Part 14

And now that Jabez had risked the dangers of the soldier-ridden street to bear his beloved daughter to a place of safety, and had braved the storm of foot and horse, and fire and steel, to rescue his brother-in-law by endangering his own life or limbs, his admiration and gratitude rose to their highest, and in proportion his denunciation of an outrage which called for such a sacrifice was strong and vehement—all the more that he sympathised with the objects of the meeting.

When he and Simon Clegg (who had been drawn to the scene in his dinner-hour with others, like moths to a candle) picked up his cavalry friend, Robert Hindley, from amongst the building materials, and disengaged him from his dead horse, he could not refrain from telling the disabled warrior, with all a friend’s frankness, that “it served him right!”

Open expression of private opinion on the conduct of rulers was dangerous at that period, as may be supposed; but private opinion became public opinion, too strong and too universal to be put in fetters.

Mr. Tyas, the _Times_ reporter, had been taken prisoner on the hustings, and it was imagined that only a one-sided account—forwarded by the magistracy in justification of their conduct—would reach London. But other intelligent reporters were at large, the garbled statements sent to the Government press were confuted by the truth-telling narratives of Messrs. Archibald Prentice and John Edward Taylor, which appeared the following day, and roused the indignation of the realm. These statements being more than substantiated by the _Times_ reporter on his liberation, national indignation rose to a ferment.

This alarmed the Manchester magistrates; a meeting was hurriedly arranged to take place on Thursday, the 19th (the third day from Peterloo), at the Police Station; thence adjourned to the “Star Inn” in Deansgate; and, as though the meeting had been a public one, resolutions were passed thanking magistrates and soldiers for their services on the previous Monday.

Then Manchester rose, as it were, _en masse_, to vindicate its own honour, and reject participation in a disgraceful deed.

“A declaration,” says one historian, “was issued, protesting against the ‘Star Inn’ resolutions, which in the course of two or three days received close upon five thousand signatures,” in obtaining which none were more active than Mr. Ashton and (despite his paralysis) Mr. Chadwick. Old Mrs. Clowes talked her customers into signing, and Parson Brookes was not idle. Mr. William Clough, whose old servant Matthew Cooper had been shot down at his own door, gave the tanners a holiday, that they might influence their fellows; and Simon Clegg, Tom Hulme, and Nathaniel Bradshaw seemed ubiquitous, they went to work with such determined zeal. _They_ did not feel “thankful” to the magistrates for the blood shed on Peterloo Monday.

Neither did the bulk of the inhabitants: and an energetic protest against the proceedings and representations of the magistracy was the result.

To counteract this, the Prince Regent, through his mouth-piece Lord Sidmouth, sent his thanks to the magistrates and the military leaders for “their prompt, decisive, and efficient measures.” But this, instead of calming, lashed the public mind to frenzy. Meetings to remonstrate with the Regent and to petition for inquiry were held in all the large towns, Sir Francis Burdett presiding at one held in Westminster.

Subscriptions were also got up for the relief of such wounded and disabled persons as had crept into holes and corners to hide themselves and their wounds from Nadin and his constabulary; and here, too, William Ashton and William Clough worked hand-in-hand to bring relief to sufferers not in the Infirmary; and Parson Brookes, to the disgust of some of his clerical brethren, lent his aid in ferreting out the miserables, if he did not ostentatiously flourish his subscription in their service; and I rather think a certain “J.S.” in the subscription-list represented the mite of the Grammar School head-master, but I could not take an affidavit on the subject. But when the wounded, as far as ascertained, amounted to six-hundred irrespective of the killed, subscriptions had need to be many and ample.

Another token of the change in public sentiment was shown in the satires and pasquinades which appeared on the walls, or were distributed from hand to hand. Previously to Peterloo a set of anonymous verses in ridicule of the popular leader had been distributed. They began and were headed as follows:—

ORATOR HUNT.

I.

Blithe Harry Hunt was an orator bold— Talked away bravely and blunt; And Rome in her glory, and Athens of old, With all their loud talkers, of whom we are told, Couldn’t match Orator Hunt!

II.

Blithe Harry Hunt was a sightly man— Something ’twixt giant and runt: His paunch was a large one, his visage was wan, And to hear his long speeches vast multitudes ran. O rare Orator Hunt!

* * * * *

VI.

Orator Hunt was the man for a riot— Bully in language and front— And thought when a nation had troubles to sigh at, ’Twas quite unbecoming to sit cool and quiet. O rare Orator Hunt!

* * * * *

VIII.

How Orator Hunt’s many speeches will close— Tedious, bombastic, and blunt— In a _halter_ or _diadem_, God only knows: The sequel might well an arch-conjurer pose. O rare Orator Hunt!

Sufficient has been given to show the nature of the lampoon without repeating its scurrility. The following, of which we only quote the two first stanzas, is of pretty much the same order, though emanating from the other side, and after terrible provocation had been given:—

THE RENOWNED ACHIEVEMENTS OF PETERLOO,

ON THE GLORIOUS 16TH OF AUGUST, 1819.

BY SIR HUGO BURLO FURIOSO DI MULO SPINNISSIMO, BART., M.Y.C. AND A.S.S.

_The music by the celebrated_ DR. HORSEFOOD; _to be had at the “Cat and Bagpipes,” St. Mary’s Gate, Manchester_.

RECITATIVE.

When fell sedition’s stalking through the land, It then behoves each patriotic band OF NOBLE-MINDED YEOMAN CAVALIERS To sally forth and rush upon the mob, And execute the MAGISTERIAL JOB Of cutting off the ragamuffins’ ears.

ARIA BRAVURA.

=_Forte._=

How valiantly we met that crew Of infants, men and women too Upon the plain of Peterloo: And gloriously did hack and hew The d——d reforming gang. Our swords were sharp, you may suppose: Some lost their ears—some lost a nose; Our horses trod upon their toes Ere they could run t’ escape our blows: With shouts the welkin rang.

=_Andante._=

So keen were we to rout these swine, Whole shoals of constables in line We galloped o’er in style so fine, By orders of the SAPIENT NINE— First friends, then foes, laid flat. By Richardson’s best grinding skill Our blades were set with right good will, That we these rogues might bleed or kill, And “give them of Reform their fill!” And what d’ye think of that?

And so on the satire ran, in mock-bravura style, through the whole course of _piano_, _sotto voce_, _pianissima-mento_, and _con baldanza_, with foot-notes to strengthen or elucidate the text. And that the writer remained undiscovered and unprosecuted spoke loudly for the re-action which had taken place in men’s minds.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST.

WOUNDED.

At the extreme end of Mr. Mabbott’s long double-countered shop was an expansive archway, closed in general by folding doors, through which entrance was afforded to a narrow sitting-room, the length of which was just by so much less than the width of the shop as was required for a passage and staircase. Once a year the open archway revealed a shimmering mass of snowy sugar-work, the towers and turrets of a castle on a rock, or the illuminated windows of a magnificent palace, fit for any princess of fairyland, with pleasure-gardens and lake, or fountain and pond, wherein stately swans floated, and were overlooked by dames and cavaliers created by the confectioner and his satellites.

For the fifty other weeks it was simply a snug parlour, comfortably furnished according to the fashion of the time.

And it was in this room we left Jabez, whilst good-natured Ben Travis, leaving his more patriotic comrades to “hack and hew” at their pleasure, galloped hither and thither in search of a surgeon to dress the wounded arm.

Every doctor in the Infirmary had his hands full; Dr. Hull, from his windows in Mosley Street, and Dr. Hardie from his in Piccadilly, had been satisfied that if they ventured forth they might soon need doctoring themselves—and they both pleaded “medical etiquette” in excuse for their lukewarmness. They were “physicians, not surgeons.” He bethought himself of Mr. Huertley, in Oldham Street, but even he had more than one wounded patient in his surgery, and was loth to encounter the danger outside. Ben Travis, however, would take no denial. He waited until sundry gaping wounds were closed, cuts plaistered and bandaged, a broken limb set, and a bullet extracted, even lending a hand himself where unskilled help could be available, being less bemused with liquor than many of his cavalry corps. Then, although they were almost within a stone’s throw of their destination—as Oldham Street was not safe for a civilian to cross on foot, with loaded cannon in such close proximity—Travis mounted the surgeon behind him, the latter not sorry to have the yeoman’s capacious body in its conspicuous uniform for a shield, as they dashed across into Back-Piccadilly to Mabbott’s back door.

As they passed Chadwick’s the younger man cast a sharp glance of scrutiny at the drawing-room windows, and bowed low in recognition of the face for which he was looking—the face he had seen so pale and pitiful, bending over an afflicted father, and so shocked to hear of even an apprentice wounded in that father’s behalf.

Ben Travis had a big body and a big heart, but he had little knowledge of the hearts of womankind, or he might have found another solution for Ellen Chadwick’s fainting fit. He did not know how she had trembled for another on seeing him dismount at Mr. Huertley’s door, nor how she had watched, too sick and sad to descend to the dining-room, when the spoiled dinner was at length set on the table—watched eagerly and anxiously, her heart’s pulsations counting each second a minute, as hours elapsed before she saw them mount and away, and noted the direction they took. And she saw no admiration in the low bow of the fine soldierly young gentleman—only the polite salutation of a stranger introduced casually by the untoward events of the day, albeit, having rendered her father a service, and professed himself the friend of Jabez, she was bound to recognise him as he passed.

To Jabez himself, lying faint and exhausted with loss of blood, on kind Mr. Mabbott’s chintz-covered squab-sofa, everything was a haze, and the people around him little more than voices. He was perfectly conscious when Mr. Mabbott hastily cut away the sleeve of his jacket, and bound the wounded arm as tightly as towels could bind. When Mr. Ashton put his troubled face into the confectioner’s small parlour, Mr. Mabbott was in the act of reaching from a corner cupboard a small square spirit decanter, and an engraved wine-glass, in order to administer a dose of brandy to the young man, then rapidly sinking into unconsciousness.

Under its influence he revived for awhile; but, as the blood gradually soaked through the towelling, he grew fainter, in spite of brandy, and by the time Ben Travis (who had surely kept the promise made in school-boy days) brought Dr. Huertley to his aid he had lapsed into a stupor from which the manipulations of the surgeon barely aroused him.

“You should have tied a ligature tightly as possible round the arm above the wound, first thing,” said the surgeon, addressing those around him—“a bit of tape, a strip of linen, a garter—anything narrow, to stop the hæmorrhage. Had this been done, there would have been less effusion of blood, and our patient would not have been so utterly prostrated.”

“Just so, just so,” assented Mr. Ashton, adding, “but Mr. Mabbott had——”

“Done his best—no doubt,” interrupted the surgeon, “or our young friend might have bled to death. But the tight, narrow ligature would have been better; and many a valuable life may have been saved or lost this day through that bit of knowledge or—the want of it.”

Mr. Ashton’s “Just so, just so; I daresay you are right,” was followed up by “Shall we be able to remove him to-night, Mr. Huertley? He is my apprentice, and has been injured whilst bravely protecting your opposite neighbour, Mr. Chadwick, my brother-in-law. I should like to get him home, to be under Mrs. Ashton’s care, as well as to relieve Mr. Mabbott, to whom, I am sure, we all feel greatly indebted.”

“Don’t name it, I beg; at fearful times like this,” said Mr. Mabbott, with a shudder, “it does not do to think of trouble or of ceremony. But I do not imagine the doctor would counsel the young man’s removal to-night, even if the road were clear and safe.”

“Certainly not,” replied Mr. Huertley, as he packed up his lint and instruments. “And in my opinion, if you remove him to-morrow you must do it carefully on every account, and will have to smuggle him away in a hackney-coach, lest he should be pounced upon as a wounded rebel.”

Two days, however, elapsed before Mr. Mabbott’s sofa lost its occupant, and even then the strong arm of Tom Hulme and the loving care of Bess were needed to help Jabez, feeble and wan, to the hackney-carriage brought up to the back door, which bore him slowly away, avoiding the main streets, until they passed under the arched gateway in Back Mosley Street whence he had last emerged at a headlong pace to prevent Miss Augusta getting into danger.

Some remembrance of this flashed through the brain of Jabez as the coach stopped in the court-yard, and on the house door-steps he beheld Mrs. Ashton, Augusta, and Ellen Chadwick, all three waiting to receive him as if he had been a wounded relative returning from far-off victories to his own hearth. Nay, the very servants hovered in the back-ground, even cross Kezia pressing to have a first look at him.

Mrs. Ashton herself, with the graceful dignity which sat so well upon her, went down the steps to lead him up and into the house, and as she touched his left hand and unwounded arm, she said impressively,

“Jabez Clegg, I understand we owe our brother’s life to your self-abnegation, if not that of our daughter also. I regret that your noble intervention should have cost you so dear; but I thank you most truly, and _shall not forget it_.”

The stately lady’s eyes were humid as she led Jabez into their common parlour (the room in which Augusta had displayed his specimens of incipient artistry) and there placed him on the large soft sofa, already prepared with pillows for his reception. The attention touched him to the heart; the humble apprentice, feeling himself honoured, raised the lady’s hand to his lips as gracefully and reverently as ever did knight of old romance.

And then he would have closed his eyes for very weariness but a little soft warm hand stole into his feeble one, and thrilling through him, a faint tinge chased the deathly pallor from his face as Augusta’s voice, full of commiseration, said apologetically, “I had no idea, Jabez, that I was sending you into danger when I asked you to look for Uncle Chadwick; I am so sorry you have been hurt.”

He held the little hand of his master’s daughter for one or two delicious minutes, while he answered feebly—“Never mind, Miss Ashton; I was only too glad to be there in time;” and lapsed into so ethereal a dream as he released it, that the low, broken grateful thanks of Ellen Chadwick left but the impression on his mind that she was very much in earnest and had called him _Mr. Clegg_.

Mr. Clegg! When had the College-boy—the Blue-coat apprentice—been anything but Jabez Clegg? _Mr._ Clegg! It was from such lips social recognition, and so blent strangely with his dream. Ah! could he but have known how much of latent tenderness was embodied in those incoherent expressions of a daughter’s gratitude, or that the speaker dared not trust her faltering tongue with his Christian name!

Mrs. Ashton called the young ladies away.

“My dears, you had better resume your occupations, and leave Jabez to repose; it is not well to crowd about an invalid on so sultry a day as this.”

So Miss Chadwick went, with her tatting-shuttle, back to her seat by the one window where the friendly shade of the dove-coloured curtains screened from observation any glances which might chance to stray from the tatting to the sofa; and Miss Ashton went back to her music-stool, where the sunbeams, falling through the other window, lit up her lovely profile, shot a glint of gold through her hair, and showed the dimples in her white shoulder to the half-shut, dreaming eyes of Jabez, who listened, entranced, as she practised scales and battle-pieces, waltzes and quadrilles, totally unconscious that she was feeding a fever in the soul of the apprentice more to be feared than the stroke of Aspinall’s sabre, though it had cut into the bone.

Not that she was a simple school-girl, and ignorant of the power of beauty. She was pretty well as romantic as any girl of that romantic age who, being fifteen, looked a year older, and learned the art of fascination from the four-volume novels of the period. Mrs. Ashton herself subscribed to the fashionable circulating library of the town, but she was somewhat choice in her reading, and had Miss Augusta stopped where her mother did she would have done well. But it so happened that, after feasting on the wholesome peas her mother provided, she fell with avidity on husks obtained surreptitiously elsewhere. Kisses from Augusta could always coax coins from papa, and as a Miss Bohanna kept open a well-known, well-stocked circulating library in Shudehill, albeit in a cellar, its contiguity to Bradshaw Street and Mrs. Broadbent’s enabled Miss Ashton (or Cicely for her) to smuggle in amongst her school-books other fictions, such as Elizabeth Helme and Anna Maria Roche used to concoct, and Samuel Richardson provided, to delight our grandmothers with.

So Miss Ashton was quite prepared to be admired and play the heroine prematurely; but she had been reared in the same house with Jabez, had been caressed and waited upon by him as a child, and anything so absurd as her father’s apprentice falling in love with her had never dawned upon her apprehension. Then not even his wounded arm could make him handsome enough for a hero, so she plunged through the “Battle of Prague,” and “Lodoiska,” and glided into the “Copenhagen Waltz,” with no suspicion of a listener more than ordinary.

Mrs. Ashton, who was back-stitching a shirt-wristband (family linen was then made at home), imagined that Jabez was dozing, and, unwilling to disturb him, only spoke when a false note, or a passage out of time, called for a low-voiced hint to her daughter, or when she found occasion to make some slight observation to the equally silent Ellen.

Presently the clock in the hall proclaimed “five.” Miss Ashton closed music-books and piano; Miss Chadwick completed a loop, then put her tatting away in a small, oblong, red morocco reticule; Mrs. Ashton laid the wristband in her workbasket, which she put out of sight in a panelled cupboard within the wall, sheathed the scissors hanging from her girdle, folded up the leather housewife containing her cut skeins of thread, &c.; James brought in the tea-board, with its genuine China tea-service, plates with cake and bread-and-butter, and whilst he went back to Kezia for the tea-urn, in walked Mr. Ashton, and with him the Rev. Joshua Brookes.

One might have supposed his first salutation would have been to the lady of the house. Nothing of the kind! With a passing nod to Mrs. Ashton, who had extended her hand, he marched straight to the sofa, and greeted its occupant with—

“Well, young Cheat-the-fishes, so you’ve been in the wars again.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jabez, attempting to rise.

“Lie still, lad! And so you thought a velveteen jacket defensive armour against sharpened steel?”

“I never thought about it, sir.”

“Ugh! Then I suppose you reckoned a young man’s arm worth less than an old man’s head! Eh?”

Jabez smiled.

“Certainly, sir.”

“Humph! I thought as much!” Then darting a keen inquisitive glance from under his shaggy eyebrows at the prostrate young fellow, he added in his very raspiest tones, “And I daresay you’ve no notion whose sabre carved the wing of the goose so cleverly?”

What little blood was left in his body seemed to mount to the face of Jabez, the old scar on his brow—which every year made less conspicuous—purpled and grew livid. Old Joshua needed no more.

“Ah, I see you do! Well, are you inclined to forgive the fellow this time?”

All ears were on the alert. Jabez caught the quick turn of his kind master’s head. He hesitated, paled, and flushed again. Joshua Brookes waited. There was some indecision in the reply when it did come.

“I am not sure, sir. But he was very drunk. I don’t think he would have done it if he had been sober.”

“Just so, Jabez—just so!” assented Mr. Ashton with evident satisfaction and a tap on his snuff-box-lid.

Ben Travis had revealed the name of Mr. Chadwick’s assailant to the manufacturer, and he to the chaplain.

“Oh! that’s your opinion, is it?” cried the latter, crustily, wheeling sharply round to disguise a smile.—“Here, madam, let’s have a cup of sober tea after that!”

“I think, Mr. Brookes,” said Mrs. Ashton, as she seated herself, “with all due deference to you—I think you ask too much from Jabez. I do not consider drunkenness any excuse for brutality.”

“No excuse for the brute, madam, certainly; but a reason why a reasoning man should forgive the brute incapable of reason.”

“Just so, Parson!” chimed in Mr. Ashton laying his Barcelona handkerchief across his knee.

“I don’t see it, sir,” argued Mrs. Ashton, handing a willow-patterned cup and saucer, with his tea, to her interlocutor; “a man who is a brute when intoxicated should keep sober. For my own part, I should be loth to let the same stick beat me twice. Our apprentice has borne quite too much from that fellow” (she waxed indignant), “and there is a limit to forgiveness.”

“Yes, madam,” answered the Parson snappishly, “there _is_ a limit to forgiveness; but the limit is ‘not seven times, but seventy times seven!’”

There was no more to be said. The rough chaplain spoke with authority, and from experience, and Jabez knew it.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.

MR. CLEGG!

However grateful Mrs. Ashton might be she never lost sight of her personal dignity, and had no idea of admitting Jabez on terms of equality after that first reception.

In his helpless condition he required attention, which she could not condescend to render personally; yet she was as little inclined to delegate the duty to Kezia, who was never over well-disposed towards him, and who might have resented the call to “wait on a ’prentice lad,” or to Cicily, who was too young to have the run of a young man’s chamber. It was like herself to hit on the happy mean, and invite Bess Hulme at once to satisfy her own longings, and meet the requirements of the case, by waiting on her foster-child in his helplessness, bringing with her her own boy, now two years old, to be committed to willing Cicily’s care when the mother was herself engaged.