Chapter THE TENTH: First Antagonism (2)

Dr. Stone had conjectured Kit Townley to be a Grammar School boy, although personally unknown to him; and that conjecture recalled to Joshua his father’s ravings of ill-usage, which he had at the time regarded as drunken maudling. It was ascertained that the boy had been at Harrop’s. Inquiry, and the search for the missing parcel, resulted in the discovery of a trampled play-ground, broken whiplashes, a string of cob-nuts, and, neatly marked in red cotton with his initials, one of Laurence Aspinall’s cambric ruffles, torn and muddy.

There was a conference with Dr. Jeremiah Smith before the night was out. A messenger was sent to Mr. Aspinall in Cannon Street the next morning, as well as to the trustees of the school.

The following day saw such another conclave as before in the Grammar School. Dr. Stone, who was present, picked out the boy who had given the alarm; and Kit Townley, trembling for himself, told all he knew. Ben Travis, at the outset, in his indignation, proffered his evidence, which went to prove malice prepense.

The boys, asked what they had to say for themselves, simply answered they had done it for “sport”—that they did not mean to throw him over, but only to frighten him to “hold his tongue,” and excused their running home on the plea that they were “afraid.” Laurence Aspinall boldly said that he knew the boy could swim, and did not think a ducking would do him much harm, and offered to jump off the wall and swim down the river himself. Liar as well as boaster, he received a summary check from Dr. Smith, apart from the reprimand administered to him as the proven ring-leader.

In these days such a case of outrage would have been brought before a magistrate, and the offenders’ names sent flying through newspaper paragraphs. Then, whether to spare the parental feelings of such influential men as Mr. Aspinall, or to save from tarnish the fair fame of the school, or to avert the further debasement of the boys from prison contact, and give them a chance to amend, the school tribunal was allowed to be all-sufficient.

Ignominious expulsion was dealt out not only to Laurence Aspinall and to Ned Barret, but to each of the conspirators—Kit Townley, honourably acquitted by them of participation in the final attack, alone escaping with a caution, a severe reprimand, and as severe a flogging; which special immunity he had purchased by running white-faced to give the alarm. It is possible he scarcely estimated the value of that immunity at the time.

But the loud hurrahs which hailed this sentence testified how the Grammar School boys valued their honour as a school, and how proud they were to be purged of such offenders.

Mr. Aspinall, too much agitated to witness his son’s public disgrace, waited the result of the inquiry in the head-master’s house; and if ever Laurence Aspinall felt ashamed of his own misconduct, it was when his father refused to take his unworthy hand as they left the door-step, and he heard Dr. Smith’s closing words of reproof mingled with compassion for the father, in whose eyes were signs of tears a bad son had drawn.

Long before Jabez was able to resume his own place in the school, Laurence Aspinall had been removed to an expensive boarding-school at Everton, near Liverpool; and this time the merchant laid stress on his tendency “for vicious and low pursuits,” and begged that no efforts or expense might be spared to make him a gentleman in all respects. Still he tampered with the truth, lest the school-master (he would be called a Principal in these factitious days) should refuse to admit a pupil with such antecedents, and decline the task of eradicating cruelty and ingratitude.

Here Laurence certainly mixed only with boys of his own class, from whom money could buy neither flattery nor favour, and where only his own merits could procure either. And here we must leave him, to pursue the fortunes of the boy whose life he had wantonly imperilled.

Had anything been wanting to bespeak Joshua Brookes’s good-will, Jabez supplied it when he interfered to protect the elder Brookes from the derisive indignities of others. Not only to Mrs. Clowes did he rehearse in his own peculiar manner the story, as told by Ben Travis, with its supplementary drama which had so nearly proved a tragedy, but at such tables as he frequented—Mr. Chadwick’s among the rest.

Mr. Ashton, who was present, spoke of being himself a witness to the former scene, and, whilst presenting his inevitable snuff-box to the eccentric chaplain, repeated his previous observation—“I must look after that boy—I must indeed.”

If the parson had been commonly observant he would have noticed a pair of black eyes fixed in eager attention on his, as he, who rarely uttered a commendation, held forth in praise of his father’s champion, the Blue-coat boy; the said black eyes being matched by the black hair, and somewhat dark skin, of the plain but intelligent daughter of his host.

But girls of fifteen were then counted in the category of children, and were taught only to “speak when spoken to,” so Ellen Chadwick passed no other commentary on the actions of Jabez than was expressed by her glowing cheeks and eloquent eyes.

CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.

JABEZ GOES INTO THE WORLD.

A sharp illness followed the precipitation of Jabez into the Irk; but he was young, had a strong constitution, and, to the satisfaction of all in the College, and many out of it, was able to take his place in the refectory, and clear the beef or the potato-pie from his wooden trencher, before the month expired. Prior to this, he was allowed an afternoon, ere he was well enough to resume fully his routine duties, to show himself to the kind friends who had exhibited most anxiety for his recovery.

Mrs. Clowes was one of these. Jam, jelly, and cakes, never concocted within the area of the College, had found their way to his bedside. Grateful for kindness from so unlikely a quarter, Jabez paid his first visit to the shop in Half Street, to thank the queer old lady. But not one word of thanks would she hear.

“Eh, lad, say naught about it; you did your duty, and I did mine, and so were quits;” and shook her open hand a few inches in advance of her face, as if she were shaking a disclaimer out of it. “And where are you taking your white face to now?” she asked quickly, the better to turn the tide of his stammering thanks.

“To Aunt Bess’s.”

“Why, lad, Bess Clegg’ll have naught to give thee fit for sick folk to eat. It’s much to me if she’ll have either a potato or a drop of milk. If she’s a bit of jannock, or oat-cake, it’s as much as the bargain. War may be glorious for kings and generals, but it’s awful for poor folk; Mesters can’t sell their goods, and can’t pay wages bout money; and I’ve heard that, since th’ potato riots in Shudehill last Spring, the folk have been so clemmed that some on them couldna be known by their friends who hadna seen them for awhile; they were naught but skin and bone, poor things!”

Whilst indulging in this tirade against war and its concomitants, to distract his attention, she bustled about, often with her back to him; then dived into her parlour, and returned with a basket, which she was handing to him, with a charge to “take that to Bess, and be sure bring the basket back safe,” when she found that Joshua Brookes was standing behind Jabez, amongst waiting customers, with a sharp eye on her proceedings.

“I say, young Cheat-the-fishes, what have you got to say for yourself? A nice young ragamuffin you are, to go a-bathing without leave, spoiling your clothes, and giving yourself cold! I hope they gave you plenty of physic, to teach you better,” said Joshua roughly, taking the boy by the shoulder, and turning him sharply round to confront him.

“Yes, sir—they gave me plenty of physic,” said Jabez, doffing his cap respectfully. “But I did not go bathing; I got into the water by accident.”

“By what? Do you call that an accident?” growled the parson, to get at the boy’s meaning.

“An accident done a-purpose,” chimed in Mrs. Clowes, whilst her scales jingled, and she and her helper weighed out her commodities for the people at the counter.

“Yes, sir,” answered Jabez, composedly; “it must have been an accident. I don’t think they really could mean to push me over. I think they only meant to frighten me——”

“Well?” queried Joshua, seeing that he hesitated.

“I think one of them slipped, and let go, and then I slipped too, sir,” he replied, modestly.

“Slipped, indeed! You’d very nearly slipped into the next world!” exclaimed the parson. “I suppose you’ll say next that my poor old father was dragged about by the young wretches by accident too?”

The colour of Jabez rose.

“No, sir; that was very cruel.”

“Oh, you do call some things by their right names (here, let that woman pass out). I suppose you’re glad enough the rascals have got their deserts?”

A dubious change came over the boy’s face. He did not answer at once; he hardly knew his own feelings on the subject. The question was repeated.

“Well, sir, I’m glad they won’t be there to torment me any more, but it must be a very dreadful thing for a young gentleman to be turned out of school in disgrace, and I don’t think I _ought_ to be glad of that. I should never get over it, if it was me.”

“Here, take your basket, and be off with you!” said Joshua Brookes, hurrying him out of the shop, that he might stay and rate the old woman for “spoiling young Cheat-the-fishes,” conscious all the while that he had been doing his best to get the lad a good home in the future.

Bess and Simon received him with open arms, glad not only to see him well again, but thankful he had been placed where he was secure from the bitter want which pinched both their stomachs and their faces. To them Mrs. Clowes’ basket brought what they had not seen for months—a white loaf and a good lump of cold meat, to say nothing of a tiny paper of tea, and some sugar—those luxuries of the rich—and half-a-crown in another paper.

How those half-famishing hard-workers, whose home had been denuded of their goods to keep life within them, thanked cross old Mrs. Clowes! She had made it a festival to them indeed, and all for the sake of the boy they had kept.

There were no pigeons—these had been sold long ago to pay for provisions, though much against Simon’s will. The cat was there, lean and gaunt; it managed to pick up a subsistence somehow; and the big Bible was there—Simon had not parted with that, though the bright bureau was gone, ay, and the cradle which had been an ark to the orphan.

The change touched Jabez sorely. Snugly housed and fed within the College, rumours of outer poverty made no lasting impression; but here he saw its grim reality, and sitting down on the three-legged stool, he covered his face with his hands to hide the tears called up by that insight into their impoverished condition. Yet had they some alleviation of their pain. Poverty appeared to have lost half its bitterness for Bess. She had had a letter from her long-mourned Tom, and the joyful news served to brighten up the visit for Jabez and all.

It was a long and deeply repentant letter, of course written by a comrade. It was dated from Badajoz, and had been a weary while in reaching them. He had been wounded in that brilliant assault, and while in hospital had fallen in with another Lancashire lad, also wounded—no other than the boy who had lent a hand to rescue the infant Jabez, and who had been driven to enlist by the sharp pangs of hunger, only two years before. From this young fellow, Private John Smith (Tom was himself a Corporal), he had learned how grievously his Bess had been slandered; but with that knowledge had come the conviction that he had condemned her hastily and harshly on mere hearsay, and the letter was incoherent in its remorseful contrition. In his soldier-life he had been tossed hither and thither—known pain, and thirst, and famine; and said he owed it all to his own jealous credulity, when he ought to have known so much better. He told of marchings and counter-marchings, battles and bloodshed; but of never one wound to himself, though he had not “cared a cast of the shuttle” for his life until that bayonet-thrust which had laid him side by side with John Smith, who had lost an eye. But he wound up with a prayer for Bess and himself, and a hope for their reunion, if the war would ever end. He “was sick of it.”

All that letter was to Bess and Simon, Jabez could not comprehend; but he took Mrs. Clowes her empty basket, and went back to the College satisfied that one ray of sunshine lit up the poor home of his friends.

And Matthew Cooper’s last chance was gone.

* * * * *

Mr. Ashton was what is known in trade as a small-ware manufacturer—that is, he was a weaver of tapes, inkles, filletings; silk, cotton, and worsted laces (for furniture); carpet bindings, brace-webs, and fringes. Moreover, he manufactured braces and umbrellas, for which latter his brother-in-law supplied the ginghams. He had at work, both in Manchester and at Whaley-Bridge, a number of swivel-engines, the design of which came from those unrivalled tape-weavers, the Dutch, and which would weave twenty-four lengths of tape or bed-lace at one time. Otherwise, the bulk of his workpeople—winders, warpers, brace, fringe, and umbrella-makers—carried away materials to their own homes, and brought back their work in a finished state.

Mr. Chadwick, as we have mentioned, was a manufacturer of ginghams—this included checks and fustians; but much of his trade being foreign, the war had locked up his resources, and his anxieties preyed on his health.

Mr. Ashton had suffered less in this particular, not having disdained to take his sensible wife’s advice—“Never put too many eggs in one basket.” Mrs. Ashton, be it said, had a leaning towards “proverbial philosophy” more homely and terse than Tupper’s, which, vulgar as it is accounted now, was in esteem when our century was young; and, had it been otherwise, would have been equally impressive from her deliberately modulated utterance. This same lady had, moreover, an aptitude for business. Mr. Ashton employed a number of young women, and Mrs. Ashton might be found most days in the warehouse, either “putting out” or inspecting the work brought in by them, with a gingham wrapper over her “silken sheen.” If the footman announced visitors, the wrapper was thrown aside in a moment, and she stepped into her drawing-room as though fresh from her toilette, and with no atmosphere of dozens, grosses, or great-grosses about her.

She was wont to say, “The eye of a master does more work than both his hands,” accordingly in house or warehouse her active supervision kept other hands from idling, and she certainly dignified whatever duties she undertook, whether she used hands or eyes only.

In those days a seven-years’ apprenticeship to any trade or business was deemed essential; apprentices were part and parcel of commercial economy, and when Mr. Ashton spoke of “looking after that boy,” it was that he thought Jabez Clegg bade fair to be a fitter inmate and a more reliable servant than others whose terms were about to expire.

Through his friend the Rev. Joshua Brookes he ascertained the boy’s age and other particulars, and sought the House-Governor Mr. Terry, and laid before him a proposition to take Jabez Clegg as his apprentice, on very fair terms. He then learned that Mr. Shaw, the saddler at the bottom of Market Street-lane, was also desirous to obtain the same Blue-coat boy as an apprentice, his friend the leather-breeches maker having named the lad to him.

At the Easter meeting of feoffees both proposals were laid before them—Simon Clegg, as standing _in loco parentis_ to Jabez, being present. After some little discussion Mr. Ashton’s proposal was accepted, to the great satisfaction of the tanner, and in a few days Jabez was transferred to his new master for mutual trial until Ascension Day, when, if all parties were satisfied, his indentures would be signed. As the governor said, it had “been but the toss of a button” whether he had gone to Mr. Shaw or Mr. Ashton:—yet upon that toss of a button the whole future of Jabez depended.

Jabez Clegg entered on his new career under good auspices—that is, he bore with him a good character for steadiness and probity, though nothing was said of brilliant parts, or any special talent which he possessed. Indeed his school-master had said that only his indomitable perseverence had enabled him to keep pace with others. If he had any latent genius, any particular vocation, no one had discovered it; his faculty for disfiguring doors and walls with devices in coloured chalks, picked up amongst the gravel, had been matter for punishment not praise, and none but the College boys themselves cared to know where the fresh patterns for purses and pincushions came from. Steadiness, perseverance, probity—they were good materials out of which to manufacture a tradesman (so Mr. Ashton thought), and congratulations were mutual.

Jabez went, with his new outfit, to his new home under good auspices, inasmuch as both master and mistress were pre-possessed in his favour, and they stood in the foremost ranks of those who began to recognise that English apprentices were not bond-slaves in heathendom. Instead of being crammed to sleep like dogs in holes under counters; left to wash at a pump and wipe themselves where they could; obliged to sit at a table in a back kitchen, and dip their spoons into one common dish of porridge, or potatoes and buttermilk; to eat such scraps and refuse as sordid employers, or ill-disposed cooks, chose to set before their primitive Adamite forks—instead of a system like this, from which apprentices (of whatever grade) only emerged at the beginning of this century, the Ashtons’ apprentices had a comfortable dormitory in the attic, there was a coarse jack-towel by the scullery-sink for their use, they had their meals with the servants in the kitchen, where was an oak settle by the fire for them when work was over.

But work did not end with the close of the warehouse. They were expected to keep their attic clean and in order, to cleanse the wooden or pewter platters, or porringers, from which they had dined or supped; to rinse the horns which had held their table-beer; to fetch and carry wood, coals, and water, for servants too lazy to do their own work; and it was not much rest any apprentice had from five or six in a morning until eight or nine at night, when he went to his bed.

As the youngest apprentice, the roughest of this work fell on Jabez, but, luckily, his training had made him equal to the occasion; though Kezia, the red-faced cook, set herself steadfastly to dislike him, because Mr. Ashton had bespoken her favour for him. In the warehouse, too, the evident good-will of principals roused the jealously of underlings, so that “good auspices” had their corresponding drawbacks.

It was not much of a pleasure to Jabez to find Kit Townley also seated as an apprentice on the kitchen settle; but the youth seemed disposed to be friendly, and Jabez forbore to create a grievance by recalling unpleasant reminiscences. With Kit Townley, who was his senior by a year, a heavy premium had been paid, and on this he was inclined to presume. But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Ashton made any social distinction between the twain, and Jabez was strong enough to hold his own.

During the few weeks’ probation Jabez was transferred from department to department, alike to test his capacity and his own liking for the business. Both proved satisfactory.

On Ascension Day, 1813, there was another appearance in that ancient room before the College magnates, many of whom, as officers in volunteer regiments, were in full-dress uniform (a dinner pending). The indentures had to be signed, the premium of £4 (returnable to the boy when his term expired) had to be paid.

Simon Clegg’s best clothes had long been lost in the pawnbroker’s bottomless pit: but some one unknown (mayhap Mrs. Clowes or Mrs. Clough) had sent him overnight a suit of fresh ones, pronounced by him and Bess “welly as good as new;” and he presented himself for the important ceremony (overlooked by the painted face of the orphan’s benevolent friend, Humphrey Chetham) as proud almost of his own restored respectability as of the part he was about to perform. When it came to his turn to sign the document, the little man took the pen with a flourish, as if he were a hero about to perform some mighty action. He stooped to the heavy oaken table, bent his head low, alternately to the right and left, and with his fingers in an unaccountable crump, imprinted his self-taught signature in Roman capitals thereon, then handed back the quill as if to say, “The deed is done!”

Governor, school-master, and feoffees congratulated Mr. Ashton and Jabez both. Simon, with moist eyes, shook Jabez by the hand, and holding the boy’s shoulder with his left to look the better in his clear dark eyes, said with deliberate emphasis—

“Jabez, lad, aw’m preawd on yo’ this day. But moind—thah’s an honourable neame: do nowt to disgrace it, an’ yo’r fortin’s made!”

Jabez was too abashed to make reply at the time; but at the supper given in the kitchen, to mark his installation at Mr. Ashton’s—to which Bess and Simon were both invited—Jabez contrived to whisper,

“You needn’t clem any more, Bess; I’ll give you all my wages.”

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.

APPRENTICESHIP.

Jabez now began his work in earnest, in the packing-room—the very lowest rung of the ladder. Not long did he remain there. The bright colours in the lace and brace rooms had an attraction for him, and he argued with himself that the better he did the rough work assigned him the sooner he should mount above it. And Jabez the plodding Blue-coat boy, was ambitious. That ambition had a threefold stimulus.

Manchester people were then, as a rule, steady church and chapel-goers. Mr. Ashton had two pews at the Old Church; one for his family, the other for servants and apprentices, the attendance of the latter being imperative. Jabez thus came in frequent contact with his old-time friends, from the Blue-coat boys in the Chetham Gallery to the Cleggs, to whom went every penny of his earnings; their distress, like that of others, having deepened with the continuation of the Napoleonic war.

Sometimes old Mrs. Clowes, meeting him in the churchyard, would grasp him by the hand, and leave something in it, as, in her old black stuff dress and coloured kerchief tied over her mob-cap, she hurried homewards to scold dilatory handmaids, and put her Christianity in practice amongst her pensioners.

Now and then Joshua Brookes crossed his path, and if he did not put his hand in his breeches pocket for Jabez—now a well-grown youth—he gave him more than sterling coin in sterling advice, though, unfortunately, in so abrupt and grotesque a manner, its effect was frequently lost. Yet one day when the Blue-coat boy had been barely two years at the Mosley Street manufacturer’s, he put a spur into the sides of his ambition.

“Young Cheat-the-fishes, were you ever in Mrs. Chadwick’s green parlour?”

“Yes, sir—I was there once for half-an-hour.” (The day he took back Miss Ellen’s shilling.)

“Well did you read the sermons on the walls?”

Jabez answered respectfully—

“I did not see any sermons, sir. I saw some pictures in black frames with gilt roses at the corners.”

“And didn’t look at them, I suppose?” in a harsh grunt.

“Yes, sir, I did! I was waiting till Mrs. Chadwick had done dinner. They were about two boys—a good and bad apprentice.”

“Oh, then, you did use your eyes! The next time they let you inside that room, just use your understanding too. William Hogarth, the artist, from his grave preaches a sermon to you and your fellows, as good as Parson Gatliffe preached from the pulpit this morning, mark that!” and he turned on his heel with an emphasising nod to fix _his_ sermon on the boy’s mind.

The opportunity came before long. It was customary when an apprentice went with a message to leave him in the hall, or send him into the kitchen; but Jabez being sent by Mrs. Ashton with several samples of furniture-binding and fringes for her sister’s use, he was shown with his parcel into the parlour, where Mrs. Chadwick, neatly attired in a brown stuff dress, with a French cambric kerchief lying in folds under the square bodice, sat at work with an upholsteress, in the midst of a mass of chintz and moreen, preparing for the new home of Ellen’s elder sister Charlotte; for, in spite of war, distress, or famine, people will marry and give in marriage. And had not a glorious peace just been concluded?

Ellen, a comely but not pretty girl, about seventeen, whose black eyes and hair were her chief attractions, sat there in a purple bombazine dress, with her sheathed scissors and College pincushion suspended by a chain from her girdle, plying her needle most industriously. He was not accustomed to parlours, and no doubt his bow was as awkward as his blush; but he had a message to deliver, and he did that in a business like manner. He had to wait until pattern after pattern was tried against the chintz, and calculations made. Mrs. Chadwick, seeing his eyes wander wistfully from picture to picture, courteously gave him permission to examine them.

At once Ellen, who was sitting close under one, rose to act as interpreter. She was recalled by the mild voice of her mother.

“Sit down, Ellen; Jabez Clegg does not require a young lady’s help to understand those pictures—they explain themselves.”

Ellen went back to her seat and her sewing with a raised colour, and a private impression that the rebuke was uncalled for, though she spoke never a word. Perhaps Mrs. Chadwick thought condescension should have its limits, and did not believe in a young lady’s impulsive civility to an apprentice Blue-coat boy. Yet that was not like Mrs. Chadwick.

Miss Augusta had been staying with her aunt. Part of his commission was to convoy her home; she was an only child, and too precious to be trusted out alone, though she was in her eleventh year, and the distance was nothing. But so many desperadoes had been let loose by the termination of the war that crime and violence were rampant, footpads infested highways and byways, and Cicily, Augusta’s maid—ex-nurse—was no longer deemed a protection.

He stood before the last engraving when Augusta—in no awe of her father’s apprentice—came dancing into the room in a nankeen dress and tippet, a hat with blue ribands, long washing-gloves which left the elbows bare, and blue shoes tied with a bunch of ribands.

Bright, beautiful, buoyant—she was a picture in herself; and Jabez turned from the dingy engraving to think so. She often came tripping into the warehouse or the kitchen, and exchanged a bright word with one or other, and away again; but Jabez had thought of her only as a pretty playful child until that afternoon. Joshua Brookes pointing Hogarth’s lessons had given the one spur; that lovely brown-eyed, brown-haired maiden, with her simple, “Come, Jabez—I’m ready,” had given another.

She put her little gloved hand in his, after bidding her aunt and cousin good-bye, and went dancing, skipping, and chattering by his side down Oldham Street, and let him lift her over the muddy crossing to Mosley Street, unconscious of the chimerical dreams floating through his apprentice brain all the while. His original ambition to make a home for Simon and Bess, where neither penury nor care should trouble them, dwarfed before the new ideas crowding upon his mind. He had read the sermon on the wall, but the old “Knave of Clubs,” as Joshua was called, little thought how that pretty piquant little fairy, the “master’s daughter,” would point it with something higher than ambition.

There were at that period in Manchester two schools for young ladies, which, being celebrated at the time, deserve to be mentioned. The one was situated at the extreme end of Bradshaw Street, looking through its vista across Shudehill to the gaps in brickwork called Thomas Street and Nicholas Croft, where in highly genteel state Mrs. (or Madame, as she insisted on being called) Broadbent superintended the education of a large and very select circle.

Education must have been at a low ebb when the chief manufacturers of the town consigned their daughters to this pompous, pretentious woman, who could not speak correctly the language she professed to teach. In her attempt to appear the print and pattern of a lady, she “clipped the King’s English,” and made almost as glaring errors as Mrs. Malaprop. Yet, strange to say, she turned out first-class pupils (for the period). The fact is, she was shrewd enough to know her own deficiencies, and delegated her duties to others who were in all respects efficient.

Then she was a wonderful trumpeter of her own fame; made frequent visitations at houses where she was well entertained, and her bombast was listened to for the sake of her young charges; held half-yearly recitations, and also exhibitions of the plain sewing, embroidery, knitting, knotting, filigrees, tambour, and lace work of her pupils; and matrons proud of their own daughters’ achievements seldom paused to reckon up the tears, the headaches, the heartaches, the sore fingers which those minutely-stitched shirts, those fine lace aprons and ruffles, those pictures and samplers had cost. For Madame Broadbent, besides being a martinet rigid in her rule—having a numbered rack for pattens and slippers, numbered pegs for cloaks and hats, book-bags and work-bags, safe-guards (receptacles for sewing, &c., like a huckster’s pocket) and slates, all numbered likewise—was not of too mild a temper, and had a _penchant_ for pinching her pupils’ ears until the blood tinged her nails; and stocks for the feet, backboards for the shoulders, and dry bread diet were her prescriptions for the cure of such delinquencies as an unauthorised word, an omitted curtsey, a bag or garment on the wrong hook, a dropped stitch in knitting, a blotted copy, a puckered seam; and work had to be done and undone until stitches were almost invisible, and little eyes almost blind. She had other peculiarities, had Madame Broadbent—but my portrait is growing too large for its frame, and she was not a large personage at all.

It was to this delectable individual’s school (“establishments” had not been invented then, or hers would have been one) that Miss Augusta Ashton was consigned for conversion into a well-behaved, well-informed, useful, and accomplished young lady.

Her cousins, the Misses Chadwick, had in their turn escaped from this penitentiary for the manufacture of ladyhood. But in Piccadilly was a school of a very different description, where young ladies of talent and fortune went to qualify for _wifehood_; and here at this time Ellen Chadwick was finishing her education, with many others, in learning _the culinary art_ in all its branches.

How came it that Madame Broadbent’s school flourished and survived the decay of its neighbourhood, being in existence when the writer of this was a child, and the other had died and been forgotten, save by the antiquary, before she was born?

To fetch Miss Ashton home from Madame Broadbent’s on dark or stormy afternoons, was the understood duty of one or other of the apprentices; but Kit Townley, having no more liking for wet weather than a cat, generally contrived to be out of earshot when his services were required. It devolved on Jabez, therefore, to carry the grey duffel hooded cloak with which to cover the dainty one of scarlet kerseymere, to tie the pattens on the tiny feet, to carry the school-bag, and hold the brilliant blue gingham umbrella over the head elevated by the pattens so much nearer to his shoulder, and to be thanked by one of the sweetest voices in the world.

It was dangerous work, though no one knew it, least of all Jabez. True, she was only a child, but she was tall for her age. And was he much more than a boy? A boy let out from the seclusion of an almost monastic institution, to whom her little airs and graces, her petty vanities, her very waywardness and caprice, only made her beauty more piquant.

Madame Broadbent’s infallibility being taken for granted, all attempts to make known school troubles and grievances were met with “Never tell tales out of school,” from Mrs. Ashton, but they were poured fresh and warm into the ear of Jabez, as she trotted by his side; and he, his school-days unforgotten, listened with ready sympathy. And this went on as months and years went by, adding to her stature, narrowing the space between them; and he still did duty as her humble escort, unless when Kit Townley was especially told off for the service and went reluctantly, grumbling at being made “lackey to a school miss.”

Yet Kit Townley did not think it any degradation to play practical jokes on Jabez, or on Kezia, leaving the younger apprentice to bear the blame. Billets of wood, scuttles of coal, pails of water brought in for her use by Jabez, were dexterously removed to doorways and other unsuspected places, where “cook” was sure to stumble over them, and then cuff Jabez for his carelessness or wilfulness, all protestations on his part being disregarded. Creeping behind the settle where Jabez sat watching, and perhaps basting the roast for the master’s table for late dinners on company days, he would steal his sly arm round the corner, himself unseen, and lifting the wheel of the spit out of the smoke-jack chain, bring spit and all thereon into the dripper, with a splash which brought the irate Kezia down on astounded Jabez with whatsoever weapon of offence came nearest to her hand, from the paste-pin to the basting-ladle, or even a saucepan lid; it was all one to Kezia.

From Kezia, however, these frequent chances and mischances went to Kezia’s mistress; and appearances being against him, the very steadiness of denial, unaccompanied with any accusation of another (other waggeries of Kit Townley in the warehouse being also laid on his shoulder), Mrs. Ashton’s faith in the youth was somewhat shaken, and he was conscious of being under a cloud. But still he kept on his way and looked to the end.

The cloud dispersed after a while. Kit Townley was something of a glutton, with a very boy’s love of pastry and sweets. It so happened that on a special occasion (rejoicing for peace or something) Kezia had set aside in her roomy pantry, the door of which fastened only with a button, a tray of tartlets, custards, a trifle, moulds of jelly and blanc-mange, and other dainties for a large party. Kit’s mouth watered to get at these things. Often and often had he stolen the fruit from under a pie-crust, and sat silent while Jabez bore the blame, but now he meditated a more sweeping raid. There was a fine retriever in the yard. Watching Kezia out of the way, he crammed mouth and pockets with the pastry, and made an inroad into the trifle. Then he whistled to Nelson, raised the dog on his hind feet, and printed the forepaws on the pantry-shelf, dishes, and tart-tray, and round the button of the door.

But he was compelled to wait until bed-time to fairly enjoy his spoil, and then could not manage it unknown to his companion. Hoping to close the other’s mouth literally and figuratively, he offered him a share, but Jabez told him he was not a receiver of stolen goods, and left him to digest that with his feast. It was a harder morsel than even Jabez knew.

The next morning before breakfast they were in the warehouse, when there was heard a terrible commotion in the yard. From the back windows Kezia was seen belabouring Nelson with a broomstick, her face redder than ordinary, whilst the poor beast whined piteously.

Jabez ran down to interpose, and the infuriated woman turned on him, then ran in her rage to fetch her mistress to witness the damage done, and the footprints of the depredator, and to own that punishment was just.

But as Mrs. Ashton ascended the warehouse stairs that afternoon, she heard Jabez and Kit loud in altercation, and before they were aware she possessed a clue to much that had gone before.

Something Jabez had said was answered by a loud guffaw from Kit, and the words—

“Let them laugh that win. I call it a deuced good joke.”

“And I call it cowardly and dishonourable to let the poor beast suffer for your greediness,” Jabez answered, indignantly.

“Now don’t you put in your oar, young yellow-skirt. I’ll let no charity-boy hector over me,” blustered Kit.

Jabez put down a bundle of umbrella whalebones he had on his shoulder, to confront the other, then counting ferules into dozens. Umbrellas used to have brass ferules, like elongated thimbles, on the sticks.

“Look you, Kit, I’ve borne many a scurvy trick of yours without saying a word, but I will not even give the sanction of silence to dishonesty, and will not see a noble animal ill-used to screen a coward.”

“Won’t you?” sneered Kit, “then we’ll see whose word weighs heaviest.”

Mrs. Ashton came into the room.

“Townley,” said she, “your word will not weigh down a feather henceforth,” adding in the same dignified tone, “Are those ferules counted? Jackson is waiting for them.”

No further notice was taken, but Jabez soon found he stood on a firmer footing in house and warehouse. Mrs. Ashton remarked to her husband, as she finished dressing for their dinner-party—

“It was a slight circumstance, William, but straws show which way the wind blows.”

And he tapped his silver snuff-box, and said “Just so;” then courteously offering his hand to his fine-looking wife, led her from the room, her purple velvet robe trailing after her, the plumes on her head nodding as they went.

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.

IN WAR AND PEACE.

A clap of thunder burst over Europe, and the great war eagle flapped his monstrous wings again. Napoleon had escaped from Elba ere crops had had time to grow on his trampled battle-fields; yet crops of men rose ripe for the sickle, and home expectations were dashed to the ground.

How many an anxious parent, how many a longing, love-sick maiden, looked for her warrior back from Canada or the Continent, if only on furlough or sick-leave! How many a weary soldier, sated with blood, looked for discharge with pension or reward, and thirsted for the fountain of home joys!

And from how many lips was the cup of delight dashed when the cry “To arms!” rang out from mount to vale, from peak to peak, from town to town, and the sheathed sword flashed forth to light, and forges belched forth flame through day and night, preparing for fresh holocausts in the new carnival of blood!

Trade centres at all such times are most convulsed, as being also centres of humanity—depôts whence fresh relays are drafted from the ranks of men whose peaceful work is at a sudden standstill. But that war blast came like a fiery flash, and commerce, only then a feeble convalescent, sank crushed and hopeless.

Mr. Chadwick felt it keenly, and, but that his more cautious and wealthy brother-in-law came to his help with hand as open as his snuff-box, his credit must have gone. His two eldest sons had gone from him, drawn away by the phantom Glory. One, Richard, was a midshipman upon Collingwood’s ship; the other, Herbert, a lieutenant in the 72nd, or Manchester Volunteers, had departed with his regiment to fight in the Peninsular. A third son, John, had been left to do his quiet duty in the counting-house, but Death had laid its clutches on him soon after his sister Charlotte’s marriage, and Ellen alone kept the house from utter desolation.

She was a girl of strong feelings and quick impulses, but pursued her way with so little show or pretence, she was hardly accredited with all the comfort she brought to the hearth; and scarcely her mother even suspected how that hidden heart of hers could throb—how intense were her emotions.

Her love for every member of the family was deep, but when her brother John died, after the first terrible outburst of grief she dried her tears, and by mere force of will set herself to soothe those who had lost a son. The prolonged absence of the others had been fruitful of pain, and the glad prospect of Herbert’s return now blighted came to her, as to father and mother, with a shock like a stab.

There was another hearth we have ere-while visited—a hearth which, thanks to Jabez, and a few months’ regular employment for the batting-rods and the tanner’s plunger, was less poverty-stricken than it had been—and where Hope had held out delusive banners to herald a soldier’s return, only to furl them again for another march, before eye could meet eye, or lip meet lip.

Thirteen years had come and gone since last Tom Hulme and Bessy Clegg had looked woefully upon each other—thirteen years of unrecorded trial and suffering—yet still they were apart. The home in which he had known her first, Tanner’s Bridge, on which he had first made love to her, had been swept away to make room for Ducie Bridge and a new high-road; and the best years of her womanhood were passing too. Would he ever come back whilst grey-haired Simon could bless their union? Would he ever come back again? Tears fell on Bess’s batting; and Simon had not one word of comfort to give her. Even Matt Cooper, who had long since resigned himself to his widowhood, was magnanimous enough to be sorry.

The new war between the “Corsican Vampire” and allied Europe was fortunately of short duration; but how much of carnage and misery was compressed into that campaign which had its brilliant close at Waterloo!

In the onset of that terrible conflict, Herbert Chadwick and a cousin, fighting side by side, fell in a storm of grape-shot like green corn under an untimely shower of hail, and their blood went to fertilise the Belgian farmer’s future crops of wheat.

Herbert was his father’s favourite son. Not a mail-morning passed but the old man made one of the crowd hurrying down the narrow way called Market-street-lane to the Exchange, to catch a sight of whatever bulletins might be posted up; and, his own mind relieved, sent an apprentice from the Fountain-street warehouse with the words, “All’s well!” to cheer up those at home. That dreadful morning when his fearful eye ran down the black list of the killed at Waterloo, and rested on Lieutenant Chadwick’s name, the letters seemed to turn blood-red: he shrivelled up like a maple-leaf in a blighting wind; his face and limbs began to twitch, and he fell forward into the arms of a bystander, in a fit.

He was carried by compassionate hands to the nearest house, that of John Shaw, the saddler. A merchant on ’Change (Mr. Aspinall) undertook to break the doubly-calamitous intelligence to Mrs. Chadwick. Dr. Hardie, whom the general excitement had drawn to the spot, was with him in an instant, his white neckcloth was loosened, and, whipping out a lancet, the doctor bled him in the arm without delay. He rallied sufficiently to bear lifting into a carriage, kindly placed at the doctor’s disposal to convey him home.

Dr. Hull was already in waiting. All that their united skill could suggest was tried. His recovery was slow and imperfect; he dragged his right leg after him; he was paralysed for life. He was not a young man, and the supreme shock, coming as it did above a pressure of commercial difficulties, had been too much for him.

It was an overwhelming disaster; but in anxiety and active care for the stricken one, whose life was in imminent peril, the sharp edge of the keener stroke was blunted for Ellen and her mother.

The Ashtons were, as ever, kind and thoughtful.

“William,” said Mrs. Ashton, meditatively to her husband over the tea-urn, the day after Mr. Chadwick’s attack, “we must not forget that if John is not related to us, Sarah” (Mrs. Chadwick) “and Ellen are. ‘Blood is thicker than water;’ and it will not do, for their sakes, to let John’s business go to rack and ruin for want of supervision.”

“Just so, just so,” he replied, reflectively, taking his snuff-box out of his pocket mechanically, and putting it back again unopened, as contrary to tea-table propriety; “I have been thinking the same myself. I will go round to the warehouse to-morrow, and see how matters stand; we must keep things ship-shape somehow till John is himself again.”

And he was as good as his word, though he had really never thought about it until prompted by his clear-headed wife. He had a habit of thus falling in with her suggestions, though had any one hinted that he followed the lead of a woman, so much younger than himself too, he would have rejected the imputation with scorn. With returning peace came joyful restorations to many homes, humble as well as lofty.

Before the time of their extreme privation, before even Simon was out of work, he had taken one of the smallest of the garden-plots on the higher ground on the opposite side of the Irk, and cultivated it in what little leisure he had, Bess giving him a helping hand occasionally. And by the sale of penny posies to Sunday ramblers from the town, and herbs and salad to the market women in Smithy door, he did his best to beat back the gaunt wolf when the wolf came.

Bess had laid by her batting-wands, put a turf in the grate to kindle up a handful of cinders and slack to boil their supper-porridge, for, though Autumn was striding on, they could not waste fuel on a mid-day fire; Simon was away working in his garden, whilst the daylight held; and she sat, as she frequently did now, on a low stool in front of the grate, her elbows on her knees, and her head on her hands, watching, in a kind of hazy dream, the red glow creeping through the heart of the turf, when a footstep on the threshold caused her to turn round.

Like a picture framed by the doorway, stood the tall figure of a bronzed soldier, with his left arm in a sling. Before the sharp cry of joy had well left her lips, his other arm was around her—both hers around his neck; their lips met in a long kiss, which told of pain and trouble past, and love through all; and then her head fell on his shoulder in a fit of convulsive sobbing such as had not shook her frame for years.

Sorrow and joy have both their baptism of tears!

It was a glad sight for Simon to see them sitting, with their hands locked in each other’s, side by side on an old box, which served them for a seat—all Simon’s lost furniture had not come back—silent from excess of happiness, yet radiant as though the glow of youth were returning in the Midsummer of their lives.

In the roughest war-time the common requirements of life have to be satisfied, and peaceful trades and arts are of necessity carried on, albeit they flourish not. And the farther from the seat of war, and the less private interest is involved, the less business and household routine is fringed on.

Thus Mr. Ashton, whose large capital had enabled him to bide the issues of the Continental and American stoppage of trade, and who had no nearer relatives in danger than his wife’s nephews, pursued his way in comparative quiet. Indeed, he was an easy-going man with much less vigour of character than his wife; and she bore little resemblance to her own sister.

So we may carry our readers away from the poorly-furnished room in a fetid Long Millgate-yard, leaving the re-united lovers to the enjoyment of the present and their reminiscences of the past, and look in upon the Ashtons in their cosy tea-room _before_ Waterloo cast a black shadow over the family.

It was a spacious apartment (as were most of the rooms in that habitation), the walls above the surbase (a wooden moulding some two feet above the skirting-board) were painted a warm dove colour, the surbase and all below in two shades of light blue. The window-tax—a result of war—laid an embargo on light, by restricting size and number, so the house, like most in the neighbourhood, having been built subsequently to “Billy Pitt’s” obnoxious impost, there were only two windows, and those were narrow. They were draped with heavy curtains, and festooned valances of dove-coloured moreen, trimmed with blue orris-lace, and worsted-bullion fringe, with spiral silken droplets here and there to shimmer in the rays of sun or chandelier. For there was a chandelier, of fanciful device, pendent from the wonderfully moulded ceiling, a septenary of lacquered serpents, whose interlaced and twisted tails met upwards, separated below in graceful coils, and branching out their seven heads, turned up their gaping jaws to close them on wax-lights. The chandelier was no misnomer; but the fiery serpents kept their flames for state occasions, when the serpent branches on each side the long Venetian looking-glass, between the windows, were on duty likewise. There was another Venetian glass above the high-painted chimney-piece, so elaborately carved, but here the serpent candelabra lit the room for common use, and were supplemented with lights in tall silver candlesticks upon the centre table.

Spanish mahogany alike were chairs, and table, and Miss Augusta’s grand piano—ranged against the wall from the door, so that the window light should fall upon the keys—and chairs and tables were alike club-footed, massive, and plain; there were two folded card tables, a cellaret, and a work-table, all with tapering legs and club-feet; and there was a ponderous sofa on the flower-besprent Brussels carpet, which, without the adventitious aid of artificial steel springs, was elastic and soft, and wooed the weary to rest aching limbs or aching head upon its cushions. There were no anti-macassars—hair-seating did not soil readily.

The air was odorous with rose, lavender, and jessamine, for the windows were both open, and what little air there was stirring swept over a large summer nosegay in a china vase between the windows. The mahogany teaboard was set with miniature unhandled cups and saucers of china, more precious than the fragrant decoction they were designed to hold; the brass tea-urn hissed and spluttered; Mrs. Ashton in a rich dress sat at the table to infuse the tea; Mr. Ashton had drawn his softly-cushioned easy-chair nearer; it was past five by the tall clock in the hall, and Miss Augusta had not presented herself.

As a thorough business woman, Mrs. Ashton was punctuality itself. She expected her family to be punctual also. Five o’clock, the Manchester hour for tea, and no Augusta!

“James!” (to the footman), “inquire for Miss Ashton; she is not kept in at school—it is a holiday.”

As the man retired, Augusta, in a white cambric frock heavy with tambour-work, tripped in at the door, her diaper pinafore not so clean as it might have been, her hands full of something which she set down on a side table.

“It is past five o’clock, Augusta; where have you been until now? And how came Cicily to send you in to tea with a soiled pinafore?” asked Mrs. Ashton, with the quiet dignity which seldom relaxed.

“Is it? I did not hear the clock strike, I was so busy; and Cicily has not seen my pinafore,” was Augusta’s light consecutive reply.

“So busy!—Cicily not seen you!” her mother exclaimed in surprise. “Let me look at your hands. I am shocked, Augusta! What would Mrs. Broadbent say?” (The hands were worse than the pinafore.) “Have I not told you repeatedly that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness?’ Go to Cicily and be washed immediately, or you can have no tea.”

Augusta pouted.

“Must I, papa?”

The management of this child was the only point on which Mr. and Mrs. Ashton differed.

“Well, my dear, your mamma says so; but I think for this once it may be overlooked, if you will be more careful another time,” said he, willing to excuse and temporise.