Part 16

Well drilled as were Madame Broadbent’s pupils, they could not quit their box in the same order they entered it—big people so seldom recognise the right of little ones to precedence. They straggled into the saloon, separated by the crowd. There Madame Broadbent, assisted by Miss Nuttall, collected her brood, and passing on to the box-lobby, they looked around for their respective attendants.

There was one—a fine young man, in height some five feet ten—who sprang forward with shawl and calesh for Miss Ashton, at the same time bowing deferentially to the pompous dame with the big fan. He proceeded to adjust the shawl round the dimpled shoulders so very precious to him, and said—

“I hope you have had a pleasant evening, Miss Augusta.”

Then bowing again to Mrs. Broadbent, he offered his hand respectfully to the young lady, to conduct her home.

On the instant they were intercepted by Aspinall and Walmsley, neither so sober as he might have been.

“Augusta, here’s my friend, Aspinall; deuced good fellow—quite struck with you,” was Captain Walmsley’s unceremonious introduction—at a time, too, when introductions were somewhat formal.

“Quite, Miss Ashton,” he assented. “’Pon my soul, I am! Your charming face has quite captivated me, and those eyes pierce my heart like bullets. Permit me to escort you home.”

There was an amusing consciousness of his own attractions in this free expression of his admiration. A woman of the world, with her weapons ready, might have dismissed him either with hauteur, badinage, or cool indifference; but to Augusta Ashton, almost a child in years, it was bewildering and disconcerting.

Her eyes fell—her colour rose. She stood silent, abashed, and confused. Native modesty took alarm.

Jabez came to her relief.

“Miss Ashton is under my protection, sir; she requires no other escort.”

The words were cool as those of a man who, having his temper well under control, did not choose to quarrel, though his pulses were beating like drums. With cool effrontery his old antagonist looked him full in the face.

“So it’s you again, yellow-skirt! A nice fellow to protect a pretty girl: a fellow without skill to defend himself, or spirit to resent an insult;” and the speaker’s red lips curled with derision.

The eyes of Jabez kindled and his teeth set. There was no lack of spirit, but not the spirit of which common brawls are made. He was anxious to get the trembling Augusta away from the gathering crowd.

Madame Broadbent, shorn of half her pretty train, came up aghast.

“Young lady! Miss Ashton! What is——”

A wave of the silver-braided sleeve set her aside, chafed and indignant at the freedom and impertinence.

“Keep out of the way, Mother Broadbent. Look after the rest of your lambkins. Miss Ashton’s cousin and I propose to see your pupil home.”

“All right, Augusta,” said Walmsley, thickly; “we’ll see you home.”

But she clung in dismay to the arm of Jabez; and not Hercules himself could have torn her from him. Ignoring the coarse taunt of Lieutenant Aspinall, he endeavoured to lead her past them, simply saying to Captain Walmsley—

“Mr. Ashton committed his daughter to my care. I am answerable for her safety.”

Aspinall, mistaking his calmness for pusillanimity, again intercepted their passage, and would have taken Augusta’s hand. But a will strong as his own—an arm strengthened by lifting and carrying heavy burdens—was opposed to him. Jabez struck no blow: he thrust out an arm with muscles like leather, swept the offensive lieutenant aside, and down he went on the stone pavement of the lobby.

“Bravo, Clegg!” exclaimed a voice from the rear; and the burly form of Ben Travis parted the curious crowd, as leviathan parts the waves, before the infuriated Aspinall could rise, or Walmsley interpose; “that’s right; take the young lady away, and leave these gallant bucks to me. I’ll guard the honour of our corps.”

The terrified young lady and the inebriated young bully were alike in sure hands. But consequential Madame Broadbent, ignored, forgotten, had received a blow to her importance she was not likely to forget or overlook.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

MADAME BROADBENT’S FAN.

They had made their exit from the Fountain Street end of the box-lobby, to avoid the rush from the gallery door in Back Mosley Street, which somewhat lengthened the short distance Jabez had to convey his precious charge, who appeared more apprehensive of offending Madame Broadbent by scant and unceremonious leave-taking than troubled by the impertinence of the young officers.

Truth to tell, the whole adventure had a savour of Miss Bohanna’s circulating library about it, and she felt herself elevated into a heroine by the occurrence. But her appearance before Madame Broadbent in the morning would be very real and unromantic, that lady resenting nothing so much as disrespect.

“You see, Jabez, I did not even make a curtsey to her as we came away. I am afraid she will be displeased.”

“If you think so, Miss Ashton,” he replied, respectfully, “I will hasten back as soon as I have seen you safely home, and bear your apologies to Madame Broadbent. She may not have left the theatre. Besides, I feel that I also owe an apology for leaving a lady of her age unprotected in the midst of such a scene. It was very remiss on my part,” he added; “but, indeed, at the time I thought only of placing you beyond reach of further insult;” and Augusta could hear him mutter between his teeth, “The impertinent puppy!”

The distance even from Fountain Street was very inconsiderable, and they had reached the broad steps of the door in Mosley Street, and his hand was on the lion-headed knocker when this ejaculation escaped him.

Service from Jabez was so much a matter of course that Augusta regarded his care for herself, and his proffer to run back at her bidding, only in the light of apprentice-duty; but that muttered exclamation spoke of smothered passion; and before James was roused from his doze in front of the far-away kitchen fire by that peal on the knocker, and sleepily opened the door, she had added a caution as an addendum to her message to Madame Broadbent.

“I hope, Jabez, you are not going back to—to interfere or quarrel with Mr. Walmsley and the other officer. If they are not quite sober, you must remember _they are gentlemen_.”

“I will forget nothing I should remember, Miss Ashton,” said he, as James unclosed the door for her entrance, and he darted off, the emphasis she had laid on her closing words having stung him keenly with a sense of his social inferiority in her sight. “She evidently thinks the apprentice College-boy has no right to raise his hand against gentility in uniform, however drunk or disorderly it may be,” he thought, as he ran along, spurred by a manly desire to show that it was not cowardice which had caused him to leave his prostrate enemy in the hands of a deputy.

He was not three minutes more in reaching the box-entrance in Back Mosley Street; but for all that, the short walk home, and the brief delay caused by sleepy-headed James, had given ample time to empty and close the theatre, from which more than half the audience had dispersed before they left. Even the oil lamps over the doors were extinguished; and though a few stragglers loitered about—the natural hangers-on to histrionic skirts—and there were brawlers in the neighbourhood, he saw none of those he went to seek.

The fact was, Captain Travis had hauled Lieutenant Aspinall from the ground with little ceremony, and, with a sharp reproof for “the disgrace he was bringing on their corps by insulting a young lady in a public place, as if sufficient odium did not attach to the Yeomanry already,” forced him into a waiting hackney-coach, giving the driver orders to bear him home to his father’s house on Ardwick Green, heedless of the young officer’s remonstrance to the contrary. But Jehu, who knew his fare, drove him instead to the “George and Dragon” on the opposite side of the Green, and Mr. Aspinall saw nothing of his hopeful son that night.

Nor would Charlotte Walmsley have seen much more of her husband, had not kind-hearted Ben gone far out of his own way to land John safely at home. Perhaps it would be hardly fair to calculate too nicely how far he was influenced to that by the relation of the Walmsleys to Ellen Chadwick, since the secret springs of action often lie too far down even for self-knowledge.

As for Madame Broadbent, no sooner had Miss Nuttall disposed of the last of the budding misses than she hid her indignation in the deep shadow of her large calesh, and, with an access of importance, left the theatre, slightly in advance of her humble dependants, and made her fearless way through Fountain Street and High street, with a step which augured unpleasantness for all beneath her roof if her supper were not done to a turn and served to a nicety.

Augusta was somewhat loth to leave her pillow in the morning, after the night’s unusual dissipation, and was still more reluctant to encounter her lessons and Mrs. Broadbent; and she for the first time remarked to Cicily that she thought she was “quite too old to go to school.” As if the world was not one huge school, wherein the dunces get punished most severely, and even the best and brightest do not escape the rod. But Augusta Ashton, buoyant, blooming, cherished, admired, adored, could not see that her real schooling would begin when Madame Broadbent’s reign ceased.

No doubt Mr. Ashton would have been coaxed into granting an extension of his darling daughter’s Easter holiday, and suffered her to remain at home that Thursday morning, but he was at Whaley-Bridge; and mamma met her request with:—

“No, my dear, you have had quite holiday enough. It would be setting a bad example to infringe Madame Broadbent’s rules. Go, my dear, and go cheerfully. I will send Cicily for you at noon. The streets will be rather rough this week.”

She went, though not cheerfully, and Cicily was duly despatched to bring her home; but neither Cicily nor Miss Ashton had returned when dinner was put upon the table at half-past twelve o’clock. Then Mrs. Ashton recalled her own words respecting the rough streets, and the insult offered as unwelcome tribute to Augusta’s beauty over-night; and, though by no means a nervous woman, the mother grew restless and apprehensive—a lovely daughter who is an only child is so very anxious a charge. As she sat down to her solitary meal, another thought crossed her mind.

“James, ask Mr. Clegg to oblige me by stepping this way.”

Mr. Clegg was with her in an instant: the summons was unusual.

“Jabez, I’ll thank you to ascertain why Miss Ashton has not returned from school at the usual time. Cicily has been gone almost an hour. Should Madame be keeping her in for any breach of etiquette last night, pray offer an apology for me and my daughter also, but at the same time politely insist on Miss Ashton’s immediate return to dinner.”

“I believe I owe Madame Broadbent an apology myself,” answered Jabez, smiling. “I shall be glad of an opportunity to discharge the debt.”

* * * * *

The school-room door was midway down the dark, narrow, arched entry. Groups of girls, with slates and bags in their hands, loitering on the pathway at the entrance and in the passage, made way for him, with curious looks and whispers among themselves (Jabez was not unknown to some of the senior pupils). The school-room door stood ajar: the whole place was in a commotion unprecedented in that precise establishment.

Madame Broadbent, holding by the copy-slip axiom, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” preserved her dignity and that of her high office by avoiding personal contact with her pupils, save at stated hours. Her assistant-governesses were at their posts from nine until twelve, from two until four; but Madame herself only sailed into the long room from the house-door across the entry at eleven o’clock to receive reports, inspect work, dispense rewards, or administer reproof and chastisement. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” had not been abolished from the educational code fifty-five years back.

The double shock her importance had received at the theatre sent her home to quarrel with her supper; and as a meal dispatched in an ill-humour does not easily digest, Othello and the Castle Spectre haunted her pillow, and broke her rest with nightmares.

She rose late, and stepped into her schoolroom later than usual, to visit her accumulation of disagreeables on minor delinquents, as well as on the primary offenders.

Let us be just: Madame Broadbent had gracious smiles and approving words to dispense to the ultra-good, and their very rarity made them valuable. But if she rewarded any that day, it was only that severity might stand out in contrast. Little hearts beat, little fingers plied industrious needles, little eyes bent over work, when Madame’s step was heard in the entry; but when her august presence fairly filled the room, every little damsel rose simultaneously, and saluted her entrance with a low, formal, deferential curtsey.

Two rooms had evidently been thrown into one to give required space, the back portion being curiously lit by a narrow small-paned window extending along the side, high above the rows of racks and pegs. It was the writing end of the room. Madame Broadbent occupied a seat in the front portion, almost opposite to the door; and as she marched towards it with more than ordinary loftiness, and beat her fan on her table with one peremptory tap, instead of a short rapid quiver, to enforce her command, “Attention, ladies!” the very youngest of those ladies could interpret the signs portentously. Lucky was the young lady whose work passed muster that morning; so many were condemned to stocks, backboard, columns of spelling, recitations from the “Speaker” and Thomson’s “Seasons,” lengths of open hem, back-stitching, or seaming!

At length Madame Broadbent, having dismissed ordinary business, rapped her fan upon the table, and in a sharp peremptory tone called “Miss Ashton!”—and Miss Ashton, who had been expecting the summons all the morning, came forward at her bidding, but not with the ordinary alacrity of pupilage. She had left her childhood (I had almost said her girlhood) behind her, in the box-lobby of the Theatre Royal.

“Miss Brookes!” cried the same sharp voice; and with a painful start the little girl who had committed such a terrible breach of decorum before a whole theatre as to utter her impromptu commentary on the tragedian’s art, rose, trembled, burst into tears, but was too agitated to obey with sufficient promptitude. Her seat was on a low front form. Madame took a step forward, stretched out her arm, and dragged the child by the ear to the side of Augusta, then gave her a smart cuff as an admonition to more prompt obedience another time.

Then with another rap of her fan on the table, which set all hearts palpitating, she began an inflated harangue to the mite of a child and the budding woman, in which she reproached them both with bringing disgrace on the “Academy,” hitherto so irreproachable. The one had drawn the attention of a whole theatre to her ill-breeding and want of proper training; the other by “boldness of look and manner had licensed the free speech of loose men;” and, as if that were not enough, had “been the cause of an unpardonable insult to herself.” She, Madame Broadbent, so highly honoured and respected by the chief people in the town, to be called “Mother Broadbent!”—it was an outrage not to be endured!

Her temper interrupted her oration; she shook Augusta violently, and condemned her to remain in school until she had learned one of Mrs. Chapone’s letters by heart. Then she darted on the smaller Miss as the primary cause of all, shook her till the little teeth chattered, and dragged her by the lobe of the ear towards a dark closet, set apart for heinous offenders.

Something akin to rebellion had been growing in Augusta’s breast all the morning. She was a girl of quick impulses and sympathies, and was not only struck by the disproportion of punishment meted out, but by the terror on the little one’s face. She threw herself in their path, and to the utter astonishment alike of pupils and teachers laid hold of the child to release her, exclaiming as she did so, “You shall not lock her in the dark! you will kill her with fright, you cruel Madame Broadbent!”

If Madame Broadbent had been wrathful before she was furious now. Never in her long experience had she been so braved. Without thought, without premeditation, she raised her heavy fan and struck sharply at Augusta. The blow fell on her beautiful bare neck, the collar-bone snapped, as it will do with a very slight matter, and Augusta dropped!

Cicily, waiting outside at the time, heard Madame’s raised voice and Augusta’s impetuous remonstrance; then a thud, a fall, and a suppressed scream from the girls; and without pausing to knock, she pushed open the door, Cicily had been too long the recipient of Augusta’s school-girl confidence to stand in much awe of Mrs. Broadbent at best of times. Now she darted forward to raise her young mistress, whom she almost worshipped, and certainly did not consult either Madame’s feelings or dignity in the epithets she launched at her.

No one had been more electrified at the effect of that stroke with the fan than Mrs. Broadbent’s self. She seemed petrified, and Cicily’s indignant outburst fell on deaf ears; but as Miss Nuttall ran for water, and Cicily cried out for a doctor, she roused to self-consciousness, and closed the school-room door as if to keep the outer world in ignorance of what was going on inside.

A wide latitude was then allowed for school discipline; but even Madame Broadbent was sensible that the blow which had felled Mr. Ashton’s only daughter was a blow to imperil her seminary.

Augusta did not revive. Miss Nuttall suggested that the school should be dismissed, and a doctor fetched; and, before either could be effected, Jabez was on the spot. He took in the scene at a glance; Augusta, white as her frock, her hair all in disorder, lay extended on a form, her head supported by the kneeling Cicily, whilst excited girls and teachers flocked helplessly around.

“Good heavens! what is the matter? What has happened to Miss Ashton?” was his hurried and agitated inquiry.

One said one thing, one another. Wrathful Cicily came nearest to the mark. “That old wretch has struck ar darlin’ wi’ her great fan. Aw’m afeared her neckbone’s brokken!”

“Impossible! She could not be so heartless!” he cried, as the group made way for him to pass, and he knelt down opposite to the sobbing Cicily, on the other side of the form, and sprinkled the pallid face so dear to him with water some one had brought in.

There was no sign of revival. “My God! this is terrible! Oh, madam, how could you do it? Mrs. Ashton will be distracted!” and he started to his feet, inexpressible anguish in every feature. “But this is no time for revilings. Where is the nearest doctor?”

“There is Mr. Campbell in Hanover Street—and——”

Brushing unceremoniously past his informant, he was with the Scotch surgeon before Miss Nuttall had recovered from her surprise, or Madame from her stupor.

Mr. Campbell was quickly on his way to attend his new patient, and Jabez speeding towards the top of Market Street. There he hired a Hackney coach from the stand, close as he was to home, and drove straight to Dr. Hull’s. He bore the doctor from his unfinished dinner with impetuosity, brooking no delay. They found Augusta Ashton faint, pale, but restored to consciousness, in Madame’s own dingy parlour, where the author of the mischief was doing her best to put a favourable colour on the disaster.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH.

RETROSPECTIVE.

The collar-bone was broken; there was no mistake about that; but Jabez, mindful of Mrs. Ashton’s protracted anxiety, lingered no longer where he would fain have remained than to see the surgeon prepare—under Dr. Hull’s supervision—to reduce the fracture; a delicate process, since to the collar-bone no splints can be applied.

Augusta’s affection for her mother overcame her pain.

“You will be careful how you tell mamma, Jabez, I know; do not frighten her more than you can help; she will be so terribly distressed,” faintly murmured she, as he again departed.

With all his haste and care, so much time had been spent, Mrs. Ashton’s fears had already conjured up all manner of evils, all of course wide of the mark. That something was wrong she felt assured, and he found her dressing to follow her dilatory messengers. The stoppage of the coach and his evident agitation were confirmatory; but the absolute facts roused as much indignation as grief.

Yet Mrs. Ashton never forgot herself; and though the waiting coach bore her to Bradshaw Street, to add her maternal reproaches to the wrathful utterances of Cicily, the rough rebukes of Dr. Hull, and the prickings of Madame Broadbent’s own conscience, the natural dignity of her manner more overawed and impressed the resentful schoolmistress than all which had gone before. She was as profuse in apologies as in extenuating pleas, but she was not prepared to combat Mrs. Ashton’s proverbial argumentation.

“Facts are stubborn things, madam, and she who cannot govern herself is not fit to govern others.”

Neither coach-making nor road-making had reached the acme of perfection, and Augusta’s removal home, without the displacement of the bone, had to be considered.

A sedan chair—the last in the town—was still kept for invalid use at the Infirmary. Jabez was aware of this, and before Dr. Hull could make the suggestion he had proposed to go for it, and was back with the black, brass-nailed sedan long before the doctors thought their patient fit to be removed.

As the unfamiliar vehicle waited at the “Academy” door, it attracted the notice not only of neighbours and returning school-girls, but of passers-by, until Madame Broadbent was in a fever. The reputation of her school was at stake, and she felt that every extra moment that hand-carriage and wheel-carriage remained standing there, the bruit of the lamentable occurrence was spreading farther afield.

There had been no cessation of afternoon school duties, albeit the teachers alone presided, and discipline was somewhat relaxed. But when patient, doctors, friends, and vehicles had gone their way, and the school was soon after dismissed, the harrassed, agitated, and prescient disciplinarian surrendered herself to alternate fits of hysteria, passion, lamentation, and overweening assumption.

That first outburst over, the self-important dame stood on her “right to maintain discipline,” even when confronted by Mr. Ashton, no longer the easy-going, pleasant parent of a paying pupil, but the angry father of an injured only child, who had posted from Whaley-bridge, on the first intelligence of the mischance, leaving his business incomplete.

Not alone to the inmates of the house in Mosley-street was Augusta Ashton precious. Notwithstanding her sometime waywardness (the result of her father’s over-indulgence), she had endeared herself, by her affectionate heart and winsome ways, to a wide circle of friends; even Joshua Brookes was less grim with Augusta; so no wonder Jabez was secretly devoted to her heart and soul. Great and general was the sympathy expressed on the occasion.

Mrs. Chadwick and Ellen were with Mrs. Ashton before the afternoon was out, and at Augusta’s eager desire her cousin remained behind, not only for companionship, but as chief nurse, an office for which Ellen had that peculiar fitness observable in some women, coupled with the deftness and experience gained in long attendance on her father.