principal.

The old man was a great angler; and that he might enjoy unmolested his favourite pastime, his son had obtained from Colonel Hansom permission for him to fish in Strangeways Park ponds. Thither he had an empty hogshead conveyed, and the crippled old cobbler, with a flask of rum for company, sat within it, often the night through, to catch fish. The Irk had not then lost its repute for fine eels, and old Brookes—who, by the way, wore his hair in a pigtail—was likewise wont to plant himself, with rod and line, on what was the Waterworth Field, on the Irwell side of Irk Bridge, to catch eels.

Returning one afternoon (Joshua was busied with clerical duties), Laurence Aspinall and his fellows met the old man staggering along with his rod over his shoulder and a basket of eels in one hand.

He had called at the “Packhorse” for a dram, and went on, as was his wont, talking noisily to himself. He had steered round the corner in safety; but hearing one lively voice call out, “Here’s old Fishtail;” and another, “Here’s St. Crispin’s Cripple;” and a third, “Make way for Diogenes,” as he was passing the high-master’s ancient house he gave a lurch, meaning to reprove them solemnly—the top of his rod caught in the prominent pillar of the doorway, and was torn from his insecure grasp. Striving to recover it, he pitched forward, and in falling dropped his basket in the mud, and set the writhing, long-lived fish at liberty to swim in the gutter swollen with recent rain.

The lounging lads at once set up a shout; but Laurence, with a timely recollection that the front of Dr. Smith’s was scarcely the most convenient place for his purpose, winked at his companions, and, with an aspect of mock commiseration, politely assisted the old man to rise, begged the others to capture the eels and carry the basket for him, and, under pretence of putting the angler’s rod in order, contrived to fasten the hook to the end of his old-fashioned pigtail.

Then he helped his unsteady steps until they were fairly out of Dr. Smith’s sight and hearing; but they did not suffer him to reach his son’s house before they showed their true colours. Loosing his hold, Laurence snatched at the rod, and, darting with it towards the College gate, cried out in high glee, “I’ve been fishing; look at the fine snig (eel) I’ve caught!” And, as he capered about, he dragged the poor old cripple hither and thither backwards by his pigtail, to which hook and line were attached.

Old Brookes screamed in impotent rage and pain; the boys laughed and shouted the louder. The one with his basket set it on his head, and paraded about, crying, “Who’ll buy my snigs? Fine fresh snigs!” with the nasal drawl of a genuine fish-seller.

Once or twice the old man fell down, uttering awful threats and imprecations; but Laurence only laughed the more, and jerked him up again with a smart twitch of the line, which was a strong one; and the other three or four young ruffians put up their shoulders, and limped about singing—

“The fishes drink water,
Old Crispin drinks gin;
But the fishes come out
When the hook he throws in.
Tol de rol.”

It may be wondered that none of the neighbours interfered. But it must be remembered that they were accustomed, not only to the uproar of a boyish multitude, but to the drunken ravings of Old Brookes, who was an intolerable nuisance. Public traffic then was not as now, and policemen were unborn.

The satisfaction of Laurence was at its height. He kept hold of the line; one of his comrades, named Barret, lashed the persecuted man with an eel for a whip, and their mirth was boisterous, when Jabez (now thirteen) came quietly through the wicket on an errand from the governor.

He took in the scene at a glance. He could not stand by and see injustice done. His dark eyes flashed with indignation as he dashed forward, pulling the line from the hand of Laurence, and tried to disentangle the cruel hook from the unfortunate pigtail.

“Who asked you to interfere, you petticoated jackanapes?” bawled Laurence, darting forward, his face as red as his hair, at the same time dealing Jabez a heavy blow on the chest.

“My duty!” answered Jabez, stoutly, taking no notice of the sneer at himself. “How could you gentlemen torment a poor old cripple like that?”

“He’s a drunken old sot!” cried Barret.

“It’s downright cruel!” continued Jabez, as he stood between the jabbering drunkard and his tormentors.

“We’re no more cruel than he is! He’s been catching fishes all day. We’ve only given him a taste of his own hook; and we’ll have none of your meddling!” and out went the pugilistic arm of Laurence straight from the shoulder to deal another blow, when it was caught from behind by the bony hand of Ben Travis, bigger and stronger by two year’s growth, whilst the other hand gripped his jacket collar.

“So you’re at your cowardly tricks again, Aspinall!” exclaimed he, holding the other as if in a vice. “But if I see you lay another finger on that lad, I’ll report you to Dr. Smith.”

“Oh! you’d turn sneak, would you?” sneered Laurence, striving to twist himself loose, and disordering his broad white frill in the endeavour.

“I’d think I did the Grammar School a service to turn either you or Barret out of it, I would! Think of you setting on that noble chap who wouldn’t turn tell-tale, though he’ll carry the mark of your boot to his grave with him!”

Pointing with outstretched hand to Jabez, who by this time was handing Old Brookes over to the grumbling care of Tabitha, and whose right eyebrow yet showed a red seam, Travis relaxed his hold of Laurence, and he shook himself free.

Some warm altercation followed. There was a scowl of sullen defiance on Aspinall’s face, and an evil glance towards Jabez, which Travis observing, with a significant nod he linked his arm in that of the Blue-coat boy, and never left him till he reached his destination, Mr. Hyde’s ancient and picturesque tea-shop in Market-street Lane.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

THE GENTLEMAN.

That afternoon a gentleman who had witnessed part of the foregoing scene from the breeches-maker’s window, whither he had gone for a pair of buckskin riding-gloves—struck by the dauntless manner of Jabez, related what he had seen to his wife, Mrs. Ashton, the stately sister of Mrs. Chadwick; whilst Augusta, their eight-year old daughter, sat on a footstool by her side, hemming a bandana handkerchief for her father, an inveterate snuff-taker—occasionally putting in a word, as only spoiled daughters did in those days.

“Mamma, I daresay that’s the little boy Cousin Ellen told me about.”

“Pooh, pooh! Augusta,” said Mr. Ashton, tapping the lid of his snuff-box, and then, from force of habit, handing it to his wife, the wave of whose hand put it back—“pooh, pooh! child. Do you think there’s only one Blue-coat boy in the town? Besides, he was not such a little boy. I know I thought something of myself when I was his size,” said Mr. Ashton, dusting the snuff from his ruffles as he spoke.

“But he would be a little boy when Ellen knew him first. She says it was before I was born.”

“He could not be a Blue-coat boy then, my dear,” observed Mrs. Ashton; “he was too young.”

“But Ellen showed him to me when we went to the College at Easter; and she says he has killed a snake—a real live snake, papa. And Aunt Chadwick bought Ellen such a pretty pincushion he had worked, and, oh! such a handsome bead purse!”

Mr. Ashton smiled at his daughter’s enthusiasm.

“Ah! I think I have heard of him before; he is a sort of _protege_ of Parson Brookes.”

“He is a very honest boy,” appended Mrs. Ashton, as she examined Augusta’s hemming by the light of the nearest wax candle. “Ellen lost Prince William’s shilling that same day. You know she always wears it dangling from her neck, absurd as it is for a great girl of fifteen.”

“Well?” said Augusta, looking up inquiringly.

“Well, my dear, the very next afternoon the boy Jabez Clegg knocked at the door in Oldham Street with the shilling, which he said he had found in sweeping the library, and remembered seeing it on Miss Chadwick’s neck. Many a boy, at Easter, would have spent it in cakes or toffy.”

“I suppose, to use one of your favourite maxims, he must have thought ‘honesty the best policy,’” remarked her husband.

“Yes; and ‘duty its own reward’—for he refused the half-crown that Sarah offered him.”

Mr. Ashton took another pinch of snuff, with grave consideration, then put the box, after some deliberation, into his deep waistcoat pocket, and again flapped the snuff off ruffles and neck-cloth ends.

“Wouldn’t take the money, you say?”

“Would not take it,” his wife repeated, folding up the finished handkerchief.

After a pause, Mr. Ashton said, with his head on one side,—

“I think I shall look after that younker. What is he like?”

“Oh, that I cannot tell; I was not with them. But I think Sarah said he had got an ugly scar on one of his eyebrows.”

Mr. Ashton brought down his hand with a clap on that of Augusta, resting on his knee.

“Then, my little Lancashire witch, the poor cripple’s champion and Ellen’s hero of romance _will_ be one and the same. I must certainly look after that lad.”

But even as Mr. Ashton came to that conclusion Jabez was in mortal peril, and his romance and theirs threatened to end at the beginning.

Laurence Aspinall was not of a temper to brook interference with his sport, or to be treated as the inferior of a “common charity boy.” Since the hour that Jabez had declined to single him out for punishment, he had resented the sense of his own inferiority which conscience pressed upon him. In refusing to tender either thanks or apology at Ben Travis’s instigation, he lost caste in the school, and the knowledge rankled in his breast. Against the debt of gratitude he owed to Jabez he laid up a fund of envy and spite, out of which he meant to pay him in full the first opportunity. That opportunity had arrived. There were some birds of his own feather, who stuck by him, of whom Ned Barret was one.

Old Brookes had been too drunk to swear positively who had molested him, or to obtain credence if he did; but the inopportune arrival of Jabez and Ben Travis had made detection certain, and nothing was Joshua Brookes so sure to punish with severity as an attack on the father who made his life a burden to him.

On the principle that they might “as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” the noble five resolved to waylay the Blue-coat boy on his return, and either extract from him a promise of secrecy, or give him a sound drubbing for his pains.

They were too like-minded for long conference. To put the old breeches-maker off the scent, all dispersed but one, Kit Townley, who pulled a top from his pocket and whipped away at it with as much energy as ever did his Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Perhaps he thought he had a meddlesome College boy under his lash.

After a time, the others sauntered back one by one, from contrary directions; there was more top-whipping, and some of the whips and tops were new. Then when they saw they were unobserved, they adjourned to the school-yard, and laying a cap on the broad step, two or three of them sat down to a game at cob-nut, so that if any unlikely straggler did come that way there might be an apparent reason for their presence.

It was late in the year. The breeches-maker was seated at his early tea, and so were most of his neighbours. The twilight was coming gently down, and the boys, tired of waiting, were about to go home to their own—Aspinall expecting a reprimand for being late. Jabez, who had been delayed at the office of Harrop the printer in the Market Place, came briskly up with a parcel in his hand just as they reached the gate. One of them snatched the parcel from him and ran with it into the school-yard. As a natural consequence Jabez followed to regain his property.

That was just what they wanted. The light iron gate was pushed-to, and there they were, shut in and screened from observation, between the deserted Grammar School on the one hand, and the College School-room on the other, which, with the dormitory above, was equally sure to be empty at that hour. They were free to torment him as they pleased. The parcel was tossed from hand to hand with subdued glee, and their whip-lashes and strung cob-nuts cut at his arms and shoulders, as Jabez sprang forward and darted hither and thither, perplexed and baffled in his efforts to recover it. Once or twice it went down on the damp ground, and gained in grime what it lost in shape.

“Oh! dear, dear! do give me my parcel!” cried Jabez, in perplexity. “Our governor will think I’ve been loitering.”

“And so you have, you canting yellow-skirt. You stopped to put your long finger in our pie!” was the swift retort of Laurence, as he interposed his body between Jabez and the boy who held his lost charge.

“Eh! and you went off with Travis, wasting your time!” added Kit Townley.

“I never waste my time on an errand.”

“Oh! Miss Nancy never wastes time on an errand.” mimicked Ned Barret; and still they kept the boy on the run until he leaned, out of breath, against the wall which served as a parapet above the river.

Then, the disputed prize being kept by Kit Townley at a respectable distance, Laurence advanced to parley with him, offering to restore his parcel and let him go if he would take a solemn oath, which he dictated, to maintain silence on all which had transpired that afternoon.

“I cannot; I must account for my time,” firmly answered Jabez, “and I must account for that dirty parcel.”

“Tell them you tumbled down and hurt yourself,” suggested Aspinall.

“I cannot; it would be untrue!”

At this the lads set up a loud guffaw, as if truth were somewhat out of fashion; but the one who stood nearest the gate with the parcel looked restless, as if beginning to be tired of the whole business. Just then Laurence went blustering up to the College boy, and, thrusting his face forward, said—

“If you don’t go down on your marrow-bones this instant, and swear to tell no tales, we’ll pitch you over the wall.”

“You dare not!” boldly retorted Jabez, with a set face.

“Oh! daren’t we? We’ll see that! Lend a hand.”

“No, you dare not!” repeated he, planting himself firmly against the wall.

There was a sudden rush; they closed round him, more in bravado than with any intent to do him bodily harm: sliding him up against the smooth-worn brick-work, they hoisted him above their shoulders, meaning to hold him there. But in their eagerness they had thrust him too far, and crowding on each other, one, being jostled, let go, and Jabez toppled over the precipice!

There was a scream; a splash in the water. Tabitha, taking clothes from a line in the back-yard, cried out, “What is that?” Parson Brookes’s startled pigeons flew from their dove-cote, and wheeling round in widening circles cooed affrightedly.

The white-faced boys stood aghast. Unless his fall had been seen from the opposite croft, their victim would be drowned before any aid they could bring was available; a wide circuit must be taken before a bridge could be reached! Buildings blocked up that side of the river. They looked at each other and spoke in whispers; then, with an animal instinct of self-preservation, sneaked off in silence and terror, leaving him to his fate.

Not all. Kit Townley, who held the parcel, had drawn near to remonstrate. With a shriek he threw down the paper, and, hardly conscious what he did, tore wildly through the gates, and across the College Yard, to startle the first he met with the alarm that a College boy was drowning in the Irk!

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH.

SIMON’S PUPIL.

It was fortunate for Jabez that the late rains had raised the level of the Irk: otherwise, that being the shallowest part of the stream, there would not have been sufficient depth of water to buoy him up when he was pitched over the wall; and had his head come in contact with rock or stone, falling from such an elevation, his history would have closed with the last chapter. It was doubly fortunate that sensible Simon had taught him that without which no boy’s education—nor, indeed, any girl’s either—is complete, and that Jabez, from very love of the water, had kept himself in practice whenever a holiday had given him opportunity.

He had gone over the wall backwards, falling into the stream head downwards, but not altogether unprepared; and to him head first, heels first, forward or backward, were all as one. Like a cork he rose, and struck out across the river. The slimy stone embankment seemed to slip from his touch; there was no hold for his hand; it was too steep and smooth to climb; and he felt that the river, swift in its fulness, was bent on bearing him to the Irwell, so dangerously near.

He raised his voice for “help.” Tabitha, listening, answered with a scream and a shout, and, bolting into the house, disturbed the Parson and his besotted father at their tea by the outcry she made, as she rushed on into the street with the alarm of “a lad dreawndin,” just as the conscious culprits slunk past to their own quarters.

Doctor Stone, the first recipient of terrified Kit Townley’s incoherent intelligence, was simultaneously racing at full speed, with a troop of College boys at his heels, down towards Hunt’s Bank and the outlet of the Irk, with the swift consciousness that the only hope of saving life was in the chance of reaching the confluence of the rivers first. He thought the dusk never came down so rapidly. A lamplighter, with ladder and flaring long-spouted oil-can light, was going his rounds.

“Turn back, my man, with ladder and light,” he called out, without stopping; and the man, seeing something unusual was astir or amiss, followed at a canter without question.

At Irk Bridge the librarian took the light from the man, and swung it to cast its reflection over the Irwell; but nothing was to be seen or heard but the full river, and the wash of its waters. To cross the bridge, in fear that the boy was beyond help, was but the work of a moment.

Slower, along the wooden railing of the Irk embankment, he held the lamp low. There was neither eddy or bubble on the water to tell where a drowning mortal had gone down.

“Jabez! Jabez Clegg!” he cried, but there was no response. Again and again he raised his voice—“Jabez! Jabez!” The only answer was from an advancing crowd, with Parson Brookes and Tabitha in their midst, who had rushed to the rescue with ropes and poles down the bridge at Mill Brow.

“I fear it’s no use, Parson Brookes,” said the librarian sadly; “the river’s high, and poor Jabez may have been drifting past Stannyhurst before we were out of the College Yard.”

“Jabez!” exclaimed Joshua aghast, “you cannot mean that Jabez Clegg is the boy drowned!” and he staggered as if some one had struck him.

“Indeed, Parson, if this boy speaks truth, I fear it is so,” and he turned to question his informant; but Kit Townley, seeing his impulsive schoolmaster approach, had edged away, and was gone.

Gruff Joshua drew the back of his hand across his shaggy brows.

“And so the greedy river has swallowed the bright lad at last! He was a boy of promise, Dr. Stone, and his untimely fate is a—a—trouble to me;” and the rough Parson’s harsh voice shook with emotion. “I baptised him, Doctor, and I hoped to see him grow up a credit to us all.”

They, and the dispersing crowd, seeing the uselessness of longer stay, were moving on towards Mill Brow as he spoke.

“Who’s this?” he cried as they neared the bridge, and a working woman, her hair flying loose from the kerchief on her head, rushed across it with an impetus gained in the steep descent.

It was Bess, with Simon at her heels, close as his stiff rheumatic limbs would carry him. She wrung her hands bitterly.

“Is it true?” she cried in anguish, “is it true? Oh, Parson Brucks, is it true that ar Jabez is dreawnded?”

There was the same choking in his voice as he answered—

“I’m afraid so, Bess.”

Simon’s voice now broke in.

“But are yo’ sartain, Parson? Ar Jabez couldn swim loike a duck. An’ how cam he i’ th’ wayther, aw shouldn loike to know?”

“Swim, did you say?” interrogated Dr. Stone. “Then there may be hope yet. If the eddies would not let him land at Waterworth Field, he might swim ashore at Stannyhurst.”

“Pray God it be so!” ejaculated Bess, from a full heart.

Dr. Stone, hurrying forward, continued:

“Follow me to the College for lanterns to renew the search.” And no second invitation was needed.

And where was Jabez? He heard Tabitha’s cry, but it came from the wrong side, and he had sense to know was useless to save, unless he could withstand the current till help came round. But the strong stream was bearing him on against his will. Suddenly he bethought him of the dairy steps, and, with a stroke of his left arm, swerved towards the hoary building looming through the twilight. One moment later, and the steps had been passed, not to be recovered, for the current was stronger than he; but that providentially abrupt turn, and a few skilful strokes, brought him upon them. Literally upon them, for the water was within a step or two of the door. With difficulty he obtained a footing, they were so slippery. Once above the water, he hammered at the door and called, but his voice was weakened by exertion and the shivering consequent on cold, wet, clinging garments. Again and again he knocked and called, but everyone was out in the quadrangle, or away in search of him, and no one heard.

He had been excited and over-heated in his prolonged struggle with his persecutors, and, short as was the distance he swam, his efforts to stem the overmastering current had exhausted him. Cold and exposure did the rest. He sank on the topmost step with his head against the door, in the angle it formed with the wall, his feet in the water; and there he lay, too faint to respond when Dr. Stone’s voice fell on his ear as on that of a dreamer. His dark robe, his position, the jutting wall—all contributed to hide him from the poor rays of the one oil-lamp which was flashed along the stream to find him.

And there he might have lain and died had not Nancy, for lack of a boy at hand to wait on her, gone down to the cellar for milk for the boys’ supper. As she filled the wooden piggin she had taken with her, she fancied she heard a moan, and listening breathless, heard another, and another, from the outside of a door which was (to her thought) inaccessible to mortal.

Down went the piggin and the milk (she was not a strong-minded woman, and it was a superstitious age), up the steps she stumbled in her fright, crying—

“Oh! theer’s a boggart in th’ dairy!—theer’s a boggart!”

Dr. Stone and his companions came in at the porch as she fled upwards towards the kitchen. The firelight gleaming on her frightened face caught his attention. Half fainting, she repeated her exclamation, adding—

“It moaned like summat wick.”

“Moaned, did you say? Goodness! If it should be——”

Not stopping to finish his sentence, he snatched a light from the table, and was unbolting the cellar-door before the governor or anyone else could comprehend his movements. They understood well enough when he came back into their midst, burdened with the limp, dripping form of Jabez, white and insensible, and depositing him on a settle near the kitchen fire, cried out for restoratives.

That was a terrible next morning, when the young miscreants, as much afraid to play truant as to face possibilities at school, sneaked to their places and set to their studies with industry out of the common. Laurence Aspinall, boarding with a master, had no choice in the matter.

How Jabez got into the water was not clear; he was too ill to be questioned over-night, and was in a fever and delirious by noon the next day. But he had never been known to loiter or go astray when sent on an errand. Kit Townley’s impulsive cry of alarm had suggested foul play, and neither Joshua Brookes nor Governor Terry had let the night pass without an effort to dive into the truth.