Chapter THE TENTH: First Antagonism (7)

A small match will kindle a large flame if combustibles be there. Fired by her too apparent satisfaction, and Mrs. Ashton’s presence, his excessive vanity induced him to perform what, with the imperfect skates of the period, was a distinguished feat. He was ordinarily proud of his calligraphy. Now, he wound and twisted, lifted his skates or dashed them down, until he had scored upon the ice an alphabet in bold capitals; but whether he had miscalculated his space, or the strength of the ice—broken into for the use of cattle at the upper end—or the crowd of inquisitive or envious followers had been too great for its resistance as he had made the last curl of the letter Z, the ice gave way, and he was plunged in up to the neck, amid the shrieks of women and the shouts of men. His chin had caught upon the ice with a stunning blow; but it rested there, and, aided by the buoyancy of the water beneath, upheld him until, with returning sense, he struggled to bring his shoulders above the surface, and upheave himself. He trod the water, and it sustained him, but the _ice_ would not. He was forced to content himself with the use of his hands beneath as paddles, to relieve the pressure on his chin, and wait for help, which seemed an eternity in coming.

He had been in the water some time when Jabez and Mr. Ashton appeared on the scene, amongst women shrieking with affright, and men rushing about without presence of mind, or paralysed to powerlessness. Mr. Travis alone seemed to have a thought, and he had sent for ropes and hatchets to cut a way to him through the ice itself. But there was a question, would his strength hold out?

“Will no one save him? Will no one save him?” cried Augusta, piteously.

“Fifty pounds to him who will save my son!” was the cry of the frantic father, who had witnessed the accident from his own carriage window. “A hundred!—two hundred pounds!—five hundred pounds to anyone who will save him!”

“It’s noan a bit o’ use, measter,” said a working man, with a shake of his head. “Men wunna chuck their lives aweay for brass; an’ yon ice is loike a pane o’ glass wi’ a stone through it.”

Unfortunately, impulsive Ben Travis had darted forward to his rescue at the outset, and his ponderous weight had cracked the already broken ice in all directions. He had himself retreated with difficulty; and now no offers of reward would tempt men to put their own lives in peril, though Kit Townley was there, urging others to the attempt, and Bob, the ex-groom, had rushed for ropes they had neither pluck nor skill to use, since a noosed cord, flung like a lasso, would have strangled him.

“Oh! save him; save him, Jabez!” implored Augusta, as he and her father came up.

Jabez looked at her strangely. His head seemed to spin. His face went livid as that on the ice. Had his secret devotion no other end than this? True, she had called him “Jabez,” but so she had called him in his servitude. She had appealed to him as one she trusted in implicitly; but the appeal sounded as made for one she loved, and that was not himself, but he who, as boy and man, had wounded him in soul and body. The very tone of her cry was as a knell to his hopes and himself. It was his foe and his rival who was perishing! Was he called upon to risk his life to warm a serpent to sting him again? The conflict in his breast was sharp and terrible. “If thine enemy hunger, give him food,” seemed to float in his ears.

There was a small gloved hand on his arm, a pale, sweet face looking up into his. The moments were flying fast.

“Oh! Jabez, Jabez, do try!”

“I will,” said he, hoarsely.

Had he not often declared in his secret heart that he would give his life to serve her?—and should he be ungenerous enough to shrink now?

“It is folly to attempt. I forbid it!” exclaimed Mrs. Ashton, laying her hand on his arm. And Ellen Chadwick, pale as Augusta, tried to stop him with—“You must not! you must not! You will perish!”

Even strangers from the crowd warned him back. But he was gone ere Mrs. Chadwick softly recalled her daughter to herself. “Hush! Ellen. This is not seemly. Mr. Clegg will attempt nothing impossible.”

He hurried to the side nearest Laurence; called to him, “Keep up; help is coming!”—asked for ladders; gave a word or two of instruction to Mr. Ashton and Travis; sent Nelson on the ice to try its strength; secured a rope round his own waist; then, lying flat on the cold ice, cautiously felt his way to the farther side of Aspinall, whose eyes were closed, and whose strength was ebbing fast. He hardly heard the words of cheer addressed to him.

Two long ladders had been lashed side by side to give breadth of surface. These, by the help of cords and Nelson, whose sagacity was akin to reason, he drew across the cracked and gaping ice; and crept slowly from rung to rung, watched from the land breathlessly, until he reached his almost insensible rival. With rapidly benumbing fingers he secured strong ropes beneath each shoulder, sending Nelson back to the bank with the main line, in case his own strength was insufficient to lift the dead weight of Laurence, or that the ice should yield beneath the double weight.

Someone sent a brandy-flask back by the dog.

“Can you swallow?” he asked. There was no answer, but a gurgle.

He moistened the blue lips, while the head bent slightly back, introduced a small quantity of the potent spirit between his set teeth; and, having warmed himself by the same means, essayed to lift the freezing skater, who was almost powerless to aid. But the latter with an extreme effort raised an arm above the ice, and grasped recumbent Jabez. And now Nelson proved his worth. He set his teeth in Aspinall’s high coat-collar, and tugged until their united strength drew him upwards and across the ladder sledge, almost as stiff and helpless as a corpse.

To lessen the weight, Jabez crept from the ladders; they were drawn to the side with their living freight before he himself was out of danger; for the heavy pressure and the swift motion set the ice cracking under him, and with extreme difficulty he dragged himself to the bank to sink down on the hardened snow, overcome by the strain of mind and muscle, whilst the approving crowd set up a shout, and Augusta Ashton thanked him tremulously.

“I’m afraid, Clegg, you’ve spent your strength for a dead man,” said Travis, grasping his hand warmly, “and Aspinall was scarcely worth it, alive or dead.”

But Jabez made no reply. He rose slowly and painfully, shook off the congratulatory crowd of strangers and friends, on the plea of needing to “warm and dry himself,” refused pointblank to accept the grateful hospitality of Mr. Aspinall, and taking the proffered arm of Travis, turned towards the “George and Dragon,” as little like one who had done a noble action as could be imagined.

Mr. Ashton followed, tapping his gold snuff-box in wonder and perplexity. He saw that something was wrong, but knew not that Augusta’s hasty thanks had closed the young man’s heart against all but its own pain.

CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH.

BLIND!

So white, so cold, so still was the rigid figure borne from the pond to Mr. Aspinall’s house, Travis might well count him “a dead man,” as the rumour ran concerning him; and feeble old Kitty set up a lamentation as over the dead.

Mrs. Ashton, who knew that to be a home without a thinking woman at its head, volunteered her services, and entered the house with the bearers, leaving the trembling Augusta with their friends. She gently put the old woman aside, and felt pulse and heart.

“There is life,” said she, “and while there is life there is hope. Keep tears until there is time to shed them; now we must act.” Then turning to the scared and scurrying servants, she gave her orders much as though she had been in her own warehouse, and with a stately authority there was no disputing.

The butler was bidden to “Bring brandy, quick!” The footman was required to “wheel this sofa to the fire, and pile up the coals!” A maid was asked for “hot blankets without delay!” and moaning Kitty was set to work to “help to strip her young master and chafe his limbs.” And so promptly were her clear, cool orders obeyed, that when the doctor arrived in hot haste with Mr. Aspinall, half his work was done. The pulse had quickened and the limbs began to glow, though the eyelids remained closed.

Most grateful then was Mr. Aspinall for the efficient matronly service rendered to his motherless boy by the stately lady, who was drawn nearer to him in his helplessness by her own kindly act than by all the conciliatory visits and peace-offerings with which Laurence had himself sought to propitiate her. And for _once_ Mr. Aspinall accepted a kindness as a favour, not as a tribute to his personal importance, and he placed his carriage at the disposal of Mr. Ashton and herself for their return home, without a sign of his usual self-inflation.

His importance received a considerable shock, however, when he called at the house in Mosley Street the following day to report progress, and relieve himself of his obligation to his son’s preserver by paying over the five hundred pounds he had in his extremity offered as a reward.

“I do not think Mr. Clegg will accept a reward,” said Mr. and Mrs. Ashton in a breath.

“Not accept it!” and the portly figure seemed to swell; “five hundred pounds is a large sum for a young man in his position; only a fool or a madman would refuse it.”

“Just so, just so,” replied Mr. Ashton, offering his open snuff-box to his visitor, whilst Mrs. Ashton stirred the fire as a sort of dubious disclaimer; “but I think, for all that, you will find we are right; Mr. Clegg is not a common man, and is not actuated by common motives.—My dear?” He nodded, and Mrs. Ashton pulled the bell-rope.

Mulberry-suited James answered on the instant.

“Mr. Clegg is wanted.”

Mr. Clegg, labouring under the disadvantage of a cold caught the previous afternoon, to which any huskiness of voice might be attributed, obeyed the summons. He was presented duly to Mr. Aspinall, and much to that gentleman’s surprise, was invited to take a seat.

“Absolutely invited to take a seat!” as he afterwards recounted in indignation to a friend; “these Whigs have no respect for a gentleman’s feelings.”

Nor had Jabez. He was pale enough when he entered, but his face flushed, his lips compressed, and the scar on his brow showed vividly, as Mr. Aspinall drew forth a roll of crisp bank-notes from his pocket-book, and loftily offered to him the reward he had “earned by his bravery.”

He flushed, put back the notes with a movement of his hand, and said, coldly: “You owe me nothing, sir. The meanest creature on God’s earth should have freely such service as I rendered to your son. I cannot set a price on life.”

“But I offered the reward, and the fact is, I must discharge the debt. Reconsider, young man, it is a large sum: many a man starts the world with less.”

“A large sum to pay for your son’s life, or for mine, sir?” interrogated Jabez, drawing himself up stiffly; adding, without waiting for reply, “I do not sell such service, sir. You owe me nothing. Let your son thank Miss Ashton for his life; he is her debtor, not mine.”

The words seemed to rasp over a nutmeg-grater, they came so hoarsely, as did his request for leave to withdraw; and he closed the door on the five hundred pounds, and on the smiles of husband and wife, before the rebuffed cotton merchant could master his indignation to reply.

The notes in his palm were light enough, but lying there they represented liberality contemned; a debt unpaid; an undischarged obligation to an inferior; and not thrice their value in gold could have pressed so heavily on Mr. Aspinall as that last consideration. The frigid manner of Jabez he construed into Radical impudence; he resented the salesman’s repudiation of reward as a personal affront, and did not scruple to express his views openly, then and there, winding up with a question which startled his interlocutors.

“What did the singular young man mean by his reference to Miss Ashton?”

Had they followed the “singular young man” across the hall to the sanctuary of his own sitting-room, seen him dash himself down into a chair, and bury his head in his hands on the table with unutterable anguish on his face, and heard burst from his lips—more as a groan than embodied thought—“Oh, Augusta, adored Augusta, what a presumptuous madman I have been!”—they would but have had half the answer. But had they mounted the polished oaken stairs to the dainty chamber where Augusta Ashton lay in bed with a “cruel headache,” brought on by the fright, and eyes red with weeping at the catastrophe which had befallen her adorable admirer, the gallant lieutenant, and heard her half-audible lamentations, the answer might have been complete.

Mrs. Ashton had heard Augusta’s frantic appeal to Jabez at at the pond, had seen him stagger and turn livid as if shot, noted the inward struggle ere he said, “I will;” but she had ascribed it to old and unforgiven injuries, and thinking it hard that he should be called upon to hazard his life for his known enemy with chances so heavy against him, had herself forbidden the attempt. This was all the solution she had to offer Mr. Aspinall. In the excitement of the accident and the rescue, she had overlooked Augusta’s excessive emotion, but now her mother’s heart took alarm. Could it be that the younger eyes of Jabez had seen a preference for the handsome scapegrace which she had not?

The matter was talked over by husband and wife long after Mr. Aspinall had left; and the anxious mother questioned the maiden in the privacy of her own room, to come thence with the sad conviction that Augusta had prematurely been led captive by a handsome face and a dashing air, irrespective of worth or worthlessness. Yet she consoled herself and Mr. Ashton with the reflection. “It is, after all, only a girlish fancy, and will die out.”

“Just so, and as the young rake is laid by the leg for one while, there is all the more chance,” assented Mr. Ashton.

“If his immersion does not convert him into a hero,” added the matron, with a clearer knowledge of her daughter. Yet neither asked themselves how the intuitive perception of Jabez came to be more acute than their own, nor what power impelled him to risk his life for an enemy at the mere bidding of Augusta. Indeed, they set the hazardous exploit down to the score of magnanimity and bravery only.

Equally unobservant were they of Ellen Chadwick’s remonstrance, or her feverish watch of every perilous turn Jabez and Nelson had taken on the ice, or of the caresses she lavished on the dog when all was over. Only Mrs. Chadwick had seen that, as she had seen fainter signs years before; but she held her peace, and, having a leaven of her sister’s pride, “hoped she was mistaken.”

There were three young hearts consumed by the same passion—that which lies at the root of the happiness or misery of the world,—one nursing the romance, two fighting against its hopelessness in silence and concealment; but “the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.”

Jabez Clegg could not tell when he had not loved Augusta Ashton, from the time when she was young enough to play about the ware-rooms, or to be lifted across the muddy roadways in his strong apprentice arms, when it was his pleasant duty to protect her to and from school. But he could trace back the time when Hogarth’s prints gave to that love a definite shape, and he began to look upon his master’s daughter as a prize to be attained. All things had tended to confirm his belief in its possibility, and love and ambition had gone hand in hand, and fed each other. The child had come to him for companionship and entertainment, the girl under his protection had confided to him her school-day troubles, and come to him for help in difficulties, with lessons on slate or book. She had looked up to him, trusted him, clung to him; and though she was as a star in his firmament, he had had a sort of vague impression that the star which shone upon him from afar would draw nearer, and, as he rose to it, come down to meet him.

His first sharp awakening was her reminder that the pair of intoxicated officers who had insulted her in the theatre were “gentlemen,” and so not to be chastised by _him_. His second—and then jealousy added a sting—was meeting Aspinall face to face in the hall, when the latter smilingly bowed himself out on his first visit. And now he brooded in despair over the final dissipation of his dream beneath the icicle-hung boughs on Ardwick Green; for the first time conscious that she belonged to another sphere.

Never by look or word had he done himself, or her, or her parents, the dishonour of giving expression to his ambitious love; and now another had looked on his divinity, and won her for himself. It came upon him like a flash when that white-faced agony, that piteous cry, called him to imperil his own life—worthless in the scale against another, and _that_ other. It came upon him with a flash that scathed like lightning. He had forgiven the boy Aspinall long ago; and the man—well, Augusta’s happiness demanded the sacrifice, and he had made it. Out of his very love for Augusta he had saved the rival’s life she had prayed for. And he had been offered _money_ for the act which wrecked his own life. Thank God he had rejected it with scorn!

A kind hand laid on his shoulder interrupted a reverie which had induced torpor.

“Mr. Clegg, you are ill—your cold requires attention. You had better seek repose: you are quite feverish.”

Repose! The man’s soul was on fire, as well as his body. Yet from his chamber a fortnight later emerged a grave business man, without an apparent thought beyond the warehouse.

And what of Laurence Aspinall, whom we left with closed eyes, wrapped in blankets, on a sofa? He had hung suspended in the water for an hour by the clock in the tower of St. Thomas’ ivy-clad church; and notwithstanding he had kept his limbs and the water in motion so long as he had power, the chill had extended upwards, and though life had been called back, sight and reason were in abeyance.

Shorn of his rich curls, for weeks he raved and struggled in the grasp of brain fever; and old Kitty, forgetting everything but her promise to his dead mother, watched and tended him night and day, albeit nurses from the Fever-Ward relieved each other in their well-paid care of him.

The frost was gone; vegetation, bound so long, had leapt upwards from its chains. Lilacs and May-buds greeted him with perfume through the open windows, and even the daffodil and narcissus sent up their incense from the brim of the garden-pond when he began to show signs of amendment.

“Better,” “Much better,” were the answers to inquirers (among whom may be cited Kit Townley, and Bob, their sometime groom); but the lilac and the hawthorn ripened and faded, and the daffodils gave place to the wallflower and carnation, and the rosebuds opened their ripe lips to June, yet the rich cotton merchant’s son saw nothing of the glow.

Over the blue eyes of Laurence the lids were closed, and not an oculist in the town had skill to open them. Dr. Hull, the consulting physician of the Eye Institution, and his surgical colleagues, Messrs. Wilson and Travers, had laid their heads together over a case peculiar in all its bearings, but the lids remained obstinately shut.

At length, when Hope had folded her drooping wings in despair, and Mr. Aspinall was borne down with grief for his sightless son, someone suggested that, as water had done the mischief, water in action might cure it.

“Can he swim?” asked rough Dr. Hull curtly of Kitty.

“Swim? ay, he can do owt he shouldna do,” replied the old woman, having no faith in the value of her charge’s peculiar accomplishments.

“Is he a good swimmer?”

“Aw reckon so! He usent to swim fur wagers i’ Ardy (Ardwick) Green Pond when he wur quoite a little chap.”

“That will do.”

Mr. Aspinall was conferred with, and the next day’s mail coach took the blind patient, his father, Kitty, and one of the surgeons to Liverpool. After a night’s rest at the York Hotel, they were driven down to St. George’s Pier, a very humble presentment of what it is in this our day. Like Manchester, Liverpool has vastly swelled in size and importance within the last fifty years, and her docks have grown with the shipping needing shelter. The Mersey was not the crowded highway it is now—there were fewer ships and _no_ steamers to cross each other’s track, and set the waters in commotion, defying wind and tide.

Mr. Aspinall had engaged a boat to be in readiness. The sightless athlete was rowed a short distance from curious spectators on the pier, and then, his face being turned towards Birkenhead, he plunged into the swelling river, which he breasted like a Triton, so welcome and native seemed the element to him. And as the salt wave buoyed him up, or dashed over his cropped head, he appeared to gain fresh strength with every stroke.

Anxiously his three attendants followed in his wake, lest cramp should seize him, or his impaired strength give out before the river—there rather more than a mile in breadth—could be crossed. Yet not a yard of the distance bated he.

By instruction he had bent his course slightly down stream, so as to meet the opposing tide, then rolling in with a freshet. He struck out boldly, the very dash of the salt waves invigorating him as they broke over his bare poll, or laved his naked limbs. Still well in advance of the boat, he seemed at last to cross the current as a conqueror. He touched the shore at Rockferry, and—miracle of miracles!—his eyes were opened. Laurence Aspinall, who for weeks had cursed his darkened existence, could once more see!

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST.[21]

CORONATION-DAY.

Misfortune binds closer than prosperity. The calamity which tied Laurence Aspinall down in a strait-waistcoat to a bed of fever, with shaven head and sightless eyes, touched the Ashtons in a tender point. Themselves the parents of an only child, the very crown and glory of their lives, their sympathies went forth to Mr. Aspinall, in spite of his haughty assumption. Indeed, distress brought him down to the common level of humanity; and having neither sister, aunt, nor cousin to undertake the care of his sick son for love, and not for fee, he learned the comparative powerlessness of wealth, and hailed with all the gratitude in his nature the occasional visits of Mrs. Ashton, in whose stately bearing, no doubt, he recognised a sort of kinship.

It was, however, not Mrs. Ashton the business woman, not Mrs. Ashton the lofty lady, but Mrs. Ashton the mother who laid her cool hand on the young man’s fevered forehead, questioned the nurses, made suggestions for the benefit of the invalid, and by means of a “Ladies’ Free Registry” in Chapel Walk, found a staid woman of experience to act as housekeeper, and bring the disorganised household into order without treading on the toes of attached but incapable Kitty.

The head of Antinous shorn of its glorious locks, swathed in lotion-cloths, tossing in delirium, would scarcely appear so attractive as to fill the most timid mother with fears for a romantic daughter’s heart, and so whilst sympathy was awake vigilance slumbered. Yet never need vigilance have been more awake. She saw him as he was—Augusta, as he had been. Through other channels than the maternal she heard of his condition from day to day, and how in his delirium he had mixed up her name with the slang of the cock-pit, the race-course, and the prize-ring; but with strange infatuation she ignored all that should have warned, and clung to all that was pleasant to her own self-love. Never had she been so assiduous in her visits to her aunt Chadwick and her cousin Walmsley; and her smiling “I’ve brought my work and come to sit with you this afternoon,” should have been translated, “I hope John or Mr. Travis will drop in. They are sure to have something to say about Mr. Laurence; it is so dreadful not to know how he is going on.”

And pretty generally her calculations were correct; the two gentlemen were interested in Aspinall as a member of their yeomanry corps, apart from private friendship, and were constant in their inquiries, even finding their way to his bed-side; and Mr. Benjamin Travis, who could not very well every day manage to meet Mr. Chadwick accidentally on his way from the warehouse, and lend his stout arm as a support, appeared only too glad to be the bearer of bulletins from Ardwick, as an excuse for calling in Oldham Street and hovering about the chair or the window where Ellen Chadwick sat at her sewing or knitting, and grew silent on his entrance, blushing when she heard his footstep or his voice in the hall, from motives sadly misinterpreted.

There was no mistaking the true purport of his frequent visits and assiduous attention to the crippled old gentleman; so Augusta having settled in her own mind that Ellen was either too reserved or too shy to give her big, good-natured but timid lover proper encouragement, took upon herself to play into his hands and make opportunities for his wooing.

“What a delightful afternoon for a walk!” Whether he or she made the observation, the other was sure to assent; and then wilful Miss Augusta, unaccustomed to be gainsaid, and seconded by her aunt, also a secret ally of Ben Travis, would drag her cousin forth in defiance of any excuse or protestation, to the undisguised satisfaction of their magnificent cavalier.

It was remarkable that on these occasions, whether they took their way up Ancoats, or Dale Street, or Piccadilly, or Garret Road, they would eventually be led so near to Ardwick Green that it would have been unkind had not Mr. Travis “just stepped across to see how Mr. Laurence progressed.”

And so, too, whenever she went abroad with Cicily at her heels, or when Cicily was sent on errand, nothing would content her imperative young mistress but that she should hasten (whether in her way or out of it), with “_Mrs._ Ashton’s compliments,” to ascertain the condition of the invalid scapegrace.

Many a scolding did breathless Cicily get in consequence from angry Kezia, the queen of the kitchen, which Augusta paid her messenger for with coins, or ribbons, or kerchiefs, or smooth words, as might be most convenient at the time. And Mrs. Ashton was accredited by the Aspinalls with a degree of attention never contemplated by herself.

But there was one person in the house Augusta avoided from that afternoon at the end of March, when her fascinating hero would have lost his life but for a much humbler hero, of less pretension and fewer attractions. She might have been blind as father and mother to his attachment until that afternoon; but that one wild, impassioned, agonised look of Jabez into her eyes had opened them for ever, she felt she had tasked him beyond human endurance, and was ashamed to look him in the face.

The presumption of the ex-apprentice paled before his devotion and self-abnegation, but, self-conscious, after that first outburst of thanks on the Green, she had shrunk from meeting him in hall or staircase, and had always a reason ready why he should not be invited to their own tea-table when father or mother proposed it.

Public events march on irrespective of private joys or sorrows, and no individual goes out into the world after three months’ seclusion to find things just as he left them. The first use Laurence Aspinall made of his eyes was to look at himself in a mirror; the second on his return to Manchester, to select a substitute for the clustering curls of which he had been despoiled. Closely shut in the carriage which Mr. Ashton lightly designated a box, he was driven down Market Street, to discover that the Spirit of Improvement, “fell bane of all that’s picturesque,” had touched the ancient, many-gabled, black-and-white houses with which his earliest recollections were associated, and they were crumbling into dusty ruins before the potent incantation “Space.” It was the beginning of a very necessary widening of the main thoroughfares of the growing commercial metropolis; but the blanks in the narrow street took Laurence by surprise.

There was a newspaper the more for his restored sight to scan, albeit the _Manchester Guardian_, which Jeremiah Garnett and John Edward Taylor first gave to the world on the fifth of May, was scarcely likely to take his view of party politics, or of his share in the Peterloo massacre, which was still a disturbing element in the town. Just now the paper, which he found at the perruquier’s, was given over to the discussion of the approaching coronation of George IV., which likewise formed the theme of conversation, not only at the wig-maker’s, but whithersoever he turned when once more presentable.

Somehow, though he found his way to the warehouse, and the cockpit, and the Assembly Billiard Club, and to Tib Street, where Bob the groom had a pretty daughter very much at the young man’s disposal, he did not present himself at his Mosley Street friend’s as soon as might have been expected, considering all things; and Augusta, in the most becoming of morning robes, watching with eager expectation for his coming, began to pant and chill with the sickness of hope deferred. He was by no means the only admirer of the lovely heiress, and was sufficiently desirous to complete his conquest before other competitors were fairly in the field; but he was in perplexity how to deal with Jabez Clegg, who stood in his way after another sort. He was grateful—after a fashion—for the preservation of his life; but _ungrateful_, inasmuch as Jabez was the preserver.

“Hang it!” said he, in conference with himself, as he tied on a neck-cloth at the glass, “if the fellow had but taken the five hundred pounds, there’d have been an end of it; and one could have wiped one’s hands of him. What right had the beggarly charity-boy to refuse a reward, as if he were a gentleman, I should like to know? I wonder what Kit Townley and Walmsley were about—the cowardly ninnies—to let an upstart like that pull me out of the hole. I’d almost as lief have been drowned.”

And away went a spoiled cravat across the room in his temper; and he rummaged for a fresh one, to the detriment of linen, as he went on—

“There’s one thing, I must either bring down my pride or give up the girl, and be d—— d to it! That old Ashton, with his ‘Just so!’ like a cuckoo, would certainly shut the door in my face if I neglected to make a set speech, and thank his precious _protege_, who knocks you down with one hand and picks you up with the other. Well, I don’t feel inclined to surrender the finest girl in Lancashire, and with such a fortune as she’ll have, so I’m in for it. I must make a virtue of necessity. Egad! I’ll write to this Mr. Clegg. No, I won’t. It would be a feather in his cap to have a thanksgiving letter of mine to exhibit.”

Having at length determined his course, Mr. Laurence betook himself to Mosley Street, made his bow duly and gracefully to Mrs. Ashton and the young lady, keeping the hand of the latter as long within his own as etiquette would permit, and sending the warm blood mantling to her cheek, with a supplicating glance of devotion as potent as words. Then, with some little prolixity, he professed his desire to “thank his noble preserver” for the life he had saved; and at his request Mr. Clegg (whom he might just as well have thanked in the warehouse without ceremony) was sent for. Coming into the parlour all unwittingly as he did, to find Laurence Aspinall, handsome as ever, and more interesting from illness, standing under the lacquered-serpent chandelier in close proximity to Augusta, sparkling with animation, and blushing like the rose he had just offered her with a pretty simile, his emotions so overmastered him that the polished gentleman had him at a disadvantage, and shone in comparison.

Both Augusta and her mother noted the contrast between the elegant manner, suave tones, and rounded periods of Laurence Aspinall’s thanks and the curt disclaimer of Jabez, though their deductions were different. Augusta was in raptures with the rose-giver.

“Ah! my dear, all is not gold that glitters. There is more sterling metal in your father’s salesman, mark my words, than in the tinselled lieutenant,” was the summing-up of the elder, as she replaced cake and wine in side-board and cellaret. She was clearly no friend to Aspinall now that he had recovered sense and sight.

The town, which had been strong and outspoken in its condemnation of the new king during the trial of Queen Caroline, was now all alive with preparations to celebrate his coronation with befitting magnificence, one branch of trade vying with another which should make the greatest display in the coming procession to the Green, the like of which never had been, and never would be again. And this competition, productive of marvellous results, due, in a great measure, to trade rivalry and an ambitious desire to outshine, was set down by historians, rightly or wrongly, as a proof of the excessive loyalty of the Mancestrians.

In all classes, from the highest to the lowest, something was being done, and nothing was talked of, thought of, dreamed of, but the coronation and the procession. In courts, and alleys there were making, and mending, and washing, and no little pinching was undergone by hard-working fathers and mothers to provide the girls with white cambric frocks, tippets, and net caps, or the lads with fresh jackets and breeches and shoes, so as not to disgrace the Sunday-schools under whose banners they were to walk.

The finest horses of the Old Quay Company and Pickford’s were put into new harness and the finest condition, and every lurry (a long, flat, sideless waggon) was called into requisition. Smiths, saddlers, sign and scene painters, were at work day and night for weeks; and such was the request for banners that ladies undertook the work when skilled labour was not to be found.

The important ceremony was fixed for the 19th of July. On the 17th a deputation of small-ware weavers waited on Mr. Ashton in despair. They could get neither flag nor banner; the painter had thrown over the order at the last moment.

“An’ Tummy Worthington’s getten a foine un, measter. It’ll be a sheame an’ a disgrace to us o’ if we let Worthington’s cut us eawt.”

[The said Worthington was a rival small-ware manufacturer].

Mr. Ashton had recourse to his snuff-box, and then to his wife.

“My dear, what is to be done? There will be no flag. The painters cannot execute the jobs in hand. Worthington’s have a fine one I hear.”

“No flag! That will never do. We must have a flag. Let me consider.”

Ellen Chadwick was busy helping Augusta to make favours for the men. She looked up.

“Do you not think Mr. Clegg could paint you one?” she suggested.

Mr. Ashton brightened, but his “Just so!” was nipped in the bud by the recollection that there was no time.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” said Mrs. Ashton, and sought out Jabez.

“It is quite out of my line, but I can try. It would be a pity to disappoint the men,” answered he.

“And nothing beats trying but doing!” added Mrs. Ashton.

Silk and colours were procured. There was no leisure for complex design or elaboration. At that time the dark blue covers of the Dutch tapes in gross bore the symbolic device of the flax plant within a rude scroll. This Jabez transferred in colours to his silk on a colossal scale, both sides bearing the same emblem of their trade, more effective on its completion than any elaborate work. He had bargained to be left without interruption. The men fidgeted about the warehouse in a state of nervous trepidation (it was an important matter to them), but at dawn on the 19th it was finished, and borne off by the weavers in triumph and exultation.

Market Street Lane being in ruins at one end, and a narrow gully at the other, Mosley Street became the natural course for the procession (two miles and a half in length) from Peter’s Field to the Green, where a royal salute was to be fired; and like every other house on the line of route, Mr. Ashton’s was filled with guests, and from garret to basement every window had its streamer, and was crowded with gaily-dressed spectators, mostly feminine, the gentlemen of the town taking part in the procession, officially or otherwise. The Chadwicks and Mrs. Walmsley were there of course, and Mrs. Clough amongst others; and on another floor Jabez—who being above the warehousemen, and not a master, did not walk—had as a companion good Bess Hulme, who with her husband had come over from Whaley-Bridge, where there was, of course, a holiday. To Tom had been assigned the honour of chief standard bearer.

In all such processions the military element, with its brilliant uniforms and stirring music prevails. But here (where every item of the cavalcade had its own brass band) were also all the dignitaries of the church, with every silver badge of office resplendently burnished for the occasion; the borough-reeve, and other magistrates, and constabulary, in new uniforms; the lamplighters with new smocks, carrying their ladders and cans; the firemen and fire-engines, bright as paint and polish could make them; the gentlemen of the town, all with favours; the Sunday-school children, marshalled under their respective banners or tablets, walking six abreast; the Ladies’ Jubilee School; the Green-Coat School; and the Blue-Coat School, on which Jabez looked down with curiously-mingled feelings.

But the marked feature of the magnificent procession was the display made by the trades, with their banners, a lurry accompanying each, bearing well-dressed workmen and machines in full operation.

At the head of these came two figures, representing Adam and Eve, in a perfect bower of greenery, as representatives of the primitive condition before dress was invented. They were followed by a lurry, on which tailors (whose art is the first on record) sat cross-legged, and stitched and pressed, as if on a shopboard, whilst a select band of journeymen walked after, bearing minature miniature garments on wands, or ferruginous geese and sleeveboards.

The blacksmiths wrought on their anvil, and carried also on long poles, horse-shoes, &c. The brass and copper smiths, likewise at work, had a bright array of kettles, candlesticks, and a mounted man in armour, as had also the tin-plate workers. The glass-blowers made a goodly array, and gave away tokens as they went. The men wore hats and caps brittle and brilliant, with wavy plumes of spun glass, whilst birds, ships, goblets, and decanters on their poles glistened in the beams of the hot sun. A printing-press distributed appropriate verses, worked off in the course of the procession. And St. Crispin’s followers waxed their threads and plied their awls on boots and shoes as they and their benches were borne along, followed by their leather-aproned fraternity, holding aloft their productions, from the most gigantic of Wellingtons to the tiniest infant’s slipper.

All branches of the cotton trade were represented. There was cotton in bags; twist in bales; carding, roving, spinning, weaving, all going on under the eyes of the onlookers, with the workpeople following in their best and brightest.

Shouts and hurrahs attended the whole line of march, not wholly unaccompanied by hisses; but as the small-ware weavers passed Mr. Ashton’s the cheers were deafening. A loom was at work weaving lengths of binding for garters, on which was inwoven “God save King George IV.,” with the date, and these were lifted on long wands to the ladies at the windows on their way, or scattered to others in the street; and as Tom Hulme caught the eye of Jabez, he pointed proudly to their banner, which had no rival in all the elaborately painted flags waving in the wind, and the impromptu artist was well satisfied. But the brightest day has its cloud. As the Manchester Yeomanry went prancing past, Travis and Walmsley alike saluted the ladies at the drawing-room window, but to the pain of Jabez and the indignation of Mrs. Ashton, Lieutenant Aspinall had the audacity to kiss his hand to Augusta.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SECOND.

EVENING: INDOORS AND OUT!

The two-miles-and-a-half-long procession was not the only popular demonstration which made the Coronation of George IV. memorable in the annals of Manchester. There were no telegraph wires to flash intelligence to the supporters of Queen Caroline that she had been repulsed from the Abbey gates, and driven thence to die broken-hearted and uncrowned. So, in the absence of a cause for indignation, loyalty, or its substitute, contrived to add a pendant of disorder and excess only to be recorded as the dung-heap out of which grew flowers of promise.

As in most of the private houses along the line of route, a cold collation had been prepared for the refreshment of the friends who crowded Mr. Ashton’s open windows. But no calculation had been made of the space the unwonted pageant would cover, or the time it would occupy in passing; and Mrs. Ashton, having discovered that sight-seeing in the dust and glare of July was parching and fatiguing, issued orders for tea to be handed round when the last banner had disappeared, and before her less intimate friends should rise to depart.

In giving these orders, she unwittingly stirred the kitchen fire into a white heat. Lavish hospitality was a characteristic of the time, and when a family of good position professed to keep “open house,” it was generally equal to the most extravagant demands. But, as a rule, Mrs. Ashton had little leaning towards impromptu parties, and Kezia considerably less, preferring those grand and formal receptions which involved elaborate preparation, and placed imaginary feathers in the caps of mistress and maids.

Kezia herself considered the honour of the house involved in everything under her control being “in apple-pie order;” and the surprise which put her on her mettle, put her also in a fume.

Recalled from the window—whence her head had been poked far as the farthest—to provide tea and its concomitants for an indefinite number of strangers, she accompanied her erratic movements about her domain with explosive outbursts of spleen at “bein’ takken unawares when nowt’s ready to hand.”

“Here’s missus bin an’ ordered tay fur th’ whole boilin’ of folk up-stairs; an’ theer’s Cicily and t’other wenches a’ agog ower th’ crownation, an’ not worth ’toss of a pancake!”

She jerked out her anger in the ears of Bess Hulme, who, seated on the settle, had just lulled to sleep Mrs. Walmsley’s crying baby, which (neglected by its gaping nurse) had commemorated the day by a fall from a high bed.

Bess made a temporary couch for the baby in a snug corner, and quietly came to Kezia’s assistance; then Ellen Chadwick, intuitively perceptive of kitchen troubles, busied herself in bringing reserves of china, glass, plate, linen, and sweetmeats from closets and store-room; Cicily and Dolly came down in due time; and the credit of the establishment lost nothing in Kezia’s hands, even though there was an additional influx of visitors, and a supper also to provide.

That was Mr. Ashton’s affair. He had tired of his processional march in the broiling sun by the time they had skirted Ardwick, and defiled into Chancery Lane. The two friends by his side, Mr. John McConnell and Mr. John Green (both cotton-spinners with whom he dealt), being of the same mind, they had fallen out of the line in Ancoat’s Lane, and turned down Canal Street to the house of the latter, to refresh themselves with something less dry than snuff or road-dust.

Mr. Green was the uncle of Henry Liverseege, the artist, fragile of form and spiritual of face, but the latter was then only a genius in his nineteenth year—with fame and an early grave dimly foreshadowed. They found him on the doorstep, with his fussy and fidgety, though kind-hearted aunt, just back from Mr. Gore’s in Piccadilly, whence they had seen the show. The gentlemen’s requirement, a “draught of ale,” was soon supplied, accompanied by a spasmodic comment on the “grand display,” and the exhibition of a pair of the loyally inscribed fillets she had secured as the smallware-weavers passed.

“By-the-bye, that was a wonderfully effective banner of yours, Mr. Ashton,” interposed the thin voice of Liverseege. “Who painted it?”

“A young fellow in my employ, who occasionally designs for us,” answered Mr. Ashton, handing his snuff-box to the group in rotation—“quite a self-taught artist!”

“Indeed! It was not much like an amateur’s brush. I should like to know him. You see I do something in that way myself.” The young painter, conscious of his own latent power, was sensitively alive to undeveloped art in another.

“Would you? Just so! Then you shall. Come along, all of you, and finish the day with us. Mrs. Ashton will find us a dish of tea, and I am sure, Mrs. Green, she will be proud to see you also.” Turning to the gentlemen, who had by this time emptied their tallboy glasses, he added, “And I think I have a few bottles of rare old port waiting among the cobwebs for us to drink the King’s health.”

It was a period of much pressing and many excuses, but the excitement of the day had so far destroyed ceremony that even Mrs. Green, who was somewhat punctilious, after a little nervous trepidation anent the fitness of her last new cap for company, consented, and accepted the arm Mr. Ashton gallantly offered to pilot her across the crowded street, along which the tail of the procession had only just trailed.

Graciously, though with her natural stateliness, Mrs. Ashton received the new-comers; Mrs. Green, finding the company generally in morning visiting dress, was at ease about her cap; the tea was exhilarating; the viands toothsome; the wines excellent; there was one common topic for discussion; the ice of ceremony had thawed hours before; and genial Mr. Ashton, having locked the doors to prevent the escape of a guest before the supper he had bespoken was demolished, was thoroughly in his element.

Mrs. Ashton was not quite so much at ease, though she was too well-bred to manifest her disquiet, which had two sources. In the first place, the presumptuous salutation of Augusta by Lieutenant Aspinall had jarred a sensitive nerve. In the second, Mr. Ashton, generously impulsive, had introduced Mr. Clegg to their friends, and _as_ a friend of whom he was himself proud. She thoroughly appreciated Jabez, and equally contemplated his advancement; but she was for “making no more haste than good speed,” and considered it more prudent to raise him by insensible degrees. And as she watched her husband, radiant with good-will, cross the room with Jabez (discomposed at the very doorway by the wondering eyes of Augusta), and present him to Mr. Green and Mr. Liverseege, thus ran her thoughts:—

“Dear me! William is very inconsiderate! He will turn the young man’s head, and insult our visitors at the same time. I hope Mrs. Clough will not recognise him. How indignant she would be if she thought we expected her to associate with one who once wore her son’s cast-off clothes! Certainly he is well-conducted, and worthy in all respects, but—people don’t forget such things! If Mr. Green and Mr. McConnell only knew William was introducing our Blue-coat apprentice, what would they say?—I am glad, however, to see young Mr. Liverseege so affable with Jabez.”

To her surprise, at this juncture, Mr. McConnell drew his chair close to Jabez and Mr. Liverseege, and attributing the evident embarrassment of the former to the newness of his position, endeavoured to dissipate it by taking part in the conversation, to which quiet Mr. Green occasionally added a word. The lady, who was so afraid of touching the dignity of her friends, had not heard her less exclusive loud whisper to the two cotton-spinners, “I’m afraid I’ve committed a grave misdemeanour in Mrs. Ashton’s sight, by bringing young Clegg among our party; but kings are not crowned every day, and I thought it a good opportunity to bring a worthy lad out. You and I”—and he tapped his snuff-box—“know what Manchester men are made of, and that young fellow has good stuff in him! He was made to rise, sirs.”

Mr. Ashton’s friends nodded in acquiescence, and willing to humour their kindly host, and perhaps desirous to test the calibre of an aspirant so introduced, wittingly or unwittingly did their part in helping him to “rise” by the very distinction of their prolonged attention. It was an act quite in the way of John McConnell, who had already given a lift to his rising young countryman, Fairbairn the engineer.

Presently Mr. Chadwick, beckoning attentive Ellen to his side, and using her shoulder as a support, involuntarily seconded his brother-in-law by joining the group, and, putting out his hand to Jabez (who rose at his approach, and offered his own seat to the paralytic gentleman), said—

“Wha-at inter-rests yo-you so m-much, M-Mr. Clegg, th-that you f-forget old f-friends?”

“No, Sir, I had not forgotten you, nor Miss Chadwick either” (Ellen coloured), “but Mr. Ashton having honoured me with an introduction to Mr. Liverseege and these gentlemen” (bowing to them), “I was not at liberty to break away, had I felt so disposed.”

“We were discussing the influence of art on our local manufactures,” added Henry Liverseege, and thereupon the subject was resumed, Ellen necessarily in close attendance on her father, standing there with sparkling black eyes, an animated and attentive listener, well pleased that Mr. Clegg’s merits (as seen by her) had at length found recognition.

Meanwhile Augusta, the centre of a group of young people, indulged in sentimental chit-chat, and trifling with her fan and human hearts, completed the enslavement of her last admirer, a fair-haired Mr. Marsland; while Jabez, from his distant seat, looked and longed in vain.

Cards were, as a matter of course, proposed for the amusement of this extemporised party; and in filling up tables for whist or loo, Mrs. Ashton’s fears for the sensibility of her friends were forgotten. They were utterly put to the rout by a loud rat-tat-tat at the street-door, followed by the entrance of Mr. Clough and the Reverend Joshua Brookes, the latter less vigorous than of yore, but in a state of unusual excitement. His loud voice was heard before he was seen. “Hogs, sir, hogs! They are no better than hogs, sir!” he was saying even as he came into the drawing-room. He appeared too much ruffled to respond composedly to the kindly greetings of his many friends; even Augusta, who put forth her little white hand with her most winning smile, attracted no more attention than a hurried “How d’ye do, lass? How d’ye do?”

“What is the matter, Mr. Brooks? You seem——”

He interrupted Mr. Ashton’s inquiry with—

“Matter, sir? Waste and riot, intemperance and indecency, are the matter. These old eyes have seen that which is enough to bring a curse upon the coronation and a blight upon the town.”

Conversation was arrested, flirtation forgot its part, cards were laid down, save by three or four inveterate players, and young and old were alike on the _qui vive_, crowding round the speaker.

“Permit me,” said Mr. Clough, commencing an explanation. “I suppose you are all aware that the new market in Shude Hill is the chief station of the nine appointed for the distribution of meat, bread, and ale to the populace?”

“Populace, indeed!—the very scum and dregs of the town—say rather the lowest, roughest rabble!” broke in old Joshua.