Part 17

And now, leaving Augusta in the hands of love and skill, with all that affection and wealth can lavish upon her in furtherance of recovery, let us step backwards to the previous September, when Peterloo was fresh, and Jabez yet wore his left arm in a sling.

Whaley-bridge has been mentioned more than once, for in that village, near the high road from Manchester to Buxton, Mr. Ashton possessed a water-mill on the picturesque banks of the river Goyt, which there divided the counties of Cheshire and Derbyshire. It had been established in the previous century, together with another in the contiguous vale of Taxal, by a speculative ancestor of Mrs. Ashton, whose old hall was in the locality. The two places had been chiefly colonised by his workpeople, many of whom had been pauper apprentices from Manchester and Warrington.

Besides the mill, Mr. Ashton owned the “White Hart” Inn, close to the bridge, where the Buxton coaches stopped; and Carr Cottage, a long, low, rough-cast building, nestling under the shadow of a fine old farm-house which crowned the elevated ridge of Yeardsley-cum-Whaley, lang-syne the Gothic stone Hall of the warlike Yeardsleys.

From this farm-house, Carr Cottage was separated by a retired walk at the back, which, itself a wilderness of nettles, gave access to the cellarage and a clear well, and led the adventurer away up the hill between the cottage grounds and the farmer’s tall high-banked hedges, which almost overtopped the cottage roof. And on the left of the cottage (as viewed from the high road) spread the granaries, stabling, and farmyard, enclosed by remains of the ancient wall, and entered by a step or two through an ancient Gothic doorway, over which ivy and honeysuckle clambered in luxurious rivalry.

The cottage, which on each floor contained four capacious rooms in its length, was on the ground divided in the middle by a respectable lobby; the house-place and kitchen lying on the left, the parlours to the right as you entered. There were two staircases, one at each end of the building, the one running upwards in the kitchen itself, the other from a small enclosed space at the back of a parlour, containing also a china closet door, and lit by a low window close to the foot of the staircase, from which it was possible to step out into the garden, unseen by anyone in the house. Otherwise, both chambers and parlours had doors of communication from end to end of the building, the two middle chambers being only accessible through the others.

The lower windows in the front—at least, those of the large parlours—were brought close to the ground, and overlooked a charming landscape; descending, at first suddenly, from the wide-spread flower-garden (with its one great sycamore to the right of the cottage for shade), then with a gradual slope to a bean-field below, to a meadow crossed by a narrow rill, then, after a wider stretch of grass, the alder and hazel fringe of a trout-stream, skirting the high road, on the far side of which tall poplars waved, and in Autumn shed their leaves in the wider waters of the Goyt fresh from the bridge, where the road bends. Rivulets, road, and river ran parallel. And from the road a broad wooden gate gave access (over a bridge across the trout stream) to a wide, steep avenue between trim hedges, which rose to the level of the cottage, in itself as delightful a retreat as any wearied denizen of town could desire. To Mr. Ashton it was necessary as an adjunct to his factory; an occasional home for his family in the summer, a lodge for himself when a visit of inspection was desirable.

Hearing that the general discontent was spreading amongst his own work-people at Whaley-bridge, Mr. Ashton, without waiting for the stage-coach, put himself into a long-skirted drab overcoat, with high collar and small double cape, ordered reluctant James to “find another for Clegg,” and having stowed away a carpet bag and a case of pistols, lest they should be molested on the road, he mounted his high gig, with Jabez by his side, and set off to “take the bull by the horns,” as Mrs. Ashton had advised.

Away they went through the mild September air, up London road (where houses had been growing in the years since we scanned it last) and past Ardwick Green Pond, where a dashing young buck, booted and spurred, lounged at the door of the quaint “George and Dragon,” and followed them curiously with his eyes; yet not so swiftly but Jabez had time to recognise with accelerated pulse his former assailant, Laurence.

Longsight, Burnage, Fallowfield left behind; Stockport-bridge gained, they go walking by their horse’s head up the steep hill, between frowning houses, to the “Pack-Horse” in the Market-place, where the beast was baited, and the travellers dined at the same table, Jabez not for one moment forgetting the social distance between his master and himself.

Again seated, they quickly left the smoke-begrimed, higgledy-piggledy mass of brick and mortar called Stockport behind, and were away on country roads, where yellow leaves were blown into their faces, where brown-faced, white-headed cottage children were stripping blackberries from the wayside brambles, or ripe nuts from the luxuriant hazels which have since changed the very name of the Bullock-Smithy through which they drove at a gallop to Hazelgrove.

It was a glorious treat for Jabez, was that drive, and Mr. Ashton, conversing with him as they went, was surprised to discover his love of Nature, and his knowledge of her secrets. This induced reminiscences of the early years of Jabez when Simon took him pick-a-back in the fields on Sundays; and Mr. Ashton led him on to dilate on his childhood among his first friends, until he had a closer insight into the young man’s heart than in all the years he had served them.

But the object of their journey had not been forgotten; and at Disley, hearing Mr. Ashton remark that they were but three miles from Whaley-Bridge, Jabez ventured to suggest—

“Do you not think, sir, as I am unknown in Whaley-Bridge, I might make inquiries, and ascertain the feeling of the people better if I went on foot, having no apparent connection with you?”

“That is a wise thought of yours, young man. Just so. I will put you down at the next milestone. Here is a guinea for your expenses at the ‘White Hart.’ But country people are inquisitive; what do you propose to be?”

“Well, sir, I took the liberty to bring a sketch-book with me—I don’t get many such opportunities—I could represent myself as an artist; or I could cram my pockets with plants and roots as I went along, and say I was a botanist in search of specimens.”

“Stick to the artist, Jabez; our country botanists would soon floor you on their own ground—they know more of plants than pencils, I’ll warrant.” And Mr. Ashton, handing the reins to Jabez, took a pinch of snuff on the strength of it.

Mr. Ashton, putting up the collar of his coat, drove direct to Carr, much to the surprise of his unprepared overlooker and wife, who had charge of the cottage. He said nothing of any companion; and Jabez some twenty minutes later walked into the bar of the “White Hart,” dusty and weary, as if with long walking; called for bread-and-cheese and ale; intimated his intention to remain the night, if he could have a bed; talked of the scenery, and led the host to tell of the best points for sketching.

Professing fatigue, he kept his seat in the bar-parlour the remainder of the day. The sling, not yet wholly discarded, drew attention, as he expected it would. The incomers, eyeing him askance, talked politics before him, and finding him less glib than themselves, whispered that he was a refugee from Peterloo, and, to show their sympathy with the party to which he was supposed to belong, freely discussed the political aspect of the district before him.

He was young, free with his money, and they were not reticent. He found that the overlooker had made himself, and his master through himself, obnoxious to his weavers, and that only prompt measures would prevent an outbreak.

The next morning Mr. Ashton put his head into the inn, greeted “Mr. Clegg” as some one he was surprised to meet in so remote a spot, and invited him to Carr Cottage.

Jabez accepted the invitation for the afternoon, saying he could not spare the morning. Under pretence of sketching, he took his way by the Goyt to the neighbourhood of the mill with pencils and sketch-book: women and children flocked inquisitively round him in their dinner-hour, and talked to him; then he rested in weaver’s cot, and when he found his way to Carr in the afternoon, and sat with Mr. Ashton for privacy under the dropping keys of the sycamore, he had brought with him the key to the prevailing discontent.

Mr. Ashton listened, took an enormous quantity of snuff, dropped an occasional “Just so,” and, knowing the sore, set about healing it. He drove back to Manchester, leaving Jabez as his temporary deputy—high honour for so young a man—and the overlooker was required to render up his accounts.

A fortnight later, as Jabez was midway up the avenue to Carr in the afternoon, he turned, hearing the blithe bugle of the coming Buxton coach, and watched its dashing progress along the road. To his astonishment it stopped at the gate. He himself reached the spot at a run.

His eyes had not played him false. Simon Clegg, in his best clothes, was there on the box seat; Tom Hulme and Bess and little Sim sat close behind him. Mr. Ashton was himself an inside passenger.

In the bustle and confusion of alighting, and dragging boxes from the boot and from the top, curiosity was kept on the stretch. It was not until the entire party were under the roof of the cottage that Jabez was enlightened. Tom Hulme was the new overlooker, Bess the new caretaker of Carr Cottage, which was henceforth their rural rent-free home: and to Simon, long disqualified by rheumatism for the wet and slush of the tannery was given the charge of the garden, with a boy under him. And of all the group old Simon and little Sim were most delighted.

Some eight months before, Sim (then about two years old) had slipped on the frosty stones in the old Long Millgate Yard and, rolling down its rugged declivity, was supposed to have injured his spine, and he had been too delicate ever since to run about freely. To the child, therefore, whose shoulders seemed unnaturally high, the change from the stifling court was something too exuberant for expression. To Simon Clegg, who, in losing his crony Matt, had felt the old haunts oppressive, the bountiful expanse of nature before him, and the comfortable fragrant home, were matters of deep thankfulness.

“Moi lad,” said he to Jabez, when the latter was about to depart with Mr. Ashton, after they were fairly inducted, “ar Bess said thah would be a Godsend to us, an’ thah has bin. This Paradise o’ posies has o’ grown eawt o’ thy cradle. God bless thee!”

“I think, my dear, the experiment will succeed. There is a matronly air of respectability about Mrs. Hulme, that will help to uphold her husband’s position amongst the workpeople, and I can trust his soldierly discipline for keeping the rebellious in order.”

Thus said Mr. Ashton to his good lady, sitting by the fire-side after supper, the night of his return home. Then, after a little pondering and trifling with his snuff-box, he added, as if reflectively—

“It is all very well, my dear, to serve the young man’s friends and ourselves at the same time, but I should like to do something for Jabez himself. It is entirely to his clear head and his tact that we owe the preservation of peace at Whaley-Bridge. I should like to give _him_ a rise.”

“My dear William, make no more haste than good speed, and never do things in a hurry,” replied his calm proverbial philosopher. “We must not excite the envy of his fellow-clerks, or we shall surround him with enemies from the first. In removing his humble friends you have cleared one barrier to his advancement.”

Mr. Ashton did not say “Just so!” for a wonder; he turned his gold box round and round in his fingers, and at length gave utterance to a thought which took Mrs. Ashton by surprise.

“If we remove all the young man’s old associations, don’t you think we ought to provide him with new ones?”

“I think, William, we ought to ‘leave well alone;’ smooth paths are slippery paths. The young man will be out of his time in six months; you can then advance him if you think proper—in the warehouse—but I do not feel disposed to open our drawing-room to him if that is what you are driving at;” and she drew herself up as if her dignity had received a blow.

“We-ll no—not exactly!” and Mr. Ashton, unable to express what he did mean exactly, shuffled and fidgeted till he upset his snuff on the Brussels carpet.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH.

ON THE PORTICO STEPS.

Between that expedition to Whaley-Bridge, with its terminal connubial conversation, and the breakage of Augusta Ashton’s collar-bone, rather more than six months intervened—six months during which Mr. Clegg, as his good master had anticipated, felt the solitary state of his trim sitting-room somewhat oppressive, the permission to receive his old friends becoming a nullity on their removal. He occupied a position midway between parlour and kitchen—above his old associates of the porringers, the fireside settle, and the sanded stone floor, and beneath the family seated round the tea-urn, on cushioned chairs and Brussels carpet. Towards the former he cast few backward looks of regret—he had put his past behind him—but, oh! who shall tell his unuttered longings for the “Open Sesame!” to that paradise of which he had had one rapturous glimpse, and one only—that paradise where his master’s daughter, so high above him, moved like a seraph, and filled the air with harmony!

I am afraid that at this time he brooded over his orphanhood, and that unknown father who had disappeared so mysteriously, and strained his soaring thoughts in their flight towards possibilities more than was good for him. He was too much alone for one of his years, and there were times in those long candle-lit winter evenings, when books and pencils dropped from his wearied hands, and for lack of a companion he held dreamy converse with the fire.

Of course his library was restricted, and there were no institutions in Manchester at that time where young men of his class could meet for mutual improvement, or that mental polish caused by the attrition of mind upon mind. Occasionally, at long intervals, and at first to the utter confusion of James, Captain Travis had inquired for “Mr. Clegg,” and been shown into the little sitting-room, with a disregard to “caste” very creditable to both of them; and now and then Mr. Chadwick and Mr. Ashton would drop in together for half-an-hour’s chat, the gratitude of the former being deeper than the surface.

But rarely did a feminine face save Cicily’s brighten up his solitude, and she, devoted to her young mistress, had always something to say about Augusta, if only what she wore or how she looked, which sent him off into dreamland immediately.

Sunday was a very chequered day, when he missed his old friends most. True, he followed the family to church, perhaps carried Augusta’s prayer-book, exchanged a word of kindly greeting with old Mrs. Clowes, and Parson Brookes, who was not as hale as he had been; but there was no old Simon to grip his hand, no Bess to give him a motherly smile, and unless the weather was fine enough for a ramble in the fields with Nelson for companion, the rest of the day was very dull indeed.

The fan which broke Augusta’s collar-bone broke down a barrier for Jabez. No personal sacrifice attended the service he rendered. He but went and came as an active messenger. But he went and came with intelligence and promptitude, and exercised for mother and daughter both the care and forethought of a much older man.

In the father’s absence the father was not missed. What came under Mrs. Ashton’s own eye Mrs. Ashton could appreciate, and the commendation of Dr. Hull was not without its weight. He had said,

“Capital fellow to send for a doctor, that messenger of yours, Mrs. Ashton! A determined, persistent fellow! Would see me, and haul me off with only half a dinner, though I protested, and he had already got a surgeon there before me!”

His thought about the sedan chair, which he had accompanied to Mosley Street to insure care on the part of the chairmen, and had ordered into the very lobby of the house; the cautious manner in which he had lifted Augusta thence, and borne her to the ready couch, coupled with his protection of her daughter in the theatre the night before, weighed down the scale already trembling in the balance, and Mrs. Ashton’s “Jabez, I am deeply indebted to you,” was not mere words. He was her messenger to the Chadwicks, her amanuensis to Mr. Ashton; and when Ellen and her mother arrived somewhere about tea-time, for the second time he was invited to join their party; and one, if not two, pair of cheeks burned as the invitation was given.

Then, the night Mr. Ashton returned home, to find Augusta an invalid, he was gratified to see Jabez again at the tea-table, and after that at odd times, until the restraint upon him gradually wore away, and he would read to Augusta and Ellen, as the latter sat at work, and do his best to make the time pass pleasantly.

Next Mr. Ashton took it into his head to teach him backgammon and cribbage, to help to make his own evenings at home more lively.

And Mrs. Chadwick, who for some occult reason had resisted her husband’s desire to show courtesy to his preserver, could scarcely be less gracious than her grander sister, who owed him so much less; so now the green-parlour door in Oldham Street was opened to him, and as Jabez refreshed his memory with Hogarth’s prints, he felt that he had made another step up the ladder.

Those were halcyon days; while Augusta, too tall to be robust, recovered so slowly, and was so much gratified by his attempts to entertain her. Halcyon days for more than one.

Yet, ere Jabez was out of his apprenticeship, or Augusta had left her pillowed sofa, a pebble was thrown into the stream which broke the surface of the tranquil waters, and disturbed them for ever.

Mr. Ashton was one of the original shareholders in the Portico, a classic stone building erected in 1806 as a library and reading-room, on the other side of Mosley Street, which, with its pillared _facade_ and flight of steps, like an Ionic temple, looked down on the plain red-brick front of the Assembly Rooms, though its opposite neighbour stood quite as high in repute, and was equally exclusive in its constitution.

Mr. Aspinall, the Cannon Street cotton-merchant (who dined with the Scramble Club, instituted by business men whose homes were in the suburbs), was likewise a shareholder in the Portico; and from constant meeting at the long tables within the book-shelved, galleried walls of its lofty reading-room, he and Mr. Ashton had a tolerably lengthy acquaintance, although it had never ripened into intimacy—the men were so dissimilar.

Charlotte Walmsley was naturally troubled by the result of Madame Broadbent’s notions of discipline, and not unnaturally (considering the condition in which Ben Travis had taken him home) blamed her husband as the primary cause. As naturally he shifted the onus to the shoulders of Laurence Aspinall, and, taking him to task, plainly told him he ought to apologise. Laurence snatched at the proposal.

“My dear Jack, nothing would please me better! I’ll make a thousand apologies, if you’ll only introduce me.”

John Walmsley had had quite enough of introductions; besides, he stood in some awe of Mrs. Ashton, and did not know how she might take it, especially as his friend Aspinall had acquired the character of “a wild spark.” He emphatically declined. But if Laurence Aspinall once set his mind on a thing he would attain it, if within the range of possibility, whether by fair means or foul, whatever might be the consequences.

For a few days he was on his best behaviour at home; and having won his father over by expressions of deep contrition, and promises of reformation, and the assurance that he would never again do anything “unbecoming a gentleman,” he prevailed on him to introduce him to Mr. Ashton, with a view to making his own apologies in person.

“Well, Laurence, you can go with me to the Portico tomorrow morning, and if Mr. Ashton is there we will see what can be done;” the tone in which this was said clearly implying, “If _we_ seek an introduction to the Ashton’s for the purpose of making the _amende honorable_ as befits gentlemen, there can be no doubt of its acceptance.”

But when they met Mr. Ashton on the steps of the Portico the following morning, the self-complacence of the lofty gentleman received a slight but uncontemplated check. Mr. Ashton nodded to Mr. Aspinall with a beaming face, and would have passed his acquaintance with a mere “Good morning,” but the other stopped, and after shaking hands, and remarking that trade was slack, presented, with due formality, the handsome, elegant six feet of dandyism who bore him company.

“Mr. Ashton, let me make you acquainted with my son, sir—Mr. Ashton, my son Laurence; Laurence, Mr. Ashton.”

The young gentleman raised his stylish beaver from his rich coppery curls, and bowed with courtly grace in acknowledgment of Mr. Ashton’s formal bow, whilst his father continued, almost in the tone of one who confers an honour—

“The fact is, my son, sir, desires an opportunity of expressing to Miss Ashton his deep regret for the indiscretion of which he was guilty in the lobby of the Theatre Royal, some ten days back.”

The smile faded from the face of Mr. Ashton, who, with a reserve very foreign to him, put his hand into his pocket for his snuff-box instead of extending it to the young man, and, tapping it with a little impatience, caught at his words.

“Indiscretion, sir? What you are pleased to call ‘indiscretion’ has placed my daughter in the doctors’ hands with a broken collar-bone.”

Before Mr. Aspinall could reply, Laurence, better skilled to temporise, interposed.

“So, to my infinite regret, my friend Mr. Walmsley has already informed me, sir. And I assure you I take shame to myself that any word or action of mine should have led to consequences so lamentable. No one, sir, can deplore the injury Miss Ashton has sustained, more than myself—the unhappy cause. It is this, Mr. Ashton, which impels me to seek an opportunity to express the sensibility of my grave offence, and my extreme regret, to Mrs. Ashton and Miss Ashton in person. I cannot rest until I have implored their pardon!”

The tones in which this apologetic speech was delivered were at once so suave, remorseful, and sympathetic that Mr. Ashton, whose sternness was seldom of long duration, was considerably mollified. He looked at the handsome, dashing blade before him, whose blue eyes seemed full of gentleness and pity, and felt as though the boy he had seen torturing old Brookes, and the yeomanry officer who had slashed at Mr. Chadwick and Jabez Clegg, could never be one and the same. He reverted to the latter circumstance—

“I think, young sir, you owe an apology to someone else under my roof—the young man who received the sabre-cut you designed for my brother-in-law, Mr. Chadwick.”

Aspinall’s handsome face flushed. His father’s quick reply gave him time to think.

“You surely, Mr. Ashton, would not expect _my_ son to apologise to an apprentice-lad, a mere College-boy.”

“Just so! I would expect him to apologise to _anyone_ he had injured, were it a beggar!”

Here the son interposed: “My good sir, do not remind me of the horrors of that dreadful day! I shudder when I recall it. We acted under orders, and I swear I was utterly unconscious and irresponsible for my actions throughout the whole affray.”