Chapter THE TENTH: First Antagonism (10)

Instead, never was the golden fruit of the Hesperides more vigilantly guarded. She was kept much within doors. The modern notion that a daily airing is indispensable had not been promulgated, or had not become the creed of the manufacturing community. Mrs. Ashton had “no leisure for gadding,” and Augusta cared little to drive in the gig with only James for her charioteer, or even to walk with Ellen, so long as the mulberry-coloured livery was in attendance. (It might have been otherwise, had not the said James held it as much “beneath his dignity” to accept a bribe as he had formerly done to wait upon Mr. Clegg.) From her old bed-room, which overlooked Mosley Street, she was relegated to one in the rear, which commanded no wider prospect than their own courtyard, nor anything more interesting than Nelson and his kennel—by-the-bye, Nelson had been in favour since the sad accident on the ice. Then, visits to Marsden Square were prohibited, lest she should there meet John Walmsley’s undesirable friend; and altogether her escapade had converted home into a cage, in spite of its gilding.

As might have been expected, the high-spirited, wayward girl, so long her father’s pet, so long indulged in her caprices, chafed and rebelled against every fresh token of restraint, and contrasted the dull monotony of her life with the freedom and gaiety promised so frequently by Laurence as the certain concomitants of wifehood with him.

With all her haughty spirit, she had a clinging, affectionate nature, tinged though it was with poetry and romance; and now that her father looked so unusually grave, and her mother so frigid, and she felt herself an alien from both their hearts, instead of bewailing her premeditated flight as a crime, the tendrils of her love only clung closer to him who professed so much, and the more she was isolated from them, the more she brooded on the ill-used and maligned Laurence, his manly beauty and accomplishments, his lavish generosity, his fascinations of voice and manner, and the fervour of his passion for her.

Meanwhile, Tom Hulme had resumed his duties at Whaley-Bridge Mill, and Jabez returned home to his. Much to Augusta’s surprise, he was not only invited to dine with them on the day of his return, but to take his place henceforth at their board as one of the family.

With Laurence’s misrepresentations fixed in her mind as truths, she construed the daily association thus thrust upon her as a deliberate affront, and resented it with a silent scorn which cut Jabez to the soul. He knew nothing of Aspinall’s letter, or that he was accused of a “ruffianly attack;” only felt that he would have died to serve her, and had done what he had to save her from life-long misery without a single thought of keeping her for himself.

A few more days, and back to Manchester came Mr. Aspinall senior, having left a little of his portliness with his gout in the Buxton Baths. Back with him came his son, and his son’s congenial companion, Mr. Edmund Barret; the former still smarting under his defeat at Carr, and all the more resolutely determined to carry off Augusta, jealousy adding a new element to his love, a new aliment to his hate.

Sitting idly by the parlour window on the third of October, with her head leaning against the frame, meditating on her own unhappiness and her parents’ harshness, Augusta suddenly started to her feet with a suppressed cry of delight, a vivid glow upon her cheeks, a brilliant sparkle in her eye. Laurence Aspinall, mounted on Black Ralph, his favourite hunter, was riding up the street, the dislocated ankle apparently not affecting his enjoyment of equestrian exercise. As he raised his new beaver in graceful salutation, even the flutter into which she was thrown could not prevent her missing his glorious curls. He had not deemed it necessary to replace his wig, and the poll shorn during fever had not yet grown a fresh crop ripe for harvest. The unfavourable impression passed with the moment, as he brought his obedient steed on the flagged pavement close under the window, and without a moment’s hesitation, she raised the sash, and leaned forward to speak with him, glad of the opportunity.

“Oh, Laurence!”

“My own Augusta, this is indeed fortunate!”

Their hands clasped upon the window-sill,—the elevation of the house raising her to his level—her tearful eyes looked up in his for traces of suffering after the “ruffianly attack,” and found there, mingled with the fierce light of violent love, a bitter sense of defeat, a resolve to obtain her by fair means or foul.

Each had the separate experience of that memorable September night to relate, coloured as passion or prejudice prevailed; but neither could fully enlighten the other as to the share Mr. Clegg had had in preventing the elopement.

He could tell her that Jabez had avowed overhearing their conversation in the Lovers’ Walk, though where he could have been to overhear, or what strange fatality could bring Mr. and Mrs. Ashton to Carr in time to become the recipients of his eavesdropping and defeat their plans, was a puzzle to both.

Be sure Laurence put the worst colour on the encounter in the lane, and urged all he had himself endured to strengthen his claims upon her—claims she was quite willing to admit, had she the power to concede to them.

Having shown with very evident annoyance how impossible it was for her to meet or give him a private interview, he exclaimed with indignation—

“What! not allowed to visit a relative, or to go abroad without a gaoler! My dearest Augusta, this is a cruel state of captivity. But my bird must not be allowed to fray her beautiful plumage in beating against the bars of her cage. I must devise a better plan for her escape. Any means are justifiable to obtain release from tyranny like this. What says my love? Is she still willing to trust her Laurence?”

“To the death!” she whispered, emphatically.

“You are alone here every morning?”

Her lips could barely frame a “Yes,” when a voice and step in the hall warned her to close the window with a hurried gesture to him; and before Mrs. Ashton, who had lingered to give an order to James, could enter the room, Black Ralph was cantering towards the Portico, and Augusta occupied with the third volume of “Alinda, or the Child of Mystery.”

Very little escaped Mrs. Ashton’s eye. The clatter of hoofs on the flags, audible through the thick front door, had left no sensible impression on her brain, but the heightened colour of Augusta attracted her attention at once. She brought her work-basket from the panel-cupboard, took thence a strip of cambric muslin, and handed it to her daughter.

“My dear,” said she, quietly, “‘all play makes no hay.’ Your eyes are younger than mine, and I think it will do you more good to hem your father’s shirt-frills than to pore over sentimental books from morning until night. So much romance-reading is not good for you. I see that you are quite flushed and excited over the one you are perusing now.”

There was a sharp rat-tat on the lion’s head, and in burst Mr. Ashton, much more flushed and excited than his daughter. He had met Mr. Laurence on Black Ralph just as he was quitting the Portico, after an angry discussion with Mr. Aspinall the elder.

“You are quite right, my dear, in saying, ‘Like father, like son,’” cried he, “for I’ll swallow my snuff-box if that pompous old cotton-merchant did not justify his scapegrace son in his attempt to carry off our Augusta! He said that ‘the end justified the means,’ that we ‘ought to be proud of such an alliance’”—Mrs. Ashton’s lip curled—“that ‘he was glad Miss Ashton had more discernment than her parent,’ that ‘his boy had set his heart upon her, and should not be thwarted in his choice by any beggar’s-inkle-weaver in England.’ And no sooner had I left him in the reading-room, to digest _my_ opinion on the subject, and put my foot on the steps of the Portico, than up rode young Hopeful, and took off his hat to me, bowing down to his black’s horse’s mane.”

Having delivered himself of this explosive intelligence, Mr. Ashton walked about, and sought a sedative in his snuff-box; and Augusta, who, folding the hem of the frill, had not lost one word, said, drily,

“I think Mr. Aspinall’s justification of his son’s design may at least be taken as a vindication of Mr. Laurence’s _honourable_ intentions, of which so many doubts have been expressed. And the bow equally absolves Laurence from a charge of malice.”

With a proud toss of her shapely head, she walked towards the dining-room, rejecting the proffered arm of Jabez, who had entered the parlour whilst Mr. Ashton was speaking, and thus closed a discussion which could not be continued in the presence of servants.

* * * * *

Jabez, on his return from Carr, had found his rough old clerical friend confined to his room seriously ill. Tabitha was worn out with his humours and eccentricities, and was glad when the young man offered to relieve her twice or thrice a week; and old Joshua welcomed him as a relief from the monotonous garrulity of an unlettered old woman. Jabez could bring him news of another stamp. Through Ben Travis (who had discovered that activity was the best antidote to melancholy), he kept him informed of the progress of the incipient temperance movement, in which the Parson took uncommon interest; through Mr. Ashton, he kept him _au courant_ of town politics, and for general intelligence he brought newspapers with him to read interrupted by many and unique commentaries. In order that Tabitha might obtain repose, Mr. Clegg usually remained until a late hour, Mrs. Ashton herself entrusting him with a latch-key on these occasions.

One night, towards the middle of October, when Joshua had been more than ordinarily crusty, and Jabez did not quit the classic corner until the “wee short hour ayont the twal,” he was struck as he turned the corner from Market Street into Mosley Street to find Mr. Aspinall’s carriage in waiting with four horses and postilions.

He stood still for a moment to re-assure himself, but carriages were not so common that he should mistake that particular one; and his heart drummed an alarm within his breast.

Hurrying on with sad misgivings, he passed two tall figures muffled in cloaks, whom he had no difficulty in recognising, from build and walk, to be the Aspinalls, father and son; and increasing his speed he gained the door, inserted his key in the latch, and was on the stairs before the cloaked individuals had finished their speculations respecting his being a robber escaped from a constable.

Formerly, Augusta had to pass his room door to reach her own, on the opposite side of the long corridor. Her new chamber was next to his own, and nearer to the staircase. A thin stream of light shot through the key-hole, and a bright narrow line cast upon the opposite wall showed the door ajar. He stood still in his surprise.

As if a tipsy, musically-disposed man were going past, the refrain of a rollicking song was trolled out in the street; and then Augusta, equipped as for a journey, came forth from her chamber to descend the stairs. She had calculated on the signal an hour earlier, and expected Jabez an hour later. As she stole on tiptoe down the stairs Jabez confronted her and barred her progress. Her silver candlestick dropped from her hand, with the one word “Again!” and rolling down with a clang, awakened Mr. and Mrs. Ashton, the only sleepers on that floor, and set Nelson barking furiously. They were in the dark, but he had caught her hand.

“Miss Ashton, this is infatuation—madness.”

“No matter, sir, let me pass; you have no right to detain me!”

“But I have, miss,” said her father coming behind, guided by their voices, his scant apparel as invisible in the gloom as himself. “Is this another attempt to disgrace us by eloping? Oh, my child, my child, you are breaking your poor old father’s heart!”

“And mine!” floated like the echo of despair’s last sigh from the lips of Jabez.

But the utter hopelessness of the old man’s tone touched a sensitive chord of Augusta’s soul, and turning, she fell upon his neck crying tearfully, “Oh, forgive me, father, forgive me. I did not think you would take it so much to heart.”

The appeal of affection to affection had accomplished what reason and authority had failed to effect.

CHAPTER THE FORTIETH.

WITH ALL HIS FAULTS.

Augusta’s penitence exhaled like dew from a flower. In the light of her mother’s lofty displeasure her tears dried, and self-will once more exerted its pre-eminence. She locked herself in her own room and resolutely refused to come forth.

“So long as that odious meddler, Jabez Clegg, remains under our roof, I will stay here; and, if you will not consent to my marriage with Laurence Aspinall, I will starve myself to death!” was her angry declaration, as she closed the door and turned the key.

“Leave her alone,” said Mrs. Ashton, “she will want her food before the food wants her; and a little wholesome solitude is good for reflection. She will change her mind before the day closes.”

This was at mid-day; but night came, and another noon, yet there was no sign of Miss Ashton’s appearance; and Mrs. Ashton had made no overtures to her refractory daughter. The tender-hearted father was in a pitiable state of perturbation. In and out the warehouse he was twenty times in the day—as Kezia observed, “For a’ th’ world like a hen on a hot griddle;” and his snuff-box was hardly ever out of his hand. Business seemed altogether beyond his grasp; he answered questions at random, or was unconscious when addressed.

To this state of trouble Jabez unintentionally contributed his quota. Over the tea-table, unenlivened by Augusta’s sparkling presence, though she was the one sole topic of conversation—he said, and not without an effort—

“It has occurred to me, and I have thought the matter well over, that since my unfortunate position in relation to late events has made my very presence obnoxious to Miss Ashton, it might be better for all concerned if I were to shift my quarters without delay. There are lodgings vacant close at hand; and I have no right to linger here and disturb the peace of any one member of your kind family.”

“Jabez Clegg!” remonstrated Mr. Ashton, with wide-open eyes.

“Have you any _other_ reason to be dissatisfied with present arrangements?” asked Mrs. Ashton stiffly.

“Oh! Mrs. Ashton, how can I have? This house has been my home for years, and such a home as rarely falls to the lot of the fatherless. To you, my benefactors, I owe everything—almost myself; and I should ill repay your uniform kindness by remaining to create discord.”

“If your only desire to remove is to gratify Miss Ashton’s whims, you will oblige me, Mr. Clegg, by remaining,” replied Mrs. Ashton, with grave decision; whilst Mr. Ashton, looking the very picture of consternation, laid his hand upon the young man’s sleeve, and said slowly—

“My lad, you have been one of the household for many years; do not be the first to make a breach in the family. If the child of our blood and our affections goes forth to strangers wilfully, and repudiates us, do not let the son of our adoption leave us to lament her loss in solitude.”

This was strong language, but Mrs. Ashton did not gainsay it, and Mr. Clegg could not longer press the point though his own pain was intensified by the fear of adding to the distress of Augusta, who, he was confident, regarded him as an interloper and a mischief-maker.

Little had been seen of Ellen since the return from Carr Cottage. A message despatched by Mrs. Ashton to her sister, in her dilemma, was answered by another to pray them to “excuse Miss Chadwick, who was not well enough to go out.”

This somewhat disconcerted Mrs. Ashton, who, more alarmed than she would admit, and disturbed by the restless uneasiness of her husband, had looked for Ellen to act as a mediator without any compromise of her own dignity.

At the close of the second day, as Augusta pertinaciously refused to open the door, at the instance of Jabez the lock was forced; and even then a barrier of chairs and boxes had to be thrust back by sheer strength. She was exhausted from want of food, but her will was indomitable, and neither her father’s entreaties, nor her mother’s commands could induce her to partake of the viands spread before her.

Jabez was in agony. Delicacy and her obvious dislike had kept him from intruding upon her privacy, but as hour after hour was added to the night, and Augusta persistently dashed aside the food placed to her lips, he joined his prayers to those of her father; and neither availing, rushed out of the house, and in less than a quarter of an hour returned with Dr. Hull. _He_ was not a man to stand any nonsense.

“Here, sir”—to Jabez—“you are young and strong, hold the silly child’s arms whilst her teeth are forced apart. If she will not take food, she shall take physic, and see which she likes the best.”

But the struggle to nourish her frame through set teeth was prolonged and painful, and the parents were likely to yield before the child.

Servants may be faithful, but they have eyes and ears, and not always discreet tongues. Family matters discussed freely in the kitchen before apprentices, found their way into the warehouse and beyond it, and Mrs. Ashton’s nerves tingled when she became acquainted with the rumours afloat.

From Tim, the Ashton stable-boy, Aspinall’s emissary (Bob the groom, once more in his old service) had no difficulty in obtaining all the information his young master needed.

Laurence waylaid Mr. Ashton, inquired anxiously after the obstinate girl’s health, and, having paved the way by as much contrition as he thought necessary, called at the house the following morning, in company with his father, to renew proposals for Miss Ashton’s hand.

Worn out by Augusta’s obstinacy, which she and Laurence agreed to call “constancy,” father and mother were in a different frame of mind to receive this proposition than when they had given their former peremptory rejection. They were not one whit more convinced by Mr. Laurence’s assurance that he meant to “reform,” or Mr. Aspinall’s quotation of the adage, “A reformed rake makes the best husband”; but rather than see their child starve herself to death before their very eyes, they yielded; and Laurence Aspinall, profuse alike in thanks and professions, was permitted by aching hearts and reluctant lips to introduce Augusta to his father then and there as his bride elect.

It was a moment of triumph for Laurence when Augusta refused to come down without an assurance under his own hand. He pencilled on a card, “My Augusta, I wait for you,—Laurence.” And presently, supported by a maid-servant, she entered the room, her dress of purple poplin serving to show how wan and transparent her fair skin had grown, how unnatural was the brilliance of her eyes.

She would have fallen, as much from weakness as emotion, on her entrance into the parlour, but that Laurence darted forward and caught her in an embrace which brought back somewhat of her lost colour; and if anything could have softened the pain of that hour to her parents, it was the apparent ardour and sincerity of the lover, the hope that a genuine passion might tend to wean him from his old habits and associates.

Mr. Aspinall’s reception of Augusta was characteristic.

“My charming Miss Ashton, I see my son has brought back the roses to your cheeks. May they never fade again, but bloom perennially without a thorn! I rejoice to kiss your hand paternally on this auspicious occasion, and to assure you that I shall be proud to welcome such beauty and such constancy as the wife of my noble son.”

Consent once obtained, the Aspinalls were as eager to press forward the marriage as the Ashtons were to retard it, neither her father nor mother affecting a satisfaction they did not feel.

“My dear,” said the latter to Augusta one day, when her eyes were sparkling over a costly present just received from Laurence, “your father was in hopes you would have fixed your heart on some good steady man like Jabez Clegg, who would have been a comfort and a credit to all of us, and have kept the business in the family after we were in our graves.”

“Pshaw, mamma! how preposterous! I am surprised at my father’s infatuation for that young man. I esteem him quite sufficiently for a friend, but”—and she locked an emerald earring in her delicate ear—“I could not exist with a husband whose heart was in his business. My husband’s heart must hold me and me only; and I must have something to look at as well as to love.”

“Ah! Augusta, it must be a very small heart indeed which cannot find room both for a wife and a business to maintain her fittingly. The sheen of a dress which must last a life is of less consequence than its durable texture.”

“Well, mamma, so long as the material pleases my eyes, I will take the wear upon trust. And do not be surprised that _your_ daughter prefers a fine man and a gentleman to one whose fortune is in the clouds, and whose origin is so obscure, he has not _even a name_ to call his own.”

She was standing to admire herself and her new jewellery in the Venetian glass between the windows as she said this, and her mother’s figure filling in the frame, Jabez Clegg came and went unseen, a pang in his heart and an intensified resolve to make both fortune and name for himself even though his master’s daughter vanished from his vision.

Nothing would induce Mr. Ashton to part with his child until she was at least eighteen; and in that particular he was proof against the importunities of Laurence and the cajoleries of Augusta. So for ten months (during which the lawyers had ample time to quarrel over the settlement of Augusta’s £18,000, so that too much or too little should not be tied down on the lady) the dashing young blade was on his trial, so to speak, and contrived to beguile both father and mother of their prejudices; whilst to Augusta a new world of gaiety was opened out.

As her daughter’s chaperon, Mrs. Ashton renewed her acquaintance with the yellow satin cushions of the Assembly Rooms, the Gentlemen’s Concerts discoursed sweet music in their ears, Miss Ashton could take her seat in the boxes of the Theatre Royal without fear of Madame Broadbent’s fan, and Kezia was in her glory, so many balls and parties had to be catered for; and Mr. Laurence Aspinall was in the ascendant.

All this was inexpressibly painful to Jabez, but as he had written to Ben Travis that “there was something more for men to do than die of disappointment or blighted love,” so he set his face like a rock against the breakers, and gave himself entirely to business. He said to himself it would be cowardice to flee from that which must be borne and mastered, so never another word was heard of his seeking a home elsewhere. If he was brave, he was not foolhardy enough to court pain in the sight of his rival’s triumph, and though in his determination to “stick to his last,” he had eschewed all art which came not within the scope of pattern designing, to that he turned with redoubled assiduity after business hours, having found a profitable market apart from Mr. Ashton’s firm, as his account with the Savings Bank in Cross Street had borne witness from the date of its establishment in January, 1818.

But for a brief space, and that whilst the wound was raw and new, his ministrations to the dying chaplain of the Old Church not only carried him out of sight and hearing, but in a measure drew his thoughts away from his own sorrow.

Once only did Joshua scarify the sore. In an interval of pain he said with his customary abruptness,

“And so that pretty lass of thy master’s is going to throw herself away on the wild rascal who pitched thee over the wall?”

Jabez could not trust himself to answer save by a movement of his head.

“Ugh! she’d better ha’ takken a fancy to thee!”

Half-an-hour or more elapsed. Waking from a doze, he said—

“Dost thou remember my telling thee to look at ‘Hogarth’s Apprentice’ in Chadwick’s parlour?”

“Indeed, I do! They have influenced my life,” answered Mr. Clegg with a sigh, pouring out a dose of medicine as he spoke.

“More physic, eh? Ugh! doctors kill more than they cure with their stuff! Ay, lad, thah’st mounted up, thou’lt be a master thyself some day, if thou dost not forget that _Jabez_ must be an _honourable_ man!”

“I never did forget it sir, even though the apprentice boy was mad enough to aspire to his master’s daughter! But losing her, I have learned a new lesson. The prayer of the olden Jabez, which has been mine night and morn from boyhood, was a prayer for _self_, and _self_ only, and I had no right to look for an answer to all the hopes I based upon it. If I have not been ‘kept from evil,’ and it _has_ ‘grieved me,’ I prayed for myself _alone_, and in grief I have my answer. Prayer should take a wider range.”

“Right, lad, right! now let me sleep.”

When he waked again he remarked—

“It’s time for thee to be off, Jabez; but time is running faster with me than thee, lad. Here, reach yon Terence from the bureau. It is the Edinburgh edition. Keep it for the sake of the rough old Parson who gave thee thy name. And take care of it. Good night. How thick the fog is!” He had lost the sight of one eye, and the other was rapidly going.

That was the ninth of November. When Jabez came again on the eleventh, the fog had cleared away from Joshua Brookes’s sight for ever; and fountains of tears ran freely from many eyes for the hot, hasty, single-minded, and learned Parson whose name was a household word in the town, and who had ever been a kind friend to Jabez. In his life he had been at war with huckster-women, street-urchins, school-boys, and his ecclesiastical brethren. In his death the wide parish, and more than the parish, united to reverence his memory, those who had laughed loudest at his eccentricities being foremost to bewail him.

Even the November clouds hung thick and heavy as a pall over the Old Church and churchyard, crowded with mourners, when his silent remains were carried to their bed in the cross aisles his feet had trodden so many active years, and if others besides Jabez shed tears over the open and honoured grave, there was many an old creature mourning in solitude, besides the queer old woman in kerchief and mutch, who sat amongst her sweets in a closed shop, and lamented that so young a man as Parson Brookes should be carried off before her.

“Well-a-day! and only sixty-seven! He’ll want no more humbugs, and no more cakes for his pigeons. Poor Jotty!”

There was no mention of Jabez in his will, but when the young man took the old worn Terence sadly and reverently down from the shelf where he had first placed it, on turning over its leaves he found a bank note for £300 pinned to the fly-leaf, on which was inscribed his own name and that of the eccentric donor.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST.

MARRIAGE!

Had Jabez been vindictive, the opportunity, or at least the promise of revenge on his successful rival was not wanting. Various efforts had been made to call the Manchester Yeomanry to account for their doings at Peterloo, and many had been the overtures and suggestions to Jabez Clegg by members of the Radical party to join in the prosecution of the offenders. But he resolutely refused to identify the trooper who struck him, saying—

“I forgave the man at the time, believing him to be drunk, and incapable of discrimination. If I have since had reason to think otherwise, I cannot be so mean as to allow private feeling to influence a public act.”

It would be false to say there never was a tug at his heartstrings when the tempters were again at his elbow, before they made their final attempt in 1822. But he said to himself—

“If it would have been revengeful at the time when the bodily injury was fresh, it would be doubly revengeful, mean, and dishonourable now that he has supplanted me in love. And in striking at him I should wound Augusta, and that must never be.”

The temptation to expose his adversary was set aside, and thus it was that Laurence Aspinall’s name was not added to those of the four defenders on the record of the trial at Lancaster in April; and as that trial, after the examination of nearly a hundred witnesses of all ranks, terminated unsuccessfully for the prosecution, the forbearance of our friend Jabez spared him at least the mortification of defeat.

The year rolled on. At the instance of Mr. Ashton, Jabez withdrew the bulk of his deposits from the Savings Bank, and adding to Joshua Brookes’s gift the £200 he had accumulated by working late and early and saving small sums even during his apprenticeship, placed all in his master’s hands, to be invested in the business and so return him a higher rate of interest. And this was the first absolute start of Jabez as a capitalist.

The joyous excitement attending Augusta’s own preparations for her approaching nuptials was somewhat damped by the unaccountable condition of Ellen Chadwick, whose health, instead of improving during her visit to Carr Cottage, had appeared to decline still more perceptibly. A constant pain at her chest, frequent headaches, uncertain spirits, and increasing languor gave Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick real cause for uneasiness; but Ellen would not hear of a doctor, and maintained that it was “nothing to trouble about,” she should “be better soon.”

But she did not get “better soon,” and when the first August sun shone on Augusta’s birthday and bridal, it taxed her powers to the utmost to sustain efficiently her part as bridesmaid.

Had Captain Travis accepted his lieutenant’s invitation to be groomsman, she would have found it still more difficult; but a comparative stranger, a Mr. Joseph Bennett, of Gorton, filled the post, the bride’s father having objected very decidedly to bold Ned Barret.

Yet Ben Travis and Jabez Clegg were both among the guests, albeit it cost each a struggle. The two had mutually strengthened each other as such friends should, arriving at the Spartan decision to “suffer and be silent, facing their fate like men.” And indeed, old Mr. Ashton had wrung the hand of Jabez at least a week before, and said—

“I’m sorry for you, Clegg; I am, upon my soul; and I’m sorry for our poor lass too, for she’s made a mistake. But keep a brave heart, and don’t let that slashing yeomanry fellow crow over you. As Mrs. Ashton would say, ‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ and we must all of us show the best face at the wedding that we can.”

If that meant elaborate display in dress and decorations, and provision for the bridal breakfast and dinner, then the face exhibited was a shining one. Mrs. Hodgson, the fashionable mantua-maker and milliner of Oldham Street (where two or three of the private houses had already been converted into shops), had kept her apprentices at work almost night and day for weeks, executing bridal orders from the Ashtons and their friends. A very snowstorm might have passed through the work-room, such heaps of white French-crape and satin, lace and organdi, lute-string and gauze, littered and covered available space, putting matronly brocade, velvet, and llama quite into the shade.

The warehouse saw little of Mrs. Ashton for a week or ten days previously. Cicily, who had gone over to the Aspinalls, had begged to be allowed to help Kezia for that occasion; and she roasted her own face in spinning gold and silver webs and baskets from sugar for the table, making “floating islands,” syllabubs, trifles, jellies, and blanc-mange to supplement the solid dishes Kezia dressed with so much skill. And Mr. Mabbott sent in a sugary “Temple of Hymen” and a bride’s cake prepared six weeks in advance.

The bride, alternately radiant and tearful like an April day, veiled with lace, and crowned with white rose-buds and orange-blossoms, wore a low-bodiced dress of white satin, festooned round the narrow skirt with costly lace, whilst on neck and arms, and in her tiny ears, were negligé, bracelets, and earrings of pearl, the gift of the gallant bridegroom’s gallant father.

The bridegroom was scarcely less resplendent in his high-collared blue coat and gold buttons, his white waistcoat buttoned to match, his glossy white trousers, and low shoes tied with a bunch of silk ferret. An oblong brooch set with a rim of pearls held down his broad fine shirt-frills; from his fob hung a huge bunch of gold seals pendant from a flat gold watch chain; and in his hand (not crushing his elaborate curls, now clustering richly as ever) he carried a hat of white beaver of the newest shape.

To Mr. and Mrs. Ashton it was a matter of open regret that Joshua Brookes, who had christened Augusta, should not have lived to marry her also; but Mr. Aspinall, whose reminiscences of the old chaplain were of another order, was much better satisfied to see his own personal friend Parson Gatliffe, the _bon vivant_, behind the altar-rails.

If the bride was tall and graceful, with sunshine in her eyes and in her classic curls, tall and stately was the bride’s mother, whose long train of purple silk velvet swept the aisles, though trains had ceased to be general. There was no faltering over the responses. There was a glow of modest pride on the cheek of Augusta; a look of mingled ardour and exultation on the face of Laurence; his “_I will_” was pronounced with a force which was almost fierce, yet, as she faintly promised to “obey,” he pressed her hand with smiling significance.

The ceremony over, the bride did not faint, but turning to her tearful-eyed father, threw her arms around his neck and clung to him, whispering how grateful she was that he had given her the man of her choice, and that he should see what a good wife she would make; and the impromptu embrace sent a shower of snuff over white satin and lace.

Yet some one fainted, whom Ben Travis caught in his strong arms and carried to the church door for air; a dark-haired, black-eyed bridesmaid, whose face was white and skin transparent as her own robe.

Custom had not set its imperative seal on the wedding tour as a necessity, but after a magnificent solid dinner, to which the party did full justice, and an elaborate dessert, during which the cake was cut, and Mr. Aspinall proposed the health of the bride in an inflated toast, demanding that it should be drunk in bumpers, “and no heel-taps,” the wedded pair drove off in Mr. Aspinall’s carriage to the family mansion at Fallowfield, there to spend the honeymoon.

“Good-bye, Jabez,” said Augusta, putting her small soft hand into his as they left the house; “you will comfort my father and mother, will you not? I trust them to you.”

And he replied with the fervency of truth, “I accept the trust willingly. Good-bye, Mrs. Aspinall” (how the word choked him!) “May God bless you, and the marriage you have contracted. Good-bye!”

He did not kiss her hand, had not taken the common liberty of guests to kiss the bride’s lips in church; he did but press her hand as any old friend who had grown up with her under the same roof might have done; but before the carriage had well dashed from the door, or the bridegroom had fairly settled himself on his seat, Laurence turned to the fair young wife, whose prophetic tears were now falling fast, with the sharp rebuke—

“What was that foundling fellow mumbling over your hand? You will please to remember that that hand is mine now, Mrs. Aspinall. You have promised to _love_ and _obey_ me—ME your LORD and MASTER. And MASTER I mean to be. I have borne the fooling of your friends and your own pretty caprices long enough. It is my turn now; and if any man so much as dares to look at you I’ll pound him to a jelly! And now dry your eyes and give me a kiss!”

And that was the inauguration of Augusta Aspinall’s married life.

It has been said that the bridesmaid fainted. Every lady carried a smelling bottle, and means to revive her were not far to seek. She soon recovered, and with a sensitive blush withdrew from the arms which had been so proud to sustain her, casting her eyes round as if in search of some other whose service might have been more acceptible. But she suffered no relapse. She was ready to wait upon the bride, to sign “Ellen Chadwick” in the church register, and to assist Mr. Joseph Bennett in cutting up the cake for distribution, with cards and gloves, to friends not present. It was an arduous task, and she succumbed before it was half completed.

“Miss Chadwick, you are not well; let me relieve you,” said Jabez, coming to her assistance after the “happy pair” had driven off, and whilst peals of laughter, shouts, and hurrahs came from the dining-room where gentlemen were honouring the bridal by drinking themselves senseless and speechless.

Ellen remained with her aunt a few days longer, during which Jabez, exceedingly pained to see the ravages hidden disease had made in so estimable a young lady, was pitifully attentive.

He could not, however, fail to see that his attentions distressed her; and, on the whole he was not sorry when Augusta’s parents and he were left to themselves, to talk of their own dear one and speculate on her future.

Weeks went by. Mrs. Aspinall visited her old home, but never without her husband; and seldom was she allowed to remain more than an hour. Her spirits seemed exuberant, but somehow her unusual vivacity jarred on her mother’s nerves, and she suspected that her spirits were forced.

Meanwhile Ellen Chadwick faded. Dr. Hardie, called in at last, watched his patient with curious and attentive eye, perplexed and dubious. He had been friend as well as physician since Mr. Chadwick’s attack of paralysis, and was a close observer. Now he came and went in a gossiping sort of way, to put his patient at ease, and off her guard. He was there one day when Jabez was announced, and saw a sudden spasmodic action of the face, a dilation of the pupils, a scarcely perceptible pant and parting of the lips, and then he watched her closer. He introduced Mr. Clegg’s name, as if casually, whilst his fingers were on her pulse. The result of his observations were told to Mr. Chadwick the same day.

“Your daughter has no specific disease, Mr. Chadwick, she is simply _love-sick_.”

“L-love-s-sick?”

“Yes; and her secret passion is consuming her. Medicine cannot save the patient’s life if her affection be not returned, and that right speedily.”

Mr. Chadwick was aghast.

“I feared as much,” said Mrs. Chadwick, with a sigh.

“Then you will have an inkling who is the desired object?” said the doctor.

“I think so.”

“Does your maternal instinct point to Mr. Clegg?” he asked, with a curious look.

“It does; but he himself has no suspicion, and I am sure regards Ellen only as a friend—a friend elevated a little above him.”

“Is the young man courting?”

“I believe not.”

“Then,” said the doctor sententiously, “the sooner he is, the better for Miss Chadwick. Her life is not worth a month’s purchase unless Mr. Clegg become the buyer. But let not Miss Ellen hear a whisper of my opinion. Good day.”

And snatching up his hat the doctor departed, leaving them to their reflections.

Here was a delicate subject to be dealt with, and that without either loss of time or the sacrifice of their beloved child’s sensitiveness and reserve.

Unknown to Ellen a family conclave assembled under the Mosley Street roof, to discuss the momentous question, and deliberate what was best to be done. Long and grave were their deliberations. At length, taking Mr. Chadwick’s imperfect speech into consideration, Mr. Ashton consented to lay the case before Jabez, and leave his brother-in-law to supplement it, if necessary; though opinions were divided as to the result.

It was after business hours, and Mr. Ashton found Jabez in his own room, doing his best to dissipate thought by hard work, mind and hand being busy with a chintz-pattern for calico-printing.

There was a nervous plunge into the gold snuff-box, and a consequent flourish of a gay bandana, and some time spent in examining the incomplete design on the desk, before Mr. Ashton could fairly enter on his embassy. After a little prelude, in which, whilst enlarging on the serious nature of his niece’s illness, he elicited from Jabez that he held the young lady in the very highest esteem, and was deeply grieved to hear of her perilous state, he put down his snuff-box on the table before him, and drawing up his chair so as to bring their heads closer together, looked steadfastly into the other’s clear eyes as he put the question—

“And what should you think of _love_ as the cause of her malady?”

“LOVE!” echoed Jabez, his mind running off to the agonised confession made to him on the Taxal hillside.

“Yes, _love_, and for the very man whose merits _my_ foolish child failed to see.”

Jabez looked at him vaguely.

“Surely not Mr. Marsland!”

“Pah! no!” exclaimed Mr. Ashton, as if disgusted at his obtuseness. “Yourself, man—Jabez Clegg.”

Jabez fixed his eyes on his informant in blank amazement, a monosyllabic long-drawn “_Me!_” being his sole response.

“Just so!” assented Mr. Ashton, and he took a pinch of snuff on the strength of it.

“Oh, sir, there must be some mistake! How has this been ascertained? Has Miss Chadwick made——”

“No, Clegg, the poor lass has never said one word, except with her eyes and pulse. Dr. Hardie has made the discovery now, and it turns out Mrs. Chadwick suspected it long ago.”

“Oh, dear! dear! this is very terrible!”

He was estimating the pain in Ellen’s heart by that in his own.

“Very terrible indeed, Clegg, for Hardie says the lass’s life is not worth so much as a yard of filleting if her love meet no return.”

The head of Jabez sank in his open hands upon the table. What would his friend Travis think of all this? Presently he raised his face, over which a strange change had passed.

“Mr. Ashton, what would you have me do?”

“Whatever Jabez Clegg thinks he ought to do,” he answered steadily, adding in another tone, “I would have been glad to have given thee my own child: my brother-in-law implores thee to take _his_ child, to save her life.”

After a prolonged silence Jabez spoke.

“Mr. Ashton, I hold that love alone can sanctify marriage: my love has blossomed and died fruitless. Yet so highly do I esteem Miss Chadwick, and so proud am I of the great honour she has done me in her preference, that I place myself in your hands. If I can spare so amiable a young lady the pain I suffer from rejected love, I should be a brute and a savage to refuse her the remnant of a valueless life. We may at least soften its asperities for each other.”

The Chadwicks went home with minds relieved, but Jabez had stipulated that nothing should be said to Ellen of their overtures to him, no hint given which could alarm her shrinking modesty.

The following day he called to inquire about her health, made his genuine anxiety apparent, and noted, as he had never done before, how her lip trembled and her eyelid drooped. Gradually, as his attentions became more marked, her health and spirits rose, and when at last he proposed to her calmly, quietly, as though he sought a haven when the frothy waves of a first passion had subsided, she accepted him as God’s best gift, all unaware that his offer was not spontaneous, or that her cousin Augusta was yet deeply shrined in his secret heart.

He had been at first greatly concerned about Ben Travis but the generous fellow, to whom he felt in honour bound to explain his conduct, only wrung his hand and said—

“I could not resign her to a worthier.”

CHAPTER THE FORTY-SECOND.

BLOWS.

Richard Chadwick, who had served as a midshipman under Admiral Collingwood, and shared in the victory of Trafalgar, was a midshipman still, and his vessel had long been away on a foreign station. Few, brief, and far between had been his opportunities to visit home and friends. Ships had been paid off, but he had been exchanged, several years had elapsed since he had set foot in Manchester, and the hearts of his kin yearned towards their sailor.

His very whereabouts was unknown to them, and when written communication was necessary, letters had to be forwarded through the Admiralty.

Ellen’s engagement and prospective marriage called forth a voluminous epistle, crossed and recrossed like a trellis, from Mrs. Chadwick to her son, whose presence she craved, if leave of absence could possibly be obtained. The letter was a singular compound of gratulation and apology, through which a thin undercurrent of dissatisfaction meandered like a stream. His sister’s strange malady and infatuation for a man of apparently low origin, whose name and parentage were alike unknown, were set forth to be deplored. Still, since the sole remedy for Ellen’s ailment rested with this obscure Mr. Clegg whose career upwards, from his floating cradle to his honourable position in the Ashton house and warehouse, was circumstantially detailed, his personal worth was a matter for congratulation; and the deep obligation of the whole family to him for the service rendered on Peterloo-Day seemed dragged in as a sort of extenuating circumstance. Clearly the Mr. Travis, whose name and pretensions cropped up here and there throughout the letter would have been a more acceptable son-in-law in the sight of Mrs. Chadwick and his other sister, Charlotte Walmsley, and just as clearly it was made apparent that his paralysed father (hale and strong in all other respects) was as much infatuated with the young man as was Ellen, having “positively offered to take him into partnership on his entrance into the family.” And even there Mrs. Chadwick felt “constrained to admit that the clear head, business tact, and energy of Mr. Clegg would be a great acquisition.”

This item of news closed the missive, which must have gone a circuitous round of red tape it was so long upon its travels. Months came and went; Father Christmas shook his snowy locks over the town; but neither the midshipman nor a written substitute put in an appearance.

Meanwhile Jabez, who had crushed down in the garden of his heart those roots of his love for Augusta which mocked his strength to eradicate, did his best to plant and foster above them a grateful affection for the one who had chosen him, and hoped in time that the newer growth might utterly extinguish the old. His attentions to Ellen were more assiduous than, under the circumstances, might have been expected; but he argued with himself—

“I must endeavour to atone to her for a proposal in which love had no part. She must never have occasion to suspect the truth. I should be a brute did I remain insensible to the unconquerable love she has so long cherished in secret for me. Augusta’s face, alas! was more divinely fair, her manner more enchanting; but Ellen, though she is older than myself, will doubtless make the best wife for a business man who has to carve his way to fortune, and _she loves me_!”

Ellen, too, had her seasons of doubt and perplexity. She had been so sensitively alive to the silent homage of Jabez Clegg to her younger and fairer cousin that at first her mind had refused to realise the fact that he desired to marry her, even though his proposal had been preceded by direct and palpable attention. She had been at first inclined to attribute his many acts of kindness and courtesy to friendship and compassion for her failing health. And when he had spoken of being won by her many estimable qualities to seek her for a wife, she had listened incredulously; then, overpowered by contending emotions, sank back amongst her cushions, in a state of insensibility. Even her tremulous acceptance had been uttered as in a blissful dream, which might vanish all too soon. From time to time she perplexed herself with questions of the motive for so sudden a change in one so steadfast as Jabez, and at last wavered between the two suppositions that Augusta’s wilfulness had wearied him, or that she owed her lover to pique. Of the real state of the case she had no inkling.

She was not alone in her latter supposition.

“A happy new year to you, Mrs. Clowes!” said our friend Jabez to his friend the old confectioner, as at one stride he took the two steps to her confined shop on the bright frosty second of January, 1823, and extended his hand to her across the counter, where she still kept up a show of activity in spite of age and wrinkles.

“Same to you, Mr. Clegg.”

She had been one of the first to recognise his right to the prefix, and with all her old-fashioned familiarity never dropped it.

“Eh, but now I look at thee, thah doesn’t look ower bright an’ happy;” and she peered into his face inquiringly.

He smiled.

“Looks are not always to be relied on. I ought to be happy, for I am about to be married, and my errand hither is to——”

She interrupted him with—

“So I’ve heard. But what o’that? Is she th’ reet un? For I wouldna give a mince-pie for thi happiness if she isna.”

The blood mounted painfully to his forehead.

“Miss Chadwick is all that is estimable and amiable, Mrs. Clowes,” he answered steadily, “and if I am not happy with her it will be my own fault.”

The old dame was not satisfied. The white linen lappets of her antiquated mutch flapped like a spaniel’s ears as she shook her head.

“Eh, well!” sighed she, opening and shutting a drawer in the counter abstractedly, “you should know best, but both me and Parson Brookes (dead and gone as he is) thought you’d set your mind on th’ lass that rantipollin lad Aspinall snapped up. I hope thah’s not goin’ to wed th’ cousin out o’ spite,” and she looked up in his face, over which a cloud had swept. “It would be the worst day’s work you ever did, either for her or you.”

He had mastered his emotion, and answered cheerfully—

“Make your mind easy, Mrs. Clowes. I am not marrying from any unworthy motive, and I think our prospect of happiness is about the average. I came to ask you, as the oldest friend I have in the town, to be present on the occasion.”

Mrs. Clowes was overpowered.

“What! Mr. Clegg! Me, in my old black stuff gown and mutch, among your grand folk? Nay, nay; I’m too old to don weddin’ garments. But I tell you what”—and her face puckered with pride and pleasure—“you shall have the finest wedding-cake that ever was baked i’ Manchester, and the old woman will mebbe look on the weddin’ from some quiet nook, out o’ the way. It’s a thousand pities Jotty is not alive to marry you?”

“There will be no grand folk, Mrs. Clowes; I am but a poor man struggling upwards, and Miss Chadwick has not had good health of late; so we shall be married very quietly on Wednesday week. Only very near relatives, or old friends are invited.”

Customers interrupted the colloquy. When the shop was clear, she asked where he was going to live after marriage, and was told, with his bride’s parents.

“Eh! but that’s a bad look out. Now, I’ve built some houses in a new street off Oxford Road as they call Rosamund Street, an’ I’ll tell you what, you shall have one to live in at a peppercorn rent, and I’ll lend you the money to furnish it. Young folks are best by themselves.”