Part 23

“Common sense might have taught me that my love was folly, presumption, madness!” he argued with himself; “that the heiress of a wealthy man would not stoop to her father’s Blue-coat apprentice. But oh!” he groaned, “I had hoped to raise myself step by step nearer to her level—to make myself worthy of her as a man, if I had not riches to lay at her feet. She is young, and what might I not accomplish with industry ere she came of age? but now——”

He tore his neckcloth off, and cast it from him, stripped off coat and vest, and flung them aside, as though they held his passionate folly, and he had done with it, then sank into a chair, the very impersonation of listless hopelessness. He had gone through all this struggle once before, and thought he had overcome his weakness; but at the touch of the enchanter’s wand love had blazed up afresh, and was not to be smothered.

His reverie was broken into by the tread of many feet on the staircase below, and the murmur of voices calling one to another; the hall-door shut with a clang, and then a light foot came tripping up the stair alone, and from heart and lips dropped unconsciously the soft refrain of that too well-known duet. She, too, was carrying to her chamber memories of the night, and bearing the burden blithely.

He listened until a door closed upon step and song. Then as if its echoes pierced his soul, he set his teeth and clenched his outstretched hands in mute agony. There was more than hopeless love in this—there was jealousy also. Then he murmured half audibly, “If he were only worthy of her I could bear it better; but to see her cast her heart at the feet of one who will trample on it, is beyond mortal endurance.”

He started to his feet. A bright thought irradiated his face.

“Coward that I am! I am quitting the battle without striking a blow. I am myself unworthy of Augusta if I surrender her to a heartless profligate without an effort to save her. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.’ Women have stooped lower, and lowly men have looked higher ere now. I am making way, but I must make money too, if I would look above me. Father and mother look on me with favour, and why not the daughter? She may learn the worthlessness of the fine gentleman in time. Courage, Jabez! Work with a will; do your duty. Miss no opportunity, and the gold and the goddess may both be yours in the end, and honestly won.”

He sprang into bed fresher and lighter than he had been all day, the prayer of that other Jabez rising from his heart with the fervour of old times.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER.

The Palace Inn on the north side of Market Street Lane was the last relic of that cramped thoroughfare to disappear at the bidding of Improvement. Possibly because its many eyes and bald dark-red-brick face looked out on a space so much beyond the twenty-one yards assigned by Act of Parliament to the regenerated street that the Improvement Committee had no powers to meddle with it, for surely its historic associations were not sufficient to protect it. Prince Charles Edward had been hospitably lodged and entertained beneath its roof by its owner, Mr. Dickenson, long ere it became an inn; he had harangued his devoted followers from the stone plateau of its double flight of steps, with his hand perchance on its smooth rail of unornamented iron; but in isolated dignity rather than palatial pretensions lay its chief safeguard. Be that as it may, fourteen or fifteen years elapsed between the first act of demolition for widening (at the shop of a Mr. Maund), and that last feat of narrowing, which blocked up and darkened history (as represented by the Palace) with common stone warehouses for every-day merchandise. Alas! Clio and all her sister muses _must_ succumb when Mammon is on the march!

But Mammon had only got his first foot in the street on that Thursday morning in July, which blushed at the doings of the Coronation night, and the Palace Inn yet held its head high as beseemed its historic state. The open space in front was enlivened by the newly-painted London stage-coach, the Lord Nelson, the fresh scarlet coats of coachmen and guards, the assembling of passengers and luggage, the shouting and swearing of half-awake ostlers and porters, the grumbling of the first-comers (shivering in the raw air) at the unpunctuality of the stage, the excuses of the booking-clerk, the self-gratulations of the last arrival that he was “in time,” the dragging of trunks and portmanteaus on to the top, the thrusting of bags and boxes into the boot, the harnessing of snorting steeds, the horsing of the vehicle, the scrambling of the “outsiders” to the top by the ladder and wheel, the self-satisfied settlement of the “insides” in the places they had “booked for,” the crushing and thrusting of friends with last messages and parting words, the crack of the whip, the sound of the bugle, the prancing of horses, the rattle of wheels, and the dashing off up Market Street Lane of the gallant four-in-hand, amid the hurrahs of excited spectators.

Every morning witnessed a somewhat similar scene of bustle and excitement at five o’clock, when the London coach started, but every morning did not see Jabez mounted on the box-seat with the coachman. Nor did every morning see the coach an hour behind time, or the driver’s face quite so red, or the spectators so heavy-eyed, or so much handing up of horns and glasses to the passengers, to be returned empty, or leave Mr. Ashton standing there when the Lord Nelson had bowled away.

That Coronation day had much to answer for.

When Tom Hulme should have risen at four o’clock to return home, his bruised limbs were so stiff and sore that the soldier, who had borne the fatigue of many a campaign, who had bivouacked on the battle-field, after a forced march, and being ready with the sun for the day’s duties, had to confess himself “fettled” by Lancashire clogs, and unable to stir. There was no alternative but to acquaint Mr. Ashton. The mill could not be left without a manager.

After the night’s unwonted dissipation, Mr. Ashton slept heavily, and was with difficulty aroused. When once he comprehended the state of affairs, he was on the alert.

“It’s a bad business!” said he to his wife, as he dressed in haste.

“‘There is nothing so bad, but it might be worse,’” was her consolatory reply. “Never bewail a loss till you have done your best to repair it. Can you not send Mr. Clegg to Whaley-Bridge for a few days?”

“My dear, your counsel is invaluable, but I fear there is not time to catch the coach; it is twenty minutes past four now.”

“It is sure to be late this morning, and Jabez will catch it if it is to be caught,” was her quick rejoinder.

Bess had already awakened Jabez, and he, fully dressed, met Mr. Ashton at his bedroom door with “Can I be of any service, sir?” A prompt commentary on Mrs. Ashton’s declaration.

A few necessaries hastily crammed into a carpet bag; a bowl of milk and a crust of bread as hastily swallowed; and Jabez, accompanied by Mr. Ashton, was on his way to the Palace coach-office confident they were in time, not having heard the guard’s bugle, or met the coach. There was, however, barely time to claim for Mr. Clegg the place already booked for “Mr. Hulme” (Mrs. Hulme’s seat was forfeited), and for him to take his seat, before they were off in a canter, and Mr. Ashton’s business mind was relieved.

As the manufacturer, satisfied that the mill-hands at Whaley-Bridge would not be left altogether to their own devices, stood within a short distance of the high steps looking after the vanishing coach, a party of roisterers came swaggering out of the inn, hallooing with all their tipsy might. One in advance of the rest, observing an elderly gentleman below, pointed him out to his companions as fair game, and leaning over the rail to steady himself, cried out—

“Halloo, old fogey! are you a Tory or a Radical? D—— me, take your hat off before gentlemen!” and, suiting the action to the word, extended a riding-whip he carried, and jerked Mr. Ashton’s hat off into the dust; whereupon his worthy comrades set up a loud guffaw in admiration of the feat.

Naturally Mr. Ashton, his brief reverie disturbed, stooped to pick up the fallen beaver, and making due allowance for the unwonted occasion, turned to remonstrate good-humouredly with an excited stranger who had evidently drunk the king’s health too frequently.

It was not with more surprise than annoyance that he recognised four of the hilarious party in the doorway and on the steps of the inn, which had apparently been open the night through. Not one of the four was in a condition to recognise him, although two of them, John Walmsley and Laurence Aspinall, had supped overnight at his own table, although the third, Kit Townley, had good reason for remembrance, and Ned Barret was anything but a stranger.

Loud laughter hailed the fall of the hat. A second attempt to “uncover the obstinate old fogey” was made, but dexterously avoided by Mr. Ashton in his absolute astonishment stepping backward beyond range.

“Young gentlemen, do you know whom you are insulting?”

There was another laughing chorus. Aspinall almost toppled over the rail as he leaned forward, impotently striking out with his whip.

“I protest the old rad’s demnibly li-ike the lovely Augusta’s snuffy old dad,” drawled out he, in a sort of tipsy-wisdom.

“Just so!” appended Walmsley, mimicking the old gentleman’s peculiarity.

Mr. Ashton, though a reasonably temperate man himself, was not so greatly shocked at these young carousers as we might be. Long usage blunts sensibilities. It was a glorious distinction to be a three-bottle man; the inability to drink a solitary bottle of wine at a sitting was a sort of disqualification for good fellowship; and it was considered a fine thing for a boy of seven to “toss off a glass like a man;” so the genial old gentleman was inclined to allow some latitude for the special occasion. But they had touched him on a tender point. The light mention of his darling daughter’s name roused his blood.

“John Walmsley,” he cried angrily, looking up, “what brings you, a married man, with these young rakes at this hour of the morning?”

“Pray wha-at brought y-you here, old fogey?” hiccoughed Aspinall, answering for the other.

One of the ostlers—Bob, the ex-groom—squeezed between the rollicking fellows to whisper in the ear of Laurence. He was impatiently thrust back with an elbow.

“Tchut! don’t believe it. Old snuff-an’-tuppeny’s fast ’shleep in bed shure sh a gun. I know b-better. I say, you——”

But “old snuff-an’-tuppeny” had turned on his heel, too wise to enter into contention with a set of inebriated boobies, though not proof against the disrespectful epithets of Laurence, or the derisive laughter of his boon companions. His irritation half emptied his snuff-box before he got home, so often he tapped smartly on its golden lid, and so often his finger and thumb travelled between it and his nose with a touch of ruminant displeasure.

Neither he nor Mrs. Ashton was disposed to overlook the fact that Kit Townley and Ned Barret—scapegraces by repute—were of the party, nor that Augusta’s name had been familiarly used in their midst.

“‘Birds of a feather flock together,’” said the lady; “and if Mr. Aspinall’s son associates with that reckless and dishonest Kit Townley, he is a very unfit friend for John Walmsley, and still worse for our dear Augusta.”

“Just so; for a dashing blade with a handsome face, who sports a uniform, talks poetry, and sings sentimental songs, is just the fellow to take a silly girl’s fancy, before she is old enough to think. I know I regret I ever brought him _here_,” said Mr. Ashton seriously, as Augusta came in the room to breakfast, entering at the door behind her mother’s back.

“Well, William,” observed Mrs. Ashton loftily, her hand on the china coffee-pot, “you can imagine _my_ annoyance when John and Mr. Laurence walked in arm-in-arm last night, after the liberty he had taken in the morning—kissing his hand to our daughter from the public procession in the face of all our friends, as if Augusta had been a flaunting barmaid. I was most indignant!”

Augusta said “Good morning,” and took her seat with a heightened colour. Such a construction of the gallant officer’s salute had not occurred to her, and native delicacy took alarm.

Mrs. Ashton continued to pour out her thoughts along with the coffee. It was fit Augusta should know her sentiments on this head.

“It would have been a breach of hospitality to resent it before our friends, and not good policy either. But I shall put a stop to his visits henceforth.”

“Oh! mamma,” exclaimed Augusta, dropping her hands at this climax, “you cannot mean that!”

“Yes, my dear, I do. If Mr. Aspinall has depraved associates, he must be depraved himself; and I am sure my daughter”—she drew herself up proudly—“would not choose her friends from those of Christopher Townley.”

Augusta’s colour suffered no decrease. She paused as she was taking her dry toast from the silver rack, and half-hesitatingly remonstrated.

“Of course I should not wish to associate with Mr. Townley’s friends. But papa may be mistaken. I do not think Mr. Aspinall would mix with them. People meet and mingle at coach-offices who are strangers.”

“Just so, my dear; but——” interposed her father.

“Why, mamma,” the persistent young lady went on, “no more perfect gentleman enters our doors than Mr. Laurence Aspinall. His manners are most refined. Then he talks enchantingly, and sings divinely. And”—this she thought conclusive—“is he not intimate with Charlotte and John?”

“Just so,” quickly answered Mr. Ashton, glancing across the table at his attentive wife, “and all the worse for Charlotte and John. I shall have a word with them on the subject. I called in Marsden Square on my way home, and found Charlotte with red eyes. John had not been home all night.” And Mr. Ashton battered the top of an egg whilst delivering what he regarded as a crushing argument.

Breakfast and the discussion were unusually prolonged, the only impression left on the young lady’s romantic, impressible, and inexperienced mind being that her parents were unaccountably harsh to her, and unjust to Mr. Laurence, in her eyes the beau-ideal of a man. Such a figure and such a face could only enshrine divinity. And if he was a little wild, so were all heroes at his age.

Let not the inexperienced young girl be over-much condemned for this. The opinion generally prevailed in her day; she had heard the sentiment expressed in farces on the stage, in society at home and elsewhere; even her own father’s hospitality trended in the same direction.

Mrs. Ashton was a woman of her word. The door in Mosley Street was closed against Mr. Laurence Aspinall, and James was incorruptible.

But the teaching of Miss Bohanna’s library being that Love was far-seeing and parents were blind, it followed that Miss Augusta (who would have resented any supposition of wilful disobedience or intentional disrespect towards the good father and mother she loved so dearly) met the fascinating gentleman (always by chance) either at her cousin’s in Marsden Square or in her walks abroad, and scented billet-doux came and went between the leaves of four-volumed romances, which Cicily carried to and from the library. One of these fell into Mrs. Ashton’s hands, when finding her advice contemned, she took measures to check this premature and clandestine love-making, as she thought, effectually.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH.

AT CARR COTTAGE.

Tom Hulme was most anxious to get back to Whaley-Bridge and the mill, and motherly Bess was equally uneasy to return to her poor little Sim, afraid lest he should tax his grandfather’s strength over-much, or meet with some fresh accident. Yet more than a week elapsed before her husband was fit to travel, and in the interim Mr. Ashton had himself gone thither to ascertain how the new substitute filled the post.

He was still at Carr Cottage when the “Lord Nelson” stopped at the end of the avenue, and Jabez, with fragile Sim mounted on his shoulder, trotted down to the gate to welcome Bess and her invalid home. They had travelled inside, but John Loudon Mac-Adam had not yet been appointed “Surveyor of Roads,” and Tom Hulme had suffered severely from the jolting of the coach.

Bess clasped her child tenderly, and held him up for his father’s kiss; but she put him down to walk on before them (he could not run), whilst she and Jabez helped the injured corporal to ascend the steep incline. Old Simon, who seemed to have got a new lease of life from the invigorating country air and occupation, had already breakfasted, and was in the bean-field gathering the first ripe pods for a dinner of beans and bacon.

“Eh, Tum, lad!” said he, as he entered the house-place, and saw his son-in-law’s pale face against the blue-and-white check cover of the arm-chair, “whoi, thi feace is as whoite as a clout! Tha’ll noan be fit to wark fur one whoile. Thah’s nobbut fit fur t’ sit under th’ sycymoore tree, an’ look at th’ fleawers, an’ watch me put th’ garden i’ fettle.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Ashton, bringing his pleasant face in at the door; “I think Mr. Clegg will have to do duty for you a while longer. And don’t distress yourself about it, Mr. Hulme, for I fancy a little fresh air will do _him_ no harm this hot weather; he has been overworking lately, and does not look too brisk.”

“You are very kind, sir,” responded Jabez, “but I trust a few days’ rest will set Mr. Hulme on his feet again.” He said nothing of himself.

But Tom Hulme had received unsuspected internal injuries, and many weeks went by before he was stout as before—weeks pregnant with fate for Jabez; and not Jabez alone.

Factory hours were long, but the Summer days were longer, and he was glad after work was over to ramble away through the valley of the Goyt, following the winding of the stream, or over the larch-clad hills above Taxal, whence he would return with the rising moon, bringing pockets full of the crisp-brown fir-cones for Sim to play with. In the pine-woods, alone with nature, he could give vent to his emotions, or indulge in meditation at his will.

Mr. Ashton, however, found him other occupation for his spare hours. The landlord of the “White Hart,” bearing in mind that Mr. Clegg had come under his roof first as a travelling artist, had expatiated to Mr. Ashton with much pathos on the deplorable condition of the inn sign, not without sundry broad hints that Mr. Clegg’s temporary residence on the spot was a glorious opportunity not to be neglected. Mr. Ashton had smiled, said “Just so,” taking a pinch from the immense snuff-box lying on the bar-parlour chimney-piece, then fallen back upon his own, gone away, and forgot the dingy sign altogether, until another hint from his tenant refreshed his memory.

As he stood at the inn door waiting for the Manchester coach, an upward sly glance of the jolly host’s caused him to say to the young man by his side, “Do you think you could manage to paint a new sign for the ‘White Hart,’ to oblige Chapman and me?”

Jabez hesitated, not from unwillingness.

“I’m afraid, sir, to attempt. It’s not in my line, and——”

“Oh! you can do it well enough. Remember the banner.”

“I’ve no materials here, sir, else——”

“If that is all, you shall have them in a day or two.”

In a few days an easel, a new sign-board, and colours were sent by the Manchester and Buxton carrier, and Jabez set to work, to the especial wonder and admiration of little Sim, who delighted to stand by his side, and grew rebellious when “bed-time” was announced. Jabez was, however, but an untaught artist, and his painting hours were few; the _couchant_ hart was rubbed in and wiped out over and over again before he was satisfied even with the outline; but then it grew in fair proportion under his brush, until he felt there was something in him beyond the region of tapes and braces.

The graceful animal, resplendent in golden collar and chain, looked mildly out from the easel in the parlour nearest to the passage (used, when the family was there, as an eating-room), and little Sim gravely reported to his elders it only wanted “gass, an’ tee, an’ ky,” when the inmates of Carr Cottage were startled by the arrival of unexpected visitors.

It was the second week in August; the air was heavy with the perfume of clove carnations, honeysuckle, mignonette, lavender, musk, and mint. Golden sunflower and crimson hollyhock were in their glory; bees and wasps hovered over balsams and china asters, or hid themselves in the blue Canterbury bells or the amber nectary of the stately white lily. Fruits were ripe for the gatherer, grain was falling under the sickle. Bess, in a fair white muslin cap, a large check apron over her dark chocolate-and-white-print gown (her blue bed-gown days were over), was moving quietly about the house-place, preparing their early breakfast, no longer restricted to oatmeal porridge.

Tom, looking worn, but clean and neat as loving hands could make him, leaned back in his soft arm-chair, and watched her with well-satisfied eyes. Little Sim was already in the garden with his grandfather, helping to gather raspberries and currants for preserving.

The tall oak-cased clock struck seven, and then, true to time, the guard’s bugle announced the coming of the coach from Manchester. Instinctively Bess went to the door, as was her wont, when the coach came in. She uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“Eh, Tum! aw declare t’ coach is stoppin’ at ar gate. Happen theer’s a parcel or summat for ar Jabez.”

And off she set past the kitchen window and the farm-yard Gothic doorway, and down the avenue, with the light foot of a younger woman. Before she reached the avenue gate, the stuffy vehicle had yielded up three ladies and two bandboxes, and the guard having unlocked the capacious boot (a kind of closet at the back), dragged thence, with much superfluous puffing and straining, two hair trunks of moderate dimensions. Yes, there stood Mrs. Ashton, grandly calm; bright-haired Augusta, tall, slim, and, it must be added, unamiably silent; and Ellen Chadwick, whose black eyes had an absolute glow of expectancy in their depths. Bess put up her hand in amazement.

“Eh, Mrs. Ashton, madam! yo’ han takken us unawares! an’ theere is na a bit o’ flesh meat i’ th’ heause; an’ th’ butcher’s cart wunna be reawnd agen till Setterday! But awm downreet glad to see yo’ an’ th’ young ladies” (she dropped a respectful curtsey), “an’ a’ lookin’ so weel. Aw wur afeard yo’ wur no’ comin’ this Summer.”

“Never mind the butcher’s meat, Mrs. Hulme; having come to Carr we must do as Carr does; I do not doubt we shall fare very well,” said the stately lady, reassuringly. “I trust we shall find your good husband free from pain, and Mr. Clegg and your family in health.”

Bess thanked Mrs. Ashton for her kind inquiries, but somehow she boggled over the “Mr. Clegg.” She was proud enough of his advancement, but to her he was still “Jabez;” and he did not seek to be otherwise.

There was a difficulty about the luggage, no men being about. By this time old Simon was nearly down the hill, little Sim following at his heels, his face, hands, and pinafore stained with fruit.

“I run for Joe,” cried crippled Sim, as Bess tried the weight of a trunk, and Ellen interposed. Run indeed! It was the very travestie of a run!

“Well, yo’ see as heaw o’ Moore’s folk are eawt i’ th’ fields cuttin’ whoats [oats]. Feyther an’ me con carry one on em atween us. They’re noän so heavy.”