Chapter THE TENTH: First Antagonism (8)

“Well, Parson, for the credit of our working population, let us hope so,” chimed in Mr. Clough, resuming—“Whilst Mr. Brookes and I were at tea in his sanctum, Tabitha ran in breathless to tell us that the platform erected for recipients in front of the storehouse had given way, that several persons were injured, and one had been killed on the spot.”

“Ah!” said the Parson, drawing a long breath between his teeth, while Jabez, unobserved by either, drew nearer to listen, and the ladies put up their hands in horror.

“It was not our most direct route, but either curiosity or compassion took us round by Shude Hill Market on our road hither, and never shall I forget the scene we witnessed. Loaves and junks of meat were being pitched high and far amongst the crowd from the warehouse doors and windows, as if flung to hounds.”

“Hounds, sir!” burst in impatient Joshua, “don’t slander the better animal. Only the commonest curs would have yelped, and scrambled, and struggled, and fought for their rations, as did the human beasts we saw clutching and gripping from weaker women and children that which had fallen within their reach, or trampling in the mud underfoot the food they were too greedy or too drunk to devour. Ay, mud, for the very kennels ran with ale thrown in pitchers-full amongst the people, to be caught in hats, and bonnets, and hollowed hands, as if it were rain in an African desert. Ale! the atmosphere reeked of ale! Men, women, and children of all ages carried it away, or drank it from all sorts of vessels; reeled, hiccoughed, and staggered under their burden, or sank down by the wayside; whilst others, shouting like maniacs, drained the half-empty mugs. I tell you, sirs, Captain Cook never fell in with greater savages. Even death and disaster in their midst had not awed them! Ugh! I say again they are hogs, absolute hogs!”

As Joshua paused to take breath, and sank into a chair, Jabez modestly put the question to the excitable chaplain—

“Do you not think the distributors are most to blame for this wanton waste and excess, to say nothing of the loss of life? Surely the arrangements of the committee must have been defective.”

The Parson’s harsh tones softened as he put out his hand to grasp the speaker’s.

“Ay, Jabez, lad, is that thee? I’m glad to see thee _here_”—and he laid emphasis on the word—“Ay, the distributors are answerable for——”

But the personal recognition had created a diversion. The question Jabez had mooted was talked over by separate knots of individuals in different quarters of the large room, whilst Mr. Clough, to Mrs. Ashton’s amazement—yes, and gratification also—shook the salesman warmly by the hand, and congratulated him on his apparent success. Moreover, he bore him away to Mrs. Clough, at the loo-table, and called her attention to the change time had effected in the old tanner’s foster-child, in the most cordial manner.

Thanks to Mr. Ashton, Mr. Clegg had truly got his first foot into Manchester society that coronation-day, and his old hopes might have revived, had not a disturbing element crept into the room during the denunciatory oration of his clerical friend.

John Walmsley, not finding his wife at home when released from yeomanry duty, had come in quest of her, bringing two of his comrades; and when Mr. Clegg retired from the loo-table with a bow, his eye fell first on the conspicuous figure of Captain Travis, in the silver-and-blue glory of uniform, bending deferentially to address Miss Chadwick; and in another moment on the elegant Adonis he had dragged from icy death, toying with Miss Augusta’s carved ivory fan, and whispering low to her, whilst she hid her India-muslin robe and too eloquent face behind the screen of her convenient harp, and drew her flexible fingers lightly across the chords.

The lustre of that evening’s introduction was dimmed for Jabez. Augusta scarcely looked at him as she brushed past to supper, leaning on the arm of Lieutenant Aspinall, her white dress in strong contrast to his dark uniform; and no doubt his pain was pictured on his face, for Ellen Chadwick sighed, as she too passed him with her martial cavalier, and half turned to look pitifully as she went.

There was no lack of ladies, so Mrs. Ashton paired Mr. Clegg off with a chatty damsel of thirty or thereabouts, and he did his best to listen and make himself agreeable, but not even the novelty of his situation could keep his thoughts or his eyes from wandering where they should not.

Along the whole course of the procession the Manchester Yeomanry had been greeted with more hisses and groans than cheers. This had chafed their noble spirits, and on disbanding they had sought consolation in the wine-cup, which temperate Jabez was not slow to observe, although their degree of exhilaration was not then considered a disqualification for the drawing-room or for the society of ladies.

Mr. Ashton’s strong home-brewed supper ale was not a sedative, yet still Augusta smiled on Laurence, in spite of her mother’s frowns, driving Mr. Marsland to desperation, and Jabez to despair.

Indeed, he was glad when the repast was over, for then Joshua Brookes rose to depart, sober as when he sat down, and the Chadwicks also. He had thus an opportunity of escaping from his torment, by offering his escort to tottering Mr. Chadwick and the parson in succession, if the latter did not object to the slight detour. Jabez foresaw that Mr. Travis was ready to do Miss Chadwick suit and service; but in offering his arm to assist the slow feet of the disabled father, he little dreamed how gladly the daughter would have made an exchange; nor, had he been wiser, would he have thrust himself in big Ben’s way, any more than would Mrs. Chadwick, who openly favoured the “personable and unimpeachable” captain.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD.

CLOGS.

Leaving the Chadwicks at their own door, where Captain Travis would fain have lingered had he been encouraged, Jabez and he fell back as guards to their reverend friend, whose excitability might otherwise have involved him in some unpleasantness, so disorderly a riff-raff occupied the streets.

Turning down Church Street, they pursued their dimly lighted way along Cannon Street, (so named from dismounted cannon captured from “rebels” which served as corner posts), through Hanging Ditch to Hyde’s Cross; thence past the deserted Apple Market, and Dr. Smith’s ancient labyrinth of a house, to the Parson’s less antiquated domicile in the corner by the Grammar School and those College-gates which had been the portals of peace and promise to Jabez, and not only to him, but to hundreds besides.

The excitement of old Joshua had been toned down amongst the wax-lights and pleasant faces around the Ashtons’ well-spread supper-table, and at first he was disposed to be conversable after his own peculiar manner. They had purposely avoided Shude-Hill Market by an ample circuit; but stragglers of both sexes from the scene of riot lay maundering or asleep in their path, or crossed it at every turn, in all stages of inebriation and disorder; until the natural irritability of the chaplain (increased by failing health) broke forth in loud-voiced indignation, ending in a wail that he was “getting old and powerless,” or he would “rise like another John Knox, and denounce the wickedness rampant in the land.”

“A good man lives there, Jabez,” said he, pointing to the black-and-white home of the head-master, where lighted windows told of hospitality awake, “a good man, but for whom I should not be alive to tell you; but there are those in the pulpit, my lads, whom the Church ought to spue out, lest they poison the flocks it is their duty to feed. Can the stream be pure if the fountain be polluted? And how shall we rebuke the gross excesses of the untaught rabble whilst chambering, gluttony, and drunkenness defile the high places of the land? Ugh! There wants another flood to wash Europe sweet and clean. The sin on the earth was not greater in the days of Noah!”

They were crossing the space before the two closed gates when he paused for lack of breath; and Travis, with no thought but to change the subject, observed to Jabez, over the head of the panting pastor—

“How quiet this little nook of ground is now! Yet to me and no doubt to you, Mr. Clegg, it is haunted by ghosts of old times!”

That set Joshua off again.

“Ugh! to hear a lad of five-and-twenty talk of old times! What’s the world coming to? Ghosts indeed! It had like to have been haunted by ghosts of something more than old times as Jabez and I know to our cost. I’ve never been right since the young ruffians had me in their clutches! And mark you, my lads, and think of it when you have young ones of your own to rear: there’s no worse sign for a country or a family than when the young jibe and jeer, mock and scorn their elders. When grey hairs fail to command respect, virtue, principle, and religion are at their lowest ebb.”

He stood within his own gate as he said this, and as Tabitha opened the door for her master, he checked all reply with—

“There! you’ve had a sermon for nothing. Ugh! you’ll forget it when the old man’s back turns. Good night, lads! See you steer clear of brawls, and give drunken fools a wide berth.”

Leaving the young men so abruptly dismissed to retrace their steps towards Hyde’s Cross, it may be as well if we throw a light on some of Parson Brookes’s dark allusions. Time had not smoothed the old man’s eccentricities, nor modified the antagonism between the Grammar School boys and the ex-master. They were always at war, and there never was wanting a _casus belli_. The previous September he had been more than usually irritated by a lampoon which began—

“O Jotty, you dog
Your house we well know
Is headquarters of prog——”

the purport of which was to fix on him the stigma of inviting a friend to dine, and regaling him with a black-pudding only.

Lashed to fury, he burst into the Grammar School when the first and second-form boys were assembled in the afternoon to rehearse the speeches which, according to custom, they were to deliver in public at the annual commemoration in October. He braved them in his hottest style, winding up with, “You are a set of blockheads! I would not come to hear your speeches if you would pay me for it!”

There was a general cry, “Turn him out! Turn him out!” But Jotty would not be turned out. He stuck himself in the doorway with his legs against the door-post, and his back against the door itself, to the extreme risk of broken limbs, whilst his young and vigorous opponents brought their strength to bear upon the door to force him out.

With such odds he was sure to be overcome; but, driven into the yard, he fought with his antagonists like a mastiff at bay, and they, like the cowards they must have been, to have assailed in a body an old man (under any provocation), by sheer force of numbers, bore him backwards to the wall, and, but for the opportune arrival of Dr. Smith, would have repeated the outrage perpetrated on Jabez Clegg eight years before.

He might well say Dr. Smith had saved his life. Such a fall, whether in high or low water, to so old a man, would have been certain destruction. They broke his heart, I think, if they did not break his limbs, for he never was the same man afterwards. Even old Mrs. Clowes used to rally him on his frequent “fits of the dumps.”

Whether Jabez and Ben Travis had, or had not, lost sight of the Parson’s homily, they were linked arm in arm, the rich yeomanry officer and the unpretending smallware-salesman, just as, nearly nine years previously, the big, raw-boned youth, with a heart large enough to match his frame, had linked his arm in that of the poor Blue-coat boy, as a friend and protector, when as yet his admittance into society was undreamed of.

Where the four roads met at Hyde’s Cross, a staggering Charlie (as the watchmen were called, much as, at this day, they are Bobbies) passed them, with his horn lantern and staff, and his rattle in his belt, proclaiming—

“Past ten o’clock! (hiccup). And a foin moonleet neet!”

The two stood for a moment; then, animated by a desire to ascertain if Joshua Brookes had spoken sooth, or, in his spleen exaggerated, they turned up Shude-hill, all alive with people who were ordinarily at that hour in bed, and made their way to the market.

Exaggerate! Joshua Brookes had seen but in part, and painted but in part. Every avenue to the market was a scene of debauchery. Hogarth’s print of “Gin Lane” was feeble beside it. The distribution of food was over, but that of drink continued. The oil-lamps of the street, the dying illumination lamps, and the misty moonlight showed a picture of unimaginable grossness; whilst their ears were assailed with foulness which would have shocked a hardened man of the world—how much more these inexperienced young friends!

Children, men, and women, their clothes torn or disarrayed, lay singly, or in groups, on the paths, or in the gutters, asleep or awake, drunk, sick, helpless, exposed; there was fighting and cursing over the ale yet procurable; there were loaves in the gutters, and meat trampled in the mire; food which, properly distributed, would have gladdened many a poor, hard-working family, too self-respecting to join that clamorous mob.

The two young men turned away sick and disgusted.

“Henry Hunt, in advocating the disuse of excisable liquors,” said Jabez, thoughtfully, “may only have designed to cripple the Government; but surely no one could witness scenes like these, whether Whig or Tory, without feeling that some restriction on drink is absolutely necessary for the safety of the State and the comfort of the people.”

“You are right, Mr. Clegg,” responded Travis, heartily. “Men of all politics ought to meet on this ground. I shall see how far my little influence goes to check intemperance henceforth. Something must be done, and that promptly.”

“Whatever I can do to second you, you may depend on, though beyond our own warehouse my opportunities are small,” said Jabez; “still, if I can influence one within our walls, that one may act on two outside, and so we may prevail in the end.”

“Yes,” added Travis, “and if this night be not eloquent in its protest against drink, all humanity must be equally debased and brutalised.”

Some caution had been necessary to cross the Market, so as to avoid insult, the captain’s bulk and uniform rendering him conspicuous, and his corps being in anything but good odour. They had kept well within the shade of the pillared piazza which extended along the side to their right, and, stunned by the uproar of brawling and fighting crowds, picked their way between degraded humanity in heaps on the pavement, crushed hats and bonnets, torn caps and shawls, boots and shoes which had done duty as drinking vessels, sodden meat and bread, and had much ado to avoid splashing through puddles of ale and other abominations. They had emerged into Oak Street, glad to have got tolerably clear of the clamour and brutality, when a cry from the direction of Tib Street, “Watch! help! watch!” fell on their ears in tones which had a strangely familiar ring to Jabez.

Hastening on at a run, they came upon a decently-dressed man struggling against three or four drunken ruffians with heavy clogs on their feet. They had got the man down, and were vociferating with oaths not to be repeated here.

“Gi’e him a lick wi’ thi clog!” “Punce him well!” “Shut up his tater-trap fur him!” “Purr him i’ th’ bread-basket” “Fettle his mug wi’ thi clog!”

Before Jabez and his companion could prevent it, a heavy thud, followed by a groan, told of a brutal kick; the two only dashed among them in time to arrest the other clogs, already on the backward swing for force; and saved the prostrate man by turning the fury of the savages on themselves. The cowardly brutes, however, stood little chance against sobriety and skill, backed by the muscular frame of Jabez and the herculean one of Travis, even though they carried weapons of offence on their feet, and plied them vigorously; and before a droning watchman hove in sight to spring his rattle for assistance, they were overmastered or put to the rout.

Most thankful was Jabez for the impulse which had directed their steps that way when, on raising the fallen man, the light of an adjacent oil-lamp projecting from the wall fell on his blood-stained face, and revealed Tom Hulme, who had been drawn into that unusually disorderly neighbourhood by like curiosity with their own, and been set upon without provocation. He walked with pain, and they supported his steps to the Infirmary, not finding Mr. Huertley, on whom they called, at home. But so fertile had that evening been of serious injuries, he was some time before he could obtain attention. Thirteen far more urgent cases had preceded his. At length his head and cut lip were plaistered up, a reviving draught administered, and after some examination of bruises, and poking and pressing of his body, three of his ribs were pronounced “broken.” His defenders were disposed to smile at the surgeon when, besides an embrocation for bruises, he prescribed “a succession of oatmeal poultices applied internally”—in other words, a cushion of as much oatmeal porridge as the patient could consume, to press the crushed ribs gently into position.

It was, however, not much of a laughing matter to Tom Hulme, or to loving Bess, who looked aghast at this deplorable termination of a day’s jollity. Nor was there a trace of mirth on the face of Jabez when at parting with Ben Travis on the Mosley Street door-step, he gripped, more in pain than pleasure, the big hand extended so cordially.

It was after midnight, but from the open windows of the still-lighted drawing-room the thin quick ears of Jabez had caught the sound of Augusta’s melodious voice blending with that of Laurence Aspinall in a popular duet, although the notes of the latter were neither so clear nor so steady as they might have been. The pallor on her foster-son’s face Bess attributed to tender-hearted sympathy for her injured husband; but Jabez hurried away from her oppressive thanks to the solitude of his own chamber, where he could bury his face in his quivering hands, and unseen wrestle with emotions of which she had no conception.

Never had he known a day so chequered. The same sun which had looked down at noontide on the triumph of his amateur brush, had beamed on Augusta Ashton’s conscious cheeks, as she accepted his rival’s familiar act of gallantry without so much as a frown. The evening had made a man of him—lifted him into a new sphere—brought him, so to speak, nearer to his divinity, within the radius of her smiles, the music of her voice. She had put her small white hand within his, and blessed him with a word or two of shy recognition; but Laurence Aspinall had again come like a cloud between him and his sunbeam; her sweetest smiles, her softest tones, were for the intruder; her arm had rested willingly on his, her voice had blent with his in sentimental song, and darkness once more shut out hope from Jabez.

“Common sense might have taught me that my love was folly, presumption, madness!” he argued with himself; “that the heiress of a wealthy man would not stoop to her father’s Blue-coat apprentice. But oh!” he groaned, “I had hoped to raise myself step by step nearer to her level—to make myself worthy of her as a man, if I had not riches to lay at her feet. She is young, and what might I not accomplish with industry ere she came of age? but now——”

He tore his neckcloth off, and cast it from him, stripped off coat and vest, and flung them aside, as though they held his passionate folly, and he had done with it, then sank into a chair, the very impersonation of listless hopelessness. He had gone through all this struggle once before, and thought he had overcome his weakness; but at the touch of the enchanter’s wand love had blazed up afresh, and was not to be smothered.

His reverie was broken into by the tread of many feet on the staircase below, and the murmur of voices calling one to another; the hall-door shut with a clang, and then a light foot came tripping up the stair alone, and from heart and lips dropped unconsciously the soft refrain of that too well-known duet. She, too, was carrying to her chamber memories of the night, and bearing the burden blithely.

He listened until a door closed upon step and song. Then as if its echoes pierced his soul, he set his teeth and clenched his outstretched hands in mute agony. There was more than hopeless love in this—there was jealousy also. Then he murmured half audibly, “If he were only worthy of her I could bear it better; but to see her cast her heart at the feet of one who will trample on it, is beyond mortal endurance.”

He started to his feet. A bright thought irradiated his face.

“Coward that I am! I am quitting the battle without striking a blow. I am myself unworthy of Augusta if I surrender her to a heartless profligate without an effort to save her. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.’ Women have stooped lower, and lowly men have looked higher ere now. I am making way, but I must make money too, if I would look above me. Father and mother look on me with favour, and why not the daughter? She may learn the worthlessness of the fine gentleman in time. Courage, Jabez! Work with a will; do your duty. Miss no opportunity, and the gold and the goddess may both be yours in the end, and honestly won.”

He sprang into bed fresher and lighter than he had been all day, the prayer of that other Jabez rising from his heart with the fervour of old times.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER.

The Palace Inn on the north side of Market Street Lane was the last relic of that cramped thoroughfare to disappear at the bidding of Improvement. Possibly because its many eyes and bald dark-red-brick face looked out on a space so much beyond the twenty-one yards assigned by Act of Parliament to the regenerated street that the Improvement Committee had no powers to meddle with it, for surely its historic associations were not sufficient to protect it. Prince Charles Edward had been hospitably lodged and entertained beneath its roof by its owner, Mr. Dickenson, long ere it became an inn; he had harangued his devoted followers from the stone plateau of its double flight of steps, with his hand perchance on its smooth rail of unornamented iron; but in isolated dignity rather than palatial pretensions lay its chief safeguard. Be that as it may, fourteen or fifteen years elapsed between the first act of demolition for widening (at the shop of a Mr. Maund), and that last feat of narrowing, which blocked up and darkened history (as represented by the Palace) with common stone warehouses for every-day merchandise. Alas! Clio and all her sister muses _must_ succumb when Mammon is on the march!

But Mammon had only got his first foot in the street on that Thursday morning in July, which blushed at the doings of the Coronation night, and the Palace Inn yet held its head high as beseemed its historic state. The open space in front was enlivened by the newly-painted London stage-coach, the Lord Nelson, the fresh scarlet coats of coachmen and guards, the assembling of passengers and luggage, the shouting and swearing of half-awake ostlers and porters, the grumbling of the first-comers (shivering in the raw air) at the unpunctuality of the stage, the excuses of the booking-clerk, the self-gratulations of the last arrival that he was “in time,” the dragging of trunks and portmanteaus on to the top, the thrusting of bags and boxes into the boot, the harnessing of snorting steeds, the horsing of the vehicle, the scrambling of the “outsiders” to the top by the ladder and wheel, the self-satisfied settlement of the “insides” in the places they had “booked for,” the crushing and thrusting of friends with last messages and parting words, the crack of the whip, the sound of the bugle, the prancing of horses, the rattle of wheels, and the dashing off up Market Street Lane of the gallant four-in-hand, amid the hurrahs of excited spectators.

Every morning witnessed a somewhat similar scene of bustle and excitement at five o’clock, when the London coach started, but every morning did not see Jabez mounted on the box-seat with the coachman. Nor did every morning see the coach an hour behind time, or the driver’s face quite so red, or the spectators so heavy-eyed, or so much handing up of horns and glasses to the passengers, to be returned empty, or leave Mr. Ashton standing there when the Lord Nelson had bowled away.

That Coronation day had much to answer for.

When Tom Hulme should have risen at four o’clock to return home, his bruised limbs were so stiff and sore that the soldier, who had borne the fatigue of many a campaign, who had bivouacked on the battle-field, after a forced march, and being ready with the sun for the day’s duties, had to confess himself “fettled” by Lancashire clogs, and unable to stir. There was no alternative but to acquaint Mr. Ashton. The mill could not be left without a manager.

After the night’s unwonted dissipation, Mr. Ashton slept heavily, and was with difficulty aroused. When once he comprehended the state of affairs, he was on the alert.

“It’s a bad business!” said he to his wife, as he dressed in haste.

“‘There is nothing so bad, but it might be worse,’” was her consolatory reply. “Never bewail a loss till you have done your best to repair it. Can you not send Mr. Clegg to Whaley-Bridge for a few days?”

“My dear, your counsel is invaluable, but I fear there is not time to catch the coach; it is twenty minutes past four now.”

“It is sure to be late this morning, and Jabez will catch it if it is to be caught,” was her quick rejoinder.

Bess had already awakened Jabez, and he, fully dressed, met Mr. Ashton at his bedroom door with “Can I be of any service, sir?” A prompt commentary on Mrs. Ashton’s declaration.

A few necessaries hastily crammed into a carpet bag; a bowl of milk and a crust of bread as hastily swallowed; and Jabez, accompanied by Mr. Ashton, was on his way to the Palace coach-office confident they were in time, not having heard the guard’s bugle, or met the coach. There was, however, barely time to claim for Mr. Clegg the place already booked for “Mr. Hulme” (Mrs. Hulme’s seat was forfeited), and for him to take his seat, before they were off in a canter, and Mr. Ashton’s business mind was relieved.

As the manufacturer, satisfied that the mill-hands at Whaley-Bridge would not be left altogether to their own devices, stood within a short distance of the high steps looking after the vanishing coach, a party of roisterers came swaggering out of the inn, hallooing with all their tipsy might. One in advance of the rest, observing an elderly gentleman below, pointed him out to his companions as fair game, and leaning over the rail to steady himself, cried out—

“Halloo, old fogey! are you a Tory or a Radical? D—— me, take your hat off before gentlemen!” and, suiting the action to the word, extended a riding-whip he carried, and jerked Mr. Ashton’s hat off into the dust; whereupon his worthy comrades set up a loud guffaw in admiration of the feat.

Naturally Mr. Ashton, his brief reverie disturbed, stooped to pick up the fallen beaver, and making due allowance for the unwonted occasion, turned to remonstrate good-humouredly with an excited stranger who had evidently drunk the king’s health too frequently.

It was not with more surprise than annoyance that he recognised four of the hilarious party in the doorway and on the steps of the inn, which had apparently been open the night through. Not one of the four was in a condition to recognise him, although two of them, John Walmsley and Laurence Aspinall, had supped overnight at his own table, although the third, Kit Townley, had good reason for remembrance, and Ned Barret was anything but a stranger.

Loud laughter hailed the fall of the hat. A second attempt to “uncover the obstinate old fogey” was made, but dexterously avoided by Mr. Ashton in his absolute astonishment stepping backward beyond range.

“Young gentlemen, do you know whom you are insulting?”

There was another laughing chorus. Aspinall almost toppled over the rail as he leaned forward, impotently striking out with his whip.

“I protest the old rad’s demnibly li-ike the lovely Augusta’s snuffy old dad,” drawled out he, in a sort of tipsy-wisdom.

“Just so!” appended Walmsley, mimicking the old gentleman’s peculiarity.

Mr. Ashton, though a reasonably temperate man himself, was not so greatly shocked at these young carousers as we might be. Long usage blunts sensibilities. It was a glorious distinction to be a three-bottle man; the inability to drink a solitary bottle of wine at a sitting was a sort of disqualification for good fellowship; and it was considered a fine thing for a boy of seven to “toss off a glass like a man;” so the genial old gentleman was inclined to allow some latitude for the special occasion. But they had touched him on a tender point. The light mention of his darling daughter’s name roused his blood.

“John Walmsley,” he cried angrily, looking up, “what brings you, a married man, with these young rakes at this hour of the morning?”

“Pray wha-at brought y-you here, old fogey?” hiccoughed Aspinall, answering for the other.

One of the ostlers—Bob, the ex-groom—squeezed between the rollicking fellows to whisper in the ear of Laurence. He was impatiently thrust back with an elbow.

“Tchut! don’t believe it. Old snuff-an’-tuppeny’s fast ’shleep in bed shure sh a gun. I know b-better. I say, you——”

But “old snuff-an’-tuppeny” had turned on his heel, too wise to enter into contention with a set of inebriated boobies, though not proof against the disrespectful epithets of Laurence, or the derisive laughter of his boon companions. His irritation half emptied his snuff-box before he got home, so often he tapped smartly on its golden lid, and so often his finger and thumb travelled between it and his nose with a touch of ruminant displeasure.

Neither he nor Mrs. Ashton was disposed to overlook the fact that Kit Townley and Ned Barret—scapegraces by repute—were of the party, nor that Augusta’s name had been familiarly used in their midst.

“‘Birds of a feather flock together,’” said the lady; “and if Mr. Aspinall’s son associates with that reckless and dishonest Kit Townley, he is a very unfit friend for John Walmsley, and still worse for our dear Augusta.”

“Just so; for a dashing blade with a handsome face, who sports a uniform, talks poetry, and sings sentimental songs, is just the fellow to take a silly girl’s fancy, before she is old enough to think. I know I regret I ever brought him _here_,” said Mr. Ashton seriously, as Augusta came in the room to breakfast, entering at the door behind her mother’s back.

“Well, William,” observed Mrs. Ashton loftily, her hand on the china coffee-pot, “you can imagine _my_ annoyance when John and Mr. Laurence walked in arm-in-arm last night, after the liberty he had taken in the morning—kissing his hand to our daughter from the public procession in the face of all our friends, as if Augusta had been a flaunting barmaid. I was most indignant!”

Augusta said “Good morning,” and took her seat with a heightened colour. Such a construction of the gallant officer’s salute had not occurred to her, and native delicacy took alarm.

Mrs. Ashton continued to pour out her thoughts along with the coffee. It was fit Augusta should know her sentiments on this head.

“It would have been a breach of hospitality to resent it before our friends, and not good policy either. But I shall put a stop to his visits henceforth.”

“Oh! mamma,” exclaimed Augusta, dropping her hands at this climax, “you cannot mean that!”

“Yes, my dear, I do. If Mr. Aspinall has depraved associates, he must be depraved himself; and I am sure my daughter”—she drew herself up proudly—“would not choose her friends from those of Christopher Townley.”

Augusta’s colour suffered no decrease. She paused as she was taking her dry toast from the silver rack, and half-hesitatingly remonstrated.

“Of course I should not wish to associate with Mr. Townley’s friends. But papa may be mistaken. I do not think Mr. Aspinall would mix with them. People meet and mingle at coach-offices who are strangers.”

“Just so, my dear; but——” interposed her father.

“Why, mamma,” the persistent young lady went on, “no more perfect gentleman enters our doors than Mr. Laurence Aspinall. His manners are most refined. Then he talks enchantingly, and sings divinely. And”—this she thought conclusive—“is he not intimate with Charlotte and John?”

“Just so,” quickly answered Mr. Ashton, glancing across the table at his attentive wife, “and all the worse for Charlotte and John. I shall have a word with them on the subject. I called in Marsden Square on my way home, and found Charlotte with red eyes. John had not been home all night.” And Mr. Ashton battered the top of an egg whilst delivering what he regarded as a crushing argument.

Breakfast and the discussion were unusually prolonged, the only impression left on the young lady’s romantic, impressible, and inexperienced mind being that her parents were unaccountably harsh to her, and unjust to Mr. Laurence, in her eyes the beau-ideal of a man. Such a figure and such a face could only enshrine divinity. And if he was a little wild, so were all heroes at his age.

Let not the inexperienced young girl be over-much condemned for this. The opinion generally prevailed in her day; she had heard the sentiment expressed in farces on the stage, in society at home and elsewhere; even her own father’s hospitality trended in the same direction.

Mrs. Ashton was a woman of her word. The door in Mosley Street was closed against Mr. Laurence Aspinall, and James was incorruptible.

But the teaching of Miss Bohanna’s library being that Love was far-seeing and parents were blind, it followed that Miss Augusta (who would have resented any supposition of wilful disobedience or intentional disrespect towards the good father and mother she loved so dearly) met the fascinating gentleman (always by chance) either at her cousin’s in Marsden Square or in her walks abroad, and scented billet-doux came and went between the leaves of four-volumed romances, which Cicily carried to and from the library. One of these fell into Mrs. Ashton’s hands, when finding her advice contemned, she took measures to check this premature and clandestine love-making, as she thought, effectually.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH.

AT CARR COTTAGE.

Tom Hulme was most anxious to get back to Whaley-Bridge and the mill, and motherly Bess was equally uneasy to return to her poor little Sim, afraid lest he should tax his grandfather’s strength over-much, or meet with some fresh accident. Yet more than a week elapsed before her husband was fit to travel, and in the interim Mr. Ashton had himself gone thither to ascertain how the new substitute filled the post.

He was still at Carr Cottage when the “Lord Nelson” stopped at the end of the avenue, and Jabez, with fragile Sim mounted on his shoulder, trotted down to the gate to welcome Bess and her invalid home. They had travelled inside, but John Loudon Mac-Adam had not yet been appointed “Surveyor of Roads,” and Tom Hulme had suffered severely from the jolting of the coach.

Bess clasped her child tenderly, and held him up for his father’s kiss; but she put him down to walk on before them (he could not run), whilst she and Jabez helped the injured corporal to ascend the steep incline. Old Simon, who seemed to have got a new lease of life from the invigorating country air and occupation, had already breakfasted, and was in the bean-field gathering the first ripe pods for a dinner of beans and bacon.

“Eh, Tum, lad!” said he, as he entered the house-place, and saw his son-in-law’s pale face against the blue-and-white check cover of the arm-chair, “whoi, thi feace is as whoite as a clout! Tha’ll noan be fit to wark fur one whoile. Thah’s nobbut fit fur t’ sit under th’ sycymoore tree, an’ look at th’ fleawers, an’ watch me put th’ garden i’ fettle.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Ashton, bringing his pleasant face in at the door; “I think Mr. Clegg will have to do duty for you a while longer. And don’t distress yourself about it, Mr. Hulme, for I fancy a little fresh air will do _him_ no harm this hot weather; he has been overworking lately, and does not look too brisk.”

“You are very kind, sir,” responded Jabez, “but I trust a few days’ rest will set Mr. Hulme on his feet again.” He said nothing of himself.

But Tom Hulme had received unsuspected internal injuries, and many weeks went by before he was stout as before—weeks pregnant with fate for Jabez; and not Jabez alone.

Factory hours were long, but the Summer days were longer, and he was glad after work was over to ramble away through the valley of the Goyt, following the winding of the stream, or over the larch-clad hills above Taxal, whence he would return with the rising moon, bringing pockets full of the crisp-brown fir-cones for Sim to play with. In the pine-woods, alone with nature, he could give vent to his emotions, or indulge in meditation at his will.

Mr. Ashton, however, found him other occupation for his spare hours. The landlord of the “White Hart,” bearing in mind that Mr. Clegg had come under his roof first as a travelling artist, had expatiated to Mr. Ashton with much pathos on the deplorable condition of the inn sign, not without sundry broad hints that Mr. Clegg’s temporary residence on the spot was a glorious opportunity not to be neglected. Mr. Ashton had smiled, said “Just so,” taking a pinch from the immense snuff-box lying on the bar-parlour chimney-piece, then fallen back upon his own, gone away, and forgot the dingy sign altogether, until another hint from his tenant refreshed his memory.

As he stood at the inn door waiting for the Manchester coach, an upward sly glance of the jolly host’s caused him to say to the young man by his side, “Do you think you could manage to paint a new sign for the ‘White Hart,’ to oblige Chapman and me?”

Jabez hesitated, not from unwillingness.

“I’m afraid, sir, to attempt. It’s not in my line, and——”

“Oh! you can do it well enough. Remember the banner.”

“I’ve no materials here, sir, else——”

“If that is all, you shall have them in a day or two.”

In a few days an easel, a new sign-board, and colours were sent by the Manchester and Buxton carrier, and Jabez set to work, to the especial wonder and admiration of little Sim, who delighted to stand by his side, and grew rebellious when “bed-time” was announced. Jabez was, however, but an untaught artist, and his painting hours were few; the _couchant_ hart was rubbed in and wiped out over and over again before he was satisfied even with the outline; but then it grew in fair proportion under his brush, until he felt there was something in him beyond the region of tapes and braces.

The graceful animal, resplendent in golden collar and chain, looked mildly out from the easel in the parlour nearest to the passage (used, when the family was there, as an eating-room), and little Sim gravely reported to his elders it only wanted “gass, an’ tee, an’ ky,” when the inmates of Carr Cottage were startled by the arrival of unexpected visitors.

It was the second week in August; the air was heavy with the perfume of clove carnations, honeysuckle, mignonette, lavender, musk, and mint. Golden sunflower and crimson hollyhock were in their glory; bees and wasps hovered over balsams and china asters, or hid themselves in the blue Canterbury bells or the amber nectary of the stately white lily. Fruits were ripe for the gatherer, grain was falling under the sickle. Bess, in a fair white muslin cap, a large check apron over her dark chocolate-and-white-print gown (her blue bed-gown days were over), was moving quietly about the house-place, preparing their early breakfast, no longer restricted to oatmeal porridge.

Tom, looking worn, but clean and neat as loving hands could make him, leaned back in his soft arm-chair, and watched her with well-satisfied eyes. Little Sim was already in the garden with his grandfather, helping to gather raspberries and currants for preserving.

The tall oak-cased clock struck seven, and then, true to time, the guard’s bugle announced the coming of the coach from Manchester. Instinctively Bess went to the door, as was her wont, when the coach came in. She uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“Eh, Tum! aw declare t’ coach is stoppin’ at ar gate. Happen theer’s a parcel or summat for ar Jabez.”

And off she set past the kitchen window and the farm-yard Gothic doorway, and down the avenue, with the light foot of a younger woman. Before she reached the avenue gate, the stuffy vehicle had yielded up three ladies and two bandboxes, and the guard having unlocked the capacious boot (a kind of closet at the back), dragged thence, with much superfluous puffing and straining, two hair trunks of moderate dimensions. Yes, there stood Mrs. Ashton, grandly calm; bright-haired Augusta, tall, slim, and, it must be added, unamiably silent; and Ellen Chadwick, whose black eyes had an absolute glow of expectancy in their depths. Bess put up her hand in amazement.

“Eh, Mrs. Ashton, madam! yo’ han takken us unawares! an’ theere is na a bit o’ flesh meat i’ th’ heause; an’ th’ butcher’s cart wunna be reawnd agen till Setterday! But awm downreet glad to see yo’ an’ th’ young ladies” (she dropped a respectful curtsey), “an’ a’ lookin’ so weel. Aw wur afeard yo’ wur no’ comin’ this Summer.”

“Never mind the butcher’s meat, Mrs. Hulme; having come to Carr we must do as Carr does; I do not doubt we shall fare very well,” said the stately lady, reassuringly. “I trust we shall find your good husband free from pain, and Mr. Clegg and your family in health.”

Bess thanked Mrs. Ashton for her kind inquiries, but somehow she boggled over the “Mr. Clegg.” She was proud enough of his advancement, but to her he was still “Jabez;” and he did not seek to be otherwise.

There was a difficulty about the luggage, no men being about. By this time old Simon was nearly down the hill, little Sim following at his heels, his face, hands, and pinafore stained with fruit.

“I run for Joe,” cried crippled Sim, as Bess tried the weight of a trunk, and Ellen interposed. Run indeed! It was the very travestie of a run!

“Well, yo’ see as heaw o’ Moore’s folk are eawt i’ th’ fields cuttin’ whoats [oats]. Feyther an’ me con carry one on em atween us. They’re noän so heavy.”

Mrs. Ashton would not hear of it. Just then little Sim came back with Joe—his most particular friend, to whom he was chief patron—a drivelling idiot, a man in frame, a child in heart and brain. He was a pitiable object, the scoff of the rabble, but he had sense enough to know his protectors. At the instance of the four-years-old child, he shouldered the box with a vacant chuckle; and Sim, loaded with an oval pasteboard bandbox half as big as himself, waddled after him as fast as his deformity would permit.

Before the travellers could reach the top of the avenue Jabez Clegg was with them, the other trunk upon his shoulder. He had heard at the “White Hart” of their arrival, and had almost sacrificed the dignity of his position in _his_ desire to run.

There were more greetings, accompanied by a cordial shaking of hands; and Bess and Simon looked on with pleasure, not unmixed with pain, that the foundling they had adopted and reared had mounted far above their heads, albeit in rising he had drawn them up too.

He breakfasted not with them in the house-place, but with the new-comers in the parlour; and Bess herself waited upon them, Meg, her little maid, being off in the harvest field gleaning for a bed-ridden mother.

She heard him conversing freely, if deferentially, with the lofty Mrs. Ashton on topics and in a language her provincial tongue could never compass. She saw him turn to answer the arch sallies of Miss Ashton, and the quieter observations of Miss Chadwick, and noted that the dark eyes of the latter kindled when he spoke, and her cheeks had a warmer glow, as if they caught their hue from the flushed face of Jabez.

Breakfast over—little Sim had sat on the door-step to share his with Crazy Joe,—whilst Ellen and Augusta retired to unpack. Mrs. Ashton graciously accepted the escort of Mr. Clegg to the mill, and they trod the avenue and the high-road side by side, discussing business matters, her dignity losing no whit by the companionship. Mrs. Ashton was one of those who can lift up without stooping.

Clouds never lingered on Augusta’s face; she had been transported thither, as she said, “with no more ceremony than a bale of twist,” but she put off her displeasure with her travelling bonnet, and danced into the kitchen airily as a sylph, to help Bess out of the quandary caused by their advent.

“I am afraid our arrival has been very inauspicious,” Augusta said, “but I can assure you I was not consulted, and am not to blame” (she had certainly not been consulted—blame was another matter). “And now what can I do for you, Mrs. Hulme?”

Augusta tucked up the sleeves of her peach-coloured gingham dress, borrowed a linen apron from Bess, who confessed to being “rayther a heavy hond at paste,” and soon the matron was at ease respecting pies, and tarts, and custards. Simon Clegg brought in a dish of trout fresh from the stream; the larder supplied savoury ham and eggs, the garden furnished peas; so Mrs. Ashton was not far wrong.

It was but a spurt on Augusta’s part; her tender impressionable heart had melted at Mrs. Hulme’s first look of dismay, but, the impulse over, there was no more tucking up of sleeves or handling of paste pins. Fortunately for their digestion, Ellen Chadwick had no less skill, since, quiet as she was, she seemed to lack an outlet for superabundant energy, and, obtrusively restless, helped Bess she hardly knew how, or how much.

Augusta wandered about cottage and garden, or sat for hours under the shade of the great sycamore tree, singing low-voiced plaintive ditties; feeling herself the most ill-used and wretched being in existence, separated from her adorable lover; and the more she brooded, the more discontented and melancholy she became. It was all very real and very much to be deplored. No knife cuts so keenly at the heart-strings as the sharp edge of a first love turned in upon itself; and Augusta was as much in love as ever was maiden of seventeen.

Mrs. Ashton went daily to the mill, but a casual remark of Mrs. Hulme’s on “Miss Ashton’s mopin’ an’ malancholy” aroused the attention of the energetic mother, and she did her best to counteract morbid fancies with long sharp walks in the early morning (extending, on one occasion, as far as Shawcross Hall, where she astonished her relatives by an informal visit), and a repetition of the dose in the evening, when Mr. Clegg made one of the party, thus unconsciously adding fuel to the fires which, unknown to her, consumed alike her niece and her warehouseman.

At the end of ten days, Mrs. Ashton returned to Manchester, leaving the girls behind. She had extorted a promise from Augusta that she would not write to Mr. Laurence Aspinall, and relied on that promise being faithfully kept. Moreover, after some debate with herself, as they walked from the mill together on the last afternoon of her stay, she committed her daughter and niece to Jabez Clegg’s care.

“You are a very young man for so important a charge,” she said, “but you are steady as old Time, and of your integrity and fidelity we have had many proofs. Miss Ashton’s health demands a prolonged stay on this breezy hill-side, but I fear she feels it dull after Manchester. If you will endeavour to amuse her when you see her drooping, I shall consider myself your debtor, sir; and should anything _unusual_ attract your notice, I depend on your calling our attention to it.”

“I feel honoured by the trust you repose in me, madam,” replied he, a grave consciousness of his own danger stirring at his heart; “you may depend on my watchfulness over Miss Ashton and her cousin.”

But of any danger to Miss Ashton beyond that arising from a sensitively delicate frame, which might need the sudden summons of Dr. Hull to allay the fears of parents anxious for their only child, he had no suspicion or perception. He had no more clue to Mrs. Ashton’s hidden meaning than she to his secret emotions. It had been wiser to have been more explicit. Without that charge he might have made it a point of honour, if not of duty, to hold aloof from the young ladies lest he should be obtrusive: as it was, the more he pondered, the more he became satisfied that it was only a delicate way of giving sanction to a companionship he might otherwise have regarded as presumptuous.

Accordingly, he constituted himself their cavalier after business hours, fulfilling to the letter his instructions to endeavour to amuse Augusta whenever he found her drooping, well rewarded if he could win back a smile or a peal of the rippling laughter he had heard so oft in her school-girl days. His attentions to Miss Chadwick were tinctured with the profoundest respect, but there was no effort to entertain or be agreeable; on the contrary, it was Miss Chadwick who kept the light shafts of her cousin’s wit within bounds when they were likely to wound—as they did sometimes.

The White Hart, to Sim’s disquiet, would have suffered long from dearth of herbage, had not thunderous clouds emptied their reservoirs amongst the hills, until brooks became rivers, and roads almost impassable. Then Jabez resumed his brush, Sim clapped his thin little hands with delight, whilst the sedate young lady of twenty-four, and the bewitching damsel of sweet seventeen, varied the monotony of piano, book, or embroidery-frame, with an occasional criticism of his work.

It was a time fraught with intoxicating delight, but of terrible temptation to Jabez. The frequent fits of langour which bowed Augusta down like a drooping lily, made her only more dangerously dear to him, and it needed all his strength to remember that she was his master’s daughter, and confided to his care. If he now thought of Laurence Aspinall and his fascination, it was only as a butterfly beau, for whom no sensible maiden could entertain a permanent liking. Not even when, turning back one forenoon for something in the closet which he had forgotten, he found her in tears on the low ledge of the open window at the foot of the staircase.

“Good heaven, Miss Ashton, what is the matter? Are you ill? Is anything troubling you?”

“Nothing,” sobbed she, the clear drops falling faster.

“Nothing! oh, Miss Ashton, this cannot be for nothing,” and he sat down on the window-ledge beside her, not daring so much as to touch her hand, his own were in such a quiver.

“Miss Ashton—Augusta—you told me your troubles when you were a school-girl, am I less worthy your confidence now? Can I do anything to serve you? I would lay my life down to save you from pain;” and the earnest tenderness of his voice spoke volumes.

She had subdued her emotion. Gathering herself up with a reflex of her mother’s stateliness, she said haughtily, “It is nothing, sir, I am better,” and swept past him up the staircase, leaving him to set his teeth and turn away with clenched hands, alike exasperated at his own loss of self-command and grieved for her grief.