Part 2

And the big man—quite a contrast to Simon—stooped and lifted the babe from the cradle with all the ease of long practice, and dandled it in his arms, saying as he did so,

“Let’s hey a look at th’ little chap. Aw’ve not seen the colour o’ his eyen yet.”

The eyes were grey, so dark they might have passed for black; and there was in them more than the ordinary inquiring gaze of babyhood.

“Well, thah’rt a pratty lad; but had thah bin th’ fowest[6] i’ o’ Lankisheer, aw’d a-thowt thi mammy’d ha’ speered[7] fur thi afore this,” added he, sitting down, and nodding to the child, which crowed in his face.

“Ah! one would ha’ reckoned so,” assented Bess, without turning round.

“What ar’ ta gooin’ to do, Simon, toward fandin’ th’ choilt’s kin?” next questioned their visitor.

Simon looked puzzled

“Whoy, aw’ve hardly gi’en it a thowt.”

But the question, once started, was discussed at some length. Meanwhile the porridge destined for two Bess poured into three bowls, placing three iron spoons beside them, with no more ceremony than, “Ye’ll tak’ a sup wi’ us, Mat.”

Mat apologised, feeling quite assured there was no more than the two could have eaten; but Simon looked hurt, and the porridge was appetising to a hungry man; so he handed the baby to the young woman, took up his spoon, and the broken thread of conversation was renewed at intervals. What they said matters not so much as what they did.

The next morning being Sunday, Cooper called for Clegg just as the bells were ringing for church; and the two, arrayed in their best fustian breeches, long-tailed, deep-cuffed coats, knitted hose, three-cornered hats, and shoes, only kept for Sunday wear, set out to seek the parents of the unclaimed infant, nothing doubting that they were going to carry solace to sorrowing hearts.

Their course lay in the same track as the Irk, now pursuing its course as smilingly under the bright August sun as though its banks were not strewed with wreck, and foul with thick offensive mud, and the woeful devastation were none of its doing. There were fewer houses on their route than now, and they kept close as possible to the course of the river, questioning the various inhabitants as they went along. They had gone through Collyhurst and Blakely without rousing anyone to a thought beyond self-sustained damage, or gaining a single item of intelligence, though they made many a detour in quest of it. At a roadside public-house close to Middleton they sat down parched with heat and thirst, called for a mug of ale each, drew from their pockets thick hunks of brown bread and cheese, wrapped in blue and white check handkerchiefs, and whilst satisfying their hunger, came to the conclusion that no cradle could have drifted safely so far, crossing weirs and mill dams amongst uprooted bushes, timber, and household chattels and that it was best to turn back.

In Smedley Vale, where the flood seemed to have done its worst, and where a small cottage close to the river lay in ruins, a knot of people were gathered together talking and gesticulating as if in eager controversy. As they approached, they were spied by one of the group.

“Here are th’ chaps as fund th’ babby, an’ want’n to know who it belungs to,” cried he, a youth whom they had interrogated early in the day.

To tell in brief what Simon and his companion learned by slow degrees—the hapless child was alone in the world, orphaned by a succession of misfortunes. The dilapidated cottage had been for some fifteen months the home of its parents. The father, who was understood to have come from Crumpsall with his young wife and her aged mother, had been sent for to attend the death-bed of a brother in Liverpool, and had never been heard of since. The alarm and trouble consequent upon his prolonged absence prostrated the young wife and caused not only the babe’s premature birth, but the mother’s death. The care of the child had devolved upon the stricken grandmother, who had him brought up by hand, as Matthew’s sagacity had suggested. She was a woman far advanced in years, and feeble, but she asked no help from neighbours or parish, though her poverty was apparent. She kept poultry and knitted stockings, and managed to eke out a living somehow, but how, none of those scattered neighbours seemed to know—she had “held her yead so hoigh” (pursued her way so quietly).

She had been out in her garden feeding her fowls, when the flood came upon them without warning, swept through the open doors of the cottage, and carried cradle and everything else before it, leaving hardly a wall standing. In endeavouring to save the child she herself got seriously hurt, and was with difficulty rescued. But between grief and fright, bruises and the drenching, the old dame succumbed, and died on the Thursday morning, and had been buried by the parish—from which in life she had proudly kept aloof—that very afternoon, and no one could tell other name she had borne than Nan.

Bess sobbed aloud when she heard her father’s recital which lost nothing of its pathos from the homely vernacular in which it was couched.

“An’ what’s to be done neaw?” asked Cooper, as he sat on one of the rush-bottomed chairs, sucking the knob of his walking-stick, as if for an inspiration. “Yo canno’ think o’ keeping th’ choilt, an’ bread an’ meal at sich a proice!”

“Connot oi? Then aw conno’ think o’ aught else. Wouldst ha’ me chuck it i’ th’ river agen? What dost thah say, Bess?” turning to his daughter, who had the child on her lap.

“Whoi, th’ poor little lad’s got noather feyther nor mother, an’ thah’s lost boath o’ thi lads. Mebbe it’s a Godsend, feyther, after o’, as yo said’n to me,” and she kissed it tenderly.

“Eh, wench!” interposed Matthew, but she went on without heeding him.

“There’s babby clooas laid by i’ lavender i’ thoase drawers as hasna seen dayleet sin ar Joe wur a toddler, an’ they’ll just come handy. An’ if bread’s dear an’ meal’s dear, we mun just ate less on it arsels, an’ there’ll be moore fur the choilt. He’ll pay yo back, feyther, aw know, when yo’re too owd to wark.”

“An’ aw con do ’bout ’bacca, lass. If the orphan’s granny wur too preawd to ax help o’ th’ parish, aw’ll be too preawd to send her pratty grandchoilt theer.”

An so, to Matthew Cooper’s amazement, it was settled. But the extra labour and self-denial it involved on the part of Bess, neither Matthew nor Simon could estimate.

In the midst of the rabid scepticism and Republicanism of the period, Simon Clegg was a staunch “Church and King” man, and, as a natural consequence, a stout upholder of their ordinances. Regularly as the bell tolled in for Sunday morning service, he might be seen walking reverently down the aisle of the old church, to his place in the free seats, with his neat, cheerful-looking daughter following him sometimes, but not always—so regularly that the stout beadle missed him from his seat the Sunday after the inundation, and meeting him in the churchyard a week later, sought to learn the why and wherefore.

The beadle of the parish church was an important personage in the eyes of Simon Clegg; and, somewhat proud of his notice, the little tanner related the incidents of that memorable flood-week to his querist, concluding with his adoption of the child.

The official h’md and ha’d, applauded the act, but shook his powdered head, and added, sagely, that it was a “greeat charge, a varry greeat charge.”

“Dun yo’ think th’ little un’s bin babtised?” interrogated the beadle.

“Aw conno’ tell; nob’dy couldn’t tell nowt abeawt th’ choilt, ’ut wur ony use to onybody. Bess an’ me han talked it ower, an’ we wur thinkin o’ bringin’ it to be kirsened, to be on th’ safe soide loike. Aw reckon it wouldna do th’ choilt ony harm to be kirsened twoice ower; an’ ’twoud be loike flingin’ th’ choilt’s soul to Owd Scrat gin he wur no kirsened at o’. What dun yo’ thinken’?”

The beadle thought pretty much the same as Simon, and it was finally arranged that Simon should present the young foundling for baptism in the course of the week.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.[8]

HOW THE REV. JOSHUA BROOKES AND SIMON CLEGG INTERPRETED A SHAKESPERIAN TEXT.

Manchester had at that date two eccentric clergymen attached to the Collegiate Church. The one, Parson Gatliffe, a fine man, a polished gentleman, an eloquent preacher, but a _bon vivant_ of whom many odd stories are told. The other, the Reverend Joshua Brookes, a short, stumpy man (so like to the old knave of clubs in mourning that the sobriquet of the “Knave of Clubs” stuck to him), was a rough, crusted, unpolished black-diamond, hasty in temper, harsh in tone, blunt in speech and in the pulpit, but with a true heart beating under the angular external crystals; and he was a good liver of another sort than his colleague.

He was the son of a crippled and not too sober shoemaker, who, when the boy’s intense desire for learning had attracted the attention and patronage of Parson Ainscough, went to the homes of several of the wealthy denizens of the town, to ask for pecuniary aid to send his son Joshua to college. The youth’s scholarly attainments had already obtained him an exhibition at the Free Grammar School, which, coupled with the donations obtained by his father and the helping hand of Parson Ainscough, enabled him to keep his terms and to graduate at Brazenose, to become a master in the grammar school in which he had been taught, and a chaplain in the Collegiate Church.

So conscientious was he in the performance of his sacred duties that, albeit he was wont to exercise his calling after a peculiarly rough fashion of his own, he married, christened, buried more people during his ministry than all the other ecclesiastics put together.

It was to this Joshua Brookes (few ever thought of prefixing the “Reverend” in referring to him) that Simon Clegg brought “Nan’s” orphan grandchild to be baptised on Tuesday, the 7th of September, just three weeks from the date of his involuntary voyage down the flooded Irk.

It had taken the tanner the whole of the week following his conversation with the beadle to determine the name he should give the child, and many had been his consultations with Bess on the subject. That very Sunday he had gone home from church full of the matter, and lifting his big old Bible from its post of honour on the top of the bureau (it was his whole library), he sat, after dinner, with his head in his hands and his elbows on the table, debating the momentous question.

“Yo’ see, Bess,” said he, “a neame as sticks to one all one’s loife, is noan so sma’ a matter as some folk reckon. An’ yon’s noan a common choilt. It is na ev’ry day, no, nor ev’ry year, as a choilt is weshed down a river in a kayther, an’ saved from th’ very jaws of deeath.[9] An’ aw’d loike to gi’e un a neame as ’ud mak’ it remember it, an’ thenk God for his marcifu’ preservation a’ th’ days o’ his loife.”

After a long pause, during which Bess took the baby from the cradle, tucked a napkin under its chin, and began to feed it with a spoon, he resumed—

“Yo’ see, Bess, hadna aw bin kirsened Simon, aw moight ha’ bin a cobbler, or a whitster,[10] or a wayver, or owt else. But feyther could read tho’ he couldna wroite; an’ as he wur a reed-makker, he towt mi moi A B C wi’ crookin’ up th’ bits o’ wires he couldna use into th’ shaps o’ th’ letters; an’ when aw could spell sma’ words gradely,[11] he towt mi to read out o’ this varry book; an’ aw read o’ Simon a tanner, an’ nowt ’ud sarve mi but aw mun be a tanner too, so tha sees theer’s summat i’ a neame after o’.”

Bess suggested that he should be called Noah, because Noah was saved in the ark; but he objected that Noah was an old greybeard, with a family, and that he knew the flood was coming, and built the ark himself; he was not “takken unawares in his helplessness loike that poor babby.”

Moses was her next proposition—Bess had learned something of Biblical lore at the first Sunday-school Manchester could boast, the one in Gun Street, founded by Simeon Newton in 1788—but Simon was not satisfied even with Moses.

“Yo’ see, Moses wur put in’ th’ ark o’ bullrushes o’ purpose, an’ noather thee nor mi’s a Pharaoh’s dowter, an’ th’ little chap’s not loike to be browt oop i’ a pallis.”

Towards the end of the week he burst into the room; “Oi hev it, lass, oi hev it! We’n co’ the lad ‘Irk;’ nob’dy’ll hev a neame loike that, and it’ll tell its own story; an’ fur th’ after-neame, aw reckon he mun tak’ ours.”

Marriages were solemnized in the richly-carved choir of the venerable old Church, but churchings and baptisms in a large adjoining chapel; and thither Bess, who carried the baby, was ushered, followed by Simon and Mat Cooper, who were to act as its other sponsors.

At the door they made way for the entrance of a party of ladies, whom they had seen alight from sedan-chairs at the upper gate, where a couple of gentlemen joined them. A nurse followed, with a baby, whose christening robe, nearly two yards long, was a mass of rich embroidery. The mother herself—a slight, lovely creature, additionally pale and delicate from her late ordeal—wore a long, plain-skirted dress of vari-coloured brocaded silk. A lustrous silk scarf, trimmed with costly lace, enveloped her shoulders. Her head-dress, a bonnet with a bag-crown and Quakerish poke-brim, was of the newest fashion, as were the long kid gloves which covered her arms to the elbows.

The party stepped forward as though precedence was theirs of right even at the church door, heeding not Simon’s mannerly withdrawal to let them pass; and the very nurse looked disdainfully at the calico gown of the baby in the round arms of Bess, a woman in a grey duffel cloak and old-fashioned flat, broad-brimmed hat.

Is there any thrill, sympathetic or antagonistic, in baby-veins, as they thus meet there for the first time on their entrance into the church and the broad path of life? For the first time—but scarcely for the last.

Already a goodly crowd of mothers, babies, godfathers, and godmothers had assembled—a crowd of all grades, judging from their exteriors, for dress had not then ceased to be a criterion; and all ceremonies of this kind were performed in shoals—not singly.

The Rev. Joshua Brookes, followed by his clerk, came through the door in the carven screen, between the choir and baptismal chapel, and took his place behind the altar rails. And now ensued a scene which some of my readers may think incredible, but which was common enough then, and there, and is notoriously true. The width of the altar could scarcely accommodate the number of women waiting to be churched; and the impatient Joshua assisted the apparitors to marshal them to their places, with a sharp “You come here! You kneel there! Yon woman’s not paid!” accompanied by pulls and pushes, until the semi-circle was filled.

But still the shrinking lady, and another, unused to jostle with rough crowds, were left standing outside the pale.

Impetuous Joshua had begun the service before all were settled. “Forasmuch as it hath pleased——”

His quick eye caught the outstanding figures. Abruptly stopping his exordium, he exclaimed, in his harsh tones, which seemed to intimidate the lady,

“What are you standing there for? Can’t you find a place? Make room here!” (pushing two women apart by the shoulder), “thrutch up closer there! Make haste, and kneel here!” (to the lady, pulling her forward). “You come here;—make room, will you?” and having pulled and pushed them into place, he resumed the service.

Presently there was another outburst. There had been a hushing of whimpering babies, and a maternal smothering of infantile cries, as a chorus throughout; but one fractious little one screamed right out, and refused to be comforted. The nervous tremor on that kneeling lady’s countenance might have told to whom it belonged, had Joshua been a skilful reader of hearts and faces. His irritable temper got the better of him. He broke off in the midst of the psalm to call out, “stop that crying child!” The crying child did not stop. In the midst of another verse he bawled, “Give that screaming babby the breast!” He went on. The clerk had pronounced the “Amen” at the end of the psalm; the chaplain followed, “Let us pray;” but before he began the prayer, he again shouted, “Take that squalling babby out!”—an order the indignant nurse precipitately obeyed; and the service ended without further interruption.

Then followed the christenings, and another marshalling (this time of godfathers and godmothers, with the infants they presented), in which the hasty chaplain did his part with hands and voice until all were arranged to his satisfaction.

It so happened that the tanner’s group and the lady’s group were ranked side by side. The latter was Mrs. Aspinall, the wife of a wealthy cotton merchant, who, with two other gentlemen and a lady, stood behind her, and this time gave her their much-needed support. Indeed, what with the damp and chillness of the church, and the agitation, the delicate lady appeared ready to faint.

“Hath this child been already baptised or no?” asked Joshua Brookes, and was passing on, when Simon’s unexpected response arrested him.

“Aw dunnot know.”

“Don’t know? How’s that? What are you here for?” were questions huddled one on the other, in a broader vernacular than I have thought well to put in the mouth of a man so deeply learned.

“Whoi, yo’ see, this is the choilt as wur weshed deawn th’ river wi’ th’ flood in a kayther; an’ o’ belungin’ th’ lad are deead, an’ aw mun kirsen him to mak’ o’ sure.”

Joshua listened with more patience than might have been expected from him, and passed on with a mere “Humph!” to ask the same question from each in succession, before proceeding with the general service. At length he came to the naming of several infants.

“Henrietta Burdelia Fitzbourne,” was given as the proposed name of a girl of middle-class parents.

“_Mary_, I baptise thee,” &c., he calmly proceeded, handed the baby back to the astonished godmother, and passed to the next, regardless of appeal.

Mrs. Aspinall’s boy took his name of Laurence with a noisy protest against the sprinkling. Nor was the foundling silent when, having been duly informed that the boy’s name was to be “_Irk_,” self-willed Joshua deliberately, and with scarcely a visible pause, went on—

“_Jabez_, I baptise thee in the name,” &c., and so overturned at one fell swoop, all Simon’s carefully-constructed castle.

Simon attempted to remonstrate, but Joshua Brookes had another infant in his arms, and was deaf to all but his own business. Such a substitution of names was too common a practice of his to disturb him in the least. But Simon had a brave spirit, and stood no more in awe of Joshua Brookes—“Jotty” as he was called—than of another man. When the others had gone in a crowd to the vestry to register the baptisms, he stopped to confront the parson as he left the altar.

“What roight had yo’ to change the neame aw chuse to gi’e that choilt?”

“What right had yo’ to saddle the poor lad with an _Irksome_ name like that?” was the quick rejoinder.

“Roight! why, aw wanted to gi’e th’ lad a neame as should mak’ him thankful fur bein’ saved from dreawndin’ to the last deays o’ his loife.”

“An _Irksome_ name like that would have made him the butt of every little imp in the gutters, until he’d have been ready to drown himself to get rid of it. Jabez is an honourable name, man. You go home, and look through your Bible till you find it.”

Simon was open to conviction; his bright eyes twinkled as a new light dawned upon them.

The gruff chaplain had brushed past him on his way to the robing-room; but he turned back, with his right hand in his breeches pocket, and put a seven-shilling piece in the palm of the tanner, saying:

“Here’s something towards the christening feast of th’ little chap I’ve stood godfather to. And don’t you forget to look in ‘Chronicles’ for Jabez; and, above all, see that the lad doesn’t disgrace his name.”

Joshua Brookes had the character, among those who knew him _least_, of loving money overmuch, and this unwonted exhibition of generosity took Simon’s breath.

The chaplain was gone before he recovered from his amazement—gone, with a tender heart softened towards the fatherless child thrown upon the world, his cynicism rebuked by the true charity of the poor tanner, who had taken the foundling to his home in a season of woeful dearth.

And, to his credit be it said, the Rev. Joshua Brookes never lost sight of either Simon or little Jabez. He was wont to throw out words which he meant to be in season, but his harsh, abrupt manner, as a rule, neutralized the effect of his impromptu teachings. Now, however, the seed was thrown in other ground; and, as he intended, Simon’s curiosity was excited. The Bible was reverently lifted from the bureau as soon as they reached home, and, after some seeking, the passage was found.

Simon’s reading was nothing to boast of, but Cooper could not read at all; and in the eyes of his unlettered comrades Clegg shone as a learned man. He could decipher “black print,” and that, in his days, amongst his class, was a distinction. Slowly he traced his fingers along the lines for his own information, and then still more slowly, with a sort of rest after every word, read out to his auditors—Bess, Matthew, and Matthew’s wife (there in her best gown and best temper)—with slight dialectal peculiarities, which need not be reproduced—

“And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, because she bare him with sorrow. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldst bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldst keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.”[12]

“Eh, Simon, mon, owd Jotty wur woiser nor thee. Theere’s a neame fur a lad to stand by! It’s as good as a leeapin’-pow’[13] that it is, t’ help him ower th’ brucks[14] an’ rucks[15] o’ th’ warld.”

Simon sat lost in thought. At length he raised his head, and remarked soberly—

“Parson Brookes moight ha’ bin a prophet; th’ choilt’s mother did bear him wi’ sorrow. The neame fits th’ lad as if it had bin meade fur him.”

“Then aw hope he’s a prophet o’ eawt, feyther, an’ o’ th’ rest’ll come true in toime,” briskly interjected Bess; adding—“Coom, tay’s ready;” further appending for the information of their visitors—“Madam Clough sent the tay an’ sugar, an’ th’ big curran’-loaf, when hoo heeard as feyther had axed for a holiday fur the kirsenin’; an’ Mester Clough’s sen some yale [ale], an’ a thumpin’ piece o’ beef.”

“Ay, lass; an, as we’n a’ready a foine kirsenin’ feast, we’n no change parson’s seven-shillin’ piece, but lay it oop fur th’ lad hissen.”

But the christening feast did not proceed without sundry noisy demonstrations from Master Jabez. If, as Simon had once hinted, he was an angel in the house, he flapped his wings and blew his trumpet pretty noisily at times.

“Eh, lass, aw wish Tum wur here neaw, to enjoy hisself wi’ us. Aw wonder what he’d say to see yo’ nursin’ a babby so bonnily?”

Simon was munching a huge piece of currant-cake as he uttered this, after a meditative pause. A look of pain passed over Bessy’s face. She rarely mentioned the absent Tom, though he was seldom out of her thoughts.

“Yea, an’ _aw_ wish he wur here!” she echoed with a sigh, the fountain of which was deep in her own breast. “Aw wonder where he is neaw.”

“Feightin’, mebbe!” suggested her father.

“Killed, mebbe!” was the fearful suggestion of her own heart, and she was silent for some time afterwards.