Chapter THE TENTH: First Antagonism (9)

On the narrow landing which ran parallel with the staircase like a balcony, Augusta found her cousin Ellen, with one hand on her side, leaning against the chamber door-post, as if for support, with closed eyes and pale lips. She had been “overcome by the heat”—so she said.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SIXTH.

THE LOVERs’ WALK.

Jabez held a responsible post, and had no more leisure than other business men for emotional indulgence. He hurried out of the cottage, and down the avenue, shutting up his bitter feelings within the doors of his heart as he went. But the process closed his eyes and ears to external sounds, and the old postman, with his long tin horn, which had been echoing through the straggling village a full quarter of an hour, passed him in the avenue and said, “Good-day,” without so much as arresting his attention.

At the mill he found letters waiting—one, which had been post-paid as a double letter, conspicuous amongst the wafered business communications, not only because of its thick, gilt-edged paper, and crimson disk of crested wax, but from its curious folding, as if to baffle prying eyes.

It was signed “Ben Travis,” and was so long, it went into a pantaloon pocket, to be read when his multifarious duties allowed him more leisure.

When the hands were dismissed at noon, and the one clerk had left the counting-house, he took out the voluminous epistle, which was dated September 10th, and certainly found therein matter of interest. Amongst a few preliminary items of news, he learned that the excesses of the Coronation night had created so much disgust in the minds of thinking men that many of those who had denounced Henry Hunt’s advocacy of abstinence, and at the public expense had formerly disseminated printed laudations of good brown ale, the “old English beverage,” as “a cheering and strengthening drink,” no longer branded the water-drinkers as “enemies to the corporeal constitution of Englishmen,” but had given their countenance to social gatherings whence intoxicating liquors were excluded. Travis himself was doing what he could to promote these temperate meetings, and looked for the earnest co-operation of Mr. Clegg on his return to Manchester. (And he did not look in vain; though neither of the young social reformers saw in advance how universal would become the temperance movement of which this was the unpretending precursor).

The letter went on to say—

“Miss Chadwick and her fair cousin were spirited away mysteriously. At first I blamed myself as the unhappy cause. I have since discovered my mistake, through a quarrel between Mr. Walmsley and Mr. Laurence Aspinall, when both were slaves to Bacchus—_In vino veritas!_ I suppose you know that Mr. Aspinall the elder is a martyr to the gout, and has been driven by his enemy to the Buxton baths. The cause, I have heard, was a gentlemanly debauch in a fit of passion or wounded pride. His son joins him to-day. I scarcely think he will call on your young ladies after what has occurred.”

“What has occurred?” repeated Jabez, “what can he mean by that? I wish correspondents would be more explicit!”

He pondered over this sentence, but could make nothing of it, and after reading a little way, came to the real object of the letter, prefaced as it was with much circumlocution.

“It may seem strange that a great, big, burly fellow like myself should be such a booby as to seek the intervention of a third person in an affair of the heart. Yet, if I have any insight into your nature, I think I may confide in you, and depend on your good offices. After so many months’ dangling and craven hesitation, I summoned up courage to make my pretensions known to Miss Chadwick. I know I did it clumsily and ungracefully; the very strength of my passion fettered my tongue. I shall never forget the pitiful look of the sweet girl as she burst into tears, assured me of her esteem, but declined my suit. Her tears unnerved me, and I had not power to plead my own cause. Do not despise me, Clegg; neither Samson nor Hercules was any stronger. I cannot resign myself to that verdict. I would throw myself again at Ellen’s feet, and beseech her pity, but that I dread its repetition. Can I count on your good offices to move her in my behalf? I know the value Miss Chadwick sets on your opinion, and how highly she esteems you, or I should not think of asking this. The trust I repose in you is the best proof I can give of friendship. Do not hesitate to tell me the worst. I trust I am brave enough to bear my fate—when I know it. Mrs. Chadwick does not believe her daughter’s decision final.”

This was a disquieting letter. Mr. Travis had been his firm, true friend, in spite of difference in position and fortune. He had overlooked that difference from the first, but would Miss Chadwick, his employer’s niece, overlook it, if he stepped beyond privileged bounds? From the depths of his own conscious heart he felt for his friend, but how to approach so delicate a subject to serve him was perplexing. He never thought of shirking the trust.

It was late when he got home to dinner. Ellen and Bess were both on the look-out for him. He quickened his pace, fearing some evil to his beloved Augusta, whom he had last seen in tears.

“What an anomaly is woman!” he thought, as he found her fingers rattling over the keys of her piano in accompaniment to the merriest ditty he had heard from her lips since she was a child.

There was a strange sparkle in her eyes, a vivacity in her manner so opposed to her sadness that he asked himself if he had been dreaming before, or was dreaming then. She blushed over her willow-pattern plate as she took her seat, but, after that first token of susceptibility, chatted with a volubility unusual to her, and curiously in contradiction to the silence and reserve of Ellen Chadwick. In the morning he had debated whether that secret trouble came within the category of “unusual” things Mrs. Ashton required to be informed of, and, behold! it was gone!

She rallied both Jabez and Ellen on their gravity, and at length, as if on a sudden inspiration, asked, playing with her green-handled, two-pronged fork—

“Shall you be very busy at the mill this afternoon, Mr. Clegg?”

It was an unusual question. He answered—

“Rather. Some bales of twist have come in from Messrs. Evans, of Darley-Abbey Mills. I must see them unpacked, and compare the twist with samples. But—your motive for asking?”

“Oh, if you are busy—— Well, perhaps after tea will be better; it will be cooler. I wish you would just take Ellen a good long walk; I found her fainting with the heat this morning.”

Ellen coloured vividly.

“Augusta!” she remonstrated.

“And yourself, Miss Ashton?” questioned he.

“Oh, I have a heap of clear-starching to do. My frills and laces are in a woeful plight. I shall be clap-clap-clap all the afternoon, and this sultry weather prohibits ironing until there is a cool evening breeze to fan me through the window. Without it I should be as likely to faint as Ellen.”

Miss Chadwick made light of her faintness, and objected, if not too strenuously, to be so disposed of; but Augusta, in her old wilful way, insisted, and Jabez, with his friend’s letter on his mind, was not likely to throw opposition in the way. So, notwithstanding his recent rebuff, he was once more “Miss Ashton’s humble servant to command.”

After an early tea, which was but a fiction to all three, Augusta was left behind, busy with a box-iron and her lady-like laundry of lace and muslin in the house-place, whilst Ellen Chadwick and Jabez went rambling with the winding waters of the translucent Goyt, under umbrageous trees on pleasant mountain slopes, where foxgloves nodded and horsetail grasses bent before them, and only an occasional reaper or gleaner crossed their path.

Had these two been incipient lovers, no more embarrassing silence could have fallen upon them. If Jabez, her junior by two years, had had a tussle to keep his love within bounds, there had at least been a glimmer of hope in the distance, and the struggle was upwards. Ellen had been trained from her childhood to keep her naturally strong feelings under control; but there was a war in her breast between maidenly shame and unsought, hopeless love, and the two hacked at each other and at her heart in the rayless dark, and the struggle was downwards.

Here she was, for the first time, alone with the man she loved with all the strength of a strong heart, with the newly-gained knowledge that he “would die to save her cousin pain;” and he, conscious of a sacred and delicate mission, all unaware of her secret love for himself, was perplexed how best to approach the subject, and take advantage of the opportunity so afforded him. At length—

“I had a letter from my friend, Captain Travis, to-day,” he began.

With little perceptible emotion, she replied,

“Indeed! I hope he was in good health. You are honoured in your friendship, sir. Mr. Travis is a noble gentleman, and I esteem him highly.”

This paved the way for him to expatiate on Ben Travis’s many good qualities. He told the story of the big, raw-boned youth’s first patronage of himself, and found an attentive listener as he traced the growth of their friendship upwards, and related favourable anecdotes which have no place in this history. But no sooner did he begin to plead his friend’s cause with all the warmth of young friendship, than her manner entirely changed. Her colour came and went; she panted as if for breath, and gasping out, “Oh—h! Mr. Clegg, for mercy’s sake, don’t—don’t!” was seized with a sudden faintness for the second time that day.

A lichen-covered old tree-trunk, shattered and uptorn in the late thunder-storms, was at hand; he seated her upon it, bringing water to revive her from a runnel near; but any attempt to renew the subject only seemed to give her exquisite pain, and he desisted on her telling him, in a suffocating voice,

“Honour forbids that I should listen to Mr. Travis; I—I—love another.”

Something in her tone or manner told him that her love was as hopeless as his own for Augusta: and nothing could be more respectful and gentle than his bearing towards her on their homeward way, thus adding fuel to the fire which consumed her.

The evening shadows were fast closing in when they reached the cottage; and she, with a simple inclination of the head, left Jabez on the threshold, and passing through the parlours, carried her overmastering emotions upwards to her room, to be grappled with in the silence of the night.

“Wheere’s Miss Ashton?” asked Bess. “Hoo said it wur too hot to bide i’ th’ heawse an’ hoo put her irons deawn, an’ after tittivatin’ hersel’ oop a bit, went eawt a-seekin’ yo’.”

In some surprise, not unmixed with alarm, for the hour was late—as times and country went—and the harvest brought rough strangers into the neighbourhood, Jabez set off at full speed down the avenue, and ere he had reached the first brook, saw her lithe figure advancing buoyantly; and, if his eyes and the gathering mist did not deceive him, a second figure parted from her at the gate.

She was the first to speak. “Whichever way did you people ramble off?”

“Oh, down by the Goyt, Taxal way, Miss Ashton,” answered Jabez.

“Ah! and I went up the Buxton Road; we were certain to miss.”

“I thought I saw you part from some one at the gate? Could I be mistaken?” half-questioned her interlocutor.

“Oh, Crazy Joe! that was all!” and he took her reply in all sincerity, not believing Augusta Ashton capable of untruth.

A day or two went by, during which Jabez wrote to tell Ben Travis he “must arm himself with fortitude”—that “the world was full of disappointments”—that “Miss Chadwick loved elsewhere”—but there was “something more for men to do than die of disappointments or blighted love.”

And yet another day or two, during which Augusta’s moods were as variable as the gusty shadows of the sycamore, changing from wild exuberance which rallied Ellen on her depression, and condescended to play or dance for Sim, to a moping, moody melancholy, enlivened by frequent showers. She was given to snatch up her hat and “run out into the garden for a breath of fresh air,” but she generally came in panting, as if the “run” had been literal; and sometimes she would be found in the house when supposed out of it, and _vice versa_.

The White Hart had not yet walked away, although Jabez considered it complete. It waited Mr. Ashton’s coming and his verdict, and stood on the easel in the dining-room.

The morning post had brought a message to Simon Clegg concerning fruit and vegetables for the Manchester home, and having sought him in the kitchen-garden to deliver it, Jabez entered the house at dinner time by the lower staircase window (frequently used for entrance and exit). His passage through the best parlour was arrested by voices in the room beyond, one of which he knew too well. It was that of Laurence Aspinall. His painting was evidently under free criticism, and had been for some time. There was some jesting at the sign-painter.

“You see, Miss Ashton, what a few touches can affect!”

The speaker had apparently made free with Clegg’s colours and brushes, and there was a murmured sound of assent from Miss Ashton.

“Well, Barret, _Nec scire fas est omnia; Ne sutor ultra crepidam_. What say you?”

“Yes; let the cobbler stick to his last. If this Clegg would be an artist, let him stick to his brush; if a tradesman, let him stick to his trade. If a man means to succeed, he must never flirt with either art or trade. It’s just as bad as wooing two women at once.”

Jabez heard no more. The blow which had been aimed at his art-pretensions drove him back by the way he came, and he paced the long terrace parallel with the “Lovers’ Walk” for fully half-an-hour. When he turned the corner of the cottage, and went in at the front door, the critics were gone, but Aspinall’s “few touches” remained. They had indeed given life to the White Hart. Henceforth the “cobbler” resolved to “stick to his last.”

Ellen Chadwick had been away, with little Sim by the hand, to take some substantial comforts to Meg’s bedridden mother. She appeared annoyed when she heard of their masculine visitors from Buxton. Her evident displeasure set Jabez wondering what Travis meant by “after what has occurred,” and he wrote that afternoon for enlightenment, sending his letter as a packet by coach, there being no second post.

It has been said that the cellarage of the cottage was only accessible by flights of steps in the portion of the weed-grown Lovers’ Walk which lay at the windowless back of the long low building, where nettles grew so thick and rank that even the square unused trap over one set of steps was half hidden by them. The path was rarely used, the farmer having made a nearer cut from the farmyard to his ancient dwelling.

Tom Hulme was slowly recovering, under the care of a Buxton doctor who came thrice a week. He could walk about the garden with a stick, but there was no sending him to the dank cellar for anything. The doctor had ordered him port wine, and Bess, who kept the key, had asked Mr. Clegg to fetch a couple of bottles from the cellar.

Tea was over, but he fancied there was sufficient light to guide him without a lantern. He had got the wine, and was approaching the cellar door at the foot of the sunken steps when he heard the sound of voices coming along the walk from the direction of the moor.

Every pulse in his body seemed to grow still as he recognised the tones of Augusta Ashton and Laurence Aspinall, and heard with deepening anguish the unmistakable sound of kisses interchanged. They had apparently paused close to the stair-head for that embrace; and then he heard—and thanked God that he was there to hear, though that hearing blighted every hope he had—his rival, with every argument which passionate love or skilful sophistry could employ, persuade her to elope with him the following night.

Backwards and forwards they walked in the gathering dusk, but never beyond the length of the premises; and now and then they stopped, and drove him mad with their caresses. The place was so retired and lonely, precaution was neglected; and Jabez, chained to the spot as it were, gathered that proposals for her hand, made by Laurence himself, had been peremptorily rejected by Mr. Ashton, who was set down as a despot and a tyrant for refusing to surrender a silly girl of seventeen to a rake of two-and-twenty. He heard her tell that Jabez Clegg had found her sobbing at the separation, even whilst her darling’s letter was at the gates. And he heard it said that the elder Aspinall not only countenanced this secret courtship, but had furnished funds for the proposed elopement. This generosity was set against the cruelty of her own parents; her affection, her pride, the romance in her nature were appealed to, but still Augusta’s better angel held her safe, until, coward that he was, Laurence terrified her with a threat to “blow his brains out” if she refused him.

She wept her assent upon his breast, and then Jabez, already half-stunned, heard the details of evidently previously concocted arrangements for their elopement and marriage at Gretna Green, professedly with his father’s sanction.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SEVENTH.

A RIDE ON A RAINY NIGHT.

Jabez, bottles in hand, his mind a chaos, had walked in at the wash-kitchen door precisely as Augusta, stealthily creeping through a gap in the privet-hedge, made her way to the convenient staircase-window, shivering more from fright than from the chill drizzling rain which had begun to fall. Putting her head in at the parlour-door where Ellen was sewing, with a brief “I’m off to bed,” she hurried upstairs in the dusk to lave her flushed face, smooth her disordered hair, crush it under a night-cap, and place her head on a pillow, to still her heart’s flutterings under the screening counterpane, and hide her emotions from her cousin under the semblance of sleep, though sleep was an absolute impossibility.

In 1821 the village of Gretna Green, on the Scottish border, was the general resort of runaway lovers, who, being in their minority, could not be married legally in England without parental consent, whereas in Caledonia a mere promise to marry made in the presence of witnesses was held binding. At Gretna a man not in holy orders, but metaphorically called “the blacksmith,” because he riveted the chains of matrimony, lived in the first house beyond the bridge which spanned the river Sark, and, with a ceremonial as unseemly as it was brief, married all comers, often with pursuers at his very doors; and the marriages so contracted were not to be set aside. For more than half a century Gretna Green weddings had figured largely in the literature of the stage and of the circulating library; and there is no doubt that the halo of romance thrown around an elopement to Gretna blinded to the impropriety of the prenuptial flight many a foolish or headstrong girl whom the actual ceremony shocked and startled.

Augusta Ashton, with all her sentimental romance, all her petulant wilfulness, all her resentment at being exiled from home and her Adonis, yet loved her parents well, although her reverence and filial obedience had been gradually undermined by the plausible sophistry and impassioned eloquence of her ardent lover. But if she loved them much, she, unfortunately, loved Laurence more. He was, to do him justice, terribly in earnest; and in the inexperience of her seventeen years she could not be expected to sift and analyse that passionate earnestness for its many components. With her _all_ was _love_, and _love_ was _all_.

His proposition had, nevertheless, come upon her with a shock. She was not prepared to ignore the prudent teaching of her mother, or to brave the indignation of her indulgent father, or to forfeit her own self-respect, and nothing could have moved her to consent but that appalling threat of suicide, and he knew her tender heart well when he made it.

But neither that threat nor her promise could reconcile her to the rash step, and she lay in bed shuddering with her own fears, and strangely enough her first thought was—“What would Jabez say if he knew it?” Not her father, not her mother, but the Jabez whom she had rebuffed only a week before, yet of whose opinion she somehow stood more in awe than of all else besides.

What did Jabez think, seeing that he did know? Think? He scarcely could think. Feeling seemed to overpower thought, reason, perception. When after a stagnant time he emerged from the stair-head, it was more as a culprit than Jabez Clegg. He put down the bottles and escaped again into the open air, cowed alike by the knowledge which had overpowered him, and by a sense of dishonour at having played the unworthy part of a listener, albeit the listening had been involuntary, seeing that the shock of his discovery had stunned him like a blow from a sledge-hammer, crushing his own long-cherished hopes to death. His next thought was of intense thankfulness that by any means the schemes of Aspinall had been bared to him, and in time to attempt the rescue of his idolised Augusta from the clutches of a villain.

Unacquainted with the events which had preceded Augusta’s removal to Carr—unaware that the Mosley Street doors had been closed against Laurence, or that a formal proposal for the young lady’s hand had been made by the elder Aspinall on behalf of his son, and peremptorily declined by the Ashtons; ignorant that imperious Mr. Aspinall, in his gouty wrath, had sworn “upon his honour” that his son _should_ “marry the girl in spite of the paltry beggar’s-inkle-weaver,” and having no faith in the man himself, Jabez regarded the use of the father’s name only as a proof of his greater perfidy, and gave him no credit even for an honourable intention or an honest emotion. The time was past for Clegg to find excuses for the wrong-doing of his adversary.

Now, with every nerve unstrung, he was required to act, and that promptly. To-morrow would be too late. What if he should take Miss Chadwick into his confidence? But no, he could not lower Augusta in the eyes even of her own cousin and neither she nor anyone there had authority to detain Miss Ashton against her will even if her foot were on the step of the post-chaise. It was imperative that he should reach Manchester immediately, yet how to do so without exciting alarm perplexed him. There was a horse in the stable at the mill, but as he had a bed in Simon’s room, and could neither leave it nor return to it in the night without passing through the Hulmes’ sleeping apartment, there was a difficulty in quitting the house unknown.

“I must be at the mill before daybreak to-morrow having something of importance to attend to, so I will sleep on the squab in the house-place, Mrs. Hulme, and if I am not in for breakfast, do not wait for me,” said he; and no one questioned him, although Mrs. Hulme and her husband were of joint opinion that “Jabez looked terribly put eawt,” and wondered what business he could have on hand of so much consequence.

No one thought of locking country cottage doors. By nine o’clock all the inmates were in bed and asleep. Before ten Jabez, sad at heart, had quietly left the cottage for the mill, had saddled Peveril, and, though no great horseman, was speeding past the “White Hart” along the highway to Manchester, fast as the steady-going roadster would travel. The wind had risen, and the rain came down persistently; but heedless of discomfort or danger, with the one thought paramount in his mind—the preservation of his master’s daughter—he set his teeth and rode on with a feverish impatience, which at length communicated itself to Peveril, and quickened the beat of the sensible animal’s hoof; impatience which would have sent him flying over the toll-gates, had either he or his steed been equal to the exploit, and which could barely brook the delay of drowsy toll-keepers.

Nevertheless as he turned from Piccadilly into Mosley Street, the muffled-up old watchman, catching the echoes of the Infirmary clock, bawled out, to mark his own vigilance, “Just one o’clock, an’ a dark rainy neet!” and the Ashton household had closed its eyelids, and its account with the day, at least a couple of hours.

It is never pleasant to be the bearer of ill-tidings, so no wonder Jabez hesitated with the lion-headed knocker in his hand ere he sent its reverberations growling through the silent house. His hesitation must have influenced the knocker, for the lion had to roar again, and louder, before he heard the window above unclose, and saw Mr. Ashton’s night-capped head thrust out, to ask, in alarm, “Who’s there? What’s the matter?”

Jabez stepped back to the kerbstone to let the dull rays of an oil lamp fall upon his face.

“It is I, Jabez Clegg, sir; I have a matter of importance to communicate.”

“Good heavens, Clegg, you! Surely the mill’s not been burned down?”

“No, sir, all’s right at the factory. There’s no harm done anywhere at _present_. If you will please to come down, I hope there may be time to prevent that which is threatened.”

“Just so, I’ll be down directly.”

There were no lucifer-matches with which to procure instantaneous light, but during this brief colloquy, Mrs. Ashton had been groping on the tall chimney-piece for their precursors the Prometheans, and having found them, by dipping a small chemically prepared match into a tiny bottle of fluid, she obtained a light as soon as the window was closed and the draught shut out.

Too uneasy to waste much time in dressing, before many minutes had flown, Mr. and Mrs. Ashton, whose fears had equally pointed to their daughter—the one in a roquelaire, and the other in her warehouse overall—were both listening with agitated and anxious faces to Mr. Clegg’s communication, made with a discomposure great as their own.

“Elope!” both parents exclaimed, simultaneously.

“Elope!” reiterated the mother! “our daughter consent to elope, and with a reprobate like him? It is not possible!”

“So I should have said, madam, yesterday,” rejoined Jabez, sadly, as he sank on a chair, overpowered more by the strain on his feelings than by the fatigue of his long, wet, midnight ride; “and I would have given the _world_ to have been able to doubt the evidence of my own ears.”

Mrs. Ashton, with clasped hands up, sat opposite to Jabez; Mr. Ashton, lacking the consolation and inspiration of his snuff-box, walked about the room with one hand to his head in a state of distressing perturbation. He stopped in his walk to ask, “What’s to be done?” as Jabez made this declaration, unconscious of its force.

The light of the chamber candle fell upon the haggard face and drenched garments of the young man. The elder one looked full at him, paused, then drawing near and laying his right hand heavily on the other’s wet shoulder, asked in a troubled voice, with an inquisitorial but not unkind manner—

“My lad, did no other motive than duty to your employers bring you eighteen miles through the rain this dark night to save Miss Ashton from an imprudent marriage?”

Jabez had not stopped to analyse his own motives. Thus questioned, it was not without embarrassment that he answered, “Mrs. Ashton desired me, sir, to watch over Miss Ashton, and acquaint you with any matter affecting her welfare. But apart from that, sir, I could not see Miss Ashton in the toils of a libertine without an attempt to rescue her. I should have been a dastard to sit passive; and even now I feel we are losing time.”

“Just so, just so,” assented Mr. Ashton. “That reminds me, Peveril is in the street, and you are soaked to the skin. My dear”—turning to his wife—“will you arouse the servants, and see that neither horse nor rider suffers in our service more than we can help.”

Having thus got rid of his wife, of whom he stood somewhat in awe, he resumed his searching catechism of Jabez.

“And so, Clegg, you have no motive beyond a chivalrous desire to save your master’s daughter, no _interest_ to serve beyond your duty to us?”

The ordeal was terrible. Jabez rose, his features working convulsively.

“Mr. Ashton, you are torturing me. Humble as I am, I love Miss Ashton with my whole life and soul. But knowing the distance between us, I have striven to keep the secret in my own breast. And I protest I had no double motive in my journey hither.”

The genial small-ware manufacturer, to whom that night had brought two revelations, looked Jabez steadfastly in the face as he made his avowal; then, taking him kindly by the hand, said—his eyes swimming—

“Just so, just so, my lad! I believe you. And, Jabez Clegg, let me tell you that I would rather give my daughter to an upright, persevering man like you, without a penny, than to a spendthrift like Laurence Aspinall, though he rolled in riches. But it’s no use saying that _now_.”

Indeed there was no use, and time was flying. A glance of grateful attachment, and a mute pressure of his liberal master’s hand, were the sole acknowledgment of Jabez. But a new bond was established between the twain.

Mrs. Ashton had come back to discuss with her husband and Jabez the best mode of procedure. She was not less shrewd than her lord, and had not failed to perceive that the young man’s heart was in the service he now rendered them. The blow dealt by Augusta to her pride dashed down the impalpable barrier between them, and she took counsel with him as a tried and true friend.

Mr. Clegg pointed out the necessity for his return to the mill before it should open, and he be missed; and taking a proffered glass of brandy and water to avert cold, he hurried, whilst hot coffee was preparing, to change his soaked garments preparatory to the ride back; his elders also taking the opportunity to dress and prepare for departure with the morning coach.

Not a moment was wasted, but though Peveril had been well groomed and fed, he was not so fresh to the road as he had been; still the journey was homeward, the rain had abated; day began to dawn as he left Stockport behind, and without much use of the whip, Jabez had his horse back in the stable before the factory bell began to ring. And then the _beast_ was allowed to rest. The jaded _man_ had to rouse himself to another day’s work, another day’s trial and excitement, without a moment for repose.

To everybody’s astonishment, Mr. and Mrs. Ashton stepped out of the “Lord Nelson” coach that morning at the bottom of the avenue, with a carpet-bag for luggage. The difference of their reception by daughter and niece was palpable, and they could not fail to observe how much the former was disconcerted by their arrival.

“Oh, aunt and uncle, this is a pleasant surprise!” exclaimed Ellen, running down the avenue to meet them.

“_You_ do not appear very well pleased to see us, Augusta,” remarked Mrs. Ashton, as she met her lazily sauntering through the garden towards them, as captivating in her printed morning dress as a sleepless night, an anxious headache, and her unmistakable confusion would permit the recognised beauty to be.

“Oh, yes, I am pleased enough, but I should have been better pleased if you had written instead of coming upon one so suddenly. It is quite startling!” and the petulance of her tone gave effect to the pettish frown on her brow.

“My dear, ill thoughts make ill looks,” said Mrs. Ashton, gravely, with a searching glance. “What is the matter with you this morning? Nothing serious, I hope.”

The very inquiry apparently annoyed her.

“Oh, I’ve got a headache, that’s all. I heard a man’s foot on the gravel-walk long after everyone was in bed, and I got a fright.”

“I think it was only Crazy Joe—he hangs about at all hours,” put in Ellen, who had not heard the crunch of Mr. Clegg’s heel on the gravel, as he stood for a moment under their window, to breathe a prayer for the safety and well-being of the supposed sleeper, before he turned away swiftly on his errand.

Almost Mr. Ashton’s first inquiry was for Mr. Clegg.

“He’s at the mill, sir. He was off afore any on us was up; an’ he said happen he mightna git whome fur breakfast, he wur so busy,” was the reply of Bess.

But Mr. Ashton, setting off towards the factory, encountered Jabez on the way, and they returned together to breakfast, as if they had met for the first time that morning. On Mrs. Ashton’s suggestion, Augusta was neither questioned nor accused.

“We should only tempt her to deny, and perhaps provoke ill-will towards our informant, with no good end,” she said. “Better wait and ascertain beyond question what her intentions are.”

Jabez would fain have spared her the pain and shame of exposure, but the matter was out of his hands.

The day passed unmarked save by Augusta’s restless lookout for Crazy Joe, and the way she hung about her mother, as if half afraid of the rash step she contemplated.

Mr. Ashton meanwhile, to cover his distress and agitation, busied himself about the transfer of the White Hart (which he pronounced “admirable”) to its place over the inn-door, and managed to elicit from Chapman, the gossiping landlord, without direct inquiry, that a fine young spark in hunting gear had put up his horse there several times within the past week, and was like to make the fortune of Crazy Joe, he gave the poor softy so many half-crowns; but Joe was “deep, and never let on what he got them for.”

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-EIGHTH.

DEFEATED.

Jabez Clegg and the young ladies occupied adjoining chambers (the two inner rooms of the suite), but the door of communication was locked, and they were attained by different staircases. Thus, as he was compelled to pass through the Hulmes’ sleeping apartment, so Ellen and Augusta were constrained to go backwards and forwards through that of Mr. and Mrs. Ashton—an arrangement to which long use had probably reconciled them.

It was this fact which had so much disconcerted Augusta, since she foresaw a difficulty in escaping unheard; and not meeting with Joe (that most unpromising of Cupids), she was as equally unable to convey a message to her expectant lover. She repented her rash promise, and would fain have availed herself of a pretext for delay; but the night came, and, haunted by imaginary pictures of Laurence with a pistol to his head, she dared not disappoint him. She had promised to meet him at that entrance of the Lovers’ Walk which opened below Yeardsley-Hall Farm into Moor Lane, whilst, the lane being a steep declivity, he was to keep the post-chaise in waiting at the foot.

Her headache served as an excuse for retiring to bed earlier than her cousin, and scarcely could her father and mother restrain themselves as she kissed them lingeringly before she went. Indeed, Mr. Ashton would much have preferred to “have it out with the girl at once, and have done with it,” there not being much “waiting” blood in his veins.

He had kept out of her sight most of the day, fidgeting over one thing and another, whilst his waistcoat and shirt-frill bore testimony to the constant raid on his snuff-box.

“I don’t like to see my poor lass trapped like a bird in a cage,” he said, in confidence, to Jabez, whose opinion he already knew agreed with his own, as did the desire to “thrash the infernal scoundrel within an inch of his life.”

The last straw had broken the camel’s back, and Jabez was no longer inclined to be passive.

Laurence had bid Augusta take no care for her wardrobe; his purse was ample, and he would dress her like a queen if she would only consent to fly with him. So, after collecting a few immediate necessaries and trinkets, and placing the reticule which contained them out of sight, she crept into bed, to lie and listen for the household to follow her example. How lazily the hours lagged! She heard old Simon shuffling about, and the creaking of his camp-bedstead, as he settled his old rheumatic bones for the night, but the firm foot of Jabez she did not hear, though the house clock struck nine, and Ellen came up with the last stroke.

In answer to a question, Ellen said that Mr. Clegg was asleep on the squab, and that she understood he had slept there the previous night, to be able to go to the mill very early, without disturbing anyone else.

“I saw him as he lay there, where he had fallen asleep shortly after tea, and I have been speaking to my uncle about him; he looks so dreadfully worn and jaded, I am sure he is either killing himself with overwork, or has some great trouble on his mind,” and a deep sigh followed this expression of opinion.

Augusta was silent. Something within her secret heart whispered that the trouble of Jabez Clegg would be intensified sevenfold by her act of that night; and haughty as she was betimes, she pitied him. And whatever were her compunctions, fears, or emotions, Jabez certainly shared with her parents in her thoughts.

Ellen slept. The clock struck ten. Father and mother entered their room, and through the door which Augusta had artfully requested Ellen to “leave open on account of the heat” came the sound of their voices in low but earnest converse—“You leave her to me, William,” spoken with decision, being the only words she could distinguish, though she heard her father walk about for some time. Indeed, she thought he would never go to bed.

Eleven! She slipped stealthily from the side of her sleeping cousin, and by the light of the moon, clear enough to-night, dressed as noiselessly and rapidly as her trepidation would permit. From habit she knelt to pray, but as she came to the passage, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” a new meaning seemed to flash through the words, and she half wavered in her purpose.

“Poor Jabez!” she murmured to herself, as she caught up her shoes and reticule, and listened in the open doorway for the deep breathing which came from behind the dimity curtains of the four-post bed. Re-assured, she stepped lightly across the room in her stocking-feet, turned the drop-handle of that chamber door as silently as the squeaking latch would permit and fled swiftly down the stairs, sitting down at the bottom to put on her shoes.

She had raised the sash, and was in the very act of stepping over the low window-sill, when a foot was heard on the stair, and turning her head, she saw her mother fully dressed close by her side, and felt her slight wrist grasped as in a vice.

“Is this your filial love and obedience, misguided girl? Is this the result of Madame Broadbent’s training? Have you no more sense of honour and decency than to elope at midnight with any man, least of all with the worthless reprobate who has caught your silly fancy? Could you not think that chastity is the brightest jewel in a woman’s crown, and the soonest dimmed, that you were ready to leave your character at the mercy of every gossip who had a tongue to wag?”

She had drawn Augusta, too much stunned to speak, into the parlour close at hand, and had shut the doors—a needless precaution, seeing how remote were all sleepers. A few words of gentle motherly inquiry might have softened impulsive, tender-hearted Augusta to tears, and turned the whole current of her life; but Mrs. Ashton’s stateliness had become sternness, and, fresh from the evil teaching of Laurence Aspinall, her daughter’s proud spirit rose in rebellion, and answered her.

“We are going to be married. And I was not going with Laurence alone. Cicily was to travel with us. Laurence himself proposed it.”

“Infatuated girl!” exclaimed Mrs. Ashton, “Cicily was in Mosley Street last night.”

“And so were you, mother,” was the smart retort, “but the coach which dropped you here carried her to Buxton. Outside passengers were muffled up, but she waved her handkerchief as she passed, as a sign to me.”

“Sign to you, indeed! I marvel you are not ashamed of yourself and your hero, who is not content with corrupting my daughter, but must corrupt our servants also! A fine hero indeed, whose qualifications are all external! I cannot see what there is to admire in him.”

“Not see what there is to admire in that exquisite figure and beautiful face? Why, I shall be the envy of half the girls in Manchester when I marry him!” Augusta exclaimed, with anything but the air of a culprit just detected.

“But you are not likely to marry him, you forward chit. You go back to Manchester to-morrow, and I will take good care you don’t marry either clandestinely or openly a man so sure to make your heart ache, if he were thrice as handsome!”

“But I WILL marry him, mamma—_I’ll please my eye, if I plague my heart_!”

“_Then, as you make your bed, so must you lie, miss_,” answered Mrs. Ashton, gravely and deliberately. “But take my word for it, neither your papa nor myself will give our consent. And now go to your room, Augusta, and thank God you have been saved from disgrace this night, and thank us that we have kept you from open exposure. Not even your cousin has a notion of this last folly. Our daughter’s honour is dearer to us than to herself,” and the mother’s tone softened as she spoke.

“Your daughter’s honour has never been in any danger,” said Augusta, haughtily, as she swept from the room, to encounter at the foot of the stairs, flooded by moonlight through the open window, her father—and Jabez.

Up to that moment she had stood on the defensive, her wayward spirit upholding and arming her for retort. The sight of the father who had indulged her every whim, and of Jabez whose esteem she valued more than she herself knew, gave a sudden shock to her overwrought nerves, and she fell forward into the arms of Jabez in a deep swoon.

Tenderly, respectfully, sadly, he bore her into the parlour, and placing her on the sofa, relinquished her to her mother, divesting himself of his shoes in order to procure water to restore her without creating alarm.

When she recovered he was gone; she was alone with the parents whose counsels she had despised, whose love she had wounded; herself detected and humiliated.

A greater humiliation had fallen to the lot of elate, enamoured, and self-satisfied Laurence Aspinall, when, leaving his friend Barret with the post-chaise, their saddle-horses, and Cicily at the bottom of Moor Lane, he mounted the hill and whistled softly at the entrance of the Lovers’ Walk, to call forth—not a blushing maiden, half afraid of her own temerity, but—two justly incensed and indignant men. His low-voiced “Augusta” died upon his lips; he recoiled, stammered—

“You! I—I did not expect—— D—nation! What brought you here? I thought——”

“Just so, you atrocious scoundrel, you thought God had left our pet lamb to the fangs of the wolf, and that neither father nor friend was near to protect the innocent!” exclaimed Mr. Ashton, raising the stout bamboo with which he was provided.

“If that infernal Cicily has betrayed us, I’ll——”

The threat was not completed, for Jabez interrupted him with—

“No, sir, it was not Cicily. You betrayed yourself. You laid bare your whole scheme in this walk within my hearing, Mr. Laurence Aspinall, and the sophistry which misled a simple confiding girl could not delude one who knew you as I do.”

“D—nation!” hissed Laurence between his teeth. “You infernal charity-school whelp! Am I to meet you at every turn? I suppose you want Miss Ashton for yourself, but I’ll balk you yet!” and, but that Jabez had a quick eye and hand, his riding-whip would have seamed the latter’s manly face.

Jabez dexterously caught the light whip, and wrenched it from him, a simultaneous sharp blow of Mr. Ashton’s bamboo on Aspinall’s shoulders tending to loosen his grasp. And then the two young men, with all the fever of jealousy added to old animosity, closed and grappled with each other as might a lion and a tiger in the arena. And Mr. Ashton, his love of fair play yielding to his exasperation, made good use of his bamboo whenever he could deal a blow without harming Jabez.

The two combatants were not unequally matched; there was little difference in size and weight, but the scientific skill of Laurence had more than a counterpoise in the nerve and muscle of Jabez, strengthened by exercise and a temperate life, whilst vicious courses had somewhat impaired his own athletic frame.

The struggle on the steep hill-side was too deadly for noise. At length Laurence—himself booted and spurred—in striving to take an unfair advantage and rip the unprotected calves of Jabez with the rowels of his spurs, lost his foothold, and was borne to the earth, falling heavily. He lay on the ground stunned and motionless. At once Jabez, with a swift revulsion of feeling, knelt down by the side of his prostrate foe, and raised his head; Mr. Ashton bending over them inquiringly, just as Barret, whom curiosity and impatience had drawn from his post below, came on the scene. A stifled groan, and a muttered curse, having assured Clegg that his rival was not mortally injured, he called to Barret—

“Here, sir, take charge of your worthy principal; and be careful, when next you plan an elopement, that you have not a man to deal with instead of a credulous girl.”

Mr. Ashton’s “Just so!” coming sharply in as chorus, the young man put his arm in that of the elder and drew him away, leaving Barrett and the postilion to restore Laurence Aspinall, and assist him into the post-chaise by the side of Cicily—whose trepidation would have been very much increased could she have seen how the blood was trickling down from a wound in his head, staining still more the torn, miry coat, and the disordered shirt-frill over which he was usually so fastidious.

Barret, leading his companion’s horse, rode on in advance of the vehicle, to prepare the pompous gentleman, laid up with the gout in Buxton Crescent, for the reception of his gentlemanly son in a highly gentlemanlike condition—hatless, wigless, dirty, dilapidated, bruised, bloody—and unsuccessful. The hat had rolled down-hill, to be crushed under the wheels of the chaise; the wig and broken whip were found the next morning by Crazy Joe, who exercised his witless head respecting them and the trampled ground to small purpose; then brought them to his friend Sim as playthings. Had they fallen into the hands of a reasoning mortal, much more perplexity, and a very serious mystery, might have been the result.

Buxton being only five miles from Whaley-Bridge, Barret again made his appearance in the neighbourhood of the “White Hart,” whilst the new sign still attracted rustic admirers; and, finding no rumours current respecting the occurrence of the preceding night, he rode off again, having first committed to Crazy Joe a scarcely decipherable missive from the discomfited lover to the not less disconsolate damsel.

The evening coach bore the Ashtons and Ellen back to Manchester; Augusta, still in a rebellious mood, the cause of which, being hidden from her cousin, occasioned the latter no little perplexity. There was something, too, in the manner of her uncle and aunt to Jabez, and of Jabez to all, which, being undefinable and impalpable, struck her as peculiar. He seemed suddenly to have risen to another footing. How was it they had taken _him_ into their confidence?

Not until the last moment—when attention was distracted by the bustle at the inn-door, the disposal of the luggage, and the taking of seats—could Crazy Joe (with cunning worthy a better cause) contrive to slip the billet-doux into Miss Ashton’s reticule, unseen by all but herself.

Not until she reached her own room could she scan its characteristic contents, which ran as follows:—

“Crescent, Buxton,

“September ——, 1821.

“ADORED AUGUSTA,

“Excuse this scrawl; I can scarcely hold my pen in consequence of a ruffianly attack made upon me by your father’s favourite factotum, Jabez Clegg, in Moor Lane last night. Can you disclose to me the strange fatality which kept you from my expectant arms, and revealed our plans to that upstart foundling? Had not Mr. Ashton also struck at me with a stick, I could readily have disposed of his assistant; but my foot tripped over a stone, and falling, I lay at their mercy. Yet, sweet Augusta, if my blood flowed it was for thy sake, and for thy sake I endure.

“Be constant, be firm; let no tyranny coerce you, and I will make a way for our union, if I steal you from their very midst. I have a dislocated ankle, a bruised and swollen hand, a plaistered crown, and I write painfully. I shall feel every hour a year until I hold you in my arms again. But if my angelic Augusta be only true to her promise, she will soon, in spite of spies and informers, be the adored wife of her

“Most devoted

“LAURENCE.”

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-NINTH.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.

It is no uncommon thing for a woman to gild a block, wreathe it with flowers, and then fall down and worship the idol she has adorned. Augusta’s hero needed no outward embellishment, so she fitted the fair exterior with the perfections and virtues of the high-spirited, noble, generous Mortimers and Mowbrays, whose acquaintance she had made in print, and had set him on a very elevated pedestal, in spite of all warnings. With that misleading letter of his before her, no wonder if the “blood shed for her sweet sake” converted the hero into the martyr, and placed Jabez and her father in the category of cruel persecutors. It did more. It erected a barrier against reconciliation. In vain her placable father held out a flag of truce; she kept aloof resentfully, though in the solitude of her own chamber she gave way, and wept at her isolation from all who loved her.

Mrs. Ashton, whose sense of propriety had been outraged, whose maternal pride had received a terrible shock, was less readily disposed to condone her daughter’s offence; and, being a better business woman than a psychologist, her tactics showed none of her ordinary shrewdness.

The failure of Augusta’s banishment to Carr should have taught her that romance is nursed in solitude, and that conciliation is better than coercion. Had she spared a few hours from the warehouse to arrange a dance, or a gipsy-party to Dunham Park; chaperoned her lovely daughter to assembly, theatre, or concert-room; invited her companionship in a stroll through St. Ann’s Square and King Street, calling at Mrs. Edge’s fashionably-frequented library by the way; joined the after-morning-church promenaders in the Infirmary Gardens, or given a little time to morning calls, she would have brought Augusta into contact with young people of her own age, and with the attractive of the opposite sex, and so have supplied an antidote for the poison Laurence and ultra-sentimental literature had instilled.